Empowering Your Life: How To Make Lemonade Out Of Lemons With Dr. Tamara Pelosi

 

Has life ever handed you a bunch of lemons? Our guest has been there and shares how she took those lemons and found a way to make lemonade and improve her life. Joining Julia Lazareck today is Dr. Tamara Pelosi. Dr. Pelosi suffered from severe emotional trauma with her husband’s imprisonment.

When someone is taken into the prison system, it can affect the whole family. Join in the conversation as Dr. Pelosi provides tools to not only help you get through similar challenges but to thrive. Her powerful story sounds like a movie, but you can’t make these things up. Hear the real story today.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Empowering Your Life: How To Make Lemonade Out Of Lemons With Dr. Tamara Pelosi

I’m with Dr. Tamara Pelosi, who has learned how to make lemons out of lemonade. She married her childhood sweetheart and had three children. Little did she know that her life would be turned upside down by her husband’s antics. While they were going through a divorce, he was accused of murdering his new girlfriend’s ex-husband. It just goes beyond belief what happened to her family. She shares her journey, what she has learned, and what can help you in any situation.

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Dr. Pelosi, thank you so much for being here and sharing your story, where you are now, where you are going, and everything that you’ve done. We’re going to get into your story. Let’s start with your passion for children and the work that you’ve done to support them. You’ve done some wonderful things.

I’m very excited to be here. Thank you for having me. Back in 1990, my girlfriend of mine, we had such a passion about children. Both of our lives were affected from alcohol and drugs, both of our husbands. We started to get some help, but we noticed that there wasn’t a lot out there for children at that time. We started a program with puppets. We would go into schools, educating about self-esteem, drug and alcohol use, whatever we could figure out that we thought children would need.

We were always in church basements. Her basement was our office. One day, we said, “There are many abandoned buildings out there. Why don’t we see if we can get one?” It was the coolest thing because we went to a town meeting. We never ever had gone to a town meeting before, and we had a couple of minutes to speak.

It was myself, Carol, and another one of our friends, Patty, and that was our group. We spoke and one of the legislators got up. She said, “I have a place if you want to go look at it.” People thought we were crazy. When we said we were going to the town to go see if we can get a building donated to us, they thought we were insane, but we had a lot of faith that something was going to happen because we knew what we were doing was benefiting children and families.

We went to the house and it was on Sixteen Acres. We get there and the building was going to be torn down because it was crawling down. There were wires hanging. It was an old farmhouse. There was even a dead cat on the floor. It was in shambles. The grass was up to our hips, but we went in there and we were like two little girls on Christmas. We were like, “This is so beautiful. We love it.” The guy that was touring us around looked at us like we had three heads. It was funny.

We did get the building $1 a year. Because we became a nonprofit, we had all kinds of people come help us and donate money to us. The building is still there now and it looks magnificent. What the community needs is what we offered. Now, we have a home base. We did divorce and separation groups for children. We did self-esteem, anger management, socializations, you name it. We would just do it and we always involve the parent too.

I didn’t get paid, but I loved going to work every day. It was awesome. We were doing that for ten years at that point. My life got shattered at a point. The date was October 21st in 2001. From that day on, when my life got shattered, I used the Sunshine Center as a safe haven. That was the only place that I felt good about myself. I was still doing community work. I had lots of support there.

Me and the woman that I co-founded the center with, we started out with Doctor programs. I had a lot of good things going on with me, but the event that had shattered my life was my husband’s antics. He became the primary suspect for the death of a very wealthy financier. The news ran with it. It was in the news for almost three years before he was put on trial and eventually convicted.

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I know that was tough times. It’s amazing how you went for your Doctorate. That’s why we call you Dr. Tamara Pelosi now because, even though there were things going on in your life, you still strive to improve yourself and improve what you were doing for the community. I commend you on that. Let’s talk about where it started. You touched a little bit on how tough things were and how working with the children and your passion was your sanctuary.

Let’s go back to where it started and what you went through while you were working on your passion and helping the community and children. That was all full of your love and passion for what you were doing to help the community. However, there were things going on in your life that a lot of people didn’t even know about. This is very typical of people that are out there doing things, that things are happening in the background that people don’t know about. Let’s go back to the beginning and talk about where it started so people understand the other side of what you were going through.

It was tough. You had mentioned about getting into my Doctorate program. I immersed myself into my studies. It was a saving grace. It’s the same as Sunshine Center was at that time. To go back to what had happened, my husband became this suspect. It was such a sensational headline that every newspaper has gotten on it and all the different TV shows. There was Primetime, Dateline, 48 Hours, and Court TV. There was even a Lifetime movie made called Murder in the Hamptons.

With all that publicity, even though I was going through my divorce, the news media was on my front lawn. Every single day, they were waiting for some kind of nugget or information. Me and my children lived like that for almost three years. It was so tough. At times, I think back of those days and it was gut-wrenching. I shared in my book that I felt like I lived in a fishbowl because my life was being exposed. Some of it were lies and some things were not even true.

Even with the Murder in the Hamptons, my role is in there. Tamara is in there, but no one ever talked to me about my side of the story, so they just made up who this person would be. They didn’t know all the good stuff that I was doing and how passionate I was working with families and donating my time. I was getting awards for Woman of the Year and volunteering. There were so many different things.

It was just this flip side that the families didn’t know what I was going through at that point, but then what happened was, is that the media then found my job. They found my place of employment and secret space. They were lining up and coming there. I worked so hard at building that place up. I didn’t want the stigma because that’s what it was. It was a stigma for me and my children. I didn’t want that being brought into the center when we were doing such good stuff. I decided to leave the center at that point.

It’s so interesting because that happens a lot where a family member might be convicted of something and the family becomes collateral damage. You and your children had nothing to do with it, but the media is following you around everywhere and they came to your work. That happens to a lot of people. Maybe not to that extent, but they’re part of the whole situation even though they’re not the ones that are being convicted or charged with a crime. Those are difficult times, especially with movie cameras and people following you around. I couldn’t even imagine. How was your health? How did you take care of yourself?

It was difficult when I was in the midst of that three years of the investigation. That was the hardest part because, as a family, we didn’t know what was going to happen. We didn’t know if he was going to be charged. It took the detectives three years to get enough with the grand jury and then he was finally indicted and then eventually, the trial. The trial was 3 or 4 months, too. It was a long period of time.

My health was affected. I had lost tremendous amount of weight. I got all kinds of stomach issues. The chronic headache and the anxiety were off the charts. I lived in a very fear-based mode. The only thing that did bring me all my comfort, feeling whole, and feeling like the good person that I am was Sunshine Center, but I left due to the fact that I didn’t want all that stigma to be there. I immersed myself. I went full-time into my Doctor program when I left.

Looking back at Tamara back then, what could you have said to her that would have helped her, or is there anything that you think that you could have said to her?

A lot of people tried to help me. People would say, “You’re going to get through this. You can do this.” I got all that support from my family. Looking back now, that’s why I wrote the book because I was able to smile again and people were like, “How did you do that?” In the midst of it, I didn’t. I have to make that clear. I was a nervous wreck for about three years. It was almost like three years was cut out of my life. That was difficult. I did stay very connected with my support system, friends, and family. They were the ones that were able to help me get through each day. Some days were tougher than others.

I asked that because even though people have situations that might not have been so in the limelight, when you’re in that, it’s hard to get out of it. I look back at what I could have said to myself and I don’t know what I could have done or said to help myself get through it. That’s why I always ask other people, “What do you think could have helped you that was back then?” It’s difficult. Maybe the people reading that are going through it can see the light at the end of the tunnel and know that there is hope and they will get through it. Maybe that will help relieve some of the anxiety.

That’s what people would tell me, “We’re going to get through this as a family.” I got my strength from my family, my mom and my brother. I was then able to fill my cup up a little bit so I could then carry on for my kids. I didn’t have a choice. I had to be there for them. Each one of them fell apart in their own way. One was eleven. The murder happened on his eleventh birthday. By the time he was convicted, he was thirteen and then I had a seventeen-year-old. They were teenagers at that time. It was already a rough time in their life, but every day, I had to get up.

First of all, I had to go to work. I had to provide. I had to be a mother and a father underneath extraordinary circumstances. I didn’t have a choice. I just did it. I plowed through. Some days were easier. I did a lot of self-help stuff. Even if I didn’t feel the best, I made myself do that. I was involved with church and a lot of self-help groups and women groups. That’s what helped me to get through. It didn’t change the situation, but I felt the support.

That’s the message that I like to get through with the book is that, “I’ve been through this. With support, you can get through things. As you start to find yourself and uncover all those layers, you then can find yourself and go on to empowering yourself,” because that’s what I did. In the midst of it, it was very difficult. What advice would I give? Find support and that you’re not alone.

I thought I was alone. A lot of women have different experiences. Not everybody has somebody that has this publicized of a murder case in their life, but those three years, I was defined by that. I allowed myself to be defined by shame. I wore that shame as if I was the person that did that. The media helped that. The media reinforced that for me. It was tough how to look at all of that.

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Fast forward a little bit, after he was found guilty, then it was like, “Why do I stay married to a man?” For nineteen years, he was cheating with multiple women. There was drugs and alcohol at one portion. There were lies and emotional abuse. He was never supportive of me doing Sunshine Center, but I still did it. I still never let him tear me down, but it was hard. For anybody who is reading who may feel like they’re alone, you’re not alone.

It’s so good that you had your family there. One of the things you talked about was that you had to be there for your kids, especially as a parent. No matter what’s happening in their life, they’ve got to be there for their kids. I commend you on that too. I know it’s difficult. Finding support groups, we have the Prison Families Alliance. There are a lot of people that come to those that have a place where they can learn from others. Talking about it helps. I’m happy that you did have that support.

However, that feeling when you’re going through it, it’s so difficult to get out of it. Some of the things I heard you saying is that you kept moving forward. Even if you didn’t feel like it, you kept moving forward and that’s important for everybody. There might be days where you want to stay in your pajamas and stay in bed. That’s okay once in a while, but you’ve got to get up and go through the motions.

I say, “Fake it until you make it.” A lot of people don’t like that saying, but I know that’s what got me through. It’s taking one step at a time, one foot in front of the other. I thank you for sharing all that. Tell us about your book and more about what’s in it and what you’re doing to help people to help empower them.

Through all those three years, I did a lot of journaling. That was one of the outlets for me. I was looking at notes where everything is dark handwriting, maybe when I was angry, or teardrops all over the papers. I was glad that I did that to be able to formulate my book. I tell the story because when I did get a job, when I went back out into the workforce, I worked for a very large preschool. I was a director there and nobody knew my past. I would come in this happy smiling face and I did. I felt happy and good. I was pushing through and doing a lot of different types of healing practices.

One day, one of the women found out about my story. I don’t exactly remember how. People talk. She told some other people and they all came to me, not to find out the gossip about the murder. They came to me because they looked at me as this power of strength. They wanted to know like, “How did you go from that, to living three years of your life like that, to having a smile on your face and being so positive?” I had to think about that. I don’t know how I did it because I was just going.

I didn’t do it for myself at first. I did it for my kids. They couldn’t lose two parents. I kept getting the help and I kept doing it. The book is divided into two parts. The first half of the book is my life story. The second half of the book is how I got through it. I came up with this little thing, lemons in our life or all of our negative behavior patterns, whether it’s anxiety, depression, fear, anger, victim or shame. How did I release those lemons? I thought back and said, “I needed to add ingredients.” The ingredients were things like, “I had to have faith first. I had to have courage to face all of what I went through.”

I picked apart, “Why I stayed with a man that was emotionally abusive? That’s not fun to do.” I needed the faith. I have all the other ingredients that I figured that were able to help me. In my head, I knew how I wanted to get it out there, but it was so hard to put it on paper at first. I kept praying and until one night, it came out. I don’t even know who was writing what I was writing because I can’t type. I had to handwrite. It came up with all the different ingredients. I had the courage, faith, forgiveness, acceptance and hope, and then how did I apply those particular ingredients into my life?

What healing practices did I use, whether it was transformational breath, tapping, journaling, connection with nature or meditating? I tried to put the second half of the book together like that. I say in the first half, “For you to understand how I’ve grown, you need to know about my life story because I wasn’t always this confident and empowered woman. I was the complete opposite. When people meet me or people who know me now and they read my story, they can’t even believe that it’s the same person.

You got married young, so there’s a lot of infatuation there. I know we didn’t talk a lot about that. The other thing is you guys were divorced, but not when he was convicted, so you were still his wife when they were gathering evidence against him.

I was still legally married to him. I had filed for divorce, but it took a long time to do that, so I was still legally married to him. That’s why it was a media frenzy because I was still technically considered his wife.

There is just so much to your story, and I know there are a lot more in the book. The empowerment portion of it is amazing, as far as helping people. I wish I had something like that when I was going through it. Along with the workshop that you’re going to be doing, could you tell us a little bit about that? Talk about the workshops generally, what they’re going to be, and what they will entail.

For the second half of the book, it’s a workbook. I have a lot of exercises in there and a lot of questions for people to delve into themselves and bring their negative behavior patterns to the forefront because you can’t change anything until you’re aware of something. What I did was I made it a four-part series. The first part is going to be talking about certain lemons and the main ingredients, and then I add in how I used those ingredients. We’ll have lots of different group activities or self-reflection activities to do.

I don’t want to call it homework, but there will be things that they need to be thinking about during the week because my feeling is, “What you put into it is what you’re going to get out of it.” The goal for me is for people to become the best version of themselves, and how do we do that? I would like it to be through these workshops that we can learn new and different ingredients, be a support system for each other and this way, you can move forward with where you want to go in your life.

Everybody will make their own lemonade. It will all taste different. It’s going to be four weeks of getting to know yourself, having guidance from somebody that has been through it, and being with other people that understand that are compassionate in creating your community. It’s going to be a wonderful workshop.

Knowing you has been empowering. Seeing where you’re at, reading your story, and relating to a lot of it, a lot of us that have somebody that is in the system or that has been accused of something can relate. We all do have that fear if it is something that it is going to be in the news and what are people going to think. It’s also learning boundaries. You’re teaching people how to set boundaries. All of that is so important.

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I want to thank you so much for your time. We’re in touch with Dr. Pelosi. She will be working with Prison Families Alliance to roll out her workshop, as well as have in-person workshops. She will come and speak again at Prison Families Alliance. We would love to have her share her story with others and help others. Any last words for somebody out there who has somebody that has been accused or is going to trial that they can do for themselves?

First of all, I would totally have such empathy for that person because I know what that feels like. It’s a very lonely place. A lot of times, there’s so much shame that comes along with that. Have your support system. You will get through it. If I got through this and it was three years of torture, anybody can do this, but we need tools, people and support. Reach out. Try not to be so shameful because I was. The more we talk about it and hear that inner talk, we can heal. When we start talking about it, we can heal.

That’s what this is all about. This is about healing from trauma and then learning how to then move forward in your life. I always like to say things always happen for a reason, not that I necessarily wanted that to happen in my life, but I don’t think I would be the person that I am now and out there on this mission to help other women who are experiencing this. Get your support system. That would be my advice.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Important Links:

• Dr. Tamara Pelosi
• https://www.Amazon.com/Recipe-Empower-Your-Life-Self-Empowerment-ebook/dp/B095W5L2DM
• Prison Families Alliance
• https://PrisonFamiliesAlliance.org/event/empowerment-workshop/

 

About Dr. Tamara Pelosi

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