Jane Ratcliffe | Finding the Truth, Liberation, and Your Voice Through Trauma
In this deeply moving episode, writer Jane Ratcliffe recounts her life-altering brain and head injury from a freak accident, and the debilitating symptoms she has battled for the past 25 years. Despite experiencing chronic pain and medical struggles, Jane's determination, resilience, and self-advocacy have helped her surmount these challenges. She touches on how she discovered her inner voice and uses it as a compass for dealing with complicated relationship dynamics and societal pressures. She also stresses the importance of true self-love, compassion, and connecting with one's intuition. Jane's story is not only one of survival, but prevailing through adversity by choosing herself in unique ways.
Show Notes:
Learn more about Jane
Buy a copy of Jane’s novel, The Free Fall
Subscribe to Beyond, Jane’s newsletter
Here For Me Season Two, Episode Three: Intuition is the Best Compass with Caroline Donofrio
Read Caroline Donofrio’s Five Big Questions: Jane Ratcliffe interview
What is an occiput?
Sinéad O'Connor - This Is To Mother You (Official Music Video)
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Nicole: [00:00:03] Welcome to Here For Me, a podcast about the power of choosing yourself. I'm Nicole Christie and I'm honored to be here with you to share life-altering stories, lessons learned, and advice from leading experts that will help you show up for yourself with the love, honor, compassion and encouragement you give to others. Because, just as we say “I'm here for you” to show we care for someone, saying “I'm here for me” to ourselves is the best form of self-care.
Today, I'm talking with Jane Ratcliffe. Jane is a writer whose work has appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, New England Review, The Sun, and Vogue, amongst many others, and she's received notable mentions in both Best American Essays and Best American Short Stories.
Her novel, The Free Fall, was chosen by the New York Public Library as one of the most notable books of the year. She also writes the beautiful Substack newsletter Beyond, where she publishes in-depth interviews with some of the most creative minds of our time, including Cheryl Strayed, George Saunders, Dani Shapiro, Ross Gay, and Maggie Smith.
What's especially inspiring about Jane is that she's accomplished so much while managing a debilitating head and brain injury she suffered in 1998 as a result of a freak accident. In the 25 years since, Jane has battled myriad intense symptoms that have often left doctors wondering how she's able to function at all.
Jane's story of survival is jaw dropping and heartbreaking on its own, but even more so because she realized that complicated relationship dynamics in her life would lead her to navigating this journey in unexpected ways.
Jane prevailed by feeling her way through this intense trauma, which lifted the veil, revealed the truth and helped her choose herself.
Jane, welcome to Here For Me.
Jane: [00:01:57] Thank you. It's nice to be here.
Nicole: [00:01:59] I am so delighted and honored to have you join me today. I learned of you and your work through our dear mutual friend, the writer Caroline Donofrio, who was on Here For Me last season. And both you and I were interviewed in Caroline's feature, “Five Big Questions”, on her Substack newsletter, Between a Rock and a Card Place.
And I was moved to tears reading about your journey. Namely, because so much about it epitomizes what it means to be here for yourself. It is gut-wrenching, but also awe-inspiring, to hear how you continue to battle the effects of this accident, which is common with head and brain injuries, but it certainly doesn't make it any easier to cope.
And for me, as a fellow writer, it is mind boggling to imagine doing the intense cerebral work that we do while managing symptoms that would certainly sideline me. You talked about it in Caroline's newsletter: non-stop head pain, daily vertigo, severe memory loss that left you unable to find your way home from even just a block away, days long insomnia, a non-stop racing heart, feeling like you were underwater so much. And then on top of that, this experience really opened your eyes to some complicated dynamics in your life that made all of this even more challenging.
So I just am so grateful that you're sharing your story, and I'm just so honored to have you here.
Jane: [00:03:23] Thank you. I'm honored to be here. And as I say in the questionnaire with Caroline, I just don't cry. I wish I did. I don't cry, but listening to everything that you just said has brought me close to tears.
Yeah. I think when you're living through what I've lived through and what so many others have lived through and are still living through, you are caught in an extended survival mode. And extended survival mode doesn't allow for tears. You can't stop that long. You have to just keep getting through, you know, the next minute. And I'm, you know, wildly better than I once was. But certainly hearing my life fed back to me the way you just did really touched my heart.
So thank you.
Nicole: [00:04:17] You are so welcome. You are truly inspiring. And that's why I'm glad you're here today. So let's get into that. Walk us through what happened and how this initially affected your life.
Jane: [00:04:30] The story of my health is a rather sprawling one, so I'm going to do my best to keep it condensed because it covers now 25 years, but the original accident happened in 1998 and I was helping out a friend of a friend in their furniture showroom. And there was a huge tabletop mounted over the desk of the manager and I was just there for a week helping out.
And I instantly had this very intuitive response to this tabletop and I wouldn't go near the desk. And I kept saying to the manager, how do you sit under that? Aren't you afraid it's going to fall on you? And everyone kind of teased me about it, but I absolutely would not go near it. And then on the very last day, at the very last moment, the owner asked me to mail something.
So I went to the desk to get a stamp. And in that moment, the rope broke and the tabletop fell on my head.
And my life has never been the same since.
At that point, I kind of lost my senses one by one. And then they came back. And I had this massive laughing attack, which I've since learned is kind of like a normal nervous system response when your nervous system gets blown and I kept saying, you know, a tabletop fell on my head. A tabletop fell on my head.
I thought it was like the funniest thing that had ever happened to me. And then I did go to Emergency. And this was in the days, this is very, very hard to imagine now because so much is known about head and brain injury, but nothing was known about it then.
The soldiers weren't all over the news. The football players weren't all over the news. Nothing. Nothing was known about it.
And had I had that kind of knowledge now, then, I would have acted very differently, but I didn't.
I was in my 30s. I was very healthy. I had never had any issues with my health whatsoever. I had no idea what my life was about to become.
So we waited in Emergency. The owner went with me for a couple hours. And then I was in a phase of my life where I felt like I was inconveniencing him. I've changed a lot since then. And so we left, you know, I was already in debilitating pain and I was in shock, but we left. And then the next day he did pay for me to go to his doctor.
This was in New York and his doctor was on the Upper East Side. And Nicole, no MRI, no CAT scan, no X-ray, nothing.
But again, I didn't know that any of that was called for because I just didn't know. I thought I had a brain injury! And the people around me who were supporting me and my friends and my parents, they didn't know either. You know, none of us knew. So he just did like kind of a cursory checkup and said I was fine.
And I did have just staggering for four months after that. But it did eventually go away. And then I thought I was fine. I now know that that's the root of everything that's come after. Because one of the biggest things that I struggle with is this misalignment in my body that, had I gotten proper care from the beginning and had protocols that prevented the misalignment from becoming so entrenched, I don't think I would have struggled as much as I've struggled.
There's sort of two parts to what I've lived through. Because one part is the brain injury and one part is the head injury and they cross over in certain ways, but then they also each have their own path, their own journey of symptoms. So, yeah, that's part one.
Nicole: [00:08:32] You shared in Caroline's newsletter about how this has evolved. It's just like a ripple effect.
Can you talk about how, I know it's a big story and there's a lot to it, but to help people understand what you've gone through?
Jane: [00:08:46] Well, after that, I did think I was fine. And I think it was about a year and a half later, all of a sudden I was back in debilitating pain. And again, still nothing was on the news about head and brain injury.
So at first I wasn't even connecting it with the head injury. I was in just around the clock, woke up with it, went to bed with it, nonstop staggering pain. So I did find the NYU doctors, they were the ones who helped me figure out that it was connected with the accident. They said that my neck was full of scar tissue and they wanted to cut all the scar tissue out of my neck.
Which I said, no, thank you because I felt like I had a better chance of healing with my body being intact than I did with having that cut out. And they also wanted to load me up on all sorts of drugs. And I did try some painkillers and muscle relaxants, but this pain was so off the charts that it wasn't touching it. So that whole round lasted a year and I was working during this.
I was like working for VH1 and Interview. And in those days I was interviewing musicians. I was interviewing like Sinead O'Connor and Richard Ashcroft and all these bands I loved, in debilitating pain. But finally, my friend helped me find Dr. Robert Gotlin, who at that point was the head of sports medicine at Beth Israel.
So he was a sports doctor for the Knicks, I think the Giants, a lot of boxers. So he knew head injuries really, really well. And within five or 10 minutes figured out the pain was coming from my occiput, that it was really, really jammed. And he said that the type of pain that I was dealing with was nicknamed suicide headaches, because the pain is so severe some people can't handle it.
So he said, do not do surgery. Don't take the drugs and he prescribed acupuncture and craniosacral. And those did help. It took many months, but those were the things that pulled me out of it. So then I went back into being pain-free again, maybe like a year or two. And then I went back into another round.
And then that one I think lasted eight or nine months of debilitating pain. But this time I knew the care to get and I started on the care right away, all of which is phenomenally expensive. I think at this point I must have spent close to $300,000 on my health. And I'm like a writer and a teacher and I can't even work to full capacity anymore.
I'm kind of astounded at how much I do accomplish. So my life would be dramatically different if I had that money and also if I was healthy. But I can look back now and see some of the symptoms happened when I moved to Michigan, which is where I was born, and things got significantly worse here. Dramatically worse.
Some of it was building in New York. My sleep was starting to go off. I did have a couple episodes of vertigo, but they just lasted a day or two. I was starting to have anxiety and things I hadn't really struggled with to that degree before.
But again, compared to the staggering pain, they seemed very mild. They passed easily. So I wasn't really paying much attention to them and I just wanted to be back in my life. I wanted to be back in the world, which I was during the pain. I never dropped out. It's just not my nature to stop, but it's one thing doing everything when you're in that amount of pain and another when you're not.
Nicole: [00:12:54] Yeah, when you can feel like you can power through.
How far into this did you move to Michigan? And I'm curious, do you think that going from the debilitating pain to the other symptoms, do you think that was maybe going to happen anyways? Or was there something about the move, the climate, how your life changed that might have triggered that?
Jane: [00:13:13] I've wondered that a lot, Nicole. I moved to Michigan, I think in like 2007. I'd been in New York 25 years and I came back. My parents are here. They were in their 80s then.
I do think there was something I think there were two parts here. One, the weather. I am profoundly affected by low pressure, damp, thick weather and that is Michigan - a lot. So that had affected me in New York, but it didn't happen as often.
The other is something that I've rarely talked about, and to try talking about it a little bit now.
I have a sibling. I can't even call him brother, just call him sibling, older sibling. And I'm of the generation where, you know, we still grew up thinking boys were better, boys were smarter, boys were of more value. Everything about boys was just better.
And we also didn't really have the word abusive. We did have bully, but it was more kind of like in A Christmas Story. The bully, like it was almost playful in a way, and at best it was just like, you know, boys will be boys kind of thing.
So I did have an abusive sibling in numerous ways, not physically, but mentally and emotionally, verbally. And this continued.
There's many ways that it's manifested, but it definitely came up with my health. And in the years in New York, I didn't know this until much later when my mom told me when she came to help me and go to Dr. Gotlin with me, that she wasn't allowed to be there or she wasn't supposed to be there.
And I said, why? And she said, well, your sibling says you're faking all of this and we shouldn't help you because it just encourages you to fake it more.
So this was devastating, and it impacted me a lot because this combination of nothing being known about head and brain injury and having all these symptoms and then these symptoms, they got so much worse that you listed at the beginning, and they got so much worse when they came to Michigan, was terrifying.
I mean, I refer to my first few years in Michigan as the terror years. I just didn't know what was happening, and the doctors in Michigan were more inclined to think I just had generalized anxiety disorder. And I knew I didn't.
I knew because the pain was back. And even though now I had all these other symptoms, I knew this was connected to the head injury. But I had a really hard time finding the proper help.
The only doctor initially that believed me was I thought, well, let me find another sports medicine doctor. So I did and he said, yes, this is absolutely connected to the head injury, but enjoy how you're feeling now, because if I saw you in a year you'll just be worse. So I'm like, okay.
Nicole: [00:16:36] Yeah, no.
Jane: [00:16:39] More and more was starting to be known about head and brain injury. Now it was starting to hit the news. But I still wasn't getting, in Michigan, a lot of support and a lot of confirmation from Western medicine about what was happening to me.
And then to have this sibling who was saying and is still to this day saying that I am faking everything. It was a very difficult combination. And part of me feels very foolish saying this, because now I'm in a very different place and I don't view it like that at all.
But I was so vulnerable. I was so unwell. I had this childhood imprint that this person knew more about my life than I knew, and I had nothing countering it. And then I had all these symptoms happening that only slowly was more and more starting to be shared about, that the media was starting to talk about. So that was very hard.
So I do wonder if part of the acceleration was moving back to Michigan and closer to this person, who was wildly unkind to me and having to withstand that. I had in those beginning years, I had a voice going almost nonstop in my head, defending myself. You know, trying to prove myself, which was exhausting, which was such an energy drain on me. But part of it was just trying to prove myself to myself.
None of this part is easy for me to talk about at all. No, it was very hard.
Nicole: [00:18:33] I just want to acknowledge you for that. That to go through that, to recognize that this is what's happening and not feel like you have support from the world, the healthcare system, family, in the way that you want to. Certainly your family was there, your parents were there for you in some ways.
But I just want to acknowledge you for that. And say that the strength that it takes to get through that, it's hard enough. It's epic superhero strength to get through what you were going through physically, and then to deal with this on top of it.
How did you ultimately think about ways that you cope with this sort of abuse? I've been through emotional and verbal abuse as well. What are some ways that you started to protect yourself from that?
Jane: [00:19:17] Well, one thing that did just come to mind is I have often wondered how different things might have been, maybe not, but might have been had I had a sibling who rallied around me. Who is, how can I help?
Let me help find a doctor. Like, do you need groceries? What can I do for you? Can I come over and watch television with you instead of just constantly accusing me of faking this.
Nicole: [00:19:46] Gaslighting you. You were being gaslit.
Jane: [00:19:47] Yeah. I do wonder if that would have impacted my healing. I feel like it's only in very recent years that I have started to really separate fully from that voice.
It was my friends that first were saying it. One friend in particular said to me decades ago, I don't trust your sibling. He does not have your best interests at heart.
At that point, I was still so under his sway that I almost lost the friendship over it. I rose up in defense of my sibling. She was right. She was 100% right. And then more and more, my friends were noticing things that I just wasn't capable of noticing.
But it really took, I think, me getting physically healthier and then seeing more clearly some of his behavior escalating in a variety of ways, not just in regards to my health. Also, the way that I first started getting healing, physical and mental and emotional was Chinese medicine. That was the first doctor I found after going the rounds through all the Western medicine.
And I must say, initially I did sort of become very anti-Western medicine because my experience in Michigan was not good. It had been good in New York, but it was not good in Michigan.
I went very alternative, but I have come around to, you know, more of just the integrative approach. But Dr. Lu was the doctor who helped me physically and also mentally, emotionally. And I remember him saying to me early on, are you the only one your sibling treats like this?
And that really got me thinking and paying attention, because I really had thought it was just me. But it wasn't. And as I became stronger within myself, and definitely grew to like and love myself more, that helped.
Nicole: [00:21:52]. It's an interesting perspective because, something that when I went through abuse recovery for narcissistic abuse, my therapist said the same thing, it's not about you.
And on the one hand that's very validating, like you realize, oh, it's not just me. This is a way that he shows up with lots of people. That's helpful.
And I don't know if you felt this also for me, I thought, oh, I'm just somebody apparently , you know, I could easily be unplugged from this outlet and someone else is plugged in and we'll get the same treatment.
It's a weird sort of mindfuck. But it also I think maybe helped you to let go.
And the way that you learned to be there for yourself is so beautiful. I mean, it's one of the things that has moved me about your story since I first read about it.
Can you talk about some of the ways that you started doing that? I know there's boxing and you have animals. I love all the modalities and tools and things that you do to take good care of yourself.
Jane: [00:22:45] Well thank you. The boxing actually started in New York in the, not the four-month round of pain, but the yearlong one. And it had gone on for so long that I thought I may be in pain for the rest of my life.
So there was boxing happening at World Gym in the basement, and my doctors thought I was nuts. My friends thought I was nuts, but I knew I needed to do this. And I have found fighters to be the most tender, gentle, kindest humans I've ever encountered. So Phil and Steve were just super kind and very, very mindful about working with me. And I think it's a huge piece of why I started getting better.
Nicole: [00:23:35] Why do you think that is?
Jane: [00:23:36] I think probably, like most women, had a lot of anger and it allowed me to exert some of my anger. And then just physically moving my body. And also. I don't know if this was true then, but I have been very recently able to start up boxing again, and it's helping a lot with the vertigo because it's helping with the misalignments.
So it might have been that that was happening then too. And that was part of what, I didn't have vertigo in New York, but that could be, maybe it was helping get things, you know, more in alignment. So that started in New York and when I came here, I couldn't do it, but again, I recently started up.
And then definitely Dr. Lu helped. And I've been studying Tibetan Buddhism, I guess, for like three decades now. So, Rinpoche was, you know, definitely, he, he has since passed, but he was alive then, and, you know, his counsel is part of it.
And Michigan. Probably a year and a half, two years in, I just woke up one morning with this voice saying, I love you, Jane. I love you, Jane. I love you, Jane. I love you, Jane. Over and over like that, like a hundred times.
And I hadn't been doing affirmations. I hadn't been doing anything. So I heard this voice that had probably always been there.
And looking back, I think it's like the Sinéad O'Connor song, “This Is to Mother You.” There's one passage where she says, “For child, I am so glad I found you. Although my arms have always been around you, sweet bird, although you did not see me, I saw you”.
And I really feel like that was what happened to me. That that voice had always been there, and I just hadn't been listening and I hadn't been feeling it. And I don't know what allowed it to break through. But once it broke through, it has never left. And my relationship with it has only grown stronger and stronger.
Nicole: [00:26:00] How does that voice manifest for you now? What is it saying to you?
Jane: [00:26:04] In a way, it just keeps saying the same thing. I love you, Jane. I like you, Jane. Because I think like and love are two different things.
It's just allowed me to slowly but surely be more and more me to be more and more Jane Gwendolyn Ratcliffe. Which is sometimes hard, but it's just new because I feel like most women, especially women of my generation or close vicinity generations and probably men too.
You know, was always first making sure everyone else was okay or that we were doing it right according to their definition of right. And we were so busy with that, that we didn't even know what our definition of right was, you know? So those just kind of started falling away.
But I think it's just been a slow shifting of becoming more me. I also think this happens probably naturally as we age. I see a lot of women posting on social media who haven't been through any of this, who are talking about how they feel more and more comfortable being themselves and how grateful they are to be getting older.
Nicole: [00:27:22] Yeah, I think you were probably, you know, ahead of the curve on that for your generation though, because of what you've been through, right?
That's one of those things that almost forces some kind of awakening, if you will. And then it takes time, you know, and letting it unfold, it's unfolded naturally and you've embraced it. But I also hear you honoring all sides of the experience. I hear you saying, I'm so grateful. And also this is fucking hard every day just to put one foot in front of the other. Even on the best days
Jane: [00:27:50] And some days are harder than others. When I started working with Dr. Lu, after I'd been working with him for like a year, because after a year I was starting to be better, he said the only reason I took you on is because you're such a fighter, and if you weren't a fighter, you weren't coming out of where you were.
So I do think I came very close to not being here. I also had friends who were talking a lot about acceptance. I know acceptance is a beautiful thing. I know that I probably inherently have a misconception of what that means. Intellectually, I understand what it means, but at a cellular level, I just have the fighter energy.
I think I have it from my parents, who grew up in London during World War II, and I think I inherited that, like, you know, you will bomb us, but we'll go out dancing kind of energy.
So I may have it too strongly and probably more acceptance would have benefited me. But I'm profoundly grateful that I have that fighter energy.
And when I first moved to Michigan and my health was starting to really go down, I was in therapy and I was struggling with, am I just faking all of this? And she said to me in like, therapist monotone, “Okay, so you had 50 or 60 pounds fall on your head. You have all the symptoms that are consistent with head and brain injury, but actually you're well and you're just faking all the symptoms that are consistent with head and brain injury”.
And I just remember knowing in part that's insane. Like that's just ridiculous. But there was also the other part that was like, yes, that's exactly what's happening.
Nicole: [00:29:55] Well, and I think I had a therapist when I lived in Seattle, who would do something similar when she would go, let's look at the facts, which is what your therapist did. Let's look at the facts. The facts stand for themselves. There's no way that you are faking any of this, experiencing any of this.
And I also want to acknowledge you for what you said. I think you are genetically predisposed to be resilient because of the people that you came from.
But I also think, as you were saying, that as a writer and a journalist and an interviewer and someone who goes really in depth, your curiosity and endless pursuit for understanding and facts and truth is also, I think, probably a big part of what gave you that resilience.
Jane: [00:30:40] Thank you. I do have sort of insatiable curiosity. I think I was the little kid that drove everybody nuts with all my, you know, asking why. Yeah, I know I drove some of my friends nuts.
Nicole: [00:30:53] I think it's been almost like your work, as hard as I know it is sometimes to do, because of what you, to this day, deal with. But I wonder if in many ways it's also been a salvation in a way, because it's given you that ability to advocate for yourself and seek the truth.
Jane: [00:31:10] Thank you. Yeah. That's also, there's so much I've realized about myself. And again, I think part of it is just getting older.
But I have always been a spectacular advocate for myself. And the only part that ever doubted it was that part that was falling prey to this misconception of myself. And I don't really know where that came from. I mean, probably 25 years in New York helped because New Yorkers are very good at advocating for themselves.
Nicole: [00:31:42] Oh yes, I lived there. I love that about it as well.
Jane: [00:31:46] It's interesting because moving here, like what's just normal in New York here people are like, you're so outspoken, you're so this you're so that. I'm like really like, yeah, that's just what we all do.
Nicole: [00:31:58] No. Yeah. But my parents are, our whole family's from Milwaukee, so I was born there but raised in the northwest and, and lived in New York for four and a half years many moons ago. But same right?
The Midwest is kind, but sometimes it can be a little passive aggressive. And they really do look at wow, you're so bold and ballsy. I think that was a part of who you were anyways. But New York really brought that out of you.
And then you combine that with your insatiable curiosity and belief that you deserve to be here and you're a fighter. It's inspiring.
Jane: [00:32:30] Thank you also. It was interesting, I interviewed Katherine May, I don't know, six or seven months ago, and talking to her about autism and some of her needs for having things just said very plainly, just truthfully, just say it.
That is something that I also need and that has come from the brain injury. I can get very confused when people are not just saying it. I just need you to say it because I don't understand all these nuances and...
Nicole: [00:33:08] Cognitively you're like, I can't read between the lines anymore. So you just have to be very direct with me about what you need, and then we can move forward.
Jane: [00:33:15] Which isn't to say that sometimes the directness might not hurt my feelings. It might, but at least I just know, you know.
Nicole: [00:33:22] Brené Brown always says, clear is kind. The traumas I've had just in the last four years, I have a similar—not because I have a head and brain injury, it's different—but just like a lack of tolerance for bullshit, people not being direct. It's more of an impatience that I've developed.
But trauma really impacts how you walk through the world just in those everyday interactions.
So as we wrap this conversation, reflecting on everything you've shared and everything you've been through, which is so much, and you've shared such beautiful insights about your journey and how you've really showed up for yourself, what would you say is the most important thing you've learned on this journey, and what advice do you have for listeners on how to be here for themselves?
Jane: [00:34:06] Some of what I want to say are just the obvious ones. Be kind to yourself. Be compassionate to yourself. But it has to be true kindness and true compassion. And you can't fake that. That changed everything for me. That changed everything.
And that's when I became able to make clearer, truer boundaries and enjoy myself more. I think it was just, you know, keeping at it, which I kind of hate to say because sometimes the keeping at it is miserable. But the more I listen to myself again, I get so lucky with that voice that, once that voice was there, everything pivoted. Everything changed. Slowly. Very slowly.
But in those terror years, there was a lot of praying. Not like praying to deities and praying to the Great Mother. My whole sense of spirituality has evolved over the years and just, there was just a lot of sitting with myself. Even if I wasn't actually sitting. And a lot of talking to myself.
And one thing that I remember happening really early on was just saying my name out loud a lot. Like, I would just say Jane Gwendolyn Ratcliffe, even before the “I Love You, Jane” started. I would do this like just walking around or doing the dishes or…I would say my name. I don't know why. And I started to trust my intuition more, especially after going against it in that final minute with the tabletop.
If I suddenly get the intuition to unplug an appliance, I'll just unplug it. You can't know if you really did prevent anything by doing that, but I just do it.
I do think it was just allowing me to hear myself and then to take seriously what I was hearing, and gently honoring as best as I was able, and to the best of my ability, surrounding myself with good people who also took me seriously. People who had their own challenges and their own things that they were struggling and dealing with.
And then I was trying to be as present as I could for them. Like, you're, to get your village happening where you might all be in the thick of it in totally different ways, but you show up as best as you can for each other and animals.
And I just go back to saying my name out loud. I hadn't even thought of that until this conversation. I hadn't thought of that in so long.
But I do think that was the beginning. I was acknowledging myself in some way that I hadn't. And it's so funny because I remember I'd been doing it for like a year, and then I was watching, like, Suze Orman on television, and she was doing one of her financial workshops with the first thing she had everyone do was say their name out loud. And I thought, well, that's wild.
Nicole: [00:37:32] I think you ground yourself in yourself. And I think maybe when you think about the voice, you called yourself into your own being.
Jane: [00:37:39] Yeah, maybe.
Nicole: [00:37:41] This was amazing.
Jane: [00:37:43] Thank you.
Nicole: [00:37:44] Jane, I cannot thank you enough for being here sharing this story. I'm blown away by your resilience, but it comes from so many different sources. And, and thank you for being honest, too, about your journey and and talking about, you know, how sometimes we gaslight ourselves.
I think it's important that you point it out. You know, this belief that boys are better, men are better, and we don't listen to our own intuition or don't believe in ourselves enough because of things that society has put on us.
And you're prevailing beyond that, prevailing beyond head and brain injury. I think you're a beautiful example of prevailing while you're still in something, and that's inspiring.
Jane: [00:38:23] Well, thank you. And the final thing I'll say is what you just said so beautifully.
One of the biggest things that I came to learn was it wasn't even my sibling, it was me.
It was what I had done with that voice. And I feel like that's so important. And once I started really deeply understanding that, and that's only recently that I really fully grasped it. I was slowly grasping it over the years, starting with Dr. Lu.
It's only in the past two or three years that I really got it, that it has absolutely nothing to do with him. Nothing. Not one thing. It's me. It's mine, and therefore it's mine to form a new relationship with this voice and not even eradicate it so much as just know it differently. And that was when much, much bigger shifts started happening.
Nicole: [00:39:27] That's your here for me moment.
Jane: [00:39:29] Yes it was. So that's sort of possibly the most important thing about that portion of my journey was the profound realization that the external source has nothing to do with it. Nothing. It’s what have I done with that?
It's become part of my joy. It's become part of my power. It's let me experience the world so differently now that I'm no longer at war with that voice.
And so now I rarely hear the voice because I think it's speaking to me so differently now. I think it's saying very, very different things now.
Jane: [00:40:18] I love that. That is probably the single most important thing anyone can do, to be here for themselves, is accepting that and integrating that voice into your body and letting it guide you. It's a beacon.
Nicole: [00:40:30] It's like a magnificence that just allows me to be present to myself and to the world so differently.
Nicole: [00:40:38] Thank you Jane. You are a beautiful storyteller and a gift, and I can't thank you enough.
Jane: [00:40:43] Well, thank you for walking me through this. Parts of it were not easy to talk about at all, but you made it easier, so thank you.
Nicole: [00:40:54] You're so welcome.
Jane Ratcliffe's story isn't just one of strength, resilience, and prevailing. It's about the power of finding your voice, of recognizing that others can't hurt us, demean us, lead us to feel small and insignificant without our consent.
It doesn't condone the behavior of abusers and bullies, something both Jane and I, and likely many of you have experienced. But it shifts the responsibility to be here for ourselves exactly where it belongs, with us.
For the last 25 years, Jane has battled the lingering effects of head and brain injury while also recognizing painful truths about a sibling, a culture that prizes men over women, and a healthcare system that isn't always listening, much less healing.
All of this has made it that much more critical for Jane to show up for herself and advocate for herself. It's something that's critical for all of us, if only for one reason that's behind everything here for me. No one else will do it for us.
As Jane said, kindness and compassion toward ourselves has to be true. It can't be faked. For her, it started with a lot of sitting with herself, talking to herself. Saying her name out loud, Jane Gwendolyn Ratcliffe, which enabled her to step boldly into herself, her power, and announce her presence in the world.
It meant listening to her intuition, those little nudges that defy cerebral explanation but tell us something is off. A person, a situation, a vibe, a 50-pound tabletop that could fall at any moment and alter the course of a life and how it's experienced forever.
That voice inside of Jane is inside all of us. It's the one that assures us we're worthy. That we needn't look outside ourselves or prove ourselves. It's the one that says, I love you, I love you, I love you over and over.
The more we hear it, the more we heed it. And the more we heed it, the more we can truly, in Jane's poetic words, embrace a magnificence that allows us to be present for ourselves and to the world.
For more information about Jane and the topics discussed in this episode, check out the show notes at hereformepodcast.com.
Here For Me is produced by Lens Group Media in association with Tulla Productions. As is often said, it takes a village to make this podcast, and my deepest gratitude goes out to every person in that village. Our producers Dave Nelson and Stacy Harris, our audio editor, JD Delgado, designer and illustrator Amy Senftleben, and our production assistant, Sarah Carefoot. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love it if you'd follow the show, rate, review, and share it with people you love. You can also follow me on Instagram and Facebook at nicolejchristie. Until next time, thank you so much for listening—here's to you being here for you and to the power of choosing yourself.