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Navigating the Emotional Battlefield: The Resilience of Military Families with Veenu Keller · Your Thoughts Your Reality

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Welcome to your Thoughts, your Reality with Michael Cole, the podcast that shines a compassionate light on the journey of veterans battling through life's challenges.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Michael is a dual elite certified neuro encoding specialist in coaching and keynote training presentations dedicated to guiding military veterans as they navigate the intricate pathways of post-deployment life.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Join him as we delve into the profound realm of neuro encoding science, empowering these Hello, hello, hello Society, forging a New Path Forward.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Hello, hello, hello.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: How's everybody doing today?
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: I have one of my favorite people on here, vienu Keller.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: She is the parent-child whisperer.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: She speaks from Tony Robbins' stage.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: She's a trainer for Tony Robbins and I'm just going to say it here it is One of the most amazing people I know.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: She is fantastic, venu.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: You know we know each other.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: So first of all, michael, it is a honor to be on your show, to watch you go from wanting to create it to creating this and the lives that you get to touch through this show.
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: I'm so proud of you.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: I just want to say that, first and foremost, that it's really been an honor to watch you grow and create this and now I get to be on it.
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: So thank you for inviting me to be here.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: As Michael Cole has said that I am the parent child whisperer I've known with my clients to be able to help bridge that gap between parenting your kids and decoding the information that comes from our kids, because I don't know about you all, but I have six kids and I have a 30-year-old and 25-year-old and I have 11-year-old twins, so the language has definitely needed to be decoded nowadays.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: Right, it's the behavior, and so that's what I've really honed in on is really helping families find that not so much balance, but that ability to juggle it all and still be happy.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Amen, just juggle life and still be happy with kids and life.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Most people are just trying to do that with just life.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Right, you know?
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: You know, I wish there was a time machine, my friend, because if I could go back 20 years, oh damn Snap, as they say right.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: It wouldn't have been me 20 years ago, though, because I was still in that, needing a venue in my life.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: That's how we learn right, right, go through it.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: That's how we learn right, right, going through it.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: That's how we learn Absolutely.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: So, as you know, you know my passion is working with veterans.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: It's really important in families, even as much.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: The silent heroes, if you will, that you know are, you know, left to fend for themselves or deal with things, while the veterans, the brothers, the mothers, the fathers, the uncles, whatever you want to call it, are away on deployment, whether that be for two years or, you know, 10 years, and, you know, in different deployments.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: So it's really important to me that I got you on here, my friend.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: So because you have so many golden nuggets and so much wisdom from your experience alone, that is just going to be golden.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: So you know, amen.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: So what I'd like to my aunt is on Help me 40 years.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: I love you, lady.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: So what I'd like to start off with, if you can, is just some thoughts on the family unit.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: When there's the separation, you know that's not easy for anybody.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: I think both you know, at home and abroad, people are growth, they change, they develop.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: As you know, you and I have right 20 years ago to now what the difference is in our life, but just some initial thoughts of what kind of happens in that family unit, good and bad for when there's a separation, if you will.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, you and I were joking and I was going to come on here and say, well, it sucks because it does, but I'm not going to like drop the mic on that.
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: So you know, I just want to give you a little history.
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: I was married to a Marine when I was 18 years old and it was by choice.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: It was not an arranged marriage.
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: I'm just joking.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: We don't do that in America, only in India.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: That's not funny.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: Okay, it is, but still.
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: Come on.
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: And so when I got married to him within six months of us getting married, or not even like three months after we got married he got deployed for six months and it was a Westpac, so I was still learning what all this meant.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: We had no cell phones back then.
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: We had computers, but not for like everyone's use, because this was back in the early 90s and it was.
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: We just had the snail mail, and so I literally remembered that we would get a message which was called a key wife, like someone that you know was like to kind of communicate between the bridge right the bridge, the gap between Marines and us wives back home, like when they're going to be in a port, and I, I would remember my friends would be like, hey, let's go out.
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, I can't, cause I don't know what time he's going to call.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: I don't know what time he's going to call and I would excuse my dog.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: This is life, guys, this is life.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: This is real right here.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: And I, if I missed his call, I would.
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: I would literally go into a depression because I didn't know when I would get another call.
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: You know, we all, we all want to feel welcome, we all want to feel belonging, we all want to feel loved especially.
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: That's why we get into relationships.
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: And so to know that I'm a newly wife, my husband's gone, I'm hearing all the other women's like, oh, my husband called.
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, I miss mine.
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: Like, oh, my husband called.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, I missed mine.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: Like that's not where I wanted to be.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: So it really controlled my life.
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: And this is before kids, you know, wanting to be there, not wanting to miss his call.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: And I had to pay all the bills.
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: I had never paid all the bills.
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: I never had bills.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: I went from living with my mom to getting married at 18.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: And so I had to learn how to do a checking account, because they don't teach you that in school.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: We I don't even know if, like we had debit cards back then.
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: I don't remember it was like oh, I don't think so, I don't think so.
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: I think we only like books.
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: And you had to go get cash if you needed cash.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: And we always had cash, though, right, like back then, we used to carry cash because I just got my first credit card and then I got more credit cards, so I was all excited that I was like racking up the bills and I didn't realize that I had to pay these off now too, right.
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: So I was going through a lot of like growing up, still to be an adult and then being able to manage the bills and then manage my emotional being, and it was tough.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: It was tough, but here's what happened.
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: I learned how to grow up fast.
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: I learned how to cook while he was gone, because I would go and hang out with another mom who also didn't have kids, but she knew how to cook, and she would invite me over for dinners, so I'd watch what she would do and I'd write down the recipes.
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: And I still make spaghetti the way she does, I still make lasagna the way she does, and it's so good.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: That's fantastic.
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: And so when he comes home, now I'm good, Like I got the bills paid.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: This is when we have dinner.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: And he's like, yeah, so can I have the checkbook?
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: I'm like, for what, why do you need the checkbook?
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: And he's like because I make the money and I want to pay the bills.
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: And I'm like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I got this.
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: I've been doing this for six months.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: And then I would be like making him dinner.
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: He's like, oh wow, you learned how to cook.
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: I said, yes, I did and so, but I only learned how to cook three meals.
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: So I would constantly do those three meals over and over again.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: And it's like we didn't know how to communicate anymore with each other.
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: We didn't know how to share the growth that he had away and how the growth I had.
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: And now we had to grow together as a wife and husband.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: Right, did you find?
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: If you don't mind me interrupting just for a second, did you find there was, um, I don't want to say resentment, but there was an awkwardness because you had grown and now you're a self-sufficient woman that he wasn't familiar with?
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: And I'm not even talking about what he went through, but just that, that relationship between you two yes, there was a lot, because there was also now a trust issue, like we hear things.
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: I was insecure as myself because I did not have self-worth and self-esteem back then.
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: I didn't know how to love me, I didn't know how to appreciate myself and I always was in the realm of how do I prove, how do I prove, how do I prove I'm good enough?
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: How do I prove I'm good enough?
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: How do I prove I'm good enough?
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: And here's this guy who married me, so he obviously loves me, and yet whatever he said wasn't good enough.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: Because I'm like, well, you have to say that it's kind of like your mom, like, well, you have to say I look good, mom, I'm your child.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: You don't have to say you love me.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: But it went.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: It went so much deeper than that.
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: And, um, in my mind you know, I was never going to be that statistic, because everyone says, like we only knew each other for five and a half months before we got married.
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: Everybody's like, oh, you're going to get divorced.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, no, I'm not.
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: Challenge on, I will go through everything but I will not get divorced.
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: So fast forward to um.
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: About a year after you got from deployment we find out we're moving to North Carolina.
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: Our relationship's kind of rocky.
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: There has been some physical altercations.
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: The drinking his drinking really escalated like something I've never seen before.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: And this is when he got back from deployment.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: And what I know now is that it's a vice to let go of stress, to let like and I don't know cause I've never been a Marine, but I've heard stories Right and at 18, 19, 20, you don't know what it's like to be able to be an open vessel for your husband to just vent about.
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: Hey, this is going on and you know, this is the stress I'm under and now he's taking me out of the only home I knew.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: And Venu, most of the veterans that I talked to and I coach and I work with, they don't know how to anyway, they don't know how to have those conversations, you know, and that's.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: That's a major part of the problem, and we'll get into that some more.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: Well, I agree with you.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: I agree with you.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: I don't think, because if he cause emotionally talk about what was going on, he probably wouldn't have drank so much.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: If he would have had a support system, if he would have, you know, even though you were there and would have been there for him most likely.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: I can't answer that for you, but as you know, a spouse or whatever, you generally if you love someone you want to be there, but you generally don't know how.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: Especially being that young Right, exactly, exactly so now, and I'm pregnant after he got back from deployment.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: Oh, I thought you were making an announcement, Vianu.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: I thought you were pregnant now.
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: No, I got two grandbabies.
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: I am golden.
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: Thank you, michael.
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: So I was about five months pregnant when we moved to North Carolina and here's my mom saying please don't go.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: And I'm like I gotta go.
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: Mom, it's my husband Like I gotta go, but we were just having challenges and she was I'm her baby, right.
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: So I'm like she wants to protect me and I'm thinking I need to protect my baby and I need to go, because you're not going to give me a statistic and get a divorce.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: Damn it Not.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: So I want to just say something really quick.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: This is very similar to my mom's story where my dad, you know, three tours of Vietnam, came back.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: You know everybody said he didn't have a problem drugs, alcohol, domestic violence, all of those things and you know he didn't know how to deal with it.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: There wasn't the help.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: There's more help now, but still lacking in my opinion personally.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: But he, you know, came back my mom got pregnant, went back into, you know, deployed again.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: Didn't know she was pregnant yet they try, you know he tried to get her to go meet, be with her, be with him.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: Sorry, and it's the same story, is there was drugs, there was alcohol or domestic violence, and my mom was not going to leave her support system.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: She had, you know, my brothers and sisters, you know, and so on.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: So it's a very similar, weird right, Very similar story.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: And my story is very common for a lot of people.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: Actually it's very common for a lot of people.
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: Actually it's very common.
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: So when we get here, he's now in a non-deployable unit.
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: So we need to understand what the setting was.
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: I went from being with a man who was constantly gone if it wasn't, to a deployment.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: It was like for cax for 29 days or for a mission for two weeks, you know.
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: Know like.
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: So he was constantly gone, you know.
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: And then when I moved to North Carolina he's home now.
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: We had to learn each other all over again, being married and seeing him, seeing him every day.
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: He did let go of the control of the bills because he knew he wasn't good with money, so I got to keep that control.
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: But now we have kids and I will say this he was an amazing dad.
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: My boys when they were babies, he was an amazing dad.
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: And then, after about nine years here, he started to get deployed again.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: And our marriage was not great.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: It was still full of domestic violence, drinking.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: I was going out like with my friends, like we're kind of living two separate lives but together.
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: So I'm like deployment, who cares?
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: Right, like.
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: But I did care because now my whole family, my kids, were affected by it.
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: It's like they couldn't understand, like, why dad's going.
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: And you know, um, at the time my son was, uh, one of my sons was like two and a half and the other one was like six, no, yeah, six, six and a half, seven, almost seven.
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: And so they're like where where's daddy going?
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: And my husband, my ex-husband we had a great system because he worked night crew so he was gone during the night but home during the day with the kid that I worked during the day and I was home at night, um, so it kind of worked out, um, but for the kids that's where it really created something.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: So my husband and I actually was going to use this deployment as a separation Got it.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: Carolina.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: You had to be separated for a year.
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: We're like we're not cohabitating.
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: You're on a ship, so let's do it.
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: We didn't tell the kids either, because we thought this would be also a great time for the kids to get used to dad not being with me, starting a new routine, and then when dad comes back, dad could move out and we can still go on with our routine and then they can learn a new routine with dad.
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: But something changed, Like all of a sudden.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: Like two months in their deployment I'm like oh, oh, this doesn't feel good, this does not feel good that he's gone.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: What does that specifically mean?
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: Uh, if you don't mind me digging a little deeper, yeah, no, it didn you feel good, or what was the thought?
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: process.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: It felt lonely, I felt scared, I didn't feel safe anymore.
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: I felt like I had to battle the world on my own.
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: And now I have two kids, you know.
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: I saw the hurt in their eyes and I'm like, oh, I can't do that to my children, right?
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: And they didn't even know we were separated, but they separated but they just they were hurting because dad's not there, dad's on a ship and I so.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: So that's the bad part.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about good parts.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about how we got through this.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: Before you do, thank you for the vulnerability and telling your story.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: You know, I know your integrity.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: You're amazing.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: So that's not always easy for people, especially veterans and military, because they're conditioned to figure it out.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: You know, don't ask for help and those kinds of things.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: So you know everybody listening, please, please hear me when I say this there's more courage and more strength in asking for help than to, than to to put it down inside of you.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: It is not easy, but the more you do it, the easier it gets, I promise you.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: So please reach out and ask for help, okay.
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: And that's a great bridge to what I was going to say.
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: What was great?
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: What was great is I reached out for help.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: It's like we were connected.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and so you know, because you're going through all of this and you know we do have computers now, so we do have internet, but like we don't have like Facebook and stuff, you know where we can chat.
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: We're not zooming, there's no Skype, there's none of that.
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: But so I reached out for help.
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: You know, I started therapy and I started to.
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: I can blame all I want, but the truth is that I did not love myself, I did not have respect for myself, so I have to own my my own stuff too you know that's how you grow from it and heal from it.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: You know you can blame everybody else, but you don't learn.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: You definitely aren't going to grow um, so that you next time you deal with it, you can't navigate those waters and I didn't know how to ask him for what I needed.
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: So here I'm out, going out, getting other attention, and it felt good I'd still come home.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: Wasn't like going out with other people, but like it still felt good.
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: And I'm like but I didn't know how to ask that for my own spouse, you know, when he was home, when he wasn't and when he was away here's the other thing.
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: He wrote me great letters.
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: He missed me too.
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: So all of a sudden I felt seen, even though he wasn't there.
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: I felt more seen when he was gone than I felt when he was there, and that was another reason why that I was like yearning for him to be back in my life and that I needed this, that this is like the best recipe, because we we want to be seen and heard, and the moment that we're not, you know we're going to criticize you, men.
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: We're going to tell you why you guys aren't doing it right, and you guys aren't doing it right and you guys don't want criticism.
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: You know you don't want to know that you're not good enough, that you're not doing it right, and so there has to be that, that, that anchor of communication, and so you know, to be able to step out and get help from me.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: It wasn't.
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: It wasn't even for him.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: It's like I have him, it's like I, if I want something better, I got to do better and that has been my motto in my life.
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: And the other thing is that I didn't share.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: And you know, thank you for having this, though, cause I haven't talked about this story in so long, and so it's like really bringing up stuff I was also suicidal.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: Like I was suicidal from the time I was 13 to 34.
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: And the time I'm talking about right now I was 28, so my mo was always to escape.
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: It's like I can't do this.
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: I want out.
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: But because he was an alcoholic, I knew I could not leave my kids with him, so I was, so in a sense, it kept me alive.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: But every night I would go to bed and I would say, ok, god, if tonight's the night, I'm ready and it's OK to take me.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: And I would like I had a letter written to my mom about everything so she can go to court and fight for him.
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: Like you know, like I had a plan, but I just knew that I had to live for my kids to be 18.
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: And in my crazy mind, I thought well, once they're 18, I've done my job, I've raised them, we're good.
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: Now I can leave this earth, which would have been about 2016, and this is like 1999, 2000 that I'm talking about.
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: So I still had time, right time, to see what's going to change and thank god, because my life is flipping amazing now yeah, and when you talked about that, I literally got chills.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: I'm like the the world, without being new killer.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: Are you kidding me right now?
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: Oh, thank you.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: So that was like the first thing is I got therapy and he came home and we had to readjust.
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: But you know what?
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: And the kids had to readjust, yes, and so he comes home and he has to readjust to civilian world, like even though he's still going to go to work.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: It was like I have a family, like I can sit home and watch TV and you know, and then my wife wants this from me and that from me, and because that's home life, like I'm not going to mow the lawn anymore.
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: You're home like welcome, welcome, sorry, but you're home now, so can you please help with some of these duties.
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: Then it was like, oh, my God, I just got home being you, can I just like okay, how, how much time do you need?
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: A day, two days, five days?
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: Cause.
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: I'll do it Right and like, the kids were like not coming to him for anything and I couldn't tell if he liked that or if he felt hurt by that, but for six months the boys were coming to me for everything.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: Well, it's probably hard for the communication, for again, everybody, because I again, I preach it all day long it's about that communication, respecting that communication.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Hard as it is, it's got to happen because otherwise no one knows where anyone stands and everybody's in their own hell for time here, time there.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: It might not always be that way, but everybody gets in their heads.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, I don't care if you're a civilian or me, you or a veteran, we all do it.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: It's a human condition, we all do it.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: So it's, yeah, it's that communication.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: So they probably were dealing.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: I'm assuming they're dealing with that, would you agree?
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: I mean, they were four and seven, so of course, like, and then, and then they were overexcited to see daddy.
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: So it was like sometimes too much for him, right?
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: So it was like sometimes too much for him, right.
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: So it was like trying to find that happy medium and then starting to be able to rely on him.
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: It's like I had to relearn that and I didn't have the tools then that I have now, because now I would have asked better questions Like what do we need to do to make this work?
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: Share with me what you went through and let me share with you what I went through.
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: And let's now come together and say that's our past.
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: What are we going to do to move forward?
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: What do we need to do to make this work?
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: I didn't have those tools then.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: Right and I'm really glad you bring this up because it kind of leads us, I think, into the next part.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: So thank you again, again for the vulnerability and just having just a real conversation, because that's what we do, right.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Yes, and that's what makes change is real conversations and people really understanding and feeling it Right.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: So when coming back and transitioning, there was the struggles and those kinds of things.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: Did you ever find a way to kind of communicate and get to that point, even after the divorce, to kind of communicate and get to that point even after the divorce.
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: No, it was, it was yelling.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: And you know again cause we don't divorce Like I was not going to be, cause my mom was a single mom raising two kids in America she, she did have an arranged marriage at 18 and brought to America, had my brother and I, and then she raised us and but she divorced my dad when I was like not even one, my brother was not even three, and so she's a foreign country.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: She put herself through law school.
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: She's like my, my hero, and you know I was not going to be that person and here I was that person.
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: You know, it's a year 2000,.
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: You know, and my ex-husband God bless him.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: He did the best that he could with what he knew.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: He is a good guy, like.
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: He really is a good guy at heart, he.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: But we just were never going to be and we we looked at each other and we said you know what?
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: We fell in love at a very young age.
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: I will always love you as the father of my kids, like.
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: I'm so grateful that I had this time because we have our boys and if we're meant to be, we'll come back together one time in our life, but for now we have to go live our life.
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: And we both agreed it was a fairly easy divorce.
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: He wasn't inviting me for custody or anything.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: He was a Marine, so he knew he deployed.
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: I've already showed him I could take care of the kids and everything.
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: And at that time I had my degree in psychology because I went to night school while he was away at deployment and stuff.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: So I got my degree in psychology and so I was working in mental health.
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: So I became a mental health specialist.
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: I call that my past life because I haven't done it for so long, but for 20 years I was a mental health professional and working with kids with developmental disabilities and we had a lot here, like I'm in a military town and you know, we I don't know we just had a lot of kids that were did not meet the standard deviation in many areas and so I help kids talk and crawl and and use our gross motor fine motor skills.
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: And that's what I did and fantastic, I didn't know that.
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and I loved it.
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: I was certified through North Carolina as a infant toddler family specialist.
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: I'd go into homes every week and help these parents write a new story for their kid and get out of the woes of like, look at my child, I didn't expect autism and to see it through new lights, like creating new stories for them.
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: My ex-husband got transferred to California, which you know what that's.
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: I have a bone to pick with the military Go ahead, let's go they brought me here in 1993 in North Carolina and I begged my husband to get orders back to California and it never happened.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: After we divorced he gets orders back to California.
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: I'm like really.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: Do you think maybe it was just meant to be?
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: You know what?
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: I would not have the love of my life if it didn't happen.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: So, thank you, military right, I'm not going to pick your bones, I'm going to celebrate.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: It's the definition you give it right.
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: Nothing has a meaning's the definition you give it right.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: Nothing has a meaning but the meaning you give it for sure.
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: Um.
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: And so he ended up going to california, and so his father.
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: So this is another thing to think about families.
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: It's like how we are raised, whether we want to be that way or not.
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: Sometimes beliefs become innate in us.
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: And my ex-husband's dad never really showed up in his life because his parents are divorced.
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: And so I tell my boys your dad did better than his dad.
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: But it was kind of out of sight, out of mind, like I remember, michael, like back then on the phone, like the regular phones that we had.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: You know we had call waiting, and I would like, oh, your dad's on the phone.
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: And they're like, oh, I didn't hear the phone, like the regular phones that we had.
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: You know we had call waiting and I would like, oh, your dad's on the phone.
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: And they're like, oh, I didn't hear the phone ring and I'm like, oh, I was, I was on the other call and I wasn't.
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: I'd be calling up their dad saying you need to talk to your kids.
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: You haven't talked to your kids in a month.
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: Can you please talk to your kids?
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: Because I was.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: I was still single.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: I was single for nine years.
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: He got remarried, I think a year or two after we divorced, um and he needed somebody to take care of that checkbook Right.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: I still say that, um, so the boys had a hard time, you know, and deployment didn't set them up for that.
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: No, deployment got them like I'm, my dad's gone for a little bit, and then my dad comes back and even now as adults he's not really active in their life, like I guess they text and they'll call.
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: I always ask them how's your dad?
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: You know, um, I have no communication with them.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: When my boys turned 18, it was like, you know, my kids got into some adult trouble.
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: At one point I tried calling him.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: Literally I was talking to his voicemail and then he would text me back.
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: He wouldn't even call me back to talk about it.
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: So at that point I'm like done, I'm done.
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: I.
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: I really even as adults, try to involve you in what is going on with them.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: And, um, I'm done, and so my, my, I think you have to make the decision for yourself.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: You know, I mean, I made that hard choice too, um, at one point, and you know, I I have this amazing bride that I have now, you know.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: So we, we all have to get to that point of making those hard decisions for ourselves.
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: Right, and now, like my, my current husband, we've been together for I he's listening to this, I think 13 years, going on for 14.
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: We're going, let's see 12.
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: Okay, going on 13 years, 13 years at account, and he's been so good to my kids.
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: Like he, he really has stepped up.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: He came into their life when they were 13 and 17.
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: And so he's been able to really form a relationship.
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: You know, it might, my older one is more of a friendship because he was older, getting ready to graduate and then moving out.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: But you know, here's what's great is that sometimes what we get in life is either going to be a lesson in greatness or a lesson in tragedy and I watched my son with my grandkids and he is the most amazing dad, and so it's almost like what he went through with his father he was going to do way better, like he was not going to let his kids hurt it's, it's beautiful.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: You made that choice and that's what it is right.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: It's that choice that we all have.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: I don't care what it is it's.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: This is what I've been through.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: I can follow it or I can make a choice to be better, so beautiful.
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: I want to, just for your listeners who are listening, who are saying, yes, my husband's in the Marine Corps or Navy or Armed Forces, or even a first responder, like they got to go.
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: You know when the call of duty comes, you got it, they got to go.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: It's like what I would offer your listeners to think about is what are your partner's needs and what are your needs, and don't, don't forget that, like, ask questions, don't just when they come back.
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: They're coming back different.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: You have no idea what they experienced.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: My ex-husband.
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: He was one of the first people at Saudi Arabia in 1999.
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: No, not 1990.
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry, 1990.
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: Sorry, 1990.
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: When he was the first ship back when 9-11 happened, I was like he's going because they're already ready.
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: They just got off deployment.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: If anybody's ready, they're ready.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: I was like he's going because they're already ready.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: They just got off deployment.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: If anybody's ready, they're ready.
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: I was scared, you know, and I had kids.
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: And here's the deal is that talk to your kids at their age level too.
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: Don't talk to them as an adult.
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: Don't share your feelings with your kids, because they can't process it.
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: Find a girlfriend, find a friend, find a therapist, find a coach.
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: And I'm going to say this what really changed my life is when I got a coach.
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: I got out of therapy.
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: I love my therapist for 10 years, loved her, but I wasn't resolving anything.
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: There was no.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: I couldn't see the gap that I needed to close.
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: And when I got a coach and I started doing Tony Robbins stuff because that's how I became a trainer for Tony is that I did all his stuff since 2007.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: I made it non-negotiable.
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: Suicide was not an option in 2007 anymore.
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: I was going to live my life, didn't know what it was going to look like.
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: I was going to figure it out and that is what I've done, and now I help people to do the same thing.
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: Let's figure it out, let's close the gap.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Let's first of all recognize there is a gap, Absolutely.
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: You can't expect them to come back and everything's going to just fall into place, because you're different too.
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: In six months you are different.
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: You don't may not think it, but you are.
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: You've grown somehow, some way, because if we're not growing, we're dying.
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: So there's always growth.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: And so take time.
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: Date nights, date nights are so important.
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: Away from your kids, your kids will still be there.
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: Take time to go out with them.
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: Ask them what was it like?
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: Would you share with me?
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: You know, you made a point.
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: I was so young I didn't know this.
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: And he was young and a Marine and he there.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: It's almost like they're not trained to share their feelings.
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: It's like, suck it up, suck it up, you know.
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: And so it's like let them know that you don't have to be this hard core guy here.
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: You can be vulnerable because I got you and it's not going to make you less than anything, and what you share with me is between us and I want to share that with you.
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: I want to support you through it and allow him to know what you want.
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: If he doesn't know your recipe to be heard, seen and loved, he's not going to do it right.
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: So allow him to say you know, when you do this, it makes me feel seen.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: When you answer me this way, it makes me feel understood.
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: When you touch my arm, it makes me feel loved.
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: It's allow him to know your recipe and things start to mesh together.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: And that's beautiful.
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, honestly, that communication, and really here's the thing I'm going to say as well, I'm going to add to that, if I can is how good does it feel to be there for the other person?
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, you're being fulfilled, and so is the other person when you come together, communicate.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: And again, what's that love?
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: Is it touch?
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: Is it talk?
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: Is it what does it mean to you?
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: You know, and I think that is so important for people to figure out, and to know and remember we don't.
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: If you're going to relationship to get, you're in the wrong relationship.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: Go in the relationship to give and if they're in the relationship to give, guess what you're getting.
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: And it's a great cycle.
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: It's when your partner's needs are your needs and your needs are his needs, everyone's needs are getting met at the highest level.
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: When our needs are met at the highest level, it's an addiction.
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: We want more of it.
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: So when you think of a time that you were great with your spouse or great with your kids, ask yourself what needs were those meeting and at what level?
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: And you start to notice like I had, like so much certainty, safety.
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: I felt great, there was a lot of fun and surprises.
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: I felt my worth, I felt love, I felt connected.
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, these are a 10.
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: Okay, great.
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: So what do you need to do to replicate that?
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: What do you need to do to bring these needs back at the level and just get out of your head?
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: You don't have to solve everything, but you do have to feel.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: You do Absolutely, that's beautiful and amazing.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: Thank you for sharing that Truly so.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: Hey, venuu, we've totally blown past our time, which is sad a little, but awesome at the same time.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: I'll come back.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate that.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: That'd be amazing.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: That'd be amazing.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: So, um, I always ask people uh, before they leave, I throw them under the bus a little bit.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: You've already given us so many golden nuggets and so much amazing information and heartfelt, you know, which makes it even better.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: Three tips Let me get my hand up there.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: Three tips for couples, families, transitioning back together again Before we go.
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: My first one is be curious, not critical.
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: My second one is ask better questions, you get better answers.
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: And my third one is create an open, safe and trusting space for your relationships to grow.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: Beautiful, damn.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: I think you just nailed, like everything right there, fantastic.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: Thank you for sharing that Everybody.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: How do you get a hold of Coach Keller, coach B, coach B?
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: How do you get a hold of you if you're dealing with some of these things and you want to reach out, how do you?
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: get a hold of me.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: I am so accessible.
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: If you just Google my name Venu I'm going to pop up, but it's Venu.
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: Inspires is my company.
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: I'm all over every social media platform.
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: I'm very easy to get a hold of and let me support you.
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: If you're going through something with your kid, you know, with your spouse with you, you know like the world needs more self-love.
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: It does so reach out to me.
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: I'd love to support you, and I have a free ebook.
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: It's called Teach your Children that they're Enough.
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: So if you want to know how to uplevel your child's self-worth, please check out my book.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: You can go to vnewinspirescom and get my ebook.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: Fantastic, thank you.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: Thank you for the time.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: I just want to remind everybody as well the blue QR code in the top right-hand corner.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: There's resources there, reach out.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: There's some free e-books for veterans and families that I've written, but there's resources Reach out, connect.
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: Please check it out, okay?
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: So, hey, venu, thank you again.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: I am so honored.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: You know I say it every time.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: I'm going to say it to you especially.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: Time is the most important resource, valuable resource humans have.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: We don't get it back.
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: Thank you, my friend, for spending the time together for us, for, I mean, I took golden nuggets and I guarantee people listening now and in the future are going to just be better from this.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: So thank you so much, my friend.
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely All right.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, we are out.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely All right, Ladies and gentlemen, we are out.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on another insightful journey of your Thoughts your Reality podcast, with your host, Michael Cole.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: We hope the conversation sparked some thoughts that resonate with you.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: To dive deeper into empowering your thoughts and enhancing your reality, visit empowerperformanceststrategiescom.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: Remember your thoughts shape your reality, so make them count.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: Until next time, stay inspired and keep creating the reality you desire.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Catch you on the next episode.