Jessica Miller and Joshua Miller

00:03 Hello, my name is Jessica Miller on 39 years old. Today's date is Saturday, March 27th, 2021. I'm calling in, from Conway, Arkansas. The name of my conversation partner is Joshua, Miller more commonly known as Sheila and my relationship to my partner is that we are husband and wife.

00:24 And I and Joshua Miller by 8:47. They state is Saturday, March 27th, 2021. We're calling in from Conway Arkansas or conversation partner is Jessica Miller and Jessica is my wife.

00:48 Liquid kratom

00:53 But then,

00:56 To start with when and where were you? Born to sippy?

01:10 The move to Arkansas.

01:23 What was that? Like?

01:27 Well, we lived the first place. I remember living in Conway was at the end of this little tiny Gravel Road, and we lived on this little man is more like a dirt Mound. It wasn't really a cul-de-sac right by the expressway. So we are people sometimes we come off, the expressway. Usually people who are homeless and need a ride or need to make a phone call to town.

02:13 Which we spent a lot of times out. A lot of time Outdoors. It's riding bikes up and down this hill because we lived on a hill in the bus. Stop was at the top of the hill road. Watch out all the time.

02:38 Why would you say that?

02:41 Said that you were happy.

02:44 El Charro.

02:46 Okay, cool. That's an interesting question.

02:51 If I were honest and I tried to look back at my childhood, I would probably say that I wasn't unhappy but I was

02:59 And just sort of awkward feeling anxious a lot of time.

03:05 But I could you ask my siblings. Like my oldest sister has told me before that. She can. Remember. She's quite a bit older than me though. She was just always really happy and just beaming is it like when I smiled it would just let everything up so that she thought that I was a very happy childhood.

03:27 You know, that level happy but when I look back on it, I don't remember. I don't remember that. I do, remember, being unhappy so much, but I was definitely definitely felt a little bit awkward and anxious very anxious a little bit awkward.

03:42 Just a little bit awkward.

03:45 Pencil.

03:47 Who who your parents? How well, my mom? She was a stay-at-home mom until I got into first grade from kindergarten. She said, she stayed home with us. My dad was actually self-employed as a sign painter. So he painted a lot of this, like the Billboards and stuff that you see on the side of the road. And he did a lot of that in my town is in the towns surrounding a lot of, that was what they did. And then when, when I was in first grade,

04:30 So, how would they?

04:32 Navigate to parents.

04:34 If you were,

04:36 Awkward and anxious.

04:41 And I would, well, it's funny because

04:45 Like my mother.

04:48 My mother never worried about anything. So we were really just complete opposites. She had this.

04:55 This really strong, simple Faith, you know, in God, that whatever happened was for a reason, God's not going to give you any more than you can handle and these are things. You know, she said these things all the time so she just never really had any worries about anything ever. And to me that was really comforting to me in some ways because if Mama thinks everything's going to be okay. And everything's not always in my head, just always the worst is going to happen. On the other hand though. Sometimes it made me feel like

05:29 I was really kind of strange for being. So worried and anxious all the time. You know, like I was sometimes afraid to verbalize how anxious I was about things.

05:40 But at the same time, you don't make me feel better, call me down to see that she was calling and didn't, you know, didn't worry about things. She wasn't the most in my memory. She wasn't like a really Hands-On nurturing. Like some others are very supportive of everything that we did.

06:04 My dad, he wasn't around as much as he works and you work a lot because he was self-employed was a very small business. So he worked a lot and he was just kind of a goofball of the family, come home on the weekends and he had different words for a friend of the home of a friend of his who lived out somewhere out of town. I can't remember where and they convinced me. They had made no tacos or something and I just thought the food was so good and so upset. I was so angry and he probably had me convinced for

06:56 Weeks. It wasn't, it was something like that.

07:09 Definitely different.

07:19 Let me know cuz you were grown up in Conway.

07:24 What what was it like like?

07:29 Being self-employed.

07:39 Well, we don't have much, I grew up. My family was was very poor. My dad worked hard, but he had four kids, you know, and then one of my mom started working, things got a little bit better.

07:56 Yeah, but we we grew up.

07:59 Very poor. We didn't have a lot of things. Our home was and I don't say this to, I don't say this to throw shade on anyone but wasn't really fun. He was very is always in disarray, you know, things are kind of, it was a messy, you know, you really couldn't see the floor, most of the time.

08:21 Things were usually broken. Kind of thing. I don't know. I think it was just

08:29 Partly living in the time and the area where we live. We were so far out from things kind of down in The Boondocks. So, to speak normal childhood. I don't think because, I remember, I would go to, but, but I don't remember being sad about it. It was just a normal to me. It wasn't hard for me to handle the personality of it. But I can remember going to friends houses in their homes were very different from ours and they had to have thought was weird, because I would say, oh, your house is so clean. Your house smells so good. I love the pretty pictures on your wall. I remember it would make my sister mad and don't go and talk about how clean their houses.

09:27 That the way we were growing up wasn't really normal, but it was normal to me.

09:33 And I still look back and think you're my parents did the best they could, they worked hard. I don't know what, all the challenges where I was the youngest of four kids. So I was very young. I didn't, there's no way for me to know everything that went into the sort of upbringing that we had. We had we lived my very earliest memories, are we lived in this house? And it's funny because I was really young, but I can remember exactly how this house was laid out. I mean, I can't tell you.

10:07 You know, where, which rooms were and what kind of things we did in which rooms and I was only a baby 5.

10:17 I was really young when we didn't live there anymore, but I can remember details about this house. So when the house burned,

10:26 That we had this little, we called it a tool shed. I don't know if that's really what it was, but it was a little wooden.

10:33 Building that beforehand. We had kept all the gardening tools and garden, but all the tools and stuff for in their House. Burn down. We Wednesday to this little hotel in town while I guess it was being fixed up so that we could live in it.

10:50 We look at this hotel for about a month. I think. And then we finally went back and moved into this little what we called, the tool shed. So that was where we lived until I was five or six lives there. And I don't want to say, I was probably 9, I could be wrong when we finally moved out and moved into a house that rental house on the other side of town. So I can't think of anybody else who lived that way was a little too room. One side of it, had sort of a living room, dining area kitchen. And the other was

11:30 The room where myself and my sister and brother lives stayed, my oldest sister had already moved out by then and then there was a little

11:39 Like a little wooden enclosure with a bathtub and a one of those five-gallon paint buckets. And that was where we went to the bathroom. We would just take it out. There's Woods. I don't remember. I know now. Logically, looking back at that wasn't normal, but it still doesn't feel like normal if that makes sense. So, I don't look back at the end to make me sad. It's just the way I grew up just like, you know, however, you grow up. You just look back on that.

12:24 And that's really all there is to it. There's no, as far as growing up like that. I don't have any.

12:30 A strange emotional Detachment or anything like that?

12:36 But sometime you were, I would any time I had any kind of symptom if I started coughing, you know, I was answering, I was dying. Whatever happened immediately. It was worst case scenario and

13:02 Like my mom would come to brush it off. She said, just cuz you're being paranoid. And then my dad would kind of tease me, you know, everything will be fine. And that's the dude. That was the difference between those two. But I mean, you know, it's just always been there. There was never anything that really

13:26 Whether I got teased about it or whether it got brushed off.

13:31 Are you still there? There was a recurring dream.

13:38 Where and I can't remember all the details now, but I had to stream off and on from the time I was probably 4 or 5 until I was young adult where I am. There's these people in Black cities men in black suits have just sort of infiltrated my house and they're trying to find me and I'm hiding from him. I'm going into all these rooms and shut the door, but they always. So I run out in the front yard in the front yard. I mean the dirt Mound. That was the coldest that we lived on a run out there. And there is for some reason, this big like Clubhouse Treehouse thing. There wasn't actually one of those and I'll run up into this tree house and I jump off the edge into this big hole that was dug up in the ground. So I jump off into this hole and then

14:26 Somebody put, you know, covers me up. I can try don't know who it was. And so the net it is Flash's to me in front of a green screen. Like I'm a child having the dream but in the dream I've grown up and so I'm sitting in a suit in front of a green screen and all I said was they tried to hide me but my makeup wasn't enough, but I had this dream.

14:49 Repeatedly like probably once a week once a month and then as I got older it. You know, less and less but probably up until I was

14:59 18 or 20, maybe a little older even

15:02 It's really strange because I've had, I've had recurring dreams before but that one that one was weird.

15:10 Oh, accurate was your

15:14 That's what you would look like, older.

15:17 You know, surprisingly accurate in my dream. My hair was a lot of blond in my dream.

15:29 It was really light blond and my hair naturally is very dark black, but the rest of it really is pretty dead-on.

15:37 Yeah, that was that's funny. I haven't talked about that dream in years.

15:44 I don't know.

15:56 So, what?

15:59 What were you like that? As a child? I mean you said your ex's and stuff or did you?

16:06 Hey, did you get me in trouble or get you? A really good kid or her? I didn't get in trouble. I was always scared to break the rules. I was always worried about I miscarried into adulthood. You know, I just, I mean, I did from time to time do it.

16:34 But I don't remember getting into a lot of trouble. I was, I was very quiet.

16:41 And not quiet because I can remember. Like, sometimes in classes. I would get, I get in trouble a lot for talking too much but it was funny because it would always depend on who I was around. If I was around comfortable with a chatterbox and you know, my name mark in my folder. It was almost like

17:08 I was almost paralyzed but I couldn't speak, but I would want to and I want to go my friends and I would want to talk to people and go play a game, but I couldn't bring myself to go say anything. I remember.

17:20 What when I was?

17:23 I don't know how old I was eight or nine. Maybe we did a little musical with the children's choir at church, and it was called Short Stops, and it was about these kids who play baseball and there's a girl who tries out for the baseball team or whatever. I think and she gets to play shortstop. Will the team didn't know that? She was a girl, cuz she had her hair up in a baseball cap with the very beginning of the. She takes her, she takes off and they're going on.

18:07 So I got the part of Ricky and I remember it was so awkward. I really didn't have a lot of friends there and thought it was the time of the paralyzed. Me. And I remember on opening night. I can't, I can't remember how we were places to go to before it started. And I was over on the right of the stage by the piano Loft and I climbed up into the Vienna locking set on the stairs and just cried because I was singing crying. And in my head, I was singing this song that nobody wants to be friends with me.

18:53 It's so sad. It's so sad thinking about it now. Like

18:58 But it was you that was just what I did, but kind of past that time.

19:05 And it's so weird because I look back on that as an adult. And I think that's

19:11 I kind of hard, you know, but it was just normal to me. I just, I thought everybody was like that. Does that make sense? Like

19:20 I didn't think it was weird for me to feel that way. I thought everybody felt that way, but it was confusing because I saw all the other kids talking to each other. So I guess in my mind. I just thought they hadn't known each other longer or

19:35 Like I would have played with it. A good friend. I felt like they did because they were friends and they had known each other. But really they hadn't. These were just other kids who went to my church. They really weren't.

19:47 Anymore.

19:49 Acquainted with each other than I was with him. I couldn't talk to people. I didn't know if I was a long time. I wouldn't, I couldn't shut up. But if I was around people, I didn't know. It was really hard for me.

20:11 Okay.

20:15 Well, then what about your friends?

20:18 I know I know what you made a really good friend because you guys are still friends. Now. I didn't have a lot of friends I had.

20:30 You know, I have some people that I've talked to and that changed as I grew up.

20:35 I didn't meet Samantha. Samantha is my best friend. I even meet her until 5th grade, and I had some friends before that, but, you know, they move away and I've never had a lot. But the thing is, I didn't.

20:50 I didn't get to go over. I need to have people over for a sleepover Who stuff. So, I could play with people on the, on the playground at recess. Or I could go to their house if I was invited, but I wasn't. I couldn't have sleepovers. I have people come over and spend the night because of the condition. My house is in.

21:10 So I think that was part of why was hard for me to really it was probably that way for all of us.

21:16 To really cement good friendships, but I'm at Samantha and fifth grade after my grandparents moved back to Conway. And I would after school I walk to my grandparents house because they just live down the road from me and Samantha actually live two doors down for me.

21:31 So I would we would both walk the same direction home and one day we were walking down the street home from school 5th grade.

21:46 So we're looking at,

21:48 29 hours, 30 years.

21:53 I had some some good friends growing up, but I just kind of lost contact.

22:01 What was school like?

22:04 Very much the same Chatterbox in those classes. I felt comfortable in and I did not speak in the classes. I didn't feel comfortable in.

22:17 I love to ride. I was always, you know, anything, anytime we got to ride, I kind of came alive. So that, that was that was, I remember, I wrote the story and when I was in third grade, third grade, third grade, I wrote the story about a frog. His name was Zack and had just gotten this new like vcr and television dolls new really neat stuff and then he took any through all. The boxes have never told you about this.

22:51 Well, he had all this one in Springdale and it goes through the store, went through all these fun things. He did in Springdale. He went camping and this and that the other. And then when he came back.

23:03 And he had to call the cops and the moral of the story was.

23:09 Don't believe your.

23:11 Valuable boxes outside your house, but the point is so deep. I don't know who they were. They were published authors or writing professors or something came in from a college around town. I remember now, but they came in and read some of our short stories.

23:36 They wrote me this letter.

23:39 Telling me telling me how much they loved my story and

23:46 Never stop writing.

23:49 And my mom kept it for his. I mean, it's long gone. Now that

23:55 My mom wasn't the kind of person to keep things. You know, she just wasn't her like that.

24:01 And she kept it in a cabinet in the kitchen and she would take it out every now and then it read it.

24:09 Anyone, that was that's just one of the good stories that I can remember of it.

24:17 And I think maybe the reason I wanted to write so much.

24:29 Did you make it great?

24:35 I'm saying, 95%.

24:38 I do well in everything except math and my mom always said when you can study anyting, you know, if you can read you can study any of those others other subjects, but math is hard because you do it.

24:51 And for me that was a jerk. Like even if something was hard history or whatever.

24:57 I can study enough to do. Okay, man. I just never could never could grasp of that. I had all A's and most subjects, but I was lucky to get to see him for good.

25:12 Did your favorite subjects? Do you have a favorite subject? Other than like, I guess it would be English. Let me write. Yeah.

25:23 I'm going to love the English. I wasn't crazy about the rest of the subject. But, you know, those are my things.

25:35 How did you get in the band and choir?

25:38 What music was always?

25:42 A really significant part of the family. Dynamic, my mom with a vocalist, my dad played the clarinet, my sister played, the clarinet, my brother, and everybody was very talented. It was, we always joked about how just counted was in the blood.

26:01 So, it was my turn to.

26:04 To try out for band. I actually wanted to play the trumpet.

26:10 But I was

26:13 I was afraid that like, I would be compared to my brother cuz he was a trumpet player. And, you know, we were two and a half years apart. So I was always in my brother's Shadow. And so I got to my place and I went and I was devastated.

26:47 Which is kind of like Trump has bigger. So it was just kind of understood because that was just what we did. The question was what? And I remember when I got home and told my grandma laugh because I never even considered.

27:36 It was just another thing that I like to say. I wasn't the best Vocal Band and choir but I loved it. Those two things are really a highlight from 6th grade through 12th grade. Those were the highlight of my adolescence, I guess.

28:02 Did I know that you found him pretty far?

28:10 Probably enough. The fact that you could get a new saxophone class was going to go to college on a band scholarship. I got a full scholarship. And so I went to college for a semester.

28:30 And then actually join the Marine Corps in high school. I don't know, really know what happened. Like they, I saw that red stripe and I just found out they had. I had to do.

28:50 So I went to college for a semester. I had to guess for some reason. I decided I wasn't going to do that. I was going to do the military thing. And now I can't remember, what changed my mind. May be a chicken. I remember my oldest sister didn't really want me to go. She was, you know, she was always so I decided not to go, but I started in college and then I ended up after basic training, after my first semester of college and I was in the Marine Corps for 9 years and it was that was my first career. And for a long time, I thought

29:33 But I was going to be at that. I would retire after 20 and that was going to be what I did and then I have started having a family and that didn't decided we travel so much that I felt like it was better. If one of us was home because in time we went on a trip, we have to find a babysitter and

29:52 That was a pain, because nobody lived in town everybody. We lived either in San Diego or South Carolina.

30:02 And he had family. This is my first husband work.

30:15 Found in. That was why I got out, but I haven't really played.

30:20 I dabbled a little here and there but I haven't played seriously since then.

30:26 Oh, yeah, I bought cuz I got out and both of them ended up having to sell to pay rent for whatever reason.

30:46 And it's strange because when I had them at him playing very often because I had a house full of kids. It was either just wasn't enough time. I tried to play it and had to sell it.

31:12 Could you message definitely?

31:20 But it's touch on. I get to ask you about church.

31:27 You got to get well and if for some reason we quit going to church, like my mom, never really did anyway, cuz she worked Saturday nights and couldn't get up on Sundays to go. So it was just me and my dad and sometimes, my brother and sister.

31:50 But for some reason, they my dad and the rest of the family stopped going. And I don't know why, but I kept going and wanted to keep going. So I have my dad, take me. And once I was old enough to drive.

32:03 But the funny thing was that like, I can remember being in church and take it every, cuz I was Great, Southern Baptist. And I took everything to heart, you know, that the road to Salvation in the Roman Road in the other and how I had to be saved. So that I wouldn't go to hell and there were all these things, I had to do so that I would be in good standing with God and one of those things. So when everybody else stopped going to church, I thought oh, no. No, I better keep going to church and then I would get so mad because

32:34 They wouldn't go with me and then.

32:40 I would come home and I'll see you don't. I wouldn't think I was being on the alcohol and you don't do that before you married.

32:52 And then like I got teased for that.

33:03 And it was just strange because like, that was what I learned. That's what I took from being in church, but then it turned out that that was

33:10 Like I was confused because this was what I had been taught, but it's not what's happening. And it seems like I'm weird because I'm doing what I was taught. It was, it was just a really confusing and my head.

33:24 Well then.

33:28 Requested to hear some of the stories. I wanted to ask about.

33:34 How has that has the way that you grew up and the way your parents were.

33:45 How has that?

33:47 Affected or shaped.

33:51 The way that you parent your kids, well.

33:57 So if you take the way that I was raised, I always wanted obviously like we all do wanted to give my kids more than I had them and they've been through a lot, you know.

34:06 Divorces in this and that the other. So the kids have been through a lot anyways, so I know one of the mistakes I made is giving them too much, you know more than they need and I've done that I think as a result of not having much I just didn't want them to want for things. But the bigger thing about it, is that like

34:25 I felt so different growing up for whatever reason.

34:30 Yeah, there was a lot of things that happened in my childhood that I wouldn't want to go into you. That made me feel shameful.

34:38 And I don't want my kids to ever feel shame and the things that we learned that church is kind of goes hand-in-hand with that because like I don't want them to ever, I feel like

34:53 Shame is just really something that is hard to deal with and as you get older, I think it's even harder and I think parents a lot of time accidentally showing their kids. I don't think they're really trying to I know I've done it.

35:06 But like, you know, Evan one day was talking about he was ashamed of himself. And and this is the way that I see it and I really want them to grow up seeing it this way because I don't want them to ever feel the way. The way I did when it comes to

35:22 So if I'm not doing exactly what the Bible told me to do, then I'm not that I'm in the wrong was that if you feel bad about something and you feel ashamed about something, first of all, I don't want them to feel like feel the same because they did something outside of God's will, you know, because I feel like

35:44 If God created them and he created them knowing that they weren't perfect in the day. We're going to have struggles. So there's no reason to feel the same about that. And if, if what you're doing isn't hurting anybody else. It's not harming. Anybody else and stop, putting anybody else in danger or yourself. And there's not really any reason to feel shame of that. I was going to get you in trouble, but if what you're doing,

36:12 Does hurt someone else?

36:17 You apologize, you know, sincerely and you change the behavior and then you don't have to feel shit. Like the one thing that I want my kids to grow up understanding is that they do not have to feel shameful because I feel like in my life that is what has sort of stood in my way, because I had a lot of shame that shouldn't have been in wasn't anybody's fault. It was just the way you know, the way things happened.

36:49 Because people didn't know what was going on in my head.

36:53 They only saw like what my behavior and I don't know why that was happening.

36:59 So there was a lot of Shame for me, and it has helped me back in a lot of different areas in my life and I don't want them to ever feel that way. But that's the big, that's a big different. Like I want them to understand that there is no reason for them to feel shame because they can either do something about it.

37:17 Or they're not really doing anything.

37:20 Deserts Chang. I don't even know if I said that, you know, if that makes any sense at all, but

37:32 That's just the wrap up.

37:35 I want to do. I saw you looking?

37:42 Oh, okay.

37:52 Somebody thinks, okay. Well, let's go.

37:56 I got your mom just a little bit more and

38:01 Look at her.

38:03 Are keeping that Equity from a writing?

38:14 Send text, Mike.

38:16 That's the time that you really felt proud. Oh, yeah, definitely and here's the thing. I'm really glad you brought that up because if I could point to one person and talk about some of the stuff that was awkward and sad and I don't do that. I don't intend for it to sound like my life. Has there been a lot of really good?

38:42 But if I could point to one person in my life who has who helped me with all of those feelings of awkwardness and feeling different and anxiety. It was my mom because my mom wasn't, you know, she showed up to her concert. She would brag to her friends at work about that.

39:06 And even though I wasn't I mean and she was a very good vocalist even though I didn't saying like her, she would always tell me that, you know, I was doing a good job.

39:14 She'll always proud of the way I played softball. She always had good things to say and I just I don't know. I feel like that made a big difference. I mean I feel like

39:27 She's gone. Now. She died when I was Nineteen and I think like the course of my license in might have been a little different cuz it's been a struggle. And I've done well here and I've done well there but it's been a struggle and

39:46 I don't know. It's normal for someone to be a woke, you know, if my mother had been around things would have been different obviously.

39:56 But, you know, there's still times. Now, when something happens and I want to pick up the phone and call her, you know, and I think she really was the Cornerstone of the confidence that I had growing up.

40:18 What would you say?

40:27 Pictures of the things that what I asked you about, but

40:33 Would you say, did you want the kids? I didn't want to clarify that when I did ask inside your kids that it was because of the style that I have come into the picture late, but they're, they're they're our kids. But but do you feel like that?

41:03 What secrets is would you say if you had to pick one and you do because I'm asking you this question, you had to pick one.

41:10 Would you put you say, you're more focused on them not feeling shame or Moffat more focused on been feeling proud?

41:19 Oh, that's hard.

41:22 That's hard because I don't know. I feel like if they don't feel shame, they'll be more likely to feel proud because I think that Shane diminishes, you know.

41:32 Pride because, you know, I feel like for me, even if I felt like I did something. Well, if I felt shamed and it wasn't

41:40 I didn't deserve to feel the pride. Does that make sense? So I guess they answer your question. I would be more focused not feeling shame. Confidence issue. Is there a? That's the same things but you do want to find a middle ground in between there?

42:18 Thank you. No, thank you happy. That you asked me to do this with you.