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John Henry Parker: Be The Dawn In The Darkness · Surviving-ISH Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I don't understand why it was me.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I'll ever be the same.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Is the same what I?
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: want.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Anyway, you took what I thought I could never get back.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I quit holding on to that anger and broke down just to begin again.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Can you feel any longer?
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: I'm there?
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Today's guest is the author of Be the Dawn in the Darkness, a specialist in trauma, grief, loss and personal transformation.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: He's a survivor of childhood and adult trauma.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: He has a deep understanding of the struggles that people face when dealing with these issues.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: John Henry Parker man, thank you so much for being here.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: We had a few minutes of chat before we hit record and I'm so glad that you're here.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: I can't wait to see where this conversation leads us.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: So thank you for making time for us today.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really great being here.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: I appreciate the warm-up and just getting to know you and really preparing for this conversation.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Give us a little introduction, tell us a little bit about you now.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Me now.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: I'm just in a really great place in my life where I have joy in my life, I have fulfillment, but it's the most important, I have love.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: I have self-love and I couldn't say those words whatsoever.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: I couldn't even think about that years ago, decades ago.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: But I still suffer.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: But it's very quick, very short.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: I get caught in moments, then I move through them very quickly and I'm just able to look at my life and enjoy my life instead of being.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: There's an old saying that you are either the cause in your life or you are living at the effects of things in your life, and I am definitely at cause.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Start wherever you feel comfortable and, what's most important, that you think, to tell us your journey and the trauma.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about it in parallels.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: So I had a combat veteran father, marine Corps Korean War combat vet, who was also in Vietnam and really violent, raging alcoholic, really abusive, like criminal abusive.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: He should have gone to prison and he just abused our family relentlessly and so physical abuse and somehow I got the worst of it.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: He didn't pick up my brother as much but I was his favorite, but he drank a lot and every day he would come home from work and start telling me to get him a beer and then it would just get weird about around a six pack and then after a 12 pack, it's just crazy.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: And then he'd stagger in late at night and hold me down on my bed and tell me he loved me and that he'd always be here for me and I don't care if you go to prison, I'll always be here for you.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: And he'd stare right through me in a daze and he'd stand up and walk out the door and so I had this really confusing understanding that my dad loved me even when he was abusing me, and I was really conflicted and I never put that together until late in my adult years, on my 30s, like that guy was always shitfaced when he said it and he was really an introverted, dominant kind of traumatized vet so he wouldn't talk about anything.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: So like truth serum, when he got enough truth serum in him he would eventually soften up.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't until after a lot of abuse and I would go to school every day and I would have a science project of studying my welts Under my genes, because they would be hardening at different stages and I'd have new welts over old welts and it was just like every day, it was just like all the time.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: It's just like normal.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: And that's the crazy thing about it is I didn't know any different.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: But the parallel I was talking about is I had a great aunt.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Like in my book it starts off it only takes one adult of healthy character to shape the future of a child and that person for me was my great aunt Gladys, who was a Canadian journalist during the Nazi invasion of Paris during World War II, a really well known lady, published book author.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: There was a documentary about her life.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: She was awarded the Legion of Honor Medal by the French government after the war, working with the French resistance, all kinds of great stuff.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: She also worked at the French Embassy in Ottawa.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: So my mom said they're all Canadian and so she would come down to Phoenix and live with us for a couple of months every year.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: She could have gone to live with my grandparents a few hours away, but she wanted to be in the middle of our family Because my mom was her only niece and so she just loved my mom and she knew about how violent my father was.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: But she would come and live with us for two months a year and it would be the only relative piece I had in my whole childhood.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: For five years she would come down and she I say in my book I had a secret that my brother and sister never caught on to, and that she'd get up at 4.30 every day and make thick cut Canadian bacon, sharp cheddar cheese, toast and coffee, cream and maple syrup.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: And I would get up at 4.30 and she would sip coffee with me and teach me all this stuff.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: And I got to sit at her feet for three hours every morning and just soak up this wisdom.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: And my dad would never mess with her whatsoever.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: And so she armed me, she provisioned me for my life ahead, and my wife said it really well she didn't save my life, she provisioned me to save my own life and a couple of the things that she said, like God is love and you're going to find your purpose someday.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: You know, do you believe that God is love?
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: And I said eventually, after she pulled it out, I'm like that may be true for you, but it's not true for me.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: And why am I so scared all the time?
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Why does my dad hurt me all the time?
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: And so she said you're going to discover that God is love someday for yourself.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: She'd studied all the major religions of the world and she said if you take out all the extreme aspects, every single religion in the world, the common belief is that God is love.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: So if you get that, you can get along with anybody from any faith.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: So you don't have to get caught up in religion.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: You just understand that.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: I'm like, wow, that's really interesting.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: And I spent my whole life going through incredibly catastrophic trauma and getting beat up by groups of guys outside of our house and going in the Marines, and every time, just before something really violent was happening, I would be sitting there asking myself if God is love, why is this happening to me?
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: I didn't find any joy whatsoever, not one ounce of joy until I was 53, doing plant medicine journeys.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: And in that experience I discovered that there was a purpose for my suffering and it was to find and develop a gift of empathy so I could understand the pain of others.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: So, like this parallel path, glad was with me through my forties.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: When she passed she became the angel on my shoulder, but she'd already imparted all this wisdom.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: But I still lived in a bad neighborhood, still had a terrible house, the whole home environment was terrible, and then going in the military and all that stuff.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: There's more to it than that.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: But I think the parallel story for me I was just fortunate, fortunate to have some inspiration in a different side of the reality that I could strive for I don't want to get too far off topic by any means.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: but, man, you sold me on your aunt.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: I want her to be my aunt.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: I love that you had that.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: You said there was a documentary about her.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: I love documentaries.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Sometimes I have solo episodes where we discuss documentaries.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: Is it a documentary I can find?
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: Actually it was done in like 1987.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: I think I have the only known copy of it and I transformed it.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: I do have it and I'm right now trying to purchase the rights to it so I can do something with it.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: It's an amazing documentary about this person.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: The world needs more gladness.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: I'm telling you that now.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: One of the things that you touched on that also hit me was when you were talking about God.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: I'm an open gay man in the South, if you know anything about Tennessee right now they they're preachers talking about executing me, and preachers are talking about murdering me people like me.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: So when you mentioned God, it hit me because I remember when my hate crime happened.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: I remember thinking everybody was right.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: God does hate me because I tried to think differently about God than what the Christians are telling me, that they just don't know what the Bible really says, that if God sends people like me to hell, it can't be that bad of a place.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: And I invited God into my life and I invited God into my home, but God was not there when this man broke in my home and raped me and beat me until he turned himself in for murder and I was found 18 hours later.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: Where were you then, god?
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: And so, even though I've come off of that angry place with it, it is still tarnished and tainted my thoughts, beliefs and relationships with God, and this respectfully to anybody, because I will never put anybody's beliefs down as long as you're good to me, good to my people, like I'm good, but it's really had me question everything about God's the point of when I hear these Christians talk, when I hear these Christian identified communities come vocally saying that I should be killed, that there's no hate bigger than Christian love.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: And the Christian community is what has turned me personally away from God, to the point of if this, if God is who they say he is, send me to hell.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: I don't want to be there and I'm trying to change my mind with that, and so I wasn't trying to hijack your story.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: I just wanted to make sure I told you all of my thoughts before I asked the question of you had mentioned God and where do you stand with that now, and how did you get to that place with it?
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Let me try to unpack this a little bit.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: First of all, I'm a heterosexual male and I have tons of friends that are LGBTQ and I think the LGBTQ community has been there since the beginning of time.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: It's just, it's it.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: I don't think I know it's been since the beginning of time as part of our society and we just need to accept that is real.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: You can want it to be different, but it's not going to be different.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: So get over it and figure things out, come together and man, I feel so, so bad.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: That happened to you.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: And when I say God, I'm talking about spirit.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: I'm not.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: I'm not a, I'm not a religious guy.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: I've never read the Bible and I'll do respect I don't, I never will.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'm not.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: I'm not interested in those kinds of things.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: I'm a good person.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: I want to do good things in the world.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: I want to be around good people and I can tell you something as you were talking that came up from me Oprah Winfrey and Dr Bruce Perry.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: They co-narrated a book called what Happened to you, and when I heard that and I might be something interesting there's I used to have a.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: I just have to all wired up that man, there must be something wrong with me, because why else would my dad have treated me like this?
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Why else have my neighborhood been so bad?
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: And the Marine Corps and blah, blah blah.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: There must be something wrong with me, and I had it all wired up.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: So all I do is walk around all day gathering evidence that there's something wrong with me, okay, and I showed up in the world as tentative and skittish that's just what bullies and predators thrive on.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: So I had my own version of being singled out.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: And so what happened to you was really a great realization for me, because, instead of what's wrong with me, something happened to me, and when I shifted my perspective, I was able to take in more of there is nothing wrong with me, right, and so there's something right with me in so many ways, like I'm, not my experiences, I'm not my trauma.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, bad things happen.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Like you and I came into this world to clean hard drive.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: For the most part, we may have had some genetic anomalies, right, but then all this shit happened to us, okay, and here we are, okay, so what happened to me is a much healthier frame of reference than there's something wrong with me, yeah, and I hope that's helpful, because bad things happened.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: There's no way to deny that.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: You can't wish that to be different.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, it happened.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: So now we have to build a life around what do we know?
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: And I respect everybody and their beliefs.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: I'm doing better than I've ever done, surrounding myself, people I care about, and we don't talk about religion or politics.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Pretty much If we get into politics, I just say the only problem we have is we don't have a third choice.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: I did a podcast not too long ago where a man, this wonderful guy, he had some really bad experiences with his dad and he just opened up and we had a conversation about it and hardly talked about my book, but it was.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: It's really awesome because it's.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: This is the work.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: My hope is this is it's not a self-help book, okay, it's a transformational body of work that's disguised as a narrative memoir.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: You're not going to hear seven steps to change your life, but these are very strong visceral experiences that I personally went through and the lessons that I was able to learn in this angel on my shoulder, glad provisioning me, and so it's about not giving up and it's about moving forward and it's about figuring out what's next, putting one foot in front of the other.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: That's all you can do.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: That's all you can do Finding something bigger than your fear to focus on.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: We all have fear, but you have to find something bigger than your fear to help you move forward.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: One of the words that stood out to me was was it transformation?
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: Transformative, you know?
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: yeah.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: Transformational is probably the word that I was, but that really stood out to me because in a lot of the books that I've read about this topic, like, is that, here's the 12 step program, here's what you do, and so that word alone just really hit me differently.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: The transformational work is really what has made the biggest difference in my life is moving from.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Who are you becoming is really more interesting than like.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: The past is the past.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: The future hasn't happened yet.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: All we really have is right here, right now, and how can we transcend our foot blocks, this and what stands on our way?
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: And so, for me, personal development became the path to recovery.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: I was in the Marine Corps and they've done they do lots of things to tell everybody.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: They've got lots of programs.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: If you get a blue, you got a problem, you got a problem.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: You got to hear some help and it's getting easier.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: A lot of guys do, but when I was in, it wasn't okay to say you get a problem.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: It wasn't okay to have mental health issues, and so we were just trained to suck it up and but out.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Here's the key.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Another thing that Glad told me she said be aware and pay attention to the people you seem to meet by chance, because they're most likely the ones that are here to teach you the most.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: And so I was.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: I've always been curious from those conversations, and I bumped into one of those messengers in Okinawa, Japan, before I got on the Marine Corps, and he said basically, instead of sitting here drinking with my buddies, I go to the self-help section of the closest bookstore and I'd look at every book and I'd find anything that jumps off the shelf in me and I'd start reading about who I'm becoming.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: And I picked up the magic of thinking big by Schwartz Thought that was cool.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Thinking Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: But the best one, the most relevant one, was Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz, and I thought it was a weird title.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: But when I read the inside of it I'm like wow, this guy's a plastic surgeon who makes people beautiful, but they can't see it because of their self-image.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: And I thought, wow, that's really me.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: I'm a Marine looking impeccable, walk and talk and being everything impeccable, but inside I'm really damaged, Like I am absolutely the opposite of the projection.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: You're 100% correct with everything that you said.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: First, I would like to say I feel like you need to take the one-liners from Miss Aunt Gladys and put them on t-shirts and coffee mugs, because they're amazing.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: I'm just, I'm blessed.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: I think the purpose of me being in this world was to be sitting here talking to you, writing this book and sharing this wisdom.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: It's a legacy for me that I know I made a difference.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: I'm this, I know I existed because of her.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: But this is really great that people are probably the most thing, the common comments I hear from people reading the book is man, which I got to get to know her.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: She's living and breathing as we speak and maybe one day we'll get to with the documentary.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: What you shared with us with your childhood so far is you made the comment of you have a sibling or siblings, but you were the one that got the the wrath of I guess more than I guess everyone did, but you got the most.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: We all got it differently.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: It's all.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: I'll just leave it at that.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll just leave it at that, yeah.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: This was your normal, so you did you think that just every household was like this.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: Every kid goes through this, but you knew to hide it and keep it a secret.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: My dad.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Literally when my when Glad came to visit us, he would line us up in the hallway and he would get down on one knee and he would say we don't talk about what happens in this house.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: If I hear one thing from Glad that you're talking about me, you will pay.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: And he thumped us in the chest with his knuckles.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: I'm just like we were just terrorized and I desperately want a normal family.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: I go to my friends' houses and eat cookies and watch how their family worked, but I always had to keep this secret and I could never show my welts.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: I could never get my dad in trouble.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: It was really strange.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: This is how generational abuse starts and carries on until and not to jump too far ahead because I know there's so much more to talk about, but at some point you made the decision of it stops here with me, yeah.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: And again, tribute to Glad.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: She sat me down when I was a young boy and she said your dad is very abusive.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: That doesn't mean you're going to be Someday, you're likely going to have a family and I want to make a promise with you.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: And she made me put my hand over my heart and she made me make a pact with her that when I had children I would never hit them, I would never strike them in anger and I would never have them live in fear of me.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and when my son was eight years old, eight and a half years old, I sat him down and conveyed that same agreement and we never hit each other until he passed away.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: We never, and tell you, we never hit each other.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, we never struck each other.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: And he thanked me for making that agreement when he was like 25 years old.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: So we broke the chain of violence and for the men and my dad's side of the family, that's the most important thing I've ever done in my life.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: I know this is huge, because his children never lived in fear of that Side of him.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: They knew it was there, but it wasn't directed at them.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: Did the same kind of abuse carry on up until the military?
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, when I came home from the Marines I put on about 20 pounds and about felt like two inches man.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: I was just like an insane shape.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: You know, my dad was getting older and he's getting smaller and he was starting to notice that they ain't never going to happen again.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: We had some conversations where I'll let him know that how he had messed up our lives and so I took control of all that.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: But I wasn't him.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: I wasn't going to beat him up.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: I wanted to.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: I thought about it all the time I went in the Marines to be able to do that and come home and take care of my family.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: But I never had to do that, thankfully.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: We had a moment where it was going to happen and I made the choice not to do it and he was real nervous and we worked through it.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: We never had to get violent.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: When you were becoming an adult and kind of getting out on your own.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: I'm assuming you graduated high school and went straight To the service.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: No man, I was so messed up as a kid I couldn't read, I couldn't write, I couldn't do math, I couldn't.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: I'd fall asleep just trying to read anything.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: I was a sax player.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: I'd fall asleep in band class trying to read sheet music.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: It reinforces that.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Something wrong with me is I'm fucking stupid, I'm dumb.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: He used to call me that stupid, dumb, doofus, and so it contributed to this.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: There must be something wrong with me.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: When I was in high school, I was getting beat up so much by groups of guys that I just went to my friend's house and got stoned all day.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: And if I'm going to get beat up anyway, I'm going to do whatever the hell I want.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: So by the time I ended my junior year, I had seven credits I needed 21.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: And the counselor basically said you're not graduating with your class, obviously.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: So I told my dad I'm going to go on the.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: No, he told me.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: He said you're going in the job core and you're going to learn how to be a bricklayer because you're not going to live in my house, rent free, without a job.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: So here I go, down to South Phoenix, chicano, sportacasa, job core, and I'm only one of three white kids.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: The other two guys are pretty rough, bigger dudes.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: And here I am, this 155 pound kid, in the middle of a squad bay with 100 really hardcore dudes and I just was smoking weed like a freight train, just numbing it out.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: And so I found this I got kicked out for fighting and I didn't even start them, so came home and I finally told my dad I want to go in the army.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: I'd be happy if you just did anything.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Call the recruiter, find out what time they open tomorrow morning.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: And we were there early.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: He didn't even look at the paperwork.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: I was 17 and a half.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: He signed it, signed me away and get him out of here.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: And so I went in the army and I made it almost all the way through boot camp.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: But then they just they caught me doing pull ups in a strange way, Like I had a piece of glass run through my arm when I was 16 and it severed all the muscles, nerves and the tendons.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: But I was so desperate to get out of there.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: When I went through the AFI station to get in, to go through my in processing from my physical, I just hung out with hundreds of guys and I hid this situation and I could do pushups on my knuckles.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: I could do pull ups if I put my thumb over my finger and they weren't really paying attention.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: So they passed me on.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: So I thought I'm home free, I'm out of here.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: But then when they saw me doing pushups, this senior drill sergeant pulled me out and pinned me against the wall what is wrong with your hand?
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: And, long story short, they kicked me out of a medical on a medical discharge and I'm like, oh man, I've just.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: I went home and Vlad told me that if he tries to abuse you in any way, you're an adult now.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: You need to walk away, you need to live your own life.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: So I went home and he wouldn't shake my hand, he wouldn't let me in the house to live there.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: So I just picked up my devil bag and walked away and about six months later to live in my neighbor's front yard my friend's little camper I got the hare-bren idea that maybe I can get back in the military.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: And can you hear that?
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Good, thank you, I hope you can edit that out.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: I guess somebody working on my house.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: Oh no, I don't hear anything, no.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: So basically I went down to the recruiting station and I said I wanna talk to somebody about getting back in.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: And once I heard my story, they're like it's highly unlikely you'd even get an appointment with the medical review board.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: You already got separated, have a nice day.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: And I'm like highly unlikely.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: So it's not impossible, but it's just highly unlikely.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: And they're like, yeah, it's ridiculous, you shouldn't even try it.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: I'm like when's the medical review board?
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Well, you gotta pass a physical first.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, okay.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: So I started getting to know the people over the medical review board and I got an appointment and I went to a physical therapist and learned how to use some stretching on my arm.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: It was nowhere.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: I didn't have any feeling in my hand Like that's the problem.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Several thinkers didn't have their measurements, feeling or strength at all.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: But I was able to stretch it and move it enough and I got an appointment for the physical.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: I went back down and the guy passed me Cause.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: I just walked in and confidently said, hey, I had an injury.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: It wasn't quite healed up.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: They told me to come back when it was ready, so I could be taking the physical and I just played it off and the guy was okay, let's see what you got.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: I cranked out some pull-ups and he's okay, you're good to go.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: We'll let you know with the medical review board.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: And then they let me back in.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: But instead of going back in the army, I said I'm gonna go back in the Marine Corps.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna show him right.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: That's what happened.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: That's how it happened.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: It wasn't an ideal situation, but it was my.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: All my buddies had felony, so I wasn't going anywhere.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: If I wouldn't go in the military, I was probably gonna go to jail.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: So in your bio I read how you were talking about adult trauma.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: Was that part of being in the service?
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, part of Marine Corps bootcamp is they?
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: Back when I was in 1980, 1980, man, it's they still they had a ritual of they had a small little five by five room with a deep sink in it called the whiskey locker, and it's in the back of the squad bay past the bathroom, and the guide and the squad leaders would the guidance squad leader appointed by the drill instructor.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: So, to increase deniability, the drill instructor would be in his office and they would basically systematically take us one by one into the whiskey locker and just beat the little shit out of us.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: And it was designed to find our rage hardness up, and it did have that effect.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: But it also soured you and your gut.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: So I went through my process, but my only thing is I wasn't going to cry, I wasn't going to give him anything, I just went numb and it just it happened and it and it took me 30 years to try to get past that experience, though, sure, so that's some of the adult trauma.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: And then I had some bad things happen, but then losing the grief and loss, losing my brother and my son to high speed motorcycle accidents, both of them At different times.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, wow, I knew of the way that your son had passed, but I didn't know your brother was also in an accident.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, wow, yeah.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: So after they go, identify both of them.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: I just vowed never to ride a motorcycle again.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: But it's dealing with grief and loss and I tell you it's something that might be interesting, given what you just shared a little bit ago.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: I became the wounded healer for about 10 years Because the only thing I knew is I got to move my pain because I was suicidal, was there.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: I got to do something because it's eating me alive.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: And so after my son passed away, I call it the wounded healer Because if I didn't move my pain I was going to be consequences.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: And it took about 10 years for me to transcend most of it.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: And Native American first nation rituals, ceremonies, vision quests, a lot of plant medicine work, and now I'm not the wounded healer.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Like I'm really conflicted, but not so much terribly.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: But I'm conflicted because I missed my son.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: But I also, if I wouldn't have been cracked open so thoroughly and unexpectedly, I wouldn't have done the transformational work to make me who I am now.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: So that's really, it's just.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: It makes it all the more valuable to not go backwards when you just, you just keep opening up.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: And what I look at it is we mature in our grief and our loss.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: We mature in our trauma and, like you're doing right now, the work that you're doing is part of your healing and recovery.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: You're maturing in your experiences and they're going to look differently 10 years from now because of what you're doing on the show.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: So many of us have heard so many so many of us have heard so many tragic stories about survivors, and you had even said yourself there were points in this journey that you were suicidal.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: What I find that I hear very, way too often I'm sure you have too is we just want to numb that paint, we want to numb that steam.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: People turn to drugs and alcohol and get into addiction and this other endless cycle of shit.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: What kept you from getting to that point?
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: I figured out that I'm not an addict and I'm not an alcoholic, but I certainly have a drug abuse problem.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: When I was younger, I got a lot.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: I got in a lot of trouble in the Marine Corps because of my rage.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Okay, they tried to kick me out and I wouldn't have it and I figured out a way to finish my term, but I had a lot of rage and every one of those incidents involved alcohol.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: I was just truth serum.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: They would just come out right, and so I really worked on that.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: I'm and I'm.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: I still enjoy a nice glass of pino, but I don't have to drink three bottles of it.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: So part of is numbing the pain.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: But I can tell you for me, I've done a lot of work with transitioning combat veterans over the last 30 years a lot, which is a big reason why I wrote this book, because I all these experiences with myself and others and a lot of civilians, non veterans, who I worked with.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: It's about the end of suffering.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: People don't understand what suicide is.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: They think it's really selfish and I think, at some level, yeah, it is.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: But I know so many people that are still here and included myself.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to end the suffering.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: I was tired of suffering.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: And when you can start focusing on who you're becoming and you can find meaning and purpose.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: Look no further than Victor Frankel's work with man search for meaning.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: He's a mental health professional who was sent with his family to the concentration camps and they were taken away and killed and then they strip them down and then they tell them to give them give them his wedding ring.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: He realized in that moment that the only thing he had control of was how he responded to his captors and that gave him a glimmer of finding some meaning and purpose for his suffering.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: And he survived the concentration camps and wrote a big part of man search for meaning in a manuscript that was sewn into his jacket.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Then, when he gets out after the war, he writes man search for meaning and he develops logo therapy, which is meaning and purpose therapy, and it's adopted worldwide by the US military for their recovery centers, the vet centers, where they get groups of guys together and gals together and they talk about their suffering and they try to understand, like, why am I still here?
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: What meaning or purpose am I supposed to derive so I can build a life?
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: And so that's the kind of stuff that I started getting into.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: Personal development saved my life, like I said, because I wasn't going to counseling, but it became my way of developing myself, like seriously.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: I had a very limited vocabulary when I got out of the Marine Corps.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: A very small amount of emotions that I would allow myself to have and listening to personal development authors, subject matter experts, men and women expanded my vocabulary.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: I got to go work for Tony Robbins, I got to go work for Tom Hopkins and Jim Rohn and 13 years, so I didn't just get into personal development, I got into the personal development field so I could literally immerse myself and I could mimic and model successful people and I could understand how to be in the world.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: And so it was very uncomfortable, but that was my strategy and it worked really well.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: To bring this to your book.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: Do you remember that moment?
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: That was just life changing for you and you're like I'm done, I want to take control.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: That led you to the book.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: After listening to what happened to you with Oprah Winfrey and Bruce Perry.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: They mentioned the ACE scale, the adverse childhood experiences scale.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: I immediately looked it up.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: It's everywhere the 10-question survey.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: If you have a four out of 10, your chances of long-term diabetes, hypertension, suicide are high-risk factors alcoholism, drug addiction, domestic violence like divorce.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: If you have a six or higher, statistically you'll lose 20 years off your life.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: All those risk factors go up exponentially, including suicide.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: I have a 10 out of 10.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: When I started thinking I've been doing personal development, transformational development work my whole adult life and I'm doing really well.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: But man, what are my risk factors?
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: As good as I'm doing, what do I need to do now?
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: I started writing this book as a therapeutic writing project and just coughing up all the hairballs.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: I developed a process for doing it that I saved all the worst chapters for the last.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Now I'm on a quest to look at my biomarkers and to look at how can I really look into my body and look into my mind and look into what's closed down, what's unresolved.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: How can I open that up?
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: I'm really on a personal quest to continually transcend.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: Now I'm seeing a counselor.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: Another thing that helped me out big time was.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: Dick Schwartz developed a process called Internal Family Systems where he talks about parts.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: There's a part of me that gets really depressed, but it's not me.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: A part of me has a tendency to get depressed.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: Why don't you just do what that part, instead of labeling it like I'm depressed Really?
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: Are you depressed all the time?
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: Not really, but I feel depressed.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, so sometimes you feel depressed.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: It's a part of you that feels depressed.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: So that was another thing that helped me differentiate who I really am versus what's still unresolved.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: Off record.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: You hadn't mentioned how you're not really into public speaking.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: You're not really into certain things.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: That kind of comes with having a great book where people are wanting to talk to you and see you.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: But this whole time that you've been talking I was like if he doesn't want to be seen and do public speaking, he's at least got to do the audio version of his books.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: Because your voice, I feel so relaxed.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: But I feel like I've learned and I'm inspired.
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: Your voice does it.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you've been told that a million times, but Wow, I narrated my first book Okay, it's called Transitioning Veterans how we Get in Our Own Way and what to Do About it and I actually quickly.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: It's a dual narration where I have another veteran playing the voice of the critical mind.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: That's always hijacking us.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: I play the voice of the rational, reasonable mind and it's a great experience.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: It's only about an hour and 20 minutes long.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: It's built and designed for people, especially veterans, who don't want to ask for help or they can't ask for help, so they can listen to this process and the privacy of their own mind.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: I wrote this book and then I went to go narrate it.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: About three chapters in.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: It was so painful to have to like when I'm really drinking heavily I can narrate all the voices in my head and remember all that shit.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: But I decided that's as unhealthy.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: And Dan Warren is my favorite audiobook narrator.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: He's done a couple of hundred books.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: So I called my publisher and get me his email address.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: So I get his address and I send him the manuscript.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: You're my favorite audiobook narrator, storyteller.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: Please look at my manuscript.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: He calls me back one week later and says I'm 60 pages in.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: I'll absolutely do this and I'll have it done in a month.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: So when you listen to this, I'd much rather be known for casting a really great storyteller than me being the guy who narrates my own book, and I got a lot of advice from a lot of people like no authenticity, you should do it yourself.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: You know what I.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: Just I'd rather do it in a way that is effective.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: I don't want to.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: I don't want to take the time to be a learn how to do all those characters and I don't want to have to drink to do it.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: Fair enough, but he's a great.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: He's a great storyteller.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: I think you'll really love it.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't wait to check that out and I can't wait for my listeners to check you out.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: I feel like the word thank you just isn't big and powerful enough.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's reciprocal.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: Man, I just appreciate who you are and what you're doing, your authenticity and you're moving your pain, and that this is where it goes.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: Man, you got to do this and keep doing it.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: You're doing great and I've heard enough of your segments to go.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: wow your authenticity and your transparency.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: You go first.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: That's my whole thing is that I'm scared to death to do this, man.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to get out here and talk about this stuff, but it's important If you're going to reach a handful of people, or a lot of people.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: You got to be willing, even when you're unwilling.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: Yep, absolutely.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: Tell us where we can find you.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: So you can go to harvestingwisdomcom.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: Harvestingwisdomcom where you can read, you can download the first seven chapters of the book on me and really get a sense of this is for you or not, and you can listen to the first four chapters of the audiobook on me.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: And I was saying to you, I'm not trying to get consulting gigs or speaking engagements, I want this work to mean something and to do things in the world and that's why there's 31 chapters.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: Why not give away seven of them?
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: To really help people get immersed into the story?
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: And if it's strong, it carries its own weight.
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: And that wraps up another powerful episode of surviving abuse.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: I want to extend my deepest gratitude to our incredible guests for sharing their transformative journey with us today.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: Your bravery is an inspiration to us all.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: Before we go, I want to remind you to stay connected with us on our social media platforms.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: Follow us on Instagram, twitter, facebook and TikTok, where we will continue the conversation, share resources and provide support for survivors like you.
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: Remember you're not alone.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: To all of our listeners, thank you for joining us again.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: Your resilience and willingness to heal is what makes this community strong.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: As we embark on this journey together, let's remember that there is life after trauma.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: We can rise above it and create a future filled with hope and joy.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: Join us next week as we dive into the healing process and share more incredible stories of triumph and resilience.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: Until then, take care of yourself and remember you deserve love, you deserve happiness and, above all, you deserve an abundance of healing.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: And I'll pray for you.
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: I'm done hurting and I'll be the one.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: I'll be the hanger.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: I'll rise you.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: We may be longer.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: Then we begin again.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: Now I'll beg and I'll pray for you.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: I'm done hurting.