Welcome to life, death, and the space between podcast. I'm Dr. Amy Robbins, a licensed clinical psychologist and medium. If this is your first time to the podcast, welcome. If you've been here for a while, thanks for listening. Today's podcast is about making meaning.

Dr. Lee DeGere is a clinical psychologist in private practice.

She grew up on the East Coast, the lone surviving child of unsettled and iconoclastic parents.

At the age of four, she was third degree burned on 65% of her body as the result of both maternal

and corporate negligence.

After the fire, she spent most of her childhood in the hospital, undergoing countless medical

procedures.

Dr. DeGere has waited 50 years to write her life story.

She waited until her entire first family died, four by suicide and one by AIDS.

Now, a sole survivor, she recently completed her first memoir, Flashback Girl, Lessons on Resilience from a Burn

Survivor.

After experiencing tremendous tragedy throughout her life, Lees has been able to turn her

life into one of meaning.

This is her story.

The story begins at age four.

My family, we were on a vacation, and my mother was going to start the barbecue that night.

And she grabbed what she thought was lighter fluid, but what was not lighter fluid.

And she poured this substance over charcoal and went to light the fire.

And I was standing right next to her when she did this and the charcoal

didn't light so she grabbed that same fluid and poured it back over the coals

again and in that moment a tiny little flame shot up through the can and

exploded all over both my mother and me.

...