20-Minute Errand, Lifetime of Grief: A Mother's Fight Against Mental Illness

🎧 Listen now: https://risefromtheashespodcast.com/home - Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and iHeartRadio

What happens when a 20-minute errand becomes a lifetime of grief? Carol Hodges thought she was picking up her daughter from acting class. She came home to find Corinne hanging outside the kitchen window.

This isn't just another mental illness story. It's a mother's brutal journey through gaslighting, failed systems, and the devastating reality that "tough love" doesn't work when suicide is real.

"I didn't think she'd do that. I thought she was too selfish." - Her husband's words as their daughter lay in a coma.

Join Baz Porter on Rise from the Ashes as Carol maps the long road from a thriving career and marriage to discovering forged documents, rescuing an emaciated daughter from New York, and learning why bringing food matters more than perfect words.

Key Moments:
• [6:50] The forged document that revealed years of gaslighting
• [12:13] Flying cross-country to pack up a daughter's shattered life
• [23:06] The day everything changed in 20 minutes
• [29:10] What actually helps when grief becomes your teacher

Keywords: Mental illness, grief, gaslighting, suicide prevention, mother's story, Baz Porter, Rise from the Ashes

If you're navigating mental illness or supporting someone who is, this episode offers hard-earned wisdom about spotting the signs, building safety plans, and why simple presence trumps advice.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & Carol’s Purpose
• 2:26 Midlife Meaning and Sharing Hard Truths
• 5:25 The Spark: Marriage, Business, and Doubt
• 6:50 Discovering Gaslighting and “People of the Lie”
• 9:14 Corinne’s Talent and Early Warning Signs
• 12:13 The New York Rescue
• 15:22 Failed Intake and Vanishing Months
• 18:37 Home Again: Money, Medication, and Fragile Routines
• 21:18 Threats, “Tough Love,” and Isolation
• 23:06 The Day Everything Changed
• 26:01 Hospital Vigil and Final Goodbye
• 29:10 Grace, Memory, and What Helps

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:04

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of Rise and Epic Podcast. I am so privileged to introduce my next guest. She has come through trial's tribulation into peace and liberation. My name is Carol Hodges. Carol, please say hello, help people put you on Carol Hodges.

SPEAKER_02: 0:31

And I found this light down there because I have lights with all that experience. We've allowed this light backwards and give it to the thought. And what do I have? Either you may begin to wonder, who am I now? As you're facing the last half of life, and retirement's coming up, you're getting older, or you have the opportunity to see to look back at your life, connect the dots in a way where you can say, I get it. This is why I'm here. This is what I came to do. Because each of us are living our own lives. We're all the only person looking through your eyes is you. That's it. No one else can actually live your life. But I am here because I realize that the more we share, the more that we begin to understand that we're we're not alone. I don't think there's a person on this planet who reaches midlife and hasn't had challenges. And some more extreme than others. But yours are your own and there to learn from. So that's why I have been willing to share things that have gone on in my life because they finally make some sense to me. Things they may have hidden for a long time. There was a purpose. I now I get it.

SPEAKER_01: 2:21

I love that. And it's that eureka moment we'll get into a bit later. I want to give the audience and that person listening now a bit of context to what some only guess at, and that's some adversity. Can we go back in time a few years? A moment, if you will. And can you share a bit about how this was all for this movement of yours was formed? Because there's always a what I found with these interviews and these conversations, there's always a spark. And that spark comes often not in a good place, it comes from a very challenging place in our lives. But the result of it can create miracles. Do you believe you could share about that challenging environment that you experienced as much as you wish, and as much as you want to share?

SPEAKER_02: 3:18

Yes, and I'd like to start by saying I started out with good things in mind. Okay, college graduate and looking for all the best in life. And got married, had three kids. And I remember when I was in my early 40s, and I was in musical theater, I was dancing, I had things going on. I was part of my parish. And I remember that we had a couple's event where we came in and shared what was going on in our lives. It stuck with me that there was one man who looked at me and said, You will always just have velvet bumps. And then life hit, and they were not velvets. I was in business with my husband at the time. And part of what began happening is I was taking care of the finances, the details, and the business, and I began to realize it's some something seemed off. He would tell me that certain things had happened, we had certain agreements, and I thought that's not what I remember. And I began to question myself. When I have something to talk to my husband about, we had an agreement that we would talk about business at the office. And in general, that's a great thing. Makes sense. Except then the days that I needed to talk to him, he started not showing up until 2 45 when I had to leave. And I had that commitment, my kids are waiting, I would leave. This went on for quite a while. And I'm gonna jump all over a little place. So many things were happening at once, but I began to realize we were having difficulties, and I began to realize that we needed to talk to a therapist. And then one day I discovered something that really upset me. And I found that my husband pulled out some documents. He said, Here's the agreement with the date on it that I've been telling you about. Because I kept questioning. I looked at it and I knew immediately something was wrong. Because for a period of time, we had a certain, we had someone hired and we had a special word processor. So someone else had to type it in and it came out and it only had certain print. And that word processor is what every document came out for those several years. They were all on that word processor. There was not another agreement that could have come out. And what he had handed me came out, and it had been done on a computer. It was a different print.

SPEAKER_01: 7:08

Yep, understandably.

SPEAKER_02: 7:11

And when presenting that, my husband blew up, ran out of there. And the therapist looked at me and understood what had been going on. I did not understand the meaning of the word gaslighting until then, because when someone does that, happens is you're questioning yourself. I'm hearing this, I trust this person. What the heck is going on? I must be losing my mind. The therapist presented me with a book called People of the Lie. It is a very powerful book because I began, then I could understand him. People of the lie is about those who they say something that is not factual because they said it. Because it came out of their mouth, they understand it. That is the truth. So suddenly his truth and my truth were two different things, completely.

SPEAKER_01: 8:22

What did that feel like in the moment? Were you vindicated that you feel relief, that it wasn't you going completely crazy, or was there a all of this was really just to say, am I losing my mind?

SPEAKER_02: 8:39

And so I was beginning to not trust myself. And that's why I was becoming absolutely a whiz at investigating and trying to find the truth. When I got that and I began to understand, I also understood the danger of what it produces for everybody else around them. And so then I was still faced with what to do, and that wasn't the only problem I was facing. Our oldest daughter was 25 years old. And we had during the good times been able to send her to NYU across the country because I'm in San Diego, was in Los Angeles at the time. So we were sending her to NYU, and she graduated from there, Sumacum Laude. Now she was also an extremely talented dancer. She danced before she left our area. And then when she got to New York, she was an understudy with the Merse Cunningham Company. That is an international company, so she was really a very talented dancer. And after graduation, she was beginning to look for a job. But all she really wanted to do was dance. One of the issues became that what she loved to dance was a more obscure modern dance. It wasn't roquettes, it wasn't stuff of things that were available in New York City that were well-paying jobs. It was a more obscure form of expressionistic dance. And I just wanted to support her, but more and more crazy things began happening. I had been back to visit her at one time, and she had a very little studio apartment. But just outside the apartment, she had this one little corner of the kitchen and it was a big window. And outside that window was a beautiful tree. And I thought, oh, this is good. At least she's in New York City, but she can look out and see nature. One day she called me just to say they were cutting down the tree. I don't know why, I don't know how. One day she said, I cut my hair. And I said, Oh, what does it look like? I bet it's cute. She said, No, I shaved my head.

SPEAKER_00: 12:08

Hello.

SPEAKER_02: 12:11

This was in the 1990s, like 1995. That was not in. Perhaps some places you can do that these days. I was shocked for somebody looking for a job unless you have cancer. No one shaved their head at that time.

SPEAKER_01: 12:36

These were early warning signs, were they?

SPEAKER_02: 12:40

Yeah, absolutely early warning signs. And then there was a period of time she disappeared. At one point she finally said, I want to come home. And I thought, great, that the best thing I can do is get her home right now. And yet she said, I can't do it myself. So I flew. I hopped on a plane and flew on an overnight, got there in the morning and went straight to her apartment. I got up to her apartment and I had to bang on the door. And she finally opened the door and she was emaciated. She was thin as a dancer, but I was looking at somebody who was close to being a skeleton.

unknown: 13:42

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 13:44

And so I got boxes and began just packing up her things, just putting everything I could. Thank heavens, it was a small studio, but I was still, I was just packing everything into boxes.

unknown: 13:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 14:01

And during that day, we went out for food and stopped at the coffee shop. And while waiting for the food, she kept looking at me, saying, Everybody's staring at me. And they weren't, but she starts saying, I have to get out of here. Everybody's staring at me. So she picked up and took off. I threw some money on the table for the food, grabbed what I could, and went after her, racking her down to the street, and finally catching her. And you know, she she's crying and sobbing and getting her back to the her apartment. I finished packing the apartment, and she laid on the floor in a fetal position the whole time.

SPEAKER_01: 15:05

As a mother or as a human being, it's been incredibly difficult to witness and bear.

SPEAKER_02: 15:15

It was one of those, all I could think of is how am I going to do this? How will I get her out of here? And so the it was getting to be the end of the day. And we have things packed, and I know I've got to get her out of there. So I had a flight plan, and I had to talk to her next door neighbor and said they can't come until next week to pick this up. Can you let them in? And they were already, they'd see my daughter crewing crying and all. So they were already aware of some of the issue. So they said they would do that. And I got her to come down with a lot of effort to come down to get into the car to go to the airport. And on the way to the airport, she starts smoking, and the cab driver is saying, There's no smoking in the car. Just let her smoke. Because I was just hanging on, hoping that she'd stay in the car till I could get her to the airport.

SPEAKER_00: 16:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 16:30

So we got to the airport. We had no luggage, everything was just packed. It's all I could do just to get her on board. And as we start coming up to check in, she sits down on the floor and starts yelling, the plane is going to crash. Okay. This was a time of tight security, and this was not going to be easy to get her onto the plane. I finally went up and said, I need help. My daughter is not well. I need help getting her on the plane.

SPEAKER_01: 17:10

That took courage for you even to do that. To ask for the support you needed in that moment took extreme courage.

SPEAKER_02: 17:21

I couldn't think of anything else I could do. It's like I can't do this by myself. I don't know how to get her on. And they called some police, come, and they talked to her, and she said, I don't want to leave. And I said, Everything is packed up. She doesn't have an apartment anymore. I need to get her home. And so they talked to her and they just said, You don't have any place to go. And they stayed there until I got her on the plane. And I felt blessed that once I got her into the plane, she just pulled a blanket over her head and didn't say anything the rest of the flight. I didn't know what was going to happen. So we got back to the West Coast. And before we got off the plane, I called her father and said, I had one suitcase. And I said, just come as close as you can to the gate. I just need to get her in the car. He said, How about luggage? I said, don't worry about it. That can just stay later. It will be all I can do just to get her into the car. So he did that. We came up front, managed to get her in the car, and I said, have it set up. We went, Scott, we were in Northern California, then we went to Stanford. They had a Stanford Psychiatric Center. We went straight there from the airport and had to wait for quite a while. We got there and she's very calm. And I thought, I was just on two red-eye flights, packed up my daughter's place, tracked her around, got her there. I had not eaten, I had not combed my hair. And I began to realize if anybody looked like a crazy person, it was probably me. I know this can happen. They took my daughter in, talked to her by herself, came out and said, We think she's just having a little bit of parental disagreement. We probably need some family counseling. I went ballistic and I said, I'm sure at that point they really thought I was the crazy one because I couldn't believe it. That's what happened. And we took her home. She managed to stay there for about three weeks. A friend, all she had at that point, because she didn't have any money, but she still had a working credit card. And so she charged a ticket to go back to New York. Even though all of her things were en route to our house. She talked a friend into taking her to the airport. And she flew back to New York, and we did not hear from her for two months. We did not know what had happened to her. Now I can't even describe. So I already had things going on with my husband. And now another layer. And I couldn't even talk to people about this. It was like there was nobody who could even understand because it didn't make any sense to me. None of it made any sense. And she was gone a good three months. I found out a little bit since then. It was just about a year and a half ago. Someone who I did not know reached out to me and said, Are you Corinne's mom? And I said, Yeah. And he said, I knew Kareem. And it made me feel good because I found out he had offered her a place to live. And yet he'd come home from work, and he was just a friend that she knew from high school. He came home from work, and I guess he had another roommate as well who said she'd been in the bathroom crying all day long. And then I guess she he wouldn't have known that because she became whether you call it normal or stoic or whatever, but she didn't cry around him. So he wanted her to tell all the pieces that the story fit. But after three months, one day she called and said, I want to come home. And we bought her a ticket. And she came home.

SPEAKER_01: 22:50

On her own accord.

SPEAKER_02: 22:52

On her own accord.

SPEAKER_01: 22:53

Wow, that was a leap forward.

SPEAKER_02: 22:56

A leap forward. And so we just welcomed her and just let her live at home. She found a place to dance because dancing is her passion. And at the time we had to share a car. So this was another strange time in life. Because what was going on at the time is every morning she would say, Can I have the car? Because she wanted to go into the city and dance. At that point, our business was going so far south, and I had resigned from the business, but I was taking temp jobs. The reason I was taking temp jobs is we didn't have the nothing was coming from the business.

SPEAKER_00: 23:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 23:54

And I needed the money for groceries. I found temp jobs, and I would just go into whatever office would hire me and make some money, and so I could buy groceries that week. And meanwhile, Corrine had finally we found a psychologist, and so he would see her, and we could really, I think it was every other week because we had to pay. I did not know of any way at that point. We didn't have insurance. I didn't know any other way to pay for this. So I was squeezing out grocery monies and a psychologist. And he began to, he gave her some drugs for this to get her out of depression. But and some days she would take it and some days she would. Each morning we'd wake up and you'd say, Good morning. Some days she would say, good morning back. Some days she would slam the door in your face. You would not know. And then we go around the little race of who how to use the car. And so often I would let her use it. I said, But I need to get to my job. So if you can drop me off, then you need to drop me off and pick me up, and then you can use the car in between. And whenever I said no, it was just how this is how we were living for months. But one of the other things with the car that you would often say is, if I can't use the car, I'll kill myself. I knew she meant it. And I had friends who were trying to understand, but all they friends would tell me, tough love. I think this is this is further than tough love. I really did not know. And I knew that she meant it when she said, if I can't have it, I'll kill myself. But as apparently, my husband didn't believe her. He was in his own little world. He didn't believe her.

SPEAKER_01: 26:26

Where was your husband's support? Sorry. Where was your husband's support at this time? Where was your support system?

SPEAKER_02: 26:36

The closest I had was friends.

SPEAKER_01: 26:40

Was that enough?

SPEAKER_02: 26:42

No, it wasn't. Because none of this made sense. As I say, friends couldn't understand. They said, just be strict with her. It's like, oh, in what way? This is beyond. This is so far beyond.

SPEAKER_01: 26:59

What happened during the and we fast forward now going through this? Your husband's checked out emotionally by the sounds of things. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth at all.

SPEAKER_00: 27:09

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 27:10

You have a daughter that is unstable and by the sounds of things, from what I'm hearing, mentally ill at a very internal level. Yes. What happens after how does all this come to a head? Because I can feel it coming to a head.

SPEAKER_02: 27:28

Yeah. It came to a head one day because my other two children, I was doing my best for them. They were suffering too. Yeah. So one day I went to pick up my younger daughter, who was 16 at the time, and I had to pick her up. She would take a train up to the city, and she was in a class for actors up there. She was really quite good. So I had to be gone about 20 minutes to go get her from the train and bring her back. So Corinne was there. I said, I'm gonna be gone. Waved at her. She waved back. She was on the phone at the time. Went, my other daughter was ready, picked her up, came home. She ran ahead of me into the house. As I'm coming in the front door, I hear Maureen hung herself. She had taken a dog leash. Onto a second story banister, attached it, and thrown herself off. She was hanging outside the kitchen window.

SPEAKER_01: 28:46

I'm so sorry.

SPEAKER_02: 28:50

My younger daughter. One of life's a miracle. She had been taking emergency training as a Boy Scout thing. And so she had been out there on emergencies. She immediately went to 911 and called. And then we worked as a team. She went up above to cut the leash. And I went down below to catch. Meanwhile, I'm outside yelling for neighbors, yelling for anybody to help. As I'm catching it. Emergency got there shortly afterwards. She was unconscious but alive. So they they took her to the hospital. A friend happened to be driving past, saw the fire engines in the ambulance and stopped. drove me to the hospital. Another friend came as well. And so I had the two friends at the hospital along with my younger daughter. Her father was away that day on business. He was hours away so I called and just said explain what happened. We're at the hospital. His only words were I didn't think she'd do that. I thought she was too selfish.

SPEAKER_00: 30:40

Wow.

SPEAKER_02: 30:42

She lived in a coma for three more days. As a family we needed to decide and do not resuscitate. And it was two for, two against the doctor advised that we just not did that at the time. Then on the third day she also got pneumonia come on in the hospitals by this time some of my family I'm the oldest of six some of my family had flown in and we were all standing in Corine's room. We were visiting remembering good things about her and some people were just about to leave when we looked over and I realized she'd passed one of the bravest things you'll do is remember people as they would like to be remembered in happy times.

SPEAKER_01: 31:57

And I think Carol you you are a testament to something people can some people will only just guess at and it shows courage strength resilience but more importantly it shows the love of the mother and it shows that no matter what goes on in the world you will always love your child and that memory needs to be held in grace because what you have is grace in memories I want to honor you honour your courage even just sit here today before me a stranger and share that story because it means so much to me you doing that in your own healing not just for yourself but for many other people I can't ever speak into that anything to do with our deal and the journey I don't have an experience of that but I have an experience of people like you in their freedom crisis. And not for what people may think before we close out part one is there any message you'd like to share with the audience of hope inspiration or warning whatever you feel is necessary.

SPEAKER_02: 33:50

I guess that you can get through tough times I learned the value of friendship. I never understood before why people bring food over when there's a death until then because I realized that we just forgot to eat we wouldn't have eaten had people not brought food over and come to to comfort to be just to be there. It didn't take a lot of there were no words that could make a difference. No but just being there.

SPEAKER_01: 34:31

Carol thank you for your love your time your trust yeah this is why I love these interviews I know they're challenging at times but you offer so much knowledge and inspiration for people and also hope you are what's possible. So for those people listening now and if you're going through an ordeal ask for help reach out if you need for advice from someone who's been there really been there Carol the contact details are below. I'm sure she'd be willing to have a conversation to stop this happening to somebody else she's why this platform exists the exact reason and people like you make it possible so thank you for listening please do someone a favor share the message change your life and I'll see you on part two remember this you're the miracle thanks for listening not to me that's a car see you all soon