Moving Past Murder episode #76

Today’s guest interview, Brenda WInkle.

From abusive marriage with a narcissist to life coach: an interview with Brenda Winkle.

My guest today is Brenda Winkle. Brenda is a coach and host of the Waves of Joy podcast. She has taken her own life experiences and turned them into a way to help others. In our interview, she shares her story and offers valuable advice on how to find joy and happiness in the face of adversity.

 So I was talking to somebody today and they said no one ever leaves a domestic violence situation. They escape it. Hmm. And I felt that it was so poignant. Yeah, I would agree. Um, like I feel my emotions rising up when you say. Yeah, sorry. And I, that’ll be the tricking you . No, no, no. I, I don’t mean it in that way.

I just mean I definitely feel like I escaped and I escaped with Yeah. Um, a band of conspirators, really. That’s how I feel. And so, One of the things that I do is I also can recognize when someone’s in this type of situation. Yeah. And so I offer support in whatever way makes sense. Um, most often it’s just somebody to say, I believe in you and I believe you’re worth loving.

Yeah. It’s a lot. It’s a.

Testimony continued. Today in the most notorious criminal trial in Richland County history. Dr. John Boyle is accused of killing his wife, Noreen, and burying her body in the basement of his new home in Erie, Pennsylvania. The 12 year old son finally took the stand as I heard a scream. I heard a thud was about this loud.

We are the jury, find the defendant guilty. When I was 12 years old, my testimony sent my father to prison for murdering my. This podcast serves as a type of therapy and reconciliation for myself, and it is my hope that it helps anyone who has experienced deception, betrayal, and dark trauma. I’m Collier Landry, and this is Moving Past Murder.

Hey, movers. Welcome back to another episode of Moving Past Murder. I’m your host, Collier Landry, and whoa, let’s go. Happy Friday, February 10th. What a week it has been. We’ve had a State of the Union address that turned into like total chaos. We have had an N B A milestone that was standing almost 40 years, get broken right before our eyes.

The Super Bowl is coming up this weekend, the demise of a Chinese spy balloon or weather balloon, or whatever you wanna call it. Did we really have to hit it with a missile? I mean, it’s a balloon, right? Can’t we just like pop them with pins? I don’t know. I think that was a little excessive, but, uh, that apparently went down on Monday.

And of course, uh, the Murdoch trial is keeping everyone very, very interested and intrigued in all things South Carolina dynasty oriented. I don’t know what a. I, I can’t even, I talked about it last week a little bit. I’m gonna touch upon it in a second, but I wanna say congratulations to LeBron James, who surpassed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the NBA’s, all-time leading scorer now having achieved 38,390 points.

Passing Kareem, who had 38,387. I am from Ohio, just like LeBron James. And I gotta say, I. Incredibly proud to be, uh, associated from the same state as he is. But also, you know, I spent a lot of time talking on this program about people who are not great people sometimes, and, uh, you know, we all have our faults and our flaws, but, I, I think in the world we need really, sometimes we really need a really pure hero and somebody that can give inspiration that lives their life in the right way.

And I’m not saying LeBron is probably the world’s most perfect person. We all have our flaws. But this is a guy who has achieved so much in his NBA playing career and off the court, which is probably an even bigger LE legacy by far, that he will leave. He’s just someone who is consistently given back to his.

His native hometown of Akron, Ohio through the LeBron James Family Foundation, his I Promise School, which he opened up in 2018 to give underprivileged youth, uh, a chance to dream. And, and when you go into the school, it says, I promise, and we are all family. And it’s a really positive thing. And for someone who has had such a rich playing career, been in front of the public eye since he was a teenager and has really risen to the.

Without incident. This is a guy who’s not caught up in scandals and silliness and you know, he said something really interesting at the Lakers game last night when they opened against the Milwaukee Bucks, which of course we lost, but , um, he was talking about his starting five and he had his wife, his two sons, his daughter and his mother, Gloria.

He just said, these are the most important people that allow me to achieve the things that I’ve achieved in my life. So, you know, whether you’re a sports fan or not, it was a beautiful acknowledgement of what really makes a man and what really just acknowledging the people around them that support them.

And he’s done this many, many times. Obviously he’s very public about this, but it’s just, it’s really cool because not a lot of people, Do that. There’s a lot of solid cystic, solid cystic behavior that goes on in the world that we sometimes get caught up with and we lose sight of the fact that there are really genuine people out there that are working hard.

I hope that I am one of those people that you guys look up to, but I am a nowhere way, shape or form, uh, LeBron James type of character. But I do feel if you’re trying to make a difference in this world, looking up to people like. Uh, they’re really an inspiration like the world. Good guys, nice guys. Do finish first.

Sometimes doesn’t always happen. It’s nice to see. I digress. Uh, we’re going into Super Bowl Sunday this weekend too. Uh, Patrick Mahomes just won his second MVP this morning and uh, yeah, it’ll be an interesting game. Philadelphia Eagles versus. Kansas City Chiefs. Uh, I’m really, I’m really excited for it. Um, but I wanna talk about, well, first of all, I have an amazing guest on the program today, and she’s gonna share with us.

Her journey of turning a narcissistic and abusive marriage and relationship into something positive that she has done in order to give back, to share her story, and to delve into the world of coaching and podcasting, to help other women who have come from, uh, abusive relationships, whether it be physical violence, uh, mental violence, uh, financial violence.

She herself fled this marriage into. Into a, a, a home, uh, a batter. Her women’s shelter put her daughter first and really just moved on with her life and is now helping others in similar situations. So we’re gonna talk a little bit about that. Uh, last week I spoke about the Murdo trial, speaking of like horrible, heinous people.

So this is last week. There’s been a lot of conjecture about , about his son, Buster Murdoch, who was in the courtroom apparently making hand gestures flicking. The attorneys that are prosecuting his father and, uh, his girl, I guess girlfriend, then knocking over bottles of water. I guess they’ve been threatened to be removed from the courtroom.

I don’t know. I’m not watching the trial or anything. I’m just hearing sound bites from different people and I, I, I am just astonished with all of the evidence like this, his father is on trial for not only murdering his mother, but also murdering his younger brother. And I am just so astonished. That’s the type of loyalty he has.

It’s interesting, and, and I had commented about this last week because of the, uh, the H B O series, uh, called Low Country, and at the end he’s talking to his father on, on the phone in jail, and it’s, the father is obviously gaslighting him. And it seems like that if that’s his behavior in the courtroom and if he’s somehow indignant about the charges that his father has probably, definitely had a hold on this.

And manipulated him because there’s so much coming out in this trial this week. They, they now allowed, the defense was fighting it, but it was always apparently gonna be a part of it according to the prosecution. All these financial crimes, cuz this guy’s like got 99 other cases against him for collecting money and judgments.

From civil cases, from people that he represented against insurance companies and other law firms and things of that nature, and took the money and never paid people. So one of those such people that testified this week is Tony Scatter Field, whose mother worked for the Mur Os and was killed in a freakish accident at their hunting lodge.

And he reveals text messages that Murdoch had sent him, including that he was gonna take care of him and his brother, getting them at least a hundred thousand dollars and paying for all the medical expenses, uh, for his mother, uh, and, and all of her, her funeral expenses. Of course, these kids never received a dime.

However, Murdoch it shows received 4.3 million more than that. From this case, from suing the insurance company and getting the money and never gave these boys a dime who were vulnerable adults, that he said, Hey, I’ll help you, and then never did it. This guy’s behavior is beyond the pale, and these are hard things to recognize because this is evidence coming out of of conversation that they had.

This behavior has been well documented with Alex Murda or Alec Murda, however you pronounce. I, I can’t believe it. What a horrible human being. And also Mark Tinsley, who was a litigator, uh, a lawyer who was representing the, the family of the girl, Mallory. Beach who was killed by Paul’s boating accident when she was apparently potentially intoxicated and whatnot, and he was going to stand trial for at some point.

Uh, also testified about the wrongful death suit, and he testified about how he as a lawyer was worried about the murders being able to cover up the boating accident and this wrongful death suit and the manipulation that went around it, and even Murdoch claiming that he was broke and couldn’t and could.

Uh, afford to pay anything in this wrongful death suit, even though he is pocketing all this money from all these other. And my, my adopted mother said, Susan said to me the other day, she said, well, you know that people in the south often bury their money because I was like, where does the money go? She said, I’ll often bury, bury the money.

So I guess there will be a lot of amateur sal sleuths out there with metal detectors on the myrdal properties. looking for some sort of, uh, winning lato ticket. I don’t think it’s a bad. Um, so my guest today is a, a woman named Brenda Winkle. I met her through her Waves of Joy podcast and she is an energy healer and she is a, uh, a life coach and specifically dealing with women that come out of abusive relationships and abusive marriages and showing them a way forward and the work that she’s doing is really cool.

I caught up with her right before she left for a retreat in Bali, Indonesia, and I am pleased to welcome to the program Brenda. So Brenda Winkle, thank you so much for joining the program. How are you? I’m great. Thank you for having me. Yeah, absolutely. So when we last talked, you were just diving into full-time coaching.

That’s right. With your, and with your podcast running sort of in tandem with that whole thing. And how’s you’re getting ready to take a trip? Yes. I leave for Bali tomorrow. That’s amazing. I’m so excited. I’ve never been, uh, in fact, this is my first time in Asia, so I am Oh, wow. Just over the moon. Excited.

Um, can’t wait. And yeah, when we talked in August, I had just stepped away from a full-time teaching. Yeah, and started really focusing full-time on my business for the first time. And so it’s been like, what? What is that? 5, 6, 7 months? Sometime five, like six, something like that. Five, six months. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

And so you know, there’s a learning curve when you do something new like that. And I’m in the learning curve, but I’m really enjoying it. That’s fantastic. Let’s go back. You know, you’ve told me a little bit about your story, but I want to, I want to kind of get our listeners familiar with you. So we connected, or originally through a mutual friend, um, Erin with um mm-hmm.

you’re such a catch, uh, her podcast. You really connected with my story because of what happened to my mother. And so you shared with me your harrowing story with your daughter and. What you endured. You’re from Idaho, I believe, right? Didn’t I was living in Idaho at the time that the story that’s relevant to this, um, came to be.

I grew up in Nebraska, but I found myself in Idaho beginning in 2004. And the story that unfolded that I talked to you about really started in 2007. And at that point I had been married for 14. To somebody who I really did love, and I think that can be a misconception, is that there’s an absence of love in these abusive relationships.

There’s, there’s usually not. Yeah, an absence of love. Yeah, that’s a good point. And yeah, and my daughter was five in 2007, and I was a Mary Kay sales director at the time. I’d taken a break from teaching and I was doing quite. , I was in the top 2% of the company. I’d won a trip to The Bahamas. I was on a sales call with my national sales director and I said, you know, I, I just can’t go.

I just can’t go. I can’t afford the flight. That was all it was gonna cost me was the flight. And my national sales director, this was a group call, and she said, I’d like to speak to you after this. And I was like, oh, okay. I had no idea what that would entail, but that was the first time that that had ever happened in, in my memory.

And so I got on the call with her and she said, what you’re talking about is not normal and you need professional help. And that was kind of all she said. And I said, I don’t understand. And she. I can’t help you with this. You need professional help, and I was, and it was ambiguous like that. A little bit ambiguous because for context, I had said I can’t go on this trip, that the whole unit was going on.

It was paid except for airfare. And I said, yeah, I can’t go. My ex-husband and I, or my current, at the time, he was my husband, yes. I said, we were fighting and this just, this is not gonna happen for us. And so she had that information and then a coupled with, you know, the time that she’d known me previously.

And so I was like, professional. No, I don’t. I’m a little bit humiliated, a little bit offended, and I respected her enough to at least tuck it away as I should probably give this some thought. Sure. A couple of days later, I was setting up for an event at the Holiday Inn in Boise, in a ballroom with another sales director, big event for consultants.

We were creating table scapes and all the things. Mm-hmm. for about a hundred consultants. Brought in my five year old daughter. She was playing at one of the tables with her little pretty ponies or something, . And I thought it was a great day and I got home that night and the phone rang and it was this woman.

From Boise who had I’d set up the tables with and she said, what else are you gonna let him take away from you? And I said, excuse me, I, I don’t know what you’re talking about. And she said, yes you do. I know what’s happening in your house. And I just felt like this shame I, I just rising from my feet. I could feel my cheeks flush.

And I was thinking that she was talking about like the dishes in the sink and the clutter in the house and. And that’s where my head was going. And she said, it’s not what you say, it’s what you don’t say. That leads me to understand, wow, you have a problem in your house, and I know this because I had a problem in my house too, and you need professional help twice in a week.

Someone said, you need professional help. And I’m like, okay. So I started it immediate. I’m embarrassed. I am self-conscious. I’m a little bit offended, and I’m like, okay. All the things professional help. All the things. Yeah, all the things. And so, so at this point, because you’re, you’re obviously astonished in what they’re telling you.

Did you feel that you were doing a great job of masking this or were you just sort of unaware of how it was affecting you, or was it maybe a mixture of all of that, or what did that? I think it was a mixture. I knew I was unhappy. I knew that I was walking on eggshells. Yeah. I also knew that I had been told that I would die if I ever left him, and so that wasn’t even an option in my mind.

Like it, it just wasn’t even an option and I never stopped to label what was happening. I know that sounds. So were you at this, this time? Well, no, it doesn’t sound silly at all. It seems . It sounds like you’re functioning in a, in an abu you’re functioning in an abusive relationship. You’re finding a way to, to function.

And so were you, uh, were you trying to. Like you dove into work, obviously you said you were top 2% of the company and Mary Kay and I don’t, I don’t know a lot about Mary Kay, but I know that that’s probably a lot of work, , and I know that you’re a hard worker, so were you diving into that as a way of sort of not being home or, or.

Uh, just kind of saying, okay, the relationship is in shambles, but at least this I have some control over. Is that how that was working or, it came about because I had never been an at-home mom and I didn’t know how to make friends as an at-home mom. So I found myself about six months living in Boise with no friends, really lonely.

My mother-in-law at the time suggested, she said, you know those Mary Kay ladies down the street, they meet once in a while, , you should go join Mary Kay. And so I was like, yeah, okay, let’s do it. So that’s how I came into Mary Kay. Oh, that’s funny. Was I was looking for friends. Oh, that’s funny. And what I didn’t know is that the culture of Mary Kay is all about women supporting.

Yeah. And women empowering women. And so when I got into the company, I was suddenly immersed in this culture of really strong, powerful women who were teaching me to believe in myself in a way that I never had. That’s cool. And so it was addictive. It was so cool. I just, I would do anything to Yeah. Be in that space.

And so it was really filling a.

and I can imagine that there were many other people that recognized this cuz they themselves have been through it. I think so. Yeah, I think so. And so, you know, I, I had no intention of leaving him or getting a divorce or anything when these two women said, you need professional help. My intention was, Well, first of all, my intention was to find a way out of getting professional help.

Sure. . And so the first thing, , I can’t hear anything. I didn’t hear. Exactly. Exactly. And so I was like, well, I don’t know where I’d go. I don’t know where to go for professional help. And this woman on the phone said, well, I know someone and here’s her number. Wow. And I was like, oh. Okay, well, don’t have that excuse anymore,

Exactly. So I called the number and went and talked with this counselor, and at the end of the session, I didn’t reveal anything that I thought was salacious or, I mean, I wasn’t trying to hide things, but I also wasn’t telling her deepest, darkest things. I was just talking about life and I said, my friends say that I need professional help here.

I. Kind of a a statement. She closes her book and she leans back and she says, I never counsel divorce, but you need an exit plan. Wow. And I said, I don’t know what that is, but I had like chills all over my body. and she said, well, an exit plan is where you have your car parked so that it, the front is out of the driveway.

You know where your keys are all the time. You know where your phone is. Someone knows where you are. You take different routes home from wherever you’re going so that you can’t have a follower. Those kind of things. And I’m just like, wait, what? What? What is happening right now? And so I left her office just feeling like my world was shifting under my.

And your husband at the time. So he was physically abusive, verbally abusive, just all encompassing. It was, it was a little bit of everything with a whole lot of narcissistic mental abuse. Yeah. Which I think is, I think is the worst in my opinion. I think it’s pretty interesting. It’s, I mean, it’s all bad.

It’s, first of all, it’s all bad . It’s all, it’s all bad, but bruises heal. I think those, the narcissistic, the, the, the manipulation, the gas lighting, it is exhausting on an entirely different level. Mm-hmm. , I think that most people that have been through it would say that it’s, it’s soul crushing. In a lot of ways and confusing and con and very con, very confusing.

So, okay, so you, so they said design this exit plan. Mm-hmm. , which I’m just thinking, so is that you park your car, you back your car into your driveway. Is that the right? So you can just, yeah. Wow. Okay. Yeah, but on my way home, like I left the office, I got in the car, I’m driving home. I’m thinking I need this exit plan, and I’m calculating ways that I might do that.

And then even on the drive, I start to sort of shift and I’m thinking, I bet she doesn’t understand. Right? I bet. I bet there’s not really a problem. So I, um, I had this envelope on my floorboard from the Mary Kay Ash Charitable Foundation, which supports domestic violence and there was a phone number on it.

So I called the National Domestic Violence Hotline. I pulled over and called and I said, just a kind of a brief. Of what I had shared with the counselor and, and just said, what do you think? And they said, you need an exit plan. Oh, geez. And I was like, oh, okay. So I’m actually in trouble here. Like, this is scary.

And I, I felt like ev like he knew and I was scared to go home because I felt like he knew. Yeah, you feel like they know and you’ve done something wrong because that’s how they’ve manipulated you. Into feeling. And, and it’s astonishing how you just, because there’s no way they know. They don’t know. But, but you’ve, you, you’re so under theros of control.

I mean, I remember this as my feeling with my father, uh, but I was also in a, in a narcissistic relationship with a woman. And, and it was the same thing. And when I was trying to figure out like, how am I gonna get out? I was like, oh, she knows. She, she knows, but, but she didn’t know. But they would, they say things and you of course, as an empath feel guilty, but you’re like, oh, oh.

You know, cuz you’re trying to, you’re trying to figure a way out. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so then the, there’s that fear coupled with my not quite understanding the depth of the situation that I’m in. Yeah. And then this new reality that, oh, I, I might be in trouble here. Most people may have, you know, gone and got right into action, but I still needed more evidence.

Yeah, of course. And so I went and got digital, a digital audio recorder, and I wore it in my bra for two and a half weeks. Whoa. And I recorded every interaction and then he was working nights. So as soon as he left for work, I would push play and start to listen to the. and that was when it all broke loose for me.

Do you, because when I was playing back the recordings, it was really obvious that it was terrible. Do you still have those recordings? I do, yeah. Yeah. I, um, it took me about six or seven years. After this. Yeah. For me to actually stop listening to it once in a while. Oh, got it. Because the, the questioning of was I really in an abusive marriage Oh, was still there.

It was so strong and so I, I kept them because I would need to listen again. And I know that sounds morbid and no, but the truth was I really needed it because I had been told it was just part of marriage. This is what you sign up for. . Yeah,

it’s interesting you say that. So, okay, so this is 2005 you said? Or this happened in 2007. 2007. So you said you’re 14 years married at that time. Mm-hmm. . So you got married, so like 93 or whatever. Look, I can do math. Yeah. Um, so, uh, you. I, I think about this, your situation, right? And the parallels obviously with, of course with my mother, but I also think about the time of all of this, right?

So this is 2007. So you and I think back, if you had a few decades earlier, what, you know what those women live. You think about the fifties and the Mad Men and all that stuff and what those women dealt with, right? Mm-hmm. . And then you sort of fast forward to like, 2023, what women are dealing with. And I think the thing that really shocks me, and I was saying this to someone earlier who I was interviewing, whose mother was murdered by their father.

So the thing that that is so disheartening to me is that not much has changed. Is there still is this, this abuse in these relationships? And of course like, you know, there are abusive relationships on both sides, right? Men can also be in abusive relationships, but I would say more often than not, mm-hmm.

the statistics lean very heavily on the fact that the male is abusing their female partner, whatever that looks like. Mm-hmm. and in whatever way. And it’s just, it’s something that I feel like is just so slow to change. And so, and it’s so unfortunate too, because obviously of course, children. Get into this and then, you know, talk about the epigenetics evolve and generational trauma and things of that nature.

It’s like, how does this do that? But for someone like yourself, you found a way to break this cycle. Mm-hmm. . So what did that look like? It looked like moving into a domestic violence shelter, and I got tons of support. immediately. And unfortunately there’s not very many domestic violence shelters out there.

I was so fortunate to be in the last one in Idaho, which has now closed. Wow. And in the shelter it’s closed. So they don’t have any domestic violence shelters at all in Idaho anymore. There are no crisis shelters. There is, uh, domestic violence, um, called the Women’s and Children’s Alliance that offer support for.

Um, women who are rehabilitating after abusive marriages. Yeah. But there’s an application process. Sure. And it’s really valuable. But there’s no crisis shelter. Yeah. There’s not, there’s nothing. So you can just, okay, I’m out. I need to go somewhere. Let me get my right. Because you also, because I think that people misunder, it’s not like you can just go to a hotel and despite whatever your financial situation is, it’s not like you can go to a.

Because that’s not safe. So going to these crisis centers, you have support, you have security, you have people that are not gonna tolerate your husband running in and, and making a scene and, and getting angry. Um, so this was after this two and a half weeks of intense sort of playback and study of what was going on that you just like, talk to me about that day.

Like what did that just look like for. Well, it almost didn’t happen because I had miscalculated his work schedule. In my mind. I had worked it out so that I would leave on one of his days off and then he would wake up and find me and my daughter and our car gone, and that was my plan up until the morning of the day I was planning to leave and then I.

I screwed up the work schedule. Oh. And he needed to go to work that day. And so I called my friend a different Mary Kay sales director and said, I’m not gonna go today. It’s not safe. And she said, I’ll be there in 20 minutes. Wow. Get your stuff. Wow. And so she came with her car and I took two suitcases, my five year old and $400 and left.

And when I got to the. I was so scared and watching my friend walk out the door, um, that was one of the hardest moments knowing that I had to do it. There was nobody that could save me but me at that time that they had. They had given me every support, every encouragement, every safety net, and now it was on me.

Yeah. Yeah. So I stayed there and then it was like blessing after blessing after blessing. Yeah. Cause I remember you said somebody gave you a car. I remember what you were talking right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That same night, a different Mary Kay sales director, the one who I’d set up the event for in Boise, brought me a car and loaned it to me and said, you just keep it as long as you need.

And then a few months later, after I’d moved out of the crisis shelter in with my parents, um, I decided that I needed my own. So I took the two suitcases, two more boxes of things people had given me and I moved out and then I got a phone call the afternoon. I took possession of the rental house and the voice and the other said line said, are you gonna be home this afternoon?

And I said, yeah, I’ll be home. And she said, okay, well just make sure you’re home from like three to six. Wow. These people, the Mary Kay Sisterhood in the Treasure Valley in Boise. Came in and in three hours furnished our homes. Geez, that’s amazing. They brought in all the furniture, the washer and dryer clothes, decorations, plates, everything.

Wow. It was just, it’s amazing. Such a gift of generosity. Yeah. It changed my life. It’s amazing. Wow. Yeah. That’s incredible, incredible generosity for, I mean, just, yeah. Go Mary. Kay. All right. . Yeah,

I mean, and I feel like in, I feel like these were important milestones in your journey because it’s so easy for people to get sucked back in. And it feels like at every turn when that moment might have happened, where you might have just given up or just said, ah, did I make the right choice? You’re starting to question, you have a daughter, you’re this like, what am I doing?

There was somebody there with, with a lifeline, like a hand like, Hey, I’m here. Let me, let me help you. Mm-hmm. , let me help you get through this like, like the, the way forward, the way through, the way through is, or way forward is through it, you know. , I feel. Yeah. And, and, and because I unfortunately, a lot of times, you know, people don’t take that step, you know, that first step and then it’s, it, it, it’s, it’s a, you know, the woman’s like, okay, I’ll see you in 20 minutes , you know?

Yeah, yeah. Uh, it, it, it’s, wow, it’s incredible. So, okay, so you have a daughter. You’ve now moved into this house in Boise, and you what happens with, well now he’s the ex-husband, but your husband at the time. What, what does that look like? Well, when I moved into the domestic violence shelter, um, I still had the presence of mind to ask them about, I needed an attorney, right?

Yeah. And so I said to the center direct. Um, and I, the person I’m gonna talk about knows this story, so I’m not throwing shade at anybody. I said to the center director, which attorney do you hate the most when they’re on the other side? And she immediately dropped a name, , and that’s who I hired. Oh man.

And so, um, this person was also a criminal. Wow. And he gave me some really tough advice. He was not super nice. In fact, at one point he was like, if you’re here for someone to hold your hand, you’re in the wrong office. Oh my God. and . I looked him square in the eye and I said, I’m here because I want to take care of my daughter.

Yeah, somebody else will hold my hand. You get me my daughter, and. So he gave me some tough advice. I didn’t like hearing it all the time, and a lot of that advice was counterintuitive to me. So interesting. I wanted to fight for my daughter. I wanted to, you know, create this aloo around everything, and he said, Nope, nope, nope, nope.

Just give him. Yep. Just give him rope, give, you know, let him take his time. He’s gonna focus on the money, he’s gonna focus on the things. You just let it happen. And it was really hard to watch. Like our house went into foreclosure and we lost everything financially. And I just kept giving rope, kept giving rope.

And in the meantime I had my daughter all the time. And in court cases like this, the precedents of custody. Matters almost more than anything else really. And, and so there were six months that had passed and during that time, he saw her every Tuesday night for supervised visitation. For the last three months of those six months.

Wow. Which means we had a precedent set. So in the state of Idaho, it’s a very patriarchal state. Yeah. , it’s, um, clear clearly . Yes, yes, yes, yes. Recent decisions and, and now no more batter, women’s shelters and CRI crisis shelters. Okay. Yeah, exactly. So go to Idaho. Yeah. It’s kind of, kind of an understatement.

Yeah. Stay on Idaho. Yeah, it’s, it’s a tough place to live sometimes if you’re a woman. But, um, it was pretty interesting because 50 50 custody is standard and I had full custody with every other weekend, and that lasted for about a year and a half before he lost interest and moved outta state. Yeah, interesting.

Yeah, I remember you were talking about, and then I just stayed in Idaho until my daughter turned. so that we wouldn’t ever open up the court case again. And then as soon as she turned 18, COVID happened, which delayed us a little bit , and we waited for Covid to pass and then moved to Oregon. Yeah. Which you’re happily at now.

Mm-hmm. . Um, you know, it’s interesting. I, I, I say that all the time with people, give them enough rope and it’s sage advice because, You know, you, you can never underestimate the predictability of stupidity or hub or hubris. That’s like my father, you know, my thing was, and my mother would tell me that like, give someone enough rope, they’ll hang themselves.

So I’d always remember these little tidbits, but just remember, just like thinking you’re gonna slip up, buddy. Like you’re going to, you’re gonna do so. You’re gonna give me something and it, you know, I found the house pictures and, and the girlfriend and, and so, you know, there’s always these things that they do because they, they almost feel like they’re, they’ve gotten away with it.

And they’re such narcissists that they, of course, they got away with it. Of course they’re getting what they want. Of course they’re gonna win because they’re looking at the wrong things, . Exactly. Exactly. And did you find that process of letting. Your dad, like giving him more rope? Was that a hard process for you?

Are you kidding me? Oh my goodness, yes. Absolutely. Frustrating, angry, scary, uh, because I’m living in the house with my father and while all of this is going on and I’m just making notes about him every day in my head, , and it’s something that, uh, you. Yeah, I was making mental notes of all his behavior, everything, and just like, you’re gonna slip up, you know?

Mm-hmm. , and of course he, I mean, ultimately he did abs. Absolutely. But I think that’s, that’s one of the things that you’re, when you’re dealing with someone who’s such a narcissist, um, they, they don’t see the forest for the trees sometimes. I mean, we all have that own, that sort of experience. You know, you were, you can see the forest for the trees in your relationship or didn’t want to see it.

Right? But this is a different forest for the trees. They’re just, they’re just in their own world and it’s all about them. I mean, narcissism, right. And they can do no wrong. The world owes them something and then they’ve, they take it out. I mean, yeah, I can go on and on about it. So you got, and so 18 and then, so you now have channeled this, well, you were a music teacher, which is how we also connect.

People always see the guitars behind me in my little studio up here. But, uh, but you, you now take, well you have your Waves of Joy podcast and you now coach other women who have been in similar circumstances, correct? Yes, and I, I coach women who they definitely, I have this component where I know unique.

how to help someone who has been in an abusive relationship. I also work with highly sensitive people. Empaths? Yeah. People pleasers. Yeah. Perfectionists and overachievers, because we have some of the same characteristics. Sure. And a lot of people who identify as any of those things are prone to being in relationships that maybe don’t serve them.

And so the, the coaching that I give centers around creating. Your own sense of authority because so many people give away their authority. They put somebody on a pedestal, and that person on the pedestal becomes the authority. And so my coaching is centered around taking that back. Interesting. So when you say that, so when they get involved in a relationship, they then make their whole world revolve around that.

That can be one part of it. It could also be that, um, the person on the pedestal is the one who’s making most of the decisions and it sometimes we do these types of things and there’s no abuse present. It’s just a dynamic that we create uhhuh in our relationships. Yeah. Where somebody has all of a sudden more say in the relationship, and that wasn’t how it started out to be.

But if you identify as a highly sensitive person or an empath, which I think you and I both do, yeah, absolutely. It’s, it’s easy to really want the other person to feel good and to be happy. And so sometimes we can create these unhealthy dynamics because we are in tune with their emotions. Interesting.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I mean, what a. I mean gay for Mary Kay. I mean, if anything, this has been a, this has been , this has been an advertisement for Mary Kay. Are they still in business? I, I remember the Mary Kay lady down the street. Yeah, they are. I don’t, I don’t, God bless. I’m not a consultant anymore.

I, I gave that up, um, when I was doing some other things, but yeah, of course. They’re still, I think they’re, they’re ranked internationally as one of the top cosmetic companies. That’s, that’s wild. That, well, I. What a blessing for you for sure. And for your daughter. Yeah, absolutely. Wow. Um, so, you know, does she have a relationship with her father now?

Because obviously you didn’t seem like you restricted that he sort of weaned himself out. Of the situation. I didn’t restrict it. And that was advice given to me by not only my, my attorney, but by other moms of kids because I wanted to keep the door open that she never felt like, like she had to defend him.

Yeah. From me. Yeah. And that was honestly really difficult in those early years because he would do some really stupid things and some really painful things and just to be quiet and not comment and to let it happen and then be there for her without ever characterizing him as anything other than neutral.

Yeah, was was tricky. Um, their relationship changed. Um, initially when he moved, they started seeing each other in the summers, like for four weeks or five weeks, and that lasted about three summers. On the third summer, he told us both that she was flying out as an unaccompanied minor, which means you have some more support Yeah.

From the airline. And I kept looking at the airline ticket saying, I don’t see. It doesn’t look to me like she’s flying unaccompanied. It looks to me like this is just a regular standard ticket. Yeah. And he kept saying, no, it’s unaccompanied. I’m sure it’s unaccompanied. And we got to the airport and of course it wasn’t.

And my daughter just nearly went into hysterics. She was so frightened to get on the plane as an adult when she was 12, and she’s going to see her dad in this other state, and it was. It was really hard. So the flight attendants did a beautiful job of explaining what signs to look for to make sure that they believed the flight would actually make it to the other end of the flight.

And so they gave us every confidence that she would go on the flight and it would be without incident. And so she flew that way, and then I ended up. To Denver. That was the, the connecting airport where he met her. I flew to Denver and picked her up and I just sent him a text the morning she was flying home and said, oh, by the way, I’ll meet you at Maya’s gate, um, and , I will, I will fly home with her.

So we flew home together from that, and that was the last time that she spent any significant time. When we went to a cross-country trip in 2017, I gave her the option of stopping to. And she really wasn’t sure what she wanted to do and then decided that she wanted to meet for coffee. So they met for coffee for about an hour in 2017, and that was the last time that they have spent any significant time together.

And since then, they don’t really connect by phone. They text once in a while on birthdays. I know that she still loves him. I know that, um, she still loves her family, but they don’t have a lot of contact. Did he end up remarrying or anything? He did. He remarried fairly soon. I mean, he was remarried. Um hmm.

Probably by the time she was a seventh grader. Gotcha. Has that wife ever reached out to you? ? No she hasn’t. Oh, . I honestly, I’ve, I’ve been waiting. I’ve been waiting. . Yeah. Well, look, you turned, you, you did something amazing. You took, you know, a very difficult situation and spun it into a real positive and, and didn’t lose your child in the process, which is a lot more than a lot of people can say.

That’s for sure. You know, you’re very fortunate. Yeah, I feel very fortunate. Yeah. I recognize that. Well, it’s really superpowered what I’m doing now because I want other people to heal. Yeah. I want them to know that healing is possible. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I also want to name something that I talked to you about in a text.

Yeah. Which is that we can still find things that trigger us. Mm-hmm. , no matter how. Long it’s passed and the triggers, they, I do feel like they space themselves out over time and they lessen over time. Um, and just naming that, that can still happen and it doesn’t mean you’re not healed. Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. It, it a hundred percent. I sometimes am so immune to what my triggers are. You know, I have to really sort of dig deep and go, okay, where, where is this coming from? Why do I feel this way? I have to sort of question. Go, why, why? What is making me feel? Okay? And just kind of be very aware of that.

Um,

do you feel that because of, because you were able to live in such action and take all these action steps, that that really helped you process the trauma of this, losing that relationship, going through that relationship all. I think the thing that made the difference was I became an energy healer, Uhhuh

And that in itself didn’t necessarily make the difference, but in the process of being an energy healer and going through the training, you get to experience energy healing. Ah, and so a lot of my healing took place when I became a Reiki master in 2016, and it felt like a light bulb went on and like I could.

Deeply for the first time maybe in my life. Wow. Brenda Winkle, thank you so much for joining the program. This is, uh, this has been really wonderful to have you on here. Um, where can my audience find you? The hub is my website, brenda winkle.com. . I am most active on Instagram at Brenda Winkle, and I’m just getting started over on TikTok at Brenda Winkle one 11.

And I mean, I’m just getting started. I am kind figured out. Oh yeah, it’s, I’m trying. It’s a whole different world. . And then your podcast is called Waves of Joy, which we can find on Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast from. That’s right. Thank you for remembering. I often forget to say something. No, no.

I wanted people to know about you and, and what you’re doing. So, um, Brenda, thank you so much for joining the program. It’s been such a pleasure to reconnect with you and, and have a wonderful time in Bali. Thank you, Collier. Thank you for having me. It’s so nice to reconnect with you. Well, that was a really lovely chat with Brenda Winkle.

She’s such an amazing person and uh, what a wild story. Like Mary Kay. I never would’ve thought of that. I remember my first Mary Kay product. I think somebody who was a patient of my father’s actually sold Mary Kay and gave me a roll on deodorant thing, and I didn’t even know what a roll on deodorant was.

Honestly, I was so young and uh, I just remember. You, you know, I think you hear things about, oh, I’m Mary Kay salesman, but what a, what a really wonderful thing to have come out of this. A family embracing her and saying, look, you need to get out of this and we’re gonna help you, and not letting her. Sort of sit back and go, okay, well I’ll do it tomorrow.

They made her just take the action and then support her afterwards when she moves into that house and furnishing the house. I mean, what a beautiful story. There are links to all of Brenda’s material, including the episode of Waves of Joy podcast that I did with her a few months back in the show notes of today’s episode.

And please if you would let me know in the comments on social media what you thought of today’s episode. I’m trying to do something a little more uplifting and really inspire you guys like I’m inspired. Again, I loved, I love meeting inspirational people like Brenda and them and hearing them share their stories of how they’ve overcome these traumatic circumstances in their lives, and I would love to hear from you guys on what you thought of today’s episode.

Also, I’m going to start going live on YouTube very soon on my YouTube channel, which is App Collier Landry, and for those of. Have a happy Valentine’s Day. It’s Tuesday, February 14th, which is also four. Two weeks later will be my birthday. Yes, February 28th is my birthday. I won’t tell you how old I’m gonna be, but I will say, uh, I’m not looking forward to it.

No, I’m kidding. . But, uh, And you guys can always, uh, reach out and give me a five star review on Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast from, or subscribe to my YouTube channel. You can buy me a coffee. There’s all those links in there, but if not, it is all good. Just you guys listening and supporting and sharing this program really.

Is is all the birthday gift I need. So on that note, I’m calling your Landry and this is Moving Past Murder. Thanks y’all.

This podcast is made possible by support from listeners just like you. Please subscribe via at the podcast, Spotify audible. Find us on YouTube youtube.com/collier Landry.

The Film of Murder in Mansfield is available on Investigation Discovery, discovery Plus and Amazon Prime Video.

This podcast is a production of Don’t Touch My Radio.