Breaking Generational Trauma & Mental Health Barriers - Dr. Toni Boulware Stackhouse

In this powerful episode of TEEM Leadership Radio, host Dr. Cecelia Martin sits down with Dr. Toni Boulware Stackhouse, aka Dr. Tabs, a licensed counseling psychologist and founder of Life Matters Wellness. Together, they dive into critical mental health topics, including trauma recovery, therapy, and breaking generational cycles of poverty and instability.

Dr. Tabs shares her personal journey, from overcoming homelessness to becoming a sought-after mental health expert, and provides insights into the importance of faith, therapy, and self-care for caregivers.

Resources from Dr. Tabs:
Manifest Your Vision 
Trauma Informed Care for Caregivers – A must-read for anyone in a caregiving role Connect with Dr.Tabs' Website: https://www.lifematterswellness.com

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Team Leadership Radio, your resource for inspiration and
partner and transformation. We are here to train, equip, empower,
and mobilize you into your purpose. Are you ready to
take charge of your life and your career than settle
in the world of weights. Let's unlock the leader in you.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to Team Leadership Radio and Podcasts. I'm your host,
Doctor Cecilia Martin. Today I have with me Tony bowl
Ware stack House aka Doctor Tabs. She's known as a
counseling psychologist. She is a licensed clinical professional and counselor
for the state of Maryland and currently seeking multi state
licenses in DC, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Doctor Tabs is the

(00:43):
founder and operator of Life Matters Wellness, where she specializes
in helping individuals, couples, and families to heal from the
past and current trauma, anxiety, depression. She is certified in
cognitive processing therapy and EMDR, which are evidence based treatment
models for those with mental health concerns. Doctor Tabbs believes

(01:05):
that therapy is both healing and empowering for those who
are willing to engage in the process. You'll want to
know about her most recent book, Manifest Your Vision Now.
She is also the author of it Don't Make No
Sense Not to Trust God and the other book Trauma
Informed Care for Caregivers. Doctor Tabbs is a graduate of

(01:27):
the Leadership Baltimore County Class of twenty twenty one. She's
on the board of directors for the Family Crisis Center
in Maryland, who houses families experiencing homelessness due to domestic violence.
She's on the Patient Advisory Committee at the Upper Chesapeake
Hospital in Berlaiir and that's Berlair, Maryland, and teaching as
at Junct FIU Faculty for Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine.

(01:52):
Doctor Tabbs is the co founder of a New Life
Ministries alongside her husband, Elder Andrews back House, the third
Not Just Have This, highly sought after to conduct mental
health workshops and presentations for churches as well as corporate
and nonprofit industries. She is subscribed as a passionate, relatable

(02:13):
and authentic leader. Please welcome, author, counseling, psychologist, life coach, entrepreneur,
conference and retreat hosts. Doctor t.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
Yes, You're did and you did an eloquence.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Thank you for joining me today.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
Thank you for having me. I appreciate you having me.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yes, I really want to dive right in and just
learn more about you and pick your brain about this
crucial topic of mental health concerns and issues that seems
to be plaguing all of us today. But first, before
we get started, tell me a little bit about your family.
I know you have two sons and two grandsons, a
daughter in love. But what was life like growing up

(02:57):
for you as a child?

Speaker 4 (02:59):
Okay, So I am the oldest. It's four of us.
So I have three siblings and we're all stair steps.
So I have a brother right behind me, and then
I have a sister, and then I have another So
I have two sisters after me. So well, yeah, after me.
So I am the oldest of two sisters and one brother.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
Oh wow. Okay, and my parents raised us.

Speaker 4 (03:20):
My parents celebrate fifty They will celebrate fifty eight years
of marriage this year, so we are excited about that.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
So, yes, while you were.

Speaker 4 (03:30):
Raised in a Christian home and our house, two things
were espoused for us, Jesus and education. And you're gonna
have both of those things, and you're gonna have both others.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
You was going to have both of those things.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
Look, whether you wanted it or whether you and I
think I've lived long enough to say I've wanted it
and I've not wanted it.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
And then I determined.

Speaker 4 (03:53):
That it was better for me, for us that they
raised us in this way. So what I always say
to people, I've seen both transform all of our lives,
me and my siblings' lives.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Okay, now, did you think that growing up Christian was
too strict?

Speaker 3 (04:10):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (04:10):
Yeah, it was too strict, because let me tell you
why it was too strict. So my mom then my
mom just retired as a pastor. But then she was
the minister of music there so and my dad he
was leadership over the boy Scout unit. And so if
you can imagine parents and leadership roles. We were at
church all the time. It probably was one day during

(04:31):
the week that we weren't in church, and Sundays was
an all day you know, back in the day, Sundays
was you was in church all day, all day, all day.
We was raised in a Baptist church, so it was
like we got teased in our neighborhood because all we
did was go to church and it wasn't optional in
our house. It only became optional when you turned eighteen.
When you turn eighteen, you could determine whether you wanted

(04:52):
to go to church or you didn't. So of course,
the minute I turned eighteen, I wasn't going.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
And my proclamation was I wasn't ever going to get because.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
I felt like this was just way too much.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yeah, I remember the days I was raised in church,
and we were in Church of God in Christ at
the time.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
Okay, and back then there was like.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
No pants, no red nail polish, couldn't show your shoulders,
no sin.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
It was like wait, what, Yeah, we couldn't do that.

Speaker 4 (05:22):
We could wear pants, but we couldn't do the red,
like couldn't wear red undergarments, red polish, red lipstick.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
And which we now know has nothing to do.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
And has nothing with John Well. So you don't know
that until you get you grow older and gain an
understanding for yourself.

Speaker 4 (05:39):
Right, And even my parents say they didn't know either.
They were doing what was taught to them.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
So right, exactly, you kind of live and learn because
you learn, and then as a parent it's like I
know now that my mom had to be doing the
best she could with what she had, because lord, I
know I'm doing the same as a pant absolutely, But
you listen, you don't learn that raising until you get
your own kids. Right, you got so much to say
about what they did and what they didn't do, And

(06:05):
the minute you get some kids, you'd be like, oh, right,
look you find some grace real quick, real quick, real
que real quick.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
And as the oldest, you know, the older is the
next parent.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, and it's like and then you get through that
when you're like, oh, we all of those stuff don't matter.
They not gonna die. They eat a cookie off.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
The floor and absolutely absolutely, But what.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
Drew you to the field of psychology when you see
yourself today, was this something that you had planned to do?
Was this your childhood dream or was there maybe a
life event that led you to say, one day I
grew up, I'm gonna I'm gonna tackle this issue.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (06:45):
So the church that I talked about us growing up,
they did have a counseling center. Back then, they kind
of did things in a non traditional way. They had
like pastoral counselors and my mother was one of them,
and so she did counseling. So I think counseling was
because I know it's a gift. Now I know that
it is a gift. It was drawn like people were

(07:06):
always drawn to me, even when I was younger, growing up,
No matter where I was in life, no matter even
if my life was in shambles, somebody gonna find me
and talk to me about their life and ask me advice.
And I would say to myself and they would know
what was going on in my life, and I would
be like.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
Why in the world are you asking me? Right?

Speaker 2 (07:25):
But I mean, but you learned later that the gifts
that you had, if they work right, and that's why
developing them are important because then you don't want to
operate in a way that's not effective.

Speaker 3 (07:38):
So let me go back to my career.

Speaker 4 (07:41):
My trajectory started working with the population of people experiencing homelessness,
individuals and families, and it started because of my own
testimony to me and my daughter. I had relocated to
Atlanta or moved to Atlanta and then wind up getting
sick and losing my job and wind up in the
homeless shelter, and I did not want to return home because.

Speaker 3 (08:04):
I felt like it was a failed I was a failure.

Speaker 4 (08:06):
Like I said to my parents, I wanted to move
to Atlanta, and I felt like God was needing me
to do that and then for all of those things
to happen. But something interesting happened while I was in
the shelter. God had given me a vision of opening
transitional housing for people experiencing homelessness and for individuals and families.
And so when I did the call my dad and

(08:29):
took on the shame of failing and coming back home,
you know, my dad want to fix everything though, Just
come go home.

Speaker 3 (08:35):
It's going to be okay.

Speaker 4 (08:36):
I immediately found a job at a shelter, and I
worked my way up from what we call a program
assistant is a direct care person working in the shelter,
to twenty five years well twenty some years later being
a division director for homeless services, managing homeless services programs
in Baltimore City and Baltimore County for a nonprofit in Baltimore.

(08:58):
And so, but that trajectory was all planned out by God.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
I could not have done that.

Speaker 4 (09:04):
But in doing that, I've gained a lot of experience
working with individuals experience and homelessness and trying to strategically
plan with my team as it relates to trying to
decrease recidivism. We had a lot of clients come through
our programs, and we had robust programs that we had
developed to help people get life skills and all of
these things that we thought was important for them to

(09:25):
be able to gain housing stability, like job it, employement
stability and all of those things. And it was just
something that was missing. It was like, why do we
help people get into these houses? And we spent millions
of dollars rehousing them and then within the year they
lost their housing, They not sustained their housing anymore.

Speaker 3 (09:45):
They returned to the shelters. And it's like, I don't
know if you anything like me.

Speaker 4 (09:49):
I don't want to feel like I'm spending wheels, right,
I want to feel like whatever I'm doing, I'm making
an impact in the earth. I'm solving a problem, because
that's what God promised that we will would be a
solution to a problem. Right, So if we are doing something,
then it's not working. We got to figure out, like,
what's happening. So I just started doing some research. And

(10:10):
one of the things that remained consistent with a lot
of people that wind up in.

Speaker 3 (10:14):
The shelters that I operated was that it was the
mental health. It was the mental health.

Speaker 4 (10:20):
The thing about homelessness is when we originally think about
homeless we think about people who being mental health and
living on the street, and people that are like ostracized
from their families. But what we were seeing was ordinary people.

Speaker 3 (10:33):
People who had had jobs, people who had good families,
people had degrees, people who were saved.

Speaker 4 (10:40):
All different kinds of people were coming through the shelters,
and so it was like, what is it that is
preventing them? Because along with those people, there are other
people who have mental health issues and substance abuse issues,
and they can maintain their housing. But what's different about
this population of people, and it is that people stuff
trauma and sometimes people don't know that they've suffered trauma,

(11:03):
and they don't know that that is the thing that's
preventing them from being able to maintain employment stability and
housing stability and all of those things that will help
them to be able to have a full life of stability.
And so people get accustomed to living in shelters, and
it's sometimes we've seen like generations.

Speaker 3 (11:21):
We've seen my mama and with her.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
Kids coming, then a couple of years later we done
seen her daughter then came.

Speaker 3 (11:28):
It's generational generational as it relates to.

Speaker 2 (11:32):
That's really shocking to some degree because I had Calvin Williams,
he's a former NFL player on here about a year ago,
and he was talking about he and his wife, I think,
bought a few homes in Baltimore and flipped them and
so that the low income people of that community could
stay in their community and versus the traditional gentrification process

(11:54):
pretty much push the regulars the community out. So and
he was saying though, how many of them were not
prepared for home ownership. To his surprise, it was harder
than he thought it would be. And so just hearing
you talk about that, my question is, is poverty also
a mentality or a mental health issue or is it

(12:16):
beyond financial literacy and needing a hand up?

Speaker 4 (12:20):
Is Yeah, I think it's a number of factors that
play into this. I think a lot of it is generational.
I don't think that poverty is it is a mentality.
But I also believe that it's a spirit. Poverty is
a it's a spirit, and I think that that's passed
down from generation to generation. I think that if you
don't expose people to certain things, people what you don't know,

(12:42):
you don't know, and the reason why I say poverty
is a spirit is because I mean, you know, my
parents raised us and we didn't have everything that we
wanted and all of that, my parents struggled sometimes there
was lack, but the difference between that was my parents
taught us and they exposed us today different things that
made us want different things in life. So it's a

(13:03):
combination of it's generational. Like if you watched your parents
not half stable housing and they didn't expose you to
things that would help you to understand that this is
you don't.

Speaker 3 (13:15):
Have to live like this, then you don't know that you.

Speaker 4 (13:18):
Think this is all there is to life. So I
think it's a spirit. I think it's generational.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
It's lack of education and exposure. If you don't know,
you just don't know.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
I'm gonna play that was advocate because there's a lot
in Christianity. You know what spiritual or demonic versus what
is mental health? And that that debate goes back and forth,
or what's absolute reality or a generational deficit if you will,
just like you know, you know, those who of course
had slavery and other types of you know, marginalized communities

(13:51):
or what have you. And I remember being in church
one time, and back in the day when it was
very very very Pentecostal okay, hand clapping with around turning
phillips and church, and they would have the deliverance stuff happening.
And I remember being in college attending one of those
services and they were quote unquote casting out demons. I'm

(14:11):
not saying that I don't believe in all of that.
I'm just like, this is what was happening at the moment.
And I'm not one of my friends in college saying
that girl ain't demon possessed, she's just sleep depride, you know,
Like that's not a spirit that's like now, what people
will say is a mental health issue. So how are
you for those who are believers of the faith or

(14:32):
in Christianity, how do you begin to distinguish what is
what it's said to be spiritual and from a Christian
perspective or a religious perspective versus what is a mental
health issue whether you are in religion or not.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
So this is a thing. There are different ways that
people experience mental health issues. Some of it can be spiritual,
some of it can be physical.

Speaker 4 (15:00):
Right, I see people all the time who are like
there are some people who have like a diagnosis that
can cause them to get depressed or cause them to
be anxious. Right, So that is a way that people
have experienced mental health by way of a medical diagnosis. Also,
people there are some people who have chemical imbalances, so

(15:21):
that could be genetic.

Speaker 3 (15:23):
Right, So there are many ways.

Speaker 4 (15:25):
Then there are people who have had traumatic experiences in
life and they start to experience mental health issues because
of those experiences. So there are many different ways that
people can experience mental health issues, and so spiritual can
be a demonic entry way could be one, right, but

(15:48):
there are multiple ways that people can start to experience
mental health.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Okay, so you can't say it's.

Speaker 4 (15:54):
All one way, right, Well, we know that all sickness
and illnesses, indeed disease come from the enemy. So if
you take away like the track, the way that you
get there, the bottom line is it all comes from him. Right,
It doesn't matter which way, but it doesn't mean that
it all.

Speaker 3 (16:11):
Comes from that way. It's a lot of it is
life experienced.

Speaker 4 (16:14):
A lot of people are dealing with a lot of things, right, Yeah,
a lot of pressure, people have had lots of experiences,
people have dealt with trauma.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
In their childhood unresolved, right.

Speaker 4 (16:28):
Right, We all have, right, and then grow have some
other trauma that's triggering to that trauma, right, which we
call compound the trauma. So it's a lot of things
in life that causes people to deal with to experience
mental health. And all of us could have any of
us could have any issues with mental health if we
are not careful not to address it.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
So as you talk about the church, right, because we
have this thing about is this a spiritual thing or
is it them all?

Speaker 4 (16:57):
Whatever it is, we think that we want to be
able to deal with it that way or not deal
with it like that way.

Speaker 3 (17:04):
Right. So in the church for years with the people
say if they've seen people that have mental health issues,
just pray or like you.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
Said, right right, they go to the opposite way too, like, no,
they have a mental health issue. You just can't pull
all over their head and then tell right, be a professional.

Speaker 3 (17:21):
They do they do.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
Now, this is the thing I want want to be
on mads or something.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
Right, I say that the two work together. And what
we've done is put the two against each other. Right.

Speaker 4 (17:31):
We have put the prayer, the spiritual side, against the
clinical and it doesn't work. Like that we can marry
those two and put those two together. Especially if you
have somebody who has a spiritual background or have spiritual beliefs,
you definitely want to incorporate that into their treatment plan, right,
because that's important to them. Now, I do have clients

(17:53):
that I see that have mental health issues that don't
have the spiritual component. So then I'm able to address
them or how them just in a clinical way. But
the best way for me, and I say my best
work is marrying those two, the clinical and the spiritual.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
Because they both go together.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
I'm gonna challenge you a little bit. Go ahead, please
please don't fight me and the professional If I came
to you and I'm not a Christian, but let's say
I have a different spiritual belief do you still incorporate
their spiritual let's say their Buddhists for example, do you
still incorporate their spiritual component into there.

Speaker 3 (18:32):
I have to.

Speaker 4 (18:33):
I have to, and I say this to people all
the time to know, yeah, I work with I am
an approved supervisor for the State of Maryland, so I
provise a supervision for new clinicians, and one of the
things I say to them is my personal beliefs don't
have nothing to do with this as it relates to
a client, right, Sure, what I.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
Believe, whatever it is, My judgments don't belong here. So
people have to me they don't believe in God, I'm
going to provide her. I'm going to give them services.

Speaker 4 (19:04):
Right, And if they have different beliefs, and I've had
people who have had different beliefs, you just have to
help them to incorporate what they believe, sure, right, in
the same way that I would that somebody that I
share the same.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
Belief Okay, I was testing you as a professional.

Speaker 3 (19:22):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, because.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
You know when you go into a doctor's office, that's
an ethical thing though, Yeah, it is ethical, yeah, yeah,
And they.

Speaker 3 (19:31):
Teach us that we can't you can't.

Speaker 4 (19:33):
I can't just serve all the people that are believers
and those kind of things. Now, there are things that
I can say that I don't want to do because
they might impact me in a certain way, I see, right,
Like there are some therapists that would say they won't
see like pedophiles.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
I see right, okay, right.

Speaker 4 (19:53):
Or criminals who participate in sexual crimes. So it just
depends on what you and it This is the thing
about your own self awareness. You gotta know that so
that you know where you have to draw your line.

Speaker 2 (20:07):
Right exactly, and you know these are Mental health is
such an important issue today and it's it's man, we
could we could really dissect this, I mean for hours
and hours. But here are some interesting status is that
one point six million adults attempted suicide in twenty twenty two. Okay,
fifty thousand of them roughly succeeded. It's even higher for

(20:32):
just adults in general who have either mental behavior or
emotional disorders. That number is nearly sixty million. And then
it's higher among females.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
Okay versus yes, And then go to the color, and
then to.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
The color and then to the young folks. Yes, I mean,
it's just where thirty six percent of them are all
experiencing some type of emotional.

Speaker 3 (20:57):
Disorder or shrepp. What do you say, how did we
get here? What do you think is that the root
of this?

Speaker 2 (21:04):
I mean, as a society, we're doing something wrong, because
I know there are other countries that are a little
less stressed than the United States.

Speaker 4 (21:12):
Yeah, you think about so when you get to the
point of suicide, when you get to the point of
being suicidal.

Speaker 3 (21:18):
You've really lost all hope.

Speaker 4 (21:19):
Oh, Like you feel hopeless, right, And if you feel hopeless,
there is a lot that needs to happen to get
you back to a place of there is hope about
my situation. You look at what's happening in the world,
and it's a lot of things that could make people
feel hopeless about what's.

Speaker 3 (21:38):
Happening in the world. And that's what I mean.

Speaker 4 (21:41):
And you and I started off talking about the social
media thing. I had a number of young scients. I
get a lot of young adolescents like seventeen up to
twenty something, and as you said, mostly women who say,
it seems like everybody in the world is successful and
I'm not. And so my question is where do you
get that information from?

Speaker 3 (22:02):
Oh, on social media?

Speaker 4 (22:03):
Everybody, I say, if you don't turn that social media off.
So here I am turn that social media off. For
that's the first thing I tell them. Get off of
social media because if you are not emotionally stable, it's
not a good place for you. Because what people don't
understand is social media is a depiction of what people

(22:24):
want to show in their life, and nobody is showing
failures in their life. Nobody is showing the days where
they feel hopeless. And then their relationships. They not showing
what they just got into an argument or divorced or whatever.
Nobody is showing that kind of stuff at the same
rate that people are showing at depicting that I'm happy.

Speaker 3 (22:45):
Right, So it's even a false set.

Speaker 4 (22:48):
Yeah, even if they do, they do, it's at a
smaller it's at a smaller.

Speaker 3 (22:51):
Rate, That's what I'm saying. It's on there. But the
rate that everybody is depicting a happy picture. I'm good,
I'm all good, everything is good.

Speaker 4 (23:00):
That is at a significantly higher rate than all of
the other things. So you're gonna catch all of the
good stuff. And if you're a person that is unstable
and where you are, then you're gonna feel and adequate.
You're gonna feel like, oh, my life is worthless. And
so the first thing I tell people to do is
get Also, do you a thirty day fast of social media,

(23:22):
and let's build you up some so you can handle that.
But right now, you can't handle that because I assure you,
everybody that's making you think that they're like, nobody's life
is perfect. Nobody's life is from the pull pit to
the door. Nobody's life is so. And you know, in
the church, we are big at depicting a picture, right,
we are good at depicting the picture.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
Listen, we probably are the better. We are the better
at depicting a picture.

Speaker 4 (23:49):
God, I think that things is one way when really
behind the scenes not which is given a sense of
falseness to people. Because think about it, when people come
to the church, which the church is support supposed to
be a place where I can come and bear my burdens,
right and back in the day it used to be
that way. You could come and be at the altar.
But if everybody is trying to make it seem like

(24:09):
everything is okay and my life is perfect and this
is this and this is this, then why would I
feel comfortable coming in and going to the altar when
I need to. I don't think that the space is creating.
The safe space that is needed has not been created.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
Yeah, and you know, social media isn't a safe space.

Speaker 3 (24:25):
It's not absolutely not Like what I have.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
Surmises that the kids, the social media information is coming
to them and they're looking at it for a source
of confidence, and you know they're relating to people to
an extreme, you know, extent where they actually think they
know these people just from what they see these clips
online or what have you. And when we grew up,

(24:50):
we grew into the technology. Like I said my first email,
you know, oh, we can communicate like a foster. What Yeah,
And we were using and still to a great extent
this generation we're you know, my generation, we're using it
for information. We tell it what.

Speaker 4 (25:09):
We want, we want absolutely, and now it's informing them
what they want and what they need.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
Absolutely. You know. It's controlling. It's controlling, and you don't
really realize how much it is until somebody points it
out to you. Because when I say to my client
who is.

Speaker 4 (25:28):
Young and frustrated because of what they feel like social
media is informing them, they really get an aha moment and.

Speaker 3 (25:36):
Be like, oh my god, you all right?

Speaker 2 (25:39):
Yeah, because because I also go to this, what.

Speaker 4 (25:42):
Do you put on social media? Because you hear talking
about how your life is not good? But what do
you put on social media? Because you putting good stuff
on so somebody else is getting good stuff from right,
but you're not putting on there that you feel hopeless
and you feel depressed, and you feel anxious. You're not
putting that on. And so when I go through that trajectory,

(26:02):
then it's.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
Like oh, and then a light bulb go off, and
then they understand you gotta put social media in its
proper context right and has its place, but you got
to understand what it's for the and you've got to
know the.

Speaker 3 (26:17):
Positive and the negative to it.

Speaker 4 (26:19):
And just like you and I talked about at some
different points in your life, you got to be like, I.

Speaker 3 (26:22):
Need a break, I need to turn it down.

Speaker 4 (26:24):
That needs just log out of it because the notifications
are driving me crazy.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
Yeah, I know, tell me about it.

Speaker 3 (26:31):
Well.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
Then the other part of this too is you know,
because we got to we gotta look at both sides
of the coin. Absolutely has mental health. The term mental
health has it become a blanket for a poor character,
bad behavior, bad choice, I mean, absentee parenting, whatever you
want to call it. I mean absolutely to some extent.

(26:52):
It's like where will we find a balance at some
point because now everything is a mental health issue.

Speaker 4 (26:58):
Yeah, and everything is not right. Everything is not Some
of it is just poor choices, all of it is
not just like so mental health really is like a
buzzword now just like people want to say everybody is narcissistic, right,
this is a narcissist. I'm like, you can't like just.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
A special people. I've studied them. Yes, That's why I.

Speaker 4 (27:20):
Say to people like you can't just put a dictos,
even though they might have because they be like, no,
I googled it and I saw the symptoms, and like,
you can't do that. I think that people we live
in a world now and in a time that people
don't want to be held accountable, right, And because people
don't want to be held accountable, that's where we get
the whole lump and everything into mental health.

Speaker 3 (27:40):
No, they just don't want to be accountable. You're not being.

Speaker 4 (27:43):
A father, don't have anything to do if you having
a mental health. You just don't want to be accountable.
You don't want to make the sacrifices that father is made.
Like the tabs has spoken.

Speaker 3 (27:54):
But that's what it is. You just don't want to
do that.

Speaker 4 (27:57):
And so you can't say the person has a mental
illness because they don't want to be a father or
they lack the ability to do that. I mean that
there are probably some people who are not fathers or
mothers because of mental health. But all that's not a
blanket statement that you can say across the board, which
is what people are saying.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
Yeah, and I personally believe all roads lead back to
a father. I saw that, I'm about to challenge you
or that, So tell me about that, tell me about
that that theory that you're in mean in a therapy session, yes, yes,
tell me about that. Well, you know, I wasn't prepared

(28:36):
for therapy today, but I'm thoroughly convinced that all roads
lead back to a father, a positive or negative father figure.
Like that's where the breakdown begins because I think that
every child, the mothers seem to always be pretty prevalent,

(28:59):
you know, like there for children and we're clear about
what their roles are. But I think over the years,
we have left the father and the need for them
out of the equation now. And I'm saying that from
my experiences, from experiences from both male and females, at
the end of the day, they traced their issues back

(29:21):
to their father or the absentee father or not knowing
him or and I don't know, I don't know how
to basically articulate it, but I think that there's an
anchor there that's needed, that's missing because the woman has
had to carry so much. When I because I divorced
my children's father, oh, they were still in elementary and

(29:42):
middle school back in twenty twelve, and I didn't want
to for them because without my father. Okay, however, I
had to weigh, you know, the circumstances.

Speaker 3 (29:57):
Absolutely, But be that as it may, I.

Speaker 2 (29:59):
Do feel that they are missing something by not having
a male, a positive role, male model in their life.
And I think that is the case. It seems to
be for every single person that I've encountered, whether it's
a male or a female. And I think that we've
left let fathers off the hook with showing up and

(30:21):
parenting and having a voice and being present and all
of that stuff that's necessary. And you know, people used
to say to me after I got divorced, Happy Father's Day.
I didn't like that because I can't be mother and father.
I can only you can only be a And I'm
glad that people seem to stop that, because I didn't
believe they were doing it for a time, and then

(30:42):
it seemed like they stopped.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
Yeah, you can't be a father, you.

Speaker 2 (30:47):
No more than a father can be a mother. Right,
So I think that's what's wrong with the world today.

Speaker 3 (30:53):
I agree to some to a certain extent.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
I don't think that we can trace mental health back
to fathers solely.

Speaker 3 (31:03):
I do believe that I do believe that fathers are
very intricate in the lives of children, and that if
they are not present, there are going to be some
things that are missing because by virtue of the fact
that God gave us fathers, right, we show that we
need them. Fathers. Uh, they tell us who we are, right,

(31:24):
they affirm who we are.

Speaker 4 (31:26):
That's why we carry their last name and other things
that they do for us. That and that's male and female, right.
So how it plays out in your life with the
absence of a father's different in male and female.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
It does not equal mental health. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
Because this is the thing I think, well, I go
it goes back to it perpetuates a cycle of unhealthiness.
For example, like we'll absent here, it is my brother
who's just thirteen months older than me, is expected to
take a role that he absolutely and he can't.

Speaker 3 (32:02):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
Expectation of so many men today and also for the
women who are ill treated is because they don't have
a father, protecting them, covering them.

Speaker 4 (32:14):
Listen, if you're saying about the absence of a father,
I agree with you. One of the questions I asked
when a woman comes to therapy and she talks about
things that's happened in relationships of I'm already knowing what's happening.
I can tell when somebody is you was raised without
a father, But I'm gonna ask tell me about your
relationship with your father, and I'm gonna get the whole

(32:35):
story behind what is happening. But it doesn't equate to
It doesn't necessarily mean that the person is going to
have mental health issues because of it.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
You see what I'm saying.

Speaker 4 (32:46):
There are a lot of women and men who were
raised without their fathers and they are emotionally well.

Speaker 3 (32:54):
So I don't think that we could go ahead.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
Do you ask the same I wonder if how many
counselors asked the same question of a man to suc
I do. So this is the basis of my question.

Speaker 4 (33:06):
I ask people in general, tell me about how were
you raised, who raised you? Tell me about the same
question you asked me, because that is going to tell
me a lot about why you struggling in the areas
that you struggle. Listen, my job is to help bring
some resolution to what problem you bring, right, and the

(33:26):
way that we get there is to go to the
root of that. And a lot of the problems that
we have is stems from childhood, some type of experience
that we had right or did not have, and that
could be because.

Speaker 3 (33:41):
A mom or dad.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
True, very true.

Speaker 3 (33:45):
Yeah, So that's what I'm saying. We can't just say
that people got mental health because of that, because we
could trace it back to the day it could be.

Speaker 4 (33:51):
It's a lot of people. I've treated a lot of
people that got mental health issues because of that mom.
I'm not going to say because of but because of
the experience that they have with the mom, and this
is the way that they have processed through or not
processed through, and it has equated to some mental health problems.

Speaker 3 (34:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
And you also talked about those who have clinical depression,
because I have art in my family like that where
there's a chemical.

Speaker 3 (34:15):
Chemical imbalance, and that's what we are medication.

Speaker 4 (34:19):
There was no trauma, they just have physical But this
is the thing you can have. You can have like
some people can have high blood pressure or some type
of physical ailment that could cause the chemical imbalance, or
sometimes people take other kind of medications that helps with
something else that helps to create a chemical imbalance. And
how you treat that is what a chemical which is

(34:40):
the medication. Which is why I'm not one hundred percent
against medication as it relates to treatment mental health. I
do subscribe to that as a last resort. Right, if
we try to work through trauma like we do trauma treatment,
and if there's if trauma exists and we're able to
work through through it and you're given tools and you're

(35:02):
able to manage in this way, and we see significant
decrease and symptoms, right, then we'll need medication. But if
we go to medication first, then we don't know what
we could have done. Right, And now you're on medication
and the likelihood of you coming off of medication is
probably not.

Speaker 3 (35:19):
It decreases that.

Speaker 4 (35:20):
Whereas if we start with just a clinical part of
it and deal with treatment, then I say to clients,
I think now when you might want to.

Speaker 3 (35:29):
Consider medication, well, it's work.

Speaker 2 (35:32):
Like you said, it's definitely work. Listen, that's how people
don't want to do it. Now, just give me the pill, please.

Speaker 4 (35:38):
That's why people don't want to do it. People come
to therapy is work. That's why I commend the clients
that stay with.

Speaker 3 (35:44):
It because it's worked. But let me say this to you.

Speaker 4 (35:47):
One of the things that people gain from therapy is
the empowerment of themselves. A lot of times when by
the time people come to therapy, they don't feel empowered.
They feel stopped and stagnated in life, not able to
move forward. The greatest gif you give yourself is an
opportunity to move past that. And the reason why you

(36:09):
come to therapy is because you have tried it to
do to resolve it on your own, and you're not
able to do that, and so you come and you
seek help and you should. That's like you keep getting
headaches and you keep taking talent on and you're not thinking,
I could have high blood pressures. I need to go
to my primary key, right. So we partner with our
primary kere.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
Doctors when we have physical ailments and we are less
we are apprehensive about partnering with a mental health person
to help us with our emotional and mental needs. Do
you think everyone needs a therapist?

Speaker 3 (36:42):
I did I have a therapist? Yeah? I believe everybody did.

Speaker 4 (36:45):
I think that if you live longer life enough, life
will certainly show up in your life in a way
that you need some help to kind of navigate through that. Yeah,
I think that everybody do. And that doesn't mean that
you don't have to be in therapy forever. Like I've
been in therapy. I have a therapist. So if I
ever get to a place where I feel like I
need it, I can trigger that. I can make a

(37:05):
center text message like I need that's my life raf.
I can throw that out and say, listen, I need
to process through some things. Right, But what happens if
we think we don't because this is think about the
stigma attached to getting mental health treatment, especially in the
African American community. Then top it off in the African
American church, right, which is changing, And I think the

(37:27):
pandemic is responsible for it changing. But it's changing at
a galacial pace, not as fast as it needs to
because there are many people sitting on the pews, there
are many people in leadership in churches that have mental
health issues, and people don't know.

Speaker 3 (37:41):
People think that they just gonna pray, and this is
we got to address the issues.

Speaker 2 (37:46):
Yeah. Yeah, And I think like you said, the perception
is changing, which is it is?

Speaker 3 (37:52):
It is.

Speaker 4 (37:53):
It's been a lot of dialogue and conversations about it
since the pandemic. So it's changing, and I'm seeing a
lot of people come to therapy, especially African American people.
The problem is, and so now that everything is changing,
right and people want to go to therapy, the problem
now is won't have enough African American therapists to meet
the needs of the people. Because what everybody wants, all

(38:16):
of us want.

Speaker 3 (38:17):
I mean, people want.

Speaker 4 (38:18):
To go to people who are similar to them, who
can understand, and I don't got to explain a whole
lot to you.

Speaker 3 (38:24):
I can just give you my stuff and not explain
the culture stuff.

Speaker 4 (38:28):
Extra therapists, because I see all people, you are responsible
for knowing other cultures and learning other cultures and keeping
up with other cultures so that you can provide that
same level of therapy to everybody.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
But as the client, the context matters, right, And.

Speaker 3 (38:48):
As the client, you get to choose if you want
African American, right, You get to choose if you want Caucasian,
you get to choose if you want agent, whatever you want.
You get to choose that.

Speaker 2 (38:58):
Yeah, you know, speaking of of the pandemic. A lot
of people experience a lot of loss now when global
globally and before the pandemic, I oh, my gosh, I
lost so many people that I loved before I couldn't
even pointed at some you know, global crisis that was

(39:21):
turning my world upside down. I lost two grandfathers, grandmother.
All of these are the matriarchs and patriots of the family. Uncle, cousin,
cousin's daughter, my father got day. And it got to
a point to where it was like, Okay, I've met
my quota, right, I said, I don't have the capacity

(39:46):
to even go to anybody else's funeral or to hear
about somebody else die. And it happened.

Speaker 4 (39:51):
And you see how you cut it off, how you
said I don't have the capacity. Yes, that's important for
people to understand what their capacity is.

Speaker 3 (40:00):
Right.

Speaker 4 (40:00):
A lot of people don't know that. They just keep
going and keep going and going. That's how people have breakdown.
You got to understand what your capacity is. And you
got to be okay saying I've met my capacity. I've
met my capacity.

Speaker 3 (40:11):
Yeah, you have to be okay with that.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
All of that death happened, and then the pandemic and
so yeah, it's compounded, right, And then it got to
a point to where when I realized how much I
lost and the physical and emotional exhaustion of caring for
these people too right up into death because we don't

(40:34):
in my family, we don't believe nobody dies alone.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
Okay, and that's important.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
I'm they're holding my grandparents' hand, my father, and so
it's it. But then it was like I felt like
I had been run over by an eighteen wheeler because.

Speaker 3 (40:50):
You had in the emotional world. Yeah, so what did
you do or how did you work through that?

Speaker 2 (40:57):
Slowly? Okay, okay, that's good, and just taking some quiet
time to myself, like that's so imperative to me, just
to hear my own thoughts, like no one talking to me,
just sitting quietly to myself and really honing in sort
of on my inner voice. And also you know, talking

(41:17):
to people you know. And it wasn't easy, and that's
why I wanted to focus on your book and some
key takeaways from the Informed Care in.

Speaker 3 (41:25):
Form care for caregivers, Yes, yes, caregivers.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
Because in essence that's what it is.

Speaker 3 (41:30):
You know, absolutely.

Speaker 4 (41:33):
You can't give and if you a caregiving for somebody
who is transitioning, you're dealing with anticipatory grief.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
Anticipatory grief, Yeah, that's real.

Speaker 4 (41:44):
Because you're anticipating when are they going to go? And
it's like, in some instance as a caregiver, the burden
can be so great that you're like, Okay, can we
hurry up and get this old? But then you feel
guilty because it's like you're getting to the point where
you're saying, I've met my capacity.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
I met my capacity. And then one of the unanticipated
outcomes was smells and sounds like of a truck backing up,
because that reminds me of a hospital monitor. You know,
things like that that I'm triggering. That's triggering. So what
do you say for what is this about informed care

(42:21):
or trauma informed care for caregivers?

Speaker 3 (42:23):
What is that about?

Speaker 4 (42:24):
So if the basis is people don't understand that the
whole role of being a caregiver is traumatic, right, and
so really just for the caregiver to be informed about
the trauma that goes along with being a caregiver, and
that's that's it in a nutshell. But it's really bringing
awareness to the fact that caregivers really need to do

(42:46):
better with caring for themselves, because research show that caregivers
often get sick and die my Lord before the people
that they care for. Because I will take you to
all your appointments, I will make sure you got your prescriptions,
I will make sure you do right, I will make

(43:09):
sure you got all of the things that you need.
But I won't make sure I do all those things
for me because I don't have time.

Speaker 2 (43:16):
At least in my mind, I.

Speaker 3 (43:17):
Think I don't have time.

Speaker 4 (43:19):
But if you think of it as if you don't
have time, you won't have time.

Speaker 3 (43:25):
And if you.

Speaker 4 (43:25):
Don't have time, then that's the demise of you as
a caregiver. And so it's all things about the person
itself as it relates to caregiving self care, what you
need to do to take care of yourself. It's helping
people understand, like I've helped people understand that you don't
have to do everything. I'm big on outsourcing things. If

(43:47):
you can bring somebody in to clean your house, let
pay somebody clean your house. And if you can't pay
for it, talk to other family members who are not
being a part of the care team to have them
come in a day or two and come and clean up.
Since you're not helping with transportation to appointments or meals
or something like that, Can you at least come in
and do some launchry.

Speaker 3 (44:07):
Can you come in and do this?

Speaker 4 (44:09):
Can you like outsource and stuff where people don't feel
like they gotta stretch themselves because the thing is everything
that that person needs has to get done, and sometimes
one person feels like well and they don't necessarily feel
like it. It always usually falls on one person and
everybody else.

Speaker 3 (44:26):
Just tell you what a good job you doing? Yeah,
and don't think about that. You don't need to be
doing it by.

Speaker 4 (44:32):
Yourself because the person that you care for, you ain't
the only care the person that love them. There's a
whole lot of people that love them, right, But think
about it, it's always you one person that's stuck until
you have to solicit help from people. And then sometimes
that's not all. That's not always consistent, so you got
to find ways.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
To make it so that you could be Wow.

Speaker 4 (44:55):
Sometimes caregiving is like you talked about, you did this
for certain people in your family. It's for a certain season,
so it don't last forever, right, But when it's over,
I don't want to be in such.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
Dire condition that I can't live my life because I
didn't take care of myself when I was taking.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
Care of people, right, Yeah, So.

Speaker 4 (45:13):
It's important that you take care of yourself because it
might not be a lifetime since for some people they
are it is a long term.

Speaker 3 (45:19):
Situation, but in a lot of cases it's not.

Speaker 4 (45:22):
And if it's not, you want to make sure you
have done the work to care for yourself along the
way so that you are well when that assignment is complete.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
Yeah, it's it's really something to think about because, like
you said, you're so busy doing that, you're not being
and you're not taking care of yourself. And I didn't,
you know, because I was. You know, I consider, of course,
I'm younger than my grandparents. You know, absolutely, I lost
two grandfathers and two grandmothers, and all this again was

(45:52):
shot window of time. And one of my grandfather said,
he asked me to make sure that my mother, who
then passed a year or so later, didn't wear herself
out taking care of him. So, you know, I jumped
in not thinking I'm thinking he's saying that because she's older, right,

(46:13):
not because it's a heavy lift. You know, mostly physically
that you don't feel until after the fact, and like that, Yeah,
nobody's gonna die alone. But how many times can you
see somebody die?

Speaker 3 (46:28):
Take how many times you see that are trying that? No?
How many times can you see them roll a personal in.

Speaker 2 (46:34):
A body bag?

Speaker 3 (46:35):
Right?

Speaker 2 (46:36):
Like things like that that I had not any right.

Speaker 3 (46:40):
But you said it twice.

Speaker 4 (46:41):
There's emotional toll and there's physical toll, and a lot
of times people not even thinking about their emotional told
and they're not necessarily thinking about the physical told.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
They just like caregivers in general, are tired all the time.
How long do you think you're gonna.

Speaker 4 (46:57):
Do that before there's impact on you physically and then
impact on you emotionally. And so this book is really
to bring awareness to people so that they know it
takes away the work of you having to think about
the things that you need to do. I've thought about
all of the things because I lived this life, and
so because of that, I have been able to put

(47:18):
that together for people. Because it was the strangest thing
about it is in my practice, I was getting a
lot of caregivers coming and I kept on saying, this
is interesting, Okay, God.

Speaker 3 (47:27):
What are we doing here. But I got a lot
of caregivers and and working with them, I will ask
them certain questions and they didn't have a clue.

Speaker 4 (47:36):
They didn't have a clue as to like what days
are you off? What do you do in your downtown?
They looking at me, like.

Speaker 3 (47:42):
Downtown, what is that.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
I don't get no downtown, but everybody that I work with,
they get downtown.

Speaker 3 (47:48):
And they had to set it up whether you have
to call adult Protective Services and get restit right, because
I don't know you could do that. You can, And
so that's the other thing people don't know.

Speaker 2 (47:59):
Right. My people perish because of lack of knowledge. And
that's why I wanted to get that book to people.

Speaker 4 (48:04):
Because there are resources out here, and where there are
not resources, you got to make shift some resources. Maybe
somebody in the family got to be rested, right, Because
I mean, I have one client where their incomes exceeded
the limitations for them to get the respite.

Speaker 3 (48:21):
So I said, you have income, you can pay a
family member. And actually we found another. We found a
private company, a lady.

Speaker 4 (48:28):
Who had her own business where she did this and
the lady was able to pay out a pocket and
get rested and I found that through another client, So
it is ways around it, but people just need somebody
to help them understand what's needed. A lot of times
when you become a caregiver, it's because of a crisis. Right,
A crisis happened, somebody gets sick, you dive in, you

(48:48):
start to help. Then you help it. Right, this is
what you're doing and you're not thinking because a lot
of times we're not even thinking that this is going
to be long term. So it's like, let me just
fill in the gap. This is over, well, this is
over in five years right, right?

Speaker 3 (49:04):
Or this is over in ten years right, And over
those five or ten years or however long, what did
you do to.

Speaker 4 (49:12):
Care for yourself over that span of time? If you
have not cared for yourself both physically and emotionally, there
are going to be some signs, symptoms and sign up
that way and tear because physically we can't we can't
do it.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
Where is that book available? Because I think it's a
wonderful gift.

Speaker 3 (49:29):
On Amazon Amazon Amazon, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
Y'all go on and get the book because and gifted
to someone.

Speaker 3 (49:36):
Who you know is a caregiver.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
Yes, caregiver.

Speaker 4 (49:40):
Yes, I also do a Caregivers Retreat every year for
caregivers to get away, because I think that that's important
to do. Last year was our first annual care Give
Us retreat and it was amazing and everybody was there.
We set it up so that people didn't have to
do anything. We did at Eden's Resort. It was some
wonderful place time to get away, for people to do

(50:01):
for you and you not have to care for other people.
And so I did a survey for them to complete
after and everything was wonderful.

Speaker 3 (50:10):
The only thing everybody said consistently was.

Speaker 2 (50:13):
It needed to be longer, so we needed Thursday to
Sadder that they This year we're going to do Thursday
to Sunday, and I think next year we'll.

Speaker 3 (50:22):
Try to do a week long maybe five days.

Speaker 4 (50:24):
But the other thing is caregivers have a problem with
getting care for their people, so you have to understand
that we understanding to that as well. So well is
it for I have two questions? One is it co ed?
And two do you consider single parents maybe as caregivers
that can fit that bill or normally is it just
for people who are taking care of those who are

(50:46):
in medical.

Speaker 3 (50:46):
No, I consider any I mean parents.

Speaker 4 (50:49):
Especially like that's a job that you don't get no
time off of that. So they get eighteen and I
think when they get older they get worse because they're
out on their own.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
And you, oh, don't tell me that, right, right, But
I think it's not for the faint at heart.

Speaker 4 (51:04):
It's not for the faint at heart. But no, it's
for anybody who is caring for people. And it is
co ed. Coincidentally, the things that I do, the men
must think I do it for women. But let me
say this. We had we had one pastor and our
at my retreat last year, but his wife passed away,
maybe like three months ago.

Speaker 3 (51:23):
But we had one guy was brave enough to come.

Speaker 4 (51:25):
I was trying desperately to find him an another man
to be there with them, but he braved it out
with the women and they took good care.

Speaker 3 (51:32):
So I think he didn't mind being there because they
I mean, they developed relationships.

Speaker 4 (51:37):
And we do a support uh we do a virtual
support group every month and we talk about different things
that are fagging caregivers. It's I think it's something that
is missing in the African American community and certainly in
the church.

Speaker 3 (51:52):
A lot of people. It's not wild. He talked about
the caregivers who are effortlessly caring for people and it's
a thankless job.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
It really is. It really is in a sense that
you sacrifice.

Speaker 4 (52:06):
You sacrifice a lot, you make a lot of sacrifices.

Speaker 3 (52:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
Well, first of all, let us know you do take.

Speaker 4 (52:14):
Insurance, right, Well, I do take insurance, and I do
take people who are self pay.

Speaker 2 (52:19):
Okay, and are you doing virtual and in person?

Speaker 3 (52:23):
I'm doing virtual and in person.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
Yes, that's good to know. Now tell us how you
got the nickname doctor tag.

Speaker 4 (52:28):
Doctor Ta So nothing, uh, nothing fancy tabs is all
of my initials. Oh, my name is totally a label
with stack House. So my family and friends started calling
me tab.

Speaker 2 (52:43):
And then I got married leader in life and so
I got to put the S on it.

Speaker 3 (52:47):
That.

Speaker 4 (52:49):
So the thing is when I when I meet with client,
my name is a lot. My dad gave me a
lot of name, and then my husband came and gave
me a lot of name.

Speaker 3 (52:58):
It's just a lot of name.

Speaker 4 (53:00):
And so I just said I was just h and
I'm actually going to trademarket I can so it can
be my official go by name.

Speaker 3 (53:08):
But yeah, I have my clients called me doctor tags.

Speaker 2 (53:10):
But that's really neat, especially since it's all of your initials.

Speaker 3 (53:13):
Yeah, it's all my initials.

Speaker 4 (53:14):
So it's my name and I got an emblem thing
with it, and you could see my name written out,
but you see doctor tabs and the names of written
out like that. So yeah, nothing fancy, just my initials.

Speaker 3 (53:30):
Only a lame buller stack house.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
And speaking of Stackhouse, how is your husband doing? I
understand you were a caretaker for him for a few years.
Has he fully recovered.

Speaker 4 (53:42):
Or he has not fully recovered? My husband as wild.
Let me tell you why, my husband as well, because
they projected that he wouldn't even be here.

Speaker 2 (53:50):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (53:51):
And if he would be here, they had projected that
he will only be lived for four months. He had
he suffered a massive stroke. He actually shouldn't be miraculously
so he is here, He is well. His speech just
has not fully restored. He has what is considered global aphasia,
which is the worst case scenario what people who suffer

(54:12):
from strokes. That part of his brain that was injured
impacted his language expression part of his brain. So he
can do what is called automatic language, meaning he can
ask you how you doing, You can ask him how
he's doing, he'll respond, and so because he'll start to
talk to you'll think that he can talk. He can't,
and he'll start to say those things over and over
again because one of the other things that his brain

(54:35):
says to him when he's talking, he thinks he's saying
whatever it is he wants to say, but he's not
saying that. He can't get those words out, so he
can't express himself. He can't say like I love you.
He can't say like my name. He can't say his name.
If if somebody say asks him his name, I'll say,
tell him it's Samuel. He can repeat it, but it
won't stick for him to say later if you ask

(54:57):
him he'll say Samuel.

Speaker 3 (54:59):
He won't he can't say that. So just automatic language.
So yes, I have after only being married for two years,
he suffered a massive stroke and so this year makes
the eighth year. So we've been in this longer than
we were married originally.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (55:17):
So I've been a caregiver.

Speaker 4 (55:19):
And think about this, I've never nobody in my family
has ever been ill in a way that I've seen
anybody care for anybody. So this was way out of
left field. Never in my wildest dream or even nightmare.
I would I have ever imagined that my life would

(55:40):
take this turn, but it did, and the grace of
God has found me here. And not that the grace
of God. The grace of God makes it so that
I'm able to do it. It's not that it's easy or
it's has not impacted me in a way that was
mentally and emotionally not detrimental. But it has impacted me,
which is why I ended up having to go to

(56:02):
that mean I had a therapist before, but I had
to go to therapy to work through all of that.
Because when you're not expecting. My husband wasn't ill. My
husband was forty six.

Speaker 3 (56:11):
When he had a stroke. No way, yes, way, my
husband forty six A, he did the Marines, he retired
from the military. Yes, he was in good health.

Speaker 4 (56:21):
They never could determinate, And they did three different sets
of tests, three different sets of times, and they never
could determine.

Speaker 3 (56:28):
Why he had to stroke. My goodness. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (56:33):
So yeah, so it's not like I was marrying somebody
that was ill and none of that.

Speaker 2 (56:39):
That came like totally out of left field. So but
what do you do when life life you.

Speaker 4 (56:46):
Got to be able to pivot. You got to be
able to, like you talk about capacity, know what you
have capacity for. When you don't have that, you got
to manage that. Like I'm responsible for managing my capacity,
and so I got to trigger those things that I need.
And so that's why I had to go to therapy
and deal with it from a spiritual perspective and they'll

(57:07):
with it from a natural perspective and make sure that
I'm well and all of that, and so that's why
it was important to me knowing all of this. I've
had to deal with family members who were not always
involved as it relates to my my husband's family, and
so knowing all of that, it was like, Wow, this

(57:27):
is something that people need to know. People need to
be able to And like I said, when you're in it,
you're not thinking about it. You only think about it
from like in hindsight, and so sometimes hindsight is too late,
and so you need somebody sometimes to say.

Speaker 3 (57:41):
Here's a book everything you need to do from you
from A to.

Speaker 2 (57:45):
Z here it is Oh gosh, yes, it.

Speaker 3 (57:48):
Is the only thing. And I think I'm going to
update it.

Speaker 4 (57:50):
Because me and my husband used to travel all the
time before he had to struggle. So and we continue
to travel once my husband out out of rehab. So
my husband is fully independent. He can do everything on
his own. The only thing he can't do is cook,
which he was the cook of our house. When I
got married, I said I was never cooking again. My
husband could cook to the point where people would call
and be like, what's Sam cooking for dinner? Or they

(58:12):
would call and be like, oh Sam is cooking Sam,
And and you know my husband because they have called him.

Speaker 3 (58:17):
And asked him. So he can't cook.

Speaker 4 (58:19):
And they tried to and rehab tried to get him
to learn how to cook, but he wouldn't get it,
and they they determined that it was an emotional block
for him because they felt like because he couldn't do
it the way that he was accustomed to do it,
that maybe he was like, I don't want to do
this at all.

Speaker 3 (58:36):
So he was a danger to himself and others in
the kitchen.

Speaker 4 (58:39):
So we got to old bit that you know, he
can't do the cooking, and of course I managed the
house as it relates to five because there are some
cognitive impact as well.

Speaker 3 (58:47):
But he do all his dressing and all of that stuff.
On his own.

Speaker 4 (58:51):
He can't drive. Of course, he walks with a cane.
When we go long distance. He has electrical school to
and we go to the mall, Disney amusement parks and
stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (59:00):
So we travel all the time.

Speaker 4 (59:01):
And so people, yeah, we travel because I'm just determined that.
And it's a lot for us to travel because we
had to travel with his scooter so that when we
get there he can get around. So it's a lot
for us to have to travel. People always saying on face,
you're always traveling. You gotta tell us how you doing this.

Speaker 3 (59:18):
So I omitted that, and I don't even know how
I omitted that from the book, because that's a thing
like people want to.

Speaker 2 (59:24):
Know that's saying, because a lot of times people, when
something happens to somebody, people will say, well, we can't travel,
And I'm like you a lot because everywhere and so
the other thing you got to have too is an
amazing travel agent. And my brother have a brother that
a spiritual brother who is an amazing travel agent. And
he's when he makes our traveling arrangements, whether we're with

(59:48):
family with them or buy ourselves, everything is taken care of.

Speaker 3 (59:53):
Wow. Yeah, they make sure that they have.

Speaker 4 (59:55):
He'll call ahead and make sure they got accommodations. Like
me and my husband want you to buy September before
his birthday. But we go everywhere, We go everywhere, and
you just got a call a head to find out.
But what do they have for people who are disabled?
What accommodations do they head? I think basically it's a
law that people have to have accommodations.

Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:00:14):
And so it is definitely a lot to travel with him,
But I would rather travel than like it's like to me,
I feel like you let life when when you just
lay down and say just because it's hard, we're not
gonna do it, not gonna do it right, Yeah, we're not.
Like one of the things that we talked about was traveling.
We was gonna travel the world, and we in the
two years that we had we matter of fact, we

(01:00:36):
went we our wedding was Destination Wedding in Jamaica, and
at our two year wedding anniversary, we went back to celebrate.
We came back on Sunday. That Wednesday, he suffered a stroke.

Speaker 3 (01:00:47):
What yeah, so we were we were coming back from
traveling then.

Speaker 4 (01:00:50):
But in those two years, we had traveled and we
had gone to a lot of places. And so when
he came back, because he was military and he's retired,
did his rehab in Richmond, Virginia. They have like a
state of the art in brain injury rehabilitation center. When
he was at the VA in Baltimore, this nurse who
guard us, she pulled me to the side. She said, listen,

(01:01:12):
your husband is forty seven and the best chance he
got for recovery is Richmond, she said, And I don't
know if you think it's far.

Speaker 3 (01:01:19):
I said, nope, I'll drive to the end of the world.
So I started talking.

Speaker 4 (01:01:24):
She said, and they're going to try to not say
that he's qualified for it, and they did, and I
had to keep it. I've had to advocate for my
husband like crazy. But God made a way for him
to go there, and he stayed there, and I was
able to see my job let me stay there with him,
and I worked remotely. I was working on my dissertation
for my doctoral degree then, and I stayed at the
Fisher House while he stayed at the hospital. And then

(01:01:46):
they had a transitional program after the hospital rehabilitation program,
so he did that for another six months. So He
did like a year and a half down there, and
the first six months they let me stay. The two
times he was there, I couldn't stay, so he would
come home on the weekends or every other weekend, and
I had different family that would go and get him,

(01:02:07):
and somebody would take a shift and take them back
and different things. So when he got finished with all of.

Speaker 3 (01:02:12):
The rehab, I was like, okay, you ready, and we
got back on the road. We're not gonna let it
have its way with us.

Speaker 4 (01:02:19):
We're gonna dictate what we're gonna do. And so that's
what we did. We enjoy life.

Speaker 3 (01:02:24):
We traveled the best way we can.

Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
Now that's amazing and inspiring in today's world where people,
you know, get divorced rather quickly.

Speaker 4 (01:02:33):
Yeah, that was all that people. That's where people was
asking my brother asked. Somebody asked my brother stay with
us because they just got marked. And what I said was, well,
I didn't know that leaving was an option after you
made a vow.

Speaker 3 (01:02:48):
I didn't. I didn't know. But that's how people, that's
how people were. I didn't feel a release.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
Right, I did.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
No. I'm just saying, listen, listen you when you feel it,
you take it right.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
But look, I wish it wasn't. So you know, my
grandparents were married for fifty two years and I all
that longevity that long, jefty, and it didn't work out
for me. But did your ex husband have come from longevity? No?

Speaker 3 (01:03:17):
Okay, so he didn't have a desire to.

Speaker 2 (01:03:19):
Yeah we were two broken people too. Yeah. Broken. But
you know what, doctor Tabs. You don't put me on
a couch more than once today.

Speaker 3 (01:03:27):
Listen.

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
I can't help myself my podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:03:30):
I'm supposed to be interviewing you, and you don't put
me on the couch, canine.

Speaker 2 (01:03:35):
I'm gonna have to make a session or something, because
obviously I have a lot to work.

Speaker 3 (01:03:42):
I'm sorry, I can't help it. You know, my husband
told me, well we got married before he had the stroke.
He at the top.

Speaker 4 (01:03:48):
He used to tell me all the time, you are
not my therapist. And I would say, well, go get
what because clearly you.

Speaker 3 (01:03:56):
Clearly, we all look clearly all the get there. But
he used to tell me that all the time, you
are not by.

Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
The But but you know I was saying earlier, you
have become the subject matter as expert on a number
of topics that did Yes, yes from text book.

Speaker 3 (01:04:18):
Yeah you're coming from yes, So that's what maybe. But
that's what makes what I do so enjoyable, if you
will like, because I do understand that life is life,
and if God is able to use what we go

(01:04:39):
through as ministry to be able to be a blessing
to somebody else, then that makes what I've gone through
work something, even if I wish I had not gone
through it, or rather not, but at least it's something
that is useful. And God uses everything.

Speaker 4 (01:04:55):
It's about our availability to want to be used, right,
And so certainly I wouldn't have said I wanted to
have this experience and want to be used in this way,
but as life will have it, I did. And so
I'm about making lemonade with lemons.

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
Right, yeah, yeah, Honestly, I never would have dreamt that
you were in a homeless situation, living in a shelter
and then you become you know, an elitis. But that's
what God would do people. And when I tell people
my story, people always say you don't look like listen,
that's what God will do.

Speaker 4 (01:05:31):
Like what you if you are if your life is
all over, you know you've seen people where you'd be
like oh they had a hard life. You've experienced all like,
you're not really allowing God, and maybe those people are
not even in God, because when you go through things God,
God would not allow us to look like what we've
gone through. That means your enemy would be triumphing over you,

(01:05:54):
and my enemy cannot triumph over me.

Speaker 3 (01:05:56):
He cannot.

Speaker 2 (01:05:58):
That's why did we put preacher in because we get okay,
all right, if I want to make sure we cover
that now as a wrap up, I have to ask
this question. I still have so many other questions, but
one in the world of AI virtual medical appointments, give
me your honest trajectories and greatest fears regarding the future

(01:06:20):
of counseling and mental health services. Where I mean, should
we fight for continued humanistic approach to counseling because you know,
the AI version of this is coming, if it is,
it already exists in being pillowed it somewhere.

Speaker 4 (01:06:38):
Right right, Yeah, I think that you will never get
a product that will be human interaction, just not ever
going to get that. Of course, they are going to
try whatever they can try to do to get the AI,
and I think to a certain degree, maybe it is
wanted because this is the thing. They don't enough therapy.

(01:07:00):
It's sure, yeah, there's not enough therapist. And I don't
know if I have a number of people that I
know that are in school becoming a therapist. I don't
know if the time that it takes them to become
therapists and the AI production is going to probably far
succeed as it relates to timing. So me being who
I am, of course I would like to see the

(01:07:22):
continuation of face to face therapy.

Speaker 3 (01:07:25):
And I don't know if they will.

Speaker 2 (01:07:27):
Get to the point where they will omit that all
together versus have a combination of the two.

Speaker 4 (01:07:36):
All of that technology and stuff is and I promise
myself in twenty twenty five that I would not be
fearful of it, but I would kind of like dive in.
So I've been going to a lot of conferences where
they talk about AI so that I can learn some
things because I have been kind of like shining away
from But I am going to kind of embrace it

(01:07:56):
in a way because it's like you said, it's.

Speaker 3 (01:07:58):
Becoming a part of our world. We're not going to
we can't We're not going to be able to ignore it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:03):
So I mean people are already talking to Alexa and
all types of other quarts as if they are, you know,
wanting that feedback and connection, and it's it's really interesting.

Speaker 4 (01:08:14):
Absolutely, And you already got AI producing so much stuff
that's omitting human people already.

Speaker 3 (01:08:21):
So I don't think there.

Speaker 4 (01:08:23):
Is a space that AI is not going to be
able to fit it. And I think they're gonna find
a way to fit it in in all places. But
like I said, I don't, I don't. I don't know
if it will be one hundred percent or maybe not
one hundred percent in my time.

Speaker 2 (01:08:38):
I hope not.

Speaker 3 (01:08:40):
That's what I was gonna say.

Speaker 4 (01:08:41):
At least that's my brisk that it would be at
my time. I think that the generations that follow us
are more equipped for it than we are because we
are not accustomed to operating in such technical worlds. And
so that's the that's my my ligment. Like all that
text stuff is like, oh my god, Like I.

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
Need Pixel and Piper and I need the first human
beings human. Yeah, So I'm always yelling on the phone
customer service representativeistic because I'm like, I don't want to
talk to the right Absolutely, I hate it.

Speaker 3 (01:09:18):
I hate it. I hate it. I think it's domb
I think that there should be both worlds.

Speaker 4 (01:09:22):
But I think, but then that doesn't make sense because
the whole point of them doing that is to omit
a person that they would have to.

Speaker 3 (01:09:27):
Pay to do something.

Speaker 4 (01:09:29):
But I think they should still because I think the
young people they want it, they will out for it
and then.

Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
Us not so much. Yeah, I tell you, we can
go on and on. There's so much we could.

Speaker 3 (01:09:40):
There's so much.

Speaker 2 (01:09:41):
And listen, guys, if you need counseling where there's anxiety, depression, trauma,
and even if you need clinical resources, please reach out
to doctor Tabs.

Speaker 3 (01:09:52):
Yeah need that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:53):
House because I've already been put on the couch several times.
As your time, and you're gonna be for the You're
gonna be better. You gotta be better for it. Thank
you so much for your time.

Speaker 3 (01:10:03):
Thank you for having me. I appreciate you.

Speaker 2 (01:10:05):
Thank you, and thank you to all the faithful listeners
and for hanging in there with us. This was a really,
really meaty session. Again, tune in next time, and as always,
thank you for being a team player.

Speaker 1 (01:10:19):
Thank you for listening to Team Leadership Radio. Subscribe and
never miss an episode.

Speaker 2 (01:10:24):
We'd love to.

Speaker 1 (01:10:24):
Hear from you, give us a call at one eight
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A two.

Speaker 3 (01:10:32):
Four t E e M.

Speaker 1 (01:10:34):
Or visit the website for additional resources at www dot
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as always, thank you for being a team player.