ANGELA SAVAGE

My father, Swede Savage, was the last driver to suffer fatal injuries in the Indianapolis 500. Fortunately, due to safety advances, some even implemented as a direct result of my father’s crash, over fifty years have now passed without a driver suffering fatal injuries in the race. Unfortunately, my father’s death shattered my world before I was even born.

My mother was five months pregnant with me, in the grandstand, when she watched my father’s car explode after hitting the turn 4, inside wall nearly head on. We now know that through research in the field of epigenetics, a pregnant woman who experiences a serious traumatic event like this, can pass genetic markers to her unborn child in utero. Essentially, the child is born with the same post traumatic stress (PTS) effects that the mother experienced. This transgenerational trauma can even be passed to future generations.

At an early age, I knew that I was different from others, but I could never figure out why. As a young child, I can remember adults breaking into tears when they met me. I thought there was something I did wrong to cause that. When my mother remarried, I was not yet even a year old. So growing up, I was too young to know that my stepfather wasn’t my natural father. Before my mother had a chance to explain this to me at an age that I could process such a thought, I discovered this fact entirely by accident at a neighbor’s house when I was just a little girl. Unexpectedly learning who you thought was your father wasn’t your real father, was more than my young brain could process.

As I grew older, I began to suffer from depression. My younger stepbrother was my best friend and we spent hours together. But when he decided to move out to live with his natural mother, my older stepbrother and sister were so much older than me that I felt alone and lonely in my own home and family. I spent hours alone in my room, so depressed that I would sometimes write brooding poems in my own blood. When my stepfather became an abusive drug addict in my teen years, I sought escape from the stress and anxiety he was creating at home through drugs and alcohol. My life spiraled out of control.

The list of mental health issues I endured, beginning in my pre-teen years and continuing through adulthood, is long. It included all the complex emotions of being born a posthumous child, being a highly sensitive person (HSP – more likely an empath), alcoholism, drug addiction, depression, anxiety, cutting, teenage pregnancy, physical and mental abuse from others, Borderline Personality Disorder, night terrors, agoraphobia, Pseudobulbar affect, and a couple of suicide attempts. Someone once calculated the odds of any one person being afflicted with all of these conditions as over a billion to one. Lucky me.

Years later, a few people discovered who I was on Facebook. I was soon the surprised recipient of a crowd funded trip to the 2014 Indianapolis 500. This was the first time I went to the Indy 500 since being there in my mother’s womb in 1973. I felt so much love for myself and for my father from the racing family that I never knew existed. It changed my life.

For some reason, race fans and even people working in the sport, feel comfortable confiding to me their own personal mental health issues and some of the traumatic events – including my father’s crash that some of them witnessed – that have shaped their lives. More than ten years after my life changing trip to Indy, I’m still hearing from people almost daily.

Several years ago, my dear friend, Ted Woerner, who as a young boy saw my father break the track record in Indy time trials in 1973, expressed an interest in writing the first biography of my father. In addition, he wanted to tell my story along with his. He had always been intrigued that I had entered the world just three months after my famous father left it.

My close collaboration with Ted on our book SAVAGE ANGEL, was excruciating for me. I had to relive and verbalize all the things I had been trying to block from memory my entire life. But the research we uncovered about the root causes of many of my mental health issues was liberating. I now know why I was the person I was and why I am now the person I am. Knowledge is power. Hopefully, talking about my mental health journey may help you to better understand your own.

For more information on SAVAGE ANGEL or to order a copy, go to SAVAGE42.com