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A homeless drug addict received a degree and published a best-selling book in Canada and the United States. An inspirational story about a man who completely changed his life. Why this could happen, explains trauma therapist Tatyana Poddubnaya.
The Amazing Story of Jesse Thistle
Vagrancy, drugs, prison
Jesse Thistle’s father was a drug dealer, his mother was a very young girl from the Cree tribe, the indigenous people of Canada. When Jessie was about two years old, her mother left, unable to withstand the violence and inappropriate behavior of her husband. She took her three sons with her and tried to provide them with a normal life, studied and worked. But after some time, the father returned and fraudulently took the children away from their mother in Toronto. Living there with them, he drank and used heroin, taught his sons to beg and steal, and then disappeared.
The guardianship authorities gave Jesse to be raised by his father’s parents. Later, they kicked the teenager out of the house for drug use. So for Jesse began the years of wandering.
Jesse again begged, spent the night on the street, he was repeatedly beaten to a pulp and tried to set him up, accusing him of murder. Because of his addiction to heroin, gangrene began on his leg, and at some point, Thistle decided that prison would be the safest place for him.
Having stolen a small amount in the store, he turned himself in to the police. In prison, Jesse got his leg fixed. In the same place, he “jumped off” drugs, having gone through a difficult period of withdrawal. After his release, he went to a rehabilitation center.
Meeting with mom and learning
After some time, he received the news that his own mother was looking for him, and the first telephone conversation with her was a real shock for Jesse. In his own words, he was so used to feeling unwanted and unloved by anyone that at first he could not even speak from shock. Mom didn’t care what happened to him. It was she who introduced Jesse to the original culture and rich history of the Cree people.
Jesse was so impressed by what happened that he actively engaged in education, focusing on the study of ethnography. He traveled to the homeland of his ancestors and met those who preserved their traditions and national identity, despite the extermination and “cultivation”.
At 35, Jesse Thistle entered the history department of the University of Toronto. According to his recollections, he stepped over the threshold of the audience with trepidation on his first day of school. Against the background of young students, he seemed almost an old man.
Despite everything, he strove to do what he was really interested in. Since the study of the history of the indigenous peoples of America is a hot topic, and since today you can talk openly about their extermination and violence that was used by white colonists, Jesse’s project received support from the university.
Success and glory
A few years later, a former homeless, drug-addicted “lost” man received a professorship. And his memoir, From the Ashes (Simon & Schuster, 2019), is a bestseller in Canada and the United States. Today, Thistle is happily married and continues to engage in social and scientific activities.
“I think the feeling of home gives us a connection with people, with the family and, of course, with the way of life. I would add that the house is a sense of belonging to one’s land, spirituality and culture, ”admits Jesse. Professor Jesse Thistle inspires those who care about the fate of small peoples whose culture was tried to be destroyed under the banner of “enlightenment”.
The true story of this man also gives hope to those who seem to have lost everything in life.
“Jesse felt like he could be loved”
Tatyana Poddubnaya, trauma therapist
Trauma leading to self-destruction
Every addiction basically has a deep psychological trauma that pushes a person to heal a psychological wound. The hero of the story experienced severe, complex emotional upheavals during his childhood. First, it is separation from the mother. For a child, the loss of connection with the main person turns into a colossal experience of fear, loneliness and emptiness. And also – the feeling that he provoked the breakup himself, since children interpret any attitude of adults according to themselves: “I was abandoned – it means I’m bad, I don’t deserve love.”
Secondly, severe emotional abuse from his father. Emotional abuse leads to feelings of worthlessness and, again, to the belief that bullying is “deserved” and normal. As a result, fantasies formed in Jesse’s psyche that he deserved to be punished and that he would always be abandoned because he was “not good enough.”
In addition, the psyche blocks difficult emotions that the child is unable to endure or connect with the outside world (because, as it seems, this simply cannot be). Together, traumas and experiences lead to detachment from the world and a sense of one’s own “deadness” – this is a defensive reaction.
What happens in adulthood?
A blocked emotional sphere does not allow a person to experience the full range of emotions, except for peak ones – fear, euphoria, acute emotional pain. Detachment from reality leads to the experience of one’s own life as “not real”, as if taking place outside. A person feels a constant emptiness and abandonment.
Fantasies about one’s own “badness” and “worthlessness” form destructive behavior. The negative attitude of adults gives rise to reciprocal aggression, which a person begins to feel only when he has matured; it splashes outward, then inward, on itself. Jesse chose a form of self-destruction like drugs.
What helped Jesse “rise from the ashes”?
- Strong temperament given to him by nature. There are children who break down and withdraw into themselves, unable to physically deal with the abuse. And others are able to withstand and, thanks to innate physiological characteristics, form a reciprocal aggression against adults. But this is not their merit, but luck.
- Cognitive abilities. Judging by the story, Jessie’s mother is an intelligent woman, she aspired to education. Probably, the genetic aspect is also important for understanding what happens to a person’s life.
- Experience of early relationship with mother. The more a child receives a supportive maternal presence in the first years of life, the more he is able to build relationships in the future, to productively experience difficulties. Not even a breakup and subsequent abuse can spoil this first pillar.
- Presence in the life of other relatives. The child’s psyche is flexible and absorbs even the crumbs of a good attitude towards itself.
- Aggression, which, when used correctly, allows a person to move towards a goal in spite of everything and everyone.
- Hatred for the father, which helped to divide the world into “good” and “bad”, “this is possible” and “this is not possible.”
The meeting with the mother awakened the experience of early attachment. Jesse was able to get out of the destructive vicious circle and take on his own life. Intuitively, he always strove for a normal life, but self-destruction and the experience of emptiness, abandonment took away all the resources available in his personality. Jesse felt deep inside himself that he could be loved, he wanted to live, so he just needed one long-awaited meeting. And it’s good that it happened.