Teacher Shelli Welch Heals Herself, Others

TRIGGER WARNING: A head’s up there is some talk of self destructive behavior. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

Shelli found great insight from Bessel van der Kolk’s “The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.” Here’s a link to his research.

SFX: Shelli teaching preschool

Shelli Welch never thought she would wind up surrounded by kids.

SFX: Bring class back in “... today we are going to pretend we live in the rain forest…”

But the Universe hasn’t steered her wrong yet.

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.

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Shelli’s mom and dad split when she was one. So for most of Shelli’s life she and her mom were on their own. They moved around some, lived with Shelli’s grandparents for a while, then moved to an apartment in Charleston, West Virginia. 

SHELLI: My mom suffered with mental health, undiagnosed. But she did use alcohol and prescription medication to handle life. It was like being in an atmosphere of somebody that was just very emotionally volatile. It's not that she was ever angry or hurtful or unkind to me. It’s just being surrounded by this emotional volatility.

Shelli’s mom Clare had dramatic highs and lows and Shelli never knew what to expect. When she was at her best she was usually drunk -- funny, confident, and talented. Clare performed in the leading roles of West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret at the local theater. 

At her worst Clare was shut down, unsafe, unpredictable -- she’d drink until she collapsed.

SHELLI: You learn early to be on your own and be by yourself. I remember sitting in my room and playing records and singing through records. 

Often Shelli found herself alone with her records. So Elton John, Neil Diamond, and Cher kept her company… 

MUSIC: Elton John playing then warped or slow

PAUSE

One night when Shelli was five she remembers waking up in the middle of the night. 

SHELLI: Just something in my gut knew that there was something wrong with my mother. And I went to the bedroom and I couldn't wake her up. And something in my heart just told me there was something very wrong, you know, and how I had the wherewithal to call my grandmother her mother

When her grandmother got there she was able to wake Clare up and get her downstairs to the kitchen.

SHELLI:...vivid memory of my grandmother coming over and just walking my mother in circles around the kitchen, pouring coffee down her.

It turns out her mom had washed down sleeping pills with alcohol and passed out. Years later when Shelli was 10 her mom called her into the bathroom. She was holding a bottle of pills. She had been involved with a married man at the time. 

SHELLI: She asked me to get on the phone and call him while she, uh, was taking massive amounts of muscle relaxers and asking me to tell him that she was going to kill herself if he didn't come over. I just remember feeling, you know, just terror you know, and panic. I remember distinctly calling him on the phone and thankfully he did come over.

Throughout her childhood the roles were reversed. She had to be the parent. Shelli often felt it was her responsibility to keep her mom happy. 

Then one day something happened that would echo again later on in her life. Her mother came to her pregnant and wanted to know if she should keep the baby.

SHELLI: She could either keep the child…I remember just not even knowing how to confront that question, realizing it was a bigger question that I even could understand as a young child.

Her mom told her if she had the baby they’d have to go live with her great grandmother in rural Indiana. Shelli said I don’t want to move there. So Clare had an abortion. Once again Shelli had been burdened with a major adult choice.

SHELLI: I would have this recurring nightmare as a child in that apartment, which, you know, went on for years and years and years. And the nightmare I'm at the bottom of the stairs. And my mother is in her bedroom at the top of the stairs, and I hear her calling and she's calling my name help, help, help, you know, and in my dream, and there's rats and holes in the wall. PAUSE  I think that that dream really does define, um, both that sense of, you know, how much I took on myself as a child to try to make mommy better and to try to make life better. Um, and my own fears, my insecurities … I think there was that awareness as a child that, I have to, I've got to do it, I got to grow up. 

She enjoyed rare moments of normalcy playing kickball and capture the flag with the neighbor kids or visiting with her cousins in Kentucky. But most of the time Shelli felt alone, different, timid. Clare was shut down, self absorbed and incapable of intimacy and this had a huge impact on her daughter. Her self esteem took another hit in junior high where Shelli says she didn’t fit in.

After an entire childhood of holding her mother together, she was relieved when Clare married her stepdad. Only then did she feel she could break free from the emotional guilt and dependence.  Shelli moved hundreds of miles away to go to college in Montreal.

But the shadow of her parents’ choices kept haunting her. 

Her dad had been a distant figure throughout Shelli’s life. She visited with him a handful of times as a kid. Clare asked him to pay for college but often Shelli had to call to remind him to send the check. She recalls one occasion, fed up with her calls, where he threatened to pull her out of school. 

When she graduated Shelli remembers a letter arrived in the mail from her father. 

SHELLI: ...wrote a letter saying, you know, you're no longer a financial responsibility, I hope you have a great life, love dad. That was my letter for my father. So I wrote him a letter after college...in my mind I wrote him and said, I would love to have a relationship with you, but I'm going to, it's going to be up to you to initiate that. And I would never hear from it again.

Shelli noticed herself carrying out the patterns she’d seen in her mom -- drinking, smoking hash, bulimia. 

SHELLI: So I'm going to frat parties and, it's something I'm not proud of, but in association with this probably deep need for the love and approval of a male figure I had a lot of cyclical sexual partnerships and, there were times I would wake up in a bed and not know who I was next to.

MUSIC

SHELLI: When I graduated from college, I had a nervous breakdown. I cried every day. Sometimes not even being able to stop myself for a year. PAUSE FOR A BEAT And when I would feel like I made a mistake with someone and said something to hurt someone else, I literally, I would slap myself. I would just be slapping myself, hurting myself until my face would just be red.

She tried going to therapy but she says she couldn’t access her pain. 

SHELLI: The traditional counseling method of, you know, so tell me about this and tell me about that and how are you feeling? And I'd be like, I don't, well, I'm feeling, you know, and I would later go on and read … when there's trauma, there's been an injury to the brain at the communication center. So you literally, I was physiologically unable to access though that pain and those memories.

Shelli learned from Bessel van der Kolk’s book “The Body Keeps The Score” therapists help people understand their behavior in order to manage it. But research shows psychological problems come from a much deeper part of our brain. When our emotions signal we are in danger, no amount of insight will make it go away.  Instead of talk therapy studies show we have an innate capacity through physical exercise to heal from trauma. 

Shelli discovered this for herself when one day when she was hiking in the woods she suddenly felt an urge to run instead and just took off. She couldn’t stop. She bounded over roots and rocks and kept on going down the trail until her lungs couldn’t go anymore. It was the first time she felt a way to access her hurt and control her suffering. (SFX: trail running) She ran for several years but credits yoga and meditation with saving her life and turning away from self destructive habits. 

SHELLI: Yoga and exercise were my first pathways to healing. And of course yoga I would be nowhere without yoga.

SHELLI:  There's a healing meditation we do in Kundalini. Um, that's supposedly one of the strongest healing meditations you can do. It's a mantra, Rama, DAS. I say so. Hum. And, um, and I remember one time, uh, sitting in meditation, I usually do it for someone else or for the world or, and something assigned to me said, sing it for yourself. And there was a, this, but that's selfish, isn't it? You know? And there was, uh, the, that soul in me that said, you need to sing this for yourself, Sing it for your, keep singing it for yourself. How'd that feel difficult and right. 

SFX: Shelli chanting

In her mid 30s she moved to Flagstaff. Shelli had a strong intuition and started listening to her instincts. As she made this move she remembered hearing a voice in the back of her head that said: expect the unexpected.

One night at a bar she met a wildland firefighter. They began to see each other but her relationships with men were still mostly physical. Not the deep love and connection she really wanted. 

Not long into the relationship she discovered she was pregnant.

SHELLI: There was some mild panic, but I think it was more like, I remember very distinctly being in at least a place in my life where I wanted to take a step back and wanted to go, well, why has this happened to me? Is there a bigger significance here? 

Now, 35 and pregnant, Shelli thought back to the time she was a kid, advising her mom against having a baby. As a kid she had no idea then what an abortion was. 

SHELLI: I have no judgment against anybody else. Um, was it the right choice for my mom? I don't know. I don't know that, um, it wouldn't have been the right choice for me, within my soul. And maybe that also was informed by this history. Maybe there was some part of me that wanted to heal something that didn't get healed. PAUSE

I guess I realized the magnitude of the decision, you know, here was the decision my mom faced and here I was facing it. And I guess I realized that it was a very important decision…

Over the phone Shelli told her mom she was pregnant. Her mom told her she could come live with her and she’d help raise the child. 

SHELLI: (Laughs) And, uh, of course the, I was like, uh, no, ...it was difficult even for me at, you know, 35 you know, moving into 36, um, to stand, uh, in my own space, um, with my mother... She is my mother and, um, through all of it, I wouldn't be who I am if it even weren't for all of those dark places in my life. So I don't, I hold no grudges. I hold no, um, anger, that's all past, that's all been healed, but, um, she shouldn't have been a mother in that state.

Shelli knew what a huge impact a mother had on a child. Shelli’s own experience as her mother’s child weighed heavily on her mind. 

There was also a practical decision to be made. She had just moved across the country from Boston to Flagstaff. She didn’t have a job or a way to support a baby. She started researching what it would cost, if health care was available for her.

SHELLY: I allowed myself to just kind of play through it in my head. And then, um, and then there was a feeling just deep inside of me, the question arose, do you want to be a mother?...But when I was really honest with that core part of myself, the answer to that question was, no. 

She felt deep relief but also guilt. Ultimately she knew she did not want her child to go through what she went through -- a life without a father.

So after three months of agonizing over whether or not to keep the baby, she decided to give up her baby for adoption.

PAUSE

She said strangers would look at her growing belly in the grocery store and ask about the father…

SHELLY:  Oh, so what are you and the husband planning? and I remember I, um, being able to really kind of stand and, and feel very good about what I was doing. And I said, you know, actually, no, I'm, there is not a father in the picture.

She remembers the day she got in her  car and drove to Catholic Social Services, a yellow brick building south of the train tracks in downtown Flagstaff. She walked inside feeling nervous, she wasn’t a big fan of organized religion but was sure of her decision. 

A sweet woman who was assigned to Shelli gave her large scrapbooks of photographs and testimonials to choose from, each page a different couple who was eager to adopt.

SHELLI:  Big notebooks full of testimonials from family upon family about family. And it's kind of daunting ... I really thankfully was, um, very cognizant of, of emotions and, you know, not wanting to, uh, get someone's hopes up.

Each couple answered questions on a form. Shelli found herself zeroing in on one question in particular: how will your life change once you have a child. One answer definitely stood out to Shelli from one man. 

SHELLI: He was going to restructure his entire life around that child. And that would become his priority. I mean, everybody else was like, wow, I'll quit work for a little while and we'll do that. Oh, you know, um, he was the only one that really I could tell was going to be involved in that child's life.

She still wanted to meet him and his partner. 

On the day of their meeting Shelli was nervous. The stakes felt so high–she had so many hopes attached to this couple who might receive her baby…she walked into the restaurant and looked around before she spotted a couple looking at her – a tall guy with brown hair and his wife, an attractive woman with a friendly smile. 

SHELLI: It was a very, uh, nervous meeting I think for all of us. I remember my heart just racing.

Shelli felt relief, reassurance…a certainty that she was making the right choice. But there was something else too…facing Dan and Lydia (not their real names) the people who she thought could give her baby a better life brought up all these old insecurities.

SHELLI: I've carried all my life, just such a sense of shame, you know, shame, um, shame for, um, maybe shame, shame for, you know, my, my life. Um, and, uh, maybe who my mother was that I couldn't speak about all this glorious, you know, life that I had. Um, and then shame for things, you know, my own road of, um, of, uh, substance abuse and, um, um, and all the wrong choices.

Even as she sat there, she felt herself tangled up in this internal battle– a sense of comfort upon meeting the couple who would give her baby a happy home, mixed up with an ache for the childhood she never had.

SHELLI: Gosh, they had been, you know, sweethearts for, you know, and dated for like, you know, decades before they even married. They were an older couple, so everything, everything about them and their life and their relationship, um, and individually just communicated nothing but security, steadiness, love. Yeah. So everything I didn't have,

Still, right away, Shelli knew what she was going to do…

SHELLI: So, an immediate, immediate, yes... 

But Shelli chose not to have them at the delivery.

SHELLI: That would’ve just been too much.

In August of 1997 Shelli went to the hospital to be induced.

SHELLI: I had gone into it wanting to do it au natural. That I would later regret mid stream...at one point I, um, I grabbed the nurse and I, and I said, You don't know what I'm feeling I'm are you gonna give me some pain? And she goes, honey, I've had five kids. I know exactly what you're feeling. 

They gave her something for the pain but it didn’t do much.

SHELLI: All it did was make me kind of groggy in between contractions or you'd be like after this, and then they can tell you, and then you're back, you know, back into the pain zone. So luckily the actual, yeah, I think at one point I was like, you've got to give me something else. And then she says, honey, it's time to push.

Finally Shelli gave birth to a baby girl. 

MUSIC

SHELLI: I remember holding her and, uh, just how beautiful she looked and just, you know, sobbing, just sobbing and, and just wanting to make sure I was making the right decision, you know? Cause you can't, you know, you can't see it in the future. You don't have that magic ball. Nope. You can only go with your gut, you know, but you know, with all that flood of those hormones and everything in that natural, um, connection that you have, um, and I remember feeling that she was communicating to me and I know I've read stories of other women and, you know, um, that have felt, um, the soul, the child communicating. And I, and I distinctly felt her saying, I'm going to be fine and everything's going to be just fine. 

Shelli still had 72 hours to change her mind. 

SHELLI: When I said I had made a promise to that family that I was going to hold on to that promise, you know, but I knew in my heart, it was the right decision. And even though these emotions were all over the place and there were doubts and tenderness and connection... just wanting to do the best by her and letting her know how much I cared about her and the life that she was embarking on…

…You can imagine from the adoptive parents perspective, how nail biting that is every, every moment you're getting a little closer and a little closer and a little closer...

So Shelli said a tearful goodbye to her birth daughter and handed her to the nurses knowing the adoptive parents were waiting in the wings. Shelli kissed her baby on the forehead one last time CHK and wondered what was in store for her.

SHELLI: Am I going to disappear from her life...  Will I ever see her again? You know, will I ever see her? Yeah.

The new family did visit with Shelli a couple times. They drove up from Phoenix and visited Shelli at her small apartment. Shelli gave Michelle a small drum. And Shelli visited them when she was a toddler. Shelli enjoyed seeing the baby become a toddler, then a little girl.

But Shelli started to notice something strange during on the second or third visit…she was on the floor talking to Michelle and Lydia kept coming in and out of the room checking on them. 

MUSIC

SHELLI: When I was in the room alone with her, the birth mother was nervous, there was not a comfortability. Maybe I could say a fear that maybe there'd be some kind of bonding that we would have that I exclusively had with her and that she wouldn't. 

And Shelli feared that Michelle would pick up on her mother’s tension.  Nothing was said. Dan and Lydia never said anything explicit to Shelli. It was just in body language. 

SHELLI: So at a certain point in her life, I think this was by age five I backed out of her life for her mother's sake. LAUREL: And you weren't asked to, you did that on your own? SHELLI: I did that on my own. I've always had that big picture perspective. I guess for me, it was one of the, one of the biggest acts of unconditional love that I've ever done, I've ever made...I needed to back out and let them have a time for her to realize that she's the mother, I may have brought this child into the world, but that's not a mother... Just a deep, profound realization. I did not have that role in her life. Genetics doesn't make a mother, and she needed time to really, feel that and know that for herself and feel solid in her relationship with her child in that position. And, my only hopes were to be her friend, in some way.

MUSIC IN THE CLEAR FOR A FEW BEATS

Shelli felt divided about the decision wondering if she’d ever see Michelle again. But her fear didn’t outweigh the good she felt in her heart about letting Lydia and Michelle bond. 

And it’s right around then–right as she decides to give more space in the child’s life–that Shelli met Jeff.

She remembers the day it happened, when she was sitting at her favorite coffee shop and chatting with the baristas. 

SHELLI: And Jake was like, I need you to meet my friend, Jeff. And in my recollection, he picked up Jeff like this and put him down right in front of the counter and shoved him towards me. This is Jeff.

Jeff just waved and didn’t say a word.

SHELLI: And I was like, okay, can I have my coffee now? Um, because I, I just didn't notice men that weren't like, Hey!  

Their mutual friend invited both of them to a party.

SHELLI: So this gregarious, Leo is, uh, seated next to the quiet, silent waters run, deep Scorpio. He obviously finally got the courage to ask me. I think he, I think what he said is like, do you want to just, you know, we can have some dinner, like, you know, talk, 

One of the things I remember about Jeff is that he, you know, was he wanted to know about me. So he was asking me a lot of questions about me...I was used to men wanting to get me in bed. That was about it. They didn’t want to know who I was.

It was on that first date that Jeff mentioned he was adopted.

SHELLI: I just noticed from his body language and his tone of voice, that there was, you know, kind of that, you know, shame or, um, insecurity or, um, kind of, you know, self-esteem issues surrounding that.

But Shelli saw it as no coincidence that she met this man who had been adopted at the same time she had decided to step back from her biological child. 

SHELLI: The poetry of your life...the magnitude of how one life touches another life touches a whole life...certainly it wasn't lost on me.

Shelli says meeting Jeff had reinforced her decision that she was part of a divinely led plan. For Jeff his birth story was a big mystery but Shelli could help him understand what his birth mother might’ve been going through.

SHELLI: I don't know what their story is. He doesn't know what their story, but I, I can, I can bet you that the woman, for sure, it was a very anguishing decision that was not taken lightly in any way, and she's never forgotten it ever. She'll never forget it.

Jeff and Shelli loved exploring northern Arizona trails together, whether by mountain bike or on foot. They dated for a couple months before moving in together. Then got married a year later.

SHELLI: I was very terrified of marriage. Before I said I, I do, there was, um, there was a lot of, uh, soul searching...it's what I needed to do to continue my own path and growth and healing. I always longed for a partner. I did not want to be alone. I was, uh, uh, but certainly I didn't, uh, my, my mom's relationships with men were not the best examples. And at the same time I had this fantasy that, um, you know, someone else was going to make me happy once I got married.

Over the next six years she’d get a Christmas card from Lydia and Dan with pictures of Michelle. But Shelli continued to keep her distance. Then in 2005 Shelli and Jeff decided to move to North Carolina so she sent the family an email with her new address.

SHELLI: And they were like, oh, you've you, you've got to come down and visit you can't, you can't go away. You've got to come down and visit. 

This was the first time Jeff was meeting Michelle, who was now 8.

SHELLI: So we knocked on the door and she's the one that opened the door. She wouldn't open the door and she opened the door, but she hid behind the door. I'm like, oh, who's here. And then she popped out, you know, and she was all full of life and going through dance classes and wanted me to go to her dance class with her mom and see her do her dance routines... And so then when I came down, now it was right. And she was in tears and she was like, hugging me and saying, I just cannot, thank you enough for this gift.

Michelle’s parents had been upfront with her. They had never hid that she was adopted.

SHELLI:  I came from your tummy, ... she was excited to meet me. She wanted to show me her room and the stuff in her room. And, uh, you know, she loved my husband. Uh, I told her that he knew how to, to, uh, find chocolate anywhere. If there was chocolate anywhere in the house, he would find it. And he did actually,

MUSIC

SHELLI: It continued to affirm for me that I made the right choice and that, uh, um, there was, I was part of, um, just a really big life and a big picture, a picture that, of course for me, it goes beyond what isolated life, just this huge, um, weaving of, um, an, a divine design.

When Shelli and Jeff moved to North Carolina they started their own businesses. Children also kept coming into her life. Today Shelli and Jeff have moved back to Arizona and Shelli is teaching preschool.

SFX: Shelli teaching

SHELLI: It brought out the child in me. To cope with life I hardened the child. I was overly serious and, um, yeah, and I'd forgotten how to find joy and laugh and enough, you know, everything was this drive to, uh, accomplish something, be something that, you know, uh, getting a healing that core wound of unworthiness.

Michelle graduated from college summa cum laude and today works in the Phoenix area. Just before graduation Shelli met her for dinner. Shelli continues to send cards and books. Michelle will send an occasional text message but mostly keeps her distance. 

Shelli still hopes they can become friends.

SHELLI: I don't want to fail to act and at her to think that that means I don't care. I hope that she knows that I care. I hope she knows that I'm there for her if she ever wants and without, without the drama, but, you know, inevitably there's, there's a drama isn't there because I'm someone that she doesn't really know. 

LAUREL: I'm wondering, 2 Lives comes from a quote by Confucius who said we're all given two lives. The second begins the moment we realize we have only one. And I just wonder if, what that brings up for you today. SHELLI: All too often we think of ourselves as small and not having an impact…When I chose adoption, I saw how, you know, one life let's say her life, um, how it impacted mine and then Jeff's, and then her parents, and then her parents, parents, and then her, the other family members and her family and how her life will go on to affect countless of other lives. And just how beautiful that is.

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.

This episode was produced and hosted by me, story edited by Camila Kerwin of the Rough Cut Collective, music from Blue Dot Sessions. Annie Gerway creates original illustrations for each episode. You can see them at 2 lives dot org or on our social sites -- Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at 2 Lives Podcast. And if you like the show please take a minute to share it with a friend. We want to bring you more episodes and the only way to do that is get our numbers of followers and downloads up.