June 28, 2022 • 38 mins
Several million people, myself included, I fell in love with today's podcast guest around the same time - when a poem he wrote and published to his Facebook page went viral. It began, "my brain and heart divorced a decade ago over who was to blame about how big of a mess I have become.." and we could all relate.
This father of three and stand-up comic had turned to writing some years earlier to try and sort out the tsunami of anxious thoughts that threatened to overtake him and carry him out into a sea of defeat. It worked. Kind of. It's a work in progress. But there IS progress. For him. For me. For countless others who have discovered his work.
Please join John Roedel and me today. He's amazing! ~ Delilah
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
It is some some summertime. The fact that there are
kids underfoot, Oh boy, do I have a lot of
kids underfoot, and ripe strawberries in the field reminds me
that yes, summer has definitely arrived. What do you love
most is a camping trips as a backyard barbecues my
(00:26):
Hobbywood's answered that it's grilling season. He is the master
of our grill. One of my favorite things he sizzles
up is jumbo shrimp with sweet onions and bell peppers.
That's become our Father's Day tradition. Even though he's the
dad that we're honoring, he is happily grilling away and
(00:47):
has his kids, my kids, our kids and the grandkids
gobbling up every morsel as fast as he can put
it onto a platter and reload. Having him cook for
our hoard seems an odd way to honor him, but
it is the way he wants to celebrate his day,
and we are so very grateful to him for blessing
(01:08):
us with the shrimps of his labor, and the hamburgers
and hot dogs and sausages and all the many other
ways that he cares for us and spoils us throughout
the year. Fathering is different than mothering, to be sure,
but it is vitally important. And so while Father's Day
(01:31):
was a couple of weekends ago, we are going to
continue celebrating all the men who have stepped up to
the plate and been positive role models. Today. I'm joined
on love Someone by a dad whose work I discovered
on social media. When I say discovered, what I mean
is that his self published writings wrecked me, slayd me,
(01:55):
laid me out, ugly, cried, ugly ride. When I first
started reading his words, it's as if his words and
thoughts and feelings, it's like he stepped into my brain,
into my heart and soul, especially after I lost my boys,
my sons, and I had no words to put to
(02:17):
the grief of the pain. His name is John Rohdell.
He describes himself as a comic who unexpectedly became an
Amazon best selling poet writer when he began to turn
his faith crisis, his depression, his struggles into poems that
have now been read all over the world and resonated
(02:39):
with so many of us. Over the past several years.
John has published four books, Hey God, Hey John, Any
Given some Day, Untied and remedy. His newest release is
called A Pond Departure. His work has been shared millions
(03:00):
and millions of times across social media, and his fearless
writing has attracted readers from all over the world, including me.
He loves sharing the story of how he learned to
take his broken heart, his brokenness and turn it into
a windshime. I am so thrilled to be able to
welcome John to the podcast today and I have many
(03:22):
many questions for him that will get to right after
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(04:27):
So with me on Love Someone today is someone I
absolutely love but I had not yet met. Um. I
love you through your words, John Rodel, Welcome to love
someone with Delilah. Oh my goodness, I am so absolutely
thrilled and excited to be here. Thank you so much.
And when I discovered your poetry, your stories, your songs,
(04:54):
I mean they sing to me when I read them,
I fell in love with you. I fell in love
with your heart. Thank you so much. So it's really
interesting you mentioned music, because when I write, I listened.
I listened to like violin music and cello music every
single time I write. I don't listen to it when
I'm not writing, but when I write, I feel like
(05:14):
i'm It almost feels lyrical to me. I feel it
feels like I'm connecting to something other than just just writing.
It's interesting that you mentioned I was just thinking about
that last night. Yeah. When I when I read your poetry,
I read it in song like I hear it as
music not just in my head, but music in my soul.
(05:34):
It's it's powerful your words. That was my first introduction,
so I you know, I would be very transparent. I
didn't really read poetry or study poetry until it started
just emerging out of my little penguin fingers, Like it
just started happening one day, and I wasn't really burst
(05:54):
in and I hadn't. I didn't even follow button poetry
on YouTube. I I just it just immerged out of nowhere.
And I think looking back, I fell in love with
lyrics and music. Like you would get those cassette tapes
and you would open it up and you two would
have their lyrics like printed in microupiech okay wait stop
stop for the youngsters in our crowd, a cassette tape
(06:18):
was what we lived by back in the eighties and nineties. Yes, yeah,
because those lyrics, those lyrics that still ring with me
years later, Peter Gabriel or Sarah McLaughlin or whatever that is,
Like you could feel energy in those lyrics, that you
could feel infused in those lyrics. And that's when I'm
putting together work. I want that energy in my heart
(06:40):
to come out as best as I can, because I
don't know what the hell I'm talking about. I mean,
you're exactly right. I am not one of those writers
who is writing from on top of the mountains saying,
oh I know how the world works or anything. I
am a wanderer in this world I am. I'm merely
an observer trying to figure things out. I was born
and raised Catholic, um pretty strong Catholic family. But the
(07:02):
older I has gotten, the less heathered I am to
my upbringing. As far as my traditional religion, I find
myself more of the vagabond. But I want that energy
of my curiosity and my my wandering and my heart
to come out in whatever I write. Well, it certainly does.
John Rodell, Uh you. You came to my attention because
(07:25):
my podcast producer and social media director shared one of
your poems on my page and I didn't even realize,
like I've been so out of it the last five
years since i lost my son, and I'm reading one
of your poems and I'm sobbing, just sobbing, And it
(07:46):
was one about a loss and grief, and it perfectly
it put words to my pain. It painted a visual
will picture of where I was at at that moment.
I don't know. It was so beautiful and so powerful
(08:08):
and um sometimes you know they because I'm a parent
and I know you're a parent. A lot of your writings,
UM speak to all the things we go through. Yeah,
it's being a parent is one of the most helpless
feelings in the world, because at some point one of
(08:28):
them you can most It is the quinte essential helpless experience.
You love something with so much energy and you're holding
so tightly to that hand. But your job is to
start letting go of this love, of this creation, of
the soul bond you have and to let them fly.
And it's the hardest thing. My oldest son, he was
(08:52):
he's been living with autism and he was our he
was our firstborn, and he taught me so much about parenting.
From the get know, I had so many expectations of
what it meant to be a parent. I had so
many ideas like, oh, my child is going to be
like this or that, and I'm gonna put these pressures
and expectations on them. He he was my first teacher
(09:12):
in improv It's the idea of yes and this is
what you have in front of you, yes, and here
we go. Here's the adventure, and it is an adventure.
How old is your oldest now? He is twenty two now.
When he was diagnosed here in Wyoming and two thousand
and two, there was very little autism resources around here
(09:33):
at the time. Autism has evolved, the research and autism
support for autism has grown over the last two decades.
But in two thousand two, when he was diagnosed at
two years old, we were kind of on our own
on an island, and we kind of had to figure
things out as we went along, and I did grieve,
and it's the most amazing thing. We had to go
(09:54):
down to Denver, Colorado, about two hours away to have
him diagnosed. We drive down to Denver and we kind
of knew was coming at this point, and they gave
us the diagnosis. We're driving home and I'm still stuck
in the doctor's office, grieving, grieving this idea of what
being a parent was going to look like, grieving what
it meant about being a father was going to look like.
(10:14):
The doctor said, he probably won't live independently. He will
never have some of the things that you and I
take your granted. First kisses walks in the park, things
like that he will not experience the same way we do.
And I was grieving, and I was lost, and I
was still stuck in that doctor's office. But my wife,
who was driving, was already five steps ahead, she was
already three years ahead. She was already thinking, Okay, we're
(10:36):
gonna get ahold of these people. We're gonna do this,
we're gonna do that. If that doesn't work, we're gonna
try this and that. And she was improvising right there
on the start. And that, for me was probably the
first moment my heart cracked open. And all the things
I was holding on to, all these expectations of life
and what my journey would look like, I let go of.
(10:58):
And his journey with options has taught me so much,
taught me so much about life, top top lesson top,
miracle top truth that just comes to your mind spontaneously
that you have learned, either through his autistic diagnosis or
just parenting. Because I've got a lot of kids, and
(11:20):
some of them have been diagnosed with different terms, different
medical a lot of medical issues. Most of the kids
have adopted, a lot of the kids have adopted have
medical issues. But um, you know, I have very typical
children that I have raised that still all those expectations
(11:41):
you talk about, forget about it. Forget about it. So
top top truth that just comes to the front of
your brain. Be desperate to connect. That would be we
were So I was stuck, I was was grieving. I
was lost for about two or three years. My wife said,
(12:04):
We're going to try a horseback therapy, We're going to
try music therapy, We're going to try all these different things,
and we're gonna be desphere. We don't care how far
out it is, or how new age it is, or
what our neighbors are going to think, or any of that.
We're going to be desperate to fill the bridge between
us and our son. And we tried everything that is imaginable,
and eventually we found the connection that worked for us.
(12:28):
But it took years, and it was that desperation. It
was that we don't care what it looks like. We're
going to build some sort of thread between us and
our non verbal child, and then we're going to build
a family from there. So but it was that desperation.
Had had my wife and not had that, I would
have been stuck in grief. She wasn't. She was already
(12:49):
a mama bear. Let's go, let's get to work, and
I was still stuck an hour ago in the doctor's office.
And that's that for me. Changed her attitude and his
courage changed my life. And I think that's why I'm
writing today because it broke something open in me. And
I approached my writing the same way of I don't
(13:09):
I'm desperate to connect with how I'm feeling. I'm desperate
to connect with my own heart that I was estranged
from for so many years. And I took those lessons
and I've applied it to my life. So one of
the poems you wrote that I just read recently. I
can't remember the title of it, but it talked about
your um feeling lost in your faith. Uh. I've read
(13:37):
a lot of your Hey God ones where it sounds
like you have a pretty sweet relationship with the Creator,
with the great I am, but one of them that
I just read recently because this is this is what
happens for me when I go through a great loss
my my brother, my mother. I didn't have faith when
(13:59):
I lost my brother. That's what led me to my faith.
But my mom and then three boys, my adopted son,
my bio son, and my step son. It doesn't make
me question God, it doesn't. You know, a lot of
people lose their faith when they're going through grief. It
draws me a lot closer it, but it does put
(14:20):
me in a place of am I not hearing you?
Am I? Should I have done something else? Did I
miss something you told me that could have prevented this?
And I read one of your poems recently about your
faith crisis? Do you do you know which one I'm
talking about? I have? I have a lot of times
(14:43):
where I addressed my faith crisis, because that's where my
writing really began. I was in a place where I
was I was going to this well that I was
told to be full of water my entire life, and
when I whenever the going got tough, I would just
go to the well and I draw out some water
and I drink it, and I would go back to
being a happy person. But I went to that well
(15:05):
and there was nothing in there. It was dry, and
I became pretty angry at God. I became pretty angry
at the idea of all these Sunday school teachers who
had told me, you know, just pray and it'll get easer.
Just have faith and it will come to you. And
it wasn't coming for me. And it was like those
three D pictures in the eighties, you remember. You could
look at him and if you look out at the
(15:26):
corner of your eye, you could see like a uniform
jumping over like a rainbows. It was crazy three D pictures.
It was a phase for like two years. I could
never see him. No matter how I adjusted my eyes,
moved my head, I could never see those images. And
that was the same way with my faith life. I
was praying, I was asking for help and nothing was coming.
And I was so angry that I did what any
(15:47):
uh I guess, well adjusted forty something year old man does.
I went to Facebook and I started having these fake
conversations with God about where I was in my faith journey.
And I don't remember the exact poem talking about, but
I know the spirit of it. I know I know
that I I have never had a better relationship with God.
(16:07):
It's a relationship now more than it is a formal ritual.
We have a relationship almost like friends meeting across the
table from a coffee shop at a coffee shop, talking
about our lives talking about my life. And that's where
I'm at now. From the minute I found my faith,
I've had relationship within my creator is you know, the
(16:29):
Lord is my best friend, but sometimes my best friend
is silent. Yes, And that's it's an impossible riddle for me.
It's and that's where I don't speak from a place
of evangelism or I have any idea of how any
of this works. All as I know is I feel
(16:49):
this connection in my heart now more than I ever
did when I was following the formula that was given
to me. Neil stands that Neil Locke say this prayer,
do all the calisthenics, do all those things. And I
was kind of going through the motions and I it
works for millions of people, Billy with people across this world,
and that's amazing, and that's great for them. I couldn't
(17:12):
find my I couldn't find an anchor in there anymore
because I was having all these gray issues in my life,
all these it wasn't white and black, it wasn't It
was all these the middle of the road issues that
my faith wasn't addressing. And I was going through a
mental health crisis at the same time, and all I
was told was to keep praying and it will get better,
(17:33):
and it it didn't, and so I became very resentful.
And so these conversations with God were very honest at first,
like I'm not sure I believe in you anymore. And
what I was writing back were things that I would
want God to have said to me in that moment,
not judgment, not shaming, not anger, not all these things
(17:54):
that I think I might have been grown up to
think that God would think in those moments. But it was.
It's a case relationships or roller coaster. There's times where
we're going to be close and times when we're gonna
be a little bit far apart, but the love exists
no matter what. So have you gotten one of those? Hey, God,
(18:16):
it's me uh poems handy that you could share with
us today? Yeah? I could. I could. I could share
one um, yes, and I will. I will probably have
to read both parts to it. So see, I wish
we had prepared ahead of time, because I could have
been one part and you could have been. Because hype capting,
(18:39):
I should never ever play that part. Neither should Okay.
So this is a post that I made in two
thousand and sixteen, um and one of my more darker moments.
And I wrote it and put it on Facebook because
that's my process. I don't encourage andy other writer to
just put all their work on Facebook because it's a
wild West out there. But I wrote this and I
(19:03):
put it on Facebook, and no one really seemed to
care at the time. I got to do like people
was great. And then about two thousan eighteen I reshared
it and it had a whole new audience because I
think the world was in a different place. People started,
we're feeling how I was feeling at the moment in
which I wrote this. UM, So I'll just start me. Hey, God, God, Hello,
(19:31):
my lives me. I'm falling apart. Can you put me
back together? God? I'd rather not me? Why God, because
you aren't a pudget me. What about all the pieces
of my life that are falling down onto the ground. God,
(19:55):
let them stay there for a while. They fell off
for a reason. Take some time and the side if
you need any of those pieces back me. But you
don't understand I am breaking down. God, No, you don't understand.
You are breaking through you what you are feeling now
(20:18):
or just the growing pains you are shedding the things
and the people in your life that are holding your back.
You aren't falling apart, You are falling into place. Relax,
take some deep breaths, and allow those things you don't
need anymore in your life to fall off of you.
Quit holding onto the pieces that don't fit you anymore.
Let them fall off, let them go me. But once
(20:43):
I start doing that, what will be left of me? God?
Only the very best pieces me. I'm scared of changing. God.
I keep telling you you aren't changing, You are becoming
becoming who I created you to be, a person of
light and love and charity and hope and courage and
(21:06):
joy and mercy and grace and compassion. I made you
more than the shallow pieces that you adorn yourself with,
or or the things you cling to with such greed
and fear. Let them fall off of you. I love you,
don't change, become, become BOY made you to be. I'm
gonna keep telling you this until you remember, Well, there
(21:27):
goes another peace. God, Well let it be me. So
I'm not broken, God, of course not. But you are breaking.
Left to dawn. It's a new day, become Wow, Can
I just revisit one line, I made you more than
(21:48):
the shallow pieces you cling to. How many people have
realized the last couple of years, or have they? Have
they been able to realize they are so much more
than those shallow pieces they cling to. I think people are. Um.
I hope they are, because when I first wrote it
(22:08):
in two thousand sixteen, it meant something to me and
I shared it, and you know, no one seems to
really mean anything to him. By the time this folks
really started going, it was about in the throes of COVID.
I think people were able to start looking at all
these things that we thought were important that aren't anymore.
Status going to cocktail parties and exchanging our LinkedIn information.
(22:31):
Those things won't carry us on for the rest of
our life. It's the relationships we build with one another.
It's the kindness we show to one another. It's these
these things that we have that are celestial in nature,
that will that are eternal, These these true some of
these these things like that, these are who we are.
We don't have to change to fit what the world
(22:52):
wants of us. We were created out of love and life.
We just have to fall back into who we were
born to be and that's when I was writing that
I was struggling with. I was a writer on Facebook
talking to having fake conversations with God, and it was
impossible for me to tell all my friends and family
who you know, their lawyers, their CEOs, my brothers, and
a huge engineer for Xbox. I was a person having
(23:15):
writing poetry and writing these conversations on Facebook. That was
my job at the time, and I felt such shame.
But this conversation that I wrote in real time, I
didn't know I was going to write it. It was
a yes and improv piece. I just started writing it,
and by the end of it, I felt connected to
my purpose. And so that that piece alone is kind
(23:35):
of whenever I start feeling unanchored, I read that again,
and I haven't read that in a year, so I'm
really grateful I got to read it again today. Don't
you think that's when God works best, when we just say, okay,
use me, yes, I don't want my writing now. I
go by the seat of my pants. I I acknowledge
howing feeling at the time, and I feel it. I
(23:56):
let those emotions kind of have their have their moment
with me my depression. I build a relationship with it,
and I listened to it. I listened to what it needs,
and then I write from that space. I don't write
from an autopsy, looking at it later that I've defeated
it or vanquished it, because I never will. I have
a relationship with my depression. I had a relationship with
(24:16):
my grief, and at that moment, I remember feeling so lost,
and I just said, I want to build a relationship
with how I'm feeling in that moment, and God just
kind of took the wheel, and uh, by the time
I was done with it, I knew I felt better.
And the fact that it's helped other people, I mean,
that's that's amazing, and it's it's beyond anything I'm capable of.
(24:38):
And it's the idea of these words I don't think
are coming downloading into me. I don't. I'm not that special.
I think these were thoughts and words and love that's
been in my heart the entire time. And I'm just
kind of I look at writing as I'm unearthing things.
I'm like, like, uh, like Indiana Jones. I'm an am
an archaeological dig pulling out these things that were in
(25:00):
better than me when I was born and That's how
I look at writing. It's more inward than it is outward.
But maybe you know, through your kids, maybe through the
journey of autism, maybe through mental illness, you get to
go in and mind those treasures and share it with
us in your poems. And that I look at these
(25:20):
poems and these conversations as field reports from where I'm
going inside to look at things and I and so
that's why I write without really knowing what I'm going
to talk about, just going inside my heart and sitting
with it for a while and looking what's inscribed in
the cave walls of my heart, and then transferred it
(25:40):
to the paper. Um, that's really kind of how I
look at it. I'm not much skill set is very
very small, But what I can do is I can
I'm very in touch with how I feel, and I
think I can be in touch with how other people feel.
When I write poetry. I don't always write about my
own personal experience. I try to find that intersection with
how I know my heart is feeling and how I
know other people's harders is feeling, and we just kind
(26:02):
of meet at that intersection where we can all hang
out together. But I think the world is in a
little bit different place than when I first started, and
I think maybe maybe what I'm writing about now feels
more relevant to folks. It feels very relevant to me.
It feels very relevant to my listeners. Every time we
share something you've written, um boy, the response is phenomenal.
Do you have a chance ever to read the comments
(26:26):
from people that you've touched? I mean, people share on
my Facebook page and I re share your poems. People
share amazing things they do, and it's humbling, and you know,
the private messages of people when I talk about grief.
I just released the poetry book on Grief, and the
(26:47):
personal stories from people that they said to me about
their own experiences of loss and grief are our heart
breaking and I can't imagine what what everyone what people
are going through, and it's absolutely humbling to hear these stories.
I try to respond to everyone on the comments on Facebook.
(27:10):
I I used to be able to. It's becoming more
and more difficult to be able to respond to everyone.
But I read each one um and not as an
accolade or not as oh look at the look at
everyone commenting. It's more of that relationship. I want to
know how this touch somebody, and I want them to
know that what they've written back is equally as important
(27:32):
as what I wrote to start with. It's a conversation
back and forth, and it's taking that broken part of
me and turn it into something hopefully beautiful for the
world while they're doom screwing. I mean, it's exactly what
you do. You take the hurt, the grief, the pain,
and you're able to turn it into something beautiful for
people so they can find solace and comfort. And that's
(27:55):
what I think I'm trying to do in my own work.
Has turned these these holes in my heart into like
a wind chime or an instrument that makes music instead
of just sits there as a broken vessel. Well, I
I thought I could not have any more holes in
my heart. I really thought, you know that, that there
was just gonna be nothing left of the heart. And
(28:15):
then God showed me, Oh, I know, yeah, and um,
and I'm still standing and I'm still breathing. Yeah, And
that's what what an example of courage for the world.
Whenever somebody before I really knew what loss was. When
I was a child, I would go to a funeral
and you would see, you know, people still I would
(28:36):
always marvel. It is like, well, they don't seem too upset.
They're keeping it together, but they keep it together for
other people. They keep it together for their family. I
remember my friend of mine, his father died when I
was fourteen, and his his his mom didn't cry at
the funeral. I remember asking my mom about that, like,
why didn't she cry at the funeral? That boggled my mind.
(28:58):
My mom said, because she have started crying, she wouldn't
have stopped. And and that's and now that I've experienced
loss of my own life, I understand how that is.
And I took all these these feelings of grief and
I I sat with them, and it was hard. But
that's how I wrote all those poems on grief. And
the one you were referring to, I think is the
(29:20):
one where I talked about grief being a coral reef,
that we sit with it and it changes over time.
And in America we try to race through our grief.
Oh you get a weak breathement, but you better get
back to work pretty quickly. Oh are you not over
it yet? I mean, we treat it like a cold,
we treat it like a disease. But grief is life changing.
It's a comment that hits our planet and it terriforms everything,
(29:43):
so it's almost unrecognizable. But I find grief to be
the most quintessential human experience because it's not just sadness,
it's not just heartbreak. It's nostalgia, it's joy. There's those
moments where the song plays on the radio that we
shared and we love together, and it plays and then
it brings me joy. Or there's my dad used to
plant green green beans, and whenever I smell fresh green
(30:06):
greens in a garden, I can see my dad sitting
right there, covering and dirt and his overalls, I'm right
there with them. Grief is proof that we are all
entangled in the most wonderful ways. And as much as
I I think grief is proof of the divine, grief
is proof that we the love we share with each
other is eternal. And so I'm fascinated by writing about
(30:30):
it because I think it. I think it is the
greatest mystery of all. Losing my boys has given me
permission to be who I am and to stop feeling
shame about my discombobulated life. That's that's exactly right, and
that when my son was diagnosed with autism, that grief
(30:51):
I had, I let it imprison me, and then as
time went on, I let it empower me choosing this
yes and life. I controlled very little of what happens
in my own life. I can only control how I
react to it. And the more my son grew and
(31:11):
and started to blossom through uh in his autism and
started connecting with us in the world, I started finding
courage in my own just if he had the courage
to be who he was, unapologetically he was. He doesn't care.
He's he's now twenty two years old. He's at the
University of Wyoming. He has defied so many expectations that
were given to him twenty years ago through so much
(31:33):
hard work on his part, and he is He's got quirks.
He is a very interesting guy. He's but he's kind
to everyone he's ever met. But most importantly, he's unapologetically himself.
He doesn't have those shallow pieces that I had connected
I was all over myself. He discovered at two years
old what it took me till I was forty two
(31:55):
years old to discover that he doesn't have to change
to put this world He's already something beautiful and important.
He he just has to embrace himself. And that's what
took me years to get through. And that's why grief
and heartbreak and those things are awful. They're terrible tunnels
to pass through. But on the other side of it,
(32:15):
we say how strong we are. On the other side
of it, we see all these beautiful things we can
make from our heartbreak to show other people that there's
another side to devastation, that there's a that there's an
end to the storm. And maybe life won't look the
same at the end of the storm, but you can
become a lighthouse for somebody else on that same shore
(32:36):
where you once washed up on. And that's kind of
how we look at it is we we we get
lost to see, we get hurt, we get heartbroken, we
wash up on shore, but we survive, and then we
become a lighthouse to show other people how that we survive.
And if someone like me, I am a hot mess.
And that's why I say I don't write from authority.
I write from experience. You and I are both hot messes.
(33:00):
But boy, dear words resonate in my soul. I'm so
thank you. I'm having the most heartfelt conversation with the
writer poet that I've come to admire so much and
eagerly look forward to each new body of work he
shares with the world. Will continue the conversation with John
Rohdel right after I give a shout out to one
(33:22):
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(34:50):
via phone eight hundred nine four zero zero five nine nine.
That's eight hundred nine zero zero five nine. So John,
tell our listeners the titles of your books. I'm a
self published dude. I had My first book was he
Got Hey, John, And it was the first like five
(35:11):
conversations I was posting on Facebook about my faith crisis
and emotional crisis. Um that was my first book. And
then I have four books of poetry, Any Given Someday Untied,
and then the two I posted this year. I published
two this year, Remedy, which became an Amazon bestseller, and
then um Upon Departure, which is my book on grief
(35:33):
that I just published a month ago. Um So those
are them. Those are my five little babies I have
out in the world. I'm gonna have to get upon Departure.
But I'm also going to have to order like a
case of tissue, uh from from someplace before I start
reading it. Yeah, it's it's I built a relationship with
my grief. That's how I when I wrote those poems,
(35:56):
I just said, I'm going to be in relationship. I'm
not going to avoid you, I'm not going to fight you.
Let's let's learn. I want to learn from you. And
that's how those poems were kind of inspired from I want.
I want to know why this is important, why I
missed this person so much still, And I kind of
explore that. And it was hard to write, but I
(36:16):
felt a measurable and measurably better when I was finished.
John Rodell, thank you for all of this time with us.
Thank you for your writings. Thank you for being brave
enough to put a voice to our heart, to our thoughts,
to our depression, to our grief, to our foibles. And
you're just you just inspire me, You bless me every
(36:39):
time I read one of your poems, even if it
doesn't apply to me, like even if I'm like not
in that space, I know people that that it does.
And I'm forever forwarding your poems to my family and friends,
So thank you. Well, I am so grateful to be
able to have this conversation with you and this is
this is surreal and it's amazing, and I'm going to
(37:01):
cherish this talk we've had for the rest of my life.
So I'm so grateful, Thank you so much. So well, God,
bless you, bless you. John Rodell shared with us how
his writing journey began years ago when he found himself
a dad raising a child with special needs. His poem
Autism Doesn't Mean Broken will resonate with anyone who has
(37:23):
had the privilege of loving somebody on the spectrum. If
this is the first time you've heard about John, you'll
want more. I promise your soul will want more. You
should visit his website John Rodel dot com j O
H N R O E D E L John Rodel
dot com, where the greeting says. He is the writer
(37:45):
of the popular Facebook conversations entitled Hey God, Hey John,
where he sits down with the divine to sort out
the world, his mental health, why he shouldn't wear skinny jeans,
and how to believe in the unseen and our modern world.
His books can be found at both Amazon dot com
and at Barnes and Nobles dot com and you can
(38:07):
read his writings on his Facebook page and see how
profoundly they have touched millions of people from all over
the world by scrolling through some of the comments left there,
My comments are there. When your scroll through, you'll find
my comments. One thing is for certain. His brave authenticity,
his vulnerability, his desire for connection has changed our world
(38:31):
for good. One heart, one line of poetry at a time,
my heart being one that was deeply, deeply touched. Let's
gather together again in a few weeks. Until then, do
me a favor. Remember to slow down and love someone
It is some some summertime. The fact that there are
kids underfoot, Oh boy, do I have a lot of
kids underfoot, and ripe strawberries in the field reminds me
that yes, summer has definitely arrived. What do you love
most is a camping trips as a backyard barbecues my
(00:26):
Hobbywood's answered that it's grilling season. He is the master
of our grill. One of my favorite things he sizzles
up is jumbo shrimp with sweet onions and bell peppers.
That's become our Father's Day tradition. Even though he's the
dad that we're honoring, he is happily grilling away and
(00:47):
has his kids, my kids, our kids and the grandkids
gobbling up every morsel as fast as he can put
it onto a platter and reload. Having him cook for
our hoard seems an odd way to honor him, but
it is the way he wants to celebrate his day,
and we are so very grateful to him for blessing
(01:08):
us with the shrimps of his labor, and the hamburgers
and hot dogs and sausages and all the many other
ways that he cares for us and spoils us throughout
the year. Fathering is different than mothering, to be sure,
but it is vitally important. And so while Father's Day
(01:31):
was a couple of weekends ago, we are going to
continue celebrating all the men who have stepped up to
the plate and been positive role models. Today. I'm joined
on love Someone by a dad whose work I discovered
on social media. When I say discovered, what I mean
is that his self published writings wrecked me, slayd me,
(01:55):
laid me out, ugly, cried, ugly ride. When I first
started reading his words, it's as if his words and
thoughts and feelings, it's like he stepped into my brain,
into my heart and soul, especially after I lost my boys,
my sons, and I had no words to put to
(02:17):
the grief of the pain. His name is John Rohdell.
He describes himself as a comic who unexpectedly became an
Amazon best selling poet writer when he began to turn
his faith crisis, his depression, his struggles into poems that
have now been read all over the world and resonated
(02:39):
with so many of us. Over the past several years.
John has published four books, Hey God, Hey John, Any
Given some Day, Untied and remedy. His newest release is
called A Pond Departure. His work has been shared millions
(03:00):
and millions of times across social media, and his fearless
writing has attracted readers from all over the world, including me.
He loves sharing the story of how he learned to
take his broken heart, his brokenness and turn it into
a windshime. I am so thrilled to be able to
welcome John to the podcast today and I have many
(03:22):
many questions for him that will get to right after
I share a few words about my podcast sponsor. With
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(04:27):
So with me on Love Someone today is someone I
absolutely love but I had not yet met. Um. I
love you through your words, John Rodel, Welcome to love
someone with Delilah. Oh my goodness, I am so absolutely
thrilled and excited to be here. Thank you so much.
And when I discovered your poetry, your stories, your songs,
(04:54):
I mean they sing to me when I read them,
I fell in love with you. I fell in love
with your heart. Thank you so much. So it's really
interesting you mentioned music, because when I write, I listened.
I listened to like violin music and cello music every
single time I write. I don't listen to it when
I'm not writing, but when I write, I feel like
(05:14):
i'm It almost feels lyrical to me. I feel it
feels like I'm connecting to something other than just just writing.
It's interesting that you mentioned I was just thinking about
that last night. Yeah. When I when I read your poetry,
I read it in song like I hear it as
music not just in my head, but music in my soul.
(05:34):
It's it's powerful your words. That was my first introduction,
so I you know, I would be very transparent. I
didn't really read poetry or study poetry until it started
just emerging out of my little penguin fingers, Like it
just started happening one day, and I wasn't really burst
(05:54):
in and I hadn't. I didn't even follow button poetry
on YouTube. I I just it just immerged out of nowhere.
And I think looking back, I fell in love with
lyrics and music. Like you would get those cassette tapes
and you would open it up and you two would
have their lyrics like printed in microupiech okay wait stop
stop for the youngsters in our crowd, a cassette tape
(06:18):
was what we lived by back in the eighties and nineties. Yes, yeah,
because those lyrics, those lyrics that still ring with me
years later, Peter Gabriel or Sarah McLaughlin or whatever that is,
Like you could feel energy in those lyrics, that you
could feel infused in those lyrics. And that's when I'm
putting together work. I want that energy in my heart
(06:40):
to come out as best as I can, because I
don't know what the hell I'm talking about. I mean,
you're exactly right. I am not one of those writers
who is writing from on top of the mountains saying,
oh I know how the world works or anything. I
am a wanderer in this world I am. I'm merely
an observer trying to figure things out. I was born
and raised Catholic, um pretty strong Catholic family. But the
(07:02):
older I has gotten, the less heathered I am to
my upbringing. As far as my traditional religion, I find
myself more of the vagabond. But I want that energy
of my curiosity and my my wandering and my heart
to come out in whatever I write. Well, it certainly does.
John Rodell, Uh you. You came to my attention because
(07:25):
my podcast producer and social media director shared one of
your poems on my page and I didn't even realize,
like I've been so out of it the last five
years since i lost my son, and I'm reading one
of your poems and I'm sobbing, just sobbing, And it
(07:46):
was one about a loss and grief, and it perfectly
it put words to my pain. It painted a visual
will picture of where I was at at that moment.
I don't know. It was so beautiful and so powerful
(08:08):
and um sometimes you know they because I'm a parent
and I know you're a parent. A lot of your writings,
UM speak to all the things we go through. Yeah,
it's being a parent is one of the most helpless
feelings in the world, because at some point one of
(08:28):
them you can most It is the quinte essential helpless experience.
You love something with so much energy and you're holding
so tightly to that hand. But your job is to
start letting go of this love, of this creation, of
the soul bond you have and to let them fly.
And it's the hardest thing. My oldest son, he was
(08:52):
he's been living with autism and he was our he
was our firstborn, and he taught me so much about parenting.
From the get know, I had so many expectations of
what it meant to be a parent. I had so
many ideas like, oh, my child is going to be
like this or that, and I'm gonna put these pressures
and expectations on them. He he was my first teacher
(09:12):
in improv It's the idea of yes and this is
what you have in front of you, yes, and here
we go. Here's the adventure, and it is an adventure.
How old is your oldest now? He is twenty two now.
When he was diagnosed here in Wyoming and two thousand
and two, there was very little autism resources around here
(09:33):
at the time. Autism has evolved, the research and autism
support for autism has grown over the last two decades.
But in two thousand two, when he was diagnosed at
two years old, we were kind of on our own
on an island, and we kind of had to figure
things out as we went along, and I did grieve,
and it's the most amazing thing. We had to go
(09:54):
down to Denver, Colorado, about two hours away to have
him diagnosed. We drive down to Denver and we kind
of knew was coming at this point, and they gave
us the diagnosis. We're driving home and I'm still stuck
in the doctor's office, grieving, grieving this idea of what
being a parent was going to look like, grieving what
it meant about being a father was going to look like.
(10:14):
The doctor said, he probably won't live independently. He will
never have some of the things that you and I
take your granted. First kisses walks in the park, things
like that he will not experience the same way we do.
And I was grieving, and I was lost, and I
was still stuck in that doctor's office. But my wife,
who was driving, was already five steps ahead, she was
already three years ahead. She was already thinking, Okay, we're
(10:36):
gonna get ahold of these people. We're gonna do this,
we're gonna do that. If that doesn't work, we're gonna
try this and that. And she was improvising right there
on the start. And that, for me was probably the
first moment my heart cracked open. And all the things
I was holding on to, all these expectations of life
and what my journey would look like, I let go of.
(10:58):
And his journey with options has taught me so much,
taught me so much about life, top top lesson top,
miracle top truth that just comes to your mind spontaneously
that you have learned, either through his autistic diagnosis or
just parenting. Because I've got a lot of kids, and
(11:20):
some of them have been diagnosed with different terms, different
medical a lot of medical issues. Most of the kids
have adopted, a lot of the kids have adopted have
medical issues. But um, you know, I have very typical
children that I have raised that still all those expectations
(11:41):
you talk about, forget about it. Forget about it. So
top top truth that just comes to the front of
your brain. Be desperate to connect. That would be we
were So I was stuck, I was was grieving. I
was lost for about two or three years. My wife said,
(12:04):
We're going to try a horseback therapy, We're going to
try music therapy, We're going to try all these different things,
and we're gonna be desphere. We don't care how far
out it is, or how new age it is, or
what our neighbors are going to think, or any of that.
We're going to be desperate to fill the bridge between
us and our son. And we tried everything that is imaginable,
and eventually we found the connection that worked for us.
(12:28):
But it took years, and it was that desperation. It
was that we don't care what it looks like. We're
going to build some sort of thread between us and
our non verbal child, and then we're going to build
a family from there. So but it was that desperation.
Had had my wife and not had that, I would
have been stuck in grief. She wasn't. She was already
(12:49):
a mama bear. Let's go, let's get to work, and
I was still stuck an hour ago in the doctor's office.
And that's that for me. Changed her attitude and his
courage changed my life. And I think that's why I'm
writing today because it broke something open in me. And
I approached my writing the same way of I don't
(13:09):
I'm desperate to connect with how I'm feeling. I'm desperate
to connect with my own heart that I was estranged
from for so many years. And I took those lessons
and I've applied it to my life. So one of
the poems you wrote that I just read recently. I
can't remember the title of it, but it talked about
your um feeling lost in your faith. Uh. I've read
(13:37):
a lot of your Hey God ones where it sounds
like you have a pretty sweet relationship with the Creator,
with the great I am, but one of them that
I just read recently because this is this is what
happens for me when I go through a great loss
my my brother, my mother. I didn't have faith when
(13:59):
I lost my brother. That's what led me to my faith.
But my mom and then three boys, my adopted son,
my bio son, and my step son. It doesn't make
me question God, it doesn't. You know, a lot of
people lose their faith when they're going through grief. It
draws me a lot closer it, but it does put
(14:20):
me in a place of am I not hearing you?
Am I? Should I have done something else? Did I
miss something you told me that could have prevented this?
And I read one of your poems recently about your
faith crisis? Do you do you know which one I'm
talking about? I have? I have a lot of times
(14:43):
where I addressed my faith crisis, because that's where my
writing really began. I was in a place where I
was I was going to this well that I was
told to be full of water my entire life, and
when I whenever the going got tough, I would just
go to the well and I draw out some water
and I drink it, and I would go back to
being a happy person. But I went to that well
(15:05):
and there was nothing in there. It was dry, and
I became pretty angry at God. I became pretty angry
at the idea of all these Sunday school teachers who
had told me, you know, just pray and it'll get easer.
Just have faith and it will come to you. And
it wasn't coming for me. And it was like those
three D pictures in the eighties, you remember. You could
look at him and if you look out at the
(15:26):
corner of your eye, you could see like a uniform
jumping over like a rainbows. It was crazy three D pictures.
It was a phase for like two years. I could
never see him. No matter how I adjusted my eyes,
moved my head, I could never see those images. And
that was the same way with my faith life. I
was praying, I was asking for help and nothing was coming.
And I was so angry that I did what any
(15:47):
uh I guess, well adjusted forty something year old man does.
I went to Facebook and I started having these fake
conversations with God about where I was in my faith journey.
And I don't remember the exact poem talking about, but
I know the spirit of it. I know I know
that I I have never had a better relationship with God.
(16:07):
It's a relationship now more than it is a formal ritual.
We have a relationship almost like friends meeting across the
table from a coffee shop at a coffee shop, talking
about our lives talking about my life. And that's where
I'm at now. From the minute I found my faith,
I've had relationship within my creator is you know, the
(16:29):
Lord is my best friend, but sometimes my best friend
is silent. Yes, And that's it's an impossible riddle for me.
It's and that's where I don't speak from a place
of evangelism or I have any idea of how any
of this works. All as I know is I feel
(16:49):
this connection in my heart now more than I ever
did when I was following the formula that was given
to me. Neil stands that Neil Locke say this prayer,
do all the calisthenics, do all those things. And I
was kind of going through the motions and I it
works for millions of people, Billy with people across this world,
and that's amazing, and that's great for them. I couldn't
(17:12):
find my I couldn't find an anchor in there anymore
because I was having all these gray issues in my life,
all these it wasn't white and black, it wasn't It
was all these the middle of the road issues that
my faith wasn't addressing. And I was going through a
mental health crisis at the same time, and all I
was told was to keep praying and it will get better,
(17:33):
and it it didn't, and so I became very resentful.
And so these conversations with God were very honest at first,
like I'm not sure I believe in you anymore. And
what I was writing back were things that I would
want God to have said to me in that moment,
not judgment, not shaming, not anger, not all these things
(17:54):
that I think I might have been grown up to
think that God would think in those moments. But it was.
It's a case relationships or roller coaster. There's times where
we're going to be close and times when we're gonna
be a little bit far apart, but the love exists
no matter what. So have you gotten one of those? Hey, God,
(18:16):
it's me uh poems handy that you could share with
us today? Yeah? I could. I could. I could share
one um, yes, and I will. I will probably have
to read both parts to it. So see, I wish
we had prepared ahead of time, because I could have
been one part and you could have been. Because hype capting,
(18:39):
I should never ever play that part. Neither should Okay.
So this is a post that I made in two
thousand and sixteen, um and one of my more darker moments.
And I wrote it and put it on Facebook because
that's my process. I don't encourage andy other writer to
just put all their work on Facebook because it's a
wild West out there. But I wrote this and I
(19:03):
put it on Facebook, and no one really seemed to
care at the time. I got to do like people
was great. And then about two thousan eighteen I reshared
it and it had a whole new audience because I
think the world was in a different place. People started,
we're feeling how I was feeling at the moment in
which I wrote this. UM, So I'll just start me. Hey, God, God, Hello,
(19:31):
my lives me. I'm falling apart. Can you put me
back together? God? I'd rather not me? Why God, because
you aren't a pudget me. What about all the pieces
of my life that are falling down onto the ground. God,
(19:55):
let them stay there for a while. They fell off
for a reason. Take some time and the side if
you need any of those pieces back me. But you
don't understand I am breaking down. God, No, you don't understand.
You are breaking through you what you are feeling now
(20:18):
or just the growing pains you are shedding the things
and the people in your life that are holding your back.
You aren't falling apart, You are falling into place. Relax,
take some deep breaths, and allow those things you don't
need anymore in your life to fall off of you.
Quit holding onto the pieces that don't fit you anymore.
Let them fall off, let them go me. But once
(20:43):
I start doing that, what will be left of me? God?
Only the very best pieces me. I'm scared of changing. God.
I keep telling you you aren't changing, You are becoming
becoming who I created you to be, a person of
light and love and charity and hope and courage and
(21:06):
joy and mercy and grace and compassion. I made you
more than the shallow pieces that you adorn yourself with,
or or the things you cling to with such greed
and fear. Let them fall off of you. I love you,
don't change, become, become BOY made you to be. I'm
gonna keep telling you this until you remember, Well, there
(21:27):
goes another peace. God, Well let it be me. So
I'm not broken, God, of course not. But you are breaking.
Left to dawn. It's a new day, become Wow, Can
I just revisit one line, I made you more than
(21:48):
the shallow pieces you cling to. How many people have
realized the last couple of years, or have they? Have
they been able to realize they are so much more
than those shallow pieces they cling to. I think people are. Um.
I hope they are, because when I first wrote it
(22:08):
in two thousand sixteen, it meant something to me and
I shared it, and you know, no one seems to
really mean anything to him. By the time this folks
really started going, it was about in the throes of COVID.
I think people were able to start looking at all
these things that we thought were important that aren't anymore.
Status going to cocktail parties and exchanging our LinkedIn information.
(22:31):
Those things won't carry us on for the rest of
our life. It's the relationships we build with one another.
It's the kindness we show to one another. It's these
these things that we have that are celestial in nature,
that will that are eternal, These these true some of
these these things like that, these are who we are.
We don't have to change to fit what the world
(22:52):
wants of us. We were created out of love and life.
We just have to fall back into who we were
born to be and that's when I was writing that
I was struggling with. I was a writer on Facebook
talking to having fake conversations with God, and it was
impossible for me to tell all my friends and family
who you know, their lawyers, their CEOs, my brothers, and
a huge engineer for Xbox. I was a person having
(23:15):
writing poetry and writing these conversations on Facebook. That was
my job at the time, and I felt such shame.
But this conversation that I wrote in real time, I
didn't know I was going to write it. It was
a yes and improv piece. I just started writing it,
and by the end of it, I felt connected to
my purpose. And so that that piece alone is kind
(23:35):
of whenever I start feeling unanchored, I read that again,
and I haven't read that in a year, so I'm
really grateful I got to read it again today. Don't
you think that's when God works best, when we just say, okay,
use me, yes, I don't want my writing now. I
go by the seat of my pants. I I acknowledge
howing feeling at the time, and I feel it. I
(23:56):
let those emotions kind of have their have their moment
with me my depression. I build a relationship with it,
and I listened to it. I listened to what it needs,
and then I write from that space. I don't write
from an autopsy, looking at it later that I've defeated
it or vanquished it, because I never will. I have
a relationship with my depression. I had a relationship with
(24:16):
my grief, and at that moment, I remember feeling so lost,
and I just said, I want to build a relationship
with how I'm feeling in that moment, and God just
kind of took the wheel, and uh, by the time
I was done with it, I knew I felt better.
And the fact that it's helped other people, I mean,
that's that's amazing, and it's it's beyond anything I'm capable of.
(24:38):
And it's the idea of these words I don't think
are coming downloading into me. I don't. I'm not that special.
I think these were thoughts and words and love that's
been in my heart the entire time. And I'm just
kind of I look at writing as I'm unearthing things.
I'm like, like, uh, like Indiana Jones. I'm an am
an archaeological dig pulling out these things that were in
(25:00):
better than me when I was born and That's how
I look at writing. It's more inward than it is outward.
But maybe you know, through your kids, maybe through the
journey of autism, maybe through mental illness, you get to
go in and mind those treasures and share it with
us in your poems. And that I look at these
(25:20):
poems and these conversations as field reports from where I'm
going inside to look at things and I and so
that's why I write without really knowing what I'm going
to talk about, just going inside my heart and sitting
with it for a while and looking what's inscribed in
the cave walls of my heart, and then transferred it
(25:40):
to the paper. Um, that's really kind of how I
look at it. I'm not much skill set is very
very small, But what I can do is I can
I'm very in touch with how I feel, and I
think I can be in touch with how other people feel.
When I write poetry. I don't always write about my
own personal experience. I try to find that intersection with
how I know my heart is feeling and how I
know other people's harders is feeling, and we just kind
(26:02):
of meet at that intersection where we can all hang
out together. But I think the world is in a
little bit different place than when I first started, and
I think maybe maybe what I'm writing about now feels
more relevant to folks. It feels very relevant to me.
It feels very relevant to my listeners. Every time we
share something you've written, um boy, the response is phenomenal.
Do you have a chance ever to read the comments
(26:26):
from people that you've touched? I mean, people share on
my Facebook page and I re share your poems. People
share amazing things they do, and it's humbling, and you know,
the private messages of people when I talk about grief.
I just released the poetry book on Grief, and the
(26:47):
personal stories from people that they said to me about
their own experiences of loss and grief are our heart
breaking and I can't imagine what what everyone what people
are going through, and it's absolutely humbling to hear these stories.
I try to respond to everyone on the comments on Facebook.
(27:10):
I I used to be able to. It's becoming more
and more difficult to be able to respond to everyone.
But I read each one um and not as an
accolade or not as oh look at the look at
everyone commenting. It's more of that relationship. I want to
know how this touch somebody, and I want them to
know that what they've written back is equally as important
(27:32):
as what I wrote to start with. It's a conversation
back and forth, and it's taking that broken part of
me and turn it into something hopefully beautiful for the
world while they're doom screwing. I mean, it's exactly what
you do. You take the hurt, the grief, the pain,
and you're able to turn it into something beautiful for
people so they can find solace and comfort. And that's
(27:55):
what I think I'm trying to do in my own work.
Has turned these these holes in my heart into like
a wind chime or an instrument that makes music instead
of just sits there as a broken vessel. Well, I
I thought I could not have any more holes in
my heart. I really thought, you know that, that there
was just gonna be nothing left of the heart. And
(28:15):
then God showed me, Oh, I know, yeah, and um,
and I'm still standing and I'm still breathing. Yeah, And
that's what what an example of courage for the world.
Whenever somebody before I really knew what loss was. When
I was a child, I would go to a funeral
and you would see, you know, people still I would
(28:36):
always marvel. It is like, well, they don't seem too upset.
They're keeping it together, but they keep it together for
other people. They keep it together for their family. I
remember my friend of mine, his father died when I
was fourteen, and his his his mom didn't cry at
the funeral. I remember asking my mom about that, like,
why didn't she cry at the funeral? That boggled my mind.
(28:58):
My mom said, because she have started crying, she wouldn't
have stopped. And and that's and now that I've experienced
loss of my own life, I understand how that is.
And I took all these these feelings of grief and
I I sat with them, and it was hard. But
that's how I wrote all those poems on grief. And
the one you were referring to, I think is the
(29:20):
one where I talked about grief being a coral reef,
that we sit with it and it changes over time.
And in America we try to race through our grief.
Oh you get a weak breathement, but you better get
back to work pretty quickly. Oh are you not over
it yet? I mean, we treat it like a cold,
we treat it like a disease. But grief is life changing.
It's a comment that hits our planet and it terriforms everything,
(29:43):
so it's almost unrecognizable. But I find grief to be
the most quintessential human experience because it's not just sadness,
it's not just heartbreak. It's nostalgia, it's joy. There's those
moments where the song plays on the radio that we
shared and we love together, and it plays and then
it brings me joy. Or there's my dad used to
plant green green beans, and whenever I smell fresh green
(30:06):
greens in a garden, I can see my dad sitting
right there, covering and dirt and his overalls, I'm right
there with them. Grief is proof that we are all
entangled in the most wonderful ways. And as much as
I I think grief is proof of the divine, grief
is proof that we the love we share with each
other is eternal. And so I'm fascinated by writing about
(30:30):
it because I think it. I think it is the
greatest mystery of all. Losing my boys has given me
permission to be who I am and to stop feeling
shame about my discombobulated life. That's that's exactly right, and
that when my son was diagnosed with autism, that grief
(30:51):
I had, I let it imprison me, and then as
time went on, I let it empower me choosing this
yes and life. I controlled very little of what happens
in my own life. I can only control how I
react to it. And the more my son grew and
(31:11):
and started to blossom through uh in his autism and
started connecting with us in the world, I started finding
courage in my own just if he had the courage
to be who he was, unapologetically he was. He doesn't care.
He's he's now twenty two years old. He's at the
University of Wyoming. He has defied so many expectations that
were given to him twenty years ago through so much
(31:33):
hard work on his part, and he is He's got quirks.
He is a very interesting guy. He's but he's kind
to everyone he's ever met. But most importantly, he's unapologetically himself.
He doesn't have those shallow pieces that I had connected
I was all over myself. He discovered at two years
old what it took me till I was forty two
(31:55):
years old to discover that he doesn't have to change
to put this world He's already something beautiful and important.
He he just has to embrace himself. And that's what
took me years to get through. And that's why grief
and heartbreak and those things are awful. They're terrible tunnels
to pass through. But on the other side of it,
(32:15):
we say how strong we are. On the other side
of it, we see all these beautiful things we can
make from our heartbreak to show other people that there's
another side to devastation, that there's a that there's an
end to the storm. And maybe life won't look the
same at the end of the storm, but you can
become a lighthouse for somebody else on that same shore
(32:36):
where you once washed up on. And that's kind of
how we look at it is we we we get
lost to see, we get hurt, we get heartbroken, we
wash up on shore, but we survive, and then we
become a lighthouse to show other people how that we survive.
And if someone like me, I am a hot mess.
And that's why I say I don't write from authority.
I write from experience. You and I are both hot messes.
(33:00):
But boy, dear words resonate in my soul. I'm so
thank you. I'm having the most heartfelt conversation with the
writer poet that I've come to admire so much and
eagerly look forward to each new body of work he
shares with the world. Will continue the conversation with John
Rohdel right after I give a shout out to one
(33:22):
of today's podcast sponsors. I live for a great summer
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(34:50):
via phone eight hundred nine four zero zero five nine nine.
That's eight hundred nine zero zero five nine. So John,
tell our listeners the titles of your books. I'm a
self published dude. I had My first book was he
Got Hey, John, And it was the first like five
(35:11):
conversations I was posting on Facebook about my faith crisis
and emotional crisis. Um that was my first book. And
then I have four books of poetry, Any Given Someday Untied,
and then the two I posted this year. I published
two this year, Remedy, which became an Amazon bestseller, and
then um Upon Departure, which is my book on grief
(35:33):
that I just published a month ago. Um So those
are them. Those are my five little babies I have
out in the world. I'm gonna have to get upon Departure.
But I'm also going to have to order like a
case of tissue, uh from from someplace before I start
reading it. Yeah, it's it's I built a relationship with
my grief. That's how I when I wrote those poems,
(35:56):
I just said, I'm going to be in relationship. I'm
not going to avoid you, I'm not going to fight you.
Let's let's learn. I want to learn from you. And
that's how those poems were kind of inspired from I want.
I want to know why this is important, why I
missed this person so much still, And I kind of
explore that. And it was hard to write, but I
(36:16):
felt a measurable and measurably better when I was finished.
John Rodell, thank you for all of this time with us.
Thank you for your writings. Thank you for being brave
enough to put a voice to our heart, to our thoughts,
to our depression, to our grief, to our foibles. And
you're just you just inspire me, You bless me every
(36:39):
time I read one of your poems, even if it
doesn't apply to me, like even if I'm like not
in that space, I know people that that it does.
And I'm forever forwarding your poems to my family and friends,
So thank you. Well, I am so grateful to be
able to have this conversation with you and this is
this is surreal and it's amazing, and I'm going to
(37:01):
cherish this talk we've had for the rest of my life.
So I'm so grateful, Thank you so much. So well, God,
bless you, bless you. John Rodell shared with us how
his writing journey began years ago when he found himself
a dad raising a child with special needs. His poem
Autism Doesn't Mean Broken will resonate with anyone who has
(37:23):
had the privilege of loving somebody on the spectrum. If
this is the first time you've heard about John, you'll
want more. I promise your soul will want more. You
should visit his website John Rodel dot com j O
H N R O E D E L John Rodel
dot com, where the greeting says. He is the writer
(37:45):
of the popular Facebook conversations entitled Hey God, Hey John,
where he sits down with the divine to sort out
the world, his mental health, why he shouldn't wear skinny jeans,
and how to believe in the unseen and our modern world.
His books can be found at both Amazon dot com
and at Barnes and Nobles dot com and you can
(38:07):
read his writings on his Facebook page and see how
profoundly they have touched millions of people from all over
the world by scrolling through some of the comments left there,
My comments are there. When your scroll through, you'll find
my comments. One thing is for certain. His brave authenticity,
his vulnerability, his desire for connection has changed our world
(38:31):
for good. One heart, one line of poetry at a time,
my heart being one that was deeply, deeply touched. Let's
gather together again in a few weeks. Until then, do
me a favor. Remember to slow down and love someone
Host
Delilah
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