Overcome - A Mental Health Podcast

Unbroken: Surviving Abuse, Mental Illness & Foster Care with Adriene Caldwell

• Travis White | Mental Health Advocate • Episode 29

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In this powerful episode of Overcome: A Mental Health Podcast, Adriene Caldwell shares her raw and inspiring journey of surviving abuse, mental illness and foster care. From growing up with a schizophrenic mother to enduring severe trauma in the foster system, Adriene reveals the painful truths she lived through—and how she found strength on the path to healing.

Misdiagnosed for years and battling depression, anxiety, OCD, and PTSD, Adriene opens up about the difficult road toward proper mental health care and self-acceptance. Her upcoming book, Unbroken: Life Outside the Lines, is a testament to her resilience, vulnerability, and mission to help others feel less alone.

🔊 What We Discuss:

  • Adriene’s experience surviving abuse, mental illness and foster care
  • The lifelong impact of childhood trauma and attachment disorders
  • The power—and pain—of writing her memoir
  • The stigma around psychiatric medication and misdiagnosis
  • Why seeking help is a sign of strength, not weakness
  • Her turning point from survival to advocacy
  • The emotional cost of reliving trauma for healing
  • How she stays grounded while being vulnerable
  • Advice for anyone currently suffering from abuse or mental health struggles

Want to go deeper? Read the first chapter of Adriene’s powerful book at unbrokencaldwell.com

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Travis White (00:01)
welcome to Overcome a Mental Health Podcast, a place where you can share your stories. I'm grateful to have Adrienne Caldwell on the show today. Adrienne, how are you doing?

Adriene Caldwell (00:12)
doing very well. Thank you for asking. How are you?

Travis White (00:15)
I'm doing great. It's a pleasure to have you on. And this one, we're just going to go right into the episode and I'm going to have Adrienne tell us about herself.

Adriene Caldwell (00:26)
Absolutely. Here we go. So my name is Adrienne Caldwell. I am the author of the soon to be released book Unbroken Life Outside the Lines. It is the story of my life from early childhood to early 20s. During this time, I was either the witness to or the victim of emotional and physical abuse, extreme poverty, mental illness, homelessness, horrifically abusive foster care.

bulimia, drug and alcohol addiction, pedophilia, death, suicide, and incest. So I hit a bunch of categories. So tell me Travis, what would you like to know about? What story would you like to hear?

Travis White (01:12)
Let's start off by diving into mental illness.

Adriene Caldwell (01:16)
Okay.

So I went into foster care at 13. By the time I was 15, I was diagnosed with clinically a major depressive disorder as well as anxiety. It actually goes back further. When I was 13, when I was first introduced into the system, they did psychiatric evaluation on me. And at that time,

It showed that I had the very early signs of depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety. So it has been a lifelong struggle for me. I have had my wonderful psychiatrist, Nancy Daniels. She has been with me since about 2008. I have no idea what I'm gonna do when she retires, but she has truly been a godsend.

We have a rapport now where I know my moods, I know my anxiety levels. If I need to modify my meds or anything like that, she trusts me and allows me to do that. She gives me that flexibility. So I am very, very fortunate that I've been able to seek professional help.

Travis White (02:27)
Yeah, and it's important that you found somebody that actually works well with you and your personality because I think that's like one of the hardest things to do.

Adriene Caldwell (02:40)
Absolutely. Opening up and being your most vulnerable and the most honest. That's really the only way you're going to get the true benefits from it. It is hard work and it is difficult, but it has saved my life, literally.

Travis White (02:56)
And is there any specific types of therapy methods that you use to help yourself out?

Adriene Caldwell (03:05)
So when I was 13, when I entered the system, I was placed in therapeutic foster care. The woman that I lived with was horrific. Her official title is the bitch from hell. And in my book, she is TBFH. I do not deign to give her a name. But in that program, a counselor came out every other week.

and we worked through my service plan, which at the time included the depression, the anxiety, and I had OCD around schoolwork. School for me was and always has been an escape, an escape from the reality, and I excelled. So while the rest of my life was burning down, I had school and I had academics and reading. I would read a book a night.

the librarians knew me and I would just go every other morning or every morning and I would just read down the Blue Bonnet book list and finish it. So, yeah.

Travis White (04:09)
Reading is a great way to escape. I do that quite myself as much as I can with the young kids I have, but it is a great escape.

Adriene Caldwell (04:17)
It is, but I was using it to escape my reality and to avoid my issues. So we worked on that. I was actually complimented on not getting such good grades.

Travis White (04:24)
Yeah.

So your couple, okay, I can see where you're going to then by saying that. And with your mental health issues, is there something that you look back, mean, because you you've endured unimaginable trauma throughout your life. And looking back, is there something that you can pinpoint the starting of your anxiety and depression, or is it just kind of everything just kind of bundled up?

Adriene Caldwell (04:39)
Yes.

So in my psychiatric evaluation, they also noted that I had early onset attachment disorder. So my life was incredibly unstable. I ended up going to 13 different schools over the course of my primary education.

The evaluation stated that as early as early childhood, four or five years old, I had already developed an attachment disorder. And that's something that I struggle with to this day because we move so frequently. I made single serving friends reference to Fight Club there. I wouldn't invest.

into a lot emotionally into relationships because I was going to be moving in six months or the next year. But my psychiatric problems really came to a head at 15. And that's when I was first put on medication. And of course, I thought I felt like I was damaged goods, that I was flawed.

there was something wrong with me. Nobody took the time to explain that depression is a chemical imbalance. Because of the trauma I endured, my brain stopped producing the hormones, the chemicals, the happy chemicals. My brain didn't produce it. So I have to provide that to my body in the form of medication. And I compare it to diabetics. A diabetic needs insulin and no one.

begrudges a diabetic their insulin, one thinks that they're less or deficient or damaged. And that's the way I've had to learn to feel about medication and my psychiatric state of being. I've been on medication since I was 15. I stopped when I was pregnant with my daughter and that was holy hell.

Travis White (06:49)
Yeah.

So did you, when you stopped your medication, did you just see like everything just spike right back up? Did it take long for to kind of go back to that state or?

Adriene Caldwell (07:10)
was pretty batshit crazy. Just the hormones and being pregnant and not having the antidepressants, it was brutal. There are many reasons why I only have one child. So.

Travis White (07:24)
Yeah, and I've been lucky on the side of like, I've been able to just take medication at like certain specific times when my stuff was like really, really bad. So, so I can only imagine like what you've had to go through, like just taking it for that specific time and getting like tapering off and getting to a place where I was normal with inside my head is a lot of work.

Adriene Caldwell (07:49)
Yeah.

Travis White (07:50)
So I can only, I can't imagine the stuff that you've had to go through to, it.

Adriene Caldwell (07:57)
Yeah.

But again, you know, we're fortunate or I'm fortunate. I've been able to receive help. So.

Travis White (08:00)
Yep.

Well, I look at where you're at today. You've written a book about it and you're out there sharing the story of your trauma, trying to help people, which is, in my point of view, very applaudable.

Adriene Caldwell (08:20)
Thank you. Thank you. My goal

with my book is to make a true and lasting change in one person's life. If I accomplish that, just changing the trajectory of one person's life, I will consider it worth everything. And honestly, writing this book has been incredibly difficult, very traumatizing. And back to mental illness.

I was told for almost 20 years that I had bipolar disorder. And it was when I met Nancy Daniels, my psychiatrist, she said, you're not bipolar. You have severe PTSD. And that was such an epiphany. It was such an awakening. And it's kind of like the puzzle pieces finally started to

Travis White (09:05)
Mm-hmm.

Adriene Caldwell (09:10)
to fit together.

Travis White (09:11)
Yeah, you get told that it's like everything starts making sense now. And it's, that's crazy that you said that because that's kind of been a recurring thing that I've seen on this podcast is just the misdiagnosis of mental health issues.

Adriene Caldwell (09:16)
Exactly.

It's a challenge and I think it's a field that, you know, I think 100 years from now, what we currently view, you know, the DSM-5 or whichever one we're on, in 100 years, it's gonna look archaic. But...

Travis White (09:40)
Mm-hmm.

It's

gonna look archaic and it's gonna be completely different. I still remember when they added things that I never imagined being in there, like video game addiction. Sorry that I got off topic there, but I just remember things like that.

What? I want to go to your book.

What do you want? No, you already, I guess you already answered that one. But the title, where did the title come from? Unbroken. What does the word unbroken mean to you?

Adriene Caldwell (10:18)
I actually looked it up in the dictionary and it means untamed, unbreakable. And originally the title was broken and I changed it to unbroken because that's truly how I feel we are. We are damaged. We are not broken.

Travis White (10:41)
That's awesome. I love it. ⁓ I'd love for you to get in, and I don't even care what direction you go, a little bit more of the trauma that you faced just growing up in general.

Adriene Caldwell (10:41)
Thank you. Thank you.

Well, along the mental health theme, my mother was schizophrenic. My grandfather was schizophrenic. Unfortunately for my mother and for me, my family didn't and doesn't to this day believe in mental illness. She was not provided treatment. No one recognized that she had

a disorder, an illness that needed to be treated. the time I spent with her, it was crazy. It was insane, some of the things that she would say and that she would do. She said that David Bowie was my brother's father and Mick Jagger was my father and her father.

my family didn't provide or didn't support the mental health aspect of it. They just generally say it doesn't exist. And that's a struggle that I have with my family because they completely disregard it as if it doesn't exist. It doesn't matter. But ultimately, I...

I went into foster care at 12 years old and I did not see my mother for a decade. When she was relinquishing her parental rights, I was 12, I refused to see her. She had beaten me with a wooden dowel rod, you know, the rod that you hang your clothes on in your closet. She had beaten me severely with that and...

Travis White (12:15)
Mm-hmm.

Adriene Caldwell (12:20)
forced me to get on a Greyhound bus to San Francisco because she wanted to be closer to an inmate who was in prison for murder and raping women. yeah, she, 10 years later, we reconnected. She was living in El Paso.

She had a social worker. She had a lovely little government subsidized apartment with furniture. She had her medication, the seven day medication pill sorter on her dining room table. She was taking medication. She was thriving. We had a truly blessed reconciliation. She received the help that she needed.

Now at that point, I no longer needed her as a mother figure. My aunt, not even my blood aunt, she married my mother's brother, so we're not blood related at all. But she acted as the maternal figure in my life. So when I reconnected with my mother, was...

Travis White (13:13)
you

Adriene Caldwell (13:30)
to see that she was doing well, that she was successful, that she wasn't struggling anymore. It gave me great peace of mind. And unfortunately, no one else in my family was able to see her before she passed. She passed roughly one year after our visit, after I drove to El Paso to visit her. And I, this was...

I think 1997, 1998, the internet was still new. I went on white pages and paid for the report. I found my mother's last known address and last phone number. I called it. It was a homeless shelter in El Paso. They said my mother had been there, but she wasn't there presently. They took down my name and my phone number and some woman put the post-it on her desk and a year later,

when my mother returned to that homeless shelter, that's when they gave her my number and that's how we got connected. And after that, that's when I went and I visited her in El Paso. And I'm so grateful and so thankful that I did. I realized that she did the very best she could. In fact, she made the...

The hardest decision that you can make as a parent in my book, she relinquished her rights with the expectation that a family would take both my brother and me in, that they would adopt us, and they would provide us with a middle-class lifestyle that we, there was no way that she could provide for us. She made the most selfless sacrifice.

Travis White (14:54)
Mm-hmm.

Adriene Caldwell (15:17)
by relinquishing us and giving us an opportunity to have a more normal life. Now, it worked out for my brother. He was four at the time, beautiful blonde haired angel. I was a 13 year old girl who had been abandoned and beaten by her mother. I didn't know how to fit into a normal family.

We, our poverty was so severe. I mean, I had never gone to a restaurant where a waiter would take your order. And we ended up, so after living with family, my mother wanted her own place. We realized the only way to really get your own place is to be homeless. And so summer after fourth grade,

We went to the Salvation Army in downtown Houston and then we were placed, we were given an apartment in government housing, Haverstock Hill. If you're ever interested, just Google Haverstock Hill Houston and the ratings say, know, it's not so bad as long as you, you know, mind your own business. They've only murdered two or three people this year. So it...

It was a horrific experience. We endured a level of poverty that most people can't believe. We couldn't afford toothpaste. We used baking soda. We couldn't afford toilet paper. We used washcloths. We washed our clothes in the bathtub and hung them up to dry.

Yeah, it was, and we were malnourished. The current word for it is a food desert. Of course, we didn't have that terminology back then. We had the convenience store at the front of the apartment complex and then another store across the road, but we had no way to get to a supermarket. So my brother and I were both extremely malnourished when we were taken into care.

So.

Travis White (17:22)
You're literally like bringing tears to my eyes. This is...

Adriene Caldwell (17:28)
It's okay. Everything that I have gone through has made me the person that I am today. I would not change a single thing.

Travis White (17:36)
you've, you've, yeah, you've,

you've endured a lot and I just give you kudos for that because not anybody can, everybody can step into your shoes and be where you are at today. Cause like, just overcoming things in general, it's hard to do and it takes a lot of consistency, changing habits and

Adriene Caldwell (18:01)
And I'll be honest, for the first half of my life, I wasn't a good person. I was manipulative, I was conniving, I used people to survive and to get by. I did what had to be done. And I spent the second half of my life trying to make up for that. But, yeah.

Travis White (18:21)
Yeah, you were,

it just sounds like you were in full-blown like survival mode trying to get through life.

Adriene Caldwell (18:27)
Absolutely.

You're absolutely right.

Travis White (18:32)
And knowing what you know now, what would you say to your younger self?

Adriene Caldwell (18:39)
Well...

I would tell myself that my future life is something that I would never have ever imagined that I would live. The life that I have now, I am beyond blessed. if you told me back then that I would have the life that I have now, I would have called you a liar.

I wouldn't have thought it was possible, but here I am. I have it.

Travis White (19:14)
And somebody that is going through trauma and starting to suffer from any mental health problem, what do you say to those people?

Adriene Caldwell (19:25)
I try to, I try to ingrain in them the notion that seeking help is not weakness. It's the opposite. It is strength. Being able to say, need help, that requires courage. That's bravery. And yeah.

So.

Travis White (19:49)
Yeah, it's...

You kind of mentioned this a little bit, but I'd love for you to go into more detail. Like, Doreen, writing your book, what was your, what was that journey like emotionally, mentally, and spiritually? Like, said it was quite hard. Like, did it just, did it, did it just, did it?

Adriene Caldwell (20:11)
It was hell. It was honestly hell.

I... go ahead, please.

Travis White (20:17)
I was just thinking like, it just make you relive everything in the past?

Adriene Caldwell (20:23)
Yes, absolutely. And I am expert level at compartmentalizing and pushing everything down and writing the book. It's been brutal. It's been absolutely brutal because yes, I've had to relive it and mental health professionals.

acknowledge that your body can't tell the difference between something you experienced in the past and when you relive it in the present. Your body feels and it feels like you're going through it all over again. It's been incredibly difficult. This is probably one of the hardest things I've ever done because I am

I want, I'm trying to give my readers as honest and bare my vulnerability, letting all of that out. And that's not normally how I cope. I cope by being strong and by really repressing.

a lot of things, just push it down, know, push it down, put it in its box, on the shelf, put it away. And the book has been very, very challenging. And I've actually been working on it since 2022. My husband is very ready for me to be done. And he's not thrilled about the idea of the potential second book.

Travis White (21:49)
Hey.

Adriene Caldwell (21:54)
because it does impact me. It brings everything back. And that hurt little girl that was rejected by society, rejected by my mother.

Travis White (21:57)
Yeah.

Adriene Caldwell (22:15)
even though I wanted to leave her, rejected by the family that was supposed to take my brother and me in when they kicked me out and sent me to go live with my aunt and uncle. Then not thriving there. Just a 13-year-old who's gone through those levels of abandonment. I had no idea how to interact in a normal family situation because I had never been.

in a normal family situation. I didn't know. And they mistook my standoffishness and my reluctance to engage as me being snobby or thinking that I was better than them when really I just didn't have the social skills to engage in a normal family environment. I had never had.

a normal family environment.

Travis White (23:09)
And I just want go back to hit on something that you said that I really relate to and it's being vulnerable. It's a very hard thing to do. So I commend you for doing it like as you were writing your book as well as coming on here. But I do have one question for that. Like when you're being vulnerable and reliving your past, how do you stay grounded?

Adriene Caldwell (23:19)
Yes.

Not very well. I'll be honest, not very well. I generally, I'll be bluntly honest, I generally have to take a Xanax in order to be able to write my material.

Bye.

It's painful, it's brutally painful, but I feel, I hope, I dream that the final product is going to be valuable and useful to other people struggling in their lives. So, ultimately, I think the pain and the trauma that I'm reliving,

I hope, I pray that it's gonna be helpful to others. it's not to be famous, it's not to say, woe is me. It's really just an entreaty to those struggling or who have struggled just to say.

you know, keep going, just put one foot in front of the other, take that next step and that next step and the next step. And soon you're going to be further away from the issue and you'll be able to cope with it better. So that's my ambition is to really be that beacon of hope.

Travis White (25:05)
You want people to see that light at the end of the tunnel.

Adriene Caldwell (25:05)
But...

Yes, but at the same time being very realistic and not undermining or minimizing the level of trauma that anyone else has gone through. As we were speaking about before we started this show, the trauma, yeah, it's...

It doesn't end. It lives with you and you have to develop the skills to accept it, to give yourself the grace of forgiveness and acceptance and to overcome it, to not let it derail your life. Don't let it define who you are.

or where you're going. Don't allow your past to dictate your future.

Travis White (26:00)
very, very well said. And before we started recording, we actually touched base on something I'd love to bring up again, dealing with trauma, because I did it before we started recording. You said, don't compare your trauma to others. I just want to say that's, I think that's an important thing to bring up.

Adriene Caldwell (26:22)
Absolutely. Every person has gone through a trauma of one sort or the other. There is no use comparing because the emotions that that person went through are valid, are real, impacted that person's life and should never be diminished or compared. That's one of my

one of my things. I don't want anyone to compare my life to theirs. It's not a fair comparison. And I tend to believe that we are given our struggles, we are given our challenges, our obstacles with the ability to overcome them.

with the ability to make it through. I feel, and I try to keep religion out, but I feel that we are not given more than what we can handle. So now we need help with it and definitely seek treatment, therapy, medication if needed. We don't have to go through it alone, not at all.

But yeah, never compare because pain is pain.

so.

Travis White (27:55)
And I'm just curious, all of a you've decided to write a book and you're going on podcasts and stuff and speaking. Was there like a turning point when you realized that you wanted to share your story like in a kind of a public light?

Adriene Caldwell (28:12)
Mm-hmm. So back around 2021, 2022, well, I need to back up. So I was a ward of the state of Texas until the age of 18. And in my early 20s, I requested access to all of my children's protective services records, and they sent me a giant box.

giant. So two two letter full size letter station. So one here and the next here. It was a giant legal box filled with every document, every report that was ever written, every psychiatric evaluation, every counseling report, everything that was included.

And I'm so sorry, I lost my train of thought. What were we going on?

Travis White (29:09)
let me see. was the, it was, what was the turning point that made you like want to speak out public publicly? Yeah. Yep.

Adriene Caldwell (29:18)
Thank you.

So I was going through my CPS case files and the damage that the bitch from hell, TBFH, the foster parent, what she put us through. I'll say it like this. My mother, my schizophrenic, physically abusive mother, I've never had a single nightmare about her.

but the woman I lived with in foster care, I have had nightmares about her up until the last three years. So what started out was I wanted first to make sure that she was no longer a foster parent, that she had no more access to abuse any more children.

And I know that in our county, her license was taken away, but I was concerned that she had gone to another county and might be amusing other girls. And I reached out to at least 30 lawyers asking if anything could be done. I really wanted one, to make sure she wasn't able to hurt anyone else, but two, to try to seek...

justice for what she had done to me. She did more damage to me than my schizophrenic, physically abusive mother. I told you some of the things of what life was like with her. One time we were trying on swimsuits and I came out and I showed her and she said, wow, your thighs are so fat. I'm surprised you haven't started throwing up so that you can lose weight.

And I wanted recourse. I wanted repercussion. I wanted to punish her. And after reaching out to a ton of lawyers and higher ups and social welfare services, I realized there was nothing I could do except write about my experience. And that's when, and I had heard my entire life.

you know, you should write a book. You should write a book. I never took it seriously. But after realizing that I wasn't going to have any sort of legal recourse, I could at least have emotional recourse. I could put my story out there. And even though I cannot use her name, I will not use her name. She is TBFH. Even in my book, she is TBFH.

that that was the best I could do. And I submitted reports to the other county where I hope she doesn't foster children. But that's how it started. That's how it started when I couldn't get any traction as far as either criminal or civil. Well, I haven't looked into civil suits, but the woman

But the damage that woman did to me has, it echoes through every aspect of my life. So, yeah.

Travis White (32:24)
And it's it's actually quite a shame that like first of all, I want to say I applaud you for going through and taking the legal side of things and taking action trying to get her out of the foster care system Even though in the end it didn't work out like you wanted it to But it's actually a shame that There's nothing you can do like it's

you'd think there'd be something, but it's just crazy to me. It doesn't make sense in my mind that it's kind of just like, well, it is what it is. There's nothing else you can do about it.

Adriene Caldwell (33:02)
So her next door neighbor, Helen. Helen worked in the prison system for 30 years. And I have a quote that she provided in a police report where she says, the next door neighbor says, prisoners are treated better than the way that woman treats those foster girls. And that says a lot.

You know, as I said, she worked in the prison system for 30 years. She knows what she's talking about. The abuse we endured was horrendous. And another example, there was one full bathroom. We were not allowed to use their toilet. We had 10 minutes to shower. And the last foster child that showered had to clean the bathtub with comets.

Travis White (33:25)
Yeah.

Adriene Caldwell (33:54)
before the foster family would use the tub because we were dirty. We were, yeah, just horrific. you don't wanna, I don't wanna admit that there are people out there in this world. It's just so hard for me because I've adopted some life axioms just.

some things, my way of approaching the world, one of them is always assume positive intent. When you're in an interaction with someone and there's a disagreement or something went wrong, don't assume that that person came into it trying to be mean or trying to mess things up. Another is to forgive easily and often.

I just have these things that I try to live by. So.

Travis White (34:50)
I really like those and I think that's really cool. I'm out of curiosity. Did you put stuff like that in the book or like some of those or?

Adriene Caldwell (34:52)
Thank you. Thank you.

I haven't put it in this one. I think I, if I write the second one, so mid twenties to later. And I do unfortunately have the subject material. I was in an abusive relationship and yeah, and I was widowed.

At the age of 35, my husband was 38. Our daughter was 10 years old when he passed away. At the same time, I was developing severe uncontrolled rheumatoid arthritis, other things. So, you know, the punches didn't stop coming. They didn't, but I'm still here. I'm still fighting.

Travis White (35:50)
Yeah, and that's...

And you should be proud for being able to still be standing and fighting. It's... And... I...

Adriene Caldwell (35:59)
Thank you. Thank you. I think we all should, all of us, anyone.

And I think everyone's endured trauma of one sort or another. And it's important to recognize those traumas and to feel validated.

Travis White (36:07)
Mm-hmm. ⁓

And you, something you said did bring something to my mind. I'm just curious. So you said you got the case files for when you were in foster care. Was there anything in there like that was written down on paper that you never knew of or anything that like you learned for the very first time? Right. Cause I, I just think of this like on the side of things like,

Adriene Caldwell (36:25)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (36:41)
I'm thinking back to some of my trauma like when I experienced some medical problems and I was reading the doctor's notes years after I went through that situation and there were things in the doctor's notes that I had no idea because they never told me about it. Was there anything like that? Just out of curiosity.

Adriene Caldwell (37:02)
In the file, so during my mother's life, she never admitted that she had been assaulted, sexually assaulted by her father. But when she was relinquishing parental rights, CPS had her write down family history and on one of those pages,

she wrote that she was sexually assaulted by her father. So there was that.

Yeah. Yeah. That was, we suspected it, she denied it, but finding that documentation, that was hard. That was really hard. And...

Travis White (37:54)
And so anybody that's experiencing abuse in any type of way, whether it be mental or physical, ⁓ anything sexual, yeah, verbal, what bit of advice can you offer somebody going through that?

Adriene Caldwell (38:04)
sexual, verbal.

to value yourself, to know your own worth and that you do not deserve to be mistreated. Everyone makes mistakes, everyone makes some bad decisions. Another life axiom, I believe people make the best decisions they can at the time with the information that they have. So,

I just...

Yeah, repeat the question again, please.

Travis White (38:51)
now my brain got foggy. Now have to give me a second to remember it. anybody that's suffering abuse, what advice do you give them?

Adriene Caldwell (39:05)
Seek help. It doesn't have to be as formal as, you know, therapy, you know, you must do therapy every week or twice a week. It doesn't have to be as regimented as that, but seek help. You do not have to go through it alone. If you are going through it alone, you're doing yourself a disservice. There are resources available.

I mean, we've come leaps and bounds since the 50s where none of this was spoken of. And really take advantage of what's available. And don't be ashamed. So many people are ashamed that they aren't able to deal with their situation on their own independently.

And that is such a flawed view. I want people to seek help and it doesn't have to necessarily be the traditional therapy client relationship. There are many ways to seek help. know, find a mentor, find groups that have the same situation as you.

I don't believe in the one form fits all. It's not like that. But definitely reach out and you are not alone. You are not alone. And social media has been a godsend. You can...

Do it anonymously, seek help, seek guidance anonymously if you're not ready to be public with it. There are so many resources and it's painful and it's hard. It's hard to admit that you need help and it's painful to reach out, but the benefits are so worth it. So worth it.

Just don't do it on your own.

Travis White (41:14)
Yeah, I totally agree. It's like for me, once I admitted that I had the problem and was starting to step out of my comfort zone to get help, it's like this big, light beam was shining on me and I saw things change quite quickly. So it's...

I totally agree with everything you said.

Adriene Caldwell (41:38)
Thank you. Thank you.

Travis White (41:41)
You know, I feel like I could just talk to you for hours about your story. But is there anything? I guess let me ask this question first. I like to ask this question just to see that it's kind of a generalized question, but I like to see the different reactions I get. What do you think the biggest stigma in mental health is?

Adriene Caldwell (41:46)
you

the biggest stigma.

Probably that if you need medication, you are somehow inadequate or defective or inferior. And I want to, you know, abolish those thoughts.

Travis White (42:27)
Yeah, I totally agree with you there because I it goes back to exactly what you said just a minute ago. This isn't like a one size one form fits all like everybody has their own way of dealing with mental health issues. And if that means you need medication, get the medication.

Adriene Caldwell (42:47)
And now

with companies expanding their mental health offerings, employee service, employee benefit services, companies are recognizing that the mental health of their employees impacts their performance. And if they can provide solutions for their employees, it's going to benefit, ultimately benefit

the employer in the long run. you have healthy, happy, ambitious workers, that leads to great results. When an individual is struggling and it has no peace, that person isn't going to be able to deliver their very best performance at work or at home or in life.

Travis White (43:39)
I totally agree. I like that the workplace is starting to recognize it because for so long it's just completely gone unnoticed.

Adriene Caldwell (43:49)
Absolutely. Employee benefit services. Pretty much every mid to large size employer has some sort of employee benefit service where you can get connected with therapists, counselors. Absolutely. And I feel like it's a service that is underutilized. It's there. Your employer pays for it. Take advantage of it.

Travis White (44:19)
Yeah, I totally agree.

see, I'm just making sure that you've pretty much answered all my questions. I'm making sure there's not like anything like lingering on my list here.

Adriene Caldwell (44:33)
I would like to take a moment just to introduce my website. It's www.unbrokencaldwell.com. And on my site, if you provide your name and your email, you will get access to a bonus chapter. It's actually in my prologue in chapter one. And then

Travis White (44:34)
⁓ yep, yep, go ahead.

Adriene Caldwell (45:00)
I will not spam anyone. I will only use email address to notify when the book is available for purchase. But my website, I include photographs of me early childhood later. And I also provide the documents from my CPS case files. So I,

hired some beta readers off of Fiverr and they, one of the remarks was, because in the book I include my psychiatric evaluation and the abuse diagram after the last beating from my mother. I include those at the end of the book. And so all of this information is available. I have the case notes.

I have the reports, the evaluations. I'm incredibly open. Everything is available. I even, I actually, so after living with TBFH, the bitch from hell, I was so desperate to get out of her care that I applied for and actually won a congressional scholarship to do a one-year foreign exchange to Germany.

my junior year of high school, and I have letters that I wrote to my best friend. So letters from 30 years ago. And I even have letters that I wrote to my CPS caseworker. And when she didn't respond to me and answer my questions, I went above her. I wrote her supervisor. So I've always...

had to take care of myself because no one else was going to do it. So all of that is available on my website, which will be up in a few weeks. anyone who, in fact, one of my, one of my beta readers made the comment. She said, no one can accuse you of making up anything. You have receipts. So

I thought that was humorous as well as very true. I've got documentation for everything that I say. Because like you said, I've got the spectrum of events, of traumas. So I've not.

Travis White (47:00)
because

Yeah, you've lived through

a lot. ⁓

Adriene Caldwell (47:16)
I have, but I have also been incredibly

blessed. I am alive when honestly I should not be. I attempted suicide more times than I could count. One time I took my uncle's gun and I put it against my temple and I pulled the trigger and it clicked and I pulled the trigger again.

and I inspected it and the safety had moved on by less than a millimeter. And that's when I realized that I was on this earth for a purpose. What purpose that is? Still don't necessarily know. But I knew that I was not going to be allowed to leave this earth. And that was my final suicide attempt.

I did, I pulled the trigger twice, so.

Travis White (48:11)
You took the words out of my mouth. was like, you're supposed to be here. There's a reason.

Adriene Caldwell (48:17)
Thank you, thank you. I'm glad you think so. I hope that I can provide inspiration and...

Travis White (48:22)
And.

Adriene Caldwell (48:31)
inspiration and just guidance, know, just support, support that you're not alone. You're not the only one who's going through this. It is possible to get to the other side. It's not easy. It's not easy at all. And it takes work. You have to invest in yourself. You have to invest in your therapy, in, in, you know,

Travis White (48:31)
third.

Adriene Caldwell (48:56)
delving into your emotions, unpacking all those things that we have buried and compartmentalized for, or at least I have, for years and years of my life. So, yeah.

Travis White (49:10)
And there's no doubt in my mind that somebody will pick up your book and it will change them.

Adriene Caldwell (49:17)
I hope so. I really hope so. That's my greatest ambition. Now of course I'd like to win a Pulitzer or something like that, but yeah.

Travis White (49:26)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I'm right there. I'd like to win some podcast award eventually, but right now, if I can change that one person, that's what's going to count for me right now. And is there any social media or anything like that where people can find you?

Adriene Caldwell (49:43)
Absolutely.

Yes, so my website unbrokencoldwell.com and Facebook I'm unbrokencoldwell, Instagram unbrokencoldwell, X unbrokencoldwell. think it's only one L at the end. No, no, it's unbrokencoldwell. I will be honest, I do not have a lot of content as I'm

just trying to get everything set up, but yeah. I am available. Unbroken Caldwell is my handle.

Travis White (50:21)
And I will leave links to all of those in the show notes so our listeners can easily... Yep. Including your website. Yeah. No problem. And is there anything that... Honestly, I feel like we could... Like I said before, we could go on for hours with all the subject matter. there... And this specific for this, you know...

Adriene Caldwell (50:24)
that'd be fantastic. Thank you very much. And including my website. Thank you. Thank you so much.

We could. We could.

Travis White (50:45)
Is there anything that you would like to bring up that we have not already discussed?

Adriene Caldwell (50:50)
Mm-hmm.

No, I want to thank you for allowing me to be a guest on your show. I feel truly honored and privileged to be here. You are providing a podium for mental health and helping others recognize, you know, not only the need for it, but the

The lack of shame, that there's no shame involved. It is a good thing, it is a positive thing, it is something to be embraced and utilized. It's a tool, like a hammer in a toolbox. You don't build a house without tools and you don't recover from your trauma and from your past without tools.

So.

Travis White (51:45)
Well, and thank you for coming on and being so vulnerable and willing to share your story. Stories like yours that are the reason why I do this. Like I, and I kind of repeat myself all the time. Like I, I love the stories. Like each individual story is fantastic. I love them all. it's.

And I feel like in a sense, I'm getting free therapy sessions because everybody else are the ones that are doing the talking. I talk like 5 % of the time. Everybody's giving out all this advice and saying do this. It's like, hmm, I could do this differently. And it's like, I could probably just have a notebook out taking notes the whole time because it's like, I love hearing the stories and I, you've.

have a great story to share and you have a

Adriene Caldwell (52:33)
I am truly

honored to be on your podcast. I am grateful to you for giving me a podium to speak. And it's an honor to be on your show.

Travis White (52:41)
You have...

Thank

you. Well, you have a light about you and I'm sure that that will come across to multiple listeners on here and when people read your book.

Adriene Caldwell (52:55)
Thank you. Thank you very much.

Travis White (52:57)
You're welcome. And, my

hand to all the listeners. Thank you so much for listening. You can find me on Instagram, YouTube. Those are my main focus. Handle is overcome pod. the best thing that you can do for us right now is subscribe to our channels. Follow us, like our posts, share stuff.

like anything you can do to get the word out there. Very grateful. And thanks again for listening. Until next time.