The Professor and Heather Anne
Although we don't have all the answers, we hope we can encourage and excite you.
We're here sharing our lives to inspire you to make the most of the second half of your life.
Join us each week, my friends, where you're sure to get a smile -- from lessons learned to mishaps, the adventures go on for miles...here on The Professor and Heather Anne.
The Professor and Heather Anne
What If Telling The Hard Truths Is The Real Start Of Love?
A coffee shop meet-up, a late arrival, and a pair of good shoes set the scene—but the real story began when we chose honesty over comfort. After Yom Kippur, we split a slice of pie and opened a chapter most people hide: years of abuse that ended in front-page headlines, a courtroom that felt surreal, and a family learning to breathe under the weight of judgment. That early disclosure wasn’t a test; it was a signal that midlife dating works best when truth arrives first.
We talk about how to share hard histories with care, why putting polarizing facts up front can actually protect both hearts, and how stigma still shapes assumptions about abuse and incarceration. The conversation moves from media snapshots to what life inside the system really felt like—how courtrooms and deals behind closed doors can strip nuance, and how faith and small rituals rebuild a sense of control. Humor emerges as a coping tool, sometimes sharp, often necessary, keeping despair from hardening into identity.
Safety becomes the quiet centerpiece. Commuting between cities, we noticed something new: the ability to rest. For a nervous system wired by trauma, deep sleep beside someone is not small—it’s evidence. We connect these lived moments to the science of ACEs and PACEs, showing how protective relationships, mentors, purpose, and faith buffer the long tail of childhood harm. Looking ahead, we plan to bring in experts on trauma-informed healing and the realities of dating in midlife—the good, the bad, and the human.
If you value conversations that don’t dodge the hard parts, press play and stay with us. Subscribe, share this episode with someone who needs hope, and leave a review to tell us: what truth would you put on the table early?
And they were meeting and he came after her one last time.
The Professor:And my my overall impression was this is someone who is very strong.
unknown:Your next favorite podcast pick starts now. Here's the Professor and Heather Anne.
The Professor:Welcome to the Professor and Heather Anne. Although we don't have all the answers, we hope we can encourage and excite you. We're here sharing our lives to inspire you to make the most of the second half of your life.
Heather Anne:So on our first episode, we shared a little bit about ourselves, kind of what we're looking to accomplish here and share on our next episodes. We decided for this episode, we're going to go ahead and jump into dating and our first date and the first couple of months of our date of dating.
The Professor:Um with a focus on the impact of Heather's childhood uh on the way our our relationship developed.
Heather Anne:So we had our first date and we talked a little bit about that. We met at a coffee shop. Um I was late because I couldn't decide what to wear. Calling girlfriends, just really nervous. Um I did try on probably eight or more different outfits, as uh the women out there listening would know. It's it's scary enough to go on dates, but uh to go on your very first date after 30 years, uh, because my uh ex-husband and I were married for 26 together for 28, and um by the time I decided to start dating, it had been 30 years since I'd been on a date. And um, you know, you just don't look the same as you do when you were 20 years old, and all these things run through your head. Um, it was very nerve-wracking. I um don't know if I ever really told you this, but I considered canceling.
The Professor:No, you never told me this.
Heather Anne:I did. Uh thankfully, a few of our friends were like, no, no, you need to go on a date. Just go have fun, see what happens. And um, obviously, I'm very happy that we did because here we are, just literally three years later. And um our first date was really interesting, and we connected right away. Um as soon as you I got out of the car, walk up to you. Uh, you were you were wearing decent shoes. You were wearing good shoes.
The Professor:The shoes made all the difference.
Heather Anne:Shoes made all the difference. That was okay. I could give this guy a chance. He wore the right shoes. Uh didn't wear flip-flops or uh uh Birkenstocks or anything like that. Um, so I was excited about that. And nervous? Were you nervous?
The Professor:I was nervous. I was uh on the one hand, I felt like and a big difference between dating when you're 20 and dating when you're 60 is that I'd had enough experiences that I was confident that I have had an interesting life. I have interesting things to say. Uh whereas when you're 20, it's well, it's basically it's all potential. You haven't really done anything yet. Um but uh just trying to both impress someone but also remain humble and and genuine. Uh it it's it's it's a difficult balancing act and something I hadn't done in a long time. Uh so yes, I was nervous.
Heather Anne:Well, I was nervous, the same thing. Um, again, it's just a natural thing for women. We want to make sure we're wearing the same, you know, the right outfit and our makeup and our hair's good. But also I had accomplished a lot in my life as well, so I was confident in that. Um, being in business, I was I'm a very confident businesswoman. But also, I had things that I had to decide when I was going to share with you. Um, and I was still in in my mind how I was going to share with you. So, about 30 minutes into our date, I just kind of threw out, hey, my family was in the front, it was uh front page news, not for the good, and just kind of left it at that.
The Professor:So that was I could ponder over that between that and our second date, uh, which was uh maybe a week, a little less than a week later.
Heather Anne:I think it was less than a week. So our second date was um on Yom Kippur, which is a very uh odd thing to be state. So Yom Kippur uh is a very um solemn holiday. Yes, and you fast and repent of your sins, and then you uh go to services, and so we went the night, the last night of Yom Kippur, and um you then you break your fast, and we decided to we didn't really get to talk, um, but we decided to, after Yom Kippur, to go get pie.
The Professor:Yes.
Heather Anne:And so we were able to sit down and have more of a conversation. And I think that's when I threw out.
The Professor:Um that's when Heather told me what it was that had made front page news.
Heather Anne:So three weeks before my senior year, um my family became front page news by um I grew up in a very uh trauma field. I was abused. I I had been abused since I was three, physically, um, by my dad. He terrorized us most of my childhood. We never my life was always black and white. There was no gray. It was either really, really good or really, really bad, and you never knew from day to day when that was going to switch. And my parents were meeting for um, you know, for things that they needed to meet for. They had separated, right? They had they had separated that summer, um, the only second time she had ever kicked him out of the house. And they were meeting, and he came after her one last time, and they were in a it was summertime, they were at a strip mall, pizza parlor, parking lot was full. Uh, but she wound up um killing him with her car. And how we found out was the little snippets on the news. It was like one was DOA, one had been arrested, and we actually thought um our dad had finally killed our mom because it wasn't the first time that he'd come after that, and it wasn't the first time he had tried to kill her. So sharing that very early on on our second date after a very solemn day as it was.
The Professor:Um It was pretty heavy.
Heather Anne:It was very heavy.
The Professor:Uh and I'd I'd never known anyone. Well, I I I guess I can't really say I've never known anyone who had an experience like that, but I've never known anyone who told me about an experience like that. So this was something completely outside of my personal experience.
Heather Anne:And I was actually surprised that I shared that very early on. But I think I kind of had the attitude of if we're going to date, if this is going to go anywhere, I wanted to share this information. I didn't want it to be six months down the road. Because my fear obviously would have been you wouldn't have been able to handle it. You didn't necessarily want to bring that into your life.
The Professor:So the I think it's a bit of valuable dating advice to sort of put the most the sorts of things that are most likely to alienate someone, to put those, have those out front pretty quickly uh rather than uh save them to be a surprise later.
Heather Anne:Why do why do you think that?
The Professor:Well, because you don't want to you don't want to waste time with uh someone who who's going to uh who's not going to be interested in you anymore once they find something out. It's the same with like uh on on profiles to have any kinds of attitudes, opinions you have that you know are likely to be polarizing. Some people will really like it, some people will hate it. You got to get those right out in front. And then and all the people to whom that would be disqualifying, okay, they know, and and then you don't have to waste any time with them, and they don't have to waste any time with you. So I kind of consider this as part that kind of a thing that uh because we're older and we don't want to waste our time.
Heather Anne:Is that that honestly that that really is what it is is that I wasn't sure if I really wanted to start dating yet. Um had fun, I was having fun with it. Um uh I only met two people off of the app because once we met and started dating, it was two weeks in you asked to date exclusively. So um I knew I was still a little worried. So with each date, I felt like I just kept giving you a little bit more information and a little bit more information. But that second date was when I really just dropped the bomb on this is where I come from, this was what my life is.
The Professor:And my my overall impression was that this is someone who is very strong to have uh to have gone through experiences like this and to be where she is now, uh, a success both in her professional life and and and a and and her personal life as a successful mother, um, and just just someone who obviously had it together. Uh uh that uh my impression was this is someone who is has been uh battered but not broken. And in some ways, like having gone through something like that, and to and to still to still have your act together to be psychologically stable uh is a remarkable accomplishment. So in my mind, it was this was actually a a plus, but of course, anyone would be worried that you know it would be it would be a minus. And so that that's that's where you were coming from, right?
Heather Anne:That's where I'm coming from. I mean it it's not you know, it's not an everyday occurrence. Number one, um you think about it, and you probably know some people, but they don't talk about it. The chances of meeting somebody that has a parent in prison is already low. That's you know, the chances of that of low. But to meet somebody whose parent, I mean, she was found guilty of second-degree murder. So to meet somebody whose parent was in prison for sec for murder is uh even less likely of a chance, especially from where you came from. And even in my business world, there's a lot of people that do know my story, but there's you know, a lot of people I do business with. It's that's never brought up, it's no need to bring that up. Um, but it's it's a whole different type of topic in a relationship.
The Professor:And like I couldn't help but think about like what this would have been like in the days of my great-grandparents who had arranged marriages, and the people arranging the marriages would, in fact, immediately disqualify someone who, if if like you know, if one parent was an abuser and the other parent was a murderer, then the assumption would be well, this person has inherited those traits, so that they're no good.
Heather Anne:I I we would have not been a match in the good old days.
The Professor:In the in the old country, no.
Heather Anne:So uh it was in and it wasn't just sharing that, it was having to share the whole story. And honestly, for the first time in my life, I felt very comfortable and very safe with you, and to be able to share things with you that I had actually never shared with anybody, not even with my ex-husband. Um, even though my boys do know a lot of what happened to my childhood, and obviously they had to know that their grandmother had uh been in prison and what she was in prison for, because you know, we have Google nowadays, and you can research any of this.
The Professor:I researched it.
Heather Anne:So you did you researched it?
The Professor:Yes, yes.
Heather Anne:I I and what you read didn't scare you or it didn't scare me because I I thought of all this as not I thought of all this as something that had happened to you, had been imposed on you, not something not anything that you had done.
The Professor:And so so again, having having gone through all that and and emerged as as as strong as you were seemed to me to actually be a plus.
Heather Anne:Well, and it was important to me to share not just the nitty-gritty um of this is what happened, but also all the emotions that went behind it. Um a lot of my childhood was the system letting us down uh multiple times. And even that night, we found out from the news. And the police didn't the police never came and ever talked to my sisters and I. I I I'm the youngest of two older I have two older sisters, and I'm the youngest. Um we found out from the news, and in California, the news didn't come on until 11 o'clock at night. So we're waiting and waiting um to hear So this is 1986. 1986, and we're waiting to hear what in the world's going on. And like I said, um my older sister lived in Southern California at the time and just had a baby, and we had to call her and tell her. Our response was, you know, mom's dead, and you need to come here. We have to figure all this out. So it it wasn't just like, oh, here's what happened to my life, it was explaining a lot of those emotions behind that. And you know, I I was 17 years old, I was scared. I was it it changed the whole trajectory of my life. And and talking about this, we we know that a lot of Gen X and baby boomers dealt with a lot of childhood trauma. And me being open and honest about this is part of hoping that maybe we can help others by me talking about it, um, just like I brought it out in the open with you, being able to bring it out in the open with our audience, so that we can dive in more as episod as we um record more and more episodes, we'll be talking more about dealing with that trauma and the things that I went through. Um and the things that I had to overcome. One of the main things that I had to overcome was showing up at school that first day of school, my senior year, um, and acting like nothing, even though they we were all over the front page, all over the evening news showing up and acting like everything was okay.
The Professor:So you you didn't receive sympathy, you received mostly ostracism.
Heather Anne:Yes. Not so much that yes, I would say, and I and I see now at the time I saw it that way. I see now as an adult that people, adults, people that I'd gone to school with my whole life, they just didn't know what to say to me. Uh friends, parents, just what do you say to somebody when this happens? And so um I really got to know who my friends were. Um I had a few teachers uh that I had had throughout the four years of high school that would come and check on me and everything. But the biggest change that I had was I was going into my senior year of high school with a full ride scholarship already and um blew that my senior year. So uh just having to deal with the trauma and showing up in court. Um one of the things that I shared with you was just how I felt showing up at school that first day of school that year, um, when I had just like the day before went and visited my mom in county jail because um she was in county jail the first three months of my senior year because they had set her bail at a half a million dollars, and that was just not something we could obtain at that time.
The Professor:So there was yes, there so there was sort of trauma piled upon trauma. So one of the things you told me about in one of our first days was about being a witness at your mother's trial, and the a lawyer had accidentally or accidentally on purpose left up there the photographs of the autopsy.
Heather Anne:Yeah, that was um that was uh something that took me many years to actually forget. Um I was testifying. It wasn't the first it was the first time for the trial. We had you do pre-trial things and different things, and and I hope to also get into is um, you know, especially people of our generation, maybe the younger generation of today, don't necessarily see it this way, but we grew up learning about history and government, and you expect the system of how the system works, and then once you're actually in the system and we were in the court system and having to go to trials and judges and lawyers and and um the jury and everything, it's very different. It's not exactly what you think it's going to be. And that was very surprising and disappointing. It was very disappointing. But there's a lot of well what you see on TV is not how it is not how it even remotely represents what truly happens in real life. Corner cutting, deal making, a lot of deals behind closed doors. But it was I was very comfortable being able to share that. And one of the things I really want to dive in is being able to talk and have conversations so that because one of my passions when I go out and speak and everything is to help women. I I want to encourage women, I talk about hope a lot because that's basically hope was the one thing that was constant with me on I knew I could have a better life. And even when all of this was going, I knew I could have a better life, and that's what kind of just kept me. Brought you through. Hope was my main hope and having conversations with God and knowing that this wasn't my life. This wasn't this was not the life I was going to live as an adult.
The Professor:So for me, listening to these stories, I I know, I wanted to, I wanted to know more, but I also I didn't want to interrogate Heather. But I would ask questions like like one of the questions I asked early on was, well, well, when this happened, when when your mother killed your father, were you were you relieved?
Heather Anne:And we were. Um we were very relieved. We thought that he had killed her. Um, and then it within a few hours, um, family members were able to find out them some some things, even though the police still never came and questioned my sister and I. Um, we were able to find out that actually he was the one who had been killed, that she was um being arrested. And we were actually very relieved. It was like, okay, that's over. And we really felt at that time that people were going to listen to our story and understand why this happened. And and the last thing we ever thought that our mother would be found guilty and go to prison. And we'll and we'll dive more into that because that's a whole that's a whole few episodes of going through the system and doing all of that. But these are things that you, you know, when you're younger, you when you're dating, you can keep things like that secret and you're not going to share as much stuff. But as you get older, like we had discussed earlier, you just want to lay it on the line. Here it is. This is what I've got.
The Professor:Take it or leave it.
Heather Anne:You you want you you want to continue? Do you it's it too much?
The Professor:So, yes, one of the things Heather was you're sure you go on into this crazy.
Heather Anne:That's it. That's I still kind of say that today.
The Professor:Now it's a joke.
Heather Anne:Yes. Now it's like you married into the crazy, so uh you're stuck with me. But um it was. I I was constantly, and you did great with assuring me as we kept getting closer in our relationship, kept building, you were very good with letting me know that yes, you actually a lot of times told me what happened to you is not who you are, it's just a part of you.
The Professor:And so by you just letting me talk about it and um yes, so and there were so many, there's so many pieces of it. I remember it was either our third or fourth date when you went into quite a lot of detail about visiting your mother in prison and what what what prison life is like and and and also how how the visitors are treated. And it was it was it's kind of almost like Kafka-esque. It's it's like it's it's both brutal and absurd, absurd to the point of being funny, you know, if if if you could bring yourself to laugh at it. And I just remember being kind of just transfixed by this, by this story.
Heather Anne:I think you were a little surprised that I did make a lot of jokes. So one of the things, and I'm gonna be honest, and everybody works, and you know, listeners out there know everybody works through their own trauma and everything in their own way, but my sisters and I we use a lot of laughter and we make a lot of jokes, and there are jokes that do offend people, but it's helped us deal with all this trauma.
The Professor:It's a catharsis.
Heather Anne:It is, it's you know, it's like, you know, it it there is something to be said to be to walk through those gates, and it and it's very different from county jail and prison. So we learned that as well. And but to be able to walk through the security gates, wait, and just all of what that brings, it's just a surprise of you have to be searched. You have to be searched, you can't take certain things, you can't wear certain things, um, just learning all the rules and regulations and um being able to share the share that with you. Another thing that happened the first couple of months for our relationship is um a lot of times, because you lived in Stillwater and I lived in Tulsa.
The Professor:Those are about an hour and 15 minutes difference.
Heather Anne:So we would have to plan dates and weekends and different things like that. And you would come, we'd be like, oh, well, let's go to dinner, we're gonna go do this, we'd come, we're gonna go do that. And um, you would come over and then I just wanted to sleep. I was afraid you were gonna think I had narcolepsy or something because um you'd be it's like, no, I don't want to go out. Let's just have dinner here, let's go get something, bring it back. Um, but it was for I learned now, because I've done we we've done research and stuff about it since, is that truly for the first time in my life, I felt safe. I felt safe to sleep with and just fall asleep. I'm we'll get into all that other stuff, but just literally being with you, we would be watching a movie and I would just fall asleep. And you'd think that I'd never slept in my entire life, but apparently I haven't. Um because as anybody that's lived through trauma as a child, one of the things that maybe you don't know or you've never really even experienced yet in your life or didn't realize in your life is that when a child wakes up in trauma, they don't just jump out of bed, they actually wait and listen to the house. The house is going to tell them what type of day you're gonna have. Is it already starting? Had it been con had events gone on all night? Had he been beating her all night? Did he wake up, wake us up and beat us? You just listen. And I had never really not had that in my life until I met you. So it was easy to feel comfortable. And one of the things that I do tell you all the time, we can share that, is that my soul feels safe for the first time in my life. And that is something that's magical.
The Professor:It I really can't attribute it to anything in particular that I do or say, or at least nothing that I can, you know, put like identify, put my finger on. It's more like just like who I am.
Heather Anne:It's just who you are. It's a God thing.
The Professor:It's it is a it's a god thing.
Heather Anne:We're gonna talk about God. We might as well just bring him out right now. We're gonna talk about him. We're we're very well aware. We con it's in our everyday conversations. We're very thankful to be here where we are.
The Professor:And just the unlikeliness of our meeting.
Heather Anne:Of our meeting. Uh you we both grew up in California. I actually was in California in areas and stuff that you were.
The Professor:It is possible that we crossed paths in Los Angeles in the early 90s.
Heather Anne:I'm a little bit on the woo-woo side, the magical side. Uh, partly because I need to be. That was part of what helped me survive my childhood was always being on the positive and looking for the good stuff in my life. So I always joke around with him when we first started dating that um I probably passed you in Westwood and we bumped each other. We didn't even know. But God had that all set up for us that one day you would get in your Honda and drive east and come to Oklahoma, and we would meet in a coffee shop in Jinx. In Jinx, Oklahoma.
The Professor:Yeah.
Heather Anne:So that's um we'll be talking more about trauma. I would also like to have um more um experts on that we had discussed before in our first episode. We'll have some experts on to talk about childhood trauma. The negative things that we um have that happen in our childhood are ACEs. I talked a little bit about it in our first episode. Of that's all the adverse things.
The Professor:Adverse childhood experiences.
Heather Anne:And mine is a 10. And then the positive things, paces stands for protective and compensatory experiences. I just call it the positive stuff. So even though my ACEs is a 10, my paces is a nine. And um, that's truly what helped me uh become who I am today. I'm very fortunate. Um but dating at our age is I've heard a lot of horror stories. I've had a lot of women my age ask about us dating, how we met. Um, so we'll be diving into some other episodes about dating at this age, and all.
The Professor:The things all of the things that go with dating at the low points as well as the life.
Heather Anne:Yeah, even the low points the good, the bad, the ugly of dating in midlife. Um we we'll be talking more about dating, and we'll have topics on trauma and more of the things that just affect people our age. We hope that you enjoyed this episode in which we talked more about dating and how we our relationships first started. We have more exciting discussions coming up. Uh, again, we've talked about different guests that we're going to have on. So join us here each week, my friends. We're sure where you're sure to get a smile from lessons learned to mishaps, the adventures go on for miles. On the Professor and Heather Anne.
unknown:Thank you for listening to The Professor and Heather Anne.
