We were lucky to catch up with Launa Hernandez-sjongstan recently and have shared our conversation below.

Launa, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you feel you or your work has ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized? If so, tell us the story and how/why it happened and if there are any interesting learnings or insights you took from the experience?

The Entire reason I am on this creative path is due to the fact that my entire narrative was mischaracterized by my Ex Husband and I misunderstood the dynamics of my relationship with him. I was with him for over 12 years and married to him for almost 10 years. During that entire time, I had no idea I was suffering abuse at the hands of a narcissist until it was almost too late and I found myself in a hospital in February 2024, with my actual life on the line, I barely survived.
That experience lead to being suddenly abandoned, financially crippled, having my name slandered to my family and friends, and I’ve been going through the divorce process since April 2024, when he filed.

It is because of that experience and the distance I’ve had from my Ex Husband , I’ve been able to see that I was misunderstood by so many people because of the mischaracterization of me that my spouse presented to everyone as my personal narrative. My spouse took his own liberties and was presenting something very different to everyone in my network and in his network, behind my back. I had no clue that my spouse was weaponizing the work and progress I had made with my own mental health in Therapy and with my Psychiatrist – almost a decade worth of progress – and he was using it against me. My spouse was painting a complete opposite picture of me to everyone, he even found a way to weaponize my age against me, blaming much of it on menopause as well.

I learned that I had to take back my narrative and the best way to do that was to get out and talk about me and my experience and share it with my friends. Once I began to speak out to my network, I began learning about the wild things that my spouse was presenting to other people, as facts about me, the one thing my friends kept saying to me is “this is crazy, it’s like a movie, you have to tell your story.”
I have always kept very detailed journals and planners so I figured I’d start with those and I created the website www.MMMBLMD.com as a way to share my story and I decided to begin with my journal entries from November of 2022 when I took a break from working to focus on healing some childhood trauma associated with my Dad.

My main goal for the 2 years before my life completely imploded in February 2024, was getting some recognition for my Dad, a Police Officer in my home town that took his life in 1984. At that time mental health wasn’t spoken about and the entire thing, my father’s passing, was handled quietly. I had been reaching out for years, with zero luck. I was reaching out to the Local Police department and the City Council in my hometown to get some acknowledgment for my Dad, since Mental Health is, now, very much in the cultural zeitgeist. I also have tons of vintage photographs that my Mom took from my childhood years so I began to incorporate those into my blog posts.
I learned that once I began to share the journals and the photographs, I started to heal – little by little – from the tremendous amount of trauma and pain that I’ve been dealing with since February. I still have long way to go, but taking back my narrative and taking back my life’s story – away from a Narcissistic Abuser – and sharing it the way that I want to, is the most important victory for me.

Launa, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t for the trauma I’ve experienced over this past year. It’s the bumps and bruises that have forced me out of hiding. I’m a very private person, it’s not in my wheelhouse to share and even less in my wheelhouse to be creative or to be the center of attention. I’d rather fly under the radar or exist like wallpaper, barely noticeable, after a while it’s just “there” in the background.

In February 2024 – my spouse did a complete 180 on me – I was having a very serious physical episode and required medical attention. I was so physically incapacitated that I didn’t realize, until we were sitting across from someone refusing to admit me into a mental hospital and I had to plead with my spouse to take me to an actual Emergency Room – BECAUSE my Spouse took me to a MENTAL HOSPITAL. Like he actually took me to a Mental Hospital instead of an actual Emergency Room, and he argued with the staff at the Mental Hospital, over the physical pain I was obviously experiencing, telling them a much different story that made zero sense.
In that moment my entire world turned upside down I could not fathom how I got there and why – WHY would my spouse take me to a Mental Hospital, instead of an actual Emergency Room, which is what I needed. Thankfully the Mental Hospital refused to admit me – seeing my obvious signs of physical distress.

Unfortunately, my husband didn’t stop there and actively lied to the Emergency Room staff and gave them a list of VERY FALSE diagnoses that would force them to hold me, involuntarily, on a 5150 Psychiatric hold. My Psychiatrist was never contacted, Law Enforcement was never involved and I was never advised of the MANY rights I had in the situation and my right to contest it and demand legal representation. I’ve learned a lot since that day.
Long story short – a month later in March of 2024, my spouse abandoned me, our 3 dogs and the marriage – unannounced, without any warning – one morning while I was taking a shower – I have not physically seen him in person since. He subsequently filed for divorce less than a month later and has decided to “fight it out” in court, refusing for any civility or amicability and blaming the entire dissolution of our marriage on my unwillingness to admit myself into a mental hospital. I have not had any sort of contact with him, outside of our divorce attorneys, since April 2024.

This entire creative, vulnerable journey is the pain of the tortured road that I’ve been traveling along my entire 47 years of life, that unexpectedly reached unimaginable new levels of torment and agony, in February 2024. I had to do something to manage the anger, rage, and resentment I’ve been holding on to and to prevent me from doing something that might actually land me in a jail cell. What I have found to be most surprising is how helpful it has been for me to put my story and myself out there and share it with others.

Unfortunately, since I’m still very involved with the legal process and proceedings of the divorce, I can’t completely put my FULL self out there. I am using a pseudonym and cannot use any current photos of myself for anything related to MMMBLMD.com/MMMBLMDMedia/and the Midlife Misery Podcast – and that maybe a blessing in disguise. It provides an extra layer of comfort knowing that I can’t be recognized or associated with the brand, unless you’re one of the very few that have had access to me as a child or my childhood photos. So for now, the only photos of me I am using are vintage childhood pictures from the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. My mom was an aspiring photographer so there is no shortage of photos for me to use.

After spending 8 months in constant turmoil and being re-traumatized over and over again, while I was desperately trying to piece together my life and make sense of what the heck actually happened. I began to see the warning signs I ignored, year after year, that have always been hidden in plain sight during the full 12 years of my relationship with my Ex Husband.
I also began to see that my story may be unique, in certain aspects, but it’s a very female story and I am definitely NOT ALONE in having my life flipped upside down on a dime and in a moment. That moment when I began to realize that the person I married and trusted with my life was NOTHING like the one he pretended himself to be and there are MANY Women out there that have experienced similar situations or are currently going through it. I even found it within my network of friends, in my pain and turmoil, I already had so much in common with what some of them were experiencing because they were deep in the trenches too. Some of my friends have been dealing with it for years and still haven’t made sense of the question we all ask ourselves “What Happened?!”
I decided to create a website to share my story, since I have so much of what happened to me written in my journals and daily planners, it made it easier to have something already prepared. This endeavor has also helped me, to at least begin, to piece together the shattered remains of my life. I’m almost to the one year mark of the Involuntary Psychiatric Hold and its trauma from February 2024 but I’ve still got a very long way to go.

Then, after encouragement from my network of friends, I decided to create the Podcast – Midlife Misery – to further my efforts to make sense of something that may never make sense. Knowing there are a lot more women out there that have stories just as traumatic as mine, if not more traumatic than mine, I’ve found comfort knowing that I’m not alone. I’m hoping I can help myself heal and get to the other side of this mess – a mess that I did nothing to create – aside from believing that a person – my spouse – was who they presented themself to be – who actually turned out to be the most dangerous person in my orbit. I’m hoping that if I can help myself heal and move forward, and if one other person finds comfort in hearing my story and learning that they are not alone, then I’ll have accomplished everything I’ve set out to achieve.
As a bonus, if I can finally get some acknowledgment for my father and his service to his community as a Police Officer, from my hometown and its Police Department, then I will be ELATED.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

My entire journey is that of resilience.
I am born and raised in Orange County, my Dad was a Police Officer in my hometown and my Mom was an aspiring photographer. My Dad and I were best buds, I am a mini version of him and he took me everywhere, he even took me to the Police Department’s gym to work out with him. My mother told me he was a little disappointed that I wasn’t a boy, but that faded quickly and I became his pride and joy, his little menace to the family and society alike.

My parents divorced when I was 2 and my father passed away less than two months after my 6th birthday, by his own hand. When my father took his life, he was the first officer in that city’s Police Department’s history to do so and it was quietly handled by the department. My Dad did not get the funeral service and publicity that other officers received, those that lost their lives in the line of duty, also, understandably so, it was 1984 after all.
My Grandparents on both sides of my family picked up much of the slack left by the void of losing my father at such a young age. My maternal Grandparents took up the brunt, and I’m grateful for it. My maternal Grandfather filled in as my father figure and taught me all of my most important life lessons. He was a US WWII tail gunner and fought for our country in the South Pacific.
At the time of my Dad’s passing my family did not know what to tell me, understandably so. How do you let a 6 year old know that her father has un-alived himself? So my mother gave me a story when I got older and curious – unbeknownst to me at the time – it was another officer’s story – one that exists in that department’s history. It wasn’t until my early 20’s that my mother told me the truth and it reopened the wound all over again.
I’ve spent my entire life sort of shoving all of that trauma down, and just moving forward in life, fighting for everything that I had.

Then, my Mother had a stroke in 2009, by then she had moved to the Midwest to where her parents, my Maternal Grandparents, are from. I ended up moving to the Midwest in 2011 to help her further her recovery and soon after I met Ex-Husband. We married in 2014, and immediately moved to the south, we spent 2 years there and then moved to my home town, in Orange County, in late 2017.

I struggled with severe depression during the first years of my marriage and decided to enter Psychotherapy shortly after moving home. I began to discover that the years of pushing down my childhood trauma had caught up to me and that I needed to find new coping mechanisms. I worked for years to get past the crippling depression, I also began to see a Psychiatrist who diagnosed me with ADHD in my early 40’s and my entire world opened up in the best possible way. So much of my life finally made sense, all of my problematic behavior and tendencies, they all made sense and for once in my life I stopped asking myself “what is wrong with me?” – I finally had a answer and a way to manage it and I began to feel whole again.

After the breakthrough and ADHD diagnosis, I began to reach out to the local Police Department in my home town to see if there could be some way to get some acknowledgment for my Dad. Since mental health is not so much of a taboo subject as it had been in the early 80’s – I was hoping for something, however small, but some type of mention of my Dad and his service to the community that I’ve called home – for most of my life.
I kept getting the same canned response “we weren’t talking about mental health at the time” – and this lack willingness to do the bare minimum and acknowledge my father weighed on me heavily. Much of the progress I was making through therapy and medication halted, almost like I hit a brick wall. In late 2022 I decided to take a leave of absence from work which turned into a year, I was focusing on all of the childhood trauma of losing my dad and also making more attempts to get acknowledgment for my Dad. I was reaching out to the City Council and I kept trying with the Police Department but making zero headway.

Then, when my husband decided to take me to a mental hospital instead of the Emergency Room in February, I almost died when I finally did get to the emergency room, because he continued to lie to the Emergency Room staff and I was so physically incapacitated I could not communicate for myself. I could keep going on and tell the rest of the story, but then there won’t be anything left for people learn about when they listen to the Midlife Misery Podcast. Let’s just say, the Hospital Emergency Room episode isn’t the worst of the entire debacle that lead to the Spousal Abandonment episode in March and it gets even wilder from there, trust me.

I would not be here today, telling my story, if not for my unwavering resilience.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I had to unlearn that my self-imposed lesson – a private, under the radar existence – isn’t always the best existence.

I have lived by that motto for my entire life. I don’t like being the center of attention and I like sharing anything personal about me and my life, even less.

I had to unlearn that really quick because of all the damage my Ex husband had done in such a short amount of time.

It was wild to me that he could get so many people to believe, even a fraction, of the things that he was saying about me.

I have a very solid friend network that knows me very well, but I had isolated myself a bit in the years since I began to focus on getting acknowledgment for my Dad. My Ex Husband took full advantage of that time I was self isolating and he did everything he could to ATTEMPT to smear my name and image. Thankfully, the majority of my network is still in tact and they know me better, and the ones that have fallen off should never have been a part of it anyway – good riddance.

I’m learning that being an enigma can do more harm than good, it’s been a very humbling lesson to say the least. I’ve had to get comfortable with speaking up and speaking out about myself and it is absolutely the hardest thing for me to do. Which is a weird dichotomy because I’m usually pretty confrontational, just not when it comes to my own vulnerabilities and the sharing of my own personal backstory, but it made me distant and un-relatable, at least to the masses. The ones I’ve always let in know who I am, but the masses were willing to see me through my Ex Husband’s eyes and know me through his interpretation of me, and it was a very unfavorable interpretation to say the least. Taking back my power and my story and lowering my walls to let people in and see ME and learn about ME, has been a hard lesson. I always thought the walls would protect me but they ended up harming me in the most incomprehensible ways.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mmmblmd.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lhernandezsjongstan/profilecard
• Other: Midlife Misery Podcast Spreaker Supporters page – https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/midlife-misery-the-journals–6430471/support
  Midlife Misery Spreaker About me page – https://www.spreaker.com/user/launa-hernandez-sjongstan–17336573Midlife Misery Podcast on Apple Podcasts – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/midlife-misery-the-journals/id1783590939
  Midlife Misery Podcast on Spotify Podcasts – https://open.spotify.com/show/4W9JVMggbXW4m9N55f4nzA
  Midlife Misery Podcast on iHeart Radio Podcasts – https://iheart.com/podcast/245204077
  Midlife Misery Podcast on Amazon Podcasts- https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/772c562f-13fb-49d5-a960-d9f238140558/MIDLIFE-MISERY-THE-JOURNALS?ref=dm_sh_fJaVJUiXLOKfX46YIQSAgpZ2F

Image Credits

The images are all mine, I own the original photos and the negatives – yes they are that old