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Healing from Grief and Trauma · Live Your Legacy

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Live Your Legacy.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: Where every story holds a turning point.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: And every turning point holds the power of legacy.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Grace and Greetings.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Live Your Legacy, a Mr.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: Grand production, the Commercial Conversational podcast where we explore life's defining moments that shape the legacy we leave behind.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Patricia D.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: Freudenberg, also known as Patty from New York.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: And this show is rooted in one simple truth.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: Grief is not always about death.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes it comes through life's changes, losses, detours, new beginnings.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: And here we speak with entrepreneurs, authors, leaders, and creators who have turned their life's defining moments into meaningful work and lasting contributions.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: Because legacy is not only what we leave behind, it's what we are shaping right now through vision, impact, and purpose.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: And today, I'm honored to welcome our special guest, Reb Chaplin, Kaya.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: Haya Lerner is a licensed clinical social worker, ordained chaplain, and author of Torah of trauma.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: As a second generation Holocaust survivor, she carries the weight of inherited grief alongside her own and spent decades transforming the weight into life of service, healing, and witness.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: Her her work bridges the sacred and the therapeutic, offering a rare integration of spiritual wisdom and clinical experience.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome our guest.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: Hello, Reb Haya.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for being here.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: And where are you coming in from?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: Tell the world where who you are.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_03: Hi Patty.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_03: I'm uh Reb Haya learner and I am in Miami, Florida.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: Ooh, I like Miami.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's one of my favorite places.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, I lived there for a couple of years uh when I was younger.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and I, you know, always have a place in my heart for Miami.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: But in this show, I I say thank you for being here, and let's get right into it.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: I have my uh my my you know my my my 10 questions of the show that I that I love um to hear everybody's responses, especially on this topic on overcoming legacy and grief and tying it all in together.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: Would you agree or disagree that hindsight is always 2020 and why?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_03: I think the whole purpose of I I've come to realize that we we put so much emphasis on success, but really our intention is to fail.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_03: And as we fail, that's how we learn.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_03: So the next time something happens, we adjust, we let we give that a try, and if that doesn't work, then we adjust it even more, we refine it even more.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_03: So that becomes our growth point, not the success.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_03: We can we can learn something from success, but most of the time humans uh learn things through failure.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: What I love about that answer, and thank you, is the thing that came to mind, Haya, is that it's almost like removing fear if you're embracing failure.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: So that was a beautiful, beautiful answer.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: Can you take us back for a moment and share with us a pivotal moment that changed the direction of your life and or work?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it was a year where I had been working for uh a local social service agency for uh for AIDS, uh HIV and AIDS for families.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_03: It was a nonprofit uh AIDS agency.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: I was also um a member of ETS Chaim of uh South Florida, which was the LGBT uh synagogue, and this was at the height of the AIDS crisis.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_03: So it seemed as if every every month at least one to two people died, people that I was close to either because they were good friends or because they were clients.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so before, you know, so the one death happened in January that pulled the rug out from under me, and then no sooner did that happen than there was a couple of other people that died, and a couple of other people died.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_03: So I never really got a chance to settle into the grief before another person left the planet, and um, and it all came down to a head when uh in November that year my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, and so that became a very devastating uh perspective.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_03: I had already lost a very dear friend uh who died a couple of years before.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_03: So it there was just a a lot of grief that I was dealing with.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, first of all, you know, I know it's been a while, but still sending my deepest condolences because when you when you think of those moments, and and again, thank you for your vulnerability to share those pivotal moments, you know, it kind of it kind of still gets you in your heartstrings.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: So my my deepest condolences and and all at the same time, but uh you don't you don't know how resilient you are until you you go through that, right?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: So so you know what challenge would you say was a blessing in disguise?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_03: I I want to say all of them because what happened is that it it it sensitized me to the pain and suffering of other people.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_03: I was no longer this immature kid, I was the one that uh was holding it up, holding myself up, um, and in a lot of cases uh my my friends and family.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um but I think the other pivotal point was when my mom died.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_03: I had to realize that how I'm perceived after I'm gone is something that I had to really look at and and realize that there were I had to make a ton of changes to to myself, to my personality, uh, to my interactions with other people.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um so I think that that while it was a terrible time for me, it was also a time to readjust and re reframe my life, make make my life into something different.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that was the ultimate when I I wrote this book and I came to the conclusion, I think that was where we needed to change our perspective, that we can frame the story as not just a loss, but it but a connection to love and to attachment.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um and how can we be a better person in the scheme of um how can we honor the people that we love that have gone beyond?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: Boy, you're you're you're um really pulling at my heart strings.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna go a little roguier, uh a little, a little off my my my my uh my off-road here.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me a little bit more about your mom.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_03: My mom was born in Germany, um just as the as Hitler and the Nazis were coming into power.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um when she was five years old, I think, her father uh was arrested on uh just after Kristallnacht, which is the night of the broken glass, when um all the when the synagogues and the the neighbor Jewish neighborhoods were being uh mobbed by uh by their neighbors, their non-Jewish neighbors.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um my grandfather was arrested, and with a number of other men, the rabbi that my grandmother had been working for, um her my grandmother's brothers were arrested.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_03: They were sent to Buchenwald, which is a concentration camp, um, and they spent 11 days there, and it was a brutal situation.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_03: They were told that they were never going to come back.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um so they they were told to leave.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_03: They my grandfather and uh my mom's uncles were released, and um they fled, they had to leave Germany, and they fled to Brussels, Belgium.
• 9:48
  unknown: Wow.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_03: And with nothing.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_03: Right, with just whatever they could pack and um and leave.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_03: My so they went to Brussels, and um it seemed that that the one day they just got unlucky, and the entire family from the immediate family of my grandparents, my mom, her sister, uh, my grandfather's family, my uh grandmother's brothers, um, and their wives, my great-grandmother, they were all sent to a detention camp called uh Camp River in the Purines.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um and they spent a year there, uh, probably a year.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um they were told that uh that they were going to be transferred to Auschwitz, but the notorious concentration camp.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_03: And um at that point my great-grandmother was very sick.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_03: She had uh typhus.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_03: My aunt had was recovering from typhoid, uh, and the SS guard had broken my grandmother's leg uh because she wouldn't convert to Christianity.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_03: They decided at that point that it was probably a good idea to uh to to escape, and so through the the the Catholic Church uh uh and the emissaries from the the Catholic Church found uh helped them escape.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_03: They went to a convent in Louvain.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_03: They had changed their names.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_03: So uh my mom went from Hella to Helen, my uh aunt went from Ruth to Jackie, and uh they were in a convent until the just about the end of the war, 1944, I think.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um they didn't my grandmother uh went from place to place and uh and she would go visit my my mom and her sister at least once a week, which put herself in danger and put everybody else in danger.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um eventually they would be uh my grandfather and grandmother didn't stay together.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_03: My grandfather he was uh becoming friendly with my grandmother's sister-in-law, whose husband just died just before liberation in uh Lithuania.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so he decided he didn't want to come to America, so my grandparents divorced.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_03: My grandmother uh decided to go to to New Orleans.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_03: Actually, no, it was the the the chair person of the uh the Bulaba watch company who was Jewish and didn't want uh Jews to be settled just strictly in New York or in Canada.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_03: He wanted to disperse the Jewish survivors all over the country, and so because my grandmother uh knew French, they thought, okay, New Orleans.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_03: French quarters.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_03: Of course, no one spoke French, nobody spoke French by then.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_03: It had been kind of that there's Creole French and Cajun French, and that's it.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and nobody spoke Yiddish, and uh, so they got helped by the local Jewish Jewish family service.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry, what I you know it just I I I know like it was like rough conditions, however, it reminds me of pioneers.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, the risk, the risk taking for the greater of good, you know, because uh a pioneer really is having faith in the unknown and the unseen, right?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: And as a chaplain, I'm sure you resonate with that, but you know, and and I I have a deeper understanding now, even from your first question, about how failing, you're you're gonna make me cry.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: How failing is learning because like this story is as heart-wrenching as it is, here you are generations later talking about it, and the legacy did continue, and you know, the resilience was on the other side of that grief, you know.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, so I just want to make a couple of other points, and I'll do this quickly.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_03: My my grandmother, my great-grandmother died in the camp.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um, my but my grandmother had to leave before she knew whether my grandmother, her mother would be alive.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, she died in the camp, and uh and she was able to get back, and she was able to be settled in New Orleans, um, where she met my dad.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_03: My uh my parents got married in the 50s.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um my uh I was born actually next week is my birthday.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: Oh happy birthday in advance.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then five about five years later, my brother uh was born.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so we had this existence in uh in New Orleans.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_03: I went to school, I went to college at LSU, Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um and eventually in uh November of the year that I just talked about, my mom had breast cancer, but she was able to survive for about 16 years.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and she got to meet her grandchildren.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_03: My brother got married and had two boys, uh, so she got to meet her grandsons.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and unsadly when the oldest turned bar mitzvah at the age of 13, that the year before she had died.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_03: So she hadn't been, she wasn't able to survive long enough to uh to be a witness, physical witness to my my nephew's bar mitzvah.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, but she's there, was there in spirit, and uh we just lost connectivity, but it's okay.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: That's all right, go ahead.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's okay.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: We pop in and pop out magically, that's perfectly okay.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: We we we roll with the spirit here.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: We got some comments from uh Bella Unplugged, and uh she's an event planner, she does amazing things.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: She also has a show, and she's saying, Wow, Reb, what a story! And I I see you pushing through the tears, uh, but like we said, right?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: We are in agreement.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: Is that correct?
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: That there's the other side.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there's the other side of it.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: There's the dark side, and then there's the other side, um, which you're here to talk about.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I I've been thinking a lot about Dolly Parton, and and I know she had some really rough times, and what she did was to turn her grief and and disappointment and sadness into doing something positive, the world.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I and that's really what I've learned is there's a guy who worked with Elizabeth Kugler Ross.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, his name is David Kessler.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I refer to them all the time because I'm a grief consultant.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: I refer to them all the time, but go ahead.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_03: So, but what he says is fine meaning.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, so I I for the last, I guess, maybe five years, I've been doing things to memorialize my my family.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_03: So there's a program in um in Europe called Stopersteiner, which is it's a tech it it translated as a stumbling stone.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: And what that means is that it's a brass plaque uh that's uh that's inserted in a paver outside the the the Holocaust survivor victim uh lived before they were they fled.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_03: And so uh I have gone back what I'm sorry, I didn't hear you.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like a tribute, like a tribute.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, it's a memorial.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so I had gone to Europe before, actually uh at the begin many, many years ago, Ronald Reagan was in office.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_03: That's how far back it went.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but we couldn't go to the eastern German part of the country that because of it was still communist and it was so closed off.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_03: So when I went, um it was maybe four years ago, I went to my mom and uh aunt's um hometown of Magdeburg, Germany, and excuse me, installed the the Stolpersteiner there in front of their home.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then flew then went out, went to Leipzig, Germany, where my grand great-grandmother lived.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_03: And so it was able to bring um a remembrance of her.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_03: And and I've been doing that for a long time.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_03: The Holocaust uh uh memorial uh in Miami Beach has a plaque uh commemorating my both sides of my mom's family.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um maybe three years ago I took my cousin to France.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_03: We went back to France, we saw where my great-grandmother's memorial is, um, and we toured the camp.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and it was funny because that they were treating us so nicely.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_03: And at the end, when we were about to have when we're ready for for lunch, he said, Well, I said, you know, how much do we owe you?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, Well, you you did such a we we treated you so badly before that we're treating you like royally now to kind of make up for it.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_03: But that that was kind of ironic.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: Did you take this with you?
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: Did you take this with you?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_03: No, I didn't, but I used my my sleeve.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: Tissues for all the audio listeners.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, you know, we gotta we gotta like laugh a little too, right?
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because it's so and if we could find some peace and meaning, uh, like David Kessler says, and you know, Patty from New York, um, the lady interviewing you now, I'm bringing the seventh stage of grief, uh, which is legacy, the light at the end of the tunnel.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: So you have just walked uh through uh all the stages uh with us here in your story.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: So I thank you for that.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: Now the next question might be a little challenging, and again, feel free to name more than one, but who has been the most memorable mentor in your life and why?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_03: Uh oh god, there are so many.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um one uh I could tell you the top four.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_03: Okay first, real quickly.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_03: So Rabbi Zalman Scheckter Shalom me a blessed memory.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um, even though I never met him, I have been meeting his students for years, even before I joined the uh the Jewish renewal movement.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so he's been a major influence in my life.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the next person would be uh Rabbi Marsha Prager, who was the dean of the Olive Ordination Program, um, and rabbinic pastor.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: rabbinic chaplain Simcha Raphael and Rabbi uh Raisel Raphael are two significant people in my life who uh who have taught me how to reframe grief um and to to turn it around and one more person that I can't not mention and that's uh Rabbi Tirts of Firestone who introduced me to intergenerational grief and and trauma and how it affects even things that we may not even know about and what happened to our family is like already in involved in our DNA.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_03: I mean there are things that I think about that um I would know have no other way of knowing um but I think that it it it is transmitted through my my mom and my grandmother's DNA.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: This memory yeah so those are the and there there are so many others my partner Nancy Drypus genetic expression it's a genetic expression yes absolutely science you know um yeah there there's so much study on this because it's it's real and once once we're aware of it then we could use epigenetics to change that gene expression we can't change our DNA but we could change the gene expression and this is taught through great science and great medicine and I'm not a medical doctor so disclosure uh but I like to read and share resources so I'm so happy that you brought attention to that yes yeah in fact it I had done when I first started oh okay go on go go on no no no question no I was gonna say told me I when I first started working at Jewish community services with the Holocaust program my supervisor and I did a uh a um a talk at the University of Miami and one of the things that we came came across is that mothers um when they they're the daughters of mothers who were survivors had a deeply depletion of oxytocin which is a uh a stress hormone and so it just kind of shows you that this a connection between epigenetics and DNA and how that gets expressed in the the transmission of trauma from mother to daughter and I wouldn't be surprised if it was also if they did research on sons fathers and sons wow thank you for that no that wasn't important I'm glad you put it in there um what would you say to your younger self today hang in there it gets better you know you just have to put in the effort and you know we're we're in illul which is our month of our forgiveness and introspection and I think that if you look at your life and forgive yourself one of the most powerful things that I did um and you know unfortunately it had to be when my parents died was to forgive them for being human and also to forgive myself for being human and once you have that that that heavy weight off of you it's so much so freeing.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: Right because you know I I love that you said that I that resonates with me too and in my in my later years even though I I'm still young but you know it's it's all relative right that you know there there is such grace there because we're all doing our best and our parents didn't have the playbook they were doing their best with what they had with their experiences with their genetic expressions so ooh that that's it's beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful what wisdom would you want to give your future self to keep holding on to to keep going to you know to to address the fears uh and anxieties and um and just keep plugging along just keep going you know we get nervous but you know my my family taught me that even though you have all these challenges you still can be resilient and adapt to uh to to those challenges and you know that's to keep that perspective that gene was a blessing by the way it was you know I never I never thought that I was a miracle until I went to uh prague the Czech Republic and it was the it and going into the Pinka synagogue and seeing 77000 names etched on the walls that are uh that were victims of the Holocaust and I realized and more and more the more I read the more I realize just how much of a miracle I am because uh it it just by the the sheer the the sheer history I should not be here and then my goal would be how do I make this life worth living what do I need to do to make the world a better place and I'm not talking about the entire world I'm talking about my world you know that that that small world that surrounds me your pond which leads me right into the next question what does legacy mean to you personally well this is a hard thing for me to to reply because I'm not I'm not a parent sadly I don't have a relationship with my nephews um that's for another story um so my legacy is for is my book my book is teaching people I I've spent almost 40 years working with grief and trauma and there are things that have worked and there are things that have haven't worked and I think that's my legacy is what has worked to help people have a better life or to heal from the traumas of um that unfortunately we go through and you know so it's big T trauma little T trauma it still has the effect of of causing deep wounds.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: My ultimate goal is with my book uh one of the things that has the couple of things have happened since my my book was published um it's actually but published the day some of the hostages were released in January 2025 which I think is very just by coincidence just by coincidence and I I am divine timing divine timing exactly um but what also uh back in October my publisher went to the Frankfurt Book fair uh fair festival which is one of the oldest and uh and largest and people in Germany were coming up to them saying this book is an important book and it needs to be translated so we had it translated to German and to me that would be the ultimate in healing I hope that my book will be at the Leipzig book fair in March um which would be even more of a healing circle the full circle again I I you know I'm interjecting here but like I I I believe you're trying to to give us that that message that that full circle that is just so divine I mean my goodness from from your from your roots to now a book being published in that language where the trauma began it's like wow wow it's like sweet redemption exactly hallelujah and so that the book has just recently about a month less than a month ago been translated to Hebrew and I'm trying to get it out to it to the Israeli population because I know that they have been dealing with PTSD far before October 7th so that's my other goal.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_03: And you know so my continuation to continue the healing process uh and then somebody that I knew who had written read the book suddenly took up her paintbrush again her musical instruments again and that's that's the epitome of healing that's what the healing process is for you know when somebody reads that they're that our ancestors went through the same thing we did and and what what worked for them what worked didn't work for them how can we tweak it a bit so that it does work and uh so I think that's part of that's my legacy is how do I take something that was traumatizing from my uh from my background my ancestry and bring it into the healing that I think the world needs wow well that leads me into the next question which you you might have answered briefly but if you want to go a little deeper let's put a scooper giver on let's put our scuba's on uh what do you whole people remember most about the way that you lived worked or served always being there you know I I try to do my best to be present with my my clients um to be present with my readers what is going to be helpful for them um how can they um how can they deal with healing because you know life is traumatizing so that that's what I hope they that that life can begin in it uh again um you'll never you'll never uh be relieved of the tr the grief the grief is gonna always be there but how do we move with that grief to um to make our beloveds proud of us beautiful if you could do it all over again would you change anything or did every part of the journey have a purpose every part of the journey had a purpose I may not have liked it at the time but I could see now that you know you talked about what 2020 provides and I think you know I could see that it made me more compassionate more kind um more patient and you know that and and unfortunately it also makes me a little bit more aware of uh of suffering and you know so I can't allow that to totally consume me so it also means having strict boundaries preserving your peace preserving your peace exactly exactly what is something uh this is our signature question here before we uh learn a little bit more about where we could find you what is something about your journey that most people would be surprised to learn now you it could be anything it could be a hobby or something you're working on but let us know people want to know what would be surprising to us to learn from you my dog I name does your dog have a name my dog has a name her name is Bella she's a labradoodle um I don't know bella where are you she come on come here Bella Bella come so she'll be she's walking over here all right hold on what she's a pot she she acts like she's almost two years old but she insists on me oh look at that this is bella and and if I could say anything that that helps me heal is this this one right here.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_03: I see how you're like the minute you said her name you're like smile from here to ear she has been such a joy we got her about a year and a half ago and she's been a joy to have um I think with but my partner and I haven't laughed so much because she just does silly things and yeah so so this is Bella my golden my labradoodle.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_02: Oh thank you Bella for joining us today oh you know and it's fun with a dog lover too so thank you for sharing her with us.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_03: And and and it's funny because she really doesn't go for the screen but there are times when I'm working with a client where she wants to come up on my lap and just get her nose really close to to the screen as if you know she wants to go through the screen to help uh a client heal.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_03: And it brings on smiles whenever she comes on screen.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_02: Oh for sure and and dogs you know and we could have a whole segment on dogs because there's so much healing with dogs right and I mean it is a man's best friend it really is uh so so thank you for for sharing uh I'm gonna go over here and and ask you my baby we're gonna we're gonna bring um this up over here this is your website but tell us uh a little bit more about your website what you're doing where can people find you I'm gonna show your website as well and that's hi um hi uh all wait what was that uh uh hi hi learner hire learner lcsw.com so I'm on uh I'm on um psychology today um there's also an application for if somebody wants to find me for therapy uh they can go on the website and click on it's through brighter visions um I provide individual counseling adult for adults and and maybe older adolescents um and uh so I I provide that uh to clients virtually I'm licensed in Maryland Connecticut and may uh and Florida um but you can find me through my website through psychology today uh and some other platforms if you google me you can find me all right so here we're highlighting your book do you want to talk a little bit more about your book yes so my book was published January 2025 um it had been a long slog through because I I wasn't really sure uh if um I wasn't sure how to go about writing people kept telling me I need to write and then I was talking to uh a dear friend and a spiritual advisor and she said do it about the Torah and so I had been um I had been attending uh a Torah study through Temple Israel Greater Miami led by Mitch Shepitz of Blessed Memory and uh and I realized these texts as we're wrestling with them are like wait this is happening now there was even one year where birds were falling out of the sky and it just so happened that the tour portion was about birds falling out of the sky so um so it's like really sometimes it could be really strange.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then in the process of writing this my uh we had a building collapse here maybe five or ten miles from me from where I live um and it was like strange like why would a building fall down um and it wasn't it wasn't uh you know it and it it wasn't a terrorist attack because that's the first thing we thought about you know it's a terrorist attack given that it was 9-11 and the more I learned about this it wasn't a storm it wasn't a hurricane it wasn't a tornado no no it wasn't and so the more I researched this and more observant about this the realized that that it was right near the ocean where there was a lot of acid rain um also so it it kind of degraded the rebar in the the steel uh that that holds up the building plus the the it was it was right on the line between um surfside and Miami Beach and right at the border the Miami Beach Council had uh agreed to build to have a building go up and so what they were doing was jackhammering concrete and cement cement which meant that the vibration also loosened up the cement the concrete the the rebar and eventually in fact it it was just a few weeks before it was just a report that a few weeks before the the collapse they started noticing signs that it was starting to de uh deteriorate and so that was another pivotal point because I'm sit standing here I was talking to a rabbinical friend of mine and she said you know this sounds like the Tower of Babel Babel and I thought yeah this is here is a tower it was 12 12 feet uh stories high um and it just fell fell down it collapsed and now I see now I see you tight now I was gonna say how what does this have to do with the book I see now the tie of that story so you referenced that um wow wow right and that it's more than that because I I was going to doing my clinical uh pastoral education at a local hospital here uh at uh it's called Jackson Memorial Hospital and as I was driving home there were all these gun shops in the poorest neighborhoods of Miami and I'm thinking this is putting our uh our kids at risk how is that any different than Abraham wanting to kill his son um we we put guns in in the hands of children or people who will go out and shoot uh children or shoot a a synagogue or shoot a a church or grocery store you name it they have a reason to do it um so again a connection abraham and Isaac sibling rivalry we are dealing with that now between between um Jacob uh Isaac and and Ishmael you know the Arabs and the Israelis we're competing and we're we're and throw in the mix of j of of Christians and you know this is our world this is the world we're living in kidnapping hostage taking been doing that for centuries um so you know alcoholism alcohol was introduced by noah and how did that affect once you in affect the the the substance abuse that it could also be connected with the snake at the Garden of Eden.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_02: So you know these are things that um that we could look at great parables I mean I I I really highly recommend anybody who's uh interested in you know learning more and and the parables there's always teaching in there it's not about religion it's about the message it's about the teaching uh I say that all the time I'm also a non denominal space not that you are but I am uh but I always reference scriptures because there is teaching in there um Thank you for the exactly and it's also historical, right?
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um some of it's absolutely some of it could be, you know, okay, um, I believe it, I don't believe it, but a lot of it is recorded history, and uh, you know, that's in important too.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: So so thank you for that.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I'm gonna give it to you for uh as we wrap it up here today, and I want to say thank you.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_02: And again, check out the website.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna spell it out for any of the audio listeners.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's higher learner lcsw.com.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: That's spelled C H A Y A L E R N E R.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's Higher Learner L C S W dot com.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's for our audio listeners, and here it is on screen for all the video watchers.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and again, I just want to give it to you for some closing remarks.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh take it away.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_03: Ah, so you know, I am very happy to uh to to meet you, Patty, um, and your listeners.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_03: My book has helped hundreds of people to to deal with trauma and grief, and um and if it could help them, they can it can help you.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_03: So I hope that you will give the book a read.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_03: Uh it's on Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com and it could be ordered from any bookstore that uh that you find interesting, um, that you go to.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_03: And um, so give it a uh a read, and if you'd like to send me a review, that would be great at highlearnerlcsw.com.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um and if you know of anybody in the Maryland, Florida, Connecticut area that would like therapy, then please uh then please give them my information.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, reach out or reach me and I'll direct you like traffic.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'll direct you right over.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, okay, well, we come to the top of the show, and I want to say again thank you.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll be putting that book on my uh referral list as an Amazon influencer, so thank you.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll also be uh purchasing it, so thank you because I love uh parables, I love reference, I love learning from a different perspective and gaining some understanding.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_02: So I really appreciate you and uh God bless.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's uh coming to the wrap of our show.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_02: I want to say thank you to all the listeners, and don't forget to hit subscribe, leave a five-star rating, write a review.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_02: You could find us on Apple Podcasts, Fatify, Amazon Music, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_02: And for now, it's a rap.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_02: Also, you could um find us uh and wherever you want to find follow us, go to live.vip and you could learn a little bit more about the show, the guests, and where to find us.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_02: And for now, I want to say until next time, live your legacy and God bless.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_03: God bless.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: And every turning point holds the power of legacy.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: Every step, every start, every star, sweet leg.