Hope In The Wilderness - Part 1 | Episode # 155 | Encore Episode # 16

Empowered Living With Jeff Byrd | Guest: Lauren Hope

Welcome to Empowered Living. Listen as Jeff tackles critical issues in a way that brings "Insight for business, leadership, and life!

https://www.talknetworkradio.com/hosts/EmpoweredLiving

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Hello, this is Gabriella on the scene today with Top
Network Radio. We have a real dread for you just
around the corner, and that is Empowered Living.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
With Jeff Bird.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Jeff is the owner of Jeffrey Berg Coaching and he
will be coming to you weekly to teach you more
about empowered living. Now, let's join Jeff already in the studio.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
Hello and welcome. This is Jeff Bird with Jeffrey and
this is Empowered Living. That's a day We're going to
do something I've never done before. We're going to have
a guest in the studio and we're going to do
an interview. And our guest today is Lauren Hope. Lauren
is the founder of a Good Girl Chronicles. She's a blogger,
she's an advocate, she's a peer recovery specialist, and she

(01:19):
has an incredible story. Thank you so much, Lauren for
joining us today.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Thank you so much for having me here.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
Yeah, so you've got quite a story. And in these days,
we see so much, so many people who have taken
their own lives. Recently, you know, we just think of
Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain just in the past couple
of months, and there's so many other Robin Williams, and
those are just the high profile ones. So many of
us know many other people who have either effectively done

(01:47):
that or tried to on their own level. And you've
got a story. You started as a reporter for Wavy
TV ten and then ended up hitting some difficulties and
ended up at a point with an attempted suicide, but
now have had quite a road to recovery and making
a huge difference and speaking out for others who may
not know how to speak out for themselves. And so

(02:09):
we can't wait to hear your story and the steps
that have led you out that hopefully can be reproduced
in the lives of anybody who may be listening who's
struggling with this, or somebody that they know and they
just don't quite know how to reach out and help.
So I would love if you would share your story
today with our guests.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Well, that's right, Jeff. Four years ago, I seemingly was
on top of the world. I was a reporter for
Wavy MES ten, I owned a condo before thirty, I
had this amazingly beautiful boyfriend who's the best shape of
my life. However, I was struggling with major depression and anxiety,
and I didn't ever feel safe enough to share that

(02:49):
with anyone, not my friends. I even struggled telling my
therapist about it. In my family just to protect me
told me to keep those things seek and I know
that they meant well, but in telling you to do that,
it led to a lot of shame, and I felt
very weak that I had this thing that I couldn't
tell anybody about. I was convinced that I was the

(03:10):
only person in the world struggling with it, and that
shame led me to not being compliant with my meds
or going to therapy or being active in treatment. And
so in twenty fourteen, I had a lot of wife stressers.
I was in a relationship but the man that I
really loved didn't love me. I was seeing a lot
of trauma in the news fields. I don't think people

(03:33):
think about this. News reporters see a lot of traumatic events.
I was the weekend and night reporter, so I was
reporting to shootings, murders, rapes. You see people at their worst,
and I didn't know how to process that. So I'd
come home and just internalize it. And I know now

(03:55):
that I experienced some PTSD from that in news like,
there is no day or two of debriefing or anything
like that. After you do a murder, like the next day,
sometimes hours later, you're putting a camera in some greeving
mother's face, and it just it broke me. And so
so twenty fourteen, I attempted suicide and just so so

(04:22):
dark in such a dark place, and so often here
a lot of people say that when they make an attempt,
it's not about dying, it's about escaping the pain. I
felt broken, alone, worthless, fat, unloved, and I had this
negative self tape all day long. And depression is like

(04:45):
living under a rain cloud. And even though the world
is sunny, outside of that ring cloud, all you can
see is the rain and the cloud. So that clouds
how people talk to you. You're convinced that they're thinking
the worst of you, what you think about yourself. And
when I survived my attent, I went to a psyche
hospital in Virginia Beach. I wish so much that I

(05:06):
could tell you that that was the fix. Well, when
I got out, I didn't really have a treatment plan
for dealing with what led me to that attempt, and
I took fmla leave but I don't think a lot
of people know that you can take a family medical
leave for mental health. But still I wasn't dealing with
my mental illness. And I went back to work for

(05:29):
five days after my thirtieth birthday, and I remember being
at my desk and my hands trembling, shaking, thinking, how
am I going to get through this day? I'm going
to fail? Like I can't do this. This used to
be a job that was second mature to me, and
all I could think of was get out, just get out.
And so I walked into my news director's office. I said, listen,

(05:51):
I cannot do this anymore. So I left Wavy July ninth,
and in twenty fourteen, and then my life to fell apart.
I just fell apart. I know now that I defined
myself by that job, so I was already severely depressed.
So when I left the job, I felt like I

(06:11):
had nothing to live for. I got a little brink
you think, retail job where people would come in and
laugh and point at me, which was so degrading. And
then for close to two years I lived in a
really dark, depressive episode. It was literally like being the
walking dead. After a while, I could work. I was

(06:32):
to sit at home all day and eat and sleep,
and I cut off all of my friends. Then I
started pulling my hair out at the root just to
feel something because I felt so numb. I developed this terrible,
debilitating social anxiety where I couldn't leave the house at all,
and it all came to a head. I think this

(06:54):
is when my parents knew that it was bad. Food
was the only thing that was comforting me in my depression.
That's it, like food and YouTube, and it was a
funny accommodation. So December twenty fifteen, it was my stepfather's
birthday and they were going to a really nice, fancy
restaurant in Norfolk, which I normally love, and I was

(07:16):
making every excuse for why I didn't go because I
was terrified to leave the house. So my mother goes
to buy me makeup, she goes about me clothes, and
I literally broke down crying, hysterical at the thought of
leaving the house. And they were like, oh wow, this
is really this is really intense. And so then they
told me listen, like we've watched you just kind of

(07:40):
your whole life just fall apart over these last few years.
You need to move in with us, and we're going
to help you get your life back. And another interesting
thing that happened is that I started taking a new medication,
an antida pressent and so, but it took a while
for it to like really grab hold of me depression.

(08:00):
The antidepressants like pushed away the rain cloud basically, and
then it was like, oh, well, life isn't that bad.
But then, but at that point I had made a
mess of my life. I was one hundred pounds overweight.
My boyfriend, you know, couldn't deal, so he left. And
then I realized, holy smokes, I've walked away from my

(08:20):
television career. Yeah, I just didn't. Even though I felt better,
I was like, I don't have any reason to live.
I've messed everything up. And I remember it was, Yeah,
it was December twenty fifteen. I was in my parents'
man cave, like again, A TV was the only thing
soothing me, and I was watching this A and E

(08:42):
special Amy Dreamy and this is how they did that
memory is for me, and I felt something say to me,
turn off the television. I'm like, oh my gosh, now
I'm hearing auditory. Oh Vince. But then I got to myself.
It wasn't like I could hear it. It's like the
stirring in my soul. And I thought, am I having

(09:05):
one of those experiences where God is speaking to me?
Is just what it feels like. And so I remember
finding back saying God, I can't do this anymore, like
just saying like i'd be really okay if I want
to sleep, and you made it so I didn't wake up.
And I remember from saying, listen, I need you to

(09:29):
get up today. And I said, what is there to
get up from? You see what I've done in my life.
God is bad. There's no coming back from this. He said, Listen, Lauren,
I have never promised any of my children that they
will have a life without strife. You know. We live
in a broken world. You don't get that. But I
promise all of my children that I will give them

(09:50):
the strength to endure it. I'm going to help you endure.
But first, Lauren, I need you to get up. And
I remember just crying for this life that I had
lost and letting it fall away. And He's like, I
not only need you to get up for yourself, there's

(10:10):
a higher calling for you when you get up and
you presevere through this, It's gonna give me so much
glory because I'm going to tell you that so many
of my children are suffering in silence with this very
same thing, and when I for you, it's going to
free so many other people. I just felt that in
my spirit, so okay, okay, He's going to give me

(10:34):
the strength to endure it. So at first it was
I'm gonna fill my hair today, I'm gonna take a
shower today, I'm going to call a friend today. And
then early twenty sixteen, I was watching this Joyce Myers
special and she was talking. She referenced first Peter five eight,

(10:55):
and the part of that scripture that stuck with me
was that the world is suffering. And I felt like,
and God said, people need to know why you left
waving these ten They need to know, like it's time.
And so I wrote this blog, my Good Girl Chronicles blog,
and I had been offline, offline for two years, and
I didn't think anyone would care. Like, within twenty four hours,

(11:17):
it's like being being in all of these notifications, Viewers
who were legitimately concerned about what happened, Viewers who were
sharing with me their own mental health struggles, people they
had lost to suicide, popular girls in high school who
never talked to me sending me their stories. I thought, God,
is this what you meant? Is this what you meant?

(11:38):
It was so revealing to me that, yes, there are
so many of God's children struggling with mental illness, depression,
suicidal ideation. And just because I dared to speak, they
felt free enough to share their truth, their truth too
or it made them comfortable in their diagnosis. And that
was the first moment I realized my new purpose was

(12:02):
to share my story of living through this, to inspire
other people to make peace with it and to live
through it. I did not realize the wilderness that God
would take me through because the more I shared my story,
the angrier my parents became. They're very conservative people, you know,
they're part of this black culture that believes what stays,

(12:26):
what happens in this house stays in this house. We
don't talk about mental illness that type of thing. And
it caused a lot of friction in our family. So
the point where they pretty much put me out in
May of twenty sixteen, and it just fractured our family.
And I know that a big catalyst was because I
was blogging about it, I was going to churches, and
I have enough grace for my family to understand that.

(12:48):
I feel like my parents thought it was a reflection
on them that the more that I talked about, you know,
my depression, some childhood trauma, they felt like it reflected
on them negatively, negatively, And I get that, but it
was my story to tell, you know, not theirs. And
so I was homeless for an entire year. I slept

(13:09):
in the backseat of my beetle some nights in the
Walmart parking lot. I hotel hopped when I got money.
But here's the beautiful thing. Because I dare to be
transparent about everything that I lost about being homeless, people
showed up. I'd post on Facebook like, this is what

(13:30):
it looks like to be homeless. This is how God
has humbled me in my homelessness. People would donate money
to my GoFundMe for twenty sixteen. It's about twenty seventeen.
I survived off four thousand dollars of go fundme donations
from viewers, from strangers, and I felt like, again, that
was God feeding me in the wilderness. I know that

(13:54):
homelessness could have broken my spirit if I did not
know who God loved. Friend of mine from Wady, who
left the TV business going to ministry, encouraged me to
read the Bible. He said to read the Book of Colossians.
And for whatever reason, I couldn't connect with that book.
He says, read the Book of John. You're gonna love it.
And I read this amazing book and there's a section

(14:18):
in there about the Samaritan woman, the woman at the well,
who I really identify with. And the thing that gets
me is that she came into a barren place, so
broken and made so many mistakes. I mean, the world
thought the worst of her. Jesus said, it doesn't matter
who you were before you came to it as well.

(14:41):
I love you anyway, and I am going to give
you an everlasting water that never runs dry. Never thought.
That makes no sense, that's how earthly. That doesn't connect
in my brain. And that is what God's love felt like.
The brokenness of your family of bandity you, the brokenness

(15:01):
of having to go to leave your dream because of
your mental illness. I felt broken just like her. I
am no saint. I have made a lot of mistakes
and so many times I didn't feel like I deserved
the second chance. But that book that what Jesus did
for the woman at the well just showed me that
it doesn't matter who you were before this depression, for

(15:24):
this attempt, I'll love you anyway, and I am going
to see you in a barren place. And that sustained
me oh so much in my homelessness. And another thing
is young man said so beautiful. He encouraged me to
read the Book of Jeremiah, and Jeremiah thirty one four
there's a translation that says I will rebose you and

(15:45):
you will be once again. And I felt so many
broken pass And the beauty of Jeremiah is that you know,
even though God's people were not following the words in there,
it says, I'm going to take all of that brokenness,
make you in the my in it. Afterwards, you still
get to experience joy. It's a beautiful thing. And these

(16:08):
were the things that were sustaining me when I was
sleeping in my car, or I even slept under an
office test for a while. And I twenty seventeen, in
the winter January through March, I stayed in a church
homeless shelter, and I remember sharing this tattered Bible with
me every day and living on that hope that God

(16:28):
is rebuilding me. He is going to make all of
this new. There is beauty for ashes. And it was
that that kept propelling me to get up every day,
to try to apply for jobs, to make connections. It
was my everlasting water, the thing that kept me full

(16:50):
in the wilderness. And the more that I shared my story,
just as I said, the more people were having conversations
about mental illness were getting help. And then I started
getting speaking engagements from that in going to churches and
then going to schools and everything. And someone met me
and said, listen, you've got something and we want to

(17:13):
invest in that. So we want to help you become
a certified peer recovery especially, which is it's been around
for a while, but it's becoming more popular. Basically, that
is somebody with a lived experience of mental illness and
or substance use disorder that's in recovery. And what we
do is we use our lived experience to help you
out of your dark place. You know, we say, I

(17:34):
know exactly what it feels like suicide, I know what
it's like to struggle with addiction. Then we connect you
to resources we help coach and mentor your family. I
like to think of it like recovery has a lot
of There are a lot of doors to recovery can't push.
I can't walk through that door for you, but I
can show you the doors, and I can keep encouraging

(17:55):
you on why you're worthy of walking through that door,
that recovery is possible, that everyone is deserving of a
second chance. And even though we don't talk about spirituality
and peer so that's a lot of what it is.
It's saying, yes, you're deserving of a second chance, Yes
you are not too far gone. I've been able to
show God's love through this job, and for the past

(18:18):
year I've been helping people addicted to heroin and all
types of substances, people who have survived suicide attemts and
don't know how to rebuild their life. And I think
all of that theme from God meeting me in the wilderness,
like joke, I feel I'm very much identify I would
joke meeting me in the wilderness and placing a calling

(18:41):
on my life to speak my truth is that it
is people free and acting on it and trusting in Him,
and that purpose because I'm telling you it's not been
an easy journey, journey to speak my truth. But I
know without a shadow of a doubt that this is
the calling that God has on my life, and I
can see how it's free people.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
Wow, this story powerful and it's amazing. There's so many
images that come to mind. But while you were talking,
one of the images that came to my mind was
of someone sitting in a dark room, no windows, not
a door opened, just absolutely alone and in the dark.
And when God said I need you to get up,

(19:19):
it was like when you responded to that call, it
was like you went and cracked opened the door and
I just saw like brilliant light letting through. And then
as you keep pushing that door open, all these other
people are coming out. They were in the room too.
All y'all didn't know you were in the same room.
Everybody thought they were alone. But now you actually opened
the door and showed, hey, there's light to like all
these other people that now have been able to come

(19:42):
out and to talk about it and to discuss things
and to get healing. But I want to ask you too.
So that was the first vision. But then when you
were talking about the woman of the girl. The way
that you described Jesus as engaging that woman and what
he had for her is so different than the way
so many people or see God. We tend to see
him often as a reflection of the people around this,

(20:04):
of our parents or whatever else. And if you've got
a story that you don't know how to share, don't
even know where to start. Even if you couldn't find
somebody who was willing to listen, you wouldn't even know
what to say. It was a starting point. So they
feel like, Okay, everybody else around you has rejected me.
God must tell you Jack too.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
Jack will be back shortly to wrap up today's message.
This is Gabriela Steal on the scene today with Top
Network Radio. If you're just tuning in, you're listening to
Empowered Living with Jeff Bird. If you've missed any part
of today's message, you can hear it again online as
well as the entire archive of Empowered Living at www

(20:44):
dot Topnetwork Radio dot com or search keyword hashtag empowered Living.
We would like to acknowledge our music partners Sound Ideas
for Corporate to the Max and Kevin McLeod for Airport
Loun Any scriptures read during this broadcast are from the
New American Standard version of the Holy Bible. If you

(21:08):
would like to learn more about Jeffrey Bird Coaching, visit
www dot Jeffbird Coaching dot com that is j E
F F b y r D Coaching dot com. Do
a Facebook search for at coaching Rocks, or drop Jeff
aligne at Jeff at Jeffbird Coaching dot com against j

(21:33):
E F F B y r D Coaching dot com.
Let Jeff's coaching rocks be the building blocks of your
empowered success. Now let's go back to Jeff for the
rest of the day's message.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
How important is it in recovery from anything and in
your opinion, to get to catch a glimp that beyond
all of this earthly battle and negative experience and painfully
to woundy that there is so much higher power, like
the like this beautiful day we're having here now with
the sun just shining in the sky. Over all of

(22:09):
the trouble and all of the storms we've had this week,
but that's there, and it's love and it's light, and
that's who God is, and that's who Christ came to
bring that culture of heaven to this earth to reconnect
us without the way with the way things really are.
So how important is it in the discoverage you have
a glimpse of that reality.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
First off, I just want to say that imagery of
being in a room like that makes me very in
this dark place with all these people who did not
realize we were all in the darkness together, and thinking
that my story cracked through the darkness for people is
just really having words for that. It makes me very emotional.
I mean know that that is not that's not of me,

(22:50):
you know, like the woman as the Well. I just
I felt like everything I had gone through did not
make me worthy of having a purpose anymore. And so
for you to say that is us. Oh man, that's powerful,
So thank you. You know, it's interesting that in a
lot of recovery models most people they do have the

(23:11):
aspect where it's a power higher than you. I mean,
AA even describes to that. And I think that's important
because it gives you hope. Like when I when I
hear you say that, I feel like it's like knowing
that there is somebody greater than you that is going
to throw you a raft in the stormy waters. You

(23:32):
know what I mean? Like it's not saying that, you know,
God is a Genie boom, the waters are going to
still right, He's going to help you endure the rough waters.
And that's so important because when you're dealing with mental
illness or addiction, a lot of times it can feel
like a beast of your own making and feel very helpless,
and then know that there is this all powerful, knowing

(23:54):
God that says I'm going to help you get through this.
It's it's the thing that got me up every day
and when the world had rejected me, my parents, the
TV community, my friends, that story of the woman at
the well was the first time I ever really knew
what unconditional love felt like, right, unconditional love when this

(24:18):
woman had five husbands and the man that she was
with was not her husband. I mean, think about the
awful things the world was probably saying about her. There's
some people who look at that and say the reason
why she went out on the time of the day
that she did because she felt shameful and God still
met her there. It's the best I can't. It is

(24:39):
like living water in a barren place, and I think
that that is the thing that a lot of people
need to get through really really dark times. And another
amazing thing about the woman at the well, she was
one of the first storytellers because of how Jesus met
her at the well.

Speaker 3 (24:53):
What did she do?

Speaker 2 (24:54):
She went and told the hall of the people in
the village, let me tell you about this amazing man
who met me. Where was that? And lucky anyway, you know,
I just have no words. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
And the thing I love about her story, which is
so wonderfully reflected in your story, is the fact that
neither of you got it together to come to him.
He said to you, Okay, it's not like, well, let
me clean up, clean up my act, you know, and
then bring you like a better project. It's like, this
is the broken product that I actually And he came
right to both of you that, no, you haven't even started.

(25:28):
Like Churchill said, this is not the end. This is
not even the beginning of the end. But it might
be the end of the beginning. And I'm going to
give you a living water that you don't even know about.
You're here trying to in the heat of the day,
trying to get something out of this well, a little
bit of whatever you can to try to give it.
I'm going to give you this abundance that you've never
even known before, and I just I just think that's
incredibly beautiful. So I want to ask you this. So

(25:50):
we're going to wrap up the first part of your story,
but uh, there's a part two come in, so make
sure and stay tuned next week because what we're going
to do is go through some of these steps that
Lauren just described herself going through and then put some
some actionable steps for anybody, because I would be surprised
if there's not somebody listening to this who feels like
they're in the same situation, feels like they're just overwhelmed,

(26:12):
they just made too many mistakes, They've destroyed their lives,
they don't know who to talk to, they don't know
what to say if they head somebody to talk to,
and they need steps. So there are in her story,
even though it's absolutely unique, there's still some steps and
some ways of thinking, the mindsets of actions that can
be reproduced in the lives of other people that can
get whoever they are. Maybe you may be a friend

(26:35):
to the same place that they need to go. But
I want to I don't want to keep you waiting
till the next episode, if you're listening to this one
in case you're in a crisis right now, And if
that's the case, Laurena, would you please tell our listeners
if that if what she's described there's something of what
she's just described, if her story resonates with you and
that dark place and you're still in that dark room

(26:55):
and the door's not cracked open yet and you don't
see any light whatsoever, for anybody who may be in
that place or know of somebody who's in that place,
so they don't even know how to initiate the conversation
with them. What can they do now?

Speaker 2 (27:07):
Well, first off, I want to talk about the suicide
Prevention Lifeline. That is a twenty four hour, seven day
a week lifeline where if you're struggling with suicidal ideation
or if you think that your loved one isn't it's
not just for the person who's struggling, it's for families.
Call That number is one eight hundred two seven three
Talk one eight hundred two seven three talk. They can
connect you to local resources. And let's say you have

(27:29):
a friend that you're concerned about and they're saying things
that are setting off your red flag you can call them.
They'll give you a script on how to talk to
your friend and how to connect them to help. Also
an amazing organization known as the National Alliance on the
Mental Illness. You can go to NAMI nami dot org
and type in your city. They have chapters all over

(27:49):
the country. Connect with them. I have learned so much
about living with the mental illness. They also have a
warm line where you can call and talk about your
mental health challenges and again they can connect.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
You to Lauren. Thank you so much. This has been
a powerful and a moving time together. And can't wait
to come back next week and go through the steps,
the actual steps like you did that people could take
and give them that they can do this actionable things
one step after the other that could help lead them
from that dark room, just like you were in, into

(28:22):
a life of purpose and of our experience being multiplied
and helping other people, and just to be like where
you are today, just radiant and outgoing and just knowing
that you got a purpose and here to make a difference.
So we looked very very forward to talk to.

Speaker 2 (28:38):
Me, to me next time.

Speaker 3 (28:39):
Thank you, You're welcome. Thank you so much for tuning
in this is empowered, living God bless you and we'll
see you next time.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
The a