The Witch’s Daughter - Podcast Interview With Author Orenda Fink

Patrick Teahan, MSW sits down with author and Jungian shadow work practitioner Orenda Fink to discuss her memoir The Witch's Daughter — exploring borderline personality disorder, going no contact, codependency, and reclaiming your sense of self after childhood trauma.

By Patrick Teahan

just wanna see if you guys can see this

so let's see if you guys can get a close-up of that this guy is my 1983 gi joe laser trooper codename flash that i got when i was six years old this is not my original one i picked this up on ebay but my mother gave this to me when i was six years old and it's part of he's going to be part our focus point in this whole video it's pretty cool he's got this is not for you geeks out there that's not his original backpack did the best i could but he's got the laser rifle swivel arms laser rifle connects to the backpack visor to protect himself from the fierce scorching laser whatever um loved gi joe when i was a kid and uh as a psychologist now or in the psych world i'm not psychologist i'm a social worker but um if you look at his face let me see if i can in there he's got this like he's so cool he's over it affect but anyway this is my flash and he's going to be the focus of our story today um i wanted to circle back to oh now i'm in focus i wanted to circle back to the last attachment video and i was thinking that um you know we can name our attachment style we can get a good ballpark of it we can name that our parents were narcissistic we can put a stamp cptsd we can put all these sort of ideas and concepts together which are helpful but they sometimes those stamps or labels they don't tell the how of how we got them it doesn't exactly tell the why about why that they're there and i want to tell you a story today to tell you a little bit about my own attachment style and how i got there and flash is going to be the sort of the focus of that story and um i think that some of these stories they're they're not they are missing in therapy meaning that if we might be depressed you're anxious you're this you're that some meds let's try this we don't spend enough time figuring about how somebody got depressed how somebody got anxious we don't really investigate enough into their childhood and that's how i feel about things not everybody wants that but that's how i feel about things and that's okay um so innate i'll just go get into the story so in 1983 i was six years old somewhere around the level of this cuteness put a picture up this is me around the time of starting sort of kindergarten and um just one day i couldn't can't tell you what time of the year it was but my mom picked me up early from school in kindergarten to get i think it was either maybe like a like a pediatrician appointment or a dentist appointment or it just might have even been around my birthday and i just wanted time with her so it was like a half day and she signed me out and i was so jazzed um to sort of that we were going to hang out together and so was she which was a huge part of the story too and we hopped in the family's crappy we had like a plymouth valiant this gray thing um with vinyl seats this car had like the plasticky vinyl seats that would sort of like burn the f out of your legs if you're wearing shorts in the summer and all these little accessories and stuff like that um you had to really keep hold of them if he got a toy because they would just fall into the the never ending sort of you're never going to be seeing again between the back seat where the where the seat belt would fall under and sort of hide that's another thing if you we didn't use seat belts because they were just jammed under there but the parenting was so bad that why you seat belts anyway if you grew up in the 60s through the 90s or even beyond it's probably a miracle that you're alive if you had parents like mine about safety and stuff like that so so she picked me up and i was super jazzed about her sort of spending time with me and the best part of her picking me up was that she was in a really good mood this is really the focus point of this memory that i have is that um my mother always wasn't in a really good mood or an awake mood or sort of a you know like an available engaged mood so it was rare and it was important so my school was like maybe like an eighth of a mile like the grammar school um down from the center of our town sort of the center of our life and it was all on one street think like main street usa but a little bit like 80s trashy like trashy new england if you ever if you've been through that i'm not saying new england's trashy but hopefully you know what i mean um so the school was at one end of this like main street and about an eighth of a mile half made out down the street was the sort of the um the strip of all the shops and the places where our most of my family's life would sort of focus back then there was they were all mom-and-pop places in the 80s so it's sort of like there was the pizza place that we loved there was the donut shop there was the five and dime across the street from the five and dime was a convenience store the convenience store where the adults would have us go run and get scratch tickets and cigarettes for them um there was tchotchke stores where my it was like a little jewelry store that um would sell these little like smurf figurines that were really popular they fit like cabbage patch kids that error of the 80s smurfs um and we were just all about that store and there was even this little hole in the wall hodgepodge place where you it was like a joke shop kind of like costume shopping it was going i can't even tell you what they were i don't even maybe they didn't know what they were selling um but i got this really cool white michael jackson glove which had sparkles on it and it was cheap as f but man i was like i was the in my neighborhood that day when i got that glove it was like sort of right it was like around 83 84 beat it error thriller error michael jackson so so just trying to paint a picture of what all that was like but most importantly in this block strip of main street there was the pub it's one of the bars that would that my siblings and i would spend most of our childhoods in because our lives focused around my parents drinking and therefore being in a bar and the pub was where the adults would sort of have us run across the street to get the cigarettes or the scratch tickets i was kind of a runner in those early grammar school there was if i was bored they would send me there or whatever and just would run across the street and go get them with the money that they gave me you know like sort of like just contributing to their addiction um and my mother and father would spend hours in this place depending on the on the on the time of the week chances are we were in a bar every day for at least one or two hours on the weekends between three and five hours my siblings and i were all in early grammar school and if it was the summer coming out of this place it was so dark and smoky in there when you would come out of this place and hit sort of like we were kids it's almost like i'm telling like an alcoholic story myself but we were kids but when we would come out of this bar so dark on the inside it's so sunny and bright on the outside it was like it would hurt our eyes so that's to tell you how much time we spent out of there if you've ever like left a movie theater and you're just like oh my god what's that thing in the sky that's what it was like and my mother let other alcoholic adult adults interact with us you know scratch ticket smokes being the runner i was kind of the mascot of this place at times and i thought it was totally normal and none of the alt the other adults ever questioned it i never remembered sort of saying what are these kids doing in here um or questioned if why we were why there were kids waiting in a car in the in the parking lot for hours because we were tired of being in the bar and we would wait there waiting for our mother to come out so it was a complete failure of healthy parenting and boundaries and you know thank god for therapy here i am here we are and we you know at times we would be sent to the pizza shop at the that was like the last stop in the corner of this main street we would we would go get a pizza and then we'd bring it back and have the pizza in this bar the smoky bar and skip dinner just let's get a pizza so incidentally there was also a church around the corner from this bar which i find weird because it's like my family led this sort of bizarre double life they were trying to sort of be the cert church people or whatever and go to church every sunday at least my dad was but then we would have that alternative sort of like that was my parents lifestyle was hanging out in a bar so so back to the memory so my mom was in a great mood this day and she's really put together she was really excited to see me so was i and she could give me that energy was feeling good she picked me up from the grammar school at the end of the street we drove up and the first stop was the donut shop and this donut shop wasn't a dunkin donuts it was this old school mom and pop place where the counter kind of like was low and you would sort of sit at these individual stools that had like a colory vinyl on them and they would you would just ask for the donut that you want or the coffee or whatever they would bring it to you and i remember having an english muffin in this this is very specific memory that i have english muffin with butter and i loved it you know i might not have had breakfast that day but that's what i sort of had my mother probably got tea and my i just remember it was like a good sort of feeling because my mother had this gift of gab and she was extroverted she could sort of talk to the ladies who worked at this donut shop we were the only ones in there and i was cute so it was like sort of just talking about me and i just sort of drank up the attention because it was sort of at that time in my life where in my whole childhood we were all on a deficit of attention so so i remember that and then once we were done donut shop getting the english muffin is a few doors down past the hardware store past the little like walkway park past the fish market where my dad would get swordfish and sort of stuffed clams there was all these little places was this bar and if there's one thing i'm 100 clear on in my childhood was that it was always on our mind as kids about whether we had to go to the bar or not we would probably beg and plead not to go but we knew we would always end there so me walking past with my mom is it was it was probably on my mind and as my mother and i were walking past these places we walked past the bar is we skipped it and we went right into this the five and dime was next to the bar and that's where flash comes in so at the five and dime which i love five and dimes by the way you know they're such they're like a weird catch-all of everything from like nail clippers to like office supplies cascade groceries toys you don't get that weirdness you don't get that oddness vibe from something like a target so every time that i um every time i see a five and dime if it's still in existence i love going and i love vintage stuff so i'm all about the five and dime and i'm also probably dating myself here so um so that's where i got flash but after i got the toy we probably just went and did whatever but i just remember specifically skipping the bar it might have been too early in the day might have not even been open yet but i just remember at that time being so focused on if we were going to have to go or not you know memories are funny and at the time of the story i already had the experience of abuse that having a father with narcissistic personality disorder an alcoholic mother with borderline features um sometimes when the parent is so is that alcoholic alcoholism is a lot like an active personality disorder so it's hard you don't really know which one it actually sort of is until the person would have some long-term sobriety and if they have the past any capacity to work on themselves but that's what my mom was like there was already domestic abuse domestic violence in my life for the age of six neglect chaos and right around the time of this memory that i'm sharing with you guys that we would lose a family member and the family would continue to sort of decline and deteriorate into sort of just sort of chaos and sort of neglect and things were bad and they just kept deteriorating so what does all that have to do with attachment by total miracle when i was when i got to therapy later in life at 19 and i was still fresh from the fire about all this stuff and i started talking to a childhood therapist you know i would go to this therapist and i would talk about how amazing a person my mother was and because of these little memories like the one i told you it was helpful for us to process those memories because my therapist was very wise and she would catch my count she was a specifically a childhood trauma specialist so she was sort of just she was on this stuff and she would catch all my contradictions meaning that she the contradictions that people have when they're new to looking at their family system when they're new to this stuff and i would say my mother was amazing but we but she would catch that we spent most of our lives in bars i would say that my mother was a drinker but i would also say that was because how bad my father was and the therapist would catch that you know about sort of lice my mother taking license and excuses i talked about how we didn't have money and my therapist would counter but that you got but my mom could afford alcohol i would say that she was a great mom because i got but only because i got sort of toys i would say she was a great mom but in actuality the therapist pointed out that she was a mom who was coping and taught me to cope and i would also say that my mom really loved me because that's what she verbally said but the therapist would count her and say but her her love didn't match her behavior which was really a mind-blowing thing for me at the time another way that you can look at it is that when i got to therapy this really good memory was evidence about how malnourished for consistent connection with my mother that i actually sort of was and what i mean by that is when you when when you look at your own childhood and think back to what you needed and what what every kid needs and what you didn't get is i didn't need a whole lot of toys i needed more connection with my mother i needed consistency i needed to be home working on things like homework and family life rather than being in a bar so that's what i mean about that male nourished for that kind of stability and connection so when i started to unpack what happened to us and really sat with what children need for healthy development it became more and more clear with the more therapy that i did is that the clarity was i chased my mother because she was

inconsistent

and that inconsistency led to how i chose partners later in life in my late teens and early 20s how available they were or how unavailable they were or how more how available i wanted them to be i chased

so when a child's parents are addicted coping self-consumed but can once in a while be in a good mood you chase that connection of the good mood you chase that experience as kids and as part of the chase it's like being hyper vigilant about their bad moods what's going on for them what you do and what you don't do might contribute to those moods that's how children think sort of like mom's in a bad mood because i asked for milk money earlier today children think they cause these things and that is actually a survival mechanism

and we also we keep really focusing on the potential of a good connection the potential of a good mood or at least that's how it happened to me so in my 20s while i was in therapy and my dating attachment style was anxious preoccupied chasing as a six-year-old my attachment style was anxious preoccupied chasing being aware um being so wrapped up in whether it was going to be a good day or a bad day and as a kid i checked up on my mother constantly i was her caretaker her emotional well-being came first to me and i would also do that in my relationships later too i was sort of the selfless sort of person i don't mean like i was overly giving it there was just no concept of me it was just all about the other person and if they were gonna leave or not um so that's how my attachment style took root and it would later change to other styles but that's what it was like for me in those years thank god for therapy so with that story that i just told you again it may be easier to see an attachment style develop from someone's childhood when it's not your childhood but i have some suggestions for you guys or some homework get a but go to the last video and get a ballpark idea of your attachment style the second thing what you do is you sort of write out some ideas or story just like as i just recounted to you some vague memories some some ideas about your family system think about it in terms of like this guys is to think about when you were six years old who was your person who was the person that whether it was a bad attachment or not who was the person that you were attached to what was going on for them meaning what kind of mental state were they in my i just happen to have an unavailable alcoholic mom with borderline features and when you put that in terms of what that would have been like for a six-year-old to have a parent like that you can see this stuff sort of unfold so at that time what comes to mind what comes to mind did you do you remember waiting to connect with your parents do you remember avoiding parents do you remember um your parents being so wrapped up in somebody else that you got forgotten all of that stuff to try to come up with chunks of that story and to put yourself in a kid's shoes again it's sort of easier to do that for to see somebody else but it's harder to do for yourself and if it speaks to you you know jump on ebay jump on sort of etsy or whatever and get a childhood toy because it's sort of like the red telephone i call it sort of of making a connection a tactile connection with your inner child so that's it i hope the story resonated in some ways i hope the video is helpful and as always i leave you with may you be filled with loving kindness may you be well may you be peaceful and at ease may you be joyous take care guys bye

In this deeply personal conversation, Patrick Teahan, MSW welcomes Orenda Fink — indie musician, Jungian depth coach, and author of The Witch's Daughter — to discuss her powerful memoir about growing up with a mother who exhibited traits of borderline personality disorder. Orenda opens up about the chaotic, alcohol-fueled world of her childhood, where witchcraft, supernatural stories, and emotional volatility were woven into daily life from a very young age.

The discussion dives into the complicated role of the codependent parent — the father who seemed safer on the surface but who repeatedly pulled Orenda back into the toxic family system by urging her to apologize for things her mother had done. Patrick and Orenda explore how this dynamic mirrors what so many adult children of narcissistic and personality-disordered parents experience: the cycle of abuse, the false reconciliation, and the slow erosion of self that comes from years of self-betrayal.

Orenda shares how writing her book in real time forced her hand toward going no contact, describing the moment she realized she had to become the hero of her own story. Patrick draws parallels to his own experience of cutting off his mother, framing it as a painful but ultimately life-giving act of individuation — the hardest thing he ever did, yet the decision that allowed him to finally become himself.

The conversation also explores Jungian shadow work and dream analysis, including how recurring nightmares can serve as messengers from the unconscious. Orenda explains how her Jungian training helped her understand that the very quality she most feared — selfishness — was the shadow element she needed to integrate in order to break free from her role as the all-good, self-sacrificing child.

Whether you are navigating a relationship with a personality-disordered parent, considering going no contact, or working through the grief of losing a parent who is still alive, this conversation offers deep validation and insight into the recovery process. Patrick and Orenda remind listeners that it is never too late to know yourself and reclaim the life that childhood trauma tried to take away.

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Information provided is not intended to be a substitute for in person professional medical advice. It is not intended to replace the services of a therapist, physician, or other qualified professional, nor does it constitute a therapist-client or physician or quasi-physician relationship.

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The Witch’s Daughter - Podcast Interview With Author Orenda Fink

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