The Story Behind ‘I Was Born Among Thieves’

Although my book is a story of a series of incredible tragedies in my life, it's ultimately really a book and a story not about being broken, but about how one becomes whole. And regardless of how painful or how complicated your story may be, that there's always hope. There truly is always hope. Our area innovator today is Jillian Thorpe, author, speaker, and former director of international Born and raised in South Africa, Jillian defines the very meaning of what resilient is, overcoming a traumatic childhood, the loss of her father at the age of four, and later the sudden death of her husband, former NFL player Deron Thorpe. Her journey from surviving to inspiring has touched lives around the world. In this episode, Jillian shares how she found strength through tragedy, why she believes hope is the real force in the human experience, and what she's learned from writing her powerful new memoir. This is Bay Area Innovators, and I'm your host, Steve Yuspas. Jillian, welcome to our program. Thank you very much, Steve. Thanks for having me. Thank you. So, you grew up in South Africa, and you came to the U.S. at the age of 14. I grew up in Romania. I came to the U.S. at the age of 16, very close, went to high school. Tell us a bit, you grew up in an abusive environment, it was tough over there. Tell us a little bit about your experience growing up in South Africa. Yeah, so I was born and raised in South Africa, and lived there for the first 14 years of my life. I grew up under the apartheid system, and it was a difficult system, of course, growing up under, with extreme racism. We had different classes of individuals underneath that system. The hierarchy went, you know, white people, those particularly from, those of Dutch descent, and English, predominantly. And then you had people, colored people, like myself, of mixed descent, so if you're mixed in South Africa, you're considered colored. So you are mixed descent? So yes, I'm of mixed descent, so I'm really half black, half white. So I grew up in the colored community, and it's what I knew, I don't recall ever actually meeting or knowing, maybe seeing from a distance, white people. But I actually never interacted with white people growing up in South Africa, everything was kept very segregated, and I grew up in a colored community, in a colored household, colored schools. If you went to the beach, you went to the beach on the colored side, or your designated area. So that was really interesting, you know, growing up under such a system. But it was one that I was familiar with, and I didn't know any different initially. So that, you know, is the backdrop of, you know, but if you zoom in, you know, I talk about in my book, The Color of the Sun, more personal experiences of the tragedies that unfolded within my family. Yes, your life has been a roller coaster. I know you start your first sentence in the book is, I was born among thieves. What's that about? What do you mean by that? Yeah, so what I mean by that is, literally from the day I was born, so I was what is called a call baby, when you're born completely inside the amnio sac. And that's very rare. One in 80,000 or something like that. So it's very rare for babies to be born in that, because usually the water breaks, and of course, the birth occurs, but that was not the case for me. And there's a lot of superstition around babies born within the amniotic sac. People prize that skin around there, and nurses would sell...when babies were born inside of the sac, they would sell that skin to sailors. There's a lot of superstition around that, who believe that it prevented drowning or brought supernatural powers and brought incredible gifts to that person. It was considered, you know, you're special if you're born with that. But that was stolen the moment that I was born. And that story was recounted to me by my family over the years. But fortune certainly did not follow me from the hospital. So I use that analogy of being born amongst these, because I was literally born amongst these, by the skin of that sac being stolen. And then what subsequently occurred throughout my life and the series of tragedies that followed, which I'm looking back as I wrote my book, when I came up with that analogy, was just that there's a series of theft that occurred throughout my life, the innocence of my childhood that was stolen from me. And so essentially from day one through my early years of the theft of, like I said, my childhood innocence. Now, your father died when you were four years old. Yes. And then you probably defined the word resilient. Please tell us a bit of some of the hardest situations you were in and then how you got out of it and what was it that made you be able to come out of the tragedies and continue on and thrive? So that's a great question. I mean, there's so much that occurred that I'm not sure. It would take up a lot of this interview when I say a series of tragedies, I don't say that lightly. There's a lot that occurred within my childhood, starting from the death of my father at four years old. I was four when he passed away. He actually had committed suicide. And back then, suicide was considered very taboo. You did not talk about it at all. It was never to be mentioned in the family. But as children, we were never told that he actually committed suicide. We were told that he just had gone. That was really difficult for me to comprehend because I was very close to my father. I admired him, loved him. He was my absolute world at that age. And to know that he would have just left us, left a bitterness in me, because again, we were not told that he had died. We wouldn't learn until later on. I wouldn't learn about that until years later, but nevertheless, in terms of the tragedies that unfolded as a result of his death, my mom turned to alcoholism after he passed away. So she was not physically there to be, I mean, she was physically there, but not really capable of taking care of us. So my grandmother sent us away to what they call boarding school, but it was really foster care on a remote farm where my siblings and I lived, two separate farms. My brother lived on one farm, my sister and I lived on another. And so it was sort of one loss after the other. I lost my dad, not knowing that he died, but that he had left us. And then my mom had abandoned us by, you know, putting us on this remote farm. And we were left there for two years. Not that we were left unattended, we were left with a family. But the tragedy of what felt like losing both parents. And then my mother would return a couple of years later, and she had met a man who she subsequently married, who turned out to be incredibly abusive. And I document that and I write about that in my book, the abuse that occurred after he entered the home. Again, a very incredibly abusive individual. And that's just the first chapter, the first part of my book. But there's so much more there, because ultimately I'd come over to the United States and I'd talk about the difficulties and the transitions of coming here as an immigrant, and not really knowing where to fit in, particularly as a colored person, where growing up in South Africa, all I knew was non-white people. I'd never interacted with white people in my life. And coming here and not knowing what group I fit into, I didn't, I personally didn't identify with white people because I had known white people in South Africa, but only from a distance. And then black people weren't particularly receptive to me because I had this, at the time, a very, what sounded like an English accent and I looked white. And so I felt like an outsider that I didn't really fit in. And so I talk about that as well, and what that felt like and what that meant to me. I would later then, fortunately, met the absolute love of my life, my late husband, Darren Thorpe, who was truly the first person who cared about me, worked by my side. There's so much that I could say about him. And then tragically... And of course, he was in the NFL, right? Yes, yes. So he and I met in college at UNR. So after we had moved from South Africa to Southern California, Ventura County, where I graduated from high school there, then we moved to Reno. And it's where I attended UNR and met my late husband, Darren Thorpe. And yeah, so he went on to play and then he had come to Reno on UNR on a full scholarship and played football there. And after he graduated, went on to play in the NFL. So it was an incredible time being with him. He was a remarkable human being. And unfortunately, he tragically and unexpectedly passed away. And I read about that in your book. He was perfectly healthy and the doctors cannot figure out what was wrong with him or what happened. Yeah. They say it was an arrhythmia. Well, you have to say something, right? Yeah. Right. Exactly. And so they wrote it down as an arrhythmia, although everything was perfectly fine with his body. They did toxicology. They did the full autopsy on him. His heart was healthy. It was not a heart attack. So he was an incredibly healthy human being. He ate healthy. He never did drugs. He was truly the epitome of health and then just literally dropped dead one day. So that was another enormous tragedy within my life. And I think you asked, how does one get get over that? Exactly. Yeah. Ultimately, although my book is a story of a series of incredible tragedies in my life, it's ultimately really a book and a story not about being broken, but about how one becomes whole. I mean, initially when I wrote my book, I wrote it as a form of therapy for myself. I wasn't intending to share this with anybody else, but then ultimately decided to do so. And that's another story in itself. But in terms of how does one become whole, you know, for me, I see it as one is truth, right? I mean, we've got to be honest with ourselves in order for us to move forward. We've got to acknowledge. All right. So it's, for example, if somebody is an alcoholic, the first thing you have to do before you get better is can't be in denial. Right. You've got to accept that and acknowledge that you've got a problem for me and for many others out there that may be trauma. And so it's acknowledging that this happened for many years. I ran for my past. I wanted nothing to do with it. It was shameful. It was something I'd rather forget, but it doesn't go anywhere. It still physically lives inside of you. And it turns cancerous. And I don't mean that in a physical sense. And yes, it does for some people, but it manifests in unhealthy forms in us as humans. And so I think, again, first is acknowledging that, yes, this happened to me and yes, it does hurt. Right. And once you acknowledge that, then the next part, really important, is safety. All right. Finding a safe space to bring all this stuff to the surface. Because if you bring it out, it gets eliminated in many ways. It gets dispersed. It absolutely does, Steve. But if it stays in us, it literally eats us. Trauma is very physical and very real within us. So, again, being honest, then finding that safe space to let that out. And so maybe that safe space is, for example, somebody is, unfortunately, as many people are out there, let's say, a spouse who's being abused right now. Well, one, you've got to get out of that environment. You can't heal in survival mode. All right. So you've got to remove yourself from that environment. And find somebody that walks with you, right, as you're healing. It's very difficult to do this on your own. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's difficult to. So it's finding a therapist, finding a trusted friend, a pastor at your church, a trusted loved one. For me, it was my late husband, who was enormously supportive as he walked with me through my healing, because it's not easy when the stuff is brought up to the surface. It's incredibly difficult when these painful feelings, particularly if they've been buried for some time, come to the surface. But he was there that walked by my side in conjunction with a therapist who helped me. And then as you do that, I would really encourage one to also find ways of expressing yourself, expressing that pain in healthy ways, not unhealthy ways of maybe turning to drugs or alcohols or whatever, you know, the things that we do as humans to run from our pain. But find healthy ways of expressing that. For me, it was writing. Writing is incredibly therapeutic for me. And once it comes out on paper, it almost becomes somebody else's story. It's like the feelings are released from that. Today, when I look at my book, it's words, right? The feelings are no longer associated there. You know, people will ask me, you know, am I okay to talk about your husband or are you okay to answer questions about your past? I'm completely comfortable with that because those feelings are no longer there. And so maybe it's writing for you. Maybe it's not writing, right? Not everybody finds the process of writing therapeutic. But maybe if you're a musician and it comes out through music or maybe you just enjoy being in nature or yoga, you know, whatever it is that feeds your soul, right? That it's really important that you do that as you're healing. Ultimately, I'd say patience is definitely required through the process, knowing that you are absolutely worth it, that every single one of us are absolutely worth it. And find your way of writing your story because as when we're younger, for me particularly, I had somebody else write chapters of my story as a child. But as an adult, I get to write my story now. I get to write the chapters of my future for myself. And you can have that, you can write that however you wish. And that's ultimately the goal of my book. It's not about, don't feel sorry for me, right? That's not the purpose of the book. And I don't think that people get that because the feedback that I've got from so many is that although there's so much tragedy and yes, sadness, and it brings people to tears as they read some of the tragedies that I went through, but that what they do get is that the whole purpose of this is about how do you become whole and regardless of how painful or how complicated your story may be, that there's always hope. There truly is always hope. Speaking of hope, I want to talk more about hope. Indeed, hope is probably the element that makes society survive or in many ways, continue civilization. Tell us what your understanding of hope is. Do you think it's almost like a substance in the brain or somewhere that gets triggered when something happens or is it outside, it's like in the soul or what's your understanding of hope? How does it come about and when is it coming and when is it going? This Bay Area Innovators episode is sponsored by Peter Cassara Clothiers, an Italian menswear store that brings timeless European style with a modern edge to Sunnyvale and the Bay Area for over 50 years. From top Italian suits and shoes, the exclusive Tami Bahama line, they've got your look covered. Check out their website at petercassaraclothiers.com to find out more. And now, back to our interview. I think that honestly hope is always there. I truly believe that hope is eternal. I believe that it's actually embedded in us. When you look at all the things that we've done to each other in the history of civilization and what we continue to do to each other today, the great ills, I think that thing that keeps us moving forward as humans, Steve, is ultimately hope. I don't know, I'm not a scientist, but I would say from my experiences and also me studying psychology, I have two degrees in psychology, a bachelor's and a master's degree. I believe that hope is actually very deeply embedded in us as humans. You were the director of international studies at Santa Clara University for many years. You did mention that you saw a tendency of students from different countries, how many they would go back and how many would stay here. What was the connection there? Here in the Valley, you mostly had students at Santa Clara University. I worked there for 14 years in that role. I also oversaw international admissions as well. The majority of our students, and this is not specific to Santa Clara, this is all these universities here in California, the majority of the students came from India and China. What was very interesting for me observationally was that when students come here on the F1 and J1 visas, their intentions are to remain here in the United States, even though these are temporary visas which allow them to come here to study and gain knowledge and some work experience. Many of them, their goal is to find a company to sponsor them and stay here. I saw something very interesting in that with Chinese students, now these are particularly students in graduate programs and these are students who are in STEM programs, they usually come here to major in information technology in a wide range of engineering degrees, but I found that about 90% of Chinese students would return back to China, where Indian students, for example, and I'm using these two groups because these are the largest, the biggest. We trickle down of some other countries, but not too many, like international students was just not diverse, it was mostly Indians and Chinese, but yeah, about 90% of Chinese would return to China, where 30%, around 30% of Indians would return to India, which I always found very fascinating, and so they would return after, so the visas would allow you to remain here in the United States to receive your degree, and then what was allotted to students on the F1 and the J1 visa is optional practical training, OPT, which allows you to remain, it was initially, it used to be one year that you could remain after you graduated from a college or university here, but then the government extended it to three years, so these students would go into the tech fields and get jobs here in Silicon Valley and these big companies around Silicon Valley, gain that work experience, and the Chinese would return back to China after receiving that. Any thoughts why that would be the case, any wild guesses? You know, look, it begs to ask the question, right, were these students, are these students pawns of the CCP, I mean, it's just, you've got to ask that question, because when you see the glaring disparity of numbers, you know, 30% to 90% return rates, you wonder why, why are the Chinese going back, were they sent here as opposed to coming here on their own terms, I don't know, but you know what's interesting, Steve, is that nobody was asking that question, universities didn't care, they didn't care because ultimately it was the almighty dollar, right, these students are coming here, no issues with money, particularly if you're attending a, so Santa Clara University is a private institution, but for the public institutions like the UCs, these are students who are paying house state tuition, so they're taking the seats away from the American students and bringing this in because there's much more money to be had from China, so there wasn't a, you know, nobody's interested in looking at that or interested in stuff from a patriotic standpoint in terms of, well, hey, I've lived here in California as a student, not to talk about me, myself, but there are many students who can't get into the UCs, it's exceptionally difficult to get into the UCs, UCLA, for example, is the most applied to school in the nation, and yet many of our California students can't get in there, and yet these seats are given, notoriously have been given to Chinese students who aren't remaining here, right, there's no commitment to remain here, they're going back to China with that information, our students who are committing to stay here and work here in this country aren't getting those seats, so I think that that's a question that should have been asked, but never were. Not only that, but probably on a daily basis that we now see reports of academic espionage of spies or secret, stolen secrets being, usually with Chinese people that would take them back to China in many ways. I want to move on to South Africa and some current news, the President of South Africa was recently here, the White House met with President Trump. Right. Any thoughts on what's happening? I don't know how familiar people are with the current situation in South Africa as far as tensions, I guess, between races or whatever. Right. What is your take on that? That's a great question, Steve. I don't think that people are terribly tuned into what's going on there. Certainly it got some exposure with Cyril Ramaphosa, the President who came here and met with Trump at the White House, and Trump exposed what is going on in South Africa with regards to the killing of white farmers. Now, predominantly the individuals who own the farmlands and do the farming in South Africa are white, and Trump had exposed the killings that are going on there. And that was largely, of course, dismissed by legacy media here in the United States. The White House claimed that same day and days after that, this was all lies by the Trump administration. And that's actually inaccurate. I still have family in the United States and I have friends who send me information about what is... You mean in South Africa? In South Africa, yeah. And so I get articles, I receive videos on the truth about what is going on. And yes, white farmers are in fact being killed in South Africa. If legacy media had an ounce of morality in them, of true journalism in them, you could go to South Africa and see for yourself, go report for yourself and see what's happening. They're not doing that. They're simply dismissing that this is occurring. Now, I'm half black. I grew up under the apartheid system, but I absolutely, absolutely am not in favor of any form of discrimination. Reverse discrimination does not work. That is not your answer. You look at what happened to Zimbabwe, same thing happened there where they killed the farmers, ran them off the land. Zimbabwe used to be the breadbasket of Southern Africa, provided the food for Southern Africa. It is a complete disaster today. There was no food. Kids eat rats there. And that's a fact. Why? Because we did exactly what South Africa is doing. When the land is taken over by natives, they don't have the skills in place. Now, you've got to have a different program in place. You can't just simply kill people and expect that we continue to thrive. So that's a concern. And yes, I believe that that's 100% been inaccurately reported here about that not occurring in South Africa, because in fact it is. And Trump administration is correct. So there's a lot of abuses in the world right now, and especially kids in so many ways are being abused. I wonder your thoughts about the child trafficking, the child trafficking before sex, and also the transgender movement that happens that affects kids in so many ways. So on those two issues, any thoughts on those two? Right. So in my book, you know, I document child abuse. It's what unfortunately I was subjected to as a child. So this is a this is a topic that's very sensitive to me in terms of the sex trafficking. Well, that was enormously disturbing to me under the Biden administration. The board has been kept wide open. All these kids that have were unaccounted for, which is stunningly inexcusable to me that that was allowed to happen. And then with regards to wokeism today and and children being brought into the center of this is enormously disturbing to me. It's June. It's Pride Month. What you see in the streets from San Francisco to other major cities are naked men parading around in front of children in the public. And this is acceptable. People display their fetishes out on leashes. You need to see a lot of a lot of sickness out there that children today are being exposed to. I just wish that more people would speak up about this. This is not about being anti-transgender. This is not about being anti the LGBT community. But why is this being put smack dab in the middle in front of our kids faces? Why are they being exposed to literature in the classroom that is stunningly inappropriate? These are major concerns to me. I think it's it's it's absolutely wrong. I think that there's definitely some changes that in a positive way that has gone on and forced under the under the Trump administration. But I'd really like to see more people speaking speaking out. I know that it's it is difficult to do so, particularly in this climate of cancel culture culture. When you say something that goes against what's trending right now, you're considered, you know, anti this or anti. But being brave enough to speak up for children and and securing their innocence is something that is so incredibly important to me. Well, Jillian, thank you so much for your time. In conclusion, I would like you to give us an advice for the people who lived in through tragedies, who lived in abusive environments. You already mentioned some ways for them to come about. What would be your your concluding thoughts to them, how they can come out with hope? Just like I mentioned earlier, Steve, I think one is just being true to yourself. Right. And knowing that you are absolutely worth it. You know, hope, like I said, lives within us. But you get to write that story moving forward for yourself. And what what do you want that story to look like for yourself? Right. So ask yourself that question. What do you want your future to look like? It's not easy making change. Right. I'm not going to sit here and say that the magic pill, there's no magic pill. And is it easy? It is not easy, but you are worth it. And if you believe in yourself and you believe that you are, in fact, worth it, you can and you will make those changes. It just says I explain that how you can go through the process of doing so. But again, it's being honest with yourself, believing in yourself and ultimately love yourself, you know, and write that and write write your story for yourself. Don't have somebody else write that for you. Julia, thank you so much for your time. You're welcome, Steve. Thank you. Thank you for watching another episode of Bay Area Innovators. If you enjoyed this episode and you know someone who should be on our show, please send us an email We would love to hear from you. Thank you and see you next week.