The Power of Positivity: Dumpster Diving, Couch Hopping, and Making Peace With My Dysfunctional Family
Big Time Adulting
Caitlin Murray
4.9 • 811 Ratings
🗓️ 7 February 2024
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Our storyteller today is writer Mal Wrenn Corbin, a cherished friend of Caitlin Murray’s mom. Mal grew up in Worcester, MA a town riddled by poverty, addiction, and violence. Mal grew up in an unsafe home, witnessing domestic violence, alcholism, and drug abuse. Her childhood was tossed in and out of the foster care system and she found solace at school and in her friendships. After a youth marked by neglect and loss, she escaped Worcester and ultimately persevered. She went on to Dartmouth college and built a successful life for herself. But becoming a mother was a turning point that helped her recognize her own self-worth for the first time. Mal’s story highlights the resilience of the human spirit in the face of adversity. This on is a tear jerker!
Mal has written a memoir, Raising Wrenns, where she revisits her past and begins to embrace her family's flaws.
- Visit Mal Wrenn Corbin's website
- Follow Mal @malwrenncorbin
- Follow Caitlin Murray @bigtimeadulting
- Caitlin's magazine Soul Snacks
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I was six and so the twins were five. |
| 0:04.0 | We had been left alone for a couple of days or a few days. |
| 0:08.0 | It's hard to say. |
| 0:10.0 | So we set off into a close-by park and it was my mission to hunt for food. |
| 0:18.0 | Your hope is to stumble on that happy meal box with some scraps that |
| 0:23.7 | somebody's left behind. Welcome back to the big time adulting podcast. I'm your host, |
| 0:33.5 | Caitlin Murray. Oh my God, I love doing silly things like that. So here we are today with a family |
| 0:41.7 | friend of mine, Mal Ren Corbyn, a actually very, very close friend of my mother's. What's like the age |
| 0:50.2 | difference between you and my mom, like 25 years or something like that. I'm going to be, |
| 0:56.0 | dare I say 50 this next month, so 20 years. And I have to admit, like, I think I kind of stole her |
| 1:03.4 | from you a little bit because I turned her into like this hybrid of mother figure and sister figure. |
| 1:12.9 | She's like you. She's a beautiful human being, like a lot of fun, but a lot of great depth too. She is amazing. And I was actually going to |
| 1:19.4 | revise what I had said. Like I feel like to call her your friend is to like undermine the |
| 1:24.6 | strength of your relationship with her because you are really more like a family |
| 1:28.1 | member. And you have come such an incredibly long way. And you have written a book about your life. |
| 1:38.0 | Your memoir, Raising Rens, was just published. It's a story that sort of weaves together, the mythology of Rens and your |
| 1:46.7 | personal journey of survival, resilience, transformation growing up in Worcester, Wusta, |
| 1:53.4 | Massachusetts. People don't know how to pronounce that name of a town. If you're not from |
| 1:59.0 | Massachusetts, many people call it Worcester, Worcester or Worcester or something. It's a a town. If you're not from Massachusetts, many people call it Warchester, |
| 2:01.6 | Worcester or something. It's a tough town. It's a town that's kind of plagued by poverty. |
| 2:08.3 | There's a lot of addiction, violence. And you, unlike your parents and brother, were somebody |
| 2:14.9 | who was able to escape that. Why don't you talk a little bit about what |
... |
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