Skirting Danger: Women's Safety
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Skirting Danger: Women's Safety
S1-E2 Three Steps to Overcoming Extreme Grief: Psychologist Dr. Jan Canty Shares Her Healing Trinity
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Surviving the unimaginable, Dr. Jan Canty offers a lifeline to those who have faced significant trauma and loss. As a clinical psychologist and family homicide survivor, Dr. Canty discusses the healing trinity method, which she adhered to during her journey of healing after her husband's murder. This episode promises an insightful exploration of how this bio-psycho-social model can guide trauma survivors through a personalized and adaptable recovery process, emphasizing the crucial interplay between biological, psychological, and social dimensions. This episode also tackles the impact of social media on grief, the challenges of public scrutiny, and the profound gestures of support that can make all the difference.
Guest Info:
Website: https://jancantyphd.com/
Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/domino-effect-of-murder/id1497819808
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@jancantyphd
Skirting Danger Music by Brad Poirier www.hairstylistempowermentpodcast.com
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Speaker 2:I know how to play, I see the lines you try to cross, but I'm ten steps ahead. You're already lost. I've learned to leave the room before I walk in. With every glance I see where you've been. No fear, no prey. I own my own lane. You'll never get close. I'm stealing clear of your game. Skirt in danger. I'm free and alive. I see through the lies. Ask you where the following podcast.
Speaker 1:I need to follow cutting my own path.
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Speaker 1:The following podcast contains explicit information about violence and deception, crime prevention and how all women can lead safer lives.
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Speaker 1:Skirt in danger. I'm free and alive, watchin' the traps while I thrive. I see through the lies that knock you out. Hello, lovelies, welcome to Episode 2 of Skirting Danger, a podcast that's dedicated to female empowerment and many ways that all of us can avoid becoming a crime victim. My name is Gerald Spear and I am the host and creator of our podcast.
Speaker 1:Today is my second interview with Dr Jan Canty, a clinical psychologist and family homicide survivor who shares her wisdom and common sense approach to mental health. Even though it's not required, if you haven't listened to our first interview with Dr Canty in Episode 1, I recommend that you do so first. In this episode, dr Canty talks about how she healed from her extreme trauma by using a method that I refer to as the Healing Trinity and please note this is not a clinical term for this program, but it does describe it to a T. She did this after her husband's secret life led to his murder at the hands of a sociopath and drug abuser. As the name implies, the Healing Trinity involves a three-pronged approach to healing that has been shown to overcome even extreme trauma and making that recovery stick. It's a common sense program that's easily understood and can be done at your own pace. If you are a trauma victim, whether it's from a failed relationship or even the death of a loved one, this method serves as a tool that you can use to overcome trauma and embrace a happier, healthier and more fulfilling life.
Speaker 1:Before we move on to our interview, here's a message you'll want to listen to. For the first five people that respond to this message, I will be thanking you by buying you a cup of coffee. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to let you know about our Skirting Danger newsletter. It offers more insights into women's safety, current scams and how to deal with them, and many ways to move on from bad situations. It's free for all our podcast followers, so hit that follow or like button and check out the show notes for the subscription link. Please, everybody, give our guests a warm welcome. Dr Jan Canty. Psychologist, book author, photographer, tiktoker, podcaster. She has an impressive resume. She is also a homicide survivor. Jan, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2:You are welcome.
Speaker 1:We have something that is so important to talk about. It's a program that I refer to as the Healing Trinity, and it is for anybody who has suffered grief, loss, trauma, how to heal and how to make that healing stick. Would you like to explain it to our audience?
Speaker 2:Sure, it's pretty straightforward, and one of the things that I like about it is it's so adaptable and it's on your own time what you're able to accomplish. And it's old it's been around for a long time. In psychology it's called the biopsychosocial model, so it affects the biology of you, the psychological or spiritual side of you, and the social, and the idea behind it is, if you address all three areas of your life in any kind of depth, then the changes that you make are much more likely to stick around than if you just address one or the other. It's not a quick fix, but it's very durable, and so when I was in the throes of my grief reactions to my husband's homicide, I thought that's what I got to do. I got to address all three dimensions of me to get myself out of this situation. They're pretty comprehensive.
Speaker 2:The biological could be things like your diet, your DNA, it could be medications you're on, it could be your level of physical activity, diseases that you've had or will acquire if you keep it up, how much sleep you're getting, anything that affects you biologically, physically, that could end up on a lab result or x-ray.
Speaker 2:That's the kind of thing that is involved in the biology and it may or may not require the attention of a physician in my case a little bit, but not a lot. But biology is important because without it we're not going to have stamina. We need as reasonable good health as we can get in order to think clearly, and it makes us feel better to be in better shape physically. So things like smoking and doing drugs and skipping on sleep and not bathing regularly and not taking your medications as prescribed or over-medicating, those are some of the things that you would look at biologically. Obviously, the DNA you can't fix. It is what it is, but awareness of it is important. So, for example, if you have a likelihood of inherited tendencies towards heart failure because you look at your family tree, then that behooves you to take extra care of your heart. You can't change the DNA, but you can mitigate the circumstances that might invite the problem.
Speaker 1:And what did you do in that respect?
Speaker 2:This did not happen first, but biologically what I did, because I was in bad shape. I had lost a lot of weight, my hair had thinned to the point where I had a bald spot in the top of my head called alopecia. I had people commenting on how tired I looked and I was dragging. I wasn't sleeping well.
Speaker 1:So you just felt haggard.
Speaker 2:Yes, I felt like the day before you get the flu all the time what I ended up doing. I did see my physician, which I recommend people to do just to have, and this is when I was younger. So she did blood testing, et cetera and there was nothing alarming. She did recommend that I take a very small dose of Xanax, which I did not want to do, but she said you are running on fumes. You have not slept more than two hours in a month and you can't keep that up. You've got to turn the switch off. So she wrote me a prescription for three pills. That's all I would accept and the first pill. I slept 16 hours.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 2:Yes, I don't think it was the medications per se. I think the medications allowed me to exhale. And then my body took over and said man, you need to go to the mat and just crash. And I'll tell you, when I woke up after 16 hours the world did look better to me, but I had started to adapt to that crazy schedule of two hours, or sometimes a cat nap in the middle of the day, and that became my new normal. And you can't sustain your life on two hours sleep a night. So I did that little piece.
Speaker 2:But then the piece that I think was really significant for me is I joined a gym and when I went to the gym I was referred to a group of women that met at 630 in the morning four days a week. And I joined them and we clicked and everybody had a schedule in the day. You know we had to get, we had to rush at the end and get where we were going. But at six 30 in the morning most people don't have a lot going on. So we were able to make it, and if we by chance did not make it, you'd have you'd better have a good darn good explanation the next time, because they were going to demand an answer from you. We all held each other accountable and we challenged each other, and it was so refreshing for me not only to feel myself physically getting stronger, but to be in the company of people that were like-minded, that were taking care of their body, that felt like they had a goal.
Speaker 1:That's fabulous.
Speaker 2:And we helped each other. In fact, in the fourth year of doing that, we decided to try triathlons. Not that everybody has to do a triathlon, but we decided let's raise it.
Speaker 1:Boy that's dedicated.
Speaker 2:We went through the Danskin and I went through the Subaru. I did some other ones and I had no visions of me breaking records. Don't get me wrong. I really am a bad swimmer, but I thought my goal is to finish. That's it, and no matter if it takes two hours or four hours, I'm going to finish and I want to do it without having a heart attack or drowning. So that was my goal, and we agreed, among the four of us that did it, that we were not going to cross the finish line. At home, when I tell my husband this, he rolls his eyes. But we agreed that we were going to be there for each other across the finish line and held each other accountable. Like you can make it, come on another quarter mile, you got it. You got it and we did.
Speaker 1:What is your second part?
Speaker 2:The second part that I undertook was social, sociological, because I found and this is very common among homicide survivors and probably trauma people affected by trauma in general, but I know it's true among homicide survivors is that we tend to isolate. That's not healthy. I mean, in the beginning I felt it was necessary because I wanted to get the media away from me. I was tired of answering questions and I was in such a state of being overwhelmed I didn't want to talk anymore to anybody. But after a while you begin to hermit and that's not a good thing. So I thought I've got to spread my wings and connect with people.
Speaker 2:And the other thing too I don't know if this is a general statement about trauma, but with homicide survivors it's a truism that after about three months you lose your support base. The people that pledged to be there are gone, and I think that's partly because of you pushing them away and I think it's partly that they get just compassion fatigue. So you're pretty alone and I wanted to address that. So what I ended up doing was volunteer work in very far away places like Kenya.
Speaker 1:What was your purpose for that, as opposed to doing something locally? I'm sure you had a reason for it. I'm curious.
Speaker 2:Because I felt it would put my life in a bigger perspective than just local. And so I volunteered on different continents doing rural projects and not everybody can do that, but the way I, you know it does become cost prohibitive if you are careful. But I did it through volunteer work and I was okay with having the most basic I mean basic living conditions, when I was in India, for example.
Speaker 1:I was in a very very remote area and I did not.
Speaker 2:I was there for five weeks and in that five weeks I had no shower, no bath.
Speaker 1:So what do you do? Just take a rag and wipe yourself down, or what?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's all you can do. And it was very humid and I ended up getting plaques on my body from the infection because my doctor thought I had psoriasis. I said, no, I think it's just germs. And my husband said when I got home, after five weeks he goes. You look like a refugee. And I did all my because I get my nails done. They had all fallen off, my hair was awful oh God, was I a mess.
Speaker 2:But the work and the experiences that you get from meeting with people and this is the part I want to emphasize, at least with international volunteer work the interfacing that you do with people is humbling, because you meet people that have no access to clean water physicians, transportation, toilets, hard paved roads, laws that back them up, et cetera. Boy, does that put things in perspective. When you come home, you suddenly find yourself in a place of gratitude because you have a roof over your head, you've got running water, you've got a toilet, you've got transportation, I had my education, I had the police that would back me up, I had the right to vote, I had the right to be in public alone as a woman. Things that you take for granted are no longer there when you're across in some of these places and meeting people who'd been through horrendous situations with no help at all. Like I met a woman named Gloria who was a cook at the camp in Andre Prada. Oh no, no wait, let me think Gloria, she was the one I met in the Rift Valley area of Olipiki-Dange in Kenya and we literally bumped into each other in the morning. I was told to stay in my tent in the morning because the animals crossed through the area and on their way to the watering hole and, being a photographer, I couldn't resist the sunrise. So I tiptoed out of my tent and went to the edge and I literally bumped into her, coming around a corner and she said you're supposed to be in your tent. I go, I know, but the sunrise, I want to get a picture of it. And she said you cannot do that, it is too dangerous.
Speaker 2:And she went on to tell me the story of. She didn't listen either, because elephants in Kenya are very different than Indian elephants. They're very vicious. In Kenya are very different than Indian elephants, they're very vicious. And she said that she was walking hand in hand at dusk with her fiance. And it's hard to believe this, but elephants can get disguised and lost behind a tree. You can't see them or hear them. If they're standing still, even though they're the size of Montana, you can't see them. And she and her fiance were walking at dusk which is when they tend to be more mobile and this elephant took its long trunk, took her boyfriend, her fiance, threw him on the ground and stepped on him in front of her and she said to me at that point I was not Gloria anymore. And I said what you have is post-traumatic stress disorder. She had never heard of it. She has no chance of any intervention whatsoever in her entire life. She just said I was not Gloria anymore.
Speaker 2:And I met a lot of people like that, people not just Gloria, but others who had been through horrific situations with no help, no backup, not even a comprehension. It's like well, that's life, you know easy come, easy go. And that put my situation in perspective too. I had help and I had the ability to get more help if I wanted it. But social connection is critically important and that's part, I think, why the gym experience was so helpful to me. I met with people that were very positive.
Speaker 2:So who we surround ourselves with is a reflection of where we are and where we are going. So if you surround yourself in negativity, well that's where you're going to be. And if you surround yourself with can-do people who have overcome obstacles, who are putting their shoulder to the grindstone, that's how you're going to be. That's why looking carefully at your friends is critically important, because they're a reflection of you. And if they're, if they got a long face and they're bitter and doing drugs and sleeping until 11 every day and complaining the rest of the hours that they're awake, that's not going to help your head. And if you can't stand being around people, then be around animals. They're uplifting too. You know. Being around little kids, for some people is very, very enjoyable.
Speaker 2:So there's different ways to do it, but I think sitting on the couch alone is not healthy. You don't gain anything by sitting still and belaboring your situation. You know my mentor. You had this expression he would use. He says I've never forgotten it. He said some people like to preen their symptoms no-transcript. And then the last piece was the psychological or spiritual, and I would say that was addressed much later and it came about indirectly. I have a relative who I admire by the name of Holly, and she runs. She's the CEO of a crime scene cleanup company in South Carolina called Diligent.
Speaker 1:Data oh boy.
Speaker 2:And she was the one that suggested to try to do a podcast. And I'm like I don't even listen to podcasts, I don't know anything about podcasts. And she said, well, she said I think there's a need, just just think about it. Well, that led to me being a guest on other shows and they were very encouraging. And then I got picked up by the mental health news radio network and they were supportive and it just kind of fell into place. And here's my point of why it was healing for me, and I would bet you most podcasters would say this is true. What it did for me is it helped me network in a way I would have been otherwise impossible, and that was healing. I could finally be in the company of other people who'd been through what I'd been through. And boy was that real, it was like a window open. I could finish their sentences. For them it was very refreshing. Rather than being a subject of curiosity, they'd been through what I'd been through and we were simpatico and the networking I gained through podcasting was invaluable.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying everybody has to have a podcast, but you do have to address yourself psychologically and that can also mean things like looking at what you tell yourself the internal statements that you make like I'll never get better, I'm such a loser, I'm so ugly, what did I do to bring this upon myself? Et cetera, et cetera. If you start writing, if you start thinking those things, start writing it out and put it outside of your head on a piece of paper and put it aside. And then go back and look at it and what you're going to find is you're going to look at that and say, dang, anybody would be depressed if they, if they lived and believed this crap. And you can change that.
Speaker 2:And so if you say to yourself I'm such a loser, did I bring this awful event about by doing x, y and z? And then the next statement ought to be but what if I didn't? What if it wasn't because of me? Or I'm not worthy of investing in myself and changing? Well, if you're not going to invest in you, nobody else is going to do it. So challenging these negative beliefs is part of the psychological or spiritual recovery. And then I think, another one which can only occur later. It cannot occur at the beginning. That is way too much to expect. But way down the road, I think it's a very productive thing to ask yourself how can I pivot this awful experience into something that's positive and that can take many forms, like I know people that have said about.
Speaker 2:I just did a podcast release, I don't know, a week or two ago, of a guy who was raped as a child and ended up murdering his rapist and went to prison and when he got out he decided to change the laws about reporting of sexual abuse In the state he was in. It was a two-year window after the age of 18. And he changed that to. I think he had to age 55 or later. Even so, advocacy is an important part of spiritual growth and psychological healing. To say I'm going to spin this into something positive Changing laws, doing speaking engagements, being interviewed, writing there's many ways to do it.
Speaker 2:But I think to look at yourself as a veteran, like I went through this experience and you've got some distance from it. Like I said, this doesn't happen immediately, so maybe it's five years out or 10 years out and you can look back on it and say I went through this awful experience. What can I take away from it to improve the world? Can I change a law? Can I write a book, can I mentor a child, can I do a podcast? What can I do with it? Because I am a veteran, I did this. I learned this, I've been through it. I am no it up, but I think advocacy is a very healing dimension and that's why I think you hear so many people like people who've lost their children to homicide. You'll hear them like we've got Marcy's Law now and we've got Adam's Alerts and there's things that it doesn't erase it, it doesn't make it go away, but what it does do is make something positive come out of a tragedy, and that's the best you can do, I think.
Speaker 1:I've got to get these thoughts out of my head or bounce them off of somebody. What type of a psychologist would be qualified and appropriate for such an extreme experience?
Speaker 2:There are not many out there. That's the first problem I want your listening audience to understand. This is shocking, but true. There is no training in social work, psychology, psychiatry, counseling. There's no trauma programs out there. It's an aside, it's part of another program, a part of a class. So what you want to do is look for somebody who's licensed and either been through it themselves or has been mentored by somebody who's been through it themselves, and the buzzword is they're trauma informed. But mental health can be achieved not just through one-on-one meetings with a therapist. It's also very smart to go to support groups.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Like Parents of Murdered Children POMC. Like Parents of Murdered Children POMC. There's this guy that's been in the news whose wife killed their three children.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's going to be back in the news because the trial is going to start. She was a labor and delivery nurse. It's an unbelievable story. We think it was due to postpartum depression and psychiatric drugs that she was taking. But my point being, if I had him face to face with me, the thing I would tell him is let's go find another man whose wife murdered their children, so the two of you can talk in private. I think that's very healing.
Speaker 2:I think another thing that's very healing and, like in my situation I've not done it, I'll admit go participate in restorative justice, which is hard, it takes a long time, but through the Department of Corrections you can. If the offender agrees, you can talk to the person face-to-face who murdered your loved one, and many people say that's more healing than any amount of mental health intervention. But support group meetings there's a whole thing you could look for in those you know. You want to look for one that has low turnover, because if people are constantly leaving there's something wrong. You want to look for one. My preference it's just a preference is in person rather than Internet because, we do too much on the internet as it is.
Speaker 2:I mean, think about taking a virtual cruise versus an in-person cruise. I would prefer if you can do it Not everybody can. You might be in a wheelchair or you might be in a remote place or there might be other obstacles that prevent you going in person. But if you have an option, do the in-person one and look for one with low turnover. Look for one with low fees or no fees. Look for one that have ground rules that are in writing, like regarding confidentiality, participation. Look for a leader of that group who manages the group well, that doesn't let somebody go on and on and on and on and let other people not get a chance, or vice versa. Let's people just sit there week after week after week after month and not say a word. That's not good either, and you might do both. And so if you want to do both, I would let your therapist know. Hey, I want to attend this group over here in conjunction with what we're doing, and keep it all above board.
Speaker 1:I think that's interesting. I really appreciate you giving that information, because that's a good insight when somebody really needs help. Now you mentioned your podcast. I want to talk a little bit about it. I'm a fan now. I happily wait for your next episode to drop. I keep checking on it. Oh, is it here yet? Is it? Wait for your next episode to drop? I keep checking on it. Oh, is it here yet, Is it? Oh, thank you. So interesting and so helpful to sometimes get out of our own head and our own space and realize that there are people that have experienced equal or far greater trauma. And I wanted you to talk a little bit about it the name of your podcast, how long you've done it, what it's done for you and for others.
Speaker 2:The name of it is Domino Effective Murder, without the T-H-E, just Domino Effective Murder. It's sponsored by the Mental Health News Radio Network, which is a consortium of mental health-related podcasts on all kinds of topics. Episodes come out twice a month and I try to keep them informative so that a person can take information away from it.
Speaker 2:It's not just about what happened to the individual at all. In the intro I try to talk about resources and take generalizable pieces of it so that if you lost a brother to homicide and this person we're going to be hearing from lost a brother to homicide, you're going to gain from it particularly for you, and it must be resonating because it's heard in 22 countries now. And I did a funny thing just two days ago. I went on to what do they call it? Chat, gpt and just for the heck of it I put in.
Speaker 2:Tell me about domino effect of murder. What are people saying about it, or something?
Speaker 1:Oh, that's interesting. I haven't thought of doing that and it came up with this.
Speaker 2:I'm like ooh, I like what it said this robot, but it healed me. It was the final panache of what I needed. I took away so much from my guests. I am in awe of my guests. I admire them. I'm grateful to them. They are amazing people. They are people from every walk of life who've experienced horrible things, and they're all different. A couple of years ago, I sat down and listened to a bunch of them back to back to back and I was looking for is there common denominators in what I'm hearing? And there was. What I discovered after listening to a bunch of them back to back is that every homicide is unique, but the aftermath is not. It's very predictable. So I enjoy it. I've learned a lot, a great deal from it. It forces me to learn. So, for example, I did an episode on a woman who learned of her father's murder on Facebook live. She was in a restaurant, queued Facebook live up and watched her father be killed on Facebook live. He was a randomly selected elderly man.
Speaker 2:And she was. She was crazy about her dad and it was was on. She's a very religious person and it happened on palm sunday. That bothered her. So that forced me to learn a whole lot more about what's going on in terms of social media and live homicides, and it's startling what I learned and so I did on that podcast episode. I talked about my own ideas about what we could do as a society to stop that and in her situation, the final one-two punch was that she learned that the head muckety-muck of Facebook was in her community and of course he knew of this awful event. He did not even drop by to see her. He was there to promote something else, which is like the extra insult of what happened, and I think we got to get out of the mind frame of measuring trauma. Well, she had it worse, she had it better. It's trauma and people are all different. Person A might be just scraping by as it is and then X happens and it's enough to push them over because they were already doing poorly, whereas person B, it takes a whole lot more, but it's still traumatic. So we need to drop the well, she had it better, she had it worse and just get into.
Speaker 2:We, as veterans of trauma, can help other people become veterans of trauma, whether it's trauma from rape, whether it's trauma from a natural death of a child, it doesn't matter. It's still awful. It's still disorienting and disheartbreaking, and I think that it makes you a better listener, if you allow it to, because you're putting yourself in their shoes and you can feel what they feel. But you're a step away from it, and that's one of the best things we can do for other trauma survivors is step aside, close our mouth and listen. How many times do we get that in our life? Instead, we get bumper sticker advice, like like. I had a young guest on my show. She was in her twenties and her husband was stabbed to death and they'd only been married a year and somebody said well, you're young, you'll get remarried. Oh my God.
Speaker 1:Or I had another one say well, the guy said well, you're young, you'll get remarried, oh my God.
Speaker 2:Or I had another one say well, the guy said well, your 14-year-old son. He was always a problem anyway, and now you don't have to worry about him.
Speaker 1:Really In my case.
Speaker 2:Somebody said to me well, you know, given what I've read in the newspaper, I think he really committed suicide. He just used somebody else to do the job for him. And I'm like, what gives you the right to say that to me?
Speaker 1:Who needs your opinion?
Speaker 2:My husband was killed with a baseball bat. I had somebody say to me I hear it was a home run.
Speaker 2:No, it's amazing the things that people will say and do, which is why it's important to have people that got your back, that you can go to and say you're not going to believe this, and you can trade horror stories and realize there's a lot of insensitive idiots out there, and not everybody's that way. So you got to find the ones that are like the pearls you know and hold on to them and they'll be your best friends.
Speaker 1:I can't imagine ever saying something like that, but you do sometimes feel at a loss for words.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but don't make them feel better. It's not an illness that they need to recover from.
Speaker 1:It's a situation they need to process and grow through.
Speaker 2:So I think the thing to say is you know I'm at a loss for words. I so want you to feel better, but I know it's going to take time. I'm here, talk to me.
Speaker 2:If you're good enough, if you're good enough friends with them to do that, I'm here. What do you? No-transcript woman made the comment I can't sleep, I have bad dreams and I'm up. And she said to her. The neighbor across the street said to her you know, I'm a light sleeper and I'll tell you what. When I'm awake, I'm going to put my porch light on and that just tells you that I'm awake. And if you want to come over in your pajamas, I'm here. If you don't just know that I'm awake and I'm across the street and I'm thinking of you.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's all it took. You know, my husband died unexpectedly. This happened in 2008. And I still haven't fully processed it, because it was so unexpected to walk out to the living room and find him dead. I mean, just gone. But I found out afterwards that he was not taking the medication that he should have been taking. But I kept thinking what did I miss? What did I do? If only you know, if only this has to be my fault. I just don't know how exactly it is my fault, and so it took me a long time to get over it. But I never will forget a neighbor knocking on my door. This was about a week after Robert had passed and I said oh hi. I said come on in and she goes. Well, I don't have a lot of time. She says I'm just here to pick up your laundry, and I said I said sorry, he goes. No, I'm going to do all your laundry, see that's something that is concrete.
Speaker 1:I'll never forget it.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly I. I was with a coworker once, a woman I liked very much very heavyset woman she was. This is when I worked at a psych hospital. She was a very heavyset woman. This is when I worked at a psych hospital. She was a very heavyset nurse and I happened to be standing next to her when she took the phone call that told her her husband had taken his life.
Speaker 1:Oh boy.
Speaker 2:And she just about buckled and over the next day or two she was talking about I don't know what I'm going to do about my lawn. That seemed to really bother her. Like I can't do it I'm going to do about my lawn. That seemed to really bother her Like I I can't do. And she couldn't. She was very out of shape, so I paid for her landscaping for the rest of that summer. Now, if somebody had called her and said to her call me if you need anything.
Speaker 2:She would not have said would you pay for my landscaping for the rest of the summer? That would not have come out of her mouth, and yet it was the thing she needed, just like you would not have said would you do my laundry for me? That wouldn't happen. So sometimes when we see a need, we need to do it. Go fill it, whether it's I'm going to cut your grass for you, or I'm going to take your cat into the vets to be checked, or I'm going to do grocery shopping or pick your kids up from sports event or whatever it might be that you know is on their mind.
Speaker 2:Because when trauma comes, the other advantage of doing some of these things is that we don't want to be out in public, we don't want to be seen. You don't want your neighbors gushing up to you, and so this is a way like can I run to the store or the drugstore, get your prescription, whatever it might be, so that they're interfacing with the public on your behalf? That's something that they can do, not a casual relationship. Or they are a professional attorney or a spokesperson. They can become a public spokesperson for you from the media, rather than having the media have direct access to you. So you can either write out the statement this is what I want you to say, or you can tell them they can wing it and you can say you can take questions, or I don't want you taking questions. You set the boundaries, you set the guardrails and they go out and they are the spokesperson for you. And that's I wish.
Speaker 2:I so wish I'd had somebody that had done that for me. I didn't even think of it at the time. That would have made my life so much more relieving. But I didn't have that. And they were. They were so intrusive consistently after 18 months that I finally moved away from the city altogether. They would not shut up and let it go, and I finally, reluctantly, decided that in order for me to heal, I had to make a big change. So I went from Detroit to a very, very rural farming community, which you know. Their idea of crime was a bounce check.
Speaker 1:Well, you could walk and have solitude.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that was healing and I met some wonderful people, but they didn't know about this because I didn't talk about it for 30 years what motivated you to write A Life Divided?
Speaker 1:Just to clarify for our audience A Life Divided is Jan's autobiography about growing up, who she was when she married her husband, all about his brutal murder and the aftermath that she went through for years.
Speaker 2:I wanted people to see it through my eyes, but I wanted it to be accurate as well.
Speaker 2:And the way it came about was just on a whim. I decided gee, I wonder if anybody's still talking about this homicide. So I Googled it, which led me to a very active blog about his homicide and I was shocked. I'm like after 25 years or whatever it was at that point 27 years, people are still talking about this. So I started reading it and getting familiar with it and one thread of the blog was a detective and so I answered him and we started going back and forth and he encouraged me to come out and talk about it on the blog. He said because I know the truth, I know what murder is like. I live in Detroit and people are drifting away from you know what really happened and believing in these myths that surround it, like there was a belief. This was stupid. Somebody got the idea and perpetuated the belief that a headless mannequin was thrown on my front lawn to traumatize me after the murder.
Speaker 1:And that never happened. The events were bad enough without embellishing them.
Speaker 2:So I started sprinkling in some things and I was shocked at the well of support that I got. I didn't expect that because I'd had such awful comments earlier and I decided the newspapers have had their say and I'm far enough away from this now that I can tell the story one accurately, two subjectively, and three in a way that hopefully will help other homicide survivors. I wanted to make the ending more generalizable and I wanted to put everybody, including myself, under the microscope, because I don't believe there's any situation where a person is 0% responsible and 100% is on the other person.
Speaker 1:I know I kept trying to find my part. What did I do?
Speaker 2:Well, you know you've got to look deep In my case. Well, as you read the book, you know I kept trusting. I just trusted, I didn't question. He said the bills recovered. The bills recovered. He said he was working late. He was working late. I wanted to be even-handed is my point. I did not want the book to come off as they're all bad and I'm a saint.
Speaker 1:You also have a second book.
Speaker 2:It's called what Now? Navigating the Aftermath of Homicide and Suicide, because that's the book I wanted when I needed it and it wasn't there. Because what resources and information that is out there is so fragmented there's no way a person is going to be able to pull that information together. They don't have the energy, the resources, the knowledge and they don't even know what questions to ask in the beginning. So I wanted to pull it together in one resource to say let's organize this longitudinally.
Speaker 2:This is the death notification. This is when the media descends. This is the funeral information you're going to need. This is what you need to know about your body. This is what you need to know about helping your children deal with it, if that's relevant, crime scene cleanup. I mean all that early stuff. And then it goes into later stuff about your employer and selling your home and advocacy work, probation of the person that murders your loved one. That's all.
Speaker 2:At the end I put I don't know 10 pages of resources at the back and complete.
Speaker 2:I had a glossary in there so you can speak on a level with other professionals who come at you in a way that makes sense to you, like you'll know what a preliminary exam is, or you'll know what voir dire means if an attorney is talking to you. That's all in the glossary in the back and it's. I deliberately wrote it in such a way that you can skip certain chapters if they don't, if they're not relevant to you, because it's 450 pages and it could easily have been 600 pages, but it gets expensive and it gets heavy. So I pared it down and pared it down, but I wrote it in such a way that you can skip the chapter on crime scene cleanup if that's not relevant to you, or you can skip the chapter on children's grief if that's not relevant to you. And it's easy reading. And at the very end of each chapter I have bullet points so that you can go back and make sure you got the drift of the main points at least of each chapter.
Speaker 1:I have my copy. I bought both the books at once. Before we close today, I want to ask you about your TikTok channel, Jan Canty PhD. I have become hooked on it, and obviously many other people have as well, and I'd love to know how you got into that and what you thought TikTok was before and your goals with it.
Speaker 2:Plain and simple. It was my daughters who are in their early 30s. Mom, you've got to do this. And I'm like TikTok, that's for dancers or something that's for teenagers. And she's going have you even looked at it? And I go no, it's kind of like a parallel. What happened with the podcast? I was pulled into it, you know, with these stereotypes of podcast. Now it's like tiktok and she said just just go look at it, it's not people just dancing, and it's true, kamala Harris is on there, you know. I mean, it's all kinds of people on there.
Speaker 2:And so what I decided to do is these little clips on information, not just about my situation. I, I want to talk about homicide reality and I want to talk about resources and and I so I tried to dispel myths, I try to uplift, and I haven't had a lot of trolls and if they're weird I just cut them off at the pass. I don't even answer them, but that's rare. Most people have either not said anything or said something positive. But what does surprise me which ones are popular really floors me, like I did one on funeral scams and I thought nobody's going to care about this. That was very popular.
Speaker 1:I find that all of the topics that you cover are so interesting. You have a series on TikTok right now about mass murder. You've talked about personality traits of social media influencers, how you can con yourself, gypsy Rose Lee, the Menendez brothers. There is such a variety of topics and, for listeners who haven't discovered your channel yet, you have hundreds of TikTok posts. I'm a total fan. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm looking forward to many more interviews with you.
Speaker 2:Appreciate you having me.
Speaker 1:Thank you, we'll talk soon. Before I say goodbye, I want to let you know that I have included links in our show notes, which are right below the title of this episode, for Dr Jan Canty's website podcast, where you can purchase her books and, of course, her TikTok channel. This is Gerald signing off Season 1, episode 2 of Skirting Danger. Stay safe, ladies, and live free. Skirting Danger is a One Good Thing. Media production Creator and host is Gerald Spear, our sound engineer is David Dodd and our music Skirting Danger is by Brad Poirier. Thank you.