The How We Got Through project connects elders with younger members of the community for recorded phone conversations during the pandemic about life and how the elders got through tough times.

In this interview, Sally Graham, retired from a career in human services, talks with Darianna Merejo, a student at New Mission High School, about everything from the Cuban Missile Crisis to finding the right fit for college to tracing the lowest point in her life back to her childhood.

Below is an excerpt from the edited transcript of their conversation.

Darianna: Can you tell me about a time you felt your lowest, and how did you get through that?

Sally: I think the time I probably felt my lowest was when I was having some emotional issues. And I’m trying to think how to say it.

When I was growing up, there was a lot of conflict in my house. And so even though we lived in the suburbs, and everything was happy happy, there was still a lot of conflict going on. Both of my parents drank too much, and sometimes there would be money issues, but we couldn’t talk about that because we were all very happy.

I had two younger siblings, and I was always responsible for them and their behavior, which I did a very terrible job of, because they didn’t respond to me very well, let’s put it that way. So anyways, I started to have a lot of feelings about how I’d failed, and I was really angry at my parents, and I took it out on myself.

I beat myself up: You’re not good enough. You hate your job. You’ve been through four jobs in the last two years. You don’t fit anywhere.

So I was very low then. And what really helped me was reaching out and finding other people. It wasn’t necessarily a particular individual, but sometimes somebody would say something, and it would be: "Oh, that’s what that means!" One person said something, and I was like: "Oh, maybe my parents were alcoholics. Oh. Okay."

So then that set me off on another path, and I got to support groups. And we’d all been through--somebody used to say, “Same house, different furniture.” So we grew up in the same house. We grew up in a house where there was alcoholism, dysfunction, whatever. Everybody’s furniture was arranged a little bit differently, in terms of how many kids there were in the family, et cetera, et cetera, but it was still the substance abuse.

Once I sort of got on the path of realizing that my parents had had issues with alcohol, then things started to follow into place, and there was a lot of support from other people around that. And I think that’s true for people who are survivors of violence and trauma and all kinds of things, when you can have a support group of people who can hold your hand and let you cry and weep and rage, and then also read you the riot act.

Everything’s a big mess in life. But at any rate, it will get sorted through. I guess that’s my point. It sort of never goes away. You’re always reaching out and helping people and they’re helping you.

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