Season 2 Episode 3: Annalise Raziq
Annalise Raziq:
It was fine in my family to be angry. It was not okay to be sad.
Tyler Greene:
Hello there. Welcome to This Is My Family, a podcast about building a life with the people you love. I'm your host, Tyler Greene. I'm so glad that you're here. I'm raising a baby with my husband in California and we're taking this pandemic one day at a time, just like I'm sure a lot of you are. As my family grows, I wanted to have honest, unfiltered conversations with people about how we make our families and how our families make us. In each episode, I talk to someone who can inspire us to think about family in a new, bigger, more inclusive way.
Tyler Greene:
Some are people I've known for years, others are people whose work is important to me. In this episode, I'm talking to Annalise Raziq. I've known Annalise for quite a few years now. She is an incredible storyteller, so good, in fact that the popular live storytelling show, The Moth, has featured her many times. If you haven't heard her moth stories, you must. There's a link in the show notes to one of my favorites. I also directed Annalise in a solo performance about her stepfather, Bill.
Tyler Greene:
As I worked with her, I saw someone who used art to process the complex emotions that surround her family relationships. I wanted to talk to her on the show because I know that she's done a lot of soul searching as an adult about how her parents and stepparent shaped who she is. The influence of our parents is something that we all know is real, but we don't always take time to really investigate and understand, Annalise has. I started by asking her about what it was like for her when her parents first split up.
Annalise Raziq:
The reason that they separated is not any what I would term typical reason that people get divorced. Basically, my father was having some kind of mental breakdown. It started with, I think, paranoid episodes. To my father's credit, I guess, he just came to my mom one day and said, "I need you to take me to the hospital." He was getting treatment, but I think the kinds of things that he started saying to my mom, the tipping point is that he started saying to her that my brother and I were not really his children.
Annalise Raziq:
My mom started getting worried that in the state that he was in, he might harm us in some way. When she went to go talk to his psychiatrist about it, basically, the psychiatrist said that he couldn't guarantee that nothing would happen. I think my mom just reached a point where she thought I can't wait for something horrible to happen or be worried all the time. We moved in with my grandparents, with her parents. It was just devastating. The one just extremely painful memory from that time is that my dad came to my grandparents' house, we were playing out on the driveway and I had this red hippity hop, which I don't know if they have those anymore.
Annalise Raziq:
It's like a giant red ball that you sit on and you hop around. I loved that thing. I was hippity hopping on the driveway and my dad drove up, parked the car, got out. Because I was always excited to see him and I remember like going, "Daddy," and he didn't look at my brother and I. He had a look on his face that just breaks my heart right now when I think about it, a kind of a clearly on a mission to do something and also just in such incredible distress. He rang the doorbell, and my mom came to the door. He got down on his knees and he was like, "Come back."
Annalise Raziq:
He said, "Please come back." My mom was saying, "Said, I can't. I can't." Then my grandfather came to the door, and I just remember him just saying really sadly like, "Said, you have to go back home." My dad stood up. He looked lost. That's what it was, he looked lost. He stood up to go back to the car. He turned to my brother and said, "Will you come with me?" My brother went. I remember them driving away, my brother looking out the back window in total panic and crying. He must have been about six-and-a-half.
Tyler Greene:
Wow.
Annalise Raziq:
Then I think my dad brought him back either a few hours later. Or I think it was just a few hours later, he brought him back. Just heartbreaking all the way around.
Tyler Greene:
Was there a diagnosis?
Annalise Raziq:
There was. The diagnosis was paranoid schizophrenia. Honestly, my brother and I have talked about this so much, whether that diagnosis was actually accurate. My father was essentially ... He was an immigrant. He was born on the West Bank, in Ramallah. It's an epicenter of conflict for many years, I believe. Every person that lives there cannot help but be affected by trauma. He carried that with him. Then the stress of coming to this country, which had great opportunities for him, but also incredible racism. He was the man of his family.
Annalise Raziq:
He had a brother who was institutionalized at an early age. There's a mental illness component, anxiety, or I don't know what the exact diagnosis is, but it clearly runs through that side of the family. Again, is that a chemical thing or is that a result of trauma? I don't know. I've still so many layers to work through. Because of all that complexity, my brother and I have always been like, is that really what it was? Or was it depression or mania or who knows?
Tyler Greene:
After the divorce, your father remarried. Tell me about your stepmother. What was it like when she came into your life?
Annalise Raziq:
I remember that she hated me. The apartment in my memories, in my vision, after she came, is always dark. I knew, immediately, I had a sense that I wasn't safe. My mom, as I got older and things escalated in that relationship with my stepmother, it's the only time actually in all of my history that anyone attempted to explain cultural differences, even though my entire growing up is intrinsically bound to cultural differences. I was saying to her, "I don't understand why this woman hates me." My mom said, she was brought over here, she spoke no English.
Annalise Raziq:
She gets dumped in this apartment in St. Louis. My mom said that she was not aware of my father's mental difficulties. She just said she was just in a horrible situation, and my mom said that she tried to help her. While I appreciate the fact that my mom was definitely a compassionate person, oddly, I didn't feel like her compassion extended to me as a child. When I look back on it now, I find it odd that I was coming home, because we would go to my dad's every other weekend and it was horrible. I hated going. I would come home and say, "I don't want to go over there anymore. I don't want to go." It's just interesting to me that instead of saying, well, what's going on and what can we do? Instead, basically, this person's behavior was justified to me.
Tyler Greene:
Do you think it was like a protection of your father or maybe some guilt about the separation and wanting to fix that?
Annalise Raziq:
Bingo. Right when you said that. Yup. I think that's very perceptive. I think everyone had guilt. To me, I just look at it as a very unfortunate turn of events, a situation where everybody really was doing the best they could, but with very limited skills and with very difficult circumstances.
Tyler Greene:
Later in your life, when you were about 13, you cut ties with that side of the family. I wanted to know what happened with your stepmom that led to breaking those ties.
Annalise Raziq:
One of the reasons up till I was 13 that I kept going is that they had their first child together who is my half-brother, Abe, and we are very, very close. When he was little, I would babysit him when I went over there. I loved him. The day that it finally all came down, I was sitting at the kitchen table trying to do my homework. I was really concentrated just working on my homework. While I was doing that, my brother, Abe, came in and ... I don't know, he was doing something and then he left the room. Then a little bit later, my stepmother comes in and just start screaming at me in Arabic. I looked over and it was because he took an apple out and he was trying to cut it up. There was just stuff all over the counter, it was a mess. She was freaking out, yelling at me and saying, how could you let him do this? What are you doing? He had been trying to cut it up with a big ... Not like a butcher knife, but a big knife, a big ... It's probably dangerous what he was doing. She picked up that knife and she just flung it at me.
Tyler Greene:
Ugh, god.
Annalise Raziq:
I was like, alright, that's it. At 13, I remember, I was shaking, but I just stoop up very calmly. I remember just folding up all my books and my notebooks and stacking it all up, and I went to the living room and I said, "Dad, take me home." I remember my voice was shaking. He was like, "What?" I said, "I will never ever set foot in this house ever again." I think probably because of the look on my face, he didn't ask me any more questions. We got in the car, and it was 30 years before I ever saw my stepmother again or went to my father's house 30 years.
Tyler Greene:
Wow. Annalise's mother, Carol, got remarried too. She married a man named Bill. The first time Bill encountered Annalise and her brother, it wasn't while dating their mom, it was actually at a community event held by something called the ethical society. It's a humanist congregation, a community that gathers without religious dogma.
Annalise Raziq:
Bill told me years later that that was where he had first seen my brother and I. We were at the coffee after whatever talk or whatever there was in the basement, where they had the cookies and the lemonade. He was always very observant. Bill was always a kid magnet. Kids just loved him, just gravitated to him, which was always fascinating to me because he was physically imposing. He's a big guy like football player type guy with dark skin and then snow white hair. The contrast was like he was very distinctive looking, very handsome. Bill was Black, by the way. Did I say that?
Tyler Greene:
You said dark skinned.
Annalise Raziq:
He was down in the basement and the other kids, I guess, were running around doing stuff. My brother and I, we're together in the corner quietly sitting there together. He was watching us. He asked this woman like, who are those kids? The woman said, "Oh, those are Carol's kids." She said, "There's something wrong with them." Because we were clearly not acting like ... We weren't running around doing stuff. We were just sitting together quietly. Bill told me that he looked at us for a second and he looked back at her and he said, "There's nothing wrong with those kids, they're just sad." Which just touches me so deeply, you know? That was the thing about him, is he just had tremendous compassion. I think at that time, everyone, and for years after, I think, was so busy trying to fix things by ignoring them, by shoving them down, that it's so powerful to be seen in that way and to have someone acknowledge just the truth of what is going on. I'm sure that I saw him at the ethical society. What I remember about him, my memory of him, is this just visceral joy that I would feel when I saw him. I just loved him instantly. I remember he would come to my grandparents' house and I would just fling my little body at him when he came through the door. I was just like, "Bill!" I would run and just fling myself at him. He would scoop me up. I always wanted to be physically close to him. He was such a source of light. It's even more remarkable to me now as an adult to know that he carried such a light and he carried it especially for me. To know now as an adult that he had his own pain, his own deep pain that he was dealing with, but even in the midst of all of that, to be able to give so generously of who you are is just incredible.
Tyler Greene:
What was some of that pain?
Annalise Raziq:
He came from a family with a lot of kids. His father wasn't around, but the family was just decimated by alcoholism. It was sad. I feel like he had dreams that he never got to do. He would lay on the floor in the house and he would be surrounded by ... We had this giant dictionary. No one has these anymore. It was just humongous. He would have the dictionary open and he would have the Atlas and the encyclopedias open, and he would be reading about all these different places in the world in a different time and different life circumstances. He would have been a world traveler.
Tyler Greene:
It's clear the joy that Bill brought into your life. We've spent a lot of time talking to each other about Bill, especially for your solo show. Bill and your brother had a much more difficult relationship.
Annalise Raziq:
Yeah. My relationship with Bill existed in a bubble over here that was just my love for him and our love for each other and the light that he brought for me. Then another bubble was alcoholism and his struggles with drinking, and then another bubble was his relationship with my brother. My brother and he, especially toward the end, it was a parent loved each other, but my brother and I had very different relationships with Bill. My brother was very, very angry when my parents separated and then divorced.
Annalise Raziq:
I was grateful for Bill, because I needed a stabilizing force. My brother was resentful. Because of Bill's alcoholism and I think limited ability to be able to deal with difficult emotions, he was not able to be the adult that he needed to be with my brother. They got into conflict a lot. Bill apologized to my brother many, many years later. It was just very touching, and I know my brother really appreciated it. At the time that we were growing up, it did a lot of damage.
Tyler Greene:
More with Annalise in just a minute. If you're enjoying the show, please hit subscribe or follow so that you don't miss an episode. You can scroll back and check out seasons past, maybe you'd like to hear my conversation with the host of the Code Switch podcast, the delightful, Shereen Marisol Meraji.
Dr. Aliza Pressman:
As a parent, do you ever wish someone could just whisper some realistic and trustworthy support in your ear and not make you feel awful for not having all the answers? Well, that's what I'm here for. I'm Dr. Aliza Pressman, developmental psychologist, parent educator, clinical professor, and I'm a mom. My goal is to make your parenting journey less overwhelming and a lot more joyful. Please join me every Friday for new episodes of Raising Good Humans.
Tyler Greene:
As I was talking with Annalise about the difficulties of her childhood, I told her about something my old therapist taught me, that there are three things humans need to feel in order to thrive, safety, control, and worth. I asked her what came to mind when I said those three words.
Annalise Raziq:
Am I allowed to curse?
Tyler Greene:
Of course.
Annalise Raziq:
My first thought when you said those three words is I'm fucked. I am fucked. Because, safety, yes, in the bubble that Bill and I existed in, I felt safe, but I did not feel safe with the things that were going on in our home. I will also say that I never felt unsafe with Bill, personally. As anyone who's grown up around an alcoholic, especially if you grew up in an alcoholic home, so where you were a child, I think that there's always an element of when you come home on a given day, it's like, what am I walking into today? I guess, is that a good day? Is it a bad day?
Annalise Raziq:
Then at my dad's house, when I was still going there, safety, no, no safety. Control is an interesting one, because I had no control at home. I tried to exercise hypercontrol outside the home, so straight A student, hyperorganized, volunteers for everything like Superwoman. I look at that now and I really see that I was just running, just running, just like stay in motion, stay in motion, stay in motion is a strategy that followed me for most of my life. Because then all the stuff that you're scrunching down, there's no time or energy for it to come up, because you just have too much going on.
Annalise Raziq:
Then worth, I've always struggled with that. This is very recently, within the last couple of weeks, I was reading a book, which is called Normal People, by a young woman named Sally Rooney. She's just brilliant. I feel like at revealing complex relationships, one of the characters in this book, partway through the book, I was like, oh, does she live in an abusive family? It turns out, she does. The whole central relationship of the book starts in her teenage years with this guy she goes to school with. They continue to be involved through college.
Annalise Raziq:
They have tremendous affinities for each other, but just an inability to actually be together for an extended period of time in relationship. He says, toward the end of the book that he realizes that there's a pit inside of her, just a big dark pit that can never be filled. When I read that, I just immediately burst into tears, because I experienced that. It's like it does feel like a pit. The thing is, for most of my life, I thought everybody had that. I thought everybody had that. I thought everybody had this self-loathing that I've struggled with.
Annalise Raziq:
It really is only in the last few years that all of a sudden, I realized like, oh, I remember because I was talking to my therapist, I was like, one of the ways that I've gotten through life is that I just minimize things that are painful to myself, great compassion for other people, no compassion for myself. When we were in therapy, I was saying, "Yeah, but ... " We were talking about some of these very difficult things. I said, "Yeah, but everybody comes from a fucked up family." She was like, "Well, there are degrees to that." I was like, "Really?" That's when I started realizing like, oh, everyone is not experiencing this or even degrees of this. Some people don't have this in their lives at all. That's amazing. I wonder what that feels like.
Tyler Greene:
Annalise's family of origin was no doubt complicated. She's still always expected to be a mother and have her own kids. She married a man named Greg. Before their daughter, Kaylee, was even born, Annalise was worried about repeating the chaos of her own childhood. I know Kaylee. She's about my age now, all grown up. She's awesome, really, truly, a badass. My kid is still a toddler. I wanted to get some advice from Annalise about how she found the tools to be a great parent.
Annalise Raziq:
I started immediately from the time I was pregnant thinking, how can I make sure she doesn't get all of my crap? How can I make sure I transfer as little of my fuck upedness to her? When I was pregnant, I was like, okay, you've got to be calm, you have to be calm. I don't know how to deal with this conflict, you can't freak out. You know your internal conflict because she can feel it. I did varying degrees of a good job with that.
Tyler Greene:
I have a question about that, because I think you and I both grew up in tumultuous childhoods. I think you and I are pretty good people in the world now. We somehow did it. I wonder, as your daughter grew up, how did you raise her? I know that's a simple question, but you say she's very rooted and that's fine. I mean, I experienced you as pretty strong and powerful and rooted. I don't know that you would say that about yourself, but I see that. How'd you do it?
Annalise Raziq:
Well, yes, you're right. I don't see myself that way. I see myself as a mess.
Tyler Greene:
Same here, but other people tell me I got my shit together. Sure, fine.
Annalise Raziq:
I know.
Tyler Greene:
Whatever you say.
Annalise Raziq:
I think this is one of our ... We, you and I, have many affinities and that's definitely one of them. I feel like she was born who she is on the one hand. I don't think that had anything to do with me, but I will say that I did make a conscious choice from the very beginning to avoid doing things that I knew had been done to me. When I say things that have been done to me, my parents, all three of them, my dad, my stepdad, my mom, they all did the best that they could. I know that. I know that they loved me. I also know that they were missing some critical skills that could have really helped me. I knew what some of those were. It was fine in my family to be angry. It was not okay to be sad. Nobody in my family knew how to handle sadness. We didn't talk about it. It wasn't acknowledged. I think that's probably because everybody was just in some ways white knuckling it through life. It's like if you've let a little bit out, you might open the floodgates and you're not prepared to handle that, so don't. One thing with her is that I always wanted to make sure that she knew it was okay to feel however she was feeling. When Kaylee was about maybe five years old, my mom was up visiting for the weekend. Kaylee got upset about something. I don't know what it was. I tried to talk to her a little bit, but she had just reached a point of wailing about it and talking wasn't going to be helpful. I said, "That's okay. You can just go lay down and cry for a while if that's what you need to do." My mom had made dinner and we'd had the food on the table. We were sitting down to eat and I couldn't eat with the sound of the wailing. It's just I need things to be peaceful when I eat. I can't handle that. The weather was nice. I said, I'm going to take my food and go out on the porch and eat. I go out on the porch and a couple of minutes later, I hear the wailing is getting louder and louder. Here comes my mom leading my screaming daughter out onto the porch with us, and she's got two plates of food and she's trying to get Kaylee to sit down and eat. I know she's doing it to ... That old school thing like distract her. Like, come on, come on, we're all going to eat. That's bad enough. I was like, "Why did you bring her out here?" Then while we're sitting there, Kaylee's mouth is wide open. Because when I say she's wailing, she is wailing. Her mouth is wide open. My mom pops a piece of food in there. I was like, whoa. It was like a dizzying tumble back through time. So many things started clicking into place in my head like, oh, food. You stuff your emotions with food. I remember I got so angry. I rarely got directly angry with my mom, but I got so angry. I looked at her and I said, "Don't you ever do that again." I said, "If she wants to cry, if she wants to scream for the next three hours, then you let her scream."
Tyler Greene:
Wow.
Annalise Raziq:
I mean, and I feel bad because I know that, again, my mom's just doing what she knows how to do. That message, it made so much sense to me. It really did put so many things in order from my childhood where I was like, oh, man. Not only letting Kaylee feel whatever she feels, but also not hiding how I feel, that was the other thing. I'm not saying ... I always felt like, well, I have to filter things to her that are appropriate. She was three-and-a-half when Greg and I separated. I'm having this horrible year. I'm thinking, how do I ... We're close. She's picking up on things. She knows when I'm sad. I don't want to pretend like I'm not sad, but I also don't want her to be overwhelmed by it. I want her to know it's going to be okay because I do believe it's going to be okay. I remember one evening, she was probably four maybe, and I had gotten a phone call from Greg. I was really upset after this phone call. I'd gone out on the back porch to talk to him. I was just really sad. I came in and she saw me. I could tell, she could tell. I just walked into the living room and I sat down on the couch and I was crying. She came in and she was looking at me and I just said, "I'm just really sad right now." She came over and she sat next to me with her sweet little skinny legs, and then she reached over and she patted my knee and she said, "It's okay, mommy. I think we should go to bed and you're going to feel so much better in the morning."
Tyler Greene:
Success.
Annalise Raziq:
I said, "You're right."
Tyler Greene:
That's so good, yes.
Annalise Raziq:
That's really good advice. We went to bed. When I got up the next morning, and I said, "You're right, I feel better."
Tyler Greene:
I love that so much. You've got Kaylee, she's grown up. Who else do you consider family now? I'm curious. How does family look compared to how you imagined it might?
Annalise Raziq:
I want to be able to say, oh, here's the family that I wanted and now I have it. When I was upset growing up in my house with my stepfather and my mom and my brother where I felt like we were four people in four different corners of the house, and I vowed to myself, my family is not going to look like this. One of the reasons I went to acting school, when you do a show, you have an instant family. For the time of that rehearsal and the performances, you are bonded with those people. I loved that feeling. I started doing storytelling because my entire life, I've been trying to make sense of my life, just like so much. It's so overwhelming, my history, my family history. I've been trying to make it make sense or make order out of it or ... I don't know, just extract the meaning from it. I started writing stories and telling stories to try to get a grip on that. It was hard to start doing that, because I thought nobody wants to hear about this like, this very specific I grew up a Polish Palestinian with a Black stepfather. Who's going to relate to this? Nobody cares about this. The surprising thing has been that the more specific you get, the more people can relate to it, which makes no sense whatsoever, but it's true. Through doing that, telling these stories, I do feel a communion with the people who listen. I feel so connected to them in a way that lets me know, every time I do that, that I really am not alone. I can feel that connection anytime. It's always available to me. Even though I am a person now, in my life circumstance, I live alone. During COVID, I've really been a little bit concerned about myself. Afraid I'm, as I've said, turning into an agoraphobic hermit who never wears pants.
Tyler Greene:
You and other person in the world actually.
Annalise Raziq:
Even though I live alone and I spend a lot of time alone, because I actually like quiet and it helps me create things, I feel connected to so many people. I have a small cadre of people I have heart connections with, like real intimate heart connections. Those people are my family, and my family who's still alive that I'm close to, my brother Abe and my brother David and my daughter, of course. It doesn't look at all like I thought it would look. I feel really lucky.
Tyler Greene:
I was thinking about season two of this podcast and the conversations we really loved from the first season. We identified that we really wanted to talk to people this season who would "go there." I also wanted my listeners to know a little bit more about me and the people that I call family. I made a shortlist of a couple people and you were very at the top. I'm so glad that we took the time to really go through your background and paint this picture for people, because you have lived an incredible life. Your daughter is just the most beautiful expression of what I would consider a very successful life on earth. I'm just grateful to you for allowing me to introduce you to this new community. Thanks for, I guess, always making me feel safe and loved.
Annalise Raziq:
Tyler, I do love you. I do love you. I'm so grateful to have you in my life and to call you my family. Thanks. Thanks for making the space for me too.
Tyler Greene:
You're welcome. Annalise and I have a little inside joke. Every time we see each other in person, or virtually these days, there are inevitably tears. Not because we're particularly depressed people, but because we feel things really deeply. I always look forward to crying with her. It's a form of creativity almost like, how can we push each other to the point of emotional release so that there's something else on the other side? I love that about us. The thing is, Annalise was taught to hide away most of her emotions for so long.
Tyler Greene:
By consciously opening herself up in this way, making art, unearthing her memories and turning them into stories she can share, it's clear that she was able to take a very different approach with her daughter. Respecting her kid's emotions and her own became such an important tool for them. That's something I want to take away from this conversation. I think it's common for all of us to say, how do we not repeat the mistakes of our parents? I'm still thinking about Kaylee's let's go to bed, you'll feel better in the morning advice to her mom when she was so young.
Tyler Greene:
She's clearly repeating the good, gentle nurturing she used to receiving from Annalise. She's doing a damn fine job. After this conversation, I'm also left with a reminder that every human being has a complex story underneath what we see on a daily basis. Our lives are complicated, rich, layered full of surprises. We truly don't know what's going on over there, so to speak. We step into another person's shoes to know more and to know ourselves a little bit more too. I have such gratitude to you on, Annalise, for opening up your world to me and to our listeners. In the end, it helps us all feel less alone during these incredibly isolated and disconnected times.
Tyler Greene:
Thank you to my friend, Annalise Raziq, for joining us and sharing her story. You can check out her work at annaliseraziq.com. Again, check out that moth story in the show notes, Brussels sprouts. I'm telling you, you've never think of them the same again. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at TIMFShow. Her website is timfshow.com. This podcast is a production of thestoryproducer.com, and it's made by me, Katie Klocksin, Tricia Bobeda, Jackie Ball, and Bea Bosco. It's edited and mixed by Adam Yoffe. Our music is by Andrew Edwards.
Tyler Greene:
Social Currant takes care of our social media and show admin. You can find them at socialcurrant, that C-U-R-R-A-N-T. Last, but certainly not least, our art director is my handsome husband, Ziwu Zhou. If you like this show, we need your help to spread the word. Okay, this week, I'm going to say, can you give us a five-star rating? I've been obsessively checking and it looks like the last one we had was with the title representation matters and it's one of my favorite reviews, I love it. It's been a while since that one. If you could give us a five-star review and say something nice, I really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Tyler Greene. Until next time, stay beautiful and messy.
Speaker 4:
Is the podcast all done, Sam?
Sam:
All done.