How to Understand & Begin Healing Generational Trauma in the Face of New Crises

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
So are you originally from Mobile.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
I was born in Mobile. My early years were in
Balwin County, Okay. My parents moved around a bit. I
ended up in Atlanta, but my grandfather was a roe
crop farmer in Baldwin County, and which is just across
the Bay from Mobile, And so I spent a lot
of time hauling bags of soybeans to put in planners

(00:29):
and pulling weeds off plowheads and cultivators. And yeah, I
spent a lot of time there, but I didn't live
there full time. After I left as a child.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
I spent I grew up on like five different types
of farms. Sarah, Yeah, it makes it. I like to
joke about how I definitely was raised in a barn.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
So yeah, yeah, yeah, and we didn't he didn't have cattle.
One of my uncles later on had one went into
dairy farming and one went into he was a road cropper,
but they they had moved to Louisiana, and so when
they one went they went into roe crop and then
one left row cropping to go into dairying. And then uh,

(01:16):
he ended up picking up a fair number of fairhead
of cattle that he you know, raised, but my grandfather
just kept he always kept a couple of beef cols
around for slaughter, and you know, one for milk because
my grandmother still made butter and and so they had that.
And but it was almost entirely a roll crop farm.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Sounds very normal. H one of ours was an Ostrich farm.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
Wow, Okay, we didn't do that.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
And then we had another that he had. It was
like a zoo. He had lots of lamas and ferrets
and parrots. Yeah, he adopted parrots that that came from
individuals who had passed away and they didn't have anything
else to do with them.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
So that's a yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Well he was a very interesting and noble guy for sure,
but he since passed. But this was my uncle. Okay,
this was my uncle. The Ostrich farm was a different uncle.
And then my grandfather had a horse farm, and then
my other grandparents were farm hands. So we traveled around

(02:32):
Tennessee from farm to farm, vaccinating cow, putting up fencing,
just you know, whatever needed to be done to those
that time. But yeah, the parents were super cool because
he like one spoke Spanish and only Spanish, and then
one only whistled TV show yep.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
One custom so you got the Rockford Files, you got
you know, the Love Boat, you got all those yeah,
all those TV show themes.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Yeah, it was super cool. But people don't realize how
recent the transition to a technological world really has been.
Considering that, you know, I guess if you come from
like highly populated areas, it kind of feels like the
world's been always a little bit more advanced rather than

(03:27):
boondock country. And yeah, coming from Alabama, it's just fields
mostly where people joke about how we're fifty years behind
everybody else, but they don't realize how true that is. Yeah,
it really gives you a completely which you know, the
US is so large, it's basically a completely different country

(03:48):
in every little region that you go to.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, almost every state is completely different,
you know, or at least there are similarities across borders
only because you know the line drawn there, but the
geography and you know, kind of the culture of the land,
like you know, the very northern part of Alabama, the
very southern part of Western Tennessee, the you know, the

(04:11):
western part of Alabama, the eastern part of Mississippi. Kind
of the same thing with the eastern part of Alabama. Jordan.
You know, it's all about like there's there's these cultural
areas that are divided by a state line, but there's
a lot of similarities across that. It's more like a
little little area, and it's kind of like the Five Boroughs.

(04:32):
You know, you go in New York, you go to
a different borough, and you might as well be in
a different town, a different city. You know.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah, there's a lot of you know.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
It's I tell people a lot of times, you know,
they'll say, you know, how are you doing on this,
you know, with some thing that I've dealt with, and
and I tell them, I'm like, look, my ancestors two
generations ago, nobody toilet paper, The women didn't have tampons,

(05:02):
they didn't have a bathroom in the house.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
No running water my dad, my dad running water in
his grandparents. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
Right, they were fairly tough people. They didn't have time
to have the problems that I have. You know, I mean,
people lived, they died, they moved on, and so in
a certain sense, you know, the complexities of today's age
add a lot more complexity, if that makes sense, right,

(05:30):
or they add a lot more complicatedness. I guess I'd
say whereas you know, they were much more focused on
It's funny, you know, my son likes to say a
blessing before a family meal, and but it's a I mean,
it's it's it's a way of him saying gratitude, you know,

(05:51):
having gratitude. But my grandparents when they said the blessed
of my parents blessed meal, it was because they were
super thankful to have food that day. Like it was,
it was a different level of gratitude, right, Like they
knew what it was like to not have food on
a day, so when they had food that day, very
grateful for that, you know. And yeah, I think there's

(06:15):
we've got a lot in exchange over the decades, but
we've we've traded a lot for what we've gained.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
Right, absolutely. Yeah, you lose sight of the things that
were super important then which are super important now also,
But they are like relationships and building the family and
having the gratitude for what you do have because you
could very easily not have. And we've become so comfortable

(06:46):
in our you know, consumeristic society where for the not
all of us, for sure, but for the most part,
everybody has their basic needs met. Yeah, and you know,
are you familiar with maslows hierarchy of needs? Okay, so
you know for centuries that that bottom level was nobody

(07:07):
could escape it. Most people couldn't escape it. They were
every single day running themselves in the ground just for
their food, water, shelter, and most of the time couldn't
make ends meet for days at a time. And so
now for the most part, we've kind of stabilized that
out and we're able to move through the other levels

(07:29):
as a society and a people and a culture because
you know, the microcosm is the macrocosm and vice versa.
So that's why healing the individual helps to heal the
community and heal the family unit and heal everything that
that individual touches. And healing's messy. You know, we're dealing.

(07:52):
You know, while we were stuck on the bottom level
of Maslow's pyramid, we were accumulating a lot of trauma
that we didn't have the time or opportunity to really process.
Plus who knew how to? Nobody knows how to, So
that's why we get all of those cliches of like,
you know, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and you know,

(08:14):
figure it out. But anyway, we could go on a
tangent about that for decades. I promise I can. I
can talk, but tell us about your struggles and what
you've been dealing with.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
Well, I think it's a good segue actually, because I
think what there was some point in my life where
things were One of my core beliefs is no one
outruns the universe, and it will kind of eventually. You

(08:49):
will just kind of get to a place where you
have to make decisions, you have to confront things, You
have to face them, you know. I mean, I guess
some people die before that happens. Some people die because
it weapens, but you know, you will come to that place.
And I was at a place one time where I
decided that, well, what purpose do I have? What what
do I have? And as I thought about a number

(09:12):
of the challenges i'd have, you know i'd had earlier
in life. This was probably in my twenties, maybe late twenties,
but late twenties, early thirties, i'd say, somewhere in that range.
I had looked. I'd looked at my ancestors in two ways.
One is I have three words tattooed on each arm,

(09:34):
and to me, they build one upon another, one upon another.
They kind of tell the story of my ancestors, that
I could look back on people who had been through
those very foundational hard times and survived and worked each
generation to make each generation better. And those words were
you know, and again one word kind of leads to
the next and the nextness, So it's honor, courage, determination, perseverance, wisdom,

(10:00):
and finally success. So I looked back and I try
to say, well, look, you know, I'm kind of a
visual person, so I have to see a picture and
then I have to take that picture, and it's like
a metaphrase. So it's like, for like everything in that picture,
I have a little phrase that describes everything that I saw.
And you know, that's how you know, those six words
eventually from my arm, so that I could see them

(10:21):
all the time and remind myself when things got difficult,
you know, ask yourself the question, did you start with
an honorable an honorable intent, an honorable position? Because that
should give you courage when things get difficult, And if
you show courage over and over again, that basically is
what people call determination. And if you are determined for
long enough, then you know, then you will have persevered,

(10:45):
And my grandfather used to say, experience is what you
get just after you needed it, and so wisdom tends
to come after perseverance, right. You know, if you persevere
long enough, then you figured it out from all your
experiences what you're screwed up, and you're like, ah, now
I'm wiser than I was going Then when people say that,
that's the thing. You know, Like in the Old Testament,
the Angel comes to Solomon, He's like, you know, an
honor of your father, David, I'm gonna give you. You know,

(11:06):
God's going to give you what you want. So what
do you want? He says, well, what I want is wisdom,
because if I have wisdom, I have everything else, and boom,
Solomon becomes the wisest man you know to ever live.
So I thought at some point I was like, that's
what I'll do. If that's wise and I want to
be wise, I'll pray that prayer. Now, what they left
out of that story was I'm trying, I'm saying this

(11:31):
without profanity, but they left out all the poodle that
would know. Okay, they left out all the shit you
got to go through to get that wisdom, right, Like
they just left all that out of that story. And
maybe it was left out for Solomon, I don't know,
but it's not for everybody else, right, and so and
then the last was if you if you had wisdom,
you were more likely to achieve success whatever. That was

(11:54):
probably not money, but some you know, success in your
life overall. And so at that point I decided kind
of that the other side of that coin was I
really felt like someone in our family was going to
have to put and our family had kind of shrunken
in size over the generations, you know, which I think

(12:16):
has happened to a lot of families. You know, from
a very large family is to basically it's now it
was me and my wife and four children now three,
and if they have fewer children, which is kind of
the trend, then it'll be you know, it just kind
of keeps getting smaller. But I looked back and I said, well,

(12:36):
how far back did this go? My great great grandfather
was a very from I did not know, but from
all accounts he was extremely kind to my father, who
would have been his grandchild, but he was terribly difficult
and a very hard disciplinary on my grandfather's My grandfather,

(12:57):
who most likely had a mental willness because he was
you know, in the majority of sense, he was crazy, okay,
like he I mean, he drank to no end, he
would fight anything, he shot people. He would definitely be
in prison today, Okay, like there's no doubt to be
in prison. Back then, it was just kind of like
you were out in the backwards of Alabama, so you know,

(13:19):
stay away from gym. He's kind of crazy. But you know,
like he would just tell you stories like yeah, yeah,
wentn't this thing, this thing happened, I shot the guy,
like I was done with that, you know, and it's
just like, well back up, as a matter of fact,
one time I was smallest, probably ten or eleven years old,
and he had had a problem on some land he
at least there were some guys who on an adjacent

(13:42):
piece of property were growing marijuana and they were you know,
this is like in the seventies, right, so it's you know,
and what they did was they put crops around the
center of these large fields and then they grow marijuana
in the middle so you couldn't see them from the road.
And this was like way out in the middle of nowhere,
dirt roads, and so they had damaged some of the
equipment because they wanted him off the land that he

(14:03):
was farming so they could take that land. And he
had gone to the sheriff, and the Sheriff's like oh Jim,
and they didn't. I don't think people really understood how
off the rails he could get. He was. We were
all kind of descended from this Muskogie line of the
southeastern Muskogie nation and scotch Irish. It's just a terrible
mix when you mix whiskey and firearms. It really is

(14:25):
like all the things, all the stereotypical stuff from like
Native Americans and scotch Irish is like, don't feed them
cheap whiskey and then give them a firearm. And that
was his preferred mode of operation was you know, although
we couldn't drink it. After a heart attack when it
was like forty five fifty got saved, you know, but
he was still himself, okay, Like like you know, having

(14:48):
a religious experience a lot of times doesn't change you, right,
it does in many ways, but those core kind of
it just kind of.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
Shifts the habits a little bit.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
Yeah. Yeah, So he didn't get drunk before he shot people. Now,
he just did it for justifiab or reasons. Yeah. So
one of the guys, so they had damaged some of
his property, like a tractor. They'd come along and cut
some injectors on a tractor, and I was, I was
with him. I was always there with him, and uh
and and when we left one night, they had chased

(15:18):
us down this start road and were shooting at us,
you know, like shoot like they was. It was a
crazy time. And uh so, yeah, I was. I was
riding in the pickup when and so like he changes
across this field. Yeah, I was like, like I said,
I was probably ten or eleven at that time. Okay,
And so like when people tried to like when they
now as an adult, I went to a phase where

(15:40):
I got bullied. But later I realized I was like,
wait a second, you've been shot at, you've been beat
you've been done. Why are you letting somebody bully you, like,
you know, what are they exactly going to do other
than kill you? That hasn't happened yet. And so anyway,
so that was the last straw for him. Okay, So
the next thing, the next day, we're going to get

(16:02):
the parts to fix what they had damaged. And he
happens to see what we come up to a stop sign.
You can't remember like that. Well, you know, it's like
like you're out in the country, nobody's around. You know.
It's like a major highway, but you're coming off a
smaller road that connects. So you see. Well, one of
the guys was sitting on a tractor. I remember that
tractor like it was yesterday. It was a case. It

(16:25):
was a back before casing there and actually that it
was a case tractor and it had large, you know,
dual rear wheels on it. And he was sitting on
it waiting at the stop sign for some traffic to
go by, and my grandfather snapped like he had one
of these. His eyes rolled back in his head like
a shark, like I mean it literally, like I could
only see the whites of his eyes that he had

(16:46):
have big eyes that were like these big, piercing may
these small kind of piercing pupilish eyes, but they rolled
back and I looked at him and all I could
see was white, and his whole demeanor changed, and I
was saying, and I remember thinking to myself, even at ten,
I'm like, so that's what you were really like and
he reached down, because they always had a shotgun with him.
He reached down and I instinct as he pulled it

(17:10):
up to move it out the window, to shoot the
guy in the head. That was his intent. He'd had enough.
I threw my body on top of the shotgun and
I was weighing it down. I said, you can't kill him.
You cannot kill him here. And and at some point
like he told me to get the buck off his gun,

(17:31):
and do you know, and he didn't hit me, like
you know, he could have easily like knocked me over.
He didn't do that. And that guy has no idea
to this day. It's probably dead now. It's a long
time ago, but he had no idea his entire life
that some eleven year old kid saved him from being
shot in the back of the head. I mean it was.

(17:53):
And it was probably five minutes. I finally travick, he moved.
My grandfather sat there. He finally put the gun down
and and in about four or five minutes. It probably
seemed a lot longer, but it couldn't have been that much.
His whole countenance changed, like it just kind of went
back and all he said to he just looked at

(18:14):
me and said, don't ever do that again. Yeah, don't
ever do that again. And I was thinking, hey, I
got an idea, how about you don't ever do that again?
So I say that, say, like my you know, and
then he was extremely abusive to my father, very like
he would have that. But he shot at my father

(18:34):
like he would run. He swore that my father was
from another man, you know, my grandma, my grandmother never insanity, right,
like that just did not occur, and he left a
lot of damage. So I decided someone along the way
that I was going to do whatever it took to
change three generations of bad behavior. That was my goal,

(18:55):
because I think you mentioned earliest like you know, these
things kind of go along through the generations, like they yeah,
they had a lot of they didn't have anything. They
were worried about eating and so whatever actions they took,
they were just worried about getting food sheltered. But you
stack that up over several generations, and.

Speaker 1 (19:11):
Yeah, I just want to say, the culture is that
they'll complain about how they were treated by their parents
and then turn around and do the exact same thing.
So that's how like the perpetuation just continues on, So
hudos for being like, Okay, enough is enough because I
don't know about you, but I well, yeah, like you

(19:31):
I sat there and was like, well, this isn't what
we're doing. This isn't what we're doing. That's not what
we're doing. Okay, So now I've got a whole playbook
on what not to do. Okay, what's better than that?

Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yeah? I mean you know, and you just you work
to not like so, my parents haven't come back. My
father's life was so difficult he volunteered to go to
Vietnam to get away from it, right, like that was
that was his Vietnam cannot be worse than this, and
it probably wasn't actually, although he had. He ended up

(20:05):
this big, dumb farm boy. For he was six foot four,
two hundred and thirty pounds, slim like he was just
a huge human a big human being. And so but
they tested him and somehow he had a protensity for languages.
So they sent him to learn Vietnamese and put him
in intelligence cool, which left him with a lot of
scars along the way. Like you know, he would tell

(20:27):
me parts of the stories, but not the end of it.
I'm like, well, what happened to that guy. I don't know, man,
I don't know. I don't. I'm like, well, you were
the one that spoke Vietnamese, aren't you. Yeah, I had
the interrogating without you. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
I don't.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
You could just see like he was. He'd wake up
in the middle of I screaming in Vietnamese, you know,
just like screaming. It's like it became kind of a
normal thing. From time to time. It happened. But my
parents decided they never wanted to be poor again. So
what was the trade off for him poor? You just worked,
but you got off the farm and you were And
so that I appreciate what they did, because they really

(21:06):
moved that next generation forward. I wouldn't be I wouldn't
live the life I have if they hadn't. But no,
there are no free lunches. So what was traded was
I never saw my parents really. I kind of grew
up alone, and you know, and that led to opportunities
for sexual abuse that kind of went on and went under.

(21:28):
Not really, who are you going to tell? You know?
And then you pick up bad habits along the way
to deal with some of those things, I think, Yeah,
I started smoking drinking way too early. But once you've
been exposed to adult behaviors, you know, what's one more
adult behavior? Right? And you know, I lost my mother.

(21:52):
She was diagnosed when I was I think eleven with
breast cancer. She ended up dying when I was twenty two,
But she spent five years, eleven years in three different
battles with breast cancer where she thought she was past
it and then she wasn't. And all of her sisters
died from breast cancer. And then I got married, and

(22:13):
somewhere along the way, you know, I decided this. I
decided what I thought was just a pretty easy thing.
I'm just gonna correct three generations of bad behavior. I just, yeah,
do those things. Yeah, I suggest people think more deeply
about these topics before they just commit themselves to, like,
this is what I want to do. And somewhere along

(22:34):
the way, we had four children. You know, But again,
no one out runs the universe. All those things that
I had dealt with before eventually caught up with me.
Things that I thought I had put out of my
mind or that I was just not going to deal with,

(22:55):
you know, they were just things that happen in life
and move on. Caught up with me. And when I
was fifty three, which I didn't think I would live
past fifty three because my mother died a fifty three
and I don't know why, but I just thought my
mother and all their sisters died at fifty three. I
don't think I'll make it past fifty three. And I
just turned fifty three when and I started having these

(23:18):
stomach pains abdominal pains, and I didn't want to go
to the doctor because I was like, no, that's probably
how I'm going to die. So my wife taught me
to go into the doctor. And admittedly i'd been partying
way too hard. Looking back on it, I realized it
was just kind of a way to help numb things out,
you know, to cope. Yeah, and I want to say

(23:41):
I wasn't fun. I would just say that it would.
It led to I think eventually all the all of
history and you know the side effects of partying to
deal with history. I ended up going I went to
the doctory. So I think I got a call blocker
problem said okay, what do I do? So I'm will
send you for an ultrasound. It's either the gallbladder will

(24:02):
take it out or you'll have call stumps. And the
tech who was doing them, who was doing the ultrasound,
I could see on her face something went right, you know,
like but and I said, what would you see?

Speaker 1 (24:18):
She's like, oh, nothing, they're not allowed to tell.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
I was like, yeah, okay, that's not good. And they
called me that afternoon and they said the doctor said
off said, hey, we found leashons on your liver, so
you know, we know you've got liver cancer. We need
to send you in for an MRI. I and I
messaged my doctor and I said, hey, man, that's bad.
Liver cancer is bad. But I partied hard, so it

(24:44):
doesn't surprise me. The liver would you know, would maybe
fail on me at some point, but at least it's
not paying creatic cancer. And then they got them or
results back the next day and they're like, hey, actually
you got pank creatic cancer and it's stage four. It's
pan created cancer has spread to your liver and h
and I broke down and cried like a baby, you know,

(25:06):
I just I was like, I cannot believe you know that,
not only because I always thought it was gonna be
something like prostate kid like I figured I would get
cancer because my mother and other sisters had it, you know,
so I was like, yeah, it'll probably happen, but not
pancreatic cancer. Like, where the hell did that come from?
You know, like it should have been prostate cancer, colon cancer,
you don't coming into anything. But where they are, pancraded

(25:27):
cancer comes so random it is and it's and it
turns out that there's a small population that have the
same genetic mutation that my mother and her sisters had,
this Bronc of what this Bronco mutation b rc A
mutation that it shows up in some people as pancreatic cancer.
Small percentage, not a lot. Eventually, my oldest daughter, who's

(25:50):
a doctor, found a place, a trial that they were
running in a center at the University of Pennsylvania where
they only deal with pancreated cancer patients who have this
genetic mutation. It was like the one place in the
country that does it. But after they gave me a
lot of medication to calm me down, and I realized,
you know, because I don't want to leave my wife

(26:11):
and children and all that kind of stuff, you know,
I started the treatments and that went on for a while,
A lot time still actually on one of the drugs
and the cancer trella started. But this August, I'll cross
seven years since diagnosis and I'm in the one One
doctor told me it was one thousand and one, one
thousand percent that I've made it this far, and the

(26:35):
skins show no visible sign of disease, so it doesn't
really happen. There are people who make it this far,
a small number of people who make it this far,
but they can still see the tumors. They might be dormant,
they might be deador just scar tissue, but they can
still see them, so they can't see it. So I'm
very blessed in that way. But that's that's a tough

(26:57):
that's a tough set of treatments they put you through
because just throwing everything at it, they don't really know.
It's not like, oh, well it's breast cancer, so we
do these things. It's just got oh it's being created cancer.
We just throw the kitchen sink at it. You know.
It took me three days to get the chemo in
one day in the in the infusion center, they would
do the first two type. It was a three chemo treatment.
The first two types of chemos plus all the stuff

(27:18):
they put around it so it doesn't kill you, right,
you know, and a histamine steroid like all this stuff
to try to get your body not to react to it.
You know. They're like, we're going to poison you, and
we're gonna give you a kind of an antidote, not
a full antidote, but something that will keep you from
dying right now, okay, And then they hook you up.
Then they hook you up to a pump that gives
you a chemo that is soap. When they sent me

(27:41):
home the first time with the pump, they sent me
with a haz mat bag And I said, why do
I need a hassbat bag? And they said, well, if
the two were to come out the pump or for whatever,
the ivy were to pop out and any of this spills,
you got to grab the pump, put it in this bag.
You gotta call the fire pump. They're gotta bring a
has mat team. I said, well, we're putting that inside me.

(28:07):
They said, yeah, don't let us. Bill thought, this is
not good stuff, like you're putting inside me. Stuff like
I don't call the hazmat team if I get it
inside me, but I do call him if it falls out.
So there was a there was a long story behind
the cancer treatments and then and I thought that was
the worst. And I even said then it's like, hell,

(28:28):
I can't get worse than this. But it turns out
never say that, yeah, because it can. Because on June
the seventh, twenty twenty one, I found the body of
my son who had taken his own life. Oh and
so now I just say, I really hope I experienced
nothing worse than what I've experienced. I know it's out there.

(28:51):
I just really appreciate not experiencing.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
Anything else, how old was.

Speaker 2 (28:56):
So that's kind of the history of you know, what
I've worked to do is from that is to tell
people who are going through very difficult times and difficult
times for them. You know, like somebody said, well I
haven't been through all that. It doesn't matter where you

(29:19):
are is where you are, Like, that's that's your thing
that you carrying, and you know that there is for me.
I ended up collecting these little phrases, fifteen of them
that looking back, they kind of represented ideas principles that
I could kind of hold on to. And you know,

(29:40):
when I got frustrated about having to do EMDR because
of you know, my son's choices, my son's suicide, and
that he was eighteen. Oh man, he told us at
nine that he wanted to kill himself. Nine years of age,
he told his mother, Yeah, he had no access to internet.

Speaker 1 (30:02):
I'm sorry my son started having similar conversations with me
at age seven.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
I like, that's it's still stunning to me, Like, like,
I don't know, I don't you know, my son had
no access to internet, he didn't have friends who had
had parents or siblings who had told themselves he did.
And there's just like, yeah, I don't really see a purpose.
I'm like nine years old. How can you know about

(30:31):
a purpose to life? It's like, I don't really see
any you sent it. I'm going to you know, I
think killing myself is the way that that is what
I will eventually do. How did you deal with it
with your son?

Speaker 1 (30:44):
I mean, I'm still just dealing with it. You know.
It's gotten a lot better than it was. He's now
he just turned in and we're in the transition period
of homeschooling him. So he's been in public school. And
I think that how has had a lot to do
with it because he's he's so incredibly smart. He started

(31:05):
having existential crisses at age two, Like at age two,
he started having breakdowns talking about how he doesn't want
to die, he doesn't want us to die, he doesn't
want like all of these things what's after at age two,
and it's just kind of escalated to where it's just
the pressure and weight of life has been so heavy

(31:27):
on him already, and you know, for no specific reason
other than he's just too damn smart for his own good.
He's just too self aware. And so what I've done
is just every single night at bedtime, we spend like
thirty minutes hanging out and he'll talk to me and

(31:47):
I just kind of keep really close tabs on what's
going on in his head. And then so we're working
on homeschooling. He'll be homeschooling next. So this semester's almost
over and we'll be hitting summer, and in the fall
he'll start virtual school, so he homeschool's virtually. He'll be
homeschooling virtually with me, and then i'll be able to

(32:09):
and then he's in the Gifted program, so he'll go
to a physical classroom once a week, and then i'll
be able to also get him into some clubs that
he's interested in, because one of the problems with living
in the boondocks of Alabama is if you're not into sports,
I just hate it for you. We got nothing, We

(32:29):
got nothing, and he's not. He'd rather be into coding
and video game and he likes chess. He likes to
build things. He likes robotics and legos, and cooking class.
He likes to cook. So but there and there's class,
there's clubs, local clubs that I can put him in,

(32:50):
but they're always They're all for like Tuesdays and Thursdays
at eleven am. So they're four homeschool in order for
us to help him. So that's just all we're doing.
I've been watching what he's actually into, what lights him up,
and we can't I can't support those desires and interests

(33:16):
with the public school system. So we're shifting so that
we can just kind of like, you know, what do
you what do we like? Let's let's just focus on
what we like. So that's friends come over and yes.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
So we ended up taking all four of ours and
my wife home school them. She stayed home a single
income family and she stayed home and and raised the
children and took on homeschooling them. I've got you know,
it's kind of I know this may seem like dark humor, Okay,

(33:52):
but that's how you deal with it, right. Yeah. So
we we like to say all four of our children
have been successful. Right, they were homeschool but they've been successful.
My oldest is the daughter, and my youngest is the developer,
a commercial developer of my youngest. My oldest son is
he travels and is like an influencer, is basically like

(34:15):
missions work for him. He has a big belief that
too many people stay inside big cities and never see creation,
and that if they want to find peace, they need
to find creation because that's where. Yeah, it makes me emotional.
He's great. So they're all they've all been successful, even
Heston who killed himself on the first try. So you know,
so I mean it's people, yeah, you know, I mean

(34:37):
people think like, how do you say that? What am
I going to do? You know?

Speaker 1 (34:41):
Yeah, and to laugh and it.

Speaker 2 (34:42):
Is it's a it's a very sad situation. But I
like to think of them all as being successful. But
I commend you on that because it's a it's a
difficult path, but it's my wife did very similar things.
Like you know, she would do the school work in
like three or four hours, which I don't know how
to take nine or ten hours, but it like they
would do that and then they would focus on what

(35:03):
each individual child like where their focus was, and they
did field trips and they learned, you know. So he
could have gone to any of my children and said,
you know, explain to me how a paper mill works,
and they would tell you because she had taken him
through a large paper mill and that's you know, and
they've just gotten this tour for manufacturing and all that
kind of they had had a I think they had

(35:24):
a great educational life. You know what. I would say
that I saw in my son again like yours, too
highly intelligent, too high a Q for his own good,
and he had so he did see things very black
and white, not a lot of gray. And he was

(35:47):
a saw. He was an he was a he was
an old soul, but he was a very soft soul.
And this is a very difficult place for soft souls.
There's a level of I mean, I don't want to
say ruthlessness, but certainly a level of fortitude that existing

(36:07):
in this plane requires and he was just too good
a human being, like you know, he was justice matter
to him, right and wrong, hypocrisy, you know, those things.
But if there is one piece of advice I passed
along to people who have children that have dealt with this,
you know, these challenges, it is keep them away from

(36:29):
Nietzsche and keep them away from Marcus Aurelius. His diaries,
those are works Nietzsche was really kind of Nietzsche had
a lot of problems in his life. Okay, like he
had a lot of problems, so he had a view
of life that was not exactly what one might think
of as positive or you know, and and Marcus areally

(36:53):
is the diaries were his diaries. He wrote things that
if you're in a really good mental place, kind like Nietzsche,
if you're in a good mental place, you can read
in each ainle like, ah, yeah, but I really agree
with that, And I kind of think, you know, that's
kind of but if you're in a dark place, if
you're close to the tunnel and the tunnel is kind
of seductively pulling you in, someone reinforcing that God is

(37:16):
dead and there's no kind of meaning or Marcus really
is his diaries saying when what he's really communicating is
that if you're at peace, you do what's right, and
you know, be stoic about it. You may die, but
die with honor, and you know, and death is not
to be feared. But if you're in a dark place
not fearing death, you know, taking those same concepts and

(37:37):
applying a minute all of a sudden, you know, I
believe my son applied some of those principles in ways
that the authors probably didn't intend for him to do.
But he started reading. He was into languages and philosophy,
you know, before he turned eight. You know, by the
time he was eighteen, he was you could say he

(37:59):
was fluent, but so and the becoming fluent in writing
and speaking Latin, and he read all the great philosophical
works from you know, the Bible through you know, the
Greek philosophers. And when you said, you know, like your
son had an existential crisis, You're like, what do you

(38:19):
what could you possibly be? Like, you're you're nine, what
you have everything you need? But in his world, the
world itself was an existential crisis, you know, like he
could just see and he thought he could forecast the future.
You know, like he would simplify the future down and

(38:40):
then forecast it out and he's like, it's just there's
really no reason to be here.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
You know.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
I don't personally understand that because I've worked hard to
stay alive, so I don't have that same point of
view and the things that I would offer him or
would not resonate with him because we came from such
a different point of view. So I just I would
just commend you for what you're doing and the focus

(39:11):
you're putting in the way you're handling situation of spending
time talking to him. I just I think that's wonderful.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
That's really all you can do. Yeah, I completely understand
like their crushing despair with the with the weight of existence,
because you know, the more you know, the more likely
you are to turn towards the darkness and just let

(39:39):
it take you and melt away into it. And it
is really overwhelming, really spiraling. And I think that that
is one of the biggest issues that we have with
like the mental health crisis. Uh, there's lots of lots
of problems, lots of directions. There's there's the accumulation of

(40:00):
generational trauma for sure, and then now we're in the
age of information, so we're capable of exploring the philosophies
and all of that, and it just you know, before
the internet, you had to go outside and play in
the in the dirt, and it made things feel a

(40:21):
lot easier and a lot safer. And you know, the
news were constantly bombarded with all of the terrible things
in the world. And you know, we're all working ourselves
to death just for inflation to continue raising prices on everything.
Relationships are falling apart and coming back together, and you know,

(40:47):
we don't have the villages that we had centuries ago.
You know. Take I was talking to a lady yesterday
about how she's talking about how she has to help
her brother with her mother and because she her mother's
getting older and so you know that comes with things

(41:08):
and stuff, and she was discussing how she had to
do that, and I was telling her, you know, we
all have heard it takes a village to raise a child,
but it takes a village period for every single individual,
no matter what stage. So it takes a village not
only to raise a child, but also to just exist

(41:30):
in the not crushing despair because there's nothing more important
than our relationships. But like you said earlier, the formation
of these little clans are getting a lot smaller, and
that puts even more pressure on the individuals that are
in that clan, because now instead of dividing out all

(41:51):
of my son's needs between me and his dad, and
his aunts and his uncles, and his cousins, and his
brothers and sisters, and his gran parents on both sides,
and then the neighbor kids, and you know, we could
spread out all the needs of one individual, because one
individual needs a lot, and it becomes too much for

(42:14):
three people to handle. You need, you need a village
of fifty to accommodate all of the emotional needs of
the single individual. And you know that puts so much
pressure on parents that are trying to do right by
their children while they're also drowning in their own emotional

(42:36):
needs and don't know where to turn and don't know
who to ask for help, don't know how to ask
for help.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
Yeah, look, I think you've I think you've described it
extremely well as an example. I truly believe if my
mother had been alive, my son would still be alive.
You know, you also need kind of the breadth of
that community, that family unit, not just the nuclear family,

(43:02):
but that larger family structure, because in a larger family structure,
inevitably one or two of those people will sync up
with another person who, without them, would have been alone.
And my son would have absolutely my mother would have
adored him, He would have adored his grandmother and they
would have had a communication where I really believe, you know,

(43:27):
she would have just had a way of understanding him.
But we didn't have that, so that was left to
just me and his mother, and you know, and his
siblings were frankly too young to understand or deal with
any of that, right, And so I do agree with
you one hundred percent. I mean it is. And the

(43:50):
knowledge of our family physician, wonderful human being, he had
seen Haston on a fairly regular basis, because you know,
he knew and he knew kind of where he was,
and is why our family physician's wife is a psychiatrist

(44:10):
and she had seen Heston as well as well as
another psychiatrist. And but you know, you can only make
somebody do. You can offer them things to do, their
person has to decide to do them. And I think
it's easier with she's I don't know. It's not that
let other people are dumber, but when you get to
a certain level of intelligence, you make decisions irrespective, right, Like,

(44:34):
those doctors aren't smart enough to tell me what to do, right, Like,
they're just not and and so.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
What a dangerous realization to have, right.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
Right, I mean, it's just like, so I don't listen
to them. I'll just do it myself, and and I'll
do it when I want and how I want. So
I'll wait until it gets really bad, and then I'll
try to do what they said, but that'll be too
late because I needed to do it. You know. It's
just but he had seen him about ten days before,
and he always took the extra time to talk to him,
you know, just to talk to him and see how

(45:08):
he was going to talk about whatever was going on.
He just he felt connected to it. So he wanted
to make sure he was okay because I'd been diagnosed
pancreatic cancer, so we want to make sure the family
was okay. And when he committed, when he killed himself,
you know, our family position was really kind of personally
devastated by it, you know, because he's like I just

(45:30):
met with him, you know, I really thought, you know,
he was turning a corner. He was out of it.
And I'll never forget what he told me, he said,
he said, Andy, it's the patients I worry about the
most are the highly intelligent ones. If you're of allegiate
average intelligence, the chances you're going to carry yourself are

(45:52):
pretty low. But if you're highly intelligent, you you think
you know so much that, like you said, the despairit
you just realize, right or wrong, you realize and I
use you know both. You realize that this is futile
and there is no way to win, and there is

(46:13):
no purpose, the real purpose to it, you know, and
like we're stuck in these four dimensions. And these are
things that I've talked to Hesson about, you know, over
the years, right and and you know he said, you know,
he said, you never see people with Down syndrome try
to kill themselves. I've never had one of my patients

(46:34):
try to do it, because you know what, I don't.
They're just they don't really seem to have the capacity.
But then you take somebody who's got a high IQ
and he goes, they're happy, the person who has basically
everything in front of him that you know can accomplish
so much. He said, those are the most you know,

(46:57):
and I think it's just like what you said is
not even really being unhappy to them, it's just looking
at things realistically. You know. Heston believed it was. I
was like, but I don't, I don't think that's reality, Like,
I don't, I don't any sympathis. He used to tell
me suicide was the most logical thing, you know, if
you saw the world the way I do. And by
that he meant correctly. He didn't mean like his view

(47:20):
was flawed. He meant like my view was flawed, and
he saw it for what it was. Then it seemed
logical to him. It's a serious seem it was.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
It's a serious It's just a series of painful events,
like really excruciatingly painful. And yeah, I mean it makes
the most sense to if you just go ahead and
opt out, you don't have to experience any of that pain,
because I mean, inevitably we're all going to die anyway,
so might as well just like skip the pain and
go straight to it.

Speaker 2 (47:50):
That's that's you've just described his philosophy. You know, where
he finally ended up at and he was better for
a while, and then something snapped and I'll never know
exactly what it.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
Was, diagnosis, what was how far this.

Speaker 2 (48:10):
Was years later, and I remember him telling me, I said,
you know, heston listen, if for no other reason, you know,
you need to be here for your mother, Okay, Like
you're very close with your mother. He was the youngest,
so they had more time to spend together, you know,
because she homeschooled them all. But he was the youngest,
so as they kind of moved on into other things,
they got a lot of time to spend together. And

(48:33):
and I would say, you know, because I very well
could die from this thing, and you know your mother
can't withstand two of this. So I was I was
working to approach it kind of logically with him. I'm like, look,
I get it. Okay, I don't agree with it, but
that's your position. But at least hold off on what
you're doing, you know, because I could die and I've

(48:54):
stayed for pancrare heada cancer. And he would tell me,
I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (48:58):
I was just a dark humor, so sorry when he
can't handle both. So now that he did, you have
no choice, but.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
No, look, I'm dark humor. Is how our family gets
through these things, right. I mean, you can tell that
when it's done, everybody is really it's painful underneath. But
you know, like I said about the success thing that
comes up all the time, It's like, you know, nobody'll
ever say Heston was unsuccessful. You know, he may have
killed himself, but he was successful, you know. I mean

(49:27):
when he everybody has a different way of kind of
dealing with the pain. But when did he say that? Oh,
he looked at he multiple times he said this to me,
and he was I mean, I hate to kind of
say with like a dead face, but that's not what
it's allied with saying. He would look at me with
it like a straight dead stare, and he would say,
you're not dying. You're not dying from this, as if

(49:51):
he could just tell the future. He's like, you're not
dying from that. I'm like, Heston, you don't really know,
I mean. And at that time, I was still going
through chemotherapy and I was going through all this stuff,
and it was I'd had two major pack surgeries during
the cancer trial, like you know, disc blew out and
I had to and so it was it was a
rough time and I was like, you just don't know.
Hes like there's and he's like, I'm just telling you.

(50:12):
You're not dying, You're not tying for this. I was like,
you don't know, and he's like, I know, that's all
he would say. I know, And so far he turned
out to be right, But I don't know, you know,
it's he was, Yeah, he was. He was a little

(50:33):
too sure of himself, you know. I mean, he was
a little too sure of himself. But you know, we persist,
and you you have to decide whether when these things occur,
how one will I mean, we knew it was a

(50:53):
possibility for nine years, but when it finally happened, it
was you cannot care for it. I mean, it's going
to be it's it's devastating. I mean it if I was,
and I'm positive that my saying it the way I'm
saying it will have little impact to a person who
is My wife described it as being you walk inside

(51:16):
the tunnel, and when you're thinking about it, you're putting
like one foot inside this dark tunnel. Like as soon
as you enter, the outer edge of the tunnel is
completely black, and so you kind of put one foot
in when you're thinking about it, but then once you
step into it, it's just a very seductive thing. It
just draws you into it. And you know, because she

(51:37):
went right after he come into suicide, I thought she
was going to as well. And I guess there are
stats to show that people close to someone who commits
suicide or our likelihood of doing the same. Yeah. Now,
I don't remember what I was telling you at the time,
but what I would tell somebody in that situation, although

(52:01):
I'm not certain that it would resonate with them, although
if it does for just one, it's the reason I
say it. I want them to know that when they
when they opt out, the pain does not go with them,

(52:22):
the pain that they feel, Huh.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
It gets transferred.

Speaker 2 (52:26):
That's all that happens. It stays, and it actually grows,
and it, like a cancer, will infect everyone who loved them,
everyone who is close, and it'll affect everyone who knew
of them. And worst of all, it will the same

(52:48):
way my mother's her perseverance through cancer, her the way
she died over eleven years. The eleven years it took
her to die taught me more about how to live
than any other lesson I took from life. I watched
her persevere like she just refused until everything failed. She didvered.

(53:11):
She would just no matter the set back, no matter what,
she would just that spirit. It's now generationally forward. Right
Like it impacted me. My children have seen me persevere,
it will impact them, and it will impact their children
and so on. And ending your life will do the

(53:32):
exact same thing. It too, will persist over generations, the
generations that you will not contribute to, the things you
will not do the people who have now been infected
by that pain. I think it's far better for people
who are having suicidal ideations or are on the verge,

(54:00):
consider the possibility that it's better to stay and diminish
the pain, and possibly it would extinguish the pain without
extinguishing their own life, because then that perseverance and their
existence is what we'll transfer forward generations and the pain
will stay here diminished. It doesn't have to go forward.

(54:20):
But if they exit, the pain would just run wild. Right.
So I don't know if that makes sense anything, it does.

Speaker 1 (54:29):
It does because suicide is a it's a bit selfish.
It's a bit selfish, and you know, if you do
see the dispar like like I mentioned earlier, I get it.
We're all going to die eventually. It's just a series
of painful events until we do. And sure, you could
skip out until it's like straight to the end and
skip all the in between, and sure it would probably

(54:51):
hurt a whole lot less, but the same despair.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
It will hurt you a lot less, right right, hurt
you not everybody else won't be hurt less. That's why
it's selfish, right, yeah, to I don't it's not. I
don't think it's intentionally selfish, but it turns out that.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
Way, right, Yeah, Well they don't realize it because they
can't see outside of themselves. They can't see a point
and a purpose to their own life. Therefore, you know
it's not going to affect anybody else, Like, yeah, mom
and dad will be upset for a little a little while,
but they'll be okay. They don't understand it, especially if
you don't have kids of your own, you don't get it.

Speaker 2 (55:28):
But I mean, not only will they be okay, I
think they think they'll be better. They'll be better without
me causing all these probs. They'll be better without all this.

Speaker 1 (55:36):
Right, Yeah, so my coping mechanism for all of this
because they're the only reason I didn't knocked out as
a teenager is because I was smart enough to know
that all of the circumstances that was causing me to
want to would be over by the time I turned nineteen.

(55:56):
You know, I could move out.

Speaker 2 (55:57):
I think only if only right, if only people could
realize that it is temporary.

Speaker 1 (56:02):
Temporary, and then you can take your life and if
you're so upset about how the world is, then work
to do something about it. Because exactly how we created
this entire miss that we all live in, this emotional
wrick that we all have to deal with, is hurt people,
hurting people, and just perpetuating that trauma over and over

(56:26):
and over again to not only generationally, but to everybody
you interact with. You know, feelings and emotions are contagious,
and just like you're having an okay day and then
you run into somebody grumpy, like a cashier or somebody
at the grocery store that were just complete assholes, and

(56:46):
now you're mad for the next six hours. The same
thing happens if you have an interaction with someone who's
chipper and happy, You're like, oh, you know what, They're
the good in the world. And then that makes you
happy for the next six to eight hours. And if
you have a hard time sinking into the like getting
out of the darkness, then stick around to be that

(57:10):
person for other people. You know you can't find the sunshine,
then be the sunshine. And it is as simple as
faking it. You know, you can have like I've been
having the shittiest week. I could begin to explain to you,
but nobody knows except for those that are closest to me.
I've been smiling. And because smiling is not something that

(57:34):
you have to be happy in order to do, It's
a muscle response, like you can just like I can
raise my hand, I can put a smile on my face,
you know, and just and then that communicates to your
body that everything's okay. And then once your body, your
mind follows suit. So it's like, you know, even if

(57:57):
you can't tame the thoughts and the emotion inside of you,
you can choose to just fake a smile or dark humor.
You know, that's okay. It's okay to have dark humor.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
It is a lot of people resist that, and I'm like, hey,
you know, you're kind of taking one of the arrows
out of your quiver. Honestly, you know, like that's kind
of a way I think we were designed to deal
with some things.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
Sure, absolutely, Yeah, there's all sorts of mechanisms that you
and staying busy. That's something that helps me a lot
is if I have too much time on my hands,
I immediately get unreasonably depressed.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
I talked to a guy who deals, who had had
attempted to kill himself, and you know, he told me,
he said, you know, I know it's an old cliche
that idle time is the devil's time, But for me,
idle time is when the dark shows up, and that
I have to stay. You know, I have to recognize that.

(59:02):
You know, if it shows up, my mind will go there.
So I have to I have to purposely give my
mind something to do. And the way I do that
is I get my hands busy. And if my hands
are busy, then my mind has to focus on what
I'm doing, and it pulls me away from that thing.
So I guess there are some of those old cliches
that you know, clich I've heard. The cliches exist because

(59:22):
they're statistically accurate, you know, And so I think that's
maybe one of the examples of that.

Speaker 1 (59:28):
Yeah, they made it into the Hall of Cliches for reason.

Speaker 2 (59:32):
Yeah. Well, and you know, I mean, for me, cliches
are a way to kind of remember things. Like I said,
they're like metadata, they're like up here, and there's all
this other stuff beneath it. But you know, you just
so like when you said, like things will not this
is these things are temporary. And you know if you
could get to nineteen, then you know things would change
and then this would change. And you know, for me,

(59:55):
like one of my core beliefs is tend to kind
of lean toward mathematics in some areas, and so to me,
equations are constant, but variables change and you can change
the variable. And I think I got that when I
was studying finance in college. You know a lot of

(01:00:17):
the variables were static. I mean a lot of the
equations were static. You know, It's like if this equation
has this many variables and if you no matter what
you put in those variables, it will sum to something,
but the equation will always work. You change the output
by changing the variables. And so when you're in something
where you feel like I'm stuck, it's like, well, you're

(01:00:39):
looking at the equation. The equation is, the equation is
what it is. But you do have some influence over
what those variables are. And some of those variables will
just change over time. Give them time to change, you know,
and then the outcome will change. But I think I
think my way of saying it, I've noticed with myself

(01:01:04):
when I feel stuck is because it's like I'm looking
at the construct and I'm like, well, I don't see
how the construct's going to change, you know, and so
then that kind of brings me down. But then if
I step into what is what is inside the construct,
you know, then that makes me think, oh, well, wait
a minute, there's variables there, and I know from math,

(01:01:25):
you know from mathematics that the variables can change one
over time. One I could influence some change. One they
will change unexpectedly, like the universe will change the variables. Like,
don't get your eyes off the equation and focus on
the variables, because you can do something about the variables. Right.

Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
Yeah, most of times people need to zoom out a
little bit, and you can get stuck in this place
you're too zoomed into, Like yeah, most of the time,
just your head and what's going on inside of it.
So if you can just like step one, get out
of your head and into your environment, into your body,
even like you know there's a your head's only a
very small portion of your existence. You know, you got

(01:02:09):
the rest of this also, And uh, I teach yoga
and meditation, so I'm always telling and I focus on
anxiety and stressly that's my specialty. And I'm always telling
my students and people and everybody that'll listen that your
nervous system is regulated or can be regulated by bringing

(01:02:30):
your shoulders back and down again just like yes, so
just like raise it. Just like I can choose to
raise my hand, I can choose to bring my shoulders
back and down and open up my chest and sit
up tall, have that good posture, and that signals there's
there's a whole host of things that you can do
physically that signals to your nervous system that everything's okay.

(01:02:53):
And once your body is like hey, sending signals to
your brain that hey, everything's okay, your brain starts to
go you sure, is it okay? And it starts to
kind of like come. They feed off of one another,
just like when you're replaying scenarios in your head of
like past traumas your body is having a physical reaction. Yes, yeah,

(01:03:18):
the same thing in both directions. So you can create
trauma in the body by just thinking about things that
something you said earlier I have I have clients come
to me and they're like, I can tell that I
have PTSD. I am dealing with trauma. But like, all

(01:03:40):
of these things that are wrong in my life are
trauma responses. All of these things that are these are
coping mechanisms. But I don't have any trauma, Like I've
I had a great childhood, I have no complaints. Everything
in my life is gone peach key, Like, explain to
me how I'm so traumatized, but I have no trauma.

(01:04:00):
And so there's this thing called secondary trauma and just
by and it, you know, again, really affects people who
have high empathetic capacities, who can like put themselves in
other people's shoes and really feel those deep emotions and
sorrow for other people. And they're except And so you know,

(01:04:23):
you're watching the news of some poor kid in the
Ukraine getting pulled out of the rubble all bloodied up
and whatnot, or crying and and they're and you're you're
immediately you have this entire physical reaction of oh my god,
they're this poor baby, their parents, their their home, Like

(01:04:45):
that must be so devastating. So that is trauma that
you have just taken up in your own body. So,
you know, I don't know, maybe lay off the social
media news. That's a good that's a good start, you know, it's.

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
But when you're discussing that, it really ties into and
gives like a tangible example of something. You know. I
was watching a lot of different, uh, like documentaries and
documentaries and stories or videos about about cancer when I

(01:05:23):
first got diagnosed. And one of the videos that wasn't
really related to cancer, but it was super interesting to
me was that they had discovered you know, once they
got to like ak ak cameras, like they could see
these they would see it's kind of like, you know,
they call it that zinc spark when you know, at

(01:05:45):
the moment that the sperm fertilizes the egg, there's like
this little electrical spark that happens that nobody had ever seen,
Like the people talk about the spark of life. But
then they had like this ak camera looking at the like,
oh shit, there is a sparkle life, you know, like
it happened, you know, And they were talking about how
they had been able to see that it wasn't the

(01:06:07):
brain that controlled all these functions, that organs talked to
one another, and that the kidneys were talking actually to
the liver about things and it would change the respiratory
rate because the kidneys needed to move carbon dioxide out
of the bloodstream, and the brain was just like yeah, whatever,
you know, it's like I recognize that I'm breathing harder
now than I was before, but it really doesn't know why.

(01:06:28):
It's this organ to organ communication that happens. And they
were talking about the things that happened with the heart
and how it talks to you know, and they had
captured these little sparks. I mean, I call these sparks
like these little these like protein explosions that would these
little explosions that would release proteins that would flow to
the other organs, and they would flow to specific organs

(01:06:52):
for specific task, but they would skip all the other organs,
you know, Like the heart would have this little burst
and then these proteins would run out and go to
the kidneys and the liver and then the liver would
have like it would receive that message, and then it
would send a message and these proteins would go to
the lung end the pancreas you know, but it wouldn't
go anyplace else. They would follow the p And they're like,
that's strange, but I think it really supports what you're

(01:07:14):
saying about. You know, when you were saying you can
smile and then you know, it's basically like if you
can do these other things physically, make those choices to
do those things, like you say, like putting your shoulders back,
soon your brain in a lot of ways follows along.
It's not quite the leader that forever we were told
it is. And you know, it's like how much serotonin

(01:07:37):
does every other part? Well, it's the gut that produces
seventy percent of the serotonin, right, and then it crosses
over and as the brain uses it. But I was
saying like, in a lot of ways, the brain's kind
of it's like this passively active thing that you do
have some like if you can get your other parts
of your body to just do what they need to do,
like the brain, like you said, like the brain be like, oh,

(01:07:57):
it's not that bad. You know, it's like it's not
even in control, Like it's the kidney's telling the liver
that no things are fine, you know because you sat
up straight or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:08:07):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:08:07):
I mean, it's just it's actually kind of fascinating because
I've always thought I grew up thinking the brain was
the control center, right, and I get it in a
lot of ways for thinking and that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:08:16):
But that's just where all of our senses are. That's where. Yeah,
but there's actually there's neural there's neurons in your body
or sorry, in your heart and your gut, just like
there's neurons in your brain, and there's actually more communication
going from your heart to your brain than vice. Yes,
it's just we get stuck in our heads because it's uh,

(01:08:37):
you know, communication and how you know, it's where all
our senses are located. But we are not our brains.
We are like the and I'm this kind of skirts
on spirituality, but you can you can kind of everybody
I think can agree if they really sit and think
about it. You are not your brain or your thoughts.

(01:08:57):
You were the conscious observd of what your brain and
thoughts are doing. Yes, brains, only your brain's purpose and
job is to notice when things are awry and problematic
and potentially dangerous so that we can work around those
That's it. It's and that's why we're anxious and stressed

(01:09:20):
out all the time, and that's why we remember all
the bad stuff so easily, but we don't remember the
good because your brain goes, oh, that's safe, it doesn't matter,
but they go, oh, that's dangerous. I need to pay
incredible attention to that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
So yeah, I think that's I think that's one of
the reason. That's why I found EMDR. For me. With
the MDR, I what is it? Maybe I think it's
I rapid movement. Okay, yeah, I have something rapid Anyway,

(01:09:55):
they basically walk you back through these traumatic circumstances and
they have these buzzers going off, these things going off
on your fingers, and you're listening to sounds. But kind
of again, it's support of what you're saying. It's basically
the mind is it's basically building an a different neural
pathway for those memories that are now have been kind

(01:10:17):
of interfered with by this other you know, like your
brain has to focus on this buzz and the sounds
when you're remembering this, So it desensitizes the memory and
it forces it down a different neural pathway. Because the
brain has always taken that and anything that thing, and
anything that it might consider remotely close to being like

(01:10:41):
that thing or the experience of that thing, it just
sends it down that same neural pathway. So you might get,
like you said, in these secondary traumas, you might have
the exact same response as if you had had as
if you were remembering being molested as a child, but
it's this other thing, but your brain just sends it
all down the trauma highway, right, It's like it just
all goes down. And so E mdr. Kind of well

(01:11:04):
it does. I don't think they really know why it works,
but it works in kind of telling your brain don't
have this visceral reaction. So the buzzing and everything kind
of strips off all the visceral physical reaction from it
and routes it down this other pathway where that physical
reaction doesn't exist anymore. So then when you think about

(01:11:26):
that thing, you're thinking in a way where the emotional
reaction to it has been stripped off of it, so
you can just think about it I can't remember what
the type of or the either the type of therapy
or the principle behind it. But like I said, the
ability to observe is really important, like the ability to

(01:11:50):
step back and not like disassociate, but to step back
and just yeah, well, I mean it has its place,
I guess right, I mean it is, it does, But
to be able to just observe and not become part.

Speaker 1 (01:12:07):
Of yeah, observe absorb.

Speaker 2 (01:12:11):
Yeah yeah. Is that a standard kind of term?

Speaker 1 (01:12:15):
Oh no, I don't know. It just popped in my head.
Have I heard it before?

Speaker 2 (01:12:18):
I like that, like you should write, you should save that.
I'm going to use it actually, because I think, you know,
that's kind of the essence of it, right, observe but
don't get absorbed by it. You know, I don't know.
I'm nowhere near as proficient at being able to do
that as I would like to be. You know, you care.

(01:12:38):
What I would say is the sooner you deal with
these things, the far better off you are, because otherwise
you will always fight the habit of dealing with things
the way you once did, even when you know that
you don't have to do it that way anymore. So,
you know, I would also encourage people to, you know,
don't try to outrun the universe, confront it early and

(01:13:00):
just go ahead and deal with the pain early. Remember
one therapist told me I didn't want to do emdr
that's after my son. And you know, because I knew.
She described to me what it was going to be, like,
We're gonna walk down these memories, and one of the
first ones she wanted to deal with. She wanted me
to go through the like fifteen minutes before I found him,
like what I did to Like, I had to walk
up the stairs. I had to the door was locked,

(01:13:21):
I had to come back downstairs without my wife realizing
that something was wrong. I had to go to the
garage to get a screwdriver, come back in, acted like
everything was fine, Go back up the stairs, you know,
Jimmy the door open, get in, not see him on
one side, and then look behind the door and I
found him. And I mean, I can go through that
now because I've been It's still emotional, but I can

(01:13:44):
go through it. Before I would just turn into a puddle, right,
I mean, as a matter of fact, when I first
started going through the process, I would walk to the
top of the stairs. I could see myself going downside,
could remember what it felt like, and it was you know, man,
it's like you talk about, like so close to a

(01:14:04):
panic attack. I did have one during an MDR session.
It's only the only time I experienced that. I have, like,
I have some empathy now for people who deal with
panic attacks, like I had never really, to my knowledge,
I had never dealt with that. Maybe I had had
a panic attack. But anyway, I walked back upstairs in
this memory, and the buzzing's going off, and my heart

(01:14:24):
is starting to race. Man, I'm like, you know, because
I know what's on the other side. But I couldn't
open the door, Like in my memory, the door would
not open. I couldn't get it open. So we had
to relive that like four or five times until I
could get the door open. And eventually the door opened.
But the room was black, and I knew that there

(01:14:47):
were two windows and that that morning the sun was
shining in. No light was needed. The room was full
of light. But it probably took ten cycles of going
through that to be able to get to the place
where I could walk. I could, I could go through
open the door, I could see the room, all the light.
I knew all the objects in the room, and I

(01:15:07):
could kind of walk all the way through to the
end of it. And so that's she had kind of
told me what we were gonna You don't know until
you start doing it what it's really going to be like.
But she told me kind of what to expect, and
I was like, I don't want to do that. And
she said, well, I think you know this is what
we need to do. This is you know, how we
deal with these things. And I said, no, I don't

(01:15:31):
want to go through that. I'm able to go through this. Huh.

Speaker 1 (01:15:36):
I would rather choose avoidance please.

Speaker 2 (01:15:38):
Oh right, And she said something that I will not.
I mean, it's like one of those little things that
somebody says to You've said a couple of them today.
Then I'm going to, like, you know, I got to
take that with me. I'm going to take that with me.
And she said, Andie, we can spend ten hours working

(01:16:04):
through this, and whenever you think about it, you will
be you will not have the reaction that you do. Now.
We can spend ten hours confronting this, or you can
experience that pain every moment for the rest of your
life because you will feel it whether it's conscious or not.

(01:16:29):
And I was like, you know, look, I'm a I'm
not a tremendously bright human being, but that does not
sound like the deal I want to avoid, you know,
Like I mean, so you're certain we can get there now.
Fifteen turned into twenty ten turned into fifteen into twenty.
But the point is she was right, And you know,

(01:16:49):
no matter how painful it may appear, or how of
how alluring avoidance is, that phrase that she told me
was She's like, well, you you are living with it
every minute and you so we either do this for
ten hours or you feel the pain the rest of

(01:17:09):
your life, every minute of every day. And man, she
was right, Like I realized in that And that was
the moment I realized I had been feeling every moment
of every day all the pain from the other things
that had occurred, right, And that's how it turned into
a lot longer, because it was you know, once you
open that door, it's kind of like a web search,
you know, it's like, oh, click on that link, click

(01:17:32):
on that link, and then you're like, that was I
even doing when I started. I don't remember why I
came here. I think I was looking for something at
home depot and now I'm looking at, you know, the
mona liuse like the loover. I don't know how I
got here, you know, and it was kind of the
same process. But I am convinced that she was right.
You either you either face it for a short, difficult

(01:17:54):
period of time or you carry it with you the
rest of your life.

Speaker 1 (01:17:59):
So that's my philosophy for sure. I learned, you know,
through a series of unfortunate events, that the more you
face the things and the more that you just accept
them for what they are and you let yourself feel
the emotions and and like, yeah, it absolutely feels like

(01:18:23):
it's going to literally shatter you into pieces from the
inside out, like an emotional explosion, but like a literal
grenade inside of you is going like the shards are
just going to rip through every cell in your body
and that's going to be that, And yeah, that's exactly
how it feels sometimes. But if you just let the

(01:18:45):
grenade explode, then you don't have a grenade anymore ticking away.

Speaker 2 (01:18:52):
You don't, you don't and you know, along those lines
of you just like you can't avoid avoiding the feeling it.
It's my wife and I went through you know, I
still do. I mean it's only been four years, right,
It's I talk to people who you know, lost people
as spouse or put a child in you know, forty

(01:19:14):
years later. It's like my grandmother was like nineties, she
still remembered her son that died from Kyla, like at
six months old. Like she's still like, I don't so
I guess it does go away, you know, but I remember,
you know, we would talk about are we We had
talked about how you feel like you're making progress and

(01:19:34):
then you know, like the stages of grief are not linear.
You know, you don't actually walk through them. They just
kind of circle around in this meandering, odd way. And
my wife was saying, you know, I still like I
go back and it starts all over again. You know,
like it can't be real. What could have done different?

(01:20:00):
Fuck him? You know, like you know, like you go
through all that, you know it's like and two you
can just go well, I guess it's it is what
it is, you know, I mean, this is where we are.
And we were talking about when Dana said, you know
her name is Eliza and said, I said, the way
I see it in my mind is like a hamster wheel.

(01:20:20):
You're gonna get on the hamster wheel. And if you
don't feel those things, like all those emotions, you will
get stuck on the hamster wheel. So if the objective
is to kind of you get thrown into the hamster
will and if the objective is to get off the
hamster wheel, don't get off of it before you have

(01:20:42):
felt the emotions that as you go around, because you know,
like if you if you can, if you sit with
the emotion, if you feel the emotions, then you can
get off the hamster wheel. Like it will the cycle
will just kind of play itself out. And I think
I found that it does that. It like that you've
got to go through the cycle and you've got to

(01:21:03):
feel it and then the cycle completes. But if you
stop that cycle, like if you stop going through it
and feeling it, then the cycle will stay like it
just kind of sits on hold waiting for you to
feel everything so that the cycle complete, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (01:21:21):
When I'm yeah, it's like one of those wind up toys.
It's wound up anyway, so you can you can stop it,
but like it's it's got to go. That's it.

Speaker 2 (01:21:31):
That's a great way to say it. That's it. No,
it's that's a that's a that's a great visualization of it, right.
I mean it's like you do like you can just
you know, like you u stab those little things for
the wings would kind of and you just stop it
and then but it's still just waiting to go. You
haven't actually let it play its course. And I think
that that's a great way to say it, because I
think that's kind of how some of these things are.

Speaker 1 (01:21:53):
You know, because you've got to hold it in order
to stop it, right, really exhausting and I kind of
need my hands to do the other things. It's the same.

Speaker 2 (01:22:03):
That's a great visual. Yes, that's a great visual and
a really useful way to think about it. That really
is because I think that it's I think it's accurate.
You know, you have to let it unwind and then
you can go about your and the sooner you let
it appropriately unwind, the sooner you will be able to

(01:22:24):
the cycle will complete, you know, and then it may
get wound up the next day. But if you hold
on to it like you described, it will just sit
and wait. It'll sit and wait on you. Grief is
very patient, like it's it is very patient. It will
just wait on you, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:22:42):
Yeah, it's like a it's like a stubborn lady just
sitting there like, Okay, you can do what you need
to do, but I'm still angry. And we're you're going
to listen as soon as you get as we get
a chance, you give me an opportunity, and we're going
to talk about it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:56):
We are going to talk about it. That's exactly right. Yeah, yeah,
So it's just better. As my grandmother the one of
the worst days when I was not like a worst day,
but I remember I got spanked three times one day
my grandmother. I was staying with my grandmother and I
had been the old lady staring at It made me
think of this. She made me cut my own switch.
You know, your background you might have, but I had

(01:23:16):
to cut my own switch. Okay, like that was part
of the party. Go out to that struck cut that switch. God,
you know, don't get them, and don't get one that
won't work, because then I'll get the bigger one. So
you pick one that's you know, so you got to
kind of pick your own formal punishment. And so she
used the switch. I don't know what I did, but
she used to switch on me. Then my mother comes
back from work and picks me up for my grandmother's

(01:23:38):
and she spanks me because my grandmother had used the
switch on me. And then I get home and my
father comes home from work and he whips me because
my mother's had to spake me because my So I
don't know why that came up. When you're talking about
the lady that'll just sit there, but the spanking will occur.
So like the sooner we just get on with it,

(01:24:01):
is you know, the better off you will be.

Speaker 1 (01:24:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:24:03):
And because it's it'll just sit and wait on you
and keep spanking you until you give in. But yeah,
I thought I thought about that, and I was like, yeah,
that's kind of the way grief is. It'll just take
your spanking and get it over with.

Speaker 1 (01:24:16):
Yeah, and then you can go play with your friends.

Speaker 2 (01:24:18):
Exactly, exactly, have great stories to tell, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:24:23):
Yeah, Well this has been a lot of fun. Oh,
I guess we'll let it wrap up. It's been an
hour and a half.

Speaker 2 (01:24:32):
Wow, it really it has and feel that way. Savannah,
I gotta tell you my daughter's my oldest daughter's name
is Savannah. Oh wow, Yeah, I'll tell you, I thoroughly
enjoyed this. You've been a terrific I've gained insight from
you in the conversation I have truly, and so I
just say I really appreciate it because it didn't feel

(01:24:52):
like an hour and a half.

Speaker 1 (01:24:54):
Yeah, no, I agree, And it's been the best conversation
I've had all week podcast wise, So I really appree
ciate that I've had a lot of grief people come
on lately just by chance. I don't know what happened.
The SEO really I did a couple of episodes about grief,
and the SEO really found the managers of people who

(01:25:19):
specialize in grief. So it's been a little bit of
a heavy week. But I really appreciate this conversation. It
has been so much fun. And if you ever want
to come on again, I would be more than happy
to have you.

Speaker 2 (01:25:32):
I would love to. I mean, let's plan on doing it,
because I have I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:40):
I really I could easily talk for another hour and
a half.

Speaker 2 (01:25:43):
Oh, I definitely think that, like it would just meander
through things, you know, that's my favorite. Yeah, yeah, I agree,
and I would appreciate that opportunity to.

Speaker 1 (01:25:54):
Yeah, and then you said your son does things like this,
would he be interested in doing an episode?

Speaker 2 (01:25:59):
I'm sure he would. I'm sure he would. He is. Uh,
you know, you can check out his work to see
if if you think it would fit.

Speaker 1 (01:26:10):
I mean, just told me it sounds like it fits, sir.

Speaker 2 (01:26:13):
Yeah, look look him up at it's Bryce b r
s C. Bryce C travels dot com. Uh, Bryce ce
travels dot com. But yeah, I think he is. When
you see him, you will think either homeless or you know,

(01:26:34):
surfer dude. But he is. He is an extremely deep thinker.
Like he's He's one of those people I had to
sit with as a child. He would just get upset
about something and I would sit on the corner of
his bed. I've sat there for two hours before and
like you said about the later price, I'm not leaving,
you know, but what's wrong? I don't know. For two

(01:26:58):
hours we would just it was And I told him,
I said, Brice, I see your thoughts like a like
a like one of these old ladies who has knitting
stuff and all the yarn is just all tangled up,
you know, and the problem is like that red string
of yarn you know, and it's like, but we we
need to pull that one out, you know, like let's
just separate that one and talk about but it would

(01:27:19):
take hours. And what I realized over time was, you know,
we even had him tested and stuff. They're like, no,
he's he's intelligent, and he's got to you know, he
does not on the spectrum, he doesn't it. What I
realized was he's such a deep thinker that things get
jumbled and so you have to kind of give him
a chance to unwind things a little bit. But so yeah,

(01:27:40):
if you if you talk to him, I think I
think you'll find it. He is a lot deeper than
his appearance. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:27:48):
Well, yeah, a lot of a lot of a lot
of people these days who you know, because historically, culturally
we thought the intelligent people We've been told that the
intelligent people are the ones in like the polos and
the nice dressed yes, and you know, the academics and stuff.

(01:28:10):
And then this day and age, the most intelligent, the wisest,
the deepest thingers are the ones who like hippies that
live at a van.

Speaker 2 (01:28:19):
Yeah, and you know, he is a firm believer that
if you want to if you want to experience God.
You must go to his creation, not to a building
right where man created it. You need to go sit
in the desert or in the mountains or you know.
He's been to New Zealand a couple of times and

(01:28:40):
spent months and months and months there, and you know
he's like, you need to sit on this mountaintop and
just sit. That's where KA is.

Speaker 1 (01:28:51):
Yeah. I agree completely.

Speaker 2 (01:28:53):
Yeah, but you know, like, yeah, you just wouldn't. I
love talking to him. I love talking to him about
you know, deeper things. We get into philosophical arguments from
time too, but his you can never question that he
hasn't thought about it, you know, like he's his beliefs. Yeah,
I think the world of awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:29:15):
Yeah, look forward to right. But tell people you have
a book.

Speaker 2 (01:29:18):
You have a book, okay, Yeah, it's overcoming life stuff
of setbacks. It's I don't really go into the details
of any of you know, some of these things, but
I talk about them in the sense of, like I said,
these kind of metaphrases that kind of helped me when
things would get dark or difficult. I would think about

(01:29:40):
those things and remind myself, like, you know, equations are constant,
but variables are constantly changing, it'll to kind of reset
myself back, and you know, and so there's it's really
a book kind of about those fifteen things and how
I think they generally apply, and not that I would
be so get to think that they directly apply to

(01:30:02):
anyone else. But my hope is that by putting them
out in the universe, they will apply where they need to,
and people will read into them what they need to.
Then maybe it'll be a little spark of hope or
you know, a little ability not to quit. Mm hmm. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:30:17):
If it helps one person, it's done his job.

Speaker 2 (01:30:21):
Even that kind of sounds almost like, but it's true,
like I actulutely, you know. It's just like, you know,
it sounds like that, oh yeah, okay, but it's true.
Like people say, why you doing why did you do it?
I'm not a writer. I don't like, that's not my gig.
I don't you know, I don't even know if it's
any good, you know, I just know that I had
this urge to take it and say people would ask me.

(01:30:42):
It's like I had this kind of prompting that you
needed to write it down. So I kind of hope
it's like you know the story of Moses when he's like,
but I got a stutter, and Guy's like, don't worry,
I'll work it out, okay. And so I'm kind of
hoping that's the way it works when people read it
is that it's it's some part of it will speak
to one person at that place that they need to

(01:31:04):
be spoken to.

Speaker 1 (01:31:05):
You know. What's a kind of lame if we want
to laugh about it, is it did help one person.
If we consider that one person being you.

Speaker 2 (01:31:15):
You know what, See, I told you that's another thing
I'm going to take that actually does the But see
that one little thing kind of changes my perspective on it, right,
that's it. I see. I actually like that a lot.
I'm not like, I'm not kidding, like I like that
a lot because it did actually help me a lot.
It was very cathartic to kind of get it out,
you know, and it's actually prompted me to do some

(01:31:37):
of this where talking about it kind of not to
just talk about it to relive it, but talk about
it with a purpose. So this is great that I
love that. Yeah, it is kind of right.

Speaker 1 (01:31:48):
Yeah, content creation is therapy, and uh, it's a little selfish,
but what you know, like I don't know, we get again.
We could talk for another Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:31:58):
Yeah, yeah, we're way over. We're way over. So look again,
I appreciate it, thank you so much, and I would
be more than happy. I would thoroughly enjoy speaking with
you again.

Speaker 1 (01:32:09):
Cool. I would like that too. Awesome. Well, we're gonna
link all of that down load to your book and
your website and everything, so nobody has to look too
terribly far for it.

Speaker 2 (01:32:20):
Okay, thank you, Savannah, Thank you very much

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