Latest / Surviving-ISH Podcast / Planting Roots in the Tumbleweed: A Legal Advocate’s Guide to Mental Health w/ Paula Yost

Transcript

Planting Roots in the Tumbleweed: A Legal Advocate’s Guide to Mental Health w/ Paula Yost · Surviving-ISH Podcast

• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome back to Surviving Ish, the show where we talk about getting through life's messiest chapters without losing our minds, or at least if we do lose them, just for a bit.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so excited about the guest we have today.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: She is a double threat.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: Her name is Paula Yost.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to talk about her upcoming book.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: And she is a high-level trademark attorney and a licensed mental health clinician.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: She's a mother, she's a foster parent.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: The list goes on.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's as soon as I was reading about her, guys, that song, I'm every woman, got stuck in my head because I just think I cannot wait to have this conversation.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: Paula, I'm so excited.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: How are you?
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm great, David.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for having me on the show.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like you're gonna be one one thing that I love about the this platform that I'm building is there's not one person that I've had a conversation with that's been a guest that I've not continued a relationship with.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: They've been repeat offenders to the show, they send me their books, any new updates.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, we promote and advertise and help each other, and it's so nice.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I feel like you're gonna be a great part of that community.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: I sure hope so.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: So, okay, let's start out with your ish.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: What are you barely surviving right now?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Oh gosh.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I live in right outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, and we have had an unseasonable weather for ourselves.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: We actually had 11.5 inches of snow, which has not happened in this area in about 20 years.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so my husband is an essential worker, he is a nurse anesthetist, so he had to be at the hospital because you know, people needing surgery don't get to wait for a snowstorm.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I was in the house with our three sons who are eight, ten, and twelve right now.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: So we're all in the house together and I'm still trying to work.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've still got conference calls and all kinds of things I'm trying to do.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I look up and my children are literally walking through the house with a bow and arrow.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, whoa, whoa, full stop.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I like mute my conference call and I'm like, boys, what are you doing?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And like they just kind of looked at me like deers in the headlights, like, oh, we've gotten caught.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I don't know what you're about to do, but like, we're not gonna be shooting bows and arrows in the house.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's not go outside and shoot a snowman, but you're not gonna be doing that in the house.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm super proud of myself for surviving Snow My Guy 2026 with the three boys.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm having like all these uh what I call fun memories.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: However, my parents are probably like, no, they are not fun because we were all what there were three boys in my house.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: I was the oldest.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: We were all two years apart.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: And anything that we were not supposed to do on a snow day, I don't know why we thought that if it was a snow day or if school was canceled for some reason, that means there's no rules.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: All rules were canceled too.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: No, all the snacks are on the table, all the rules don't apply.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's a free-for-all if there's snow outside.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: So I have all these flashbacks of like us running up and down the stairs and my mom or my dad just pulling their hair out and being like, Why can you all not get snowed in at school?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: 100%.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: So I live, we're not far from each other.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: I live in Tennessee and I live in Knoxville.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so we are in a valley where they were talking about this snowpocalypse was about to happen, and we haven't had we get like maybe one decent snow a year, you know, it might put us out of commission a day, nothing too crazy.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: But where we're in a valley, it changes every 10 minutes.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: So around us, we were getting 10 and 14 inches, and we would get nothing.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: And then the next weekend, we didn't think we're going to get anything, and then an emergency bulletin comes across and says, Never mind, in 10 minutes, there's gonna be a blizzard.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: No my guy.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, exactly.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the south this year.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: We got all the craziness.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: I know I was proud of myself.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: My daytime job is I manage a hotel, so I packed a bag and I stayed at the hotel.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: It was kind of nice to be out of the house.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: So I brought my podcast off, set it up, and I actually had a couple of in-person recordings with some of the residents there.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: So that was really fun.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: It was nice, it was a new thing for me.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this what snow does you just have to adapt.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: So are you all still having snow?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, everything is back to normal.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Kids are back to school, I'm back to a normal work day.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, we have recovered.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: So, okay, so here's my surviving ish, and it happened to me today.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I get so frustrated with that.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: So I wanted to, I did my taxes, and uh, it was about three weeks ago.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I always like to periodically check in to see if they've flagged anything, you know, and so I went into the website and it needed my phone number, my email, my password.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so it said, okay, we're sending a code to your email.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, perfect.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: So I opened up an I was on my phone.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: So I opened up another tab, go to my email, get the code, put it in.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: It said, Great, now we're sending a code to your phone.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: You've looked at my eyes, you've checked my thumbprint, you've asked me for all these passwords.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: You then I get to the final question, and it says, Okay, now we need to know the exact dollar that you are getting back.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, that's what you're supposed to tell me.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: Right tell me this.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so I ended up just scrolling out of it, and I contemplated like it's only one o'clock, but I'm off today.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: Could I add some Baileys to my coffee?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: Is that justified?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: You know?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you're dealing with the IRS, it absolutely is.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, you deserve that if you're dealing with the government.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, no wonder people smoke cigarettes and drink a beer.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like, but so okay, so I'm so excited to learn about you.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: Start wherever you want, but give us give us a bit of an introduction.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: I know that I mentioned brief vaguely what you do, but tell us a little bit about you.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just a nerd who's really good at school.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm a first-generation college student and I'm an only child.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And my childhood was a lot better than a lot of children, but not ideal.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I always had basics, right?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: I know I was never worried about being homeless.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: We always had food.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: I got a good education.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: So in those respects, I had what I needed.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I was like basic bare level Maslow.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: My parents struggle with a lot of emotional immaturity.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I wound up being very mature for my age because I was filling in those gaps.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And there is a tremendous amount of generational trauma in my mom's family.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so those things led to me deciding at 15, I am going to get myself into the best out-of-state college that I can possibly afford.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I am getting out of here.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like education was my way out, which is what a lot of hyper achieving kids do.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like some kids get lost in drugs, some kids get lost in men.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: I got lost in it, sounds healthy, and I guess in the long run it worked out for me, but it can also be maladaptive as well.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: I got lost in hyperachievement, and hyperachievement was my way out.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I got into Virginia Tech, went to Blacksburg, I completed two full degrees, so not two majors, but two degrees.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: I was trying to avoid coming home and living with my parents during the summer.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want like I, under no circumstances, wanted to come back to that house.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so I figured out a way that I could just stay at Virginia Tech and do summer school, which ended up resulting in me having like an extra 34 credits that I didn't need to graduate.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I just added a degree.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I literally have a whole college degree because I didn't want to go home.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then my senior year at Virginia Tech was when 9-11 happened.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I was I was a senior in college on September 11, 2001.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I was supposed to be going to work for Human Genome Project because that was the end thing.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Then they actively recruited from Virginia Tech.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: All the jobs went away for new college grads.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I had a friend, a really good friend who was about 20 years older than me, still a really good friend, was a professor of mine, say, Go apply to law school.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: You're a really good writer, go do that.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I go to law school, went to law school.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: First day of law school, they give us a personality test.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: And surprise, surprise, I don't have the personality type of a lawyer.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I wasn't going to quit at that point because I was like, I've worked really hard to get here.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to do this.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: So do you do you mind if I ask and not to interrupt, but what type of personality was this test supposed to identify?
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: So most lawyers have, if you look at Myers Briggs, so Myers Brig is this famous research that went into human personality types.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: And they charted 16 of them.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: There's actually a website where you can take this test.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's called 16personalities.com.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's free.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: You can do it, you know, in about 10 minutes.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're done, it will spit out your personality type.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's four letters, and it will explain what your personality type means.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: It will also tell you the best romantic partner for you based on personality type and jobs that would be best for you based on personality type.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it was used for career development for many, many, many years in American history.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: So the type of most attorneys is an ENTJ.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I am an ENFJ.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so essentially, like 90% of my law school class was an ENTJ.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm not as much of a thinker as I am a feeler, which makes it more challenging to be an attorney.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm more concerned about how do my people feel, taking care of other people emotionally.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I bring to my law practice.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I wound up finishing law school, becoming a lawyer, realizing the gaps in my legal education because we don't teach lawyers how to take care of mentally ill people at all.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: 85% of a courthouse is just mental health triage.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: People that are committing crimes left and right, people that are addicted, people who are in high conflict divorce, all of those people represent some form of mental health illness.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: They are in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental health conditions, but lawyers are not being trained on how to do that.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: So they don't know how to recognize it.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I wound up going back to grad school and getting my master's degree in clinical mental health.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so I have a second business, Yoast Counseling, where I am a licensed clinical mental health therapist.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so I teach CLEs to lawyers as much as I can about the intersection of law and mental health.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: After COVID, things started changing a little bit with the thoughts of mental health.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, like even when my attack happened, the cops on their discovery told the guy that confessed for murder that it just sounds like two boys are fighting out in the front yard and one of them lost.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like, and I remember a time that like I got when I first started to learn how to drive again after getting all of my abilities back.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: I was never a great driver to begin with.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: This really threw a wrench into it.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: And and I got pulled over.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, this straight man with a gun is coming to my car.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: I'm having a panic attack, and I'm trying to tell, and I'm trying to tell him, like, please understand I have PTSD, uh, it's dark, it's raining.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: And they they like jumped in my car, pulled me out, slung me in the road, like ripped my pants, and and then took me to jail all and for nothing.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like I it there was there was no alcohol involved.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: That's a whole other story too.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: But but they didn't know how to tend to that.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so I then became, I guess I they were I don't know if they thought I was just trying to get out of it or having some kind of pity David store.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: I don't I don't know what they thought, but it it did not turn out pretty.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: And story after story after story like that exists, and I think that deep at our core, not everybody, but most healthy adults don't want to ever intentionally hurt anyone.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so sometimes people just genuinely don't know what they're looking at.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: They'll see something that's going on, but they don't recognize what they're seeing as a trauma response or as a personality disorder.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: They don't know what they're seeing.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: And because they don't know what they're seeing, that triggers a reaction.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Most people tend to live in the thought of, like, well, what would I do?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: What you would do is attributing, assuming that you are a healthy adult, you're attributing rational thought to you.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: You can't attribute rational thought to somebody who is living in trauma or who has a personality disorder because those things are not rational.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: You're not operating from a position of rational thought and rational behavior.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: So your automatic sentiment of, well, what would I do?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or if I was in that situation, I would, that's applying rational thought to somebody who is not capable of being rational at the time.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: And even when you think of, you know, I have some friends and and some children in my life that are autistic.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: And there are times that one of one of my friends, her son, there are times that people will think that he's 40 years old when he's 17, and there are times that he seems, you know, maybe 12, you know, and and sometimes he seems maybe not very straightforward, and people can take that as aggression when his personality is like, let's just get to the fact, dude.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: And but people can be defended by that.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: So you teach how to uh because I mean I guess you can't teach on everything someone individually is going through, but I guess there's like a a broad a spectrum of some sort that you can navigate a bit.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so usually what I try to tell the attorneys who I work with at least is there's this wonderful book, the DSM 5.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the DSM 5 is kind of a manual that people in the mental health field to try to be able to recognize, like, what are we dealing with here?
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so it has lists like symptoms, like do you see this, this, this, and this?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like working with state statute, honestly.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like, are the following elements here?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: If these elements are here, then you are probably in the presence of some form of mental illness.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so I try to teach recognition of mental illness.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: I also try to teach, okay, well, now that you've recognized you have a mental illness, how do you deal with that?
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: So for instance, if we have a client who we know is a hoarder, right?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Hoarders drive town attorneys crazy because their house has, you know, 42 cats in it, or it's the lawn is a disaster and it's never mowed, or it's literally a health hazard.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And town attorneys start sending hoarders letters about fixing that problem, and then they don't understand why they're not complying.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they're not complying because they can't, because they don't need a lawyer, they need a social worker, like they need someone to help them figure out a pathway to parting with these things in a constructive and healthy manner, you know, literally like the show hoarders.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: So the way you would deal with somebody who's a hoarder is going to be completely different than the way you deal with somebody who's a narcissist who has narcissistic personality disorder in the midst of a high conflict divorce.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: But you've got to be able to recognize what you're dealing with and be able to protect yourself as well and your own mental health in dealing with folks like this.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: So if I thought that is so important too, doing these podcasts, especially like how I used to do them when I was sharing a lot of mostly just survivor stories.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: I had to make sure that I had techniques and things in place to take that moment to step away, to go ground myself, to, to let myself feel.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: And that is so important.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: Just because something didn't happen to us and we're just hearing the story, doesn't mean that we can't have a reaction to it.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Secondary trauma is very, very real.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: And we see that a lot.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: I see that a lot in people like law enforcement officers as well, where like they've had their own trauma in the past because like you don't know when somebody actually has attacked them and then they're not fully, they can be living in a trauma moment as well.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so just knowing those things, awareness is half the battle in almost all mental health situations.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, 100%.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm so glad that it's slow, but it's happening that we're getting to a point where we're breaking and changing the stigmas with it because when people think mental health, they think you need to be in a crazy asylum somewhere, and that's not the case.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's just not at all you you've been hurt, you've been damaged, you know, and uh you're bruised.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: And and maybe needed it attended to in a different kind of way.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: And and it's so hard for us to for victims to even feel safe to tell someone like, hey, this is triggering me.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't think that shame is a helpful emotion.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Shame and guilt have never helped anyone do anything, it's never helped you get better.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like, other emotions serve a purpose.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, even anger, anger is fuel.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Anger will make you change the way that you act, or it will make you have some form of a reaction that will hopefully be positive.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: But shame and guilt are worthless emotions.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: They just keep you stuck, they make you feel terrible.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so usually I try to tell people who come to see me for therapy if you feel shame, if you feel guilt, like how can we release that?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how can we let that go?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: When you took that personality tax and it said that you do not have the personality to be an attorney because you have feelings.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: I guess attorneys are supposed to be factual.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: Is there a world where both can happen?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: Or does or is facts with an attorney strictly how it should be?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'm living it.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously I think it can happen, and I think it does.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: I will tell you that I encounter a lot of attorneys who do not think like me at all.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I also encounter attorneys who wind up saying working with you is one of the most refreshing things I've done because you are not focused on, I'm not focused on minutiae.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm focused on what is the big picture?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: How can we get to yes?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: How can we bring peace?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: How can we resolve this situation?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's usually my focus.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so as a general rule, I find that lawyers really like working with me, at least lawyers who want to settle a case.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like lawyers who want to settle a case and get it done and move on do tend to like working with me because that I'm very good at that.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very good at looking at like how can we holistically fix it?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me a little bit about your advocacy with because when I was reading about you, a lot of the work that you do is around like advocating for children.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: And you said that you have you were a foster parent.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: So sort of.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk through that.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, goodness.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: When I was in law school, I wound up getting a job for an agency called CASA, court-appointed special advocates.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And they advocate for children who are in foster care.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so I did that all the way through law school and I loved it.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt like this is where I am supposed to be.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: But when I graduated from law school, I had a lot of student loan debt.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I couldn't exactly go do like feel good law because I had to pay off my legal education.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I wound up wanting to go back to that very, very much.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I got back into it and I'll never forget it.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: The lady who ran the local, it's called Guardian Ad Litems in North Carolina.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: In some states, it's Casa, in some states it's GL.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: They brought me a case and they were like, this one's a doozy.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this one's a lot.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I read through this case, and it was, it was a lot.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: They were not lying.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was pretty bad.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: And anyway, I wound up becoming an advocate for this 14-year-old girl.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: And we had to go through a lot together to get her through foster care.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: She had a father who was actively incarcerated because he had committed a homicide when she was little, like two or three.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: She'd never really seen him or had a relationship with him.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: Her mother was intellectually disabled, but also addicted.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so she just hadn't really had, she had had a mother in her home, but not a stable mother who was able to parent.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I was probably the first stable adult who entered her life.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: And when she turned 18, I could not abandon her.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like essentially, the Department of Human Services was like, Well, you're 18, you're on your own.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Good luck to you.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, What is she supposed to do?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, her options are to go back to her family of origin, which doesn't seem like A very good option.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: She doesn't have a driver's license because she wasn't able to get insurance when she was in foster care.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like she's eligible to go to college because she did finish high school.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the state of North Carolina will actually pay for eight semesters of college at a public school as long as you finish high school if you were in foster care for more than 18 months.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: But nobody ever does it because so few of those kids are able to finish high school.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I told my husband, I was like, I can't leave her.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't know what's going to happen to her.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: But honestly, realistically, she probably would have been primed to wind up being like an Epstein victim.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's probably the future that she would have faced.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I just couldn't do that.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so at the time, we we were newlyweds.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't have children of our own.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: We had an empty bedroom and an empty bathroom, a guest bathroom that no one was using.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so we pretty much told her, like, you can come live with us as long as you work, like an age-appropriate job for a college kid, like no stripping.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: You got to work at like Chick-fil-A or Subway or something.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you do that or a retail store, any appropriate college girl job is fine with us.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you gotta go to school and you can't be like acting a fool.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like you can't be bringing bad people or anything into our house.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: And she didn't, like she held up to her end of the bargain.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: She ultimately got a college degree, and then we legally adopted her as an adult after her biological mother passed away.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: Oh wow.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so um we are her biological or we are now her legally adopted parents.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow and then we have th our three, of course, our three biological children after that.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, we have four kids.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: We we count her as a kid, she is absolutely ours.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: I I really admire when people do things like that and they open up their home.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: I have my one of my friends, he wasn't a friend at the time, but he is living with me right now.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: He works his ass off, he's a grown man, but it's a scary place for people like him.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: He is uh non-English speaking and he's learning English.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: He's here on asylum, but he's doing everything the quote unquote right way, but that doesn't matter right now.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: So we have, I was like, I want you to live with me.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_02: I want there to be a pre-programmed text message on your phone where you hit send if you get pulled over.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: If you sense anything, you hit send.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: We've got air tags placed on his person, in his bag, in his car, you know, where we can at least track where he is at or was at the last moment.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_02: And even seeing some of my friends who did not know about this or or or was not facing it in real life, you know, with ice or or what have you, to pull in, to come together and and want to learn and educate themselves on it to also be an ally.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I know that that's different than what you know you were saying, but like you said, what happens to a lot of people, they get set out at 18 years old with no resources.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: So there's drugs, there's alcohol, there's gangs.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: So many gang members that I've talked to that was like, I just needed a family.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's why I joined the gang.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're set out with no resources and they get caught up easily into an upstream situation, into a mess that they shouldn't have been in in the first place, and they wound up in that mess because of a lot of things, like maladaptive parenting, but it just a bad situation.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: So many of these things could be avoided.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to paint myself like a lot of times clients or when I talk about my relationship with Tanya, I feel like sometimes there's the urge to like sanctify Peter and I, like, well, you guys are such good people.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, I don't think that we are that special.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think that a lot of people who were in the situation that we would have in probably would have done something similar to what we did.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people just don't have those actual volunteer opportunities.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: But the other thing that I'll say too is that I think part of the reason I've always wanted to be a child advocate is because it has healed the part of me that wanted to move away.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I have worked really, really, really hard to give my kids all of the things that I did not feel like I had.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I've worked really hard to be the best mother I could possibly be.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I work really hard to make sure that my children know that they are loved.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like I love you all, and like I will do anything to keep you all safe and to protect you from harm.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I have so many people who I meet who say, you know, my mom didn't want me or my mom didn't accept me.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I really wish that I had had a mother like you.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I don't care.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: I would prefer my children not be Hitler, but but like I I beyond that, like beyond them being like full-on criminals, like I'm going to love my children no matter what.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like nothing is going to stop me from loving and protecting my kids.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like that's because that was something that I didn't get fully.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm trying to do that as I'm trying to be the mother that I felt like I didn't have.
• 27:21
  unknown: Yeah.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and I think that so many things can be true at the same time, right?
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like if one of your children decided to uh, you know, made the choice to go down the wrong path, you know, we can still love them and and we can still want them to their justice to be served because sometimes prison is supposed to be rehabilitating.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately, find in a lot of cases that it's not.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: So my attacker, I told you about my story, he did 14 months of his 12-year sentence.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: He was released on good time before I could even walk.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: And if our jails were rehabilitating, I would be okay with that.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: If he is gonna get out and be who uh somebody that we would want to live beside our family, then fine.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: But I don't know that our system, our jail systems do that, and that's what scares me.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't know that it does that either, and I think that that should be scary.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like the thing that I hate having to explain to my children now that they're getting older is there are people who will hurt you.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like there truly are.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's not something you really have to explain in detail when your children are little, because when they're five and under, you know, I'm you're protecting them.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: But as they get older, you really do have to explain to them.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you you have to explain to your teenage girl that the college-age guy who's hitting her on her at the football field might actually be a human trafficker.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that the creepy dude who's suddenly in your DMs asking you to send him pictures of you might not be a safe person.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you really do have to work with people and educate, like, we have to educate ourselves in a way that we never had to educate youth before.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is the first generation that's full on growing up with the internet, and there are truly terrible people out there who will contact them.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we really do have to work to keep them safe and educate them in a way that society's never had to before.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like the world that we grew up in is gone.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't exist anymore.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: There's so many conversations that I overhear that my parents never had to tell me.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: There's different conversations, but I hear my parents or my friends' parents telling them to don't leave your drink unattended, don't dress a certain way, go to the mailbox, don't walk outside after eight o'clock when it's dark.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's so upsetting.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I wish there was as much focus on don't be a bad guy, don't want to put things in someone's drink, don't want to have sex with someone without consent.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you want to do that?
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: That is not, and but again, I think that goes back to like David, we are applying rational thought.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like, rationally in my mind, like, well, why would you want to have sex with somebody who's unconscious?
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: I shouldn't have to tell you that.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: But obviously, we do have to explicitly state that in society.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: And we do have to tell our youth that, like, look, there are people who you do have to protect yourself from.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to make my kids paranoid.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: I also want them to live in reality.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: I grew up with a bunch of girls, and so one thing that my parents did was they taught us how to protect girls, how to watch out for our friends, and to to stand firm and tall with them, to be that big brother to them, to let things, let them know that this is a safe place.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: And and I really appreciate that about you know my family and my upbringing.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: Those are conversations we have in our house a lot too.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: So three kids all two years apart.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: And then I was reading that you were talking about allyship for children medical.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: Did your children have was there medical problems with any of them?
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so with my first two.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: So my oldest child was born with a complete bilateral cleft lip and palate.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: So basically when he was born, this part of his mouth, like the like the upper lip didn't form, part of his nose didn't form, and he had absolutely no roof in his mouth at all at birth.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like that part just does not, it did not form.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was one clef palette is one of 700.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's one out of every 700 live births has a complete or has a clef lip and palette.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: My community has about 2,800 live births a year.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so out of those 2,800 live births, you're looking at about 700.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: Excuse me, you're looking at about four infants that have this condition.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so it takes a lot to fix it.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: He's had about six surgeries.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's been in braces since he was three.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, like all the stuff that high school kids go through with brace and middle school kids go through, I've been dealing with it since he was a toddler.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but he is smart, he is doing great in school, and it's just it's a lifelong childhood spanning correction.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then with my second child, and I want to add, these children were wanted, and like I did like everything, quote unquote, right.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like I did everything that you would think a new mother or an expected mother should do.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: My second child, I had an a condition called acute preeclampsia, where my blood pressure was so high I was about to have a stroke.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it just the symptoms were there around week 25 of my pregnancy, but I did not know what the symptoms were.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like I had no idea that I had a medical condition that was about to kill me, like none at all.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: And when the crap really started to hit the fan, thank God I'm married to a nurse, an anesthesia nurse, because my husband recognized what was going on.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: And my husband took my butt to the hospital.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because if I had gone to sleep in our home, which is what I would have done without him being like, no, I'm taking you to the hospital, I probably would have had a massive stroke in my sleep and I would have died.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: Preoclampsia is one of the number one killers of pregnant women.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: And in both of those scenarios, both the cleft palette and the pre, and oh, sorry, let me finish that thought.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I wound up giving birth at 27 weeks.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: My infant weighed one pound and 14 ounces.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: He was in a NICU for three months.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: He came home on a heart monitor.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: He had like, I think, 68 doctors' visits in his first year of life after he left the NICU.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, he's a 10-year-old.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: He's perfectly fine, developing fine.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: He's smart.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: You'd never know there was anything wrong with him.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you met Pearson today, you would have no idea that he and I both almost died 10 years ago.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: None at all.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: You have no clue.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing what science can do.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: But it's important that we educate our mothers about their health.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: But it's also important, I know so many women of special needs kids who carry around this inner belief that this is their fault, that I've done something, and this is why my child has whatever, insert whatever the condition is.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is I did something wrong in the pregnancy.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what I did wrong in the pregnancy.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: I worked really, really hard to do everything right, but obviously I did something wrong.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think one of the best things that ever happened to me is when I was laying in the hospital with acute preoclampsia, this doctor, Dr.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: Payne, Dr.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: Payne walked in and he sat down and he was talking to me about my survival odds and my baby's odds and what was going to happen to us.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I looked at him and he said, Do you have any questions?
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Yes, is this my fault?
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Absolutely not.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: He was like, Preoclampsia is a wonder of modern medicine.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know what causes it.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know what happens with it.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: It could happen to a 22-year-old marathon runner.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: So the fact that you're 35 with this condition does not mean that you've done anything wrong.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know what causes it.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: So let that go.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is not your fault.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: And we need more people, more physicians to really focus on telling women, this is not your fault.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't do anything to cause this, because women carry that around with them.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: I know so many mothers of special needs children who, and sometimes we know it up here, but we don't know it in our heart.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so carrying that around all the time, it's kind of like that guilt and shame.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: It never helped anybody.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: It never helped anybody feel better.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it's also in most cases misplaced.
• 35:44
  unknown: Yeah.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and I think what I have personally even found, my grandmother chased her birthday.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_02: Happy birthday, grandma, she turned to 89.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_02: She's healthy, she's probably more active than I am.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_02: But she and I have had conversations where I'm the executor of her estate.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: I've been to some of her medical appointments with her.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_02: And it's almost like the doctors at a certain age, when the patient gets a certain age, they just don't care anymore.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's like you're old.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_02: And and so they they won't they talk to you in passing.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_02: And and a lot of empathy seems to be gone in the in the medical field.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think that I have the benefit of both worlds because I do live with a medical professional.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's just important to remember, and I remind myself of this as an attorney some of the time too.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes people will ask me the same question over and over again, and I'm like, I've answered this question before.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: Not you're what what about what I'm saying?
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: Are you not getting right?
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing of it is, I think that a lot of attorneys and doctors and therapists, and just name your profession, people are tired and they get burned out.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: So when they see somebody who's like 89, you know, they're like, What do you want?
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: You're already, you're still here, you've outlived.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so I think some of the time it's not that they want to be uncompassionate.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think that they're just tired.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: And not that as an excuse for poor bedside manner.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: But I try to tell myself and my employees all the time, like, nobody's ever called a law firm because they're having a good day.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like nobody's happy when they're calling us.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like our job is to help them deal with whatever is going on right now.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's our job.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: Is and again, it goes back to kind of what you and I have been saying this whole time compassion care.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of the people who call us who aren't hearing what I'm saying to them, even though I've said it 40 times, they are grieving.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: They are sad.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: They have something or they're scared.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: So they're not thinking rationally.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't attribute rational thought or information that I know, like I'm driving a car, to the average person because they're not going to be able to handle that.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just have to do the best that I can to have patience and to say it over and over again.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: But I do educate clients like that.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like I will say to them, I feel like we've had this conversation three times.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to encourage you that the reason you are not understanding it is because you are grieving, scared, or anxious.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: And those things are in between me and you right now.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna send you this in an email.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I need you to reference the email when this comes up again.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what is the barrier to you being able to remember what I'm saying to you?
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: But most of the time when I name it, when I say you're scared, you're anxious, or you're grieving, most people are like, you're darn right I am.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not used to seeing lawyers.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, okay, you you still have to work with me here.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and I think that's brilliant how you've done it.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: I know there's been many of conversations I've had where I've it's my first time in this predicament.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: You hope to never be in this predicament again, boy.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly, exactly.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so when so when someone does politely, but in that controlling, like in that listen to me.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, love that.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's an education focus.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to hurt you, I'm not trying to offend you.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: I want to bring your awareness to the fact that if you're sad, scared, or grieving, only like 40% of what I'm saying is getting in.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I need to get to like 80.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I feel like when I hear that, I almost take like a sigh of relief because it's validating.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, you're telling me it's okay that you're feeling these things where maybe I was feeling some shame or trying to hide it and act like I was, you know, when you're saying, dude, like that this shit on your desk right now is awful.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so you're not gonna retain everything.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_02: So this is what we're gonna do.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: This is gonna be our plan.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I love that.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: And and I and I do want to say, I think that you're 100% correct.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_02: I think that there's a lot that goes on with doctors in their jobs that we don't know about as the patient.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_02: You know, maybe they just lost a patient, maybe they just had to break the news using the C word to someone because cancer is the ugliest word for anyone to ever hear.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_02: And we're all, no matter if we make six figures or minimum wage, we're all underworked, overpaid, and tired.
• 40:11
  unknown: Yeah.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so I try to I try to remember all of those things.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, and my ex, who I was with for seven years until you know, a year and a half ago, amazing.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing bad I can say about him or his family.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_02: They're all in the medical field.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_02: They like that they take their jobs very seriously, they're so kind, they're so compassionate, and they care.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: But I've seen them come home and just break, so we've got to remember that too.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_02: I just didn't want it to sound to you like I was saying all doctors are awful because I don't think No, no, you don't.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think what I'm hearing us both say, you know, I was raised in evangelical Christianity.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: You probably were too.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is the South, it's what we do here, you know, it's what we do in the South.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_02: Shut up and pray.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right, shut up and pray.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: The concept of grace doesn't always translate the way that it should, but many of the things that we learn about grace and forgiveness are very important.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: Unless I feel like you are absolutely trying to hurt me for some nonsensical reason that is about you and not about me, as a general rule, we try to expend as much grace as we possibly can to other people.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because very few people became a medical profession to try to hurt somebody.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: And yet there are moments.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't tell you before Dr.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: Payne, who I love with all my soul, before Dr.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: Payne came in and told me that the preclampsia was not my fault, when I was actually admitted to the hospital, the gynecologist on call.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: And let me add, I got admitted to the hospital on New Year's Eve.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm also compassionate the fact that I ruined this man's New Year.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: I get that.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm in the hospital at 27 weeks or 26 weeks pregnant.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm terrified that I'm gonna lose this baby that I really wanted and didn't think I could have in the first place.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: My blood pressure's so high, I'm about to die.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: The nurses are are all over my body.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like my personal autonomy, my modesty is gone.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's out the window.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this man comes in and I'm like, How long am I gonna be here?
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how long am I going to be in this hospital?
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Well, basically, you're just an incubator right now.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: And like that really didn't go well.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: That was not educationally focused, it was not explaining to me.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I didn't know what preeclampsia was.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't even really understand.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was a 35-year-old woman.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: I really didn't even understand the importance of blood pressure.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody was telling me I could have a stroke.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this was all news to me.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I needed to be educated.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't need to be insulted.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that as a general rule, telling any pregnant woman you're an incubator is pretty darn insulting.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that probably isn't something that you should say, even if you believe it to be true.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's probably not helpful.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I did not use his name in my book, but I sure wrote about him.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: So well, let's talk about that.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: So your book, Tumbleweed, has is it's not come out yet, right?
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: It should be out in about two weeks.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_02: Oh wow.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so tell us about it.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: So essentially, I wrote a book about all of my kids.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote about my journey with Prattly and his cleft palette, my journey with Pearson and his our pre-eclampsia, my third baby who's third time was the charm, Paul.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I was gonna die.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was terrified to have this kid, but I had him anyway.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: He was an unplanned pregnancy, but he easiest one I've ever had, just an amazing little boy.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then my adopted daughter.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so I wrote about the challenges that my children have faced, I wrote about how we overcome.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Overcame those challenges.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it's some of it's law, some of it is mental health, some of it is medicine.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: Even though I'm not a doctor, I kind of walked through like some of the situations like we've talked to today.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: And what I really hope I did in writing that book is I hope that I have empowered other parents.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like I hope the other parents whose kids are needing OT, PT, speech therapy, whatever, I hope that I've empowered them to know better resources for their children and how to get their kids what they need.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I just hope I've done a really good job of also explaining things like what my daughter went through so that when people meet trauma survivors or former foster kids, they're going to be more grace-filled in the way that they deal with those humans and approach those humans.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_02: I can't wait to read it.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_02: I I've really enjoyed this conversation with you.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like I could just keep going.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: I I I do want to ask you, you know, I shared my story with you, you've shared stuff with us.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_02: Even if we're not okay, I'm trying to find the best way to ask this.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_02: So if I am going to a doctor or if I'm going to speak to an attorney, knowing that I have my triggers, knowing that I have things that made me uneasy, now I'm coming into a brand new situation.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_02: Like I, for example, when I first started to go into therapy after my attack, I told them I cannot be locked up in a room with a man, I cannot have a male therapist, you know, and and and they did great.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_02: They found me a lovely lady, and they worked really hard with me on that, and I appreciate that.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_02: So with me being aware of my triggers and the fact that I'm my responsibility, but if I'm going into meet with an attorney or a doctor, what how should I tell them, hey, here's a little bit about me.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: You see what I'm asking?
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how can how can I build that rapport with them?
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that people are more compassionate than you think they are.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if they're not able to be compassionate, they don't need to work with you, period.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, everybody is not gonna be for you.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we certainly have people who call my office and they will tell whoever answers the phone about some snippet of trauma, right?
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: Pick what it is, you know.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: And usually what happens is my assistant will say something like, I'm gonna share this with Paula, and then we'll get back with you on what we're gonna do.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: So if someone had sent me something like you just described, like I can't be locked in a room with a man.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: I do not want a male therapist or a male attorney or a male doctor, I would say, okay, great.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well then we're just that's not gonna happen here.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like we get it, you know, and we would do whatever we could do to make you feel comfortable because we don't want to, I think my life philosophy is I don't want to take what happened with you and make it worse.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't want to be one more person to make that worse.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: Why would I make it worse?
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: However, if you get somebody who doesn't call you back because, you know, maybe they're too busy for that, maybe they don't have an ability, maybe there's no one else there who could serve what you need, who either doesn't call you back or who calls you back with something mean and nasty, don't go there.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, find somebody else.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: Find somebody else.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like you don't have to be everybody's fit.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's like anything else in life.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we don't have to always fit into the particular box.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I would just say don't be afraid to shop.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I will say, I have personally never ran into anyone being ugly, especially in a in a professional field with it.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_02: And everyone has been, you know, accommodating as much as they can.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_02: And they'll even ask me, like I remember when I first started seeing my doctor, he would ask me, you know, do you want a nurse in here with us?
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_02: Like a female nurse in here with us.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_02: And he would tell me, Okay, I'm I'm gonna touch you here.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_02: You know, is that okay?
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_02: Are you ready for me to touch you?
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_02: And he really just took his time with it.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then after the one or two times of that, it was like, here, my clothes are off and my nurse or my scrub thing is on before he even comes in the room.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, all right, touch away.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm we we've built that relationship.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_02: I think I got in my head sometimes of well, if I go in and I tell them, hey, I've I've got triggers, I've got trauma, then it's that they're gonna look at me like, oh, you just want us to feel sorry for you.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_02: You're still trying to live in the victim mindset.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that is true.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: My that was me.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's important that you're saying that though, David, because I think that a lot of people, a lot of people feel that way.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I want people to understand that is not, we see so much trauma in professional fields that it does not shock us at all.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it does not lead us to think that you are attention seeking.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: If anything, I'm sympathetic to the fact that people like you have to advocate for yourself so much.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like you really do have to say, like, I can't, like, that's not gonna work for me.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm glad that you're able to communicate that.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think some of the time when I say something like, if you don't get what you want from this professional, don't go to them, just hire someone else.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because then what that does is that makes you have to be vulnerable and say it again and say your truth again.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's just important to understand, like most of us, this is unfortunately, there's so much trauma that for most of us, this is not our first rodeo.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so, and if you can't be compassionate in this field, you probably don't need to be doing it anyway.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_02: And it was also a nice learning experience for me because I realized that that was my like no one has ever made me feel that way.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_02: That would that was something that I had created in my head because of maybe stigmas or or outsiders of shame, get you know, all those things.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_02: And so that was something that I was able to work through myself, you know, which was really nice.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm such a fan of therapy.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_02: I do men's sexual assault group therapy every Thursday.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_02: We meet, and we've been doing it for years.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_02: Those guys have become my brothers, and I I just I don't they they've saved my life.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_00: Thankful for that.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: We finally have a therapy group for men in my area, and I think it's still virtual here, but we don't we act like this is a woman's problem and it's not, it is just as prevalent among men as it is among women, but I actually think it's more stigmatized for men, and you got you gentlemen do need your place to be able to talk.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, you don't help anybody by carrying that up and bottling it around.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's what that's when it becomes that generational trauma and abuse, right?
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_02: And and so when I when I first started this group therapy, I thought it was going to be me and a bunch of other gay guys.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I was the only gay guy.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_02: And some of them were some of these men were even raped by women, and they were even told that, well, a woman can't rape you.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_02: And yes, she can.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_02: I was told as a gay man that I could not be raped by this man because he was a military good-looking man.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_02: I did not give him permission to do what he did.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_02: And and it even if I did, and 10 minutes later I said, hey, stop, and he doesn't, it is then rape.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's and we seem to not, people don't seem to be as educated enough on sexual abuse and consent as what they need to be.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it doesn't matter whether you're a man, woman, child, for that matter, animal.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you clearly don't want to be touched and you're communicating that you do not want this, people need to stop.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: But that's also when it stops being about sex and it starts being about power and control.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_02: I have loved this conversation.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_02: I cannot wait to read your book.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: I've enjoyed talking to you too, David, and I can't wait for your show to drop and to come see you again.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, absolutely.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so, so much.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_02: Take the kids outside, let them shoot some bow and arrow archery out there.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_02: They deserve it for letting you uh stick away for a little bit.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_02: But enjoying this day and we'll we'll be in touch.