Mimi Tallo (author of Raised by Wolves, Trapped by Demons) joins Jeanne to talk about her difficult upbringing filled with loss and abandonment and how this led to her later challenges in life. She talks about her experiences in choosing the wrong relationships, abusive partners and her eventual journey to sobriety and victory over the past.
[DISCLAIMER: There may be triggers for some listeners in this episode. Difficult concepts of intimate partner abuse and parental neglect are discussed in this episode. Please listen responsibly.]
Mimi Tallo (author of Raised by Wolves, Trapped by Demons) joins Jeanne to talk about her difficult upbringing filled with loss and abandonment and how this led to her later challenges in life. She talks about her experiences in choosing the wrong relationships, abusive partners and her eventual journey to sobriety and victory over the past.
Episode Key Moments:
00:00 Introduction
02:00 The beginning: Growing up in a difficult house.
08:00 Escaping the parental home through marriage - The pitfalls of "escape."
12:15 Mimi's second marriage and the persisting challenges of her upbringing and how this played into her future decisions.
15:15 A blast from the past.
19:30 The breaking point.
21:00 How Mimi acknowledged her problem with alcohol and started her journey to sobriety.
23:45 The good that comes after the storm - Where is Mimi now and where to reach out to her.
26:00 Conclusion
Episode Links
Jeanne Retief: Blog | Podcast | Instagram | FIGGI Beauty Shop
Mimi Tallo: Podcast | Book: Raised by Wolves Trapped by Demons | YouTube
[00:00:00.000] - Jeanne
Good morning, FIGGI Goddess, and welcome to the My FIGGI Life podcast. I have such an interesting guest for you today. I cannot wait to introduce her, our amazing author talking to us about surviving emotional manipulation, a difficult upbringing, and how she made the success of her life. Stay tuned for this episode.
[00:00:21.530] - Intro
Welcome, goddess, to your sacred space. This is My FIGGI Life podcast, where we openly discuss life's wins and losses on our journeys to self-discovery. This is your best life. This is your FIGGI life. And now here is your host, Jeanne.
[00:00:40.440] - Jeanne
Welcome back, FIGGI Goddess. I am so excited to introduce to you our guest for today, Mimi Tallo. She is the author of Raised by Wolves, Trapped by Demons and other titles. But she will be talking to us about this book today. She was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, 1948. She grew up on the south side of the city and she has worked since she was a child as a cocktail waitress, waitress, medical assistant, insurer, business owner, and disability counselor. Her book is poignant and she talks very openly about her history, about the circumstances in which she was raised and how that led her into the choices she made in her adult life with her relationships and all throughout her life until where she finds herself now happily married in the Sunshine State, I believe you call it, which is Florida. Welcome to the My FIGGI Life podcast, Mimi. We're so happy to have you.
[00:01:38.840] - Mimi
I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me to you.
[00:01:41.900] - Jeanne
I read your book and there were so many instances that I could see myself in and that I could relate to. I believe you will too, goddess, because we openly talk a lot on this podcast about difficult upbringings, emotional abuse, verbal, physical abuse, and how that leads us into the relationships that we structure for ourselves later in our lives. I'd like to begin basically at the beginning. You had a very colorful heritage because you are really from a verified Italian family, all born in Italy and then migrated to the United States. Your grandparents were Italian, your parents were both Italian and born on Italian soil. Your parents were, definitely to put it delicately, a couple with their own internal demons and struggles and a lot of things that I think were going on for them from their own history as well. But your mother was very, I would call it emotionally absent, not very loving, not very expressive of love. You notice and you note in your book that you can't really remember her ever hugging you guys or saying I love you or expressing any of that. Your dad was very verbally abusive, emotionally abusive.
[00:02:54.320] - Jeanne
I think towards your mother, sometimes maybe physically abusive, but definitely towards your little brother. Living in a house like that, especially as a young child, you learn to walk on eggshells. That feeling of walking on eggshells haunts you for the rest of your life. Can you take us inside of your home life? Explain to us what that felt like, especially the evenings when you would call you in after you had already gone to bed and it would either be you or it would be your brother.
[00:03:22.220] - Mimi
My father is an alcoholic and he was, I guess they call it binge drinker today. He was able to maintain the week to keep the job Monday through Friday. Friday, when we walked home from school, my brother, who's a year younger than me and I, we knew when we walked in the door, if there was a quarter beer on the table, it was going to be hell. Most times it was. My father, he showed his affection, but only when he was drunk. It was like unwanted. We would be terrified. Usually at night at bedtime, he'd sit at that table, kitchen table drinking and arguing with my mother. We would be in our beds and we would hear one of our names called. If he called me, I'd go down there and I'd sit at that table and he would just talk about his whole life and how he had such a terrible childhood and he was in the orphanage until he was four. Then he would talk about to me as if I wasn't a loving daughter, I wasn't respectful and I would be silent the whole time. But I guess I always had this face to get myself away because you would end up saying, If looks to kill, I'd be dead.
[00:04:31.960] - Jeanne
Isn't it so interesting, though, how people that project that form of abuse and hurt always bring it back to you? Because I remember with my grandfather, as you know, goddess, I was sexually abused by my grandfather for quite some time. But the day before he finally left, he also looked at me and he said to me, You must hate me. It's like they have those really brief moments where they can almost grasp a little bit of humanity and then it just disappears. As quick as it was there, it's gone again. That really screwed with me mentally. How did that make you feel when you said that?
[00:05:07.140] - Mimi
Like my mother, like I said I have no memories, good memories, really. But my dad, even though he was so abusive when he was drunk, I still have some fond memories of him. I was able to forgive my father when he got sober. He did go to alcohol to an alcohol, but not until he was 60 and I was out of the house. He never did. If anybody knows anything about the steps, he never did that. He didn't take that fifth step with me, which is to make amends to me. I had a resentment because when I was 40, I got sober and I went to AA, and I found out about that fifth step. Hey, you didn't make amends to me. But you can't take back what's happened. The best you can do is try to work on yourself and get rid of whatever demons came.
[00:05:49.840] - Jeanne
Up for you. Talk us a little bit about maybe the lasting effect it had on you to see that happening to your little brother. Because I also come from a house where I've had to protect my little brother. I am still now dealing with a lot of feelings of guilt that I didn't do enough, that I should have been more proactive, even though I was also a child at the time. I'm wondering if this has also been thoughts going through your mind and how you've dealt with them.
[00:06:18.630] - Mimi
Well, there's such a thing too, as survivor's guilt. Why I say survivor's guilt was I didn't receive the physical abuse that my brother did. My brother actually got ripped with the belt. When I was five, I became his support, his guardian in my mind. When we were five and four, my parents had their third child and they put us in an orphanage for a week.
[00:06:42.940] - Jeanne
That was incredible to me to read that. I was like, What? Go through your mind when you realize that your parents have just put you in an orphanage.
[00:06:52.180] - Mimi
Here's my father who had spent the first four years of his life in that same orphanage. It was.
[00:06:58.140] - Jeanne
Quite.
[00:06:58.580] - Mimi
Stunning to me later on when I looked at it. At the time, I remember feeling abandoned, not good enough. I did something wrong. I'm not wanted. I'm not loved. They separated us boys and girls that night. I did not see my brother until the next day in the playground because he was on four. He tells me how he remembers how he was so happy to see me and he ran across the playground. From that day on, I became, as the oldest of eventually four children, the caretaker. I always felt.
[00:07:29.410] - Jeanne
That way. That's a very deep and profound thing to realize at such a young age. You're not safe. You cannot trust these people, people that are supposed to be your safety net, that are supposed to be the people to provide that safety and security. You, by some miracle, survive this upbringing. But you are rightly so very anxious to get out of the house. Obviously, you would want to exit this toxic environment. As we have maybe heard in many other instances as well, you're so desperate to get out. The choices that are presented to you don't really seem like choices. It seems like an escape plan, right? You're going to take it no matter what. Enter your first husband, who I almost found a little bit difficult to place because it was like he could be so good and he had such good qualities, but then there was this side to him that was almost mirroring your dad in a very definitive way. Did you recognize that in him from the get-go? Was there something niggling at your mind? Or was this just, Okay, this is my white night. This is my way out?
[00:08:40.630] - Mimi
I wanted him to be. The chemistry was really good. He was very handsome and charming. It didn't take long into the marriage. Looking back now, I see it. I didn't see it then. But he started to control. He was drawing me to be totally controlled. He wouldn't want me to go to work, and I'd say, I have to go to work. Oh, I love you so much. I want you to stay home with me today. The third time I took the day off.
[00:09:03.160] - Jeanne
I got fired. But that was so significant to me because it really just shows the naivety in that moment and how young you were in leaving the house because you say you didn't even know there was such a thing as being fired because of taking sick leave. You just believed him. It's okay, I can take sick leave.
[00:09:21.080] - Mimi
That was the first incident where I could see now what he was doing. Then he tried to keep me from my family and it just escalated. Then his drinking, which I had never seen him drunk before I married him, and his drinking, he was abusive, more emotionally and verbally. Finally, I left a couple of times and then went back as you're young and you're afraid of being alone, so then I had no where to go except my parents.
[00:09:47.270] - Jeanne
What made you steadfast enough in your decision to leave the final time?
[00:09:51.080] - Mimi
I attempted suicide.
[00:09:52.580] - Jeanne
Oh, no, I'm.
[00:09:53.390] - Mimi
So sorry. I was young and we had been married maybe a year and a half. We had lost the little we had, the very little we had. I think I talked about the China said that I had been saved back in the day. They used to what was called the Hope Chest. I was so depressed and I took sleeping pills and I took quite a bit. As soon as I did, I regretted it. I called my friend who was in nurses training and she said, Go in and make yourself throw up. But that was the moment I knew it was either me or him. I packed up and the next day when he was not there, I left my wedding to be on the table. No, nothing.
[00:10:31.080] - Jeanne
This led you down a path where you were very uncertain in many choices that you were making emotionally because you had made such actually amazing people. The people that you describe in the book and the history that you tell, it's very, very interesting. But you were working quite a couple of jobs and you had met people through these. Later, it led you to meeting Bob, which we will hopefully talk about a little bit more. I don't know if maybe you read this book back and you read that section between when you had left Jack up until you meet Bob and you see the uncertainty you were having during that time, the decisions you were making, the people that you were mixing up yourself with. It's so typical of coming from this history because we seek what we think made us safe, even though it may not be a healthy safe.
[00:11:25.630] - Mimi
Yeah, and you have to realize I did not want to go back and look at my parents, so I had never lived alone. Having gone from the parental home to the first husband had an apartment building that was only for women at first. Then when I got a job in a hotel, they gave me a room free of charge. I really had a hard time. I would have panic attacks. That is why after my shift of barcending was over, I would continue to stay out. The people you're going to meet after 2:00 in the morning aren't the.
[00:11:55.330] - Jeanne
Best they think. Even though you were, I dare to say, living in a safer world than we are now. Let's fast forward a little bit to you meeting Bob. Your relationship with Bob, for me, it felt like the most pivotal one because this was really where I saw you describing great hardship in making that decision in leaving him. A lot had gone under the bridge, a lot of water flowed into the ocean for you to finally make that decision. What attracted you about him? Because the way you describe it, I would love for you to share that to us.
[00:12:28.670] - Mimi
I wasn't attracted him the first time I had him at all. I had been dating a man who was in the mafia and he was married. I worked until 2:00 in the morning and then he knew I like to go to the bar across the street. He hired Bob to be my bodyguard. I know it sounds so far-fetched. In the book I tell you, I got a threatened phone call about this man I was dating, so I wasn't going to date him anymore. But Bob continued to come over and escort me every night. He finally asked me out. Maybe because he was a big strong man. He was big. He was 6'5 and I think about 270 pounds. He was big. Maybe I felt safe. He had been my bodyguard, of course. I felt like he wanted to protect me. And when I did go out with him, he did his best to impress me.
[00:13:18.030] - Jeanne
The grooming that he was already doing in order to get you into that point of trust and complacency and vulnerability, it's so amazing to look back at that and see it. And what was interesting is, if I understood it correctly, it took quite a while in that relationship before you started showing any signs of being really abusive. The steps were being put in place. But once he crossed that threshold, it became pretty severe pretty quickly.
[00:13:43.060] - Mimi
Yes, he really never put his hands on me while we were a man. My main complaint was he did not have a job. I had two children real quick. And of course, he didn't want me to work. The financial part was really getting bad. He was never home. He was never there. He'd stay out all night and sleep all day. So he wasn't there to help me with the children. So finally, I got a divorce. And when I got the divorce, that's when the physical abuse started.
[00:14:11.780] - Jeanne
After your divorce with Bob, you had a couple of instances where he had followed you, where he had physically attacked you.
[00:14:20.330] - Mimi
He did some really terrible things. I was going to college. I was taking my kids to daycare, and I had to use the bus system. I didn't have a car. I would study at the university during the day when we were in daycare. I found out they would fund me a car. Oh, I couldn't have that, so I got a car. Well, now when he sees I solved that problem, something was wrong with the car after a couple of months. It's not the car. I took it to a mechanic, but it was on a dealership block this mechanic worked and the dealership owner knew my ex and he came over to me and he said, Marie, I put sugar in your gas tank. Now, oh, my God, there's so many aspects of that. Not only did he put sugar in the gas tank, but he told people he did it. It's his two little girls riding in that car. The abuse was not going to stop.
[00:15:06.600] - Jeanne
I don't know. It's a weird twist of fate or something, but that enters Jack again, right? Your first husband who you meet by chance one evening again. When you met him again and you met by chance and you probably felt quite deeply in love again with him, what made you go back to that relationship or see him in a different light than you had the first time?
[00:15:28.800] - Mimi
Well, for two years, I had been trying to go to college and date and do all those normal things. Bob had been like he tried to run me over on the campus, on the quad. Incredibly crazy. He would show up on a date because his friends would say, Oh, she's over at this restaurant having dinner or something. He would show up and he would turn my chair around and he would be in my face and the guy wouldn't want to go out with me again. I had already tried relocating. I moved to near Harrisburg to get away from him, which found out I was there, of course, and he came down a few times, but he hadn't established himself and I wasn't getting the daily abuse. I thought, Oh, maybe I'll make it here. I went to college down there. There was a meltdown of a power plant, nuclear power plant. It just so happened it was right by where I was living. I had been home on the weekend in Pennsylvania and my parents had to do chemo back there. I had to drop out of there and come back to Scranford. He immediately picked up the level of abuse.
[00:16:31.900] - Mimi
Then I was warmed down because this is before Jeffrey. I was worn down financially, physically, everything. I was just not even thinking even feeling that I was providing for my children and all. I had no chat support, nothing. I took him back because he would keep saying, he would call me and he'd, I love you and I'll be different.
[00:16:51.550] - Jeanne
He's the father of the children. You want to believe it. You want to believe that he will be different and he will be a good father and you will try.
[00:16:59.060] - Mimi
I took him back a couple of times. I couldn't handle it. I remember the last time, my skin was crawling when he got into the bed. I sat up and I said, No, this isn't going to work. That was it. Then once he saw that I was doing it again, of course, he started up again. He left the house. But then he tried to get me evicted. One night, I ran into Jack accidentally, he turned on his charm and made me believe that he would take care of the situation.
[00:17:29.080] - Jeanne
You're in a vulnerable situation then because you're stuck in a really bad situation you really want to get out of. You do not have a lot of options. Here shows up this guy, which I'm sure you then see as your knight and shining armor that would hopefully help you.
[00:17:44.210] - Mimi
The thing was a leopard does not change its spots. I was told that many times. It had been 10 years, and I thought, Oh, well, he's mature now. He was only 20 something. Now he's 30 something. I'm sure he's not like he was. I thought that again, naivety or even just extremely scared and looking for something. But yes, so I ended up being with him and Bob. He broke in the apartment the one day, ran up the stairs and started fighting with Jack and they were rolling around on the floor fighting. But see, that's the thing. I knew Jack would stand up to him. Guys, I was just dating. Why would they? Finally, Bob gave up because Jack stayed.
[00:18:26.830] - Jeanne
This also quickly turned into a very toxic and scary situation.
[00:18:35.890] - Mimi
For you. I had been now with Jack seven years. He had been stepfather to my children. He worked on and off, but he died. The things he did was he also cheated a lot. I know now it was an addiction, just like alcoholism, but when you're going through it, it's extremely hurtful and it destroys your ego. First of all, I had never been a drink, and then with him, I started to drink and I did not know that I had chronic depression and panic disorder, so I was self-medicated. When these cheating things happened, I just was tearing at my soul. Finally, I did what happens in a lot of marriages. You cheat. It's almost like a revenge thing. It was after that that he became more… I don't even want to say physically abused because he never really hit me. He was always pushing me, bullying me, saying things.
[00:19:28.260] - Jeanne
I think it led to this pivotal moment. I cannot even imagine what you must have been feeling at that moment, how scared you were, how exasperated and how desperate and how vulnerable to have the courage to do something like that, but also to have to be put in a situation where you have to stand up for yourself like that. Would you mind taking us through that and what happened.
[00:19:51.970] - Mimi
That day? But this one particular night that you're talking about, he had been out drinking and he was a gun collector and he liked to go out in the woods and we couldn't afford this happy to begin it. He came in and he started with me. I'm sure I had a few drinks because I would go home from where I was working. He went to the gun cabinet and he took out a gun. I had in college taken a course on guns and how to shoot them and how to be safe. I knew about guns. He took it out. I knew the safety was on me. I knew there were no bullets in it because he doesn't put it away with things. He put this gun up to my head and said, What would you do if I pulled the trigger? I just looked at Andy and then he put that gun up to his own head, put my hand over his and said, Go on, shoot me. Go ahead, shoot me. I pulled the trigger, pulled the trigger, never even paused. He slapped the gun out of my hand and said, What if there were bullets in that gun?
[00:20:49.340] - Mimi
I said, You would be dead. I had become a very hard woman by then. I wasn't a naive teenager. I was a.
[00:20:58.380] - Jeanne
Hard woman. You were fed up with the cards that life had dealt you up until that point. When do you start realizing that your drinking had become a problem to a level where you felt it was an addiction? Because as you described it, you were a highly functioning addict.
[00:21:18.880] - Mimi
Yes, because college and everything, I drank and smoked pop, but not until kids were to bed. But I still was an A student. When I worked out, I was a good employee. What happened was when I finally found the right person and should be happy, I was waking up in the morning not wanting to die, but not wanting to get out of bed, not necessarily wanting to face life. That's because, unknown to me, the chronic depression I had had gotten back. I really didn't know that I was an alcoholic. I asked to go somewhere to feel better, to get healthier, to deal with this. I did not realize they were sending me to a rehab or alcohol addiction. I didn't know. I was blessed because there was a rehab in our area that actually very famous movie stars have gone to. It's very good. And my husband's insurance, Jerry, a good one, I paid for it. They kept me 28 days. The first few days I was a zombie because they had a medically detox me because I had so much alcohol and painkillers and muscle relaxers in my system. When they finally detoxed me and they gave me what's called the big book of alcoholics, Anonymous, or the big book, as we say, and I started reading this.
[00:22:33.450] - Mimi
The book was written about men, for men, by men in the 1930s. I thought, Oh. But then I started to relate to things anyway because they had the doctor's opinion and different things, and I could see the pattern and see why I picked up alcohol. Then they had a psychiatrist on staff there and they had done blood work and different things and they told me, You suffer from clinical depression and anxiety disorder and self-medicating all these years. Dual diagnosed and cross-addicted. So dual diagnosed was the depression and the anxiety. And the cross-addiction meant that I could be addicted to any because I'm going to try to numb my feelings. So it doesn't matter if I give up alcohol and pain pills or whatever, I would probably turn to something else. In fact, they predicted and are right that I would. Food. I get sober. I was thrilled to find the 12 steps and I love the meetings and I love the whole everything about it. I got very involved. Nine months sober, I had gained 50 pounds. Of course, it was depressing, but the type of person I am, I am a problem solver. I am proactive.
[00:23:42.340] - Mimi
I see something, I want to fix it. I immediately did the research and found a clinic in California that dealt with eating disorders, and I went away for three weeks.
[00:23:52.420] - Jeanne
So much courage to recognize these things about yourself, to want to do something about it, to want to better it, to want to address all of these things that are many times related to a lot of demons in our coverage we do not want to face. I think the universe almost smiled on you and you met Jerry and you are still together. But what was different for you with this relationship? What told you? Because you went through many instances where you still doubted him and you were still unsure if this is as good as it seems. What was that turning point for you to say, Wow, I think I've really found the good one?
[00:24:29.780] - Mimi
There was just something about him and the way we were together that he started to build that in me and I felt safe with him. Yes, I took some chances with him as far as business. We had our little arguments and belts. Again, we were both still drinking when we met. I, to this day, do not believe if we kept drinking, we'd be together. We just wouldn't have.
[00:24:59.920] - Jeanne
You were on the same path, really. You were on the same path towards wanting different things for yourselves and for each other and for your relationship. It's beautiful how that really came together. Thank you so much for sharing so openly with us about your book and about your experiences. If our FIGGI community would like to reach out to you, find your book and your other books, where can they go? Where can they find you?
[00:25:26.070] - Mimi
If you type in, We Heard Women in We Heard Women, it'll all come up. The podcast, oh, and also on Amazon and Audible. The books, my three books are on Amazon.
[00:25:38.030] - Jeanne
And Audible. That's awesome because if you're driving, as always, FIGGI Goddess, don't worry, all of the links will be in the episode description. I will link you to the book. I will link you to the Facebook page and the podcast, We Heard Women, Empowering Women. This has definitely been such an empowering story. Thank you so much for being on the My FIGGI Life podcast. Thank you.
[00:26:00.330] - Mimi
So much. I appreciate it being here. It's lovely. Thank you so much, too.
[00:26:04.410] - Jeanne
Thank you. So, goddess, remember, as always, everyone deserves to celebrate the goddess within. Until next time, we'll see you soon on the My FIGGI Life podcast.