Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele Taraba

TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Gissele: Hello and welcome to the Love and Compassion podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. And if you’d like to support the podcast, you could go to buymeacoffee.com/loveandcompassion. Gissele: Today we’re talking about spreading kindness towards other, and our guest today is Braidon Johnson. He was raised in a broken home, constantly moving back and forth between his parents and attending about 15 different schools between elementary and high school. With constant conflict and both of his parents struggling with severe substance abuse, he emancipated himself at 14 and moved into his first apartment. Gissele: School was very difficult, and he eventually dropped out at grade 11 when he had his son, Miles. It wasn’t until his 30s that he was finally diagnosed with mobility issues and ADHD. About seven years ago, he lost his mother to an overdose. [00:01:00] Just before she passed, both she and her brother were in jail after getting in trouble together. Gissele: He was faced with the impossible decision of having to choose which one to bail out, and he chose his brother. Not long after, his mother passed away, and he’s been living with the weight of that. It has been one of the hardest things he’s ever had to carry. But he also realized that setting good boundaries and separating himself from that cycle was necessary for him to heal and grow and become the person and father he is today. Over the past five years, he’s done deep work on mental health, off and on medication for anxiety and depression most of his life. But through personal work and education with the CMHA, he gained a real understanding of how trauma and mental health work. He has managed well without his medication for the past few years, although he still deals with physical mobility challenges. Gissele: but that does not stop him from working hard in labor-intensive trades. [00:02:00] Over the years, he’s worked different jobs, gained extensive experience in construction and commercial kitchens. Around age 20, when things hit rock bottom, he found himself staying at a homeless shelter, eating food like powdered milk and plain Cheerios for breakfast and even lunch, and bland frozen foods. Gissele: That pushed him to rebuild and eventually working his way up through the culinary industry to fine dining at Ruth’s Chris. Today, he’s an entrepreneur running a property maintenance and landscaping business, Four Seasons Makeover, as well as working in catering. Having lived through childhood trauma, personal struggles with substance abuse in his 20s, and housing instability He created the Kindness Project, which today, alongside with a team of 10 dedicated volunteers, serves home-cooked meals and distribute clothing every Sunday at Victoria Park, supporting around, uh, 100 unhoused individuals as well as [00:03:00] local seniors and families facing food insecurity. They’re not tied to any religion agenda, their focus is simply providing high-quality food, dignity, and compassion. Their organization started with a simple question: What if people were just kind? Please join me in welcoming Braidon Johnson. Hi, Braidon. Braidon: Hi, thanks for having me. I really appreciate this opportunity Gissele: Yeah, of course. And thank you for being on the show. I was wondering if you could tell the audience a little bit about how you started The Kindness Project? Braidon: Yeah, definitely. So basically, I had moved to Brantford, and it was in December when things started getting really cold and there was a lot of snow. And I was kind of venturing around downtown, and I noticed there was a lot of people who were struggling on the streets. And so it kinda sparked an, a thought in my mind that maybe I could go out and, uh, hand out some Christmas dinner to [00:04:00] people in need. Braidon: And so my girlfriend and I, we went out and set up a little table, and within a few minutes, people started lining up and kinda asking, like, “What are you guys doing? Why are you doing this?” And I just told them, just out of the kindness of my heart, I just wanted to give back to the community. And everybody was extremely happy, and the meals went really quickly. Braidon: And I noticed, okay, this is something that is definitely needed in the area. And so I decided maybe I’ll start coming back and doing it every week. And really quickly, we started growing with volunteers. we had a few at first, and then it kinda blew up with, tons of people in the community asking if they could get involved, um, asking if they could donate, clothing and food. Braidon: And so it kind of, uh, really sparked a flame in other people’s hearts as well. everybody kinda knows about the issues, and so we kinda all work together to make a difference in the community Gissele: and that’s such a beautiful thing to do and such an amazing [00:05:00] way of giving back in the community. Do you feel that it was your experience in the homeless shelter that really motivated you to not just see the suffering and just ignore it or feel bad about it? Because many people will see that suffering, will see that people have food insecurity, but they don’t move towards the action of actually helping someone. Braidon: Yeah, honestly, when I was staying in the homeless shelter, I never really imagined being able to be in this position to give back. I’d seen posters on the walls of people who were a part of that shelter and who donated, and I thought to myself, “Maybe one day I could be someone like that.” but when I was going through it, it never really crossed my mind to be able to actually do it. Braidon: it was always a really faraway dream. and because of the things I was going through, just honestly, it never occurred to me that I’d be in this position to be able to give back. And, I realized recently it doesn’t take so much money and so much, other than, like, compassion and love. Braidon: [00:06:00] that’s all you really need to be able to give back. And so just being a middleman and realizing that there’s so much food waste out there in the world, if I’m just someone who’s able to take up the time and the resources to get involved, then it can really make a difference just simply by just being available and being willing to try Gissele: are you able to share your experience of how you were able to get yourself out of the homeless shelter? Because there might be people who might be struggling right now who, who would see your story as inspirational. So is there anything that you can share about that experience? Braidon: Yeah. Honestly, it is hard to get out of a homeless shelter, um, when you’re trying to apply for jobs especially. and like social assistance, they don’t help you as much when you’re in a shelter. So I honestly, I fibbed on my resume and I said I had a house, and I was able to get a job pretty quickly in a kitchen, and it was part-time hours at first, but as soon as I got in there and they seen that I was willing to work [00:07:00] hard, I was able to kind of build my way up and, uh, went from just a, a small position to being a lot more appreciated and with lots of hours and lots of opportunities Gissele: That’s wonderful. Can you talk a little bit about the mindset that you need to have in order for you to… Because It can do a lot to your mental health to be in a situation when you feel like you have no resources and have nowhere to go. Can you talk a little bit about maybe some of the thinking that you had to have in order for you to move forward with applying to jobs and move forward with, wanting to get yourself out of the shelter? Braidon: Yeah. So at first, before I was in a shelter, I was kinda couch hopping, to friends’ houses and some family that would allow me to stay. But it was honestly my mentality that ended me up in the homeless shelters because I had a very poor me mentality and, it wasn’t until I finally decided, okay, it’s up to me, it’s my responsibility, I kinda have to start from ground zero in [00:08:00] order to build my way up, and just living off the backs of others, it doesn’t get you anywhere. Braidon: It really takes that push to actually get out and apply for jobs and try and build your way up in the world. so it took a while for me to get through it, but luckily the counselors that were available at the shelter, they were really helpful. And at first I was just wanting to keep to myself and I didn’t really want to talk to other people about what I was going through. Braidon: But it was when I started to open up that I realized that everybody has their struggles and everybody’s kinda going through something. And so it just takes that a little bit of motivation from others and a lot of motivation from yourself to just really get to the grind and just try your best Gissele: Yeah,and I wanna applaud the fact that it takes a lot of, courage to be vulnerable, because I can imagine there must be a lot of shame and guilt that happens [00:09:00] when you are living in a shelter and you, have a history of childhood trauma, to be able to be vulnerable and put yourself out there and say, “Here’s my situation. Gissele: Who can help me?” I think it must have been challenge. what helped you have that courage to be able to reach out to people for support? Braidon: Well, when I was growing up, like really young, like five or six years old, everybody would say, like, “What do you wanna be when you’re older?” And one of the things was I would always say a psychiatrist. but growing up, I started to realize that psychiatrists aren’t free, and they’re more so for prescribing medication. Braidon: But one thing I never connected with was counselors. And so finally kind of getting over that idea that people aren’t always gonna be able to be there to help you, um, especially when I was in a shelter and it felt like my own family wasn’t there for me. It just takes that [00:10:00] vulnerability and that willingness to wanna make a difference in your life that allows people to get in and truly try and help you through what you’re going through. Braidon: And it’s rare, but it’s definitely out there. There’s definitely people that care, out of the kindness of their hearts. I guess growing up, I always thought that relationships were transactional, Gissele: Hmm Braidon: it wasn’t until later years when I truly became vulnerable enough to be honest about everything, and that’s when I truly found people that were willing to help out of the kindness of their heart with nothing to gain, just purely trying to get someone through a hard time, and that definitely inspired me to wanna be a person like that Gissele: Mm. And you’re definitely an inspiration to other people in just by your actions through the Kindness Project. You’re demonstrating to other people the willingness to help and the willingness to love unconditionally, without the need to get something reciprocal. What has been the feedback on the Kindness Project? Braidon: So there’s definitely been some really good [00:11:00] feedback, but of course with anything, there’s been some really bad feedback. at first when we started setting up, I didn’t realize it would be so quick for people to kinda put shame upon what we were doing, saying things like, “Why are you helping these people?” Braidon: Or simply complaining to people like the bylaw or city officials and just trying to get us out of there because to them it doesn’t make any sense. Why help people? Everybody should just figure everything out on their own. And so I guess some people haven’t been in the position where they needed someone to truly just do it out of the kindness of their heart, and so it’s understandable that they thought that way. Braidon: But yeah, unfortunately there’s always gonna be those people. And, one of the things they complain about is ’cause we hand out a lot of clothes, they find like some of the old clothes around the streets and so they say that it’s just people don’t respect what we’re doing and so they just [00:12:00] take it and throw it around. Braidon: But honestly, a lot of these people, they don’t have anywhere to put these things. Like simply the garbage cans can be overfilled and there’s no laundry facilities available for people who are living on the street. So it’s understandable that people are gonna get upset about it and try and put the blame somewhere. Braidon: But like when people are really struggling, the last thing they think about is stuff like that, and truly the outdoors is their home. So when people say, “Oh, they’re littering all over our property and stuff,” like where they’re living is kind of– they think of it differently, right? Because that’s where they are living, where they’re eating, where they’re changing their clothes. Braidon: So there’s definitely people who say, you know, “Don’t help other people because they’re never gonna do things on their own.” And in some ways it is true, but at, uh, at the same time, you have to have love and compassion in order to make a difference in this world Gissele: Yeah, and that, that is the [00:13:00] fundamental essence of compassion, right? so I give the analogy when I talk to people about compassion of a boat. you’re rowing a boat on a lake and you see someone drowning. compassion is extending your hand to that person to go on the boat. Gissele: They may not choose to get on your boat, and that’s their right. If they choose to continue to drown, that’s okay. But your willingness has to continue to be there to stay on the boat and give a hand, right? And so I think people that believe in that transactional relationship still believe that, if I help someone, they have to change. Braidon: Right Gissele: And I’ve had numerous conversations with people that are unhoused, and that was one of the things that they would mention to me is that, sometimes they would get help from people, and in the beginning it was really great, but then when they saw them again and again still on the street, there was, like, this resentment that the, the people that were helping them would have as if,”Why haven’t you fixed yourself yet?” Gissele: And so then you’re giving with expectation, and so that’s one of the things that I learned from unhoused people. Are you giving from a place of your heart, or are you giving in [00:14:00] an effort to get someone to change or behave the way you want them to? And so it’s not that I’m trying to blame anyone, but that’s kind of the love we’ve been taught. Gissele: We’ve been taught this conditional love, right? I will love you if you change. I will love you if you behave. I I will love you if you’re valuable and valued in society. And so people that see people that are unhoused and continue to be unhoused despite being helped, that irritates people, and it’s really interesting to watch ’cause that comes from their own self-judgment, Gissele: Right? And I also think that maybe some of your helping behavior might make them feel shame and guilt that they’re not helping, and so I think there might be a little bit of that. What has been the city’s reaction to your, supporting people that are, in need? Braidon: So at first, I just wanna kinda mention the churches because they’re the ones that have been helping people from the beginning of time. And so it’s something that’s kind of expected of them. and when homeless people go there, [00:15:00] sometimes they don’t give them the most respect because they think it’s a part of their religion, they have to do it. Braidon: But a lot of churches are out there to help. But one of the main things I wanted to do was kinda separate helping people from church. although I do have a relationship with God myself, I don’t think everybody’s ready for that, especially when they’re going through extremely hard times. Sometimes they just need love and kindness, and it kinda sparks a flame inside of them to be willing to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Braidon: But other than the churches who have been very helpful and very kind and courteous to our operation, the city exactly hasn’t been so great. Um, we’ve been kicked out of a few spots, specifically just because we draw a large crowd. We always clean up after everything we do, so it’s never been a complaint of that, more so just that they don’t want us handing out food to large groups of people. Braidon: [00:16:00] And especially they don’t want it to be noticeable that there’s large groups of homeless people in one area because it looks bad on the city. So we’ve been asked to vacate any public parks and basically go to whatever area they designate for it. And just recently, we tried to go to a different area, trying to do our best to make the city happy and not cause any issues. Braidon: And unfortunately, a lot of people didn’t show up. There was only a handful of people. And one of the people that came, they were in a wheelchair. And so basically, like they asked like, “Hey, like I had to get a ride over here from like a pastor. And basically, would you be able to give me a ride back to downtown after? Braidon: Because I’m not able to push myself all the way back there.” And so I was able to give them a ride, but it just really made me realize I don’t think it’s gonna work doing it in a corner of the city where there is no people in need. It would be great if we could [00:17:00] get them all to come over there, but we would need help from the city somehow, maybe a bus or something like that. Braidon: But for the meanwhile, we’re gonna try and hang out in the areas where they’re located. But it’s inevitable that eventually we will be asked to leave Gissele: and I think what you’re raising is a really important issue, which is you have to go where the people are, right? If people are facing housing insecurity and, food insecurity, they may not have the funds to be able to take a bus to go where you’re going. And not to judge the city, but that’s a little shortsighted, Brantford, to think that people somehow are gonna be able to get to your place, and I think maybe that’s on purpose, that the fact that there wouldn’t be that many people and it wouldn’t seem like, that there is such a big need. Gissele: have you thought about engaging the, journalists, like the Toronto Star and that could do an expose because you’re doing a kind thing. You’re doing something that helps the city. I’m not saying that you should blame the city. [00:18:00] What I’m saying is that could you have journalists help and give greater credibility to the project that you’re doing so that you could get more support? Gissele: maybe they would provide a bus if it was, available. And so you’re just asking… You’re willing to move. Can you just give me the resources to help people find me? And I don’t think that’s an unreasonable request, if you may. Braidon: Absolutely. Yeah, I absolutely agree. I’ve reached out to some places, like the radio, just to kinda get us out there and make it more available for people to understand what we’re doing. But reaching out to someone to try and get it out there that we need people to help with the transportation would absolutely be a great idea. Braidon: And you’re absolutely right, like sharing this and sharing the issues that we have, with the public is definitely the way to get out there and the way to make a difference. Unfortunately, media does make a big difference, to city officials [00:19:00] when they realize that they’re kind of in the spotlight. Braidon: And, uh, one thing that Brantford officials have mentioned is there is no homeless problem in Brantford, which is really disheartening to hear Gissele: What? Gissele: I work in Brantford. I walked to downtown. that’s a little bit of ostriching it, Braidon: Yeah, and I’ve reached out to the homeless shelters, and they’ve basically explained that more than, often they’re at maximum capacity, and there’s way more people in need than they’re able to help. And so the long-term goal is to create more affordable housing and to create more facilities to hold people until they get transitional housing. Braidon: But it all takes help from the community, especially city officials. So I think long-term it would be amazing if they would get involved with something like that. But unfortunately, they’re trying their best to negate the issue. And I think there’s homelessness everywhere around the world, but some [00:20:00] places, due to the amount of help that is available, they’ll end up in those areas more than less. Braidon: And so there’s a lot of small organizations like mine that help out in Brantford. And so if we could all come together to make a big difference, I think that would be amazing. But I think it’s kind of a long way down the line. But reaching out to other medias, that would definitely make a big difference. Braidon: So that’s definitely a great idea and something I’m gonna look into. Gissele: Yeah, definitely. And I just wanna say, um, just from what I have learned myself, that there are countries that have addressed the homelessness issue, and they address the homelessness issue by giving people houses, right? Gissele: And so what is the responsibility of the citizens towards those that are more marginalized, right? And so from that perspective, and I think from the example of your own life, you’re demonstrating to all of us that we are all responsible for one another. We’re all responsible for helping [00:21:00] uplift each other. Gissele: I wanna go back to, you’re a chef, right, which is wonderful. what have you found has been the availability of, fresh fruits and vegetables to be able to offer that to people that are, unhoused or vulnerably housed and don’t have access to food in particular? Braidon: So I’ve reached out to a lot of grocery stores and bigger corporations, and basically there’s an unlimited amount available. Um, but in order to get access to it, you have to have a nonprofit organization, you have to be registered, you have to be able to give them information so they can do a tax write-off. Braidon: But it’s definitely out there and available, but unless you have those things in line, there’s not a lot of help unless you find smaller venues that are willing to just do it out of the kindness of their hearts. For the most part, you have to have some sort of registration, which is something that we’re still working on. Braidon: So basically, it just comes out of our pocket [00:22:00] at the moment, but in the future, definitely hoping to work towards that. I know there’s lots of grants as well that are available for initiatives like this. unfortunately, like I said, there’s just so many small organizations that aren’t necessarily working together. Braidon: And so in the future, it would be amazing to see everybody come together and have access to the different things that are available. Um, I’ve worked in grocery stores where we throw out food every single day, hundreds and thousands of dollars of food. I’ve worked in restaurants where it’s the same situation, and I have tried when I was working there to try and help in a sense of asking the managers, “Is there any way we can do some sort of donations with this?” Braidon: But unfortunately, there’s a lot of criticism towards doing that, and due to health violations and whatnot, whatever spiel they’d give me, it wasn’t as easy as just asking and doing it. But there’s definitely a lot of waste and a lot of abundance available, [00:23:00] which is sad because you still see people going to the grocery stores not being able to afford their bill. Braidon: And if we just had access to food when we need it, it would make a really big difference. It goes along with the housing situation as well. There’s lots of houses, and unfortunately, most of them are way too expensive for people to afford. And so it puts everybody in a position where there is this abundance of things, but unfortunately, there’s so many people that still go without Gissele: Yeah. and so thank you for raising a very important issue, which is,that fear-based mentality. And I’ve heard the same thing too, when you ask the question, like, why wouldn’t we donate food that is, being thrown out, and the one argument I heard often, again, would be like, “Well, if it’s rotting food and they get sick, they’re gonna sue.” Gissele: and it just, it could be my own naiveté, ’cause I don’t know if this has really happened. I don’t know if this is a genuine fear, but I don’t know any unhoused person that is [00:24:00] gonna go get a lawyer. they’re going to just eat what they can. And so if you have something that you know is still good, that is still edible, why throw it out on the off chance that you might get sued? Gissele: it’s that fear-based mentality, that litigiousness that we have that I think really closes our heart. Braidon: Absolutely Gissele: at the same time, I understand it, because I grew up, in an environment where my parents experienced child abuse and neglect, and so we were taught not to trust. Gissele: We were taught to fear. We were taught that, people weren’t to be trusted. and when you’re in that survival mode, you really don’t have the compassion. You really are just stuck on, survival mode, only thinking of yourself. And so it takes a real open heart to want to help people despite all of the barriers, which you do Braidon: Thank you. Yeah, it’s sad because Canada is [00:25:00] known as one of the nicest countries in the world, but there is a very big lack of community. Growing up, nobody trusted anybody and nobody helped each other. Everybody just did things on their own, and I think it’s kind of expected to just get things done on your own and get through things on your own. Braidon: But there is some people out there that understand that it takes a village, and so I definitely believe in that. Like when I started the organization, it was just me and my girlfriend and sometimes just myself. And at first I maybe thought, “Okay, this is gonna be really hard doing it on my own.” But really quickly people got involved, people from all over asking if they can get involved. Braidon: And so there’s definitely people out there that are willing to work together, but it’s a very small community and, and a very rare thing to see these days. But it’s amazing when people get involved because it really keeps my [00:26:00] spirit going. All the positive comments that we get, all the people that personally reach out and tell me that they have someone on the street and that what I’m doing really inspires them and gives them hope that there is s- people out there that are willing to help and help out with the people that they have on the street. Braidon: So sometimes people wanna help their family members, but they don’t know how or they’re just not able to. So it is really amazing when there is other people out there that are willing to try Gissele: Yeah, and you know, it’s so, it’s so interesting y- the comment that you made about the lack of community. I was talking to someone, and I can’t remember who, and they said to me, we don’t borrow sugar anymore from each other.” Which to me was so impactful because I was like, yeah, we don’t borrow things from each other. Gissele: Everybody has to have their own, and everybody has to have kind of this status, and all of these things that where we used to reach out to one another, now we don’t. and you know what? It’s so interesting that in other [00:27:00] cultures, in, in the cultures in particular that we have decimated in North America, like the indigenous culture and the Black culture, those cultures have always been very community-based. Gissele: They have always been very together and to see how lonely people are, how separate people are, there is definitely a need for greater community. Braidon: 100%. Yeah, it would be beautiful to see a world where everyone was kind to each other and willing to help with each other because we all go through something. Like even, doesn’t matter who you are, there’s something that you’re going through in life. And so when you get compassion from another person, it really gives you the ability to get through what you’re going through. Braidon: Sometimes it’s just, you know, a smile or a nod or a hug or just a person willing to listen to what you’re going through. Like it really can change people, especially when they’ve gone their whole life without feeling like anybody wanted to help them or like [00:28:00] everybody was just a transactional relationship. Braidon: Getting that first opportunity to get pure kindness from someone can honestly make the entire difference of how you see things in the world Gissele: Yeah, and one of the things I love about your project in particular is that you’re demonstrating that you don’t need a lot of wealth to give. You don’t need a lot. And like you mentioned, okay, so maybe giving people food is not your thing. But like you said, a kind smile, a comment, some positive advice, anything, that sort of it spreads just the same way that evil and, hate and all of that stuff spreads, so does kindness, so does support, so does joy, so does a smile. Gissele: That also is an opportunity for us to connect to one another, and it’s so amazing how just a small act actually has ripple effects. So every person that you’ve helped now can help someone else, right? Which is incredible. Braidon: Yeah, honestly, a, a [00:29:00] lot of the big inspirations for, what I do on social media came from watching videos of people just walking down the street, giving people compliments, seeing their face light up, or giving people the opportunity to tell their story. It really gave me inspiration that, wow, like, everybody’s story does deserve to be told, and everybody does deserve to feel like they’re wanted or loved. Braidon: And so a small act makes a huge difference. Giving people food, to me, is like giving them love. Gissele: Hmm, yeah. Mm-hmm. Braidon: in my background, and as an Italian, like, someone comes over to your house, you feed them. You feed them until they’re completely stuffed, and it’s just because they might go without food sometime in the future, and they’re gonna feel like they need it, like they need some love. Braidon: And so giving meals is like giving love in a sense that, especially when it’s made from the heart and [00:30:00] with good ingredients and a lot of experience, like something simple can taste amazing to somebody. And so a lot of the compliments that we get are like, “Wow, this is something I’ve never tasted before. Braidon: This is amazing.” And so it just shows that, like, everybody’s just looking for a little bit of love, whether it’s food or help or things like clothing that we give away sometimes as well. Like just a, a new shirt or a new pair of pants, something like that, it really makes a difference to somebody, especially when they’re on the streets or just when they’re in need in general. Braidon: So it’s honestly such a heartwarming experience for me to be a part of it, and that’s definitely what keeps it going for me. Um, I look forward to it every single week, just getting out there and meeting new people and seeing the same faces. And obviously, I hope that they’re gonna get help in the future. Braidon: But for now, I just do what I can and hope that it makes a difference. Gissele: Yeah, and [00:31:00] giving love without judgment, right? Without the expectation that they change. Yeah. What keeps it going? do you ever have, tough days? Are there ever days you struggle? And then if so, what helps you keep going? Braidon: I think like one of the biggest struggles is obviously the financial part. Um, like at first it was just 30, 40 people, and so it was a lot more reasonable to make meals and, and make them good quality and abundant. But as it’s grown to reaching like 100, sometimes 120 people every single week, it’s starting to cost quite a bit. Braidon: But definitely just the reaction that we get from the people makes it all worth it. And then when my volunteers are able to chip in, like that definitely keeps it going. And so it, it really shows that like, even though it was i- an idea that I had at the beginning, there’s other people that also feel the same way and [00:32:00] are willing to give just as much. Braidon: And, um, we’ve had some instances where we’re dealing with people with schizophrenia or just people who’ve been on the street for a long time and are really struggling. And so that’s always a downer when we have to experience them going through that. But they’re in such a worse place than we are, and so just experiencing that with them, it’s something that happens and, and we get over it, and that’s definitely never deterred us from going back Gissele: Yeah. Yeah. and I think, one of the things that I go back to is also the aspect of courage. some people face something like that, and they’re like, “Well, you know, I gave and then, like this negative experience happened.” Is the willingness to think about it from their perspective. Gissele: it’s hard living with things such as schizophrenia. Gissele: But we normally go to judgment because that’s what we’ve been taught. But curiosity really is the key to us coming closer together. [00:33:00] Yeah. Braidon: it actually reminded me, there’s a story that happened when I first started helping out at a a church and, um, we were handing out food to people, and there was one person who I’d seen on the streets many times, and I’ve heard from other people that he’s s- a very scary person. Basically, I think it was a mix of schizophrenia and Tourette’s. Braidon: So basically, you would see him on the street screaming and swearing, and, the first few times I seen him at the, uh, it was an outreach program. Basically, like, he was screaming and swearing, and usually that would get you kicked out of a place, but these people were kind enough to just allow them to go through what they were going through. Braidon: And still everybody tried their best to get to know him and say hi and try to create a relationship. And about four or five times in after seeing him, [00:34:00] all of a sudden he was a lot different, it seemed. He probably felt like people actually gave him a chance when everybody would usually turn him away or be afraid of him, and now he had people that knew him by name and were basically looking forward to him coming in. Braidon: And so one day you see some guy screaming and yelling on the street, and you think he’s the scariest person in the world, and the next you get to know him and realize he’s just going through some things and just needed some love. And, like, that definitely sparked something inside of me that made me realize that, you know, there’s lots of people out there that need this help, and some people don’t even get a chance to get help because the way they’re looked at. Braidon: But if there’s people who are willing to give them a chance, it could change something inside of them that a- allows them to calm that voice down a little bit and to try and be a part of a community, [00:35:00] and who knows what could happen from there. Maybe eventually they can get some help, and it could completely change who they are, and maybe not, but just seeing that compassion from other people and then witnessing firsthand going from the screaming and yelling down to just a calm individual really sparked something inside of me that made me think, “Okay, there’s something here that I would love to be a part of.” Braidon: And when I was at that outreach, they mentioned many times like, “Oh, maybe you’ll run this outreach one day.” And so when I moved to Brantford, that was something that kinda kept i- inside my head that maybe I could make a difference on my own and with the people in my community, and so that’s definitely kept me going. Gissele: Hmm. Yeah, definitely. And one of the things I’ve seen throughout my work really is the transformative power of love. When people feel seen and heard, it just has a way of helping people bloom. and even if it doesn’t, it doesn’t mean that you [00:36:00] take away your love because the love is coming from you, right? Gissele: Like through you. And so you get the opportunity to express that love, which I think is very, very powerful Yeah. going back to the issue of religion, I appreciate that your organization is non-denominational, even though like you, I also have a relationship with God. Gissele: But I think what the beauty of what your organization is doing is demonstrate that even if people don’t believe in a specific god or don’t believe in any god at all, they are still worthy of love, Braidon: Yes. Gissele: right? Braidon: Yes Gissele: that something you did on purpose, or is it something that just organically happened? Braidon: Yeah, it definitely came out of my experience working with the church. Um, that’s where I was helping out before, and they were all amazing people. Some of them went to church and some of them didn’t. But it was always the fact that everybody that came knew it was from a church, and so it [00:37:00] was kind of divided between some people who just expected it and some people who appreciated it. Braidon: And it made me realize maybe there’s an opportunity to give without expectations and see how people react to it and see if they realize, “Oh, wow, anybody can give. You don’t have to be going to church every day. You don’t have to change your religion.” Unfortunately, there’s a lot of people struggling, and some of them are from different backgrounds and grew up different ways. Braidon: And so just showing genuine kindness, it kind of changes people’s expectations of, well, if someone’s just willing to help me out of the kindness of their heart and there’s no hidden agenda, no obligation to go to church or change your religion or pray before you eat, like maybe anybody can change and anybody can make a difference. Braidon: And of course, if somebody ever asked [00:38:00] me about God or where to go for church, I would 100% point them in the right direction. But it would never be something that I wanted them to Think was necessary in order to get a meal or get some clothes or have a chat with Braidon: somebody. And so we do have some churches that kind of frown upon our organization because we’re not preaching the word of God when we’re handing out food. But something I’ve learned from studying religion is that God definitely wants people to help without expectations, and doing something like handing out food and clothes to those in need is definitely something that’s respected by God in general. Braidon: And so we don’t specifically preach about any religion, but we’re always willing to talk about it if someone brings it up, and [00:39:00] we try our best to negate any type of arguments because that’s not what we’re there for. But it’s something that comes up quite a bit, and like I said, we’re always willing to talk about it and point people in the right direction if, if they’re interested in getting involved in church, ’cause it’s definitely a, a great thing to be a part of. Braidon: It’s a great community for the most part. Almost any religion that I’ve studied is willing to open up their arms to just about anybody. And so it’s something that I’ve put a lot of time into. I’ve studied multiple different religions and, um, basically like I said, I just have my personal relationship with God, and so I pray all the time and ask for forgiveness and ask for guidance in what I’m doing. Braidon: And I think that when someone’s ready to do that, like that’s gotta be completely up to them and it can’t be forced upon them, and it’s a beautiful thing when it happens, but sometimes [00:40:00] people just need to eat to get through the day, and so that’s what we’re there for Gissele: Yeah, yeah. And I agree with you. it is love without conditions, to me, the love of God, and this is just my perspective, is more like sunshine, the sun shines on everything and everyone, including the predators and prey and, everything, right? It’s not saying, “Oh, it’s only for you, flowers, but not you, thorns.” Gissele: it just is. And so for me, I don’t see that God would be judging people because you’re not giving food with conditions. I think there are places that promote God and religion, and I think that’s wonderful, and there are other places that are just there for something else, and you are there to give food. Gissele: That is your love language, and that’s how you are loving people, and I don’t think that there’s anything that could be criticized about that or should be. Braidon: I think it would be really amazing if one day there was a church that wasn’t focused on any specific religion, but was just basically a place to learn [00:41:00] about religion, for people to come together and share their stories and their testimonies. But I don’t think it’s gonna happen anytime soon. But something I’ve realized is with having an organization that doesn’t have any specific denomination, it allows any denomination to get involved, and so it’s a beautiful thing. Braidon: Like, we have people from all different types of churches that get involved, and, uh, nobody has any type of expectation that we have to preach to people, that we have to force anything upon anybody, you know. And then it’s– comes back to what you said about trying to give to people, and then when they’re not changing, then you start to resent them. Braidon: So something beautiful is we’re happy to see people when it’s the same people come every week. Some people aren’t homeless. They’re just elderly or students or single parents, and so it’s nice to create that relationship with people and get to see them every week. And of [00:42:00] course, it would be amazing to see someone go from living on the street to coming and helping the organization, kinda like what I did myself. Braidon: So I think it’s definitely possible to see that happen, and so that’s why we continue to do what we do, and hopefully we’ll continue to do it for a long time, and we’ll be able to get to see those transitions Gissele: Yeah, and to me, your organization is modeling what we would want to see in the world, right? Like copy-paste, copy-paste. What I mean is, is that if you’ve got different people of different nations and different religions coming together for the love of people, Gissele: ’cause we’ve got many different religions, we’ve got different values, different perspectives, and if you can still come together for love, I think that’s what we would want to model in the larger world. And so I think people just get stuck on their perspective being viewed as the right perspective or the only perspective. Gissele: I don’t have a lot of [00:43:00] experience learning about religion, but from what I have seen, fundamentally, the weave that seems to be woven across religion seems to be love. It seems to be love of people, love of God, love of people, love each other, love yourself, right? Gissele: And so it’s that thread that I think would be the saving grace of humanity if we actually did it, Braidon: Yes, and that’s the only requirement that I have for anybody that wants to get in- involved, is just be understanding that everybody’s different, everybody’s gonna be having some type of different perspective on how things need to be. But everyone that gets involved should just have the understanding that people need to eat, people need clothes, people need love. Braidon: And so if you understand that, it’s pretty simple just getting involved and coming and hanging out for the day and seeing the people’s faces light up when they get this meal or snacks or just a [00:44:00] kind conversation. that’s all it takes really, is just coming out one time and people don’t wanna stop because it’s really motivating and heartwarming, and I know that’s why I do it every week. Braidon: And I, I know that’s why a lot of people follow on the social media and come– they just wanna come out and see. And we have a lot of people that just come and hang out around the area while we’re handing out food and just ch- chit-chat with people and with us, and that’s definitely the vibe we wanna keep up because it’s just feeling like a safe place is available is so important, and a lot of people don’t get to experience that in their lives. Braidon: And so that’s definitely what we try and keep going, is just a safe place, a, a place where you feel heard and where people are willing to give you a listening ear Gissele: Mm-hmm. And it’s once a week? Uh, is it always the same time, Braidon: Yeah. So we do it every Sunday [00:45:00] at 1:00, and right now it’s at Victoria Park in Brantford, and we’re kind of surrounded by a couple of churches that also do a meal program at different times of the day. So it’s nice when obviously people can get their breakfast, their lunch, and their dinner in the same area. Braidon: And so, like I said, we have a really big mix of people. We’re right beside the university, so we get a lot of, uh, university students when the school’s running. And then it’s where a lot of people go for their daily walk, so we get a lot of elderly people. And then, of course, because it’s central to all of the necessities that are available to the homeless, we get a lot of homeless people. Braidon: And so the idea wasn’t exactly to help homeless people, but also just to help people in general. Like, I’ve been in a time recently where I’ve been struggling and I’m like, “How am I gonna afford groceries, and how am I gonna afford rent?” And I think a lot of people experience that. That’s kind of like a common [00:46:00] fear in people’s lives these days. Braidon: So the idea is a meal a week that will help you get through the week, make things a little bit af- more affordable for you. And so it’s definitely for everybody and anybody who needs it, and I definitely wanna keep that up. And it’s not for any specific people, but the people who are at need the most are people who are experiencing being unhoused. Braidon: And so that’s definitely what sparked the flame, and hopefully it grows to being able to make a bigger difference in the community Gissele: Hmm. And, uh, what I also love about this, this initiative too is that, you know, in hearing you talk, it is very clear to me that you view people as equal. You view people as the same, we’re all helping each other, we’re all in it together. Because I think one of the pitfalls that sometimes happens with giving and giving organizations is the concept of pity. Gissele: I feel sorry for [00:47:00] you, therefore I’m doing this to you, but I am here and you’re there. And so, but when I hear you speak and when I see your work in The Kindness Project, it’s very clear that it comes… And that is the essence of true compassion. Compassion can only be among equals. When we see each other’s humanity and see that, you know, we’re in it together, and can we help each other, support each other, right? Braidon: Yeah, and a lot of my volunteers kind of feel the same way. Like, when we see people walking down the street in expensive clothes and we can see they’re clearly not in a extremely vulnerable position, we try and get those people especially to come over because those might be the people that need the compassion the most, even though you wouldn’t think it. Braidon: But, like, I’ve been in the position where I was down at my lowest and I definitely needed it, and then I’ve been at my highest and I still needed it. Just someone that’s willing to look you in the eyes and see you as you are and just have a conversation with you and [00:48:00] share a meal with you, I think everybody deserves that. Braidon: And so that’s why, like I said, we get some people who come back every single week and they might not need the meal, but they just appreciate the opportunity to come and share a meal with a group of people who just wanna be there for the sake of just being there and being a part of the community. Braidon: And so people have mentioned, like, “You know, I don’t need this, but I want it.” And so that’s definitely something that all my volunteers, they love being a part of. You know, even someone who’s rich, it might still give them some hope when they get to experience something like this because it shows them, wow, like, you know, you didn’t judge me and I’m just here being a part of something bigger. Braidon: And so that’s definitely something that we’ve always focused on is just h- helping out everybody, whether someone might say they need it or not. It’s just about being there for everyone and bringing everyone together Gissele: Hmm. Beautiful. [00:49:00] Two more questions. I’m asking everyone this season, what is your definition of self-love? Braidon: Um, I think the definition of self-love that I’ve learned is definitely related to self-worth. Once you realize that you’re worthy of love and just worthy of other people caring about you, it kinda gives you hope. And so it’s hard to realize when you’re going through things that you’re worth something. Braidon: But just getting out there and being vulnerable and being willing to share what you have going on, it definitely shows that you are worthy of love. And so that’s definitely what it comes down to, is just being a part of a community, being involved in your family’s lives, and all things like anything giving love, you get love back. Braidon: So I think that’s very related to, uh, to my understanding of it[00:50:00] Gissele: Hmm. Last question. Where can people find you? Where can they work with you? Where can they donate? Braidon: So if anybody wants to come out, we’ll be at Victoria Park on Sundays, one o’clock, rain, shine, snow, whatever. And if they want to follow us on social media, we’re available on Facebook and Instagram as The Kindness Project, or you can follow my profile on TikTok. It’s OMG underscore– OMG it’s underscore B. Braidon: And if anybody wants to come and volunteer, they can definitely reach out on social media or just show up and feel the vibe out for themself. If it’s something that they feel they wanna be a part of, we’d be happy to have anybody get involved, even if they just wanna come hang out for the day and get to know everybody, like that’s always available. Braidon: And if they wanna donate, we have a website. It’s, uh, www.ko, K-O-dash-F-I.com/thekindnessproject, and there’s kind of a description on there that explains, uh, you can donate towards a whole [00:51:00] meal, and you can kind of give us a description on what you’d like us to cook. And so we’re always willing to kinda try something different and share that on social media so you guys can see what we got going on Gissele: Oh, Thank you so much, Braidon, for coming on the show and sharing your amazing project with us, and thank you to everyone who tuned in to another episode of Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. Please share this amazing episode far and wide, and tune in to another episode. Thank you. Bye

TRANSCRIPT Gissele: [00:00:00] Welcome to our award-winning podcast, Love and Compassion Podcast with Gisele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. Gissele: Today we’re talking about compassion and grief, and we’re talking to Maria Belanic, who is a bereaved mother, certified grief educator, and a coach who supports grieving parents discovering how love and loss can exist in the same breath. Gissele: Her eldest sons , Stephan was diagnosed with an incurable blood cancer at 16. After an 11 year struggle he died. Six months later Maria’s dad also died. What followed was limbo. 10 years of trying to fix her grief pretending she was fine when she wasn’t. Gissele: Today Maria guides other grieving parents to carry love and loss together without pretending that everything is okay. You don’t have to be fine. Hi, Maria. Thank you for being on the show Hi. [00:01:00] Maria: Hi, Gisele. It’s such an honor to be on your show. Thank you. Gissele: Thank you. Gissele: Thank you very much. I was wondering if you could start telling the audience a little bit abouthow you guys found out about the diagnosis and how the journey led to you actually helping other grief parents. Maria: Okay. The diagnosis was actually something that we hadn’t even expected. Maria: As a teenager, he was 15, 16. He was having not so much health issues, but things that the doctors go, “Oh, it’s a growth spurt. It’s this and that.” They couldn’t really explain what was happening. And of course, they found out that one of his organs was larger than what they had thought of, so they sent him for tests and things like that. Maria: And that’s when it came back that he had a blood cancer, and then they found out that it’s really quite rare ’cause it only affects men in their later years. And my son was the youngest that they had ever seen it, [00:02:00] and they had no idea what it entailed and where it was going, ’cause most people most men who had it died within two to three years. Maria: So to live with it for 11 years was actually something the doctors hadn’t seen Gissele: And walk us through the process. So he fought for 11 years. That must have been really difficult for him and for you guys as well. And then at the end trying to grieve the loss of your son while at the same time trying to also grieve the loss of your dad. Gissele: I’m wondering if you could share sort of what the journey was like? W- were there feelings of anger and frustration? And I know that as a parent myself, I love my children so much, as I’m sure you do too. It would have been really difficult for me to trust life, to trust God, source, universe。 and to try to understand such a significant loss as a parent. Gissele: We always expect them to mourn us later on not expect [00:03:00] to bury your own children. So that’s probably one of the most difficult challenging concepts to get our heads around. Maria: It is. It’s actually unimaginable to envision that your own child will die before you do, and it’s something that basically breaks the order of what we expect life to be. Maria: And part of that, I always call the cancer journey became like a roller coaster that was our normal. It became part of our life. So after a while, you just… like the treatments, the tests, the hospital rooms, the crisis after crises became that cycle that you go, “Oh yeah, this is what life is all about” aspect. Maria: So I didn’t even envision anything about the cancer and kinda went, “This is what it’s going to be,” always. Yet, there’s that underlying of bracing of, is what’s gonna [00:04:00] happen next? And you’re constantly bracing for the crises cons– And sometimes it’s not even the crises. In Stefan case, even a common cold like vomiting could kill him. Maria: And so part of that was there’s this tension, this stress that is layered on, and it just… I guess you don’t notice it anymore because you’re living in it. And so what you’re really doing is surviving without really a plan except how do we get through this day? How do we get through this crisis? And that’s what the focus is on. Maria: And when he did die, ’cause it changed to acute myeloid leukemia when he was 27, and when he did die, it was a shock Even though I was told that he was going to die cause he was given 24 hours to live, and he actually lived for three months afterwards. And I always go, “That was probably because I had asked the [00:05:00] doctors not to tell him that he was dying.” Maria: I… And my sort of estimate was like no one really h- needs to hear those words. We I always go even in Stefan’s life, even with everything that he had gone through and experienced, he had become a registered massage therapist. So he, yeah, in his life, he was still striving. Because in our minds it was like, “Yeah, we’re just going to live with it.” Maria: I had changed the verbiage around cancer to say condition. So we had become used to this blood condition which it was like, “Oh yeah, this is what life’s g- always going to be. Doesn’t matter how old you are, this is what…” And so that’s what the attitude was. And it kept him moving forward into what do you want to do with your life? Maria: And so when the doctors had told me that, and I had to watch him [00:06:00] slowly, slowly get weaker and weaker within those three months. And I’m sure even Stefan knew what was happening. And it wasn’t that we were ignoring it. I just feel why do we need to verbalize something? I am a firm believer of until it’s your last breath, why take hope away from anyone? Gissele: Yeah, I definitely can agree with that. I’ve never shared anything on this podcast before aboutmy family’s experience. But both my cousins the children of one of my aunts died of cancer. Gissele: and I remember one of the things that my aunt had said to me was that, so he– So it was a boy and a girl my cousin Rosella and my cousin Robert. They both died at different times. Rosella died first, then he did. And and I remember her saying to me that he had gone to his appointment, and then I think he ended up being hospitalized after that appointment. Gissele: But he was planning on coming home. he had all of these things that he was planning to do in his agenda or his [00:07:00] calendar of things, and he never got a chance to do them. And so it’s … As you were talking about the fact that he was starting to… He was building this life where, he as a registered massage therapist and so on. Maria: There’s all these sort of interruptions about, I guess life had other plans. I don’t even know. But it really can feel quite shocking to, to imagine that the person is there, and then that the person is not. What helped you manage your grief?It didn’t happen all at once. I always go, “I lost 10 years of my life after Stefan died.” I lived in a blur basically where I was functioning on autopilot. But underneath it all, I was numb, I was empty, I was disorientated. And there’s a point where we can pretend that we’re fine, that we can do all the things that are expected. Maria: Like we can work, we can function But we’re not fully present [00:08:00] in life, and I know that I did things like I did fundraisers on Stefan’s behalf for his legacy. I, I was working. All of these things were automatic. And yet if someone were to say, “How is your grief?” I really don’t remember anything because everything seems a blur. Maria: Life became this before and after. Before Stefan died, which in some ways seemed like a fairy tale. Was it a life that I had lived? Right? It just seemed like it belonged to another world, and I was living in this twilight zone. Not knowing what was gonna happen, afraid that this was going to be my forever, living in this pain. Maria: And of course all I heard from other people was, “When are you getting back to normal? Why are you still stuck?” All of these things I think felt like an assault to me, and that just [00:09:00] caused more of a retreat, and almost reclusive behavior where you don’t want to go out. You just do what you can do, but you don’t wanna be around anyone. Maria: And it’s also that aspect of thinking, “What’s wrong with me?” And part of that is always go, there’s we have our own gremlins that have these voices that will say, “If you were smarter, you would have found a cure. If you were worthy, Stefan wouldn’t have died.” So all of this kept playing in my mind, keeping me awake, plus what people had said, and you’re kinda like, “What is wrong with me?” Maria: And the more we feel unworthy and something is wrong with us, A, we try to fix it or we go deeper into ourselves, and that’s why I say the 10 years of my life were a blur Until one day when I was looking in the mirror, really a f- not recognizing who I was, and [00:10:00] looking at basically the two options. This fear that this is my forever. Maria: We all see that those movies where we see the person who’s grieving and people are going, “Oh, that poor person.” They were fine beforehand, and then when their child died, look at them now aspect scary person. Or the other option was healing, and we use the word healing as if, we have a broken bone and it heals. Maria: And even with a broken bone, even the healing is never really the same as before the break. And so I viewed healing as almost forgetting. How could I forget my son? How could I move on and almost never… like he was existing beforehand. And those two were a struggle between my heart and my head, and the whisper that came to me was, “What if grief [00:11:00] stayed?” Maria: And that seemed to offer me a third option, and that’s where I recognized that the grief and the love coexist, where I didn’t have to forget about my son. I didn’t have to forget about all that I had experienced, what he had experienced. It’s like anything that I had seen doesn’t become unseen anymore. Maria: It still stays in my memory I could allow the love, and not see healing as forgetting but healing my heart with love. And that’s where it came… the pain didn’t stop. I know that there is this aspect of grief where people believe that grief gets smaller with time, and it doesn’t. Grief softens in the sense of the pain softens with time. Maria: It remains the same size. My pain is the same as when he died. It has softened so that [00:12:00] love is bigger than the pain Gissele: I wanted to comment on the fact that so often the feedback that we get during times of struggle is not helpful, right? So when are you gonna move on? As if people have a specific timeline of as to when things should happen. And and I think part of that comes from that people don’t know how to manage those difficult feelings. Gissele: They feel uncomfortable. They don’t know how to hold space for people’s s- grief and suffering, and so they need you to get over it so that they don’t feel uncomfortable, so that they don’t suffer with you. And so I just want to acknowledge that, that discomfort because people aren’t… Gissele: as a society, we’re not very good with holding suffering, right? And that is so true. Maria: and thank you for bringing that up, Gisele, because it really is. We are uncomfortable with pain, and no one has ever taught us. Even from childhood we can see that too. Maria: Whenever we get hurt, it’s like okay,” like stop crying, stop this, right? It’s to the [00:13:00] fact where emotions are not allowed. And my reframing of grief is give yourself permission to exhale. Give yourself permission to allow yourself to grieve. There is no judgment in how we feel, what our emotions are, because they are just emotions. Maria: And at times, what someone portrays as sadness could be anger in someone else, or just how we express that emotion comes out differently Gissele: Thank you for that. I also wanted to go back to your comment because I completely understand it. The… as, as a parent, we often judge ourselves, and we think we should have known things, and had we noticed earlier or had we, done thing better or is it my bad genetics or whatever, there is an element of guilt that happens that we couldn’t fix it, that we couldn’t change it, or we didn’t notice. Gissele: What helped you find kind of forgiveness for [00:14:00] yourself? And i- or are you still working through the process? Maria: What it was is the compassion. One of the aspects is what I found is that I was silent, and what I mean by silent is these were my thoughts. This is why I call them the gremlins, right? Your– you can’t sleep at night, and the gremlins come and basically your thoughts go over and over. Maria: You replay everything of, “What could I have done differently?” What should I have done? What…” All these scenarios. And it was actually when I wrote it down on paper, when I was journaling, and I actually wrote my thoughts down And I actually said them out loud too, like I read them out loud afterwards. And one of the things that I’ve come to acknowledge is when we verbalize out loud what some of our thoughts are We actually look at kinda going, “Wow, that’s kinda silly.” Maria: Like seriously if I [00:15:00] was smarter… like I’m not a scientist . I’m not a- Yeah … doctor. They haven’t found a cure how was I supposed to be? Yeah. It’s not even my field of expertise. And here I’m thinking that, tsk, I’m just supermom. Like of course I coulda done anything. And so that broke that aspect. And the worthiness aspect really is w-… Maria: something that is so ingrained in us, I think from childhood in a lot of aspects of many people have this aspect that we’re not worthy because we’re conditioned to almost say your worth is tied up to what you do, to what you accomplish instead of your worth is your worth because you exist, not because of anything you have done. Gissele: Yeah ooh beautiful and powerful. And I also wanna comment on the expectations of mothers right? Y- you know I thought about that [00:16:00] movie Lorenzo’s Oil and how it, like she had to put this oil togeth-. Like how many people would’ve been able to do that right? Like what are the chances and but we have this expectations of mothers that they should know, that they should be able to do these things an you know lift the car and do all of these things. Gissele: When my kids were little I had trouble breastfeeding. Like I really did and I did it for six months and like just as, as much as I could s- to get it in there but it was really, there wasn’t a lot and and so I had to kinda supplement with formula and I felt so terribly guilty. So guilty because I couldn’t do what other women could do Gissele: It’s like it was once I actually started to just say, “You know I’m gonna have some kindness for myself. I’m doing the best I can. I’m doing all of the things except…” The only thing I didn’t do was m- med- medication ’cause I didn’t know how it was gonna impact the baby. So I’m like, “I’ve done all the things. Gissele: Like I can just reflect back that I’m doing the best I can and I can supplement with formula i- if that’s what my kids, my children need” And so we put all these [00:17:00] expectations on mothers to be like these superhero superhumans when we’re just doing the best we can And I think that’s where we start to kinda judge ourselves and then you know then also hear this judgment from people in the world right? Gissele: So makes it hard to be forgiving towards yourself. Maria: So true and I totally get where you’re coming from because many years ago same thing. But it was also that expectation that of course you can breastfeed your child. I couldn’t. And like yourself it was like oh no and it came to the, the thought process of, “You know what? Maria: My child is eating.” That’s all that counts. A- and that’s how I frame, reframed it when I couldn’t breastfeed. It was like, you know what? I can still bond ’cause I’m holding him in my arms and the bottle fed. At least he’s getting fed, otherwise I’d have a child that would be starving. Gissele: Yeah. Gissele: Yeah. Yeah, and that’s when you start to really focus on gratitude, grateful for formula, right? Gissele: My [00:18:00] sister and I were formula fed, right? Because my mom had to go back to work. There was no sort of maternity leave in Peru but the judgment really is, it makes it really difficult. Gissele: I wanted to ask about anger and your relationship with anger during that time. ‘Cause not only did you lose your son, you also had to manage the loss of your father at the same time. Could you talk a little bit about that, like kind of your relationship with anger, and has it changed? Were you angry at like people or did you just kinda bypass anger and go straight to sadness and grief? Gissele: And- Maria: And thank you for asking that ’cause there is. There are so many different types of emotions. there were aspects of the, the journey where I, I remember in Stefan’s last couple of days I was ang- actually angry with one of the nurses. And that was only because I’d asked her to give Stefan extra medication ’cause I could see him in pain. Maria: And she was kinda like, “Oh, no,” “He doesn’t…” And I’m like no, he’s in pain.” I don’t really care. I want him [00:19:00] o- I don’t want him in pain. And even one of the doctors that was it’s already happened,” those kind of things because it was in the moment of what their actions led to. Maria: For me watching Stefan I was “I don’t care if he doesn’t talk to me. I don’t want him in pain.” And that was one of the things that some of the other doctors had said, is that some of the parents wanted their children to be cohesive so that way they could talk, and they didn’t see the pain they were in. Maria: My aspect was I don’t care if he’s knocked out as long as he’s, I don’t, he’s not in pain And even afterwards, it wasn’t as if I was angry with my faith for h- for Stefan dying. It was more of a, we didn’t discuss this, and when I die, I definitely wanna have a conversation ’cause that wasn’t the plan. I’m more of a curiosity. Maria: I must say I probably was angry with my spouse in the sense of I didn’t [00:20:00] feel that he had stepped up to where his son needed him. So that again was something that had been ongoing for ages. And so grief didn’t really show up as anger. It showed up as this missing. Not even this… there was this sadness because th- of the missing missing my son’s physical being here. Maria: That was the aspect that I equated with grief in the sense of I don’t get to see his smile. I don’t get to see him, what his future’s going to look like. Yeah. All of that. Even as today he would be 42 years old. And so that is something that you’re like, “What would life have been like?” Maria: That aspect. It was more this aspect of wanting him still here [00:21:00] and that aspect of … I guess it still came back to worthiness and in faith. If I had more faith, would he have been alive? And I th-… And it’s not really about faith, it’s more that perception of when you belong to a community sometimes there’s this judgment of did you pray enough? Maria: Do you really have enough faith? Do you this? And my attitude has become It’s not so much about our faith, it’s good things happen to bad people, to good people. Things in life happen, and it has no bearing on are you a good or a bad person. Things just happen. And when we can accept it that way, it makes it, in my belief, it makes it a little bit easier because I look at the whole world and sometimes I’m going, “I don’t understand why all these things are happening.” Maria: Yeah. There’s no rhyme or reason. And do you blame someone? [00:22:00] Yes, if it’s their actions, then totally. I would get angry on that. I wasn’t angry with the medical aspect unless I saw that they had made an error. And so yeah, that was about the only thing. Gissele: Yeah. And just talking about grief, it’s so funny how it kind of shakes… Gissele: a loss, and there’s, there could be any sort of loss. We’re talking about like a death of someone, but there are so many different losses in life, right? There’s so many things sometimes to grieve. You can grieve, like a, a relationship. You can grieve a career loss. You can grieve many things. Gissele: And so loss is a part of life because everything is so temporary. But because of the way that we have structured our society, we want everything to be certain. We want a certain level of things. And w- we wa- feel we can control all of these things, but that’s once again a reminder that all of these are temporal and then, how do you address and deal with that loss, right? Maria: So [00:23:00] true. And in regards to my father had actually lived with Parkinson’s for 25 years. So he had his own journey. And he was … he was 83 when he passed away. Part of that aspect I believe, was when his…. And Stefan was the first grandchild. I also believe that he died of a broken heart. Maria: It was almost like, “Here’s my grandson who died. Why am I hanging onto life?” Gissele: Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. In terms of the, The grief part of it, the missing people. We create all of these habits around people. I notice this when… and it’s not the same thing. I noticed it when I lost my dog, and I loved my dog so much. Maria: And I noticed the things that when I would get home, I’d be like, “Oh I gotta take Baron out,” or, “I gotta do this.” And so we build all of these habits and expectations, and it feels like something is missing when they’re not there. It feels like there’s a hole that, you don’t wanna fill with something [00:24:00] else, but it just feels like, oh, we’ve created all this life around including this person, and then what will life look like in the future when they’re not there, And that’s part of human nature, we don’t envision not having whether it’s a person or pet in our life Maria: There’s the assumption that of course they’re gonna live forever . Yeah. And even I always go, “Even though we know that there’s life and there’s death,” we have this aspect that we ignore death until it happens and then we are very frightened of it And I always go, “I’m okay with my own death.” Maria: It’s… And at times when we’re okay when death is a procession of life, of someone naturally passing away because of old age We may be sad. We’re going to miss them Of course we’re gonna miss their conversation Their, th-… Any essence of them [00:25:00] That is natural When it’s out of order or if something happens that it suddenly gets unexpected it changes an aspect So we’re jolted almost And that jolt is a shock to our system And at times I believe some of us want to find answers and we go down this rabbit hole of why? Maria: And we know that we start, when we start with why there is never really an answer ‘Cause I play this with my I guess she’s grand niece She’ll she’ll say something Then I’ll go, “Why?” Then she’ll say something and I’ll go, “Why” And she’ll repeat the same thing because it’s whys can ever end Gissele: Yeah Maria: And it’s rabbit hole that- Maria: it’s not that we didn’t know It’s we wanted different outcome One that would make us happy Gissele: y- you talking about like the expectations that people have about their lives so we expect that, w-… If you’re 99 you’re like, “Okay she lived a [00:26:00] long life”, right But somebody young it doesn’t make sense And it actually goes against our desire to control things, right? Gissele: Like we’re okay if a person dies at 99 because they’re old . We’re not okay with children dying. Like we are okay if if there’s a specific order again because that makes life predictable but when life becomes unpredictable it becomes very frightening for people And so part of life I think is dealing with the uncertainty- …that we really have no control over it as much as we’d like to believe that oh I know what the weather’s gonna be, I know you know like what things cost in like all of those illusions of control The truth of the matter is we’re along for the ride. Gissele: And it can make us feel really scared and feel very vulnerable Maria: It does and part of that right now I live in a part of the country that has a state of emergency because of wildfires. Where I am its, it’s okay ’cause I live in the one of the major [00:27:00] cities There are others that I always call especially when we’re dealing with natural disasters where you get that call that you have to evacuate That shocks the system. Maria: Yeah. And it puts, in some ways puts into perspective what’s important But it also puts in this perspective of what is loss Because there’s so many different layers to loss And as you said every day we deal with loss except we don’t see it as loss Gissele: Yeah. I’d like to touch on ’cause it… I think this is really important and I’m curious as to what your thoughts are. Gissele: How do you deal with those shocks to the system? Because the body internalized the shocks to the system, and you can consciously rationalize the shocks to the system, right? But there’s still that experience. What helped you get past the shock to the system to the point potentially that maybe you’re not hypervigilant or constantly on guard about what the next thing is going to be? Maria: Yeah. Thank you for [00:28:00] asking because it really is important. And most of the time we don’t realize that the body absorbs the shock, and it stays in and it comes out in different ways because we haven’t addressed it. And what I’ve have acknowledged and learned is the body needs movement. It needs as I call it, the exhale. Maria: Because a lot of times when we’re in shock, we’re going, like almost like we’re holding our breath. We’re not literally holding it, but we are in some ways going with these shallow breaths, like constantly. And the exhale means to actually deeply breathe out and allow the body to release this tension that is holding in. Maria: So whether that’s movement walking in nature, walking, jogging, hiking, dance, anything that has movement, and also with our breathing in the groundedness [00:29:00] of connecting back to our body. It’s not so much meditation as in some ways visualizing what our body needs, seeing the light that’s within us, and allowing that light to grow and expand, but also in releasing what our body doesn’t need. Maria: If that makes sense. Gissele: Per- yeah. Absolutely. And that has been my experience as well that usually, like if I’m in a state of like stress, like y- you have both a body response, a tightening, and a mind response where your mind, the gremlins happen and, – … you don’t wanna feed the gremlins, that’s why they turn, they turn worse. Gissele: But I find that if I can move my body, that sort of allows my body to relax enough for me to control my mind. I can’t do both ’cause if you got a tight body and you’ve gotta un- like a gremlin mind, it’s hard to do both, right? You’re like your body’s tight and then you’re like, ” I gotta try to f-… Gissele: help myself in my thoughts.” Whereas if you at least get one out of the [00:30:00] equation and allow yours- your body to say it’s safe to just go for a walk. It’s safe to just breathe,” and the breath is so important. Then you can start to address those thoughts that you were talking about, the gremlins. Gissele: Because the gremlins really, like they can seem very powerful until you train yourself to… And I use the word train on purpose because for me, I’ve had to kinda train my mind. To choose a more positive outlook. Gissele: Yeah. Maria: And that is so important. And one of the, the aspects is especially when we’re in the situation, it looks like that we have no choice. Maria: Especially when we’re deep in it. It looks like, I totally get that becau- I’m feeling it well. In some aspects, I know personally for myself, I was actually looking for someone or something to save me. We’re looking for this external something to come and save me from my pain. Gissele: Yeah. Maria: No one’s coming, sad to say [00:31:00] And it has to do with, as you say, it becomes a choice but that choice only comes when we’re willing to sit in the stillness And to hear our own whispers because we each have our own whispers are we listening? And That comes from either being grounded Being stillness and that stillness could even come from As we say within movement But even movement with voice because there is like a grief Yoga which actually teaches that when we do the movements and the breathing We actually make a sound so that way if you know that it’s released from the body I spoke about it. And it’s in that stillness that we tap into our intuition I call them the inner whispers that are going to Show you the choices that you have and then you can choose [00:32:00] and part of that I believe in choosing Is not judging one choice over the other It’s whatever choice works for you And if that means you’re going to choose sitting in the pain Then so be it If that means that you are going to say How can I soften my pain and That’s okay too So one of the things I always believe is that When we have choices Don’t judge your choices Gissele: That’s very beautifully put What would you say right now To someone who might Be going through Grief Going Through The Thick Of It In doesn’t really feel that they Have many Choices Maria: I Would definitely Say if You Can Find Support Of Someone Who Is Willing To Witness And that is Really sometimes The support That we need Grievers Do Not Need To Be Fixed Because There Is Nothing To Fix Because We Are Not Broken We May Feel That We Are broken i Know I did In Those Ten Years My Blur I Felt That [00:33:00] Something Had Broken That I Needed To Be fixed when we recognize that there is nothing to fix and what we need is someone to listen to us and Listening is Actually witnessing Because it’s not About Feedback it’s not About Advice It’s the allowing or give- holding that space, that safe container in, so to speak, like a safe space where a person feels safe in saying what their gremlins are telling them. Maria: Because a lot of times what we’re really looking for is: Where can we share what our inner thoughts are? ‘Cause our inner thoughts are what is keeping us frightened and scared. And as you said, the longer that we feed our gremlins, the bigger they become. And when we can share them, we can make them small and where they belong. Gissele: I want the audience to understand how important what you just said is. It… and it’s the power of [00:34:00] presence and just being able to hold space for people’s discomfort and suffering, right? Without the need to fix, without the need to change or repel. But I go back to what we were talking about earlier is we have not been taught to sit with our uncomfortable feelings, with our own suffering, let alone be able to hold space for the suffering of others. Gissele: That’s why we need them to fix themselves and to get over things so that we can be okay. And I notice that a trend with my parents, right? As a young kid because th- they … Their parents didn’t hold space for them and their difficult feelings, and so they couldn’t hold space for my difficult feelings, and they needed me as a kid to fix myself, to hold space to ground myself and re- regulate myself, which a kid cannot do, right? Gissele: And so we have all these expectations of people around suffering. We don’t come together like we used to in the village to grieve together to mourn together, to just hold [00:35:00] space. I never seen my dad cry except at his mother’s funeral. And that’s unfortunate, i- from my perspective, because we are born with a full breadth of emotions, right? Gissele: We have tear ducts to allow us to cry. We can laugh. We can feel sad. We can feel angry. We have all of this depth. But if you weren’t allowing yourselves as men and women to feel the full breadth of emotions, you really can’t then hold space for other people from my perspective. What do you think? Maria: I totally agree with a caveat in the sense of we’re all going to have our emotions in whatever our personality is, like our characteristics So some of us may be a little bit more stoic and don’t have this expressive sort of outlook, and neither is right or wrong. Maria: It’s how we showcase our emotion. Sometimes it’s learnt, sometimes it’s just [00:36:00] something that is that part of the person’s personality And there is that aspect of when we’re grieving, that we want someone to see the grief. We want someone else to share in the pain, and it is so right that we need community, and that is lacking. Maria: And that is the reason that I became a certified grief educator and also a coach, is because there isn’t that many people who can sit with someone else in their pain and go, “I see you.” ‘Cause really, that’s what a griever wants. A griever wants someone to say, “I see you. What you’ve experienced is so terrible, so awful.” Maria: It’s not about fixing, ’cause I cannot fix anybody else’s pain. We can’t change that. What we can do is walk along beside them, and this is one of the reasons why I say we actually walk with grief, because grief becomes our companion, and we get to [00:37:00] choose what the relationship is. Gissele: thank you for that answer. Gissele: I, I really appreciated that perspective. And I also love that you are also not making grief wrong, right? You’re not making it something that needs to go away. The grief can coexist with the love, because the love is always there. And so we don’t have to make that go away, but we also don’t have to drown in it. Gissele: I think the issue is when we drown in the grief, that when we can’t get past w- a point that we can’t function. And so what you’re inviting the audience to think about is how can we befriend grief, not in a way that drowns us, but as a way of, acknowledging the experience and also adding love to it, Maria: and that’s the, the aspect that I believe is at… like my son Stefan died 17 years ago. There are days when getting out of bed is still hard, because it’s almost like yesterday that he passed away. There are days where I go out [00:38:00] and I’m enjoying it. I don’t even feel my grief It’s always there, but it’s softened. Maria: And that is what I want to help people understand is the sense as you said, grief isn’t gonna go away. It’s how do we carry it with us as we live life fully? ‘ Cause one of the aspects, and I lived it in my blur of 10 years of being a- so afraid of being in the pain because those are the only two options that we’ve ever been told of. Maria: Either you’re going to sit in the pain forever or you’re going to heal and you’ll forget and everything will be like this bed of roses, so to speak. We hear everyone going you have to get through it.” There is no getting through it. It’s living with. And when we change the verbiage, when we say we’re living with, it allows someone who has experienced loss [00:39:00] to keep those memories, but allow not the pain to hurt them as much anymore, and also to give themselves compassion on the days where it comes up and it is painful. Maria: And you can say, “Okay, you know what? I’m gonna honor my grief today. I’m gonna honor my grief for five minutes. I’m gonna honor my grief for an hour,” and you designate that time for And so that allows us to live life forward Gissele: And I think it also allows you to not feel pressure, right? There’s… Gissele: there, there’s this pressure that feels like, when are you gonna get over this already? And you put that pressure on yourself if you hear that from other people, it’s oh I should be over this by now. And it’s love grief none of that … It has its own timeline and so th- there’s a sense of relief that comes from oh I don’t have to rush this. Gissele: I can experience my grief but als- can also allow it not to drown me or to, to completely just make me nonfunctional. I wanted to ask about since you mentioned there are [00:40:00] days when you experience joy did you ever experience guilt in y- you know living life to its fullest ’cause I think that would probably be something that I would struggle with the most is tha- is that allowing yourself to be enjoy, to be allowed li- to live a life to its fullest. Maria: Oh many times especially beforehand. Because one of the, the aspects is that as soon as we laugh or enjoy ourselves the comments are, “oh you’re so much better now. You’re over it.” And then all of sudden you feel guilty like.. Yeah …. Oh what have I done? Have I…? And so you feel guilt that you can actually laugh or even feel joy because it feels that it is disrespecting your person. Maria: And again it’s because people aren’t aware of what’s happening and we are, we’re grief illiterate. One of the aspects is again joy and sadness can coexist and it really is about [00:41:00] acknowledging and giving permission to say yeah I can feel different emotions at the same time. I can be sad one minute and the next minute I could be laughing or vice versa. Maria: And that is I going to say almost like a disrespect when we’re saying to other people that, “Oh, you’re laughing now so you must be better. Your grief is over.” No, it’s in that moment they’re present in that moment and have found some joy allow people to feel all their emotions at any given time Gissele: Yeah. Gissele: And I think peoples who give you that response of, “You must feel better,” it’s for them right? It’s- … oh good i no longer have to be worried about what sort of emotion you’re going to feel right and so i the other part of it too as I was thinking if I had passed away and I do believe in this isn’t just the end I would want my loved ones to [00:42:00] live in the most joy possible not to necessarily wanna bury themselves with me but To Live and experience and love life and live it to its fullest until it’s their time to cross over and so I think about that in terms of Oh you know If that was me I would want them to do that So I’m sure they must want this for me as well Maria: That I don’t really touch because a lot of times when people go, “oh they don’t want you to be in this” and my response is You don’t know what they want.Very Gissele: true Very True Maria: All right Part of that is again it’s the permission to Give The Griever The freedom to choose What They’re Going To Be When We Are Imposing Our Own Thoughts your person wouldn’t want you to be this Even if That Were True when we Say it out loud to someone Who’s In Pain sounds Like A Slap yeah Gissele: I can see that Yeah I Think it Would b- it Was more like Me I would say that to myself Maria: Yeah Gissele: Because I would be like thats What I would Want But You Raise [00:43:00] a Really Important Point so im gonna mention it which Is We often give Other People what we think we would want For Ourselves Maria: Yeah And Its okay to want it for yourself And even to say it to YourselfIf that is truly what you BelieveBecause a Lot Of Times we say things to ourselvesAnd we put More Guilt On Us Gissele: Yeah Fair Maria: fair So AgainIt howIsit Being saidis itPartofyour gremlinthatissayingwellyou Maria: shouldrightorisitcomingfromYour whisper Gissele: Love A couple of last questions. I’m asking everyone in this season what their definition of self-love is. Maria: So I’ll start with you self-love means… to me, is really accepting of who I am right now, knowing that I am worthy because of who I am just for my own existence. Maria: But it also, self-love is understanding about my own boundaries. What boundaries do I have that protect me and my space? Gissele: Beautiful. Thank you for that. Last question, where can people find you? Where can they work with you? What do you wanna [00:44:00] share with the audience? Maria: So definitely anyone can find me at mariabalanek.com and/or at [email protected]. Maria: That’s my email. And definitely that is a space that I provide, is for people who are grieving, who want support, and who want someone who is going to listen without fixing Gissele: Thank you so much, Maria, for this amazing episode and for, for your perspective on how to make the grieving process more compassionate. thank you to everyone who tuned into another episode of Love and Compassion podcast with Gissele. If you wanna support the podcast, you can go to buymeacoffee.com/ loveandcompassion . Gissele: Thank you so much. Maria: And thank you so much, Gissele. I love what you’re doing. Gissele: you.

TRANSCRIPT megan: [00:00:00] Gissele: Hello, and welcome to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. Gissele: We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. Gissele: Today, we’re Gissele: gonna be talking about how to become more authentically ourselves Gissele: and how to raise authentic children. Gissele: And our Gissele: guest today is Megan Fuccarelli, Gissele: who’s a TEDx speaker, international bestselling author, Gissele: and founder and CEO Gissele: of Us Squared Consulting. Gissele: Known as the authenticity Gissele: amplifier, she helps leaders in organizations move beyond performative Gissele: inclusion and into Gissele: meaningful culture transformation. Gissele: Through her Gissele: care certification and metamorphosis framework, Megan empowers Gissele: audiences to lead with authenticity, Gissele: build trust, and create Gissele: environments where people are seen, Gissele: heard, welcome, and valued. Gissele: Please join Gissele: us in welcoming Megan. Hi, Megan. megan: us Gissele: Oh, I’m so excited to talk about this topic and to talk with you about [00:01:00] it. I was wondering if you could tell the audience a little bit about how you got started in this work. [00:01:04] How Megan Got Started on This Work megan: That is a loaded question. I will say that I originally went into my first chapter of my career was actually in the education system. I retired as a school superintendent, and what I learned in that environment was that our children are sponges for collecting everything around them, and they learn just as much from what we teach them out of books than they learn from the things we talk about and how we communicate with one another, and also what we don’t talk about. megan: So when I left the education system, I wanted to lean into that a little bit more and have more honest, authentic conversation around who we are as people, and that’s what kind of drew me into this. It started as I was gonna own my job, maybe consulting with a couple school districts, and we just celebrated 10 years, and it has totally morphed into a much larger vision than even I could have held for myself. megan: But I think the universe has a way of creating the [00:02:00] visions bigger than ourselves sometimes. Gissele: Yeah. Yeah, definitely can agree with that. Gissele: I was wondering if you could comment on whether or not the school system necessarily whether it reinforces or whether it detracts from us being authentically ourselves [00:02:15] Do Schools Help or Hinder Authenticity? megan: I think it depends on what school district or what school system you’re looking at. I think there are some schools who are able to model how to become more authentic, and at the same time, we have a lot of school systems who are detracting from that ability. I think it depends on who’s running the school district, who the teachers are. megan: I think even in a very resolute school district who is very clear on guidelines that are almost detracting from that authenticity, you still have teachers who are those beacons for authenticity within their schools. So I don’t think there is an absolute that there is a school or a school system that is 100% on board with authenticity. megan: I think as a whole we detract from that, but there are beacons of [00:03:00] excellence in all systems. [00:03:01] Why People Shame Others for Being Authentic Gissele: I love that ‘Cause when I think about authenticity and when I think about even my own journey , I can see how We’ve co-created this society that really doesn’t enable us to be authentically ourselves. Gissele: It’s like, no, not like that, right? Gissele: Everybody always says, “Oh, be yourself.” And then when we’re being ourselves, we’re like, “No, don’t. Not like that.” Don’t do that.” I was just wondering what your thoughts were. megan: Yeah, I think one of the things that’s really interesting is we say that, like you just said, right? Come be yourself. But if we push back against someone for being themselves, oftentime it’s because there’s something that they’re doing that reminds me of something within ourselves that’s unhealed, right? megan: So if, for example, you say, “I want you to be yourself,” and they come to you and say, “I am dating someone of the same gender,” and you’re like, “Oh, no, no, no. Don’t tell me that. That’s TMI, too much information,” oftentimes there’s something unhealed within ourselves about that. Not that your own sexuality is in question, but maybe you have unhealed [00:04:00] trauma from a family member who exposed or a friend who exposed prior. megan: Why is that so difficult to receive? So again, I say to people, if you are pushing back against someone else’s authenticity, do a deep dive into what that’s exposing for yourself about who you are, because it has more to do with you and less to do with them if you’re not willing to receive them. Gissele: And I think that’s the reason why people make those comments that you kind of wonder why they do. if somebody’s, showing a picture of themselves and they’re not conventionally beautiful, like somebody will be like, “Oh, you look fat,” or, “You look old.” And I always wonder, like, why would anyone take the time out to do that? Gissele: But I think what you’re getting at is really, there’s something about them that’s being triggered that they need to go and check that person. And so yeah, I think this … You’re making a really important point. megan: And we Gissele: Ja megan: right? Like, people who are larger or might not have the societally perceived beautiful body type, and they’re wearing a swimsuit or they’re wearing a dress, and people will come in with, “Well, they shouldn’t wear that,” or, “You shouldn’t wear that.” megan: And I think [00:05:00] internally that person has heard that phrase before, and they’re like, “Well, if I heard that phrase wearing what I was wearing, then you need to hear that phrase ’cause of what you’re wearing.” And it’s just that unhealed trauma that circulates. It doesn’t have to be generational trauma within your family. megan: It can also be societal generational trauma of hearing it over and over that you internalize it. Gissele: Yeah, definitely. Gissele: can you talk a little bit about how we can start to tap in and really understand what authenticity means, especially for ourselves? [00:05:29] Receiving Authenticity megan: Yeah. You mentioned The Authenticity Amplifier, and that’s the name that I go by in a lot of the work that I do. And it’s not about amplifying authenticity of individuals, because I think we cannot teach someone how to be authentic. What we do, though, is we help organizations and people create environments where the people they interact with can feel free to be their authentic self. megan: So it’s about helping people receive the authenticity of others rather than helping become, helping people become more authentic in themselves. So it’s [00:06:00] about receiving that authenticity, and I think as we look at a society, especially in our current day, it’s so divided and so divisive with how we communicate with one another. megan: It’s if someone has a different opinion or a differing viewpoint, it becomes, “Oh, I’m not going to speak with them,” or, “I’m not going to talk to them,” or, “They’re wrong and I’m right.” And if we really want to amplify authenticity, we have to be willing to listen to people who might have different viewpoints, knowing that we can learn from one another, and that the most honest sign of authenticity is whether people feel comfortable being their true self in your presence Gissele: Yeah. I, yeah, for sure. I completely agree with that. I was wondering if you had ever gone through a journey yourself in finding your way back to authenticity. I know that I have, and I’m happy to talk about my, my journey and just fumbling through trying to be more authentically myself and what that means. [00:06:52] Finding Her Way Back To Authenticity megan: Yeah, and I have to say this, it is a constant journey. There are moments almost on a daily basis that I say, “Ooh, could I [00:07:00] have handled that differently?” So I must say that, yes, I have those stories of realizing when I wasn’t authentic and how I can transition or how I can pivot for the next time. And it’s an ongoing process. megan: I would say probably one of the most poignant times was when I was interviewing for a position, I was recently divorced and pregnant. I was not showing that I was pregnant, but I was pregnant. I knew I was pregnant, and I still… I did not have a wedding ring on because I was divorced. However, I kept my wedding ring in my glove box in my car, and before I would go into interviews, I would go into the glove box, take out the ring, and slip it on my wedding finger. megan: Because I wasn’t ready, I knew that if this position turned into my next position, I would eventually have to tell them that I was pregnant. In my head, I was worried, “Oh, wait, if I’m not married, what are the stories that they’re gonna tell themselves? Like, how are you pregnant and you’re divorced?” All of [00:08:00] those worries of how society would view me were running through my head, and I remember that I would slip on my wedding ring, and I would always feel some kinda way doing that. megan: Am I living a lie? Am I not telling my truth? Am I not being my authentic self? And I knew the answer to that, and there was also something in my head saying, “But I really want this job.” And there was something telling me that if I was authentic, then I wouldn’t have gotten the job. I remember doing that, and then I’d come back from the interview, and I’d slip the ring back in the box and put it back in my glove box. megan: And then this one particular position, I left the interview, felt very good, slipped the ring back into the glove box, started driving home, and I wasn’t 10, 15 minutes away from the interview and they called me and offered me the position, and that’s almost unheard of. Usually, it’s a couple days. They make you wait. megan: This one, they called me right away. They’re like, “We’re so excited to have you join our team.” And it was that moment that I felt this sense of almost betrayal to myself because then my head started [00:09:00] going, “Okay, now how am I going to tell them that I actually have to change my name because I’m divorced, that I’m pregnant, so I’ll need time off for my baby?” megan: All of these things started going in my head, and I started thinking, “I’m not being true to myself, and most importantly, I’m not being honest for my unborn child So that was probably the most poignant memory of I’m not going to do that anymore. So at that point, I stopped telling those untruths about who I was or my child, because my child is a blessing. megan: Whether he was a product of my marriage or a product after my marriage, he is a blessing, and I would never want him to think that I was ashamed of him. So I’ve never told any other untruths or been un- inauthentic about how my son came to be or how much I adore him. That was probably one of those moments that really had me reflect. Gissele: Yeah. I really appreciate you, being so candid about that experience. We’re in this [00:10:00] society where we judge each other, right? And that fear of being judged is one of the main factors of why people don’t feel that they can be authentically themselves, right? And so I can imagine you as a, potentially newly or going to be newly single person with a baby that you’re thinking financially It’s really hard to be authentically ourselves in a world where you’re not rewarded for being I was talking to someone else. We were talking about telepathy and why we are not telepathic, and one of the things that thought into my head is we don’t wanna know. Gissele: We don’t wanna really know some things, and we don’t wanna tell each other the truth. It helps us lie to one another. And so that, the whole concept of am I really gonna be judged for just expressing for what I need. I need a job right now. Yes, I’m gonna need time Gissele: off. Yes, I’m coming at divorce. Will you give me a chance, right? Gissele: And so often Gissele: We have to act from that place of I’ve gotta think about this baby, and I gotta think About this money. Gissele: And so yeah, so it makes it more difficult for us to be authentic. Yeah. megan: And I think [00:11:00] if we can come from the stage of I am good enough, and at that point, I was believing the stories that society had been sharing, right? That I wasn’t good enough if I was an unwed mother, that I wasn’t… All of those stories I had heard, right? megan: That I wasn’t worthy of good things. So I had to stop believing in the stories that were written about me without my co-authorship Gissele: Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. A- and that leads me to the, a conversation I wanna have with you about biases, right? And how everyone has biases. Can you talk a little bit about some of your experiences with, with the research you’ve done on bias and some of the conclusions you found about what helps us move away from it? [00:11:44] The Biases We All Carry megan: Yeah, absolutely. So according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, that’s like the base research that I use a lot of, is that our implicit biases, like those first thoughts that are in our heads, are cemented by the age of 12. Now, when I was teaching, I often worked [00:12:00] with children younger than eight, than the age of 12. megan: I worked with elementary age children. So up until the age of 12, our goal is to provide children with as many exposures to different backgrounds, different identities, to help them gain that lived experience. But after the age of 12, we can’t change our first thoughts or our implicit biases. Those are already created, those synapses in our brain. megan: But after the age of 12, we can really retrain our brain to not use those implicit biases as the anchoring thoughts when we meet someone new or when we’re communicating with someone. The facts are we all have those implicit biases because we all went through those first 12 years of life. If we’re still here today, we’re past that stage, right? megan: So we all have them embedded in us. megan: Instead of having shame or guilt or blame around those biases, how can we really uncover them, gain a level of awareness, and then build upon the wisdom and the knowledge that we have so that we’re [00:13:00] empowered to make different choices when we encounter those identities and experiences that are different from our own? megan: And I think that first piece of acknowledging we all have biases can be difficult for some because of what I just mentioned with the shame and the blame. But if we can move past that and realize, okay, we all have this, it doesn’t make me a bad person, how can I make sure that what I have in my head does not live in my heart? Gissele: Yeah. Yeah. megan: Ja Gissele: It’s interesting. Have you seen that questionnaire out of Harvard that does the, it’s assessing your implicit bias? Gissele: And so megan: association Gissele: Yeah. Yeah. It’s so funny. I did it. I do it with my students. Gissele: We do it every year. And it’s so funny how I was surprised by the results because I did the one for the LGBTQ, Gissele: and what I, what it found was that I was for LGBTQ , but against heterosexuals, and I’m a heterosexual woman. Gissele: And I’m like, “That’s so interesting that in the choice between these two camps, I’m gonna go here instead of being [00:14:00] neutral,” about Gissele: it. to me it was a shock. It was a such a surprise, and I was like, “Wow, that’s really interesting.” Gissele: So that goes to show , like those biases that you were talking about. Gissele: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the story of the bias you Gissele: encountered When you first had your son. Because, Gissele: I think you handled it in such a beautiful and compassionate way, something that should be modeled- in our interactions with people that might Gissele: say something Gissele: hurtful or, like that Gissele: when we experience a microaggression. Gissele: So do you mind sharing that story? [00:14:30] The Implicit Association Test megan: Absolutely. And I will say one thing about the implicit association test. So it’s an invitation that I provide people when I introduce them to the IAT, and you said that you do it with your students. One thing I invite people to do is to take that assessment. They have different categories, right? megan: Different identities at different times, and they rotate through. But to take an assessment and to keep a journal, and then six months later take the same assessment and see if your scores have changed. And if they have, reflect on what [00:15:00] experiences you’ve had since the last time you took the assessment, because our experiences will change how we perceive the world around us. megan: But I have a journal that I have kept all of my responses. I keep, I log in, okay, on this day I took this assessment. Here’s my score. It’s different from last score because of this. Here’s some other experiences I’ve had. So it just helps me to reflect on the power of our lived experiences. So I just wanna put that out there ’cause I love that you use that. Gissele: Yeah. Love it [00:15:27] How to Handle Someone Who Says Something Very Hurtful megan: So going to the story I shared, in my TED Talk. So as I shared, I had a child and my child is multiracial. When he was younger, he looked very ethnically ambiguous, but you could tell he was not, quote unquote, “white.” So we were at the doctor’s office, it was the pediatrician’s office. megan: He was probably about two, maybe three years old, walking around the office, and the woman next to me who was there with her child leaned over and said, “He’s so cute. When did you adopt him?” And I said, “Oh, he is cute, but [00:16:00] I didn’t adopt him. He’s mine.” She said, “Oh, I know, but when did you sign the paperwork?” I said, “You mean the birth certificate?” megan: And she said wait, so no, the adoption certificate.” I said, “No, he’s my child. I birthed him.” And she said, “Oh.” ” But he’s Black.” And I said, “Yes, he’s multiracial.” And she continued to respond with, “Oh, but he’s yours. Did you do that on purpose?” megan: I had to take a step back for a second, right? And was like, “Oh.” I knew what she was insinuating. I knew what all of her thoughts were in saying that, and I could also tell in that moment, by the way she was acting, the way she was responding, the facial expressions, that she was not purposely trying to be harmful. megan: She was asking questions out of curiosity based on her own lived experiences and how she viewed the world. So I took a step back after I recalibrated for a moment. It felt like five years. It probably was 30 [00:17:00] seconds, and I said, “Why, yes, I did. His father and I were very much in love, and I’m very blessed with a beautiful child.” megan: And she just kinda looked at me and said, “Oh, huh. I didn’t mean to offend.” And I said, “I know you didn’t mean to offend, but I’d like you to really reflect on what questions you just asked me, and just know that there are people who have children from all backgrounds, and sometimes it is made from love, and other times it’s not.” megan: I’m not here to say that every child is made out of a loving relationship, because unfortunately it’s not. But to assume the negative because of the stereotypes we have in our brains is where we have difficulty. And I will say that it wasn’t a place of shame. I did not make her feel bad. I said, “I appreciate you asking those questions.” megan: But it was coming from a place of if I did not share in that way, then I would’ve never allowed her to learn from how that could hurt someone else, [00:18:00] and she would’ve done the same thing to the next white-presenting parent that was raising a non-white-presenting child. So I think in our society we say, “Oh I’m just not gonna say anything. megan: I’m gonna walk away,” right? “If that person’s ignorant enough to say that, I’m just gonna walk away. I don’t need to deal with that.” Yes, and if we don’t have those conversations, if we don’t have the compassion to lean in, the curiosity to lean in, the willingness to be uncomfortable for a moment, then all we’re doing is perpetuating the possibility that they will hurt someone else who might not be as gracious in the future Gissele: Yeah. And this example is so powerful that I want my listeners to really understand the steps you took. The first thing is you had to calibrate yourself because immediately it’s bristly. I felt bristly when you were telling this story. I was like, “Oh.” Because I have family members that have had the reverse, right ? Gissele: So my sister and my cousin are darker, and they have whiter [00:19:00] children, and in the playground, people assume that they were the nanny, So that I could feel myself bristling. So I love that you took that moment to say, “Okay, I gotta recalibrate myself Gissele: before I respond rather than react And then you took an opportunity to educate someone on a topic that, that maybe made them think in the future differently. And often because we react, because we don’t regulate ourselves, we Gissele: can’t do that. And I’m not saying everybody should do that. If you’re not in a position to do that, that’s okay. Gissele: But I love that you took that moment to focus on compassion and saying, “How can I help this person understand Gissele: how they’re coming across Gissele: And I also love that you began from a place of, “I’m gonna give this person the benefit of the doubt,” Gissele: Right? I’m gonna try to see it from their perspective. Gissele: Given their viewpoint, they probably think that this is okay, even though just even hearing the story makes me Feel so bristly. It’s like, ugh, right? megan: I will say I often wonder [00:20:00] if she has ever run across the TED Talk or if she’s ever heard me share the story. I would love to try and find her or have a conversation with her now to see what it felt like for her in the moment, right? I would have loved, and I’ve said this a couple times in different conversations I’ve had, different interviews, podcasts, et cetera, hoping that maybe she’ll hear it one day, maybe she’ll listen somehow. megan: Maybe she’ll reach out and say, “Hey, you know that story you talk about with your son? That was me.” I would love to have a conversation because I’m only sharing how it felt for me, and I’m only sharing… Now, she did say thank you for walking me through that. At the same time, a lot of people will say thank you when inside they’re saying go away.” megan: So I’m just curious [00:20:46] How Compassion Helps with Shame and Guilt Gissele: Yeah. I would lo- we, we’d love to make that happen. It would be amazing to have that story and to be able to close the loop because it’s important to understand how it’s received. You mentioned shame and guilt. Th- those [00:21:00] experiences are real, and they’re so uncomfortable because, shame makes you feel like you’re not good enough, you’re not worthy, you’re not lovable. And so when those moments happens and somebody checks us or somebody says, “Hey, it wasn’t your intention, but what you said could be, like, hurtful,” it’s just a natural reaction for us to go there. And so how we help ourselves Gissele: manage that Gissele: is really important. And this is why I love compassion so much, in particular self-compassion. Going back To the whole concept of authenticity Gissele: I wanna share a little bit about my own journey. Gissele: And I’m just curious as to your thoughts because, Gissele: I always thought that I was authentically myself. Gissele: One of the things I used to say to myself is, “I’m never gonna lie to myself.” I will lie… I can lie to other people, but I’m not gonna lie to myself, Gissele: until I was. Gissele: But I didn’t- Gissele: notice, I didn’t realize that I had morphed myself into what I thought the society wanted me to be Gissele: It came to a Gissele: point in my life where I was like Gissele: I [00:22:00] was Gissele: forced to strip everything- and just go, “Who’s the real me?” The things that I want, are they really me? The way that I wanna live my life, is that really me? And I even got to the point where I was like, “I don’t know who I am.” It felt a little bit like an identity crisis. It’s … oh my gosh, like, when you strip all of these things, like, who am I at my essence? And I feel like you, that I’m on my journey back to myself and the things that I truly loved and I don’t… I no longer choose to do things that really aren’t, Gissele: like, a resounding Gissele: yes. Gissele: But I find sometimes I slip back, especially with my children. Gissele: And so can you talk a little bit about some of the ways that we can help ourselves through th- those identity crisis and Gissele: how, what the journey is towards being more authentically ourselves? [00:22:44] How Our Identities Keep Us Stuck megan: Yes when no. And so can you talk a little bit about some of the ways that we can help ourselves through those, those identity crisis- … and how, what the journey is towards being more authentically ourselves. Yeah. I will say, when you were sharing your story, I instantly thought of when I left the school superintendent position and started doing the work I’m doing now. megan: I had a little bit of a mini identity crisis because I was no longer a school superintendent, right? I no [00:23:00] longer had a title, and it was difficult for me. I technically have a title. I’m the founder of Us Squared, right? I’m a speaker. I’m an author. All of those things are great, and I felt like it didn’t have the same clout as school superintendent. megan: So what I… One of the first activities I really encourage people to think about is instead of identifying as a title, identify as the impact you make in the world, right? So are you someone who embraces everyone? Are you someone who can hear multiple sides of a story? Are you someone who can see the joy in really difficult situations? megan: What is your superpower that makes you who you are, that not other people see you as, but you see yourself as? That you’re really proud of this one attribute that you’re able to do regardless of what position you’re in, regardless of what relationship you happen to be in the moment. What is one attribute that you bring to the table [00:24:00] that you truly value and appreciate about yourself? megan: If you can hone in on that and make every decision through that one lens of, “I will make sure that everyone in my presence truly feels seen, heard, welcomed, and valued,” that is something I try very hard to do. If I can make every decision through that, then I am being authentic to myself because that’s the one thing that I really value about myself. megan: Now, if others don’t see that, that’s not up to me. I’m going to live my life in a way that I can do that, and what I have learned is the more I lean into that, the more people receive that. megan: Because people can’t receive what you don’t give without pretense. So another example of that is if someone asks to borrow money from you, I never give money that I’m not willing to part with. megan: I never give a piece of myself that I’m not willing to say, “This is truly me.” And people [00:25:00] start to see that and then receive, because people cannot receive what we do not give without those limitations and without those qualifications or disclaimers at the bottom. And I think that is something that all of us can do, is really go in with ourselves and say, “What is the one thing that I love so much about myself?” megan: It could be something physical. It could be something that you do. It could be something that you make people feel, but just that one thing that you truly appreciate about yourself, and make sure that you’re always making decisions through that thing. Is this action going to help me make this other person feel seen and heard? megan: No? Then the answer’s no. If it’s going to help this person feel seen and heard and welcomed and valued, then I’m gonna say yes. But if it doesn’t help me do that one thing that I truly believe is my purpose for being here, then I’m going to say no Gissele: I really appreciate everything you’ve said. There’s so much gold there. I wanted to talk first about valuing ourselves. [00:26:00] So in my family, the way that I was valued was through achievement, especially educational and career achievement. So I totally resonated with what you said about, when I first left my position, I was a director of six different departments, and so when I shifted to what I’m doing now, there was so much uncertainty I realized that I derived my value from the position that I had and the achievement and the money- Gissele: …that I was making. Gissele: And so for me, it was Gissele: really challenging to not see Gissele: myself as that megan: Yeah Gissele: that, that career. Gissele: And so that kind of led to this whole okay I need to let go of all these masks that aren’t me. Gissele: It wasn’t Gissele: pretty, Gissele: but Gissele: it was definitely very needed. Gissele: And I love your practice that you mentioned about Gissele: how do we get in touch with who we wanna be and sort of love and appreciate those aspects of myself. I tell myself I’m proud of myself for all the things that I’ve surpassed Gissele: And for, moving forward when I was scared and to, [00:27:00] it’s for my courage. Gissele: But I would’ve never spoken to myself that way until I had Gissele: encountered self-compassion. Gissele: And so- Gissele: it’s really pivotal. I wanna go back to the whole concept of getting Gissele: to know ourselves more. Gissele: because I Gissele: feel like that’s really the journey that a lot of people don’t know who they really are. Gissele: They’re waiting for somebody to tell them who they are and they don’t even wanna undertake that journey. How do you know Gissele: if you’re not being authentically yourself Gissele: Or if you’re not being authentic just in general? [00:27:30] The Seven “Why?” Exercise megan: Yeah. So have you ever heard of the seven why exercise? Gissele: No megan: No. So it is an exercise that I will… If I’m struggling with a decision or if I’m struggling with something, I will do this exercise. And what it is you just ask yourself why, right? megan: And you do it seven times, and every time you go a little bit deeper, and ultimately it unveils why you’re afraid or why you’re at a crossroads of making a decision. megan: So for myself, as I was going into this business and I [00:28:00] was having all of those second thoughts, my family, even today, 10 years later, I have family members who think I’m unemployed. megan: And it’s ironic and it’s comical and sad all at the same time. But what I had to do as I was leaning into having a career that was completely different from my first career, was I had to lean into why am I doing this? And it wasn’t… I thought I was doing this because I wanted to spend time with my family. megan: That’s important. That’s not it, right? So then I said, “Okay, why is it important to spend time with my family?” Because I wanna build memories. Why is it important to build memories? Because I want to make sure that people remember me after I’m gone. I want my son to remember my parents after they’re gone. megan: Why is that important? Because I believe that memories and legacies outlive all of us through generations and generations. Why is that important? Because I wanna pass along positive memories, not generational trauma. Why is that important? Because I have a [00:29:00] lot of generational trauma within my life, and I don’t want my son to be exposed to that. megan: Why is that important? Because I want my son to live a better, more fulfilled life than I did. So I didn’t transition out of schooling and out of being a superintendent to spend time with family. That was important. I did it to make sure that my son was able to live a more happy, fulfilled life because to me, that is the best sign of a, without using judgment, but a good parent. megan: I will feel successful as a parent if my child lives a better, more fulfilled, happier life than I had Gissele: Yeah megan: So it’s just diving deeper every time we ask that why. And I think if we’re struggling with a decision or if we make a decision that in our head we’re thinking, “Is this right?” If we can dive into the real reason why we’re doing it or why we’re making that decision, if it’s aligned to what we are as a person, then we know we’re on the right track. megan: And if we’re not able to answer that why question seven times, then I encourage [00:30:00] people to go back and rethink, okay, what is it that you’re hiding from yourself? And maybe you start with that question. What is something I’m hiding from myself? Or what is something about me that no one else knows? Why are you not sharing that? megan: Because I’ll feel like I’m not good enough. Why would you feel not good enough? Because society has told me that people who act like this are not good enough. Why has society said that? Because they’re afraid of people stepping into their power. Why are they afraid of people stepping into their power? If you can dive deeper every time, you usually can get to a point where you unveil what it is that you’re actually concerned about in the beginning Gissele: I love that. Yeah. I think I’ve heard it in different forms, like a so what, megan: Mhm Gissele: it a lot in terms of especially when you’re facing a fear oh, this hurts, so what? And then you go further in. But I love your idea of using it to get more authentically down to the root of what we really feel and think because there’s so many people that are disconnected with what they really feel, Gissele: and so it’s a great [00:31:00] way to connect. Gissele: Mention your son. Gissele: Can you talk a Gissele: little bit about how can we raise kids that are more authentic rather than Gissele: Going with the herd? Gissele: And the reason why I say that is, megan: is, Gissele: belongingness we have such a Gissele: strong desire to belong Gissele: and I think sometimes that kind of prevents us from being more authentically ourselves. Gissele: So how do we raise children that are more authentically themselves and maybe not susceptible to need to change themselves to Gissele: belong? [00:31:28] Raising Authentic Children megan: Of prevents us from being more authentically ourselves. Yeah. So how do we raise children that are more authentically themselves and maybe not susceptible to need to change themselves to belong? Yeah. It’s a very fine line, and I say that because one of the things I used to always say to my son is, “You are enough. megan: You are worthy. I love you,” all of those things. And for a while it became a little bit too much where he thought he was never going to get disciplined or never get in trouble because he was enough and he was worthy. So I say that as a fine line. We’re now coming back to that and doing that, but one of the number one pieces is helping your [00:32:00] child feel comfortable to talk to you. megan: Remember, it’s back to the idea of why do I take on the name Authenticity Amplifier. It’s not to help people be more authentic, it’s to help people be their authentic selves in your presence. megan: That person that my son could feel authentic in my presence. So I wanted to make sure that he knew that he could come to me with the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, and I told him from a very early age that I would rather have the ugly truth than beautiful lies. megan: And I would come to him and say, “I made a mistake today. Can I tell you about it? Did you make any mistakes today?” Because I wanted him to start feeling comfortable making mistakes and knowing that everyone makes mistakes, and I think that helped. We have an extremely close relationship. Now, all of that to be said, this past weekend we had a rough weekend, and I believe in being honest with all of the things, right? megan: And because I’ve raised him to be so close and we are so close to each other, his [00:33:00] number one fear is disappointment. He doesn’t wanna disappoint me, megan: and when he makes a decision that he knows would disappoint me, it’s hard for him. He tells me about it, he comes clean with it, but it’s very hard for him, and I’m trying to balance the compassion of thank you for telling me and also making sure that there’s consequences because he made a bad decision. [00:33:22] The Real Definition of Compassion megan: So I think there’s that. You have to realize that having compassion does not mean that you let someone off for everything that they do, and I think that leans into a lot of the work that you’ve done as well, is compassion does not mean ultimate forgiveness and never get consequences for what happens. megan: It’s saying, “Yes, you made a bad choice. Yes, you’re going to have consequences, and yes, I still love you.” megan: And holding that space for both to be present at the same time. But I think as parents, and we have a lot of discussions around this, but as parents, the number one thing you can do for your child is to help them [00:34:00] understand and to show them through action, not just words. megan: I think a lot of parents say, “I’m here if you wanna talk,” but then when the child comes to talk to you, you’re scrolling through your phone, you’re sitting at your computer, you’re working, you’re watching your show, you’re cooking dinner. I want you to truly stop. If your child is coming to you and saying, “Can we talk?” megan: Stop what you’re doing, if you can, and say, “Absolutely.” And if you can’t stop what you’re doing, don’t let them continue talking. Say, “I can’t talk right now. I so want to hear you. I’ll be done in 10 minutes.” And make sure that you are done in 10 minutes, and go back to your child and say, “Can we have that conversation? megan: I’d love to chat. I wanna hear what’s going on with you.” But truly being present and being that space where your child knows that even if you don’t like what they say, you’re still going to love them Gissele: And it is such a gift when they wanna talk to you about things. Gissele: It is such a gift, because it means that they feel safe enough to be able to discuss things with you and that you’re a safe space. And for me growing up, that was so important. As you were talking, I was thinking [00:35:00] about I love the fact that you were able to talk to your kids about the mistakes you’ve made, and that was one of the things that I made sure… Because my parents’ generation and their Gissele: parents’ generation, the parent was supposed to be seen as omnipotent and omniscient and never wrong and never say sorry or, Gissele: Try to deny any mistakes that they had. And so for me, Gissele: because of the way I grew up, it was really important for me to say to my kids, Gissele: “I’m a human Gissele: being. I’m gonna mess up. I’m not always gonna get it right.” Gissele: “But one thing I will do is come talk to you about it and apologize when I need to, and we can have discussions about the impact.” And so Gissele: that makes a big difference in my- relationship with my children because I didn’t wanna have that distance that I had with my parents for a while. Gissele: And Gissele: so I wanted to have that relationship Gissele: that felt reciprocal. megan: that, was reciprocal. Gissele: But a- again it does take a lot of work. It takes a lot of courage. I go back to the example that you gave when dealing with that person that made that bristly comment. You have to be able to regulate yourself because sometimes they’re gonna tell you things that you are [00:36:00] not really wanting to hear, Gissele: and that you’re gonna have to manage yourself and manage your difficult emotions to be present, and I think that’s part of the reason sometimes some parents can’t be present, is because they don’t know… They haven’t been taught how to handle those difficult feelings, right? [00:36:15] Difficult Conversations with Our Children megan: Yeah. Absolutely. And I will say that it’s not, it’s, you take that time in the beginning to regulate yourself, and it’s also about taking time after that too, right? megan: I remember this past weekend we had that difficult conversation, megan: and at the end I said, “Okay, I’m gonna leave the room now. Do you want a hug?” megan: “No.” “Okay, I’m not gonna force you to have a hug. Goodbye. I know that you’re not, you don’t like this conversation. I know that you feel bad. I know that you can tell that I’m upset, and I am upset, and I also want you to know that I will always love you, and I will always be here for you. And one of my jobs as a parent is to help guide you when you make bad decisions. megan: And I’m going to consistently be in your corner. I love [00:37:00] you. I’ll see you later.” megan: And I walked out of the room. Because it’s not just about having that space beforehand to regulate yourself, it’s also taking the space afterwards to say, “I’m here if you’d like to continue talking.” And I knew myself I was not ready to continue talking, so I said, “Okay, I’m gonna leave now. megan: Would you like a hug before I leave?” And I left, right? But I said I needed time afterwards to let you think about what we just discussed, and then we had another conversation via text afterwards because he was staying at my parents’. I came back home. We had a conversation via text. He called me later that night. megan: We talked a little bit. We talked a little bit today. We’re talking. We’re not where we were before the conversation, but we’re still talking. We’re not going to ignore each other, and we’re also going to give each other the space we need, because he knows he made me upset, and I also know that he feels bad, and I don’t want him to live in shame. megan: I don’t want him to feel bad. At the same time, I want him to [00:38:00] realize that he does have consequences for his behaviors Gissele: Yeah. Yeah. And like you mentioned, like compassion means like having healthy boundaries, right? For self Gissele: and Gissele: others. Gissele: I also wanna talk about the offering of the hug, and I think it’s so funny. I really had to reflect on myself. Before, when I was I had a conflict with someone, I would like not take the hugs even if I wanted it because I wanted to be stoic, right? Gissele: And now I just take the hugs. I’m like, “Somebody’s giving me a hug? I’ll take a hug,” right? And Gissele: so it’s so funny how it led me to really ask myself w- am I being authentic in that moment, or am I just trying to show that I’m not, that I’m not vulnerable, that I’m not that I’m not weak? And so we have all of these illusions, these all of these pretenses that we live in the world in terms of how people should behave and how they don’t behave. What are some of the things you have found that people that wanna be m- their most authentic Gissele: self might face Gissele: or do [00:39:00] face? And the reason why I’m asking you Gissele: that question Gissele: is, maybe I’m not framing it right, is I think of the comedian, Alok. Gissele: Have you heard of Alok before? A Indian comedian. Th- they/them dress in women’s clothing, and they wanna be authentically themselves. Gissele: They just dress in women’s clothing. They enjoy that. They look beautiful and they’re an amazing comedian, very funny. And they get a lot of hate from people. Hate. Gissele: They’re like, “You’re not a woman. Why do you dress…” Away. And the way that they manage it is really beautiful. They’re like, “Oh, obviously you must not like yourself very much. In a world where you are Gissele: criticized for being authentically yourself, anyone that doesn’t fit that Gissele: is ostracized. Gissele: And that’s why I go back to the whole school system the school system, not intentionally- Gissele: but unintentionally, does not support diversity. What I mean is you get so many kids that are, they can’t sit down for many hours. Gissele: They don’t think that the way that they do. They think [00:40:00] differently, right? And so for them, when you’re saying there’s only one right answer, and you have to be able to sit for eight hours, anyone that doesn’t fit that Gissele: is Gissele: aberrant, is wrong. Gissele: And so when you’re doing authenticity work, Gissele: at the same time, one of people’s fears is that they’re gonna get that clap back that are like if you don’t fit Gissele: into this Gissele: box of how i- authenticity should be- megan: be- Gissele: don’t fit in this world.” Gissele: What do you think about that? [00:40:23] How To Be Authentically Ourselves In A World That Doesn’t Welcome That megan: Yeah. I think for me, as I’m hearing your question and processing through, what I think about is the identities and the behaviors that are more internal or not as visible. megan: So what I mean by that is masking, right? So masking is the idea of trying to behave like a more dominant identity. For example, it was popularized with people on the spectrum. So people on the spectrum would mask and act as if they were neurotypical if they were neurodivergent. So it started [00:41:00] there, but it can also be a lot of different things. megan: You can mask your sexuality, you can mask your religion, right? megan: And it’s almost, it internalizes that oppression. It’s that self-compassion of not… If you’re going to mask to be fitting into society, then how does that make you feel about yourself? You start to have that self-shame and that self-guilt of, “Oh if I’m not wearing my Star of David, does that mean I’m not proud to be Jewish?” megan: So I think all of those pieces are very difficult, and it’s hard to be authentic if you’re in an environment that is not willing to embrace you for every aspect of who you are. Now, when I say that, I don’t expect anyone to share every aspect of themselves with everyone they meet. I’m not endorsing oversharing. megan: I’m not endorsing TMI. I’m endorsing healthy boundaries and not changing who you are to fit into an environment. That’s what I’m endorsing, [00:42:00] and I think that’s the big difference is people assume extremes. When I say everyone deserves to be their authentic self in any environment they walk into, they automatically mean, “Oh, so I need to know everything about them.” megan: No. There is no one in my life who knows everything about me, and I’m The Authenticity Amplifier. I don’t think I know everything about myself, let alone anyone else outside of me knowing everything about me. But what I do say is that I don’t stay in a relationship where I am not able to be exactly who I am in that moment. megan: Now, mind you, I said stay in a relationship, because I will meet new people, whether it’s colleagues, clients, friends- Right? Even extended family. I will meet people I don’t know as well, and I might not stay in that relationship if I don’t feel comfortable being myself. Or if I realize that they’re not comfortable being themselves, I will lean in with curiosity, “How can I help you feel more comfortable to be exactly [00:43:00] who you are?” megan: Or I’ll bring up a noticing, “I notice that the first time we met, you mentioned this about your life, and this time you mentioned something completely different. I would love to know, have you shifted your stance on things? Are you simply sharing a new aspect of yourself? Tell me more.” And it’s about paying attention to those details, and I think as people, we don’t pay attention enough to our own details, let alone the details of others Gissele: Yeah. how do we navigate environments where it doesn’t feel safe to be authentically ourselves? And it in, and some of these environments might be situations where I guess you could cut people off and decide you don’t wanna have a relationship, but what about family? Gissele: If it’s pieces like family members that you’re like, “Okay, I can’t be my authentically self ’cause when I’ve tried it, it just hasn’t felt welcome here.” What are your thoughts? [00:43:49] Being Uncomfortable vs Being Unsafe megan: What are your thoughts? Oh, I have so many stories to share around that. So we have core principles within Us Squared, my consulting firm, and one of them is growth occurs in discomfort. But what we are very clear on is that [00:44:00] discomfort is very different from being unsafe. megan: So we encourage people to lean into discomfort. megan: We encourage people to walk away from being unsafe. So there is a difference, right? Being uncomfortable means that you’re pushing yourself through something. Being unsafe means that your physical or emotional wellbeing is at stake. megan: So I say that very clearly, that there is a difference. I never encourage anyone to lean into authenticity or to be their authentic self in an unsafe environment, because like I just shared, not everyone deserves your authenticity. megan: If you feel unsafe to be your authentic self in any environment, then the first question to ask is, do I need to stay in this environment? Leaning to your question, right? So if it’s a workforce or a workplace, right now that’s a difficult question because unemployment rates are high. megan: So if you are the breadwinner, if you are the person who is bringing home most of the money for your family, if you are the person maintaining the financial stability in your family, it is very hard to say, “You know what? I don’t feel safe in this environment,” [00:45:00] or, “I don’t feel comfortable to be my authentic self. megan: I’m gonna leave this job and hope I find another one.” Not everyone has the privilege or the luxury to be able to do that, so I understand that completely. However, if it is an environment that you can leave, that you don’t have to be in, then why are you staying? Now, when you mention family, I have some family members that I only see at weddings and funerals megan: And I’m okay with that. megan: And at first, I’m from a very small family. I’m an only child. My child is an only child, right? I have two cousins that are six states away. I don’t have a lot of close family. And at the same time, there are family I still only see once or twice a year maybe, and as the family’s getting older, it’s tending to be more. megan: But that is my own boundary that I have put in place of there are certain family members that it’s not healthy for me to be in their environment or to be in their space when I don’t need to be. At the same time, I’m not going to [00:46:00] not go to a funeral to show respects or not go to a wedding to celebrate with them. megan: I’m going to do that. I’m just not going to have a deep conversation with that person. I’m going to keep it very surface level. I’m not going to lie about who I am or what I do, and I’m also not going to disclose additional information that I know they’re not comfortable with because it doesn’t help either of us. megan: So I think there’s a difference, like I said before, of being authentic and sharing everything about yourself with everyone you meet. megan: You can be authentic to yourself and stay true to who you are without sharing every aspect, especially if you know that aspect of who you are is not going to be received with compassion and grace Gissele: Yeah. And I think about it this way too, is that, I’d rather see maybe people once in a while if that enables me to, when I see them, to truly appreciate and love them Gissele: Than trying to force myself to see them often when the feeling just isn’t there. Like I’m trying to force myself to, to engage in an, in a relationship [00:47:00] that just isn’t there. Gissele: I’d rather see you and really appreciate you when I see you on those kind of sporadic times, if that’s the [00:47:07] How to Deal With Difficult Family megan: Another exercise that my therapist actually walked me through probably about a year ago that was beautiful was, when you have relationships with family that you do wanna see on a regular basis, maybe it’s a parent, maybe it’s a child, maybe it’s someone that’s very close to you, but you’re struggling, can you see it from their side? megan: And I do that all the time with work, right? And I hadn’t necessarily done that from the other person’s side in family situations. So that was an exercise I did. I said, “Okay let me look at my life, look at this relationship from the other person’s side, and really try to reflect how might they be seeing this exact same experience. megan: How might they be seeing what’s happening? What could their viewpoint be?” And also realizing different lived experiences, different generations, different ways of seeing the world, different ways of living. If we’re looking at different [00:48:00] generations, our family, our parents’ generation did not leave a job. megan: They started a job, and they stayed with it until they retired. megan: And if you look at my son’s generation, like Gen Z, they stay in a job for maybe a year. That’s a long time if they stay for a year, right? It’s just different. It’s if you’re not going to get what you need and feel fulfilled, then we’re encouraging our youth to find something that will help them feel fulfilled. megan: Baby boomers and the silent generation where you stayed somewhere until you were told you were no longer welcome Gissele: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. megan: And even then, sometimes they’re like, “I’m not leaving.” So I- it’s just different ways of looking at things. And then you have Gen X who, it’s just if you look at generational differences, and I’m not one to stereotype based on certain attributes, and there is some truth, which is why we talk about generational differences, because there is some truth to the [00:49:00] experiences that we had because of the timeframe that we were raised in Gissele: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting to see the generational impact, right? Like that, like my grandparents’ generation, they came through the war, right? And so they had… They were always in survival. There wasn’t a lot of time to be contemplating about your emotions or sitting there. Gissele: They just needed to survive. And and that kind of that dominoed to the way that we were raised. And so I feel like our generation is that generation that had to re-parent themselves while parenting. megan: Oh, latchkey kids Gissele: Oh, yeah, we had to I was more referring to the emotional part of it. Gissele: So the p- the generation that had to, be more compassionate to ourselves work on undoing our trauma, while at the same time as parenting. And so my parents’ generation, they didn’t address any of their trauma. They were just like, “Oh I don’t really wanna go to a therapist.” Gissele: Although I will say that my mom has sometimes gone to s- to see someone and she’s facing a lot of her fears, so I’m very proud of her for that. But her generation wasn’t the generation that was [00:50:00] doing that stuff. They didn’t go to see a therapist. They’re just like, “Oh that’s just how it is.” Gissele: And so I feel like my generation was the generation that were like we’ve gotta fix this trauma so we don’t pass it down.” So we’re… They’re trying to fix ourselves and trying to b- become authentically more ourselves while parenting and messing up and trying our best and, fumbling through. Gissele: But, megan: Fumbling through life And I think it’s interesting too, talking about generational pieces, I’m a Gen X, right? And I feel like Gen X were really the first generation to be in that true sandwich generation, where You were having children later, so I had my child very late in life, so I still have a child in high school, and I have aging parents megan: who are not working anymore, right? megan: So they’re past retirement, and then I still- and I’m helping them, and, working with that, and then I’m also raising my son, and it’s that sandwich generation of, okay, I’m doing everything for everyone else. What about me? And that goes back to that self-compassion and [00:51:00] realizing that taking care of yourself is not selfish, and I just had a conversation like that with one of my clients, one of my coaching clients, because they’re like I feel selfish if I do that.” megan: I said, “I know it sounds cliché. We hear it all the time. Put your own oxygen mask on first.” It is so cliché. It’s overused. I hear that. And the best thing we can do for anyone else, especially our children, is to show them how to make yourself happy so that they don’t expect someone else to make them happy in the future. megan: If we wait for someone in our lives to make us happy, we’re teaching that to everyone in our presence, and especially our children, and I don’t want my son to ever think, “Oh, I have to give someone else the ability or the power to make me happy.” I want my son to think and to know that he can create his own happiness, even when it’s difficult. megan: Find happiness in the small moments. Another question I ask him all the time, we used to do it every day, but is, “How did you help make someone else’s life better today?” Gissele: I [00:52:00] love that. megan: And he got to the point where he knew that question, and he would ask me the same question, and we would have that back and forth. megan: And I think those are some of those parenting tips where it’s not just ask your child how their day was, ’cause they’re gonna say, “Fine.” megan: And just like us as humans, how are you today? How many of us just say fine when we’re really not, right? So instead, ask a question like, how did you make someone else’s life better today?” Or, “What was the most difficult part of your day?” Or, “What was the part of your day that you laughed uncontrollably? megan: Tell me what happened.” Gissele: I love that Gissele: Love megan: I think it’s just about how can we ask those questions to help people feel safe in our presence? Gissele: Beautiful. Two more questions. megan: Absolutely Gissele: what’s your definition of self-love? I’m asking everyone this season [00:52:48] Defining Self-Love megan: I love that. So self-love is being able to look in the mirror and say, “I love you.” And I know that sounds so silly, but it can be hard sometimes. [00:53:00] And I think… And you have to look in the mirror, and you have to actually say, “I love you,” and then find other pieces of yourself. “Wow, your hair looks good,” or, “Wow, you’re gonna kill that presentation today.” megan: Or, but it’s just self-love even through the ugly, right? At the end of the day when you’re brushing your teeth, “Man, I love that you did this today,” or, “Man, I love that you kept going even after you lost that contract,” or, “I love that…” And I think we have to talk to ourselves the same way we want to talk to others, or that we wish we would hear from others. megan: If you can’t hear it from yourself without crying, you’re not ready to hear it from someone else Gissele: That’s so powerful. It’s so true. Gissele: I’ve done mirror work and I’ve had my kids do mirror work too when they were younger, and it’s so interesting to watch. You gotta be able to look at your own eyes and be able to say that, and if you can’t, then I… That shows you a lot, right? Yeah. megan: We all know people that can’t take compliments, right? And I think I was one of those people. I would always [00:54:00] say, “Oh, no big deal.” And I had one of my team members say, “Megan, I want you to repeat after me. Thank you for noticing. I appreciate that.” And it was such a simple sentence, but it took me a while to get to it. megan: And now, whatever I hear someone say a compliment, it’s, “Oh thank you for noticing.” megan: And that usually becomes part of my mirror work. I love that someone else saw that you did this, or I love that you stayed true to your values even when it wasn’t comfortable or popular Gissele: Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking about I had a conversation with someone many years ago, and they were talking about “I’m gonna give you your flowers. It’s your decision whether or not you choose to take them or not.” megan: Yeah. And you have to give each other flowers and give yourself flowers before it’s too late. And I think that whole phrase came up of, “Don’t give me flowers at my funeral.” Don’t send flowers the day I’m gone. Give me my flowers now. Don’t wait for that big performance on a stage to give me my flowers. megan: Give me my flowers when I show up for rehearsal. It’s not [00:55:00] just the performance. And I think sometimes, and I do it physically as well, I will go buy myself flowers sometimes. I’m like, “I’m giving myself flowers today.” Gissele: Me too. Gissele: Last question, where can people find you? Where can they work with you? What do you wanna share with the audience? [00:55:14] Megan’s Contact Information megan: Oh, absolutely. I love that. Thank you so much. So I’m pretty easy to find, although my name is not easy to spell. So you can find me on all social media, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, with Megan Fuciarelli. It’s just M-E-G-A-N F-U-C-I-A-R-E-L-L-I, or you can go to our consulting page, which is U-S, the number two, consulting, and that’s our handle for everything. megan: And that’s also both of our webpages. Is it .com? Gissele: It… Is it .com? megan: Yes, .com for both, meganfuciarelli.com and us2consulting.com Gissele: Oh, thank you so much. Thank you so much, Megan, for this amazing conversation and, like our discussion about authenticity and how to raise authentic children. If you like this episode, please share it with someone so that, it can, we can [00:56:00] spread the love. And thanks again for joining us for another episode of Love and Compassion podcast with Gissele. Gissele: See you soon

TRANSCRIPT Gissele: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. And if you’d like to support the podcast, you can go to buymeacoffee.com/loveandcompassion. Gissele: Today, we’re gonna be talking about true reconciliation. Our guest today is Celestin Gariyunka, who is a humanitarian and development professional with over 15 years experience in organizational leadership, humanitarian programming, refugee protection, access to justice, peace building, research, education, and partnership management. Gissele: He currently serves as executive director of Prison Fellowship Rwanda, providing strategic leadership for programs in justice, rehabilitation and reintegration, refugee protection, MHPS, disability inclusion, mediation, and community development. He holds a master’s in in economics from the [00:01:00] Independent University of Kigali, a bachelor’s degree in mathematics education from the University of Rwanda, and financial management specialization certification from Cornell University, US. Gissele: Celestin joined Prison Fellowship Rwanda in 2020 as a community-based protection officer and field coordinator, and he became head of programs in 2022. Please join me in welcoming Celestin. Hey. Hello. Celestin: Hello. How are you? Gissele: I’m good. I’m so excited to speak to you. I love the reconciliation work that you guys are doing over there, and especially in a world that feels so, so divided. Gissele: Yeah. It’s such an important conversation to have. I was wondering if you could tell the audience a little bit about how y- the organization got started. Celestin: Thank you so much, Gissele. It’s an honor to be here, and we thank you for creating a platform that reminds everyone that love and compassion are not simply beautiful words . But they are powerful [00:02:00] forces that can transform individuals, families, communities, and even countries. Celestin: I’m delighted to share the journey of Prison Fellowship Rwanda and what we have learned about healing, reconciliation, and peace building with more than thirty-two years in Rwanda. Our organization Prison Fellowship Rwanda, to understand it well, I think we need to understand or to remember Rwanda’s history. Celestin: As many of you knows, after the nineteen ninety-four genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, our country was left deeply wounded with more than a million people killed in just one hundred days, with m- families that were torn apart and communities were divided. The, the prisons became very much overcrowded, and millions of people carried visible and invisible wounds. Celestin: [00:03:00] So in nineteen ninety-five, one year after the genocide the Prison Fellowship Rwanda was established because we believed rebuilding Rwanda requires more than rebuilding roads and institutions. It requires also rebuilding hearts, relationship, and hope. And our first work as Prison Fellowship Rwanda was to enter into prisons, preach hope, encourage repentancy, pray with inmates, and remind them that although they had committed terrible crimes, they had not lost their human dignity or their potential to change. Celestin: So over time, we learned that spiritual transformation is essential, but also it’s it’s not only one part of the journey. So we established other programs like emotional healing, restorative justice, [00:04:00] restoring relationships between offenders and and victims, practical skills, and even community mediation. Celestin: So from there, our organization has grown from a, a group of of pastors that do prison evangelism to a full operation organization of almost one hundred full-time staff today. And we run many programs, including mental health and psychosocial support legal aid, youth development, livelihood programs, and community reconciliation one of the remarkable activity was what we call Reconciliation Village Program that we started in 2003 where we built houses for genocide f- survivors and genocide perpetrators that that requested forgiveness [00:05:00] and and they were forgiven, and we put their families together in what we call reconciliation villages. Celestin: So that, those are places where genocide survivors and former perpetrators, they voluntarily live together after truth, accountability, after remorse and forgiveness. And now that is the organization we are talking about. Yeah. Thank you so much. Gissele: Yeah. Beautiful. Let’s talk about the work that you do regarding prison reform. Gissele: Can you describe what you do to help prisoners change for the better? Celestin: It’s not easy. Yeah. And what I can say is that Even by the go- the government has changed the name. Here in Rwanda we don’t call prisons, we call correctional facility because- … there is a philosophy that prisons were established in the past with one vision, to punish people. Celestin: But our [00:06:00] orientation today is rehabilitation. So we do this by integrating all programs that that re-restore the human dignity, that restore the relationship, that build the true person that we want, the, the true citizen that we want to be or Celestin: to… we want to make in the future. So when we say prison reform, at Prison Fellowship Rwanda, we believe every person is more than the worst decision they have ever made. We know that justice is important, but people must accept responsibility for the crimes they committed. And accountability at, and transformation can exist together. Celestin: It’s not holding someone accountable of the crimes, but also helping them to be transformed. So our rehabilitation program, it’s holistic. So it begins with evangelism, helping people to rediscover [00:07:00] hope, purpose, to repent, and to re- to restore their moral responsibility. And from there we provide restorative justice. Celestin: We provide trauma healing and mental health support to those inmates. We provide life skills and family restoration, including also education and vocational training. And we also support livelihood programs so that a person undergoing those, all those services of correction services, get a, a holistic rehabilitation, but also be well prepared for integration back to the community. Celestin: So unless those deeper wounds are addressed, changing behavior becomes much more difficult. And that is we, what we say by experience. Unless the inner part of the person that made him to commit [00:08:00] such crimes is changed. So we… You can’t say that this one committed genocide, killed 100 people. Celestin: He was imprisoned 15 or 20 years, but without other programs that can transform him, so he will go out with the same mindset, the same behavior. So our program is to make sure that prisons Or correctional facility are place, are space for transformation, for healing, for life skills, for family restoration, for reintegration, a holistic reintegration program. Celestin: And we often- … said that rehabilitation is not simply preparing someone to leave the correctional facility. It’s preparing someone to return home as a responsible father, as a responsible mother, as a responsible neighbor or citizen, as an element for [00:09:00] peace building, not a troublemaker as as many people think. Gissele: And that’s what I love about your organization because the focus is one of true rehabilitation, right? Gissele: In many ways Rwanda is ahead of its time in terms of not viewing prison as a punishment, but rather as a stepping stone towards transformation, and so I think that’s really essential. Gissele: Yeah. How do you bring victims and perpetrators together in reconciliation in a way that perhaps honors also the fact that the, the victims have been harmed by the perpetrators? Yeah. So how do you bring them in reconciliation- Yeah … in a way that’s safe and supportive for both sides? Celestin: Yeah. I think this is this is the most delicate and perhaps the most inspiring part of our work. Celestin: Reconciliation- … is something that never forced. In Rwanda we had a very terrible experience. Rwanda, we are one community. We have one culture. We speak one language. [00:10:00] But- One circumstance in 1994, one big part of the majority of Rwandans took arms and killed the other part of Rwandans. In 100 days, three months, killed almost… Celestin: Even more because we are still discovering bodies of people killed in the genocide. More than a million people killed in, in, in 100 days. It’s terrible. But after that, we experienced that reconciliation, it doesn’t limit. It doesn’t have limits. Every crime, every situation, reconciliation, you have seen that it is something possible and can be done everywhere. Celestin: So You we have never forced someone to reconcile to another one. We have seen that forgiveness cannot be [00:11:00] demanded. Even trust, building trust cannot be rushed. It’s something that begins with truths, with a process. Through restorative justice programs we put offenders in a place and they learn. Celestin: And offenders acknowledge responsibility without finding excuses and understand the human impact of the harm they caused. That is, it’s Celestin: a long process, but that is the main target, to make sure that the offenders, they are put in a position to understand and acknowledge the responsibility and even the, the human impact they caused. But also we prepare the victims. The victims receive trauma healing, counseling, and psychosocial support before even thinking of any dialogue or meeting with the perpetrators, the offenders. Celestin: So we use several [00:12:00] complementary approach Among them we have what we call social therapy. It’s an approach that we developed that were developed by psychologists that helps small groups to rebuild trust through structured conversations, mutual listening , and collective problem solvings. Celestin: We also have what we call smart family therapy, where we put families, especially families of perpetrators and families of survivors or victims, we bring them together to heal collectively, and even helping them to discover that they are not alone in their pain, and they begin supporting one another. But also this, all those, those program cannot be built alone by us, like civil society. Celestin: We are [00:13:00] also thankful to the government that the government of Rwanda, they established a philosophy, what we call Ndi Umunyarwanda. I’m a Rwandan. This is a, a narrative that reminds people that before anything else We are all one people. We are all one Rwandan sharing one future. So it strengthens a common identity as a Rwandan, not as a, a different tribe or different regional divisions, putting divisions aside, the past divisions aside, and building a common identity together. Celestin: So one of our most successful approach that helped us to put the victims and the perpetrators together is what we call action-based reconciliation model, where we have learned that reconciliation becomes [00:14:00] stronger when people do something meaningful together. So rather than s- maybe talking about peace, survivors, former perpetrators they… Celestin: Survivors and former perpetrators, they farm together. They are put into cooperative. They do farming together. They build houses together. They weave baskets together. And even they save money together. They do some group of saving together, and they solve community problem together. All those action that are being made together, they build trust. Celestin: The trust grows through everyday life. And this approach comes to life in our eight reconciliation villages that were built by Prison Fellowship Rwanda together with our partners. So imagine maybe walking into a village where the [00:15:00] person who survived genocide and the person who participated in the genocide, who killed people, and they live together. Celestin: Sometimes they are direct victim and perpetrator, but they live together. Their children play together. They are– They attend the same community meetings and community work, what we call here Umuganda, and they help each other in… during the time of sickness. They celebrate wedding together. Even they f- they do– Their children do intermarriage, so they mourn together Everything that they do them together. Celestin: So that is how we say that our reconciliation program it’s a practical reconciliation that combine all the programs, including mental health, including counseling, including life skills, including income-generating [00:16:00] activities together. And when they are put together, they form a kind of holistic reconciliation model that helps our Rwandans restoring unity and trust. Celestin: Yeah that’s how I can say that we helped our community, our victims and some, and the perpetrators living together after what happened in Rwanda. Gissele: Yeah. I just wanna say wow. How important those steps are. Like, the first thing is the importance of reminding- Gissele: People about their unity, like what brings- … them closer together instead of perpetrating more division . Gissele: Which is what I see in the North American world. So what you’re doing is reminding them about, one people, like what- yeah … unifying them- yeah … more than separating. Gissele: The other piece that really is fundamental is having victim and perpetrator closeness, like having them closer together. Celestin: Yeah. Gissele: Also, it’s [00:17:00] hard to hate someone when you are close to them, when you get to know them, when- … it’s hard to harm someone if you truly know who they are. Celestin: Yeah. Gissele: And but on the flip side, I’m gonna ask a question that I know my listeners would ask. How- … do you ensure that the victim doesn’t get re-victimized by the perpetrator? ‘Cause that’s where the mind goes, where I got harmed once, how do I know I’m not gonna get harmed again?” Gissele: So how do you make sure- Yeah … that the, the both sides are protected from that? Celestin: Yeah. In fact- At the beginning, they we have those challenge because even not only the victim, even the perpetrator, they have shame, they, and fear to live together with the people they offended. Gissele: Yeah. Celestin: So that is a process to prepare individual, especially for individual cases. We use our psychologist to make sure that the victim, they are well prepared before any meeting, before [00:18:00] even mediation- kind of way, before any step from putting together the people, so they are well prepared. They are… They pass 12 weeks studying, doing- … week sessions of trauma healing, trust building, i- identity building, so that we make sure that those people, even those who still have wounds in the heart, they are treated. Celestin: They are helped to become strong, and even we don’t force them to go and live together side by side. So we make sure that this process of putting them together comes after a, a long journey of trauma healing and unit- … and reconciliation program. So we prepare both the families of perpetrators and the families of survivors [00:19:00] before putting them together in the same neighborhood. Celestin: And even after that, they show that maybe the perpetrators and their families, they repent. They speak the truth. They show to the victim where their relatives were put to… the one that were killed, they were put here. They were killed in this way. And after that, after those, all the process comes to the level of asking forgiveness and giving forgiveness. Celestin: So after that, that is where we reach the extent of putting them together. And at the beginning it’s difficult, butas the time goes, the people, they co- they become friends. They become one family. They c- they are in one neighborhood, and their children play together. Celestin: It’s a full, a whole, a daily reconciliation program. And we continue monitoring so that in case there is [00:20:00] a a problem, an issue, we can help them to deal with them. Yeah. Thank you. Gissele: Oh, thank you. The other thing that I think is so brilliant about your program is that the fact that you are using land as a way to join them together, ’cause it was my understanding that part of what happened with the genocide was issues of abundance, right? Gissele: It’s issues of money, one group having more than the other. And so bringing them together and working together with the land and working together with respect to finances, I think would be really critical in reconciliation. Is that accurate? Yeah. Celestin: Genocide is not, It is it start by genocide ideology. Celestin: Genocide ideology means we have one identity and those, they have their identity, and one group want to kill the other group and to finish them. So genocide, it doesn’t… It is not a- [00:21:00] about money or land or about what. It’s that ideology of killing one group and finish them. Celestin: One important aspect here is to remind people that they are one people. Even so people may have different culture. Even in Rwanda we have one culture. We are all Rwandans. We speak one language. But people may be different. But what we preach here is unity in diversity. People need to understand that they are all human being and they have to respect one another. Celestin: So this kind of divisions, they need to forget them. They need to understand the harm caused by those division: regional division, ethnic divisions. Because we know that even in one family, one household, if you want divisions, the younger children may form their group, and the elder children, they form their [00:22:00] group, and they hate one another. Celestin: The important aspect here is to make sure that people understand the identity and the importance of being united instead of being divided. So we do this with the… All our efforts make sure that after all what happened, the people understand the truth and understand the importance of living together the importance of building unit among them, and the importance of fighting together the the divisions and any bad ideology that can separate them. Celestin: Yeah. Gissele: Thank you for that. Thank you. So I know that your work not only focuses on restorative justice but also teaching the next generation. Yeah. What work are you doing with children to ensure that the genocide that happened doesn’t happen again? Celestin: Thank you. Yes, [00:23:00] we also work with children. Celestin: Currently, we work with the children of prisoners. We have a program called the Promise Pass. Before it was called the Children’s Journey. We support the childrens of inmates. To deal with the issues they are facing. There is for… There are many children who are vulnerable because of their parents who are in correctional facility, who are inmates. Celestin: So we support them with the education, mentoring, and we know that children are the builders of tomorrow. If we want peace maybe 20 years from now, we must invest in children today. So many young Rwandans were born after the genocide. They did not witne- witness the genocide against the Tutsi Celestin: directly, but they inherit the, the genocide history. So our responsibility is to help them [00:24:00] inherit wisdom instead of hatred. We make sure that the crimes done by parents, they are not– they don’t affect their children. Especially there are some parents when they are incarcerated when their children visit them, they try to find excuses or to tell the children that they are innocent, and the children grow with the, with hatred against anyone that might be the cause of their father, fathers to be in prison. Celestin: So we make sure that the youth, they are well-educated. We teach them empathy, peaceful conflict resolution. We teach them leadership and responsible citizenship, unity, resilience, respect for human dignity. But also we support them with education and family strengthening. So in our program, we make sure that there is a space for [00:25:00] youth and children. Celestin: Not only even the children of prisoners, but also the youth in general. When we do mental health and psychosocial support program, we also h- form the groups of youth, especially youth from families of perpetrators and youth from families of survivors, so that with that youth we build the future together. Celestin: We build the same understanding of the world we want or the, the Rwanda we want. So we know that our children, they attend the same schools, and they dream about the same future. So we make sure that our youth, they don’t inherit the bad things that that happened to our parents Gissele: And this is so essential because not only are you tackling with the victim and perpetrator by helping them do trauma healing- Yeah Gissele: you’re also impacting the next generation, right? And so making sure to stop it at both ends, not just with history, but with actual action, [00:26:00] right? Yeah. Action that will have long-term consequences. Celestin: Yeah. Gissele: So I know you focus on skill development and livelihood. How does that connect to peacekeeping, and what are some of the results you have found? Celestin: Yeah. Yeah. Peace is more than the absence of violence. Peace also requires dignity, hope, and opportunity, so that’s why we invest heavily in collaborative livelihood programs. We do have another program that’s called CoLive or Collaborative Livelihood Programs that, that make sure that we support our beneficiaries, not only to understand peace like a rhetorical, a philosophy, even unit as a philosophy, but peace in action. Celestin: we make sure that they are… They do some income-generating activities together, like farming cooperatives. we do have women that weave [00:27:00] baskets. We do what we call saving groups and small business. So the, all these economic activities, they create human cooperations. You can’t fight– you can’t hate someone that you are a partner into a business. Celestin: So you will make sure that you support one another so that you generate income together. So when people depend on one another, they succeed. Yeah. They stop seeing enemies and begin seeing themselves as partners. That’s why livelihood is not only about earning income. It’s a tool for rebuilding trust among citizens, among community. Celestin: So our action-based reconciliation model teaches us that working together often heals the relationship faster than simply teaching people to live [00:28:00] together. Yeah. Gissele: Wonderful. Gissele: I was wondering if you could talk about what role spirituality plays in the healing. Celestin: the Prison Fellowship Rwanda was started by a prison evangelism. Celestin: But this time there are many people who don’t understand why evangelism. Not only in Rwanda but worldwide. But evangelism it helps people to re- to rediscover the hope. To to understand that their life has a purpose. Even to help the one that that commit crimes to repent. Celestin: To understand where the harm caused. But also the most important element of evangelism is to create accountability and moral responsibility towards one another. To make sure that they have a kind of character that do no harm to [00:29:00] one another. So that’s why spirituality, it’s very important, especially in this correctional service programs, where people they do crimes. Celestin: Sometimes they do crimes because they don’t they don’t understand the importance of doing goods, good things. Or they don’t value one another. Or sometimes they un- they don’t understand why crime is bad. But after evangelism, everyone understand that crime, it’s a very bad things. Celestin: So that is why we value very much spirituality in our program. Gissele: Thank you. Gissele: Peace building is part of your organization’s work. Yeah. And the world seems quite divided right now along political lines, and there are still many wars going on. Gissele: What do you think is the first step towards people coming together in unity and to see each other’s humanity? Celestin: Peacebuilding Celestin: It’s [00:30:00] very Big. All we do is peace building. And, As people who experienced the genocide, the worst genocide in the world, I don’t know the others, but what we have seen in Rwanda is, it’s something terrible. So when we say peace, we understand it that it’s something very important. Celestin: And to get peace, it make… It is to make sure that everyone understand the importance of giving peace. That is why we focus on either the perpetrators, because Celestin: they are there because there is something that made them to be there, and also the victims. Those two people, if they are supported, they will build peace one another. Because if you don’t focus on the, the victim, he will make a revenge, and when someone [00:31:00] commit a, a crime, another one revenge, then the next will revenge again, then there will no… Celestin: There will be no peace in the system. So we want to cut that chain of crimes so that we make peace. So- Peacebuilding is part of… It’s all in our action from unit and reconciliation program, from restorative justice program, from livelihood program. What we do, it’s the the, it, the whole is peacebuilding, so that when we teach people to forgive, to build trust to one another, when we help the community to live together and get income together into livelihood, when we do preach faith or spirituality to human, we want to strengthen that peacebuilding. Celestin: So in short, [00:32:00] all the activity we are doing here, it’s about to rehabilitate people until they become, they build, they live together in harmony . They see one another as their friends, as partners, as as the same as they see themselves. Yeah. Gissele: Yeah. And the work that you’re doing is so essential, and what I’m hearing you say is that it’s a multi-pronged approach, right? It’s not just like a one-sided y- yeah … it starts from when you were saying, “We are one Rwanda. We are one people.” Yeah. It starts even just there, and then it goes to, you’re hitting all those multiple prongs. Gissele: you’re helping the, the victims heal and work on forgiveness. You’re helping the perpetrators heal. You’re educating the children. You’re managing the next generation. So the work that you’re doing is absolutely incredible, and we are very grateful for it – Yeah Gissele: in terms of helping us continue to generate peace, ’cause peace ripples out. Celestin: Yeah … Gissele: a few more questions. What does unconditional love mean to you? Celestin: [00:33:00] Unconditional love Celestin: So to me it means recognizing the value of a person Celestin: without setting some, some criteria. So you are– you know that love is not the absence of justice Love include truth, but also love include accountability. So unconditional love, I understand it like loving the humanity I understand that. For example, if I’m Celestin: I’m a Rwandan and I meet an American citizen maybe here, or I meet an Iranian citizen here. So I don’t say it that I can love this one, I hate this one. Unconditional love means understanding and recognizing the value of humanity and respecting one another. Celestin: For [00:34:00] example Celestin: Imagine two people, maybe living completely alone in the forest. This is an example that I like. And for example, you are lost in the forest and you found your enemy, the people you hate, also lost in the forest Celestin: And you have no friendship and no relationship. But if you are there together in the forest, would you continue to be enemy? Would you choose to stay alone because you see that the other one you don’t you don’t like him? So I think everyone would choose living together with the one you hate instead of staying alone in the forest That is why the people need to understand that people, they are together because they need one another. Celestin: People may even have [00:35:00] some, some bitter past, especially for families. Okay? But they, we need to choose to stay together, under- understand each other, forgive and rebuild trust, and eventually care for one another. If you are you are two people hating one another and you are lost in the forest alone, the two, so you will be forced to stay together so that you can protect one another. Celestin: So that is the philosophy that we need to understand, that we need to stay together as a human being. Yeah. Gissele: Love that. Thank you for sharing that. Last question. What do you want the audience to know? Where can they find you? Where can they donate or work with your organization? What do you wanna share? Celestin: Thank you. Prison Fellowship Rwanda It’s a network. We work with the Prison Fellowship International, and it is its presence [00:36:00] is in 100, abou- around 120 countries. But every chapter is independent in its country. So Prison Fellowship Rwanda, we have a website, and we work our work in Rwanda. Celestin: And we have a website, pfruanda.org. And I have– We have a Twitter account, and we have plenty of opportunities to work together with anyone that that understand that what we are doing is important. So it’s a privilege to work alongside dedicated colleagues, government institutions, faith communities, other civil society organizations, and even international partners who believe that we can change the world together. Celestin: So our mission is to restore the relationship between individuals, communities [00:37:00] through justice, compassion, healing and hope. So we warmly welcome anyone that that that understand that we can do this job together. The– I like your podcast because after the– knowing that we will be having this session I learned that, Love and compassion is not, it’s not a philosophy, it’s something practical. Celestin: And I see that there are many opportunities to develop these things and to ensure that we contribute in peace building to the world. So we are very open to researchers, universities, development partners, churches, and any individual interested in working together, building restorative justice and reconciliation to the world. Celestin: And we are open to share our experience and even testimonies from [00:38:00] our beneficiaries to the world so that we can build peace. Thank you so much. Gissele: Oh, wow. What a beautiful way to end. And thank you, Celestine, for coming and sharing your wisdom with us and all the amazing work that you’re doing in your organization. Gissele: Thank you to everyone who tuned in to another episode of Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. If you like this episode, please share it. We are reaching worldwide. And thanks again. Bye. Celestin: Bye. Thank you so much.

TRANSCRIPT Caroline: [00:00:00] welcome to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. Today we’re talking about people pleasing, and I have Carolyn Jos, who is a PhD in molecular pathophysiology. She’s a researcher with vast experiencein health and wellbeing in autism. But most importantly, she’s a 47-year-old single mom of two teenagers. She’s lived through death, separation, her own son’s autism diagnosis, illness, burnout, career dreams collapsing, financial insecurity, and the feeling of being a stranger everywhere she goes. And yet people describe her as easygoing, fun to be around, always smiling, strong, and hardworking. From her own words, she says that most of her life she tried to please everyone, her husband, her parents, her employers, her colleagues, her friends, because she thought that she was a natural pleaser. [00:01:00] She said yes to everything, believing that it was helping. Underneath, she had a deep need for love, safety, and belonging. Please join me in welcoming Carolyn. Hi, Caroline: Hi, Gissele. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me Gissele: Yeah, for sure. I, when I heard your story, I really wanted to talk to you ’cause there were elements of the story that I really resonated with. I wanted to start by asking you, where do you think you learned that people-pleasing was the way to get more attention and love? Caroline: That’s a good question . It’s hard to tell. I guess it was when I was pretty young. I have an older sister, she’s three years older than me, and she had some mental issues pretty early on, and it was tough for my parents, and my parents had rough times at that point too because they weren’t employed and they were struggling financially. Caroline: So I used to hide , I used to be the one that for each of my parents would have no concerns. I was doing good at school, I was pretty easygoing [00:02:00] and I, yeah, I had no trouble at all. So I started k- I make myself a bit small and say yes to anything because I didn’t want to add to their burden already. Gissele: So I guess that’s when it started, Yeah, and that’s often very common, right? With children when there’s one sibling that is suffering, the other one usually doesn’t want to add on to the suffering and, but also at the same time then is saying, “My needs are not as important as other siblings’ needs,” right? Which we internalize that messaging. Gissele: We do internalize it because you don’t even realize it that you have some unmet needs. You just, you think that’s, it’s what you get, and you don’t think about it really Gissele: Yeah, and you tend to derive value from taking care of other people’s needs, in particular your parents, right? Especially if you know that they are not coping well. But that’s not really the role of a child. Caroline: Shouldn’t be. Gissele: Have the emotional girth, yeah to take care of your parents’ needs when you’re just learning how to take care of your own needs, right? Gissele: And so I think [00:03:00] that’s where difficulties arise. I wanted to Gissele: read something that you had said to me, which is “No matter how hard I worked, I was never given the same opportunity as those who challenged, complained, or behaved poorly. I watch many of them climb the ladder effortlessly with resumes far thinner than mine, keep devoted partners while being constantly oppositional, or act like divas and still be rewarded. Kindness does not pay off.” And I think many people feel this way, that they feel that they give and give, and that when people are difficult, they’re more likely to attain. What do you think contributed to your perspective that was, that kindness doesn’t pay off? Caroline: what comes to mind now is my career because I am in a transition and I did so I started late my studies, like at 18 years old. At 17, I left my parents’ house and started to what I wanted to do, cinema. So I went to a cinema school, and then I changed to something else, and then eventually I’ve [00:04:00] worked like for five years just like a bartender or in nightclubs or in restaurants. Caroline: And when I wanted to go back to studies, because it was always in the back of my mind I had to go actually in Quebec because in France you can’t really stop and go back. If you can do that, it’s not in, in science at all. So I went in Quebec to start my studies and and I did pretty well considering I didn’t have any background in science before. Caroline: And then I was performing even better, got a master, PhD. My PhD were highly productive, like more, way more than average. But then I got pregnant, and so I had to make a pause and those little pause like that, plus the weird background, that was not what you’re supposed to do when you want to be a, like a, to have a faculty position. Caroline: It was always something that was too heavy on my resume, more than [00:05:00] all the publication and how I had, or the awards or things like that. So it felt like it, a bit unfair, because as I was trying to build a family, it’s it seems that it’s hard to make a family and actually have a, a nice career. Caroline: So I was seeing everyone continuing on their journey, continuing to fill their resume while I was with my sons first and daughter after, taking care of them. And it’s it’s frustrating, and I’ve seen a lot after that, a lot of other PhDs that actually had some positions but with nothing in their CVs. Caroline: But they were the, the student’s of the lab researcher. And so there, there was so many events like that, that I was like… and I was struggling to find a job. I never found a job that would actually fit my curriculum, my, my studies. It was always to take something below what I am able to do. Caroline: Yeah, that’s, that was hard. And in terms of relationships I think it’s the same pattern [00:06:00] pretty much to see I struggle. I left my husband when I arrived in, in Mountain for many different issues. We were very good friends. It’s not it’s not a between, It’s just different personalities, but it’s not that he was awful or nothing. Caroline: It’s just I needed a time off, but so I… And I never really found anyone so far. But I’ve seen a lot of couples that they cannot. It looks like they hate each other, but they stay together, and no, they don’t hate each other. They actually love each other, which is beautiful. Caroline: But they… I, sometimes I don’t know how he or she is doing that. How can you hold that? As everybody’s, they are always fighting or… But it’s still love. It’s just a different way of communicating it, Gissele: So I wanted to talk about what you had mentioned about the gap in the resumes because it’s so real. It’s almost like you’re punished for taking a break from your Gissele: career. There are some people that can’t, that don’t take breaks between their career, but if you’re a mother that, that can be [00:07:00] difficult. If you’re out of the system for a while, like for example, if you tried self-employment and then you’re coming back into employment, it’s hard to justify the tran- it’s almost like you have to justify the transition. You might just want something different. You wanted to try something else, and then you’re decided to come back into the workplace. But I don’t know if it’s that we believe that it’s a negative thing and therefore that’s the experience, but I know exactly what you’re Gissele: talking about in terms of gaps in terms of the resume. And the other thing I wanted to mention was, longevity isn’t necessarily a mark of a good relationship. Just because you’re in a relationship a long time doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good relationship. I think relationships are changing as the, as we’re realizing more and more, as we become more authentically ourselves, as we realize more and more what we wanted, I think our- the perspective on marriage is changing. Gissele: Think about it. Like I got married when I was 27, right? And so the 27 me is very different than the Gissele: [00:08:00] me that is here now, right? And so we don’t make decisions for for the rest of your life, so you constantly, you and your partner have to constantly keep Gissele: working on it. You have to be changing. Gissele: You have to be keep, making the same commitment, making the same choice, right? To s- to stick together, to grow together because you’re not the same person that you were when you were 27. And so the whole belief that if it didn’t last long, it didn’t work isn’t necessarily true. It’s just people change and they grow, and so I think people are starting to understand that marriage is a constant commitment, and the reasons we marry are different than they used to be Gissele: as Caroline: That’s true Gissele: Because we used to marry for, economic security, and especially women. And now women have way more options, which is why you’re seeing a big decline in marriage, right? I wa- I also wanted to go back to, so you survived a rare aggressive type of cancer and it [00:09:00] was like a harbinger. Gissele: It was like a ringing bell to let you know that- You were living a life that wasn’t meant to be yours. And so you decided that there was no more forced compliance, no more accepting less than I deserved. And so you began to align your actions with your core values, which meant saying no. For a, surviving or overcoming people pleaser, how was the process of saying no? What was it like in the beginning, and what are some of the things you found as you started to say no? Caroline: And I actually am realizing that maybe I started to say no when I got separated from my husband just a few years before that. S- say no, it’s it’s isolating at the beginning at least. Because y- you want to avoid to say no. You don’t want to do everything that people wants you to do necessarily or… Caroline: But that’s, there’s the first step of avoidance, avoiding any questions so you don’t have to say no. And then it’s just y- I have a lot of [00:10:00] very, very good friends, I’m very blessed for that. And so I know that I don’t even have to tell them I don’t want to do that. They k- Caroline: they guess, I think. Caroline: But it’s more in the workplace that I started to say that’s not why you hired me. We had this arrangement, so I’m, I don’t see the value of doing what you’re asking me, because it’s a waste of time for me and a waste of money for you, so just use my friends instead.” And that didn’t go well at all. Caroline: So it, it’s still something I’m learning to do, but I need to do it maybe differently. Unless I just get self-employed and stop being in the workplace with bosses and all that. I guess it’s probably the best option for me, and I do need my freedom. So yeah. Gissele: Yeah it, so it can be challenging, first of all, for the people in our lives when you start saying no if they’re used to you Gissele: saying yes, [00:11:00] right? To, for you to say no, you’re changing the rules of the game. Hey, wait a minute, you’re the people pleaser. You’re supposed to please me. Now you’re changing. Gissele: You’re flipping the script, right? So that, it can be difficult for people in your life. What you mentioned about the workplace, it’s so interesting because people of my generation were taught that you don’t say no. They were taught that it’s such an honor, and you’re so valued if you just add more work or are given different tasks without any additional pay. It’s you’re looked highly on. And but now we’re living in a time where that’s no longer acceptable, where people have some people need two, three jobs. No, you’re not gonna be doing unpaid labor. No, you’re not gonna go just for a value-based compensation, like a pat on the back. No, that doesn’t work anymore. And so people re- need real money, like real compensation value to be able to pay their bills and be able to get food and all of those things that they need for their family, but saying no in the workplace is you’re seen as difficult, not collaborative. [00:12:00] But organizational leaders and managers say no all the Gissele: time, Caroline: that’s the thing. And I don’t know if it’s my ADHD brain or but I have some issues with the, those unbalanced decision powers. And I did not say no per se. I was trying to say, “Okay, maybe it’s not the best use of my time and then your money, because I would be way more efficient and make way more progress on on this field, which is the thing we agreed on. Caroline: And maybe this could be done by someone, like a coordinator or someone that is already there, that is already doing this type of work.” But yeah that, that didn’t go through already. So it’s not really blocking any discussion or, and saying no like loud and clear. It was more like trying to negotiate, which I was never doing before. Caroline: I was just saying, “Okay, yeah, sure. We’ll do that.” Now I negotiate, but it’s still super [00:13:00] complicated. I guess it depends the hierarchy level of the person you’re talking to. It depends also on the personalities you have in front of you. And being seen as someone that will always say yes anyway makes you the, the, the person to go to for anything and everything. Caroline: So when you change that dy- dynamic people are like, “Oh, wait a minute. That’s not fun anymore. Maybe we don’t need you anymore.” Yeah Gissele: Yeah. And you mean you mentioned that the changing the rules of the game in terms of them, they hired you for a specific purpose, but now they wanna give you a different purpose that may not be what you were Gissele: looking for. Gissele: So when you started saying no, you said, “No, I won’t do what you’re asking because I deserve better. No, I won’t agree with something that is unfair. No, you won’t define my worth.” That was basically you negotiating your worth, right? A no to someone else is a yes to you. However, experienced being fired, Gissele: right? No notice, no explanation. How did that feel after [00:14:00] you… What you, ’cause what you were trying to do is reaffirm your worth, right? What was the impact of that firing Caroline: That was very difficult because then y- eventually you feel worthless. You feel, okay if it’s not my strengths and my expertise, my skills that they want, if that is not worth anything for them, then what can I bring? Pretty much, I can bring a lot of things, but not to the level that I could work on my specific field or ex- with my specific expertise. Caroline: So it, it really just denied the importance of the work I’m doing, which is research on the health of autistics. And at the same time it was very hard for my sense of self and like a, a big hit on my dignity. I was felt betrayed ’cause I trusted, the, this workplace and, yeah, just like you’re being swept out because you don’t have any value for us if [00:15:00] you change, if you’re more, affirming. Caroline: It was really hard. And it’s still a little bit, but getting over it. But it’s, it was disappearing pretty much. And I always feel that in my life to feel invisible. But with that, being fired is something heavy. I’ve never experienced that in my life. I’ve always has too much work, and as I can’t say no, most of the time in my life I had one, two, three, four, four jobs at the same time because people… Caroline: I never had to search for a job even, people were coming to me, “Hey, would you like to do this?” And being out like that, s- that is a very strange feeling, very painful feeling. Gissele: thank you for sharing that. As a person who related to your experience, I know that I derive my personal value from my performance, right? So I, I was like you, I’m highly educated and having, a sense of worth, a sense of either a job or a profession that was successful [00:16:00] really gave me that sense of worth. Gissele: So if you don’t have that, then what do you Gissele: have, right? in this society, we value ourselves by how much we can do, what we do for others, what our careers are, how successful we are, how much money we have. All of these are markers that we’ve given ourselves as proxies that we’re Gissele: worthy. But in the absence of those, are we still lovable? And we are, absolutely. But you lose your footing for a little bit, right? Caroline: yes, definitely Gissele: Yeah. And it makes it difficult. For me, it wasn’t so much… it was about changing careers and not seeing the success that I thought I Gissele: would have, right? And so for years and years having that financial insecurity and not seeing the uptake that I thought I would take because I’m doing something that is my passion, right? Gissele: And so I’m following my higher guidance, I’m following my passion, and I’m not seeing any results. And in fact, there’s a lot of financial instability, [00:17:00] like you mentioned. And so to see that, it really eroded my own self-worth. It really did. Because I thought, ” What if this isn’t gonna work? Gissele: Have I put my family at risk?” Like, all of these questions I had and it made me really doubt myself, and I was always a very confident person in terms of my passions and following what my heart did and doing really well. And so when, like you, you were successful in the past, when things stopped working, it makes you feel really scared. Caroline: Very and it’s talk about confidence, and I was very confident too, like for, forever because I know I can do, not anything, but I can do a lot of things. I was always thinking that even if I lost a job or had to change a career, I could pivot and do something else, and I would be fine. Caroline: It’s just that I learned to actually love research and I don’t want to give up, and I’m not someone that gives up [00:18:00] easily and now I have to give it up somehow because I need to I need to make a living. So I need to think about, okay, what I’m gonna do. But I want to take the time it takes though. Caroline: I know the financial security is something that scared me the first thing that scared me actually because I didn’t want to do like my parents did, trying to give it, give up their job and start to start their own company and then they bankrupt and then we were poor under, all my childhood and after. Caroline: So I don’t want that for my children, but I know that they have a father that is fine, that has a great position and that will always provide for them. And that’s, yeah. So I think I can take the time it takes to really look at what I want to do exactly and not jump onto the first thing because I really need money now. Caroline: I think I can… Struggle for a while is fine, but after that I want to, stop changing. I would like to just settle. When I had my cancer with, the, the statistic were not [00:19:00] good. But I was fortunate that I was the second in, in New Brunswick to get a new treatment that works very, really well. Caroline: So but before that the worst case scenario was two years to live and the better case scenario was 20. And 20, it’s not a lot, as I was 40. So I was seeing thing already a bit differently. It’s like, “Okay, how do I spend those 20 years?” It’s just, can I take a can I go into a career that I enjoy less but have more time for my children, for example, or to travel or to enjoy life? Caroline: Or is it realistic given I am too, I’m too involved in my work and I love working? I’m not someone that can do nothing. There is no Sunday I will just sit in a chair. Yes, I can binge watch some, some series or documentaries like everyone, but it’s really rare. It’s more I need to build something. Caroline: I need to create. I need to… So if I’m not happy in [00:20:00] my work then, I’m not happy in my life, and then it’s gonna impact my children too. So how can we balance all that? It’s very difficult, very complex. I don’t know how you did. Gissele: I wanna talk about the financial insecurity part of it just because it’s so funny. My parents, like in particular my mother, grew up in poverty, and that was one of the things I never wanted to face was that financial insecurity, which is why I worked so hard for all these degrees, and then got to the point when I had left that things were financially, like we didn’t know where things, how things were gonna get paid. And so I feel like these are challenges we have to face. Like, when we have those sorts of things, we have to face those limiting beliefs. Doesn’t make it feel any more comfortable, and in fact, literally it’s, was through the grace of God that we always ended up having something somehow some way, right? Somehow things came. Things were always, have always been paid. It’s just been magical in a way in terms of [00:21:00] like- things that open up ’cause, like in the beginning of the month maybe there isn’t anything and then at the end, Gissele: And one of the things that I noticed in my journey in, in, I don- I don’t know if this would be helpful for you, is that I got really clear on how my thoughts were contributing to my financial situation. Gissele: And what I mean by that is, so in the beginning of my journey when I first left the workplace and decided that I was going to do this podcast, I was gonna do this business, this I have a center called Maitri Center, and now I’m working on a documentary, that I was going to give it my all and I was gonna be doing it and I did a whole bunch of things that I thought were gonna work, that I was told were gonna work, right? Gissele: Write a book, do the, be a speaker. I did a TEDx. I have a book. All of those things that I thought were somehow gonna pay off. And on, on surface they didn’t. And and I remember when I would get things, like I got a, a teaching contract out of nowhere, literally, right? And rather than being grateful, I was like not [00:22:00] enough. Gissele: Not enough to pay my bills. Not enough, Every time, even if I got $5, I’d be like, not enough,” until I got to the point where I was like, oh my God, I would’ve been so grateful for that $5. I would’ve been so grateful just to get even a little tiny contract. So how that shifted my mindset was that I became, I’ve become really grateful for every little, tiny thing. Gissele: That doesn’t mean I don’t have days off when I’m like, “Oh my God, I don’t know,” everybody does. But I go back to that gratitude of every little, tiny thing. A dollar, oh my gosh, I’m so Gissele: grateful. $5, I’m so grateful, right? Big contracts, I’m so grateful. I’m so grateful for everything. And so it made me really hyper-aware of how much I have already. Where is my abundance? Yeah, so that was the first thing. And the second thing is that the more grateful that I started to become, the more things started to come, Gissele: which is really Caroline: Yes, it is. Yeah. But that’s funny because I also have a, a teaching job that came from nowhere in the fall, and I have a few things [00:23:00] here and there. And and yeah, you need to change your perspective on money that’s for sure. Yeah Gissele: I see, like people like my mother who worked all her life because she did face poverty, worked all her life to have money, like to save up and she still feels like there’s not enough, right? And I’m like if you’ve worked all of this time and you don’t feel it’s still enough,” like that’s… Like at what point, what does it take for you to feel financially Gissele: secure, right? And I think that comes from within, Caroline: Yes, it is. No, I, and from the bills you have to pay every month, but yes, for sure. Yeah. Gissele: Yeah. Gissele: But I even became grateful for those too. Grateful that I have the money to put something down, Gissele: grateful that means that I’ve spent something, right? So I do this trick now that I’ve saw from other people, I didn’t invent this, that when you- whenever you pay or you use a credit card or you pay a bill, you’re like s- you’re, you are grateful for the money coming out, and you know that m- the money is gonna come back in. Gissele: So as you see it, you’re like, “Oh,” I s- I’m welcoming the money that is going to be coming back to me from this. [00:24:00] And and I, again, I do find that, sometimes big things, sometimes small Gissele: things, right? Like you start… I start getting a whole bunch of book sales, right? Out of nowhere. I start just getting checks. Gissele: So it’s like, “Oh, that’s so Gissele: cool.” So just being aware of the, the gratitude and how magnetizing it can Caroline: Right. My, Remember when and I… It didn’t happen that very often that my salary was high enough that I had to pay actually tax. You pay taxes on your pay, on my, on your salary. But at the end of the year when you have to pay this extra chunk there, I was happy. I was like, “Yes, that’s… I’m helping others now. Caroline: That’s that’s amazing.” So everyone around me was, “You’re crazy. What? You’re happy to pay taxes? That’s weird.” But that’s important. And I remember my, my father, because they didn’t have a lot of money, but if there was… for example, I was I remember… Caroline: I don’t know why it popped in my head, but I was working, I was probably 18 or 19, maybe 20 in a mountain [00:25:00] for the winter. And I don’t remember what happened, but I didn’t feel very good. I was not depressed, but there was something triggering. And my parents I called them and he said, and I had no money because I couldn’t find a job I think maybe. And I didn’t have much money. I had 20, it was euros maybe at that time, in my pocket. That’s all. And he told me, “Go out. Go have a drink. Go out. Have fun.” I said it’s not reallyreasonable. Caroline: And he said, “You know what? Your mental health costs way more than anything else. So just go have fun. And when you feel, when you look happier, job will come.” And eventually that’s of course what happened. Yeah. Gissele: Yeah. Isn’t it so funny the power of that letting Gissele: go? The more you grasp onto stuff, the more you grasp you apply to 80 jobs and, you just grasp. And the minute that you let go, it’s almost you become like an open channel to the flow, that they… it does come, and it does come from that place of joy. Gissele: It does Gissele: come from that place of openness, of And it doesn’t mean you’ll have to, like [00:26:00] spend the whole Gissele: $80, right? You could just go, get an ice cream, and if it makes you feel good or just go get out of the house. Just go to a boardwalk and just walk around near the water. Gissele: Anything that gives you that sense of, peace and relaxation. ‘Cause you can get bogged down by this mentally, right? You feel like there’s so many things going for you, and I can imagine just based on your journey, as you had mentioned, you lived through death, separation, your son’s autism, illness, burnout. You feel like like you overcome one thing, and then there’s another thing, and then there’s another thing, Gissele: and you’re like, “What the hell?” At what point is this gonna… but you also become incredibly resilient, right? So what have all of these challenges taught you about resiliency? Caroline: Resiliency. That’s a word that I never quite grasped. At the very first I thought it was meaning you’re resilient, you’re difficult or I don’t know. But it was not the right meaning. And then I heard, no, it’s because you have the courage. You learn from going over something difficult and you’re stronger. Caroline: And I said, “Yeah, [00:27:00] no I’m actually weaker.” Each time there is something big like that, I’m… it’s painful. What I’ve… I’m in a survival mode really. So resiliency, it’s not a word that really resonate with me, and I don’t want to ask people to be more resilient or… this is… That is a strange concept to me. Caroline: But it’s just that it’s the learning. if I’ve been through that, I can go through that, so that’s for sure. But it’s more about what I’m showing to others around, that definitely if they see me go through everything. My mother died when I had my cancer treatment, so couldn’t go to her funerals. Caroline: And that… So there are things that accumulates like that in short periods of time that are so hard that eventually you go blank. It’s like, “Okay, don’t think about anything else. Do your treatment, survive. You’ll deal with that later.” Because it’s too much. It’s so hard that it’s too much that you can’t feel it anymore. Caroline: So you don’t feel the grief, And you just push through. So it depends on the level of pain. The, I think the [00:28:00] resiliency is even more potent when the struggle is re- really hard. When it, everything adds and adds, and then that’s the push you have to go over everything. Caroline: But when it’s sometimes one, let’s say the separation that was difficult for the family, for the children and and it was painful, but that’s when I couldn’t continue my postdoc ’cause my father died or something like that. That again, this addition make me do the steps forward and say, “Okay, now you need to move and you need to do something. Caroline: You need to make a move to get, ooh, out of the water.” That’s that’s how I see things. Yeah. So it’s not like a Caroline: it’s really more like a, a step resilience building. Gissele: Yeah, a very Caroline: Yeah. Gissele: step ladder, yeah. Yeah. And you mentioned the word courage, right? It gives you the courage to keep going because I think in life we need courage, right? Sometimes it can feel difficult to face something. And so courage is a s- a great word. I… And since [00:29:00] we’re talking about values, one of the questions you had asked was, what did you risk for, right? Gissele: Integrity, equity, compassion and understanding. Like, all… you felt like you had risked all your values. Do you still feel that way now? Caroline: No, I feel they are holding me because it’s it eventually becomes much easier to live by your values than to live against them. So now I embrace them and I think that I’m planning for different things in the short-term and long-term future. But I think if I keep close to those values, I’ll be happy whatever I’m doing, whatever the salary it brings, because it’s not contradicting with who I am. Caroline: So i- it’s really, yeah it’s an interesting period. But no, I need to stand by them because if it’s not for me, it’s for me of course, because it’s I need that and it’s gonna be, probably make me happy, but it’s also for the others. I think that still fighting for the others for s- social justice and all that, it’s part of me. Caroline: And [00:30:00] seeing that I can help people is also making me happy. But it’s not anymore just pleasing people. It’s really solving some issues. So it’s not like before. Gissele: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. A- and I know in, in my own journey in terms of, overcoming whether it be financial situations or my own sort of like issues of self-worth it really has taught me that, like happiness, peace, joy, that love for myself really is an inside job, that it really i- is not to be dependent on any of those external measures that it really has to come from within, and then thinking about how do I cultivate that from within myself. Caroline: I’m not quite there yet Gissele: Yeah, and you know what? It’s… Everybody’s journey is different and that’s why I wanted to have this conversation because there are people right now where their journey isn’t quite there, and that is okay. Allowing yourself to be where you are and allowing yourself to feel all those difficult feelings. Gissele: We so often [00:31:00] wanna run away from them. We don’t want them to exist, but we all have difficult Gissele: feelings. We all have… feel overwhelmed or scared or afraid, and it’s not about making it go away. I know for me, the way I treat fear now is more like a friend. I’m like, “Okay, what are you trying to Gissele: tell me? What is it that you’re really worried about?” Because it enables me to soothe that little s- version of myself, right? Yeah. Go ahead. Caroline: Okay. No, I was, So that reminded me when about self-worth. So when I had my cancer, and I really… I was pretty much sure that I had 15, 10 to 15 years to live. And and also because my, both my parents died at 64, so I… And they were not having as this type of health issue, so they had some, but so I was sure I was to die before that. Caroline: And that was hard for my children, of course, because all the cancers in my family, they all died pretty fast with it. So We didn’t [00:32:00] have tons of hope and I didn’t want to make them suffer because I saw my niece and nephew really suffer from the cancer of their father. And so I was… I wanted to give up. Caroline: I was like, “No, I’m not letting my children for months, for years struggling to see me, like, degrading and being my caregivers,” because they’re gonna take that role even if I don’t want it. That’s… They were starting to say, “No, I’m not going to school. I’m gonna stay with you, take care of you. I’m gonna bring you food. Caroline: I’m gonna…” And I’m like, “No that’s not what I want.” They are at the age where it’s gonna impact them too much. And so I s- I was like, “Okay, I’d ra- I’d rather die. I’d rather die than make them suffer.” And I made my psychologist cry, which is strange. And I was okay with that. I was in peace with that. Caroline: But one friend, really showed me the value I had in their life, ’cause I said that’s doesn’t matter. My children have their father, my [00:33:00] friends have their life. Every- everything is fine. I don’t have parents anymore. My sister, she has her children and…” But no they show me that actually I mattered in their life. Caroline: I did something. And I’ve never considered that myself. That’s true that e- each of my friends are adding something in my life, and I’ve never seen that before this. You’re here, but you have little pieces everywhere that builds the different families because you’re the godmother of this child, and so that’s important for them, and you’re the joker in this family when you hang o- out with them, and that’s important to them. Caroline: So see that’s how I… It’s still seeing the value from another perspective, but it really helped me to say, “Okay, let’s… You know what? I’m gonna fight this. I’m gonna get over this. I don’t want to leave them.” They love me, so that’s amazing. Gissele: Yeah. And that’s so beautiful. I think we all contribute to the Gissele: world. We all have worth just inherent. We don’t [00:34:00] have to earn Caroline: Right Gissele: We don’t have to earn our own value. We h- have it because we Gissele: exist. And I think that’s the messaging that we have not received, that we r- we… because we receive conditional love, you’re only worthy if you do something for someone or if you have some sort of role. Gissele: But we just, we’re inherently amazing and incredible, and to be able to sh- to show that. I wanted to talk a little bit about y- the work that you’re doing in terms of volunteeringwith respect to autism. There was recently the conference. So I want you to talk a little bit about the volunteer work that you’re doing and how you’re turning this time in your life. Gissele: You’re alchemizing it or transforming it from something that is a difficult thing to do to something that you are lovingly giving to Gissele: others. Caroline: Yeah. I, So that started be- with the research I was doing. And I made many friends on the way because the type of research I’m doing is really to have the first voices into the research team [00:35:00] so they can guide anything I’m doing to make sure that it’s relevant to them and not something that I want to do because it’s fun to me. Caroline: Then that’s… There is no point in that. So having them close to this to this research over the last eight years got me engaged in in, in some volunteer work with organization. And then having no job at the moment, I said I, I will do that full time,” because there is so much need there in that community that they… Caroline: it’s f- Even people that are s- that you th- you think would function pretty well, they have a job, they have some, some have children, and you think why do you help those? That there is more misery in this world.” But it’s just that they are still struggling. And Caroline: And I feel I can do something because I have… Caroline: I guess one of my strengths is to put people together and even if they don’t agree, but eventually just dialogue and stop the monologuing in both sides. So that’s what I, that’s what I want to do. [00:36:00] And I was lucky enough to be selected by the Neurodiversity Foundation from the Netherlands to be on their wisdom council two years ago, a year and a half ago. Caroline: And from there I started to celebrate Neurodiversity Pride Day in Canada. And we started small and this year is a bit bigger with the summit, the flag hosting in Ottawa, and next year will be bigger because now I have the backup from a few politicians and that’s gonna, that’s gonna help it, of course. Caroline: But it’s I find my new battle. It’s not a battle about myself. It’s not to prove my worth. It’s just to prove their worth. And make sure they get the support they need. And of course there is a, like something personal in there because of my two children’s diagnoses of neurodevelopmental conditions and myself. Caroline: So there is something personal, but at least I can conciliate both my values and my career or my [00:37:00] path. Gissele: Yeah. And the lived experience makes you the perfect Gissele: advocate because you know from that, your own personal experience and the experience with your kids. And so I think that really helps you understand some of the conflict. And you said something that’s really key, and I don’t want you… Gissele: I want you to really understand how important this, this thing that you’re doing is, which is helping people come together in Caroline: Right Gissele: There’s so much canceling, and there’s so much discourse and divisiveness. People no longer are taking the time to Gissele: engage and be with one another and especially face-to-face. ‘Cause when you dialogue face-to-face, it has a different impact Gissele: than when you do it online or via text. And so to come together in dialogue, even when you have opposing perspectives, is really key. And helping facilitate that, I think it’s amazing because it’s something that we so need, right now in the Caroline: we need it. Gissele: Yeah. Caroline: Yeah. No, thank you. And it’s, … And I know it’s gonna [00:38:00] d- g- there are gonna be a lot of challenges in doing that but in, in all the different jobs that I’ve been doing so far that’s always been a constant, trying to engage people and to make them understand each other or just better communicate. Caroline: Sometimes it’s just very easy, sometimes it’s very difficult. It depends of the emotions involved, but it’s always done that in anything I was doing, not just research. So yeah Gissele: And what do you think are the biggest communication challenges, especially in the communities that you do research on or you’re supporting volunteering? Caroline: The biggest challenge, there are a few. So in terms of miscommunication, I think it’s the different understandings of the same words. So the language is is difficult to use, especially since there are two kind of opposing models of disabilities, the medical models and the social model. And because… Caroline: in, in its social sciences and clinical [00:39:00] sciences, they cannot use the same terms to mean two different things. So it’s just to help bring those meanings in accordance or maybe to flag it with a different word. But it’s just to re- or to translate one word to another and see if they get less in opposition, but actually they probably are more complementary, those two words. Caroline: But it’s just to translate between, like a knowledge broker pretty much. It’s just to make sure that we talk about the same thing even if it doesn’t seem or feel like it , it is. Yeah. Gissele: Yeah. And, as, as we’ve talked about in the past, it doesn’t have to be this or that. Gissele: It can be this and that, right? And so the two don’t… It d- it doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game where one gains and the other one Gissele: loses. It can be about, like, how do we coexist and live together, and what are our strengths, right? You talked about kind of how hopelessness, cognitive dissonance, and self-erasure can spread [00:40:00] faster than cancer. Can you talk a little bit about how you’re helping yourself get through not minimizing your own role considering that you’re currently between jobs? Caroline: But I guess I… That’s why I’m doing so much volunteer work. It’s just to feel that I’m still building something. As long as I’m building something, I’m alive. And and to, to help others I think gives me this m- allows me to overcome those feelings of hopelessness because then if I give hope to s- hope to someone, means I have hope too. Caroline: And I don’t remember the other stuff that I said, but it is really just, yeah, fighting my way through, through the difficulties and building on them Gissele: Yeah and you had t- talked about the concept of self-erasure, Gissele: right? As a person who felt invisible when you were younger because you kinda had to subdue your needs. You no longer need to do that but how do you show up in the world in a way that you [00:41:00] acknowledge your own worth, right? Caroline: Yeah, I’ll okay, there you. I will still be invisible sometimes. That’s just normal. But the, the… So I did a website. So it’s just I’m doing this podcast. It’s just I was never personal when I was doing something. I was hiding the, the, the personal part of me just to be the professional, and now I’m showing up more. Caroline: And last fall, there is a digital stories series on the Radio Canada website, and they picked me for because I was doing a video game on autism. And but the story got really personal and I was like, “Oh that’s a strange feeling to just talk about all that,” and everyone can now know things like the cancer, like… Caroline: And that was really strange. But I think it’s makes me a bit even more authentic, and eventually it allows me to be me. So that’s really something that I’m gonna build on because if I can show, [00:42:00] okay I have doubts, I have fears, like everyone else, but let’s learn together how to build with those with those feelings and the other ones that are the more positive feelings and strength. Caroline: So it’s really, yeah, I guess getting personal, and I think I, I like it because it, there is no hiding anymore. So that’s… I’m visible now ’cause I’m telling it all. Before that there was at least one part that was invisible. I had a lot of friends, but they were friends that would not be friends because I was showing different sides of me and hiding the others, and now act- I can just be myself, and I’m gonna still be friend with them eventually. Caroline: And I thought that it would not be the case, but still, yeah. Because the part that they like is still there, but now they are seeing everything. It’s just, Caroline: yeah Gissele: And that’s so wonderful and so important because often we hide parts of ourselves that we’re worried that we’re gonna be Gissele: rejected. But then because we hide parts of ourselves, we don’t really attract people that truly [00:43:00] wanna Gissele: be with us, right? And so it’s a catch, catch-22. And I will just say in terms of hearing your story and hearing the things that you have overcome, and how you’re still passionate and willing to help others and willing to move things forward, and still, have the courage and the strength, and I think that’s very admirable. I think there’s many people would have give up right? Given up in any of the aspects of those journeys. But, you’re still moving forward, looking to be more authentically yourself, and also wanting to help others, too. So I think that’s very beautiful. So couple of more questions. Gissele: The first one is I’m asking everyone on the podcast this season: what is your definition of self-love? Caroline: No, that need to think about it. I guess self-love is just laughing at the mistakes you do and and yeah, laughing at yourself. If you can laugh at yourself and not, in, in a good way at your flaws and all that, it’s that you love yourself Gissele: Yeah. Yeah. I really like that. Last questions. Where can people work with you if they [00:44:00] want support? Where can they find you? You mentioned a Gissele: website. Share anything you want with the audience. Caroline: so yeah, the website there is a contact form there. That’s probably the, the easiest, but of course LinkedIn or Facebook or but I would suggest the website and I’m gonna update it with the new collaboration potentials. So I’m gonna build some different events in the year Caroline: the website is just http://www.carolinejose.com. Caroline: Just, Gissele: Oh, okay, perfect. Beautiful. That’s easy. Thank you Caroline, so much for being on the show, and thank you to everyone that tuned in for another episode of Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. We’ll see you soon

TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Gissele : Hello, and welcome to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content,today we’re talking about peace and love with Barbara With. She is an international peace activist, award-winning author, publisher, psychic channel, and composer and performer, and co-founder of Conflict Revolution: World Peace One Person at a Time, Starting with Self. Love: A Revolutionary Way to Resolve Conflicts of the Psyche as a Pathway to World Peace based on her work channeling the angels and Albert Einstein. She has authored six nonfiction books on metaphysics, including Imagining Einstein: Essays on M-Theory, World Peace, and the Science of Compassion. Barbara teaches and trains conflict revolution in the classroom and on Zoom, and is currently on a world peace tour, [00:01:00] calling out for the participation of the willing for a worldwide nonviolent action to end the age of war, starting with the self. Please join me in welcoming Barbara. Hi, Barbara. Barbara With: Oh, hi. Thank you so much for having me. Good to see you again Gissele : Thank you so much for being on the show. It’s such an important time talking about conflict and talking about division and peace. I was wondering if you could get started by telling the audience how you actually came to do this work. Barbara With: In a nutshell, I started out actually on a path of music. I started writing music when I was 12, and I went out on the road and rock and roll when I was 17 for 20 years, and that was really my focus. But alongside, these things kept happening. For example, I had a friend whose mother was a channel, and this is back in 1970, so we didn’t call her a channel, but he said, “Come and see what my mom does.” Barbara With: And so she said that she was an [00:02:00] antenna, Barbara With: She would light a candle. She had this beautiful picture of Jesus, and she didn’t remember anything she said. And while some of it was predictive so much of it, looking back now, I was, I would say is about self-love. How to love myself. I came from a very traumatized background and, so I saw her for probably 10 years, and when I auto- I was automatic writing spontaneously one day, writing a letter to my friend, telling her how bad it was that she made judgments. And suddenly this beautiful information was coming through my hands that I had not anticipated to say, and because I have my work with Unis, I knew what it was, but I was still very surprised. Barbara With: And when I asked, “Who are you?” They said, “You can… We are sound So because I had been [00:03:00] working with music for so long, I thought, “Great sound.” And that’s how I became a channel. In 1993 , I wanted to do groups and see what this voice of this antenna had to say to groups of people. And long story short two women in particular were sent to me by God, Theresa and Kim, and they came for readings, and they were like no one I had ever read for. Barbara With: They were very, “What does this mean? And what does this mean? And what does this mean?” And they’d follow me around to my gigs, and finally it was like, “Here’s the group.” So we started organizing groups in our living room. We’d tape them and transcribe them. And when they asked, “Who are you?” The answer was, “You can call us angels.” Barbara With: And these angels said they had this theory, if humans would resolve conflict in this way that they were theorizing, the byproduct would be world peace. Barbara With: And of course, with world peace, [00:04:00] it’s the radiation out of inner peace, family peace, community peace onto world peace. And they needed some humans to test their theory on actual conflict. Barbara With: And apparently Theresa and Kim and I, w- we dubbed ourselves the Psychic Sorority were the ones. And sure enough, with our first conflict, we were scrambling around for a while in the old way, and I said wait a minute. Let’s get the transcript.” And we read it, and the line was, “If you’re involved emotionally in a conflict, the root of your part is within you.” Barbara With: And that was the very germination seed of what then became Conflict Revolution. Because in that moment of us sitting at the table and me telling Kim and Kim telling me, and we kinda stopped and went, “Wow that’s revolutionary.” And so I was able to come back to the table and say wait a minute. Barbara With: Here’s what I can do better.” And Kim was able to do that. And because of that [00:05:00] slight shift, it was huge, but it was, y- we’re not talking about peace talks in Iran or whatever. We each experienced such a monumental change in how the world was relating to us. I went to work that night, and there was a waitress who had never liked me and suddenly couldn’t get enough of me, which made me rather suspect. Barbara With: But I thought, “This is what they’re talking about. If we do this inner work, we don’t have to go at the conflict at the level it’s being created. It will naturally change.” And our first book, Diaries of a Psychic Sorority, Barbara With: Led us to a literary agent who called me one day and said there was a tabloid in London looking for an interview with Princess Di on the one-year anniversary of her death. Barbara With: And again, my ske- skepticism kicked in, and I thought, I just was learning that I could speak to people who had passed on, but they would come to [00:06:00] me.” But I thought, “Let’s see what it says,” so I channeled it typing, and it was so profound. It was just so beautiful. And her message was, if everyone who put flowers in front of the palace would do this, we’d have world peace in a day. Barbara With: So that was how I got… Now, the tabloid didn’t want it, but my agent and I wrote a list of other famous dead people thinking, “Are there other people who wanna talk from afterlife?” And when we got to John F. Kennedy, he said, “This isn’t your idea. We are a group of souls who’ve come together in afterlife to help you with world peace, and we’ll tell you who’s coming next.” Barbara With: And in that list, we didn’t even have Albert Einstein. Shame on us. they had to take control of things. And when I channeled him, I spoke, and it was the voice of all my channeling, Barbara With: And it was the voice of sound. And it took me about three years to acclimate to this, and ac- [00:07:00] actually took me many years to finally acclimate to it. Barbara With: But I published Party of 12: The Afterlife Interviews in 2001. And in 2005, it was the 100-year anniversary of E=MC squared, and I thought, “Let’s do a little book for Albert, and let’s see what he has to say.” And that became the cornerstone of the deeper work as he delivered a unified field theory with a scientific definition of compassion, we say with a capital C, not the small C, as the fifth fundamental force of the universe, the creative intelligence that uses the other four fundamental forces to impel the creation of matter one step at a time. Barbara With: So compassion became not just what your blog beautifully covers with people who are looking how to live more in a loving state, how to forgive. It became a [00:08:00] cornerstone, a kind of a God force of this entire model of this unified field theory. And I, at the time, I just thought it was so brilliant, and it convinced me a little more that it was Einstein ’cause I could never think this stuff up. Barbara With: But that was the book that really got me invited around the world to teach and train. Gissele : That’s so beautiful. It’s not surprising that you are doing this work because it, starting from music, ’cause music It’s such a unifying force, right? It’s such a way that, people can relate to one another across languages a- across countries, and so it’s, it makes sense. W- what was the reception when you started channeling? What was people’s reaction to the channeling itself? ‘Cause it’s not a traditionally accepted methodology, right? But I also know many people that channel as well, and the messaging that comes across is so beautiful and authentic. But I think some people have doubts around it. Gissele : So what was the feedback you might have received when you first started [00:09:00] channeling? Barbara With: I lived in a world of musicians, so it wasn’t, I didn’t live in a corporate world or a that world, and so there was a little more acceptance and flexibility to it. But my attitude has always been, and still remains, that at the root of everything is a mystery. It’s a mystery. We do not know. So I’m not gonna come here to try to convince you this is Albert Einstein. Barbara With: My whole thing was, you tell me what it is then. Barbara With: Come and have a reading, and then you tell me what it is, because I’m not really sure, but it sure is beautiful Gissele : Yeah, and the– and to be honest, the messaging is really the fundamental. If you take something out of the messaging, it really doesn’t matter who it’s from, right? the messaging you’re sharing about peace and world and compassion are things we need in this moment, whether it comes from Barbara or whether it comes from somebody as well known as Einstein. Gissele : And Barbara With: and when the girls asked, “Who are you?” And they said, “Angels,” my skeptic again kicked in “Angels? What is [00:10:00] this, angels?” And we decided just that, that we’re gonna judge it by the fruits and the fruits were so profound that we couldn’t deny Gissele : Yeah. Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit more about the, the compassion with the C? Like, how is it defined in, How does it really fit within the whole concept of peace? Barbara With: His definition of compassion with a capital C is based on the root of the word, which is a compass. And the meaning of compass, one is that it’s an instrument that draws circles, and another compass is the one that aligns to true north. So he explained, and this is the whole unified field theory, that compassion reaches into the nothing and pulls out all of the mathematics that are going to be you. Barbara With: And it creates a circular membrane domain that surrounds them so that gives you this finite life that you’re about to experience. And this is all taking place in the center of the [00:11:00] planet. And then, like a compass that aligns to true north, compassion aligns all of our co- let’s call it compilation of consciousness. Barbara With: So it aligns all of our compilations to true north so we’re all on the same map. Barbara With: And in a unified field, the microcosm operates like the macrocosm. So those compilations energetically are a reflection of how the Earth operates. So the Earth has an electromagnetic field and so do we. And then the third thing that it does, it in- instills within our being in every cell that we have the truth, which is that we’re all one being. Barbara With: And I think that’s where the more traditional idea of compassion as love and empathy and kindness, I think that’s in that little category. But the rest of it, he really kept in a kind of a scientific n- revolutionary definition that I’d never heard anywhere before as a part of all of creation. And [00:12:00] it basically it says we are made of compassion Gissele : Beautiful. Yeah. I- it’s so interesting that, as you brought in m- the whole concept of math, when I think about the F- Fibonacci sequence and how everything is made in swirls, right? Everything is made in a particular sequence. Three, six, nine, and repeating and so on. And we often see math as like a, a course that we took some time in elementary school and maybe in high school and maybe… But there’s all of this, I don’t know, all of this, this connection to numbers and connection to equations and a connection to frequency and energy and all of these things that we don’t see. And I love what you said before we think we have it all figured out because we think we have this knowledge base of what we think are hard facts, but the truth of the matter is there’s so much we don’t know. Gissele : There’s so much that’s a mystery. Like 99% of it is empty space, and so all of that is mysterious. And so I do love how we’re able to bring that aspect of it, right? I’m curious as to, you define the whole concept of [00:13:00] self-love and how that fits with peace. Gissele : And the reason why I say that is because there’s a lot of misconceptions about self-love being very selfish and narcissistic, and people don’t see that connection to international peace. But I’m of agreement with you that it’s very much needed. But I’m just wondering if you could share with the audience how the two interconnect and how it really is the path to peace. Barbara With: On a basic level, I would distinguish those two from selfishness, which is you are making decisions just for your own sake at the expense sometimes of others, and self-love, which is really the thing that all of us have been charged to learn because no one is going to take care of us. Barbara With: No one’s gonna feel my feelings, no one’s gonna think my thoughts, no one’s gonna make my decisions. Barbara With: But in the unified field theory, self-love becomes a process, and this is what Conflict Revolution is. It teaches us how to [00:14:00] not just witness ourself e- every day as a practice, but we work with what we call the three human dimensions, and these are the three dimensions that allow us to have this human life on the planet. Barbara With: And they’re emotion, which we locate in our solar plexus, intuition, we put in our heart, and intellect in our head. Barbara With: And in the process of aligning to compassion, the… If you’re aligned to compassion, here’s how it looks. Emotion starts flowing up. There’s no good and bad. It’s all the fuel of what’s going to create reality for us. Barbara With: Again, a bigger definition of emotion with a capital E. So at the root of the lamp and the computer, there is Emotion, with a capital E. But there’s also within that, of course, all of our feelings. But in, if we’re aligned to compassion, emotion is flowing up through us, and it’s [00:15:00] activating intuition, which is always impelling us to take the next step for the good of the whole situation. Barbara With: And intuition knows that. God knows what is. Intellect doesn’t, but the heart… and I define it, we define it as a small impelling, could be a statement, could be a body urge, telling us to take the next most advantageous step for the good of the whole situation. And this is how we’re meant to operate. Barbara With: But then it flows into the third, into the intellect, and on a very base level, intellect and ego are needed to define the world. Somewhere on some subatomic part of our intellect, there’s this message going, “That is a computer. That is a computer. That is a computer.” And it’s part of what’s projecting and creating that computer from the math that compassion somehow knew to pull out of nothing. Barbara With: But what happens is [00:16:00] when this flows up into the intellect, ego has been given the power to be the part of the operating system that actually makes the decision. So if intuition tells you to turn left, it’s not intuition that is driving the electromagnetic command to your hand. It’s the ego and the intellect So Einstein says every conflict that manifests in the world is between intuition and intellect because we’ve been given the power to say no, and we all ha- do this. Barbara With: Intuition says rest, and intellect says, “I can’t rest. I’ve got 150 things to do.” And then we rush off, and we do those things, and we g- start to have conflicts, and we wonder why, and we blame people. So that is what we term as self-love, is that when we are taking care of our operating system to the highest good of the system, and if you [00:17:00] think about working for the highest good and you think about ego making a decision that overrides intuition, now it’s making a decision for the good of the few, the intellect, at the expense of the many, the whole rest of the system. Barbara With: So self-love even gets defined in this kind of quasi-scientific way. And going back to the angels, when we do this, the natural byproduct is this projection of that peace, and that’s when the waitress who didn’t like me suddenly did, when the money comes in, when the synchronicity starts because we’re so lovingly caring for ourself and ultimately letting go, God’s in charge of trying to make things happen out here that we get out of the way and the magic is able to happen Gissele : I love that you said that it really is about connecting to our heart, and our heart will usually take– tell [00:18:00] us the path that where it could work out for everyone. I actually do like making decisions from that space. Once I– when I connected with my own self-love and self-compassion, I was able to have more compassion and love for other people. And now that when I have conflict I can say to myself, “Okay, can this be resolved with the maximum good for all involved?” And usually it’s not anything that I’m thinking of. I just put that– the thought out there, and it does come, and it can come as long as, as you mentioned, I’m not coming from a place of ego. Gissele : When I’m coming from a place of ego, I will see myself as a victim. I will see myself as wanting to be right, needing to have that, that reassurance. But when I can set that aside, my heart usually always wants to have, okay, what’s the greatest thing that could happen from this situation which is the good for everyone? Gissele : It doesn’t have to be this or that. I wanted to touch on something that I’ve been wanting to talk about in this podcast but have hesitated on and I’m so grateful that you mentioned it, [00:19:00] which is there is no good or bad. And this is an interesting journey considering the kind of people I have on my podcast. Gissele : I, I’ve had people that have forgiven their son’s killer and I’ve… former white supremacists and so on. So from a spiritual perspective, I have heard this, that there’s no good or bad. There’s just experience. Our soul chooses. It comes, it’s looking for experience. At a very human level, it’s hard to say that when you see kids getting hurt, when people get assaulted or murdered or racism or, like when… Especially children. it’s a really sensitive subject when children are hurt. It’s kinda hard to have that conversation. You can see it from a higher spiritual perspective that could be true and we’re all part of the divine and are therefore omnipotent and omniscient and all of these things. Gissele : But from a human perspective, to see someone suffer is really difficult. How can we come to term with those seeming dichotomies in a way that acknowledges the things that people might be going [00:20:00] through but also helps us understand that maybe this isn’t as real as we think it is, or people aren’t as horrible as we’d like to believe? Gissele : I don’t even know how to frame it. Barbara With: I came from a background of sexual abuse, so I come from that, and I think there’s two things. One is that w- I think spiritually we are here to unify the field. We’re here to… It’s like Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of Man. So we have two stories. One is the horrible things that my father did to me as a child, which were very true and did inflict tremendous trauma upon me and suffering that took me a long time, and the other is the spiritual belief system you may have about this bigger picture about eternal life. Barbara With: And I’ve just been doing a series of channeling sessions with a, a man who had, was just murdered not too long [00:21:00] ago, and he was explaining that, and th- the same with me and my father, is that before you come into this life, you have a covenant, and some of that covenant is based on your own, say, karma, for lack of a better word. Barbara With: Because when we have these compilations of consciousness in life, talking about math, and we make decisions, which we’ve given free will, if P then Q. If I choose to lash out at you, then this series of things will take place. If I choose to forgive you and love you, then this s- and all of that gets compiled in your compilation so that when you die, you make something of a covenant as well that, okay, and, this is why the Buddhists want us all to detach before we die, because what we’re attached to in life carries on, and then we have to go again to work through those attachments. Barbara With: And he really stressed, this young man who had been [00:22:00] murdered, that you really have to have the whole picture, and that within human life you don’t just go, “Oh those children just chose to be abused in their souls.” It’s we’re here to apply compassion to the actual human experience we’re having, and as the angels used to say, “We’re gonna ask you mothers to detach from your children. Barbara With: We know that you can’t, but we’re still gonna ask you to do it.” So our job is to detach from this reality as being the primary reality, this human physical form, and expand into a greater consciousness. And in this way, intuition then can lead us to Be in those places where there’s trauma, to be in those places where there’s the need for compassion, showing [00:23:00] up as a light of compassion, much like Jesus did, and then being guided to how do we help better everything. Barbara With: And in that way, it doesn’t deny the truth. Now, with my father, for example, I came to, in my life before he passed, I came to this incredible release of him. I, he didn’t let him back into my life, but I found that forgiveness, and I found that I put him out on the far circle is what I said. “Hi, Dad, I’ll see you in the afterlife,” ’cause if you can’t take responsibility… Barbara With: And yet before we came in, I think we had a covenant where he said… I said, “Will you help me be this amazing voice?” And his abuse triggered the dissociation, which triggered me exploring that world. So I never say those things lightly, though. It’s… Yeah, you just can’t Gissele : Yeah, and that’s fair. And I really appreciate that [00:24:00] because I think there’s room to both honor the, the suffering that we experience as human beings from our humanness, but also acknowledging that, there, there’s a bigger picture that we’re, again, going back to that whole s- the unknown, that we may not fully know, that we may not fully understand. And at some point in my life, I did ask myself, are our enemies our best friends because they’re forcing us to step into our power, to really, understand, how much we love ourselves, to act as the mirror for us? And that goes to what you had said earlier about each of you when you were talking about your conflict, the, the three of you, and you were mentioning, how am I responsible for the part that I’m bringing, and that kind of created change. That has also been my experience in my life, that when I’m having conflict with someone and I’m having an emotional reaction, it’s really is me that it’s being mirrored back, and I’m like, “Okay where do I need to change?” It’s not an easy thing to do. I Gissele : think the ego always wants to go to, “I’m a victim. It’s their fault. When are they gonna [00:25:00] change?” But when you are willing to shift your energy, I have found that people shift as well, which is really cool and interesting, but like you said, difficult. Difficult, yeah. Yeah. So if somebody was looking to, have more peace in their life right now, ’cause I- again, I go back to I love what you said. Gissele : It starts with us in, in our families, then our communities, and then the world. But we’re always wanting to “Oh, why can’t we just stop, the war in Afghanistan?” But meanwhile we can’t even stop like the conflict within ourselves or within, with our immediate families. What’s a starting point for someone who wants to experience greater peace within themselves and within their family unit? Barbara With: Well, let me give you Conflict Revolution 101. So it’s a practice that we do every day, and there’s– I say there’s four essential components to this: the three human dimensions, emotion, solar plexus, intuition, heart, intellect, and then there’s the witness who is watching those things. [00:26:00] So I always got so infuriated when people would say turn inward.” Barbara With: It’s like, “Okay, but what? What am I looking at? My organs? What are we looking at?” So what we’re looking at is how these three dimensions operate, because we all have a operating system, and most of us, most of that system is in conflict. We’re not feeling all of our feelings. We’re not listening to our intuition. Barbara With: And then the emotion that we do feel, like you’re saying you get into conflict, it moves up into our intellect, and we immediately start to define it as that person out there is just so disrespectful. And so there’s two operative things. One is that we wanna feel all emotion, not just the g- good ones, not suppress the bad ones. Barbara With: There are none. And to do that, it has nothing to do with thinking Barbara With: Has to do with breath and body. So we teach people how to, when an emotion comes up, anger, [00:27:00] depression, sadness, to use the breath in present moment to move it. And if you need some sort of buffer to your intellect, I used to have a affirmation that said, “I don’t need to know why I’m this mad. Barbara With: I need to just feel and breathe.” And then feel and breathe, and as you release it, it’s always a wave. It’ll always pass. When you’re in the very heart of the worst of emotion, you think it will never pass because it feels like eternity, because you are so connected, so deep into the planet to that part of your dimension, that there’s no thought processes. Barbara With: There’s not even intuition. It’s just the pure, raw force of creation. And so once we do that, we then weaken those projective thoughts, because that’s what’s so hard. You get mad and you have that thought and you’re looking at your friend. So when you start to [00:28:00] move the emotion otherwise… The second part is the shadow work, which is like what you said. Barbara With: When you get triggered, identify what you think that person is doing to you. Then we revolve it, thus the revolution, to ourself. And I just had one with my psychic sorority sister of 33 years. we were texting. We had a little conflict, and I thought, “She’s just not making herself clear.” Barbara With: And then I went back and I read my text. It said, “My text isn’t clear?” So I asked intuition, “What should I do?” And they said, I heard “Reach out to speak to her in person.” And so instead of trying to tell her how unclear she was- I wrote, “Hey, I can’t wait to talk to you on Saturday and go further with this.” Barbara With: And she wrote me back to say, “Hey, I got triggered. I’ve got these stories in my head. I’m gonna just step away, but we’ll talk Saturday.” And that dynamic right there, and I s- texted her this morning just [00:29:00] weeping how far we’d come in 33 years. That dynamic creates an entirely different energy flow. You’re still in conflict. Barbara With: Conflict’s never gonna go away. Conflict is a part of creation and life. But when we align to that compassion, honor ourself and our feelings, what I find is people feel the shift immediately when they honor their emotion. When you start to breathe in, embrace, and move that energy forward, now you’re tapping into creation, and your intuition is gonna get stronger, and it happens almost immediately Gissele : Yeah. Yeah. One of the things I was contemplating in my own journey is how this world that we have all co-created really focuses on the neck up, like just how much we value intellect . And also an unwillingness to feel difficult feelings, an unwillingness to be able to look at our fear and feel [00:30:00] like things like shame and guilt. but I know in having been involved in conflict and have mediated conflict, just how much shame and guilt will force people to not be able to look inward. It’s like a projection. How does compassion help us address the shame and guilt that requires us sometimes to look in and see that maybe we weren’t clear in our communication or that we weren’t necessarily being the most loving and compassionate ourselves? Barbara With: Because there’s two different things. There’s the actual shame, the f- emotion of shame that is a frequency, then there’s the intellectual thoughts of shame. Barbara With: So when shame comes up, it triggers a lot of times childhood patterns, for a long time. But when you treat the shame and you honor the emotion of shame with your breath to get it moving without letting it direct itself, into those shame f- [00:31:00] shameful thoughts, because on a very basic level, just aside from the human condition, to have this physical experience, emotion moves up, intuition says, some of the emotion is, “I’m a chair. Barbara With: I am Barbara. This is the math. Go be Barbara.” And then the intellect takes that, forms the thoughts and the d- definitions, and projects it. So when you’re feeling shame or deep anger or resentment, and it’s being filtered through a, an intellectual message that this is because my grandmother was this or that you’re not being this, you’re creating that reality. Barbara With: You are cementing that reality, and people don’t understand how much power they have to break that. Doesn’t mean everybody’s suddenly gonna bow down to you or there’s never gonna be conflict, but when you break that and you w- honor the shameful emotion with your breath and [00:32:00] move it like more like yoga, that the intellectual arena frees up from having to project, and now you can, have that little wiggle room where you’re like, “Okay, now let’s see. Barbara With: I’m doing conflict revolution. Okay, they really are disrespectful of me. Where am I disrespectful of me?” Barbara With: And I’m telling you 100%, because intuition will tell you something and you’ll do the opposite, and that is such a great disrespect f- for aligning to compassion Gissele : Love that. I wanted to share some of my own experiences in terms of not listening to my intuition. W- just because sometimes a level of intuition or guidance didn’t make sense in my mind, and then there was other instances… So I got beyond that, so I was able to follow my intuition, things that were most excitement. The thing that I didn’t expect in following my intuition was when I put expectations [00:33:00] on what should come. So for example, when I first left my workplace, I had a steady job and, and I w- I’ve been guided to do this podcast, and I’m doing a documentary, and I’ve been guided to do this center that I have. And when I was guided to do things like write a book, okay, so I wrote a book, or do this talk, and then I do the talk. And so I do all of the things expecting certain specific outcomes. Oh, I should have… be flooded with engagements, or I have lots of money now, and all of these things. And when that didn’t happen, I got mad at my intuition and at my heart and at God, source, universe, ’cause I’m like, “Look it, I’m following what you’re telling me to, but things aren’t showing up. Gissele : What gives, right?” So what is your feedback on when we have expectations when we’re following our heart and how to perhaps let that go? Barbara With: I think that is a lifelong journey. I think it’s a lifelong experiential ’cause we are our own guinea pigs, right? We’re the lab rats. And the story that I always tell is my mother, at 94, fell [00:34:00] and needed to go into assisted living. And so we all, m- my three sisters and I, we looked for the place. Barbara With: We all felt intuitively this was good. It was near her home. Every- she even was willing, which was unheard of. So I was so like, “Oh my gosh, I followed my intuition.” And about the second month in, she called me and said, “Hey, I looked at this newsletter from the place, and they said th- there’s a chance that we might all be evicted in July.” Barbara With: And I was like, “What?” And it turned out they didn’t tell us that they were the interim company that had been hired by HUD because the original owners of this place had just walked away. Gissele : Oh Barbara With: tell us when we signed the lease. And so that, those questions were like, “What in the world? I am this evolved being who followed my intuition.” Barbara With: And it’s like, okay, whatever. So they end up getting a lot of upgrades, and come July, [00:35:00] my mother’s showing them the new social worker and the new nurse, and it’s like, “Oh, we’ve done it.” And then she fell out of bed and broke her femur, and she couldn’t be there. So I had decided not to sell her home until we knew if she was gonna be able to stay. Barbara With: So when she broke her femur, the only option short of a nursing home, which I was never gonna do, I found two homeless caregivers, and I brought her home and I installed them, Barbara With: And she lived another three years, and she loved those women. And despite the, okay, my intuition says Victoria is a good fit, but I put her in the house and she turns out to be crazy. Barbara With: What am I gonna do? They stayed with her until she died. They were with her when she died. So that lesson for me was, there’s a reason why they didn’t tell us. squadcaster-djej_1_06-18-2026_140036: Yeah. Barbara With: know what it is, but I had to deal with it in the moment the way that I did. But that was so [00:36:00] impacting for me that it really helps me so much now to just go, ” What’s my intuition say to do?” Barbara With: And then I hear it, and then I do it without a lot of that wait a minute. I’m supposed to… This is gonna… I have to.” It’s like, no, just do it, because you can’t see that long run. And this trust that I have in my intuition is what keeps me safe Gissele : Yeah. But it’s so funny because we are not taught that, right? We’re taught to look for external sources of safety and look for external information and validation and leadership. And so because that isn’t fostered to us in the school system, sometimes with specific parents, it’s like h- having to unlearn a lot of those messages so that we can then be in touch with ourselves. Gissele : But… A- and I will say that when I look back upon any of those experiences that I’ve had, my life is way better than having followed my intuition, and it was way better than I thought it would be. But the [00:37:00] journey has been… Like, I’m like, “Man, I’m stubborn,” right? Gissele : Because I’m like I’m like, I have all these expectations and I think this is how it should go, and when it doesn’t go, and I’m like, It’s another opportunity to let go. It’s another opportunity to surrender even more, even though surrender has never felt safe for me, right? Because of lots of childhood trauma and so it’s a process of baby stepping it to surrender. But it feels so good when you can surrender and how, when life demonstrates to you that you are in fact are safe. Barbara With: And those intricate, intimate baby steps of learning, learning, okay, wait, I can trust my intuition, and then there’s all this fear, and then there’s the fearful thoughts. So it’s breathe away the fear. You can adjust the thoughts, and step by step, we become these new creatures of this new earth Gissele: Yeah Gissele : What do you think the new Earth will look like since you mentioned the new Earth? Barbara With: I think this is my theory ’cause people are like does Einstein think that the worlds are gonna split and there’ll be this one w-?” I think they already do, because what I’ve [00:38:00] found is that the more that I have self-loved, the more that I’ve aligned to compassion, and the more I do my conflict revolution, when I get my aha moment, like when I see where I’m disrespecting myself, and we call it hanging and dang, ’cause it’s like you’re watching and suddenly you see yourself doing that thing and you’re like, “Dang, it’s me,” and then you make the decision to make a different decision. Barbara With: That is the most powerful transformation. I can tell you all day long all these theories, but until you do this… And when I get that, then the people around me either rise to the occasion d- as a reflection, they’re inspired and they’re meant to, or they disappear. Gissele : Yeah. Yeah Barbara With: I think right now what we’re, what I’m finding in my life, because I have never been happier or more at peace in what I think is probably the craziest planet this has maybe ever existed, Gissele : yeah. Barbara With: but I’m not… Barbara With: [00:39:00] Because my safety and my self-love and my validation all come from the voice of God within me, all of that, it’s a… I made this covenant to be here at this time, to make this change, to be the change so that when I walk out into the world, people turn their heads and they’re like, “Wow, you’re glowing. Barbara With: Wow, you’re exuding.” It’s like that’s the point. I’m living my life. I’m taking care of myself, and in the process I’m exuding. And the people who really are… And I do think there are people who are evil in the sense that their intellects are so just clenched down into, “This is how it has to be, and for the good of me.” Barbara With: There’s really people like that in the world, and they do have an effect, but when I come up against them, they don’t shake my core. That’s gonna be their karma, not mine. And my exuding of compassion that, like you said, c- love and [00:40:00] compassion are the most powerful forces of the universe, it pushes them away or it changes them, and I just, I’m so excited. Gissele : Can I say how much I love the dang? Because, or like at least in, in my history, my natural inclination would be, would have been to be mad at myself for making a mistake and be like, “Oh my God,” in the words of Taylor Swift, “It’s me. I’m the problem. It’s me.” But sometimes realizing that, especially when you are doing the work of love and compassion, right? You’re like… Sometimes your brain is more likely to say, “Oh my God, you’re a fraud. I can’t believe it.” But just like I love the dang, “oh man. Oops. I guess I guess I didn’t do that right. Gissele : How can I change?” I… It really… I love the language. It softens it to the point where you’re able to say, “You know what? I’m doing the best and I’m always keeping my eye on how can I be more loving and compassionate, and sometimes I just don’t have it. Dang. Maybe this next moment I will do a better job.” Gissele : And so I think that enables us to [00:41:00] soften and the more that, in my experience, the more that I am kind and loving to myself, the more that I actually am way more tolerant. I don’t need people to change or to be different because they’re not giving me anything. I’m getting everything from myself, and that doesn’t mean I don’t love people or they don’t love me, and that’s wonderful. But the essence of my peace, of my love and all of that is from within, so I don’t need people to behave in a specific way so that they can give me something, Gissele : which to me, Barbara With: what you just said is so huge. And while we’re going through it, it feels like all those things. It feels like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe how I’ve just, not listened or didn’t…” But we don’t take into any account in that moment, look at us making the effort to be self-conscious, as we say, conscious of ourself. Barbara With: Huge. Huge Gissele : yeah. It’s so [00:42:00] interesting, like I will say now to myself, “I’m so proud of you.” Like when I overcome something really difficult or when I try to do better, even if I mess up, I’m so proud of you. And these are only things that I heard when I was like financially or educationally successful. Barbara With: Right Gissele : But now I say them to myself even for minor things when I’m like, “You know what? Gissele : We overcame that or we tripped over that rock, but we remembered and we’re better this time,” or, “We treated that person with a lot of love and compassion,” or, “We made a different choice this time,” or whatever. even if I take three steps back and one step forward, I’m still proud of myself for taking that step forward and from learning from those step back, ’cause last time it was five steps fa- back, right? And so it’s that, the ability to say to myself, “I’m proud of you. I believe in you. You’re worthy.” It’s just so powerful, and we have that within us, right? Isn’t that Gissele : so [00:43:00] fascinating? But we don’t… and you talked about evil people. I think, again, those people are so disconnected from their own hearts ’cause once you connect to your heart, there’s no way that you can’t see the beauty and the humanity in someone else. There’s no way that you can’t relate to their stories and to their suffering and to their humanness, right? Like you must be fairly disconnected from yourself in order to just see somebody suffering and go, “Oh, like to Gissele : me that doesn’t make… Yeah. Oh, Barbara With: evil Gissele : Yeah, which is Barbara With: But that goes back to the beginning conversation where I have to believe on some level, as much as I don’t like this and I’m on a world peace tour for the rest of my natural life to bring this forward, those two have a covenant. They have something I don’t understand. Barbara With: It doesn’t excuse that behavior, but it detaches me from having to think I gotta get in there and f- fix them or, something beyond what my intuition can guide me to do to help [00:44:00] that person or what have you. So it is that balance Gissele : Yeah. A- but a- and I appreciate and love what you said because my experience has been one, when you hold the highest energy of love in front of people that are hurtful, they transform. I’ve seen it. It’s really interesting. It’s something I’m exploring actually in, in my documentary because I’ve had those experiences and you’re like, “Wow.” Gissele : And yet I can’t always do it. Gissele : Do you know what I’m saying? And yet sometimes I just I want to choose to hold that energy. I want to choose, but in those moments, I feel… At times I feel like, oh, no, the ego Gissele is just way, she’s just way too loud. She needs to feel like a victim right now, or she needs to feel whatever difficult moments. Gissele : It’s okay. And Barbara With: We call it stomping on sidewalks Gissele : Exactly. Barbara With: gotta go st- go stomp. Go stomp for a while Gissele : what I’ve learned is that’s okay too, right? Like that… so I Gissele : have to [00:45:00] acknowledge, my human self, right? And I think that’s one of the challenges we think that we have to be perfect at being loving and compassionate. We have to be the Dalai Lama or these people that are spiritual people, and you’re like I’m stomping the sidewalk today. Gissele : I’m not being the Dalai Lama today. I’m just being my human self.” It– but in the next moment I can choose more love and more compassion, right? Barbara With: And Princess Di said something too that struck me so much in that first interview was that she was making this case about we have to stop elevating famous people. We have to stop looking outside ourselves like, “Oh, Deepak Chopra, he’s the whatever,” or this and that, because we’re all stars in heaven. Gissele : Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Barbara With: And so I think that’s a big lesson for Gissele : Thank you for mentioning that because that’s one of the things that, I read a, a recent report from the Muhammad Ali Center, and they did a report on compassion, and they were talking about how people don’t want to learn from [00:46:00] celebrities and gurus and stuff like… Gissele : ‘Cause it’s all fake. They don’t know who to trust, and so they just wanna learn it from regular people. They wanna see other people and how they’re, fumbling through being more loving and more compassionate and how they’re trying to, you know– ’cause they also wanna… They want that authenticity, that real voice, right? But it’s true. It’s like we’ve had that for a long time, that guruism where we kept pe- putting people up in pedestals when, like you said we’re all part of the divine, Gissele : right? We all have that- Barbara With: Any time that we take somebody and put them on this pedestal and think that they’re the one, that imbalance right there, because they’re not. And I would say to anyone, “Don’t do anything that whoever is teaching you isn’t doing themselves.” Barbara With: Otherwise, and that’s always been my philosophy, and I don’t know if it’s why I’m not a rock star, except that, intuition again, thank God, what a terrible business that turned out to be. [00:47:00] but to find the people who actually… I had this woman at work. I used to work at a nonprofit, and she taught time management. Barbara With: She could not manage her time out of a paper bag. So always look for that, and I’m a big proponent of self-teaching Gissele : Yeah. Yeah. I like people and follow people that say and I’m a big… This is something that I do myself, which is the power’s within you. You can follow somebody’s path, follow different people’s guidance or whatever if that helps you. But ultimately, everything we need is like Neville Goddard says, each of us has a seed within us, and that seed knows everything that you need to do. Gissele : All you have to do is water it, right? So everything comes from within us. We’re just not quiet enough, so we follow all these different people and follow their paths, but their paths aren’t ever gonna get you to where you need to get to. You have to follow your guidance from within. It knows the way , right? Gissele : And so if you’re following [00:48:00] a program but it helps you go inward, amen. Barbara With: Right Gissele : If it’s a path to where you gotta follow their path and that’s the way, eh, that, that’s not for me. So for me, it’s more like, okay, are you teaching me to go inward? Are you telling me to really go and follow my heart, my intuition, my guidance? Then that to me is yeah that’s everything. Wait, there’s different people, different ways you can get there, and that’s, like you said, the beauty of the experience. I can try different things and I can use people for support and whatever. Like the… Otherwise, we would’ve come here in this world by ourselves. Gissele : So obviously we’re meant to support one another and uplift one another. But to me, that’s a sign of a teacher that is t- getting you to find that from within yourself, Gissele : rather than focusing on a guru or a leader or whatever because I don’t think that’s the path people follow, the path… And that’s their path, but maybe it’s not your path. Barbara With: And the angels told us years ago that this work that we were doing, ’cause we were all like, “We’re gonna be on Oprah.” It’s like, [00:49:00] no, the work that you’re doing is not a stopping place. This is not about accumulating a bunch of followers. It’s about making a one-to-one connection and then moving on. Barbara With: If they need more information, they can come get it, but… And so I’m as much as, there was that part of me that wanted to be a rock star, it’s like I’m way okay with that Gissele : And I also wanna emphasize something that is very instrumental that you said, which is You focus, as much as you’re doing this worldwide tour and you’re talking to people, what I heard you say earlier was that you’re focusing on every relationship that you have. E- every, every person that you’re interacting with, you’re interacting with them from that place of love and compassion. That has ripple effects that we don’t see on television or whatever that we’re acknowledging, and that is so huge because I think people feel like I need to be Barbara,” or, “I need to be whoever. I need to be Oprah.” But the truth of the matter is, if you focus on the one-to-one relationships with the people in your life and in your [00:50:00] environment, and treat it from the place of love and compassion, that has incredible ripples and universal ripples. And I think that’s why we have so much conflict in our world. It’s difficult for us to find that peace within ourselves and with the people immediately in our lives. Like, how many people have conflict within their families, and yet they’re like, “Oh, end the war in Afghanistan”? You can see how difficult it is if Barbara With: Yeah, very Gissele : if you can’t talk to your aunt or, like everybody’s excommunicated this other part of your life. Gissele : It… You’re not gonna have peace in Afghanistan. You’re not gonna have peace in the world because that’s just a reflection of ourselves. And that’s, Barbara, that’s a hard lesson, isn’t it? Barbara With: This is the hardest work you will ever do, but the rewards are phenomenal Gissele : Yeah. Yeah, fair enough. So last question, where can people find you? Where can they work with you? What do you wanna share with the audience? Barbara With: barbarawith.com, And it’s W-I-T-H like the preposition, Barbara With. I have up in my right-hand corner of my website, it’s called the [00:51:00] Conflict Revolution Challenge, and you can go and download the basic instructions. And then I also have a 12-week journal that you can download to keep track of what you’re learning in your own guinea pig type of way. Barbara With: And if someone would like to have a reading use the coupon code EINSTEIN, and you can get 40% off of an hour reading, and they pack a punch. And my website leads to my music website also, which is barbarawith.com, and my other publishing company, Synergy Alliance, where we published our first book, and there’s just… Barbara With: There’s so much. It’s just so deep and so rich that you could, you can learn a lot just going through the website. But reach out through the website and the contact and ask a question Gissele : Thank you so much, Barbara, for sharing your wisdom and all your knowingness about love and compassion, we had a great conversation around how we can take steps in helping the world become a little bit more [00:52:00] peaceful. And thank you to everyone who joined for another episode of Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. See you soon

TRANSCRIPT Gissele: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. Today, we’re talking about unconditional love in relationships, and my guest today is Adam Guzman-Puell. Gissele: who’s a holistic relationship counselor, coach, and existential therapist, and the author of the Amazon bestseller, Lessons on Love. Gissele: He draws on 20 years of apprenticeship in spiritual traditions from around the globe, including indigenous elders, Buddhist teachings, and yogic philosophy, integrating their wisdom with modern psychology to help couples and individuals build conscious, meaningful relationships rooted in the sacred. When he’s not working with clients, you’ll likely find him having fun with his son, Gissele: Arjuna and his wife, Adrienne, mentoring a young person or volunteering at a local permaculture garden in Bali, where he lives for the majority of the year. [00:01:00] Please join me in welcoming Adam. Hi, Adam. Adam: Hi, great to see you, Gissele. Pleasure to be here. Gissele: Oh, good to see you too. Thank you so much for being on the show. I’m so excited for our conversation, talking about, relationships and how challenging and also amazing and beautiful they can be, especially trying to unconditionally love people. Gissele: I was wondering if you could start by telling the audience a little bit about how you got started in this work. Adam: So gosh where to begin? I guess the journey of love is a, a journey of a lifetime. I think we all know that, right? But it’s, Adam: For me, one of the, opening doors, the big opening doors of, finding love started actually in my childhood, and we’re talking about unconditional love, right? Adam: This love and, I grew up with a little bit of a, a rough childhood. I was a little bit of a, a crazy teen, a little wild. Lots of some problems with the law and problems with drugs, alcohol. [00:02:00] And when I was 16, I was blessed to find the loving presence of an indigenous elder over on Algonquin territory in Ottawa, Canada. Adam: And she was a beautiful woman, and she had this power of just, one of the greatest gifts of love is being able to see somebody. To see past, who, the, the mud and the conditioning, and seeing through to the heart. So she saw past what society may have looked at “Oh, here’s this messed up kid who’s like this and like that,” and she saw me at my core, right? Adam: And so that was like, that allowed me to step into who I truly was, and that started the 20-year apprenticeship with, different indigenous elders, teachers through the p- process of meditation. And that was like the beginning of the opening of love and that’s… Yeah, that, that was the beginning of that part and, there’s other chapters and I’m sure we’ll get to those, but oh, yeah. Gissele: Yeah. [00:03:00] I love that story. And I also wanna point out how key what you just said is unconditional love is the ability to see people as their true essence, and from my perspective is the divine within them. And so if we could truly love people, we can see them beyond their flaws, beyond what they’re portraying, beyond that, the hurt behaviors. But it’s … it can feel difficult to do that when we ourselves probably don’t see ourselves that way. Gissele: Can you tell me a little bit about what you’ve learned from what are the, the core teachings from all of these different traditions about the importance of self-love in loving other people? Adam: Yeah. The importance of self-love is really… i’m gonna draw from the Gita now, and then I’m gonna weave it into the different Buddhist and indigenous teachings. But in the Gita, in the Bhagavad Gita they talk about the Self with a capital S- Self, right? It’s that [00:04:00] divine. Adam: You talked about the divine within us So when we really tap into that divine within ourselves, like who we actually are, you and me, we are souls. We are beautiful, we are whole, we are complete, and that is us in our essence. So the more that we connect with that essence within us that true essence of us, we are love itself, right? Adam: So the more that we are able to connect with that through different practices, whether it be meditation, whether it be through service, whether it be through just the simple act of taking care of yourself ’cause your body’s a temple, right? So those things help you get in touch with your essence, and then you’re more able to give that to the world around you, right? Adam: You– We all know that, we can’t give from an empty cup. So Adam: tap into the divine within us, and then we’re able to reflect the divine into other people. I just wanna tell just a fun, fun story that just happened to me yesterday evening, [00:05:00] and it wa- it’s a perfect example of what happens when we look at people in the divine. Adam: So the other day I w- I had to go get water. So in Bali, we have to get like liters of wa-water. We can’t actually like 20 liters at a time ’cause you can’t drink the drinking water here. So I went to go get water at the store, at the convenience store there, and at the convenience store, there’s a lot of builders around the area, and there, so there was this character that kind of looked a little shady. Adam: Like you could look, see, he looked a little shady and, of course, like my automatic schemata comes up that we’re programmed through from, and then there’s quick automatic judgments that I’m, that I made. And so that’s my little self looking at these, this scenario, looking at that, and then I bypass that with my conscious self, with my divine self, and it’s “This is a divine being here that’s looking at…” Adam: And I consciously said that in my head, and then I saw him at that. And amazingly, immediately when I did that, the man [00:06:00] got up and helped me pick up my water and then put it on my motorbike to drive away. It was like how my thoughts really truly influenced the situation around us. And there’s a lot of research in heart math, like how your, your heart actually puts out a frequency into the field and affects the vibration of other people’s hearts, and the same is true with our thoughts. Adam: That’s just a little quick story that I just thought about the that Gissele: Yeah, fantastic. Adam: Yeah Gissele: It actually reminded me of my own experience. So I was once at a Starbucks in downtown Toronto, ’cause I’m Canada, and I remember coming in and it was super busy. And so I’m doing the lineup, and I gotta get back to my meeting, and then somebody comes in, and the energy just feels off. Gissele: It just feels I don’t know. I felt like I just need to run away, but there are so many people and everything was blocked, and I thought, “Okay, so I can’t run away right now. It’s gonna look weird, and it’s blocked, so what can I do?” And the only thing that I could think to do in that moment is to [00:07:00] align to the essence of love, which meant, for me, just sending out loving thoughts to that being, to that person, and to the people all around. And I did not expect this. This was so weird. So the person then looked right at me, and they kinda had a weird expression, and they said, “I can’t be here.” And then they just left. Gissele: And some people kinda had a weird expression. The majority of people didn’t even notice. And that, to me, was the beginning of me understanding the transformative power of Gissele: love, just being able to see to hold the essence of love, in- including for that person. Gissele: I didn’t know what, what was up with them, but I just knew that I… if I held that energy for them, that maybe it could help ’cause I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t… Not expecting anything to happen, but it was really interesting to see that [00:08:00] immediate reaction to that energy that I was putting out there because I… Gissele: There was… That little s- little me was like, “Oh, I can’t just bolt out of here. It’d look weird,” right? So expecting that judgment. But, so thank you for sharing that story, Gissele: ’cause it, it reminded me. The other thing that really stuck out to me is just how often we do th- things from the little self. Gissele: I… Gissele: you’re right, and especially me as a woman, the way I was trained not to trust anyone, because of our family history of abuse. And so my little self always constantly goes first to, Danger. Danger. Who’s the th- what’s the potential danger?” But it takes practice, Gissele: and that’s what you were trying to say. Gissele: It takes real practice for us to see it and to bypass. Can you share a little bit about your journey to getting to that bypass? ‘Cause I can’t… I can only imagine that it must not have been just immediately. You don’t… Unless maybe that happened to you, that you became automatically enlightened. Gissele: But it’s been a minute for Gissele: me in terms of the journey of having to really shift from that little S. Adam: Yeah, I think, everyone [00:09:00] it is that takes time, and even if it just happens in an instant, if you believe in past lives, they’ve done the work before. Gissele: Yeah, Adam: right? Adam: Yeah. So for me yeah, it’s been, it’s similar. It’s been a long journey and I did many different practices for years of just it’s like I think, I did meditation different Vipassana meditation for years, different yogic meditations for years. Adam: Studying with indigenous ceremonies for years and like really apprenticing on the land. I’m not just like talking about a weekend retreat. It’s like literally in, in it. And how I look at it is like we’re polishing a diamond, right? There is it’s when you get a, a diamond at first it’s all rough and ragged, right? Adam: But it takes time and you’re just chipping away bit by bit. Adam: And the more you chip, the more sparkles start to shine through and the more you do it. And it’s a process and we have to be patient with ourselves and patient with those like automatic reactions that come up. And like a really helpful practice for, [00:10:00] everyone listening is really to remember that’s not me. Adam: That’s not me. And it’s like that’s something, like something that like I, like I’ll say with my wife or something like that, if my little self comes up and I’m critical or a jerk or something like that because it happens to me and I, as I’m like, “I’m sorry, sweetie. Adam: Like that’s not me.” And I’ll literally put it aside and it’s not, it’s not bypassing because it’s like some people are like, “Oh, that’s bypassing.” It’s like, no, it’s just not acknowledging that like it’s like actually who are you at your core, right? And we’re talking about we’re– we opened up this conversation, we’re said we’re divine at our core. Adam: So that remembrance of oh okay, so I’ve been programmed through different experiences throughout my lifetime that this is the self that’s this conditioned self, but that divine self is limitless. It’s love itself. Adam: And so just keep reorienting through that and like I cannot say enough about meditation right? Adam: It’s [00:11:00] ’cause like meditation we have like we have five senses that are going outside, all right? But meditation trains us to go inside, right? And it also trains us to concentrate on our thoughts and to realize that, oh, I’m not the thoughts. I’m actually the one standing behind and watching them flow by, right? Adam: And so who is that I that’s watching the thoughts, and it’s no matter n- neuroscience, they’ve talked about all these plot places and they can pinpoint where different emotions come, they can pinpoint where the different thought is coming from, but they cannot pinpoint consciousness. Adam: The person that knows that there’s a, there’s observing, and that’s the soul, and that’s who we are. Gissele: Yeah. I really appreciate you being honest about the, the fact that that it’s an ongoing practice, right? Gissele: And in relationships, sometimes you get triggered and you don’t really understand why, and, even though you love your partners and you love the people in your life sometimes there has to be an apology. Gissele: There has to be a reflection of “Oh, is this who I choose to Gissele: [00:12:00] be?” And that can feel hard. We can… We judge ourselves so often expecting perfection of Gissele: ourselves in this work, which is not fair, right? It’s like you said, it’s a journey. What helped you gain the knowing that you are a soul instead of a s- a human self? Gissele: And the reason why I ask this is because I know in my journey, I could have recited… Like in the past, I could have recited to you all the stuff that you’re talking Gissele: about, but I didn’t know it. And I knew I didn’t know it because when the challenges came up, I always reacted from the place of the little self, always went back to the nervous system that was constantly tight and reactive the fear-based thoughts. Even though I knew the stuff, like I could recite it from all the stuff that I had read, it wasn’t until I f- until I fully started to embody and truly know and remember. Am I there yet? Absolutely not. I knew when I acted [00:13:00] differently, when I Gissele: reacted differently to the challenges in my life, that I was beginning to embody. Gissele: But again, that also took a minute. So I was wondering what helped you realize it and that… have that knowing of us being a soul being rather than just this little s… Because the majority of people are worried about death and all of… taxes and all these things, right? Adam: And those are things we have to worry about them too, right? They– It’s like they’re also that we have to do that as well. But but I think you, y-you describe very well the, the process of like first learning, right? First there’s like this intellectual understanding. So imagine that you’re trying to drive a car. Adam: The first thing that you do is you do the test, right? And you’re like reading the book, and you’re learning about all these different things. And then so you’re intellectually getting the understanding of what it is to all the processes you need to do. The same as like learning about these essence. Like you can read different scriptures and they’ll tell you these things, and you’re starting to understand it intellectually, which is helpful, right? Adam: ‘Cause it gives you that frame, right? And then you [00:14:00] see where you’re off. But it doesn’t mean you’re not getting it. Like it doesn’t mean you’re not fully there. It’s just your– It’s just the process of learning, right? So we have to give ourselves grace in like that, like we’re gonna stall the car every now and then. Adam: We’re gonna get stalled and maybe bark at somebody every now and then, and that’s okay. Give ourselves grace. And then you said embodied, and that’s really where it is. It’s when we are in the body and it’s a somatic experience, right? We need to bring this within us. And the mind is the first kind of like director. Adam: Our conscious mind can direct us where we need to go. But like bringing us within the body, and that’s why I keep bringing it back to meditation ’cause it’s like the shortest route to, to connecting to that soul essence. Because like we’re bringing our attention within us and we’re like tapping in “Oh, here’s me. Adam: I am this mountain. There’s Adam: these cloud– There’s these thoughts floating by of maybe [00:15:00] it’s negativity, maybe it’s judgment, maybe it’s… But I’m not that. I’m the one watching.” And there, like there begins a moment when you realize “I’m not actually these thoughts floating by. I’m the mountain watching the clouds float by. Adam: I am that essence.” And so that, that awareness comes through practice, and it is an embodied experience. And the more that we do it, it just happens. Like we’ll realize that we’re m- gonna be more conditioned to be more loving. But as we opened it up, it’s a practice and it’s a process, and we gotta give ourselves grace along the way ’cause we’re gonna scrape our knees many times. Adam: We’re gonna fall, and that’s okay. Adam: Yeah. Gissele: Yeah. I wanted to share sort of my own experience in the sense that… So in, on the meditation, in the cushion, like I could have the most amazing experiences. Once I would come out though, I was still reacting the same way. even when I acted differently, let’s [00:16:00] say I took big steps, like from that embodied place, my nervous system would still… Gissele: there was so much tension and so much like clenching and so much, even though my meditations were great. And so I kinda had that disconnect of ‘Cause then what I would do is I would amp up my meditation. I would meditate more, and then I’m like I can’t just meditate my whole life away and wait till it changes,” right? And so what advice do you have Gissele: for someone who might be going through that journey Adam: yeah. So Gissele: of trying to connect their inner world with their outer Adam: Yeah. That’s the process that we’re all moving through, right? And I think, When we’re in the world, right? We’re not monks away from the world, and this is like we’re we’re here to be love in the world. And the process I would say is the meditation is the, like the beginning training ground. Adam: And then any time that we’re facing challenges in the world, this is a moment to release [00:17:00] ourselves, right? To release ourselves. So if there’s a challenge, say you’re, you meet a conflict with your spouse. You’re, there’s someone that in your work is upsetting you. So the upset is the small self, right? Adam: That’s the small self is getting upset. So can you relax and release around that feeling? So similar, when we’re on a mat and you’re te- you may feel some tension, you take a deep breath, you breathe in, and you relax into it. And that’s like you calm your nervous system down, right? That’s a very known somatic process, just breathing in and relax. Adam: Breathe in and relax. And that process of relaxing and releasing calms the mind down, and you’re more likely to, you know– So your nervous system is less likely in fight, flight, or freeze. Then from there you can ask yourself, “What’s the right response in this moment?” Adam: ‘Cause you’re not reacting, you’re just [00:18:00] responding. It doesn’t mean that you don’t, respond to the person who’s being a jerk in front of you. Maybe you can be really firm, but you can still be coming from a place that, of love that’s not reactive, right? And I’m, I– Like, you can yell at someone with love in your heart, right? Adam: It really it’s really what is the intent behind it, that really makes the difference, right? So Adam: Yeah. Gissele: I think what you said is really important, so that’s why I wanna just kinda stop here. Because I think people believe that when you are truly unconditionally loving or compassionate that people… You’re just gonna be a mat. You’re just gonna let people do whatever they want, and it’s not true. You can have very clear boundaries, but do it as a way to love yourself. And so I love what you said because it’s the energy behind it, right? So you can fire someone but still wish them well, still wish them and send them off with a nice package and say, “You know what? This didn’t work out for us, but maybe your dream job’s somewhere else. Gissele: Here’s a nice package. We wish you [00:19:00] the very best. We don’t hate Gissele: you.” Or you c- it could be acrimonious. It could be like, “I, we hate you, we wanna punish you, we wanna…” And so it’s the energy behind it which I think is really key. I think where some of us struggle is the fact of catching it in time, Adam: Yeah Gissele: It going from the I’m gonna… I have a reaction, and then I reflect on Gissele: it versus I’m c- consciously a- aware of how I’m engaging in relationships. And again, that’s one thing that I’ve really had to work through because I was that, that… I’d gotten to a point where I was just, okay, I react and then I apologize later ’cause then I can see it, Gissele: but that’s also not fair. And so I really had to be aware of how I was showing up and the things that were triggering Gissele: me. So for example, I… There’s there’s people in my life that we have a very surface relationship, right? And And it’s not [00:20:00] because we want to have a surface relationship, and it’s not that I’m outing people. It’s that sometimes with history, everybody kinda armored up, and everybody’s just protected. And so the superficiality is so that we don’t get deep and that we don’t get… So that we don’t feel vulnerable. But that lack of vulnerability prevents you from having closeness and prevents you from truly being in a position to truly unconditionally love others. What do you think might help situations like that when you are afraid of being vulnerable but have a desire to be vulnerable, to love Gissele: more? Adam: Yeah I would say that you don’t need to be Like, I think it’s a beautiful desire, but I don’t think that you need to be vulnerable They don’t need to be vulnerable or you don’t need to be vulnerable for you to unconditionally love them, right? ‘Cause there’s gonna be tons of people that are gonna be complete jerks to you. Adam: You’re gonna give [00:21:00] them care, consideration, and they’re not gonna give you anything back. But can you love them just the same, right? That is the real practice, and that’s the real process. It’s like, can I love… you have so many great stories of people loving their son’s killer, people loving people that are racist towards them. Adam: Can you do that? That is the real practice. So Adam: Do that and to get there, we do have to build our capacity of love within ourselves, and it’s helpful to have close friendships where we have the ability. ‘Cause there’s something really special Adam: About being with others that we– that can meet you in these places, and they can help you expand your love, right? Adam: Expand your Adam: Love, expand your… And that’s why an intimate relationship is a beautiful process to do this because at the same time you may love this person, but they’re also different from you, right? They’re also different from you. [00:22:00] There may be other things, but you’re literally, you’re little– more and more of yourself is dissolving in this relationship because you’re saying I can still love them through this. Adam: I can still love them through this. Oh, we may not see the same way like this. Okay, I can still love them through this.” And what does that do? That also helps us expand our love that, “Oh this person’s a Christian. This person’s a Muslim. We may not see everything in the same way, but I can still love them for this.” Adam: And it opens, these circles of love expand and open up through that process. Adam: Yeah. Gissele: Yeah. Gissele: Thank you for that. What I found out for myself is that the more than I love myself, the more that I give to myself the things that I’m looking for in other people. Like, when I’m triggered by someone, Gissele: I’m like, “Okay, what am I not getting? Like, why is this triggering me?” ‘Cause if it wasn’t about me, I wouldn’t care, right? Gissele: If it was… If it really wasn’t about me, then I wouldn’t have any impact. I’d be like, “Okay, so that’s just them. You do you, boo,” [00:23:00] right? If you’re hurt, then, like I’m just not gonna be there to be the recipient of your hurt. But if I’m triggered by someone, it means something for Gissele: me. It means that I’m missing something, that I’m not giving myself or not feeling like I’m receiving something. And so what I’ll do is I’ll give it to myself. And And the more that I do that, the more that I’m present and not abandoning myself and the more that I love my- and accept myself, I no longer need other people to behave in a different Gissele: way. I no longer need them to show up how I expect them to show up. But the link to that is always me. It’s always okay, so I’m being triggered. It has to be about me, in giving myself the space to explore what it is about the relationship where my needs are not being met, yeah, Adam: And that’s totally, that’s it. I remember at one point in, in my marriage, I had… My wife and I, we had this real rocky period [00:24:00] and I we had just moved to Bali. There was a lot of high stress, all these things. So whenever there’s changes, there’s gonna be more stress, whether it be a new baby, a new job, there’s gonna be more stress and other stuff is gonna come to the surface. Adam: So it was a real high-stress time. And we were like just bickering and fighting each other, and there was a lot of like tension between us. And then on our wedding anniversary, we had went to the beach we had just had a fight, and then I went and swam in the ocean, and then my wedding ring like flew into the ocean. Adam: And then I was sitting there on the side of the ocean and I’m just like looking and I’m thinking, “Gosh.” And I had this like real intuitive feeling and there was this voice within me that said, if you’re not smart, you’re gonna lose something a lot more, more precious than that wedding band,” right? Adam: And then, so I started to, so I started to do a lot of introspection and I was like, “Okay where in me? What is like creating this tension?” And I realized that, we were being super critical of each other and there was tension. I was like [00:25:00] where am I being critical of myself? Adam: Where am I being super hard on myself? Where am I being so unkind to myself?” And I was like, “Oh, okay.” And then I amplified my, like my Metta meditation, which is for those of you who don’t know, it’s like loving-kindness meditation. So it’s a beautiful practice. I highly recommend it. Adam: You can just put your hand on your heart and you say, “May I be filled with loving kindness. May I be held in loving kindness. May I be happy.” And you’re just offering tenderness and care to yourself. And actually, in the Buddhist meditation, it’s so beautiful ’cause you start with yourself, then you extend it outwards. Adam: Then you think of those around you. You think of your partner, you think of your dog, you think of your son, your child, whatever it is, whoever it is, and then you extend it to your neighbors. Then you extend it to your community, the strangers outside that you don’t even know, and then to those that may be your enemies that you don’t like. Adam: But it, they see the… It understands that it’s like these widening circles. The more that we extend [00:26:00] our love, the more that we can extend it beyond to like its limitless potential, where even those that are our enemies that are hard, you know, really hard to connect with, we can find that exact same love as we, as w- with, those dearest to us. Adam: And as you said, it starts with ourself. Gissele: Yeah. It’s so funny, I love the work of Neville Goddard. Gissele: I don’t know if you Gissele: know who that is. It’s a big manifestation thing, and a lot of people focus just on the manifestation part, but if you actually listen to some of his lectures, he does talk about interconnectedness, and he says, “Everybody’s you pushed out.” Gissele: One of the things I started doing is is really seeing everyone as me. Adam: Yeah Gissele: Seeing, my husband as me, my children as me, and where that really helped me was to treat people better. Because if I think of them as me, I want them to have the best tip, I want them to have the best experience, I want them to feel the most loved, I want them to feel the [00:27:00] most accepted. and so that’s really helping me not feel separate from or disconnected, ’cause I think we live in a world right now where we feel so separate from Gissele: one Gissele: another that we’re trying to eke out an existence, that we’re trying to eke out being seen and loved by our loved ones and our relationships, that we see ourselves as so separate, and that’s what you said, like the little self. Gissele: The little self s- sees itself as separate and sometimes as a victim of things or, even if it’s not and things are working for them, it’s still separate. But the, the more that I contemplated if everybody is me pushed out, then they’re an aspect of me, and it helped me feel less alone. Gissele: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what sort of the different traditions talk about interdependence and connection in that unity instead of separation. Adam: We are… Like, we’re all connected. We hear this from traditions all around the world. Quantum physics is actually starting to see everything is energy. We are actually one. There’s [00:28:00] no separation between you and I, and the ancient traditions knew this. In the Lakota tradition, they say there’s this beautiful saying called Mitakuye Owen. Adam: It means, “For all my relations.” We are all related. We are all interconnected. So anything that I do, over here in Bali, you know, whether it be to my son, to my neighbor, that is connected with you in Toronto, right? It s- there is a ripple effect that we are all part of this great web of life. Adam: There’s no separation. And that’s the beauty of love, because love unites us. It brings us together. It’s like it has this unifying quality. Fear divides us, separates us, and that’s why, like, when you are looking at all this, the, the news, all the propaganda, it’s like, it’s literally trying to separate, and it knows, divide and conquer. Separate people, right? Adam: But when we realize that, hey, at the core of it, you and I are part [00:29:00] and parcel of the same stuff. We are the same thing, and we are… There is a great big sun in the sky, and we are all illuminating rays, part of that great beautiful light. And it’s really nice to know that we are not alone, right? Adam: We are not alone. We are connected, and every person is part of you, and what a beautiful practice that you offered us, ’cause I’m gonna, I’m gonna start doing that as well. Thanks, Neville Goddard Gissele. Gissele: Yeah. ‘Cause it, some of his other lectures really talk about, the true power of reimagining people. ‘Cause you talked about Gissele: enemies, and he was one of the first people that got me to contemplate, number one, what if our enemies were our best Gissele: friend because they’re forcing us to stand in our own power? And the second thing that he helped me with my, with people that I struggle with is reimagining them. And I’ve done this with conflict. So what you do is you really focus on, okay, so instead of seeing them the way that y- we normally do , let’s say you have [00:30:00] conflict with someone, your mind already tells you, has a picture of them, how they’re gonna behave, what you expect of them, worst-case scenario. But what Neville Goddard would always say is, “Reimagine that situation and that Gissele: person. See them as the loving person that you want. see the situation in the end that you want to experience.” And I’ve had stuff even with students where, it just seemed like they would s- it was one instance where a student had sent me an email. Gissele: They were super frustrated with their mark that they receivedand, I tried to email and explain to them and they escalated even more. And I said to myself, “You know what? I’m just gonna reimagine th- that everything is g- gonna work out. I’m sending this student lots of love.” And the only thing that I emailed them back and said is, “I really would love to talk to you. I’d love for us to chat because this relationship matters to me, and it’s important for me that you understand how we got to the grade and for me to hear your voice.” That’s all I said, left it, went to bed, kept [00:31:00] reimagining working out, and I relaxed into it, and I saw that person full of love, and I felt full of love for them. A few days later, n- I, and I hadn’t heard anything, and I forgot about it. That’s usually when things happen for me, when I forget about what the things are happening. And then they emailed me, and they just said, “No need to worry. No need to meet. Everything’s perfect. Thank you. Gissele: You’re the best professor.” It was just full of Gissele: love. I was like, “Oh, okay.” And so the the willingness to not see people in that same box, is what kind of got me to go, oh if people are just me pushed out, then I’m the one who’s creating this story about who they are, right? Gissele: And then they’re feeding that story. So can we reimagine our enemies as people that are misguided, Gissele: That maybe are, there to teach us something, or that are just… They don’t really remember who they are, like you were mentioning, that small self. and so it’s an important practice, but it does take courage in the sense that you have to be willing to do [00:32:00] it, and especially when you’re f- when you’re afraid. Gissele: It’s difficult when you are afraid, is you have to manage your difficult emotions first, I would say. Adam: Yeah, 100%. thank you for that story. It’s so beautiful. And want to highlight, you have to manage your emotions first because otherwise it’s bypassing, right? And then we’re actually– Then these things get stored in our body. So that practice of like just feeling, releasing, taking a few breaths within that tension, and then from there doing these practices of like reimagining, seeing someone as who they are, we talked about it, seeing them as the divine being, seeing them as the di-diamond. Adam: And literally it’s so beautiful, and I’ve had many experiences like that too, where you like literally you bring it out. You’re bringing… Because your love, your loving energy is like the sun pulling out the seed that they are, pulling out the sprite, pulling out the beauty, and shining a light on what [00:33:00] is already there, right? Adam: It already is there, but because we’re tuning in, we’re like, we are like tuning forks, right? We’re tuning the vibration. You talked about the story about being in, in Starbucks. Like your vibration is tuning the entire place and like they, there’s research on this, like the one person’s heart like that is emitting love can literally influence all the other people around them through just their– There’s an electromagnetic field around that influences. Adam: So that is it’s a powerful practice and I think it’s empowering because it lets us know how powerful each and every one of us are, especially in this world that feels like, “Oh my gosh, what’s going on? There’s so much going on. What, can I do in the grand scheme of things?” Adam: And, this, there’s a story from Thich Nhat Hanh, a beautiful Buddhist monk, beautiful social activist, and he said this story that there’s of a boat [00:34:00] person and the– he’s “Be like the, the boat person.” And the boat person is this one that, that even in a stormy sea, there’s just one person on the boat, if he is calm, can literally calm the entire crew, can calm all the takes one person. And he says, “Be that boat person.” And I think we all, that’s all, all our responsibility right now is to be those boat people. Gissele: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think you mentioned this earlierWe really have to address ourselves. And the reason being is b- you mentioned int- being interconnected. For the longest time in my world I wanted to change systems. Gissele: I wanted to change all of these different systems, the child welfare system, the youth justice system, all of these things. And then one day, I was really reflecting on… I don’t know. I don’t know what kinda led me to reflect on how I was contributing to these systems, and what I noticed [00:35:00] was how I acted when people were hurtful to me. I wanted them punished. I wanted them to get away from me. I wanted them, like, separate and isolate and punish. And so of course these systems are gonna reflect that experience because that’s how I acted when I was hurt. And so I had to be willing to shift that. I had to be willing to get curious about hurtful people, If I couldn’t love them, could somebody else love Gissele: them? would I allow myself to be okay with somebody else getting curious about them if I Gissele: couldn’t? And That took a minute because we have all these reasons why we think that punishing and separating and putting people in jail and murder and war are justified. We have all of these justifications because we feel personally threatened, because we feel that things are happening to us But when you get beyond that fear of death, ‘ Gissele: Cause I think that’s really the ultimate fear, when you get beyond [00:36:00] that, “I’m just this physical body,” I think you open up the space to be willing to get curious about people’s hurtful behavior. Gissele: I was as w- curious as to your Adam: Yeah. a co- a few thoughts. One, I just wanna highlight the power of curiosity, right? It’s a really a powerful practice. I know even in your TED Talk you talk about the power of curiosity and just how that that curiousness , one, it’s one of the qualities of all geniuses is being curious. Adam: And in mindfulness, Adam: it’s also a practice of just when you can be curious with whatever’s going on inside of you. “Oh, wow, there’s fear here.” And you’re like, “Let’s be curious about that.” It actually, there’s like, like kids are curious and they’re able to meet things that are more challenging because they’re– that curiosity, it there’s this spark, there’s this intrigue. Adam: So curiosity in itself is a powerful tool to meet more challenging things because there’s there’s no [00:37:00] expectation. There’s no like, a scientist is just curious. It’s just “Oh, I’m like, I’m putting on my lab coat. Let’s see what happens,” right? And if you’re a real scientist and you’re really trying to get to the truth and not just, get your paper and get to what you want, right? Adam: Be like, Adam: When you’re really honestly curious about… Gissele: what you’re saying. Yeah Adam: Yeah. So that in itself is powerful. And and then the other part which you were saying was about beyond the death and when we really know who we are. So I’ll tell you this, like during the pandemic when everyone was like going like, “Oh my God, what’s going on?” Adam: I really– I turned to the same manual that Mahatma Gandhi turned to anytime that he was going through challenging times. He turned to the Bhagavad Gita, which is they say is one of the wisest books ever written. And he had said, I’m paraphrasing here, but he had said that, when I’m feeling down and glum and feels like there’s no hope, I turn to the Gita and I’m joyful and filled [00:38:00] with life,” right? Adam: Because it’s like he found– There’s like it was wisdom. It really gave him true knowledge of how life actually worked. So when this time everyone’s so afraid, right? They’re afraid of dying. They’re afraid of germs. They’re afraid what’s gonna happen with the world. There’s oh my God, like Gissele: of people, yeah Adam: so much fear. Adam: There was like bigger than the virus of COVID was the virus of fear, and everyone was like freaking out, Gissele: Yeah Adam: And so what, and at one point I like fell into the thing and I was like, “Whoa whoa.” And I found the Gita and there’s this one verse that that they’re talking… And just so you know, so a little, backtrack of like the Gita takes place on a battlefield, right? Adam: There’s the, there’s this big war between two warring armies. it’s the war of Kurukshetra and the Pandava armies are the good guys. The Oh gosh. And then there’s the bad guys. I can’t believe I told you. Anyway, then they’re fighting each other, right? They’re fighting each other. And there’s this one warrior who’s, his name is Arjuna, it’s the same name as my [00:39:00] son. Adam: And they have to– he’s in battle and he’s asking himself like he has to fight the battle in the next day. And he’s looking at the army on one side and looking on the army on the other side and he’s thinking “Oh gosh, like I’m gonna have to fight in this battle.” And then he starts to fret. He starts to do what any of us get what most of us do in times of challenge. Adam: He gets afraid. He starts to doubt himself. He says, “What am I supposed to actually do?” And his wisdom actually starts to get clouded and he’s like, “Oh, I should just run to the forest. Killing’s bad. I don’t know. This or that. It’s… When this is gonna be good.” And he turns to his wise guide, who is Krishna, who is the manifestation of the divine, and the– he’s telling him like, “What should I do?” Adam: And the very first wisdom that Krishna tells him, he says “Why are you afraid?” He says, “You are the soul.” He says, “Fire cannot burn you. [00:40:00] Water cannot drown you. You are indestructible. You are limitless. Like this is who you actually are. Do not be afraid.” Like that was the very first thing he says is “This body will come and pass, but your essence, your beauty, that is, is gonna go on forever. Adam: If you die, no worries. You’ll be a glorious battle. If you win, then great. You’ve cr- you’ve created success for the world. There’s nothing to fear.” And the same thing is said in the Bible, right? It’s do not fear is the most used word like phrase all throughout the Bible. Adam: It’s 80 times, like 78 times or something. Do not fear. Do not fear. Do not… Gissele: ‘Cause we didn’t get Adam: Yes. It’s oh, I didn’t realize. Gissele: God has to said it Gissele: a lot. I know it’s, it doesn’t compute. Adam: Yeah. So that, that’s what I’d say is just remembering who we are is like at the essence is, So it’s helpful to turn to these things, like these things which are like real wisdom because they remem- like there’s where you’re getting your knowledge makes a difference, [00:41:00] right? Adam: So if we’re getting our knowledge from these ancient wisdom traditions that really tell us actual truth, that helps instruct our life in a better way than maybe, this old paradigm. How old? A very old paradigm that we’re, we are just these bodies, right? But we are so much more Gissele: Yeah. Gissele: death seems like the last barrier to overcome as a humanity Gissele: ‘Cause if you truly believed that you were immortal and Gissele: that, that we continue on and that like as the Gita was saying, none of these things harm you, then I think we would be more curious, we would be more okay. But we have such huge fears that I think really block us from that unconditional love because When you’re in survival mode, everything just shrinks to the… Your lens becomes super small, and then you’re not thinking about b- getting curious or wondering what’s happening to the other person. You’re just like, “I gotta book it out of here,” or, “I gotta fight my way through.” And so it really prevents us from being [00:42:00] that love. Gissele: What helps you address or has helped you address fear in your life? Adam: Yeah. I’ll bring it back. Turning to these wisdom traditions helps me because it’s like environment is so helpful, right? If you’re around people that are courageous, you’re, s- science has shown that environment is one of the greatest influencing forces on our actions. That’s why, they spend billions of dollars trying to throw advertisements of you because they realize that an environment is actually programming you, right? Adam: So I like to program my own environment, right? By influencing Adam: myself with what am I actually putting in my mind, right? So like I’m gonna be turning towards things like the Gita, things like these different scriptures. Sorry, you might hear my son crying in the background. Gissele: That’s okay. Gissele: baby. Awesome. Yeah. Gissele: It’s reality Adam: that’s it. But so that’s like ’cause, It was Mark Divine, really great thinker. He said, if you don’t program your mind, [00:43:00] someone else is gonna do it for you.” Gissele: Yeah Adam: So really being mindful of where I’m putting my attention is really something that I do. Adam: Meditation as well. There’s a few practices that to tense and release. But really it’s like that breathing into breathing in, it’s a somatic experience. So fear, a lot of times what happens, like what is it? We feel a tension in our chest. We’re feeling this clenching. Adam: We’re feeling, “Oh my gosh.” So if we can actually just get curious, welcome it, right? ‘Cause what happens most of the time, we brace ourselves. We’re bracing. We’re like, “Oh gosh. Oh no, I’m gonna fear. Let me get rid of this fear. Oh, is it… How am I gonna…” And we’re like, and then we start like trying to get rid and that’s like we don’t need to get rid of it. Adam: Like it’s just in the Buddhism, it says when Buddha come- when Mara comes, which is the darkness, the demon, it’s invite her in for tea. I invite Mara in for tea. So if fear is coming, okay, invite it in for tea. No need to try to like it’s like can we just breathe in, [00:44:00] relax, and Adam: Set in and let’s really take a deep belly breath, relax into that, and let that somatic experience go. Adam: And then also so that’s what we can do somatically and then focus our intention also on where it is we wanna go, right? ‘Cause the, the mind is a powerful tool for directing us. So we can focus on love. We can focus on service. We can focus on making this world a better place. The, right now the, the story of Viktor Frankl is coming to mind right now and- So ’cause you were talking about being in survival, right? Adam: And when we’re in this survival state, it’s oh my gosh, like we’re trying to protect ourselves. But Viktor Frankl is a perfect example of someone transcending that survival state. ‘Cause, Viktor Frankl was in a concentration camp. All of his basic needs were not met. For 14 hours a day, he had to work on, like railroads and camps, bare next to [00:45:00] no food. Adam: Yet in that space, he was still able to find love. He was still able to be generous, offer kindness and care to others. And what he did was he took his attention off of himself and put it on other people, right? ‘Cause the minute that we’re thinking just about the little me, this is that’s the isolated self. Adam: But if we move our extension and expand it, as you said here’s an extension of me. This is person, is they’re afraid, and I’m gonna give them care. I’m gonna give them kindness. I’m gonna give them courage. And that’s what he did. And what did he get? Care, kindness, and courage. ‘Cause whatever we give to others, we actually get back ourselves. Adam: So that is a powerful practice, is to take our attention off of ourselves, put it on something bigger, whether it be a cause, something bigger than ourselves, a person who needs our help. And that really is like a, a fast track to overcoming Gissele: Ooh, I love that you said that. It made me think when I used to [00:46:00] work in the child welfare field, kids who had experienced abuse and neglect, they always wanted to help other young Gissele: people even though they had experienced negative things. That’s one of the things they always wanted to do, is help other people that were in their situation, so Their willingness to care about others hadn’t been extinguished even though they had ad- adversity. The other thing that I thought of was, y- you’re mentioning all of these ancient traditions and ancient scripts and elders. Just how much in North America, like part of that racism, part of that, the genocide that happened to indigenous people in Canada and throughout the world the slavery that happened to m- racialized people. Gissele: A l- a lot of those cultures have all of that wisdom, right? They bring all that wisdom in, so it was so interesting to me how we’ve become so separate from ourselves. We’ve become so separate from that true spirituality that I think it, it was purposeful, Gissele: right? Because that spirituality really connected us to who we [00:47:00] truly are, and if you’re disconnected to that, then you’re more easily controlled. And so I think it’s really interesting that in North America in particular, we have all of this separation and division and a lack of appreciation from that indigenous knowledge that we’re just gaining back now, I would say. Gissele: There’s still a lot of that. Why aren’t people over it? Gissele: It’s like no, it’s because we haven’t yet returned to ourselves, Adam: yeah, 100%. And it’s really, returning to ourselves is really where it comes down to, right? And that, that– spiritualityIt’s the gateway to that because we’re talking about, oh, wow, okay we’re all divine. We’re not separate, right? Adam: And when we realize this, like this great truth, right? That, oh, we’re interconnected, we are love, that’s what’s gonna bring us. But we’ve– we’re coming out of this big age of ignorance where we’re– we’ve been so against each other. We’ve been pulling at each other’s skin. but what’s happening n- right now, which is beautiful, is there’s a great awakening [00:48:00] happening in the world right now. Adam: And, Adam: And even though it looks like there’s a lot of chaos in the world, there’s also a lot of light happening. And it’s– There’s a, there’s something amazing happening. What I like to look at it is if you look at a washing machine, you put a bunch of dirty clothes in there. Adam: At first you’re turning it up and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, it’s just getting more dirty,” right? But it’s like that’s has to happen. The dirt was already there, but now it’s just coming to the surface so it Gissele: I love Adam: And that’s what we’re seeing, right? It’s just something is being cleaned. Adam: There’s a great awakening. It’s gonna be okay. Just keep focusing on the light and keep doing our practices, right? Gissele: Yeah. Oh my gosh. I think I totally agree with what you said. I think i- that all of those things were always there, right? When you have all these people that, that are doing hurtful things. We always… Going back to what you mentioned about the enemies, we always focus on the one, Gissele: Like people like Hitler, for example, right? [00:49:00] But 10 million people voted for Hitler, right? And this is not to say anything about the German people. That’s just where we were all were as a consciousness. And so all of those people that we talk about, the oppressors, all contributed to that. We all contributed that the desire to punish, that negativity, the hate of our neighbors, and it all begins in the home. Gissele: There’s so much dissent. I think you and I were talking off camera and, like how many people wanna end war, they wanna end prejudice, but they don’t talk to their own family members. They… There’s so much hate within their family, like immediate family, or there’s so much hate within themselves. Gissele: We can’t stop war if we can’t do it at a micro level. Gissele: And so what might help some individuals start to, to be able to look at that in a way that doesn’t cause sort of shame and guilt? Adam: Yeah. Yeah, this is a lot of heart of my work as a relationship counselor and whatnot, and I think, yeah, like you said, like we wanna change the world, but [00:50:00] how can we do it if we don’t first change ourselves, right? And it really begins within. Adam: You know, I’m just trying to answer that question specifically about the shame and the guilt. Adam: And first, I think it really starts with what is your intention? Like, how do you want to really show up in the relationships? And we all want peace. We all want love at the end of the day, right? That’s what we want. And when we’re looking at those closest to us, when we’re looking at our family, that’s the, the quickest point that we can change the world. Adam: I think I, I told you this story off camera, and I’m gonna tell all of our listeners ’cause it’s a beautiful proverb Adam: and it starts with there is this this monk and he’s looking to a younger monk and he’s turning to him and he’s really distraught. And he said, Adam: I’m feeling so distraught. I’ve wasted my life.” And the young man said why?” And he said when I was young, I sought to change the world,” right? ” and when I couldn’t do that, I turned and I was like I’m gonna change my country.’ And that I couldn’t do, so I tried to change my [00:51:00] community. Adam: Even that I couldn’t do, so I tried to change my family, and that I couldn’t do. And now in my old age, I know that if I would’ve first started with myself, then I– maybe I would’ve been able to change my family. Together, we would’ve been able to change our community, our country, and our world,” right? And this is extending these circles of influence, right? Adam: And it’s li- the exact same thing as that meta practice we talked about earlier, right? Bringing the love within, then bringing it with our family. And if we can find that peace and harmony with, those that are, like in our family, it’s the greatest point, tension, ’cause it’s there, right? Adam: Family will bring up a lot of edges, right? So here’s the opportunity, for, for us to polish the diamond, right? ‘Cause it’s right there. It’s right within us, and we have this opportunity. So it’s really getting curious and say, “What is my intent?” So if we’re gonna be complaining about the world, right? Adam: Realizing [00:52:00] that we have the opportunity right in front of us. It’s so much closer than we think. And if we talk about this And Ubuntu , the great web of life that we are all part of. Indra’s net, another Buddhist thing that we’re all connected. If we realize that if I can bring peace here I’m actually contributing to peace in the entire world. Adam: And that’s a process. It’s a practice. We do lots of the things that we talked about here today, but it’s just realizing that, it’s like this is this is so important. Sometimes we forget about it, right? We forget about the family. But I really believe that’s one of the greatest… the family is an organism, is an organization, right? Adam: So it’s if you wanna change systems and organizations start with this closest organization to you, right? Start in your own family unit, and find the love there. Meet the difference there. And and, we said this earlier and I was just, last final point. Adam: It’s like, one of the greatest manifestations of love is respect, [00:53:00] right? It’s a respect for somebody else, right? And respect is like, “I’m not actually trying to change you,” right? We can see things differently. You may want… And this could be in your family. You may wanna do things this way. Adam: You may wanna… I’m gonna respect your decision. I’m gonna respect your choice. I’m gonna respect that’s the way you like to live, right? And when we can extend that respect in the family unit, and I said this earlier, we can extend that respect between nations, right? So it’s really a great practice and process. Adam: So yeah Gissele: I was wondering if you could define Unconditional love. Adam: Yeah, for sure. Unconditional love. Unconditional love for me is that no matter what, sun, shine, smiles, frowns, negative comments or loving ones, there’s that all-embracing, that all-embracing warmth that, you are perfect just the way you are, right? Adam: I love you just the [00:54:00] same. Jesus Christ was the perfect example of unconditional love. He loved his followers, and he also loved the people that were crucifying him . these people were were bringing nothing but pain. Martin Luther King, he was punched in the face and put to the ground, and he got right up to his perpetrator and then smiled and, offered him a hug. Adam: And that unconditional love that he offered to that man transformed him. And it… A- agape, brotherly love. This man is my brother. Adam: Even though he’s my perpetrator, he is my brother. And that he brought that onto him, and the beauty of that, after this man punched him in the face He was transformed. He was transformed. Adam: He completely gave up racism. He completely started becoming an advocate for Black people’s rights, and that is the power of unconditional. That’s what it is, and that’s the power. It’s the transformative power to really change this world Gissele: I could keep talking to you Gissele: for [00:55:00] forever. Adam: I love talking to you too, though. This is the best Gissele: Okay, so last question. Where can people find you? Where can they work with you? Talk about the book. Anything that you Gissele: wanna share with the audience? Adam: Thanks Gissele. I think we’ve been telling a lot of different stories here today and talking about the transformative power of love and, you know of all people, stories are transformative. Like stories can literally change our lives through it brings us a new paradigm, a way of looking at the world. Adam: For our listeners, I think the best way to get ahold of me is LessonsonLove.org/gift, and I have a gift of five sacred stories that will really transform the way you love yourself, love your partner, and show up in this world and bring more love into it. So LessonsonLove.org/gift. And that’s my gift to you so that you can be that gift of love into the world. Adam: Yeah Gissele: Oh, thank you so much. And thank you for sharing your wisdom and for this amazing conversation. As I said, I could keep listening to you all Gissele: day. Adam: been an honor. It’s been an Gissele: you. Thank you. Thank you [00:56:00] so much, and Thank you to everyone who tuned in for another episode of the Love and Compassion podcast with Gissele. Gissele: See you soon Adam: Bye

TRANSCRIPT Gissele : [00:00:00] welcome to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content, and if you’d like to support the podcast, you can buymeacoffee.com/loveandcompassion. Today, we’re gonna be talking about finding happiness even in the most difficult moments. Gissele : Our guest today is Karen Olson, who is the founder of Family Promise, a national non-profit organization that helps homeless and low-income families. Today, the organization boasts more than 200 affiliates across the US, with more than 180,000 men, women, and children served each year. In her book Meant for More, Karen tells her story from tragedy in childhood to an adulthood full of compassion and service, which has made her stronger, healthier, and more fulfilled than ever before. Gissele : Many people seek happiness through acquiring material goods or achieving status, only to find a lack of fulfillment. With first-hand [00:01:00] testimonials from Karen and other volunteers, Meant for More is a call to action. When you reach out beyond yourself and seek to make a difference in the lives of others , happiness will catch up with you. Gissele : Please join me in welcoming Karen Olson. Hi, Karen. Karen: Gissele, thank you s- so much. I’m happy to be here. I’ve got a little cough today, so I have to clear my throat. Gissele : Thank you so much for being on the show. I was wondering if you could start by telling the audience a little bit about your childhood and how that led you to to choose a life of service. Karen: My childhood before I was 12 was very happy. Playing outside, going to the beach in the summer, swimming in Long Island Sound, and in the winter, skating on the pond on our street. And I just was happy-go-lucky, giggling and laughing all the time, having so much fun. I didn’t recognize that it was so happy until one day it [00:02:00] wasn’t. Karen: When I was 12, I experienced a very tragic and sudden loss. My mother committed suicide when I was just 12. She had been depressed, and she was seeing a doctor, and her marriage to my father wasn’t good, and but we had no idea she would commit suicide, but she did. And since I was so close to her and my dad was an alcoholic I just, it left a hole in my heart when she died. Karen: But that hole drove me to help others, ’cause I knew what hurt was, and I didn’t want anyone else to hurt. So I did various things. I volunteered at the ho- local hospital as a candy striper. I delivered flowers to people. And I played tennis with a man, young man across the street whose girlfriend left him, and he had cancer, [00:03:00] and he didn’t have long to live. Karen: But it just seemed natural to me to wanna reach out to others, something I was not aware of before I had lost my mother. But the loss of my mother encouraged me to reach out to others, and I think it’s that drive, that passion that drove me on to create Family Promise and help so many people Gissele : Now how did you specifically choose to help that population, the homelessness population, instead of like maybe some other organization? Gissele : Like why homelessness in particular? Karen: I started out giving sandwiches to people in New York City at Port Authority Bus Terminal. And actually, what led me there was I was on my way to a meeting in New York City. I was a consumer promotions manager. And I was about to pass [00:04:00] this woman who I had seen before. She was elderly. She sat on a crate outside of Grand Central Station, and she always looked down, like she was very depressed. Karen: And on this particular day, I decided I just couldn’t walk by her without offering something. So I ran across the street and got her a ham and cheese sandwich and an orange juice. And when I came back, she said, “Thank you. God bless you. Haven’t eaten anything since yesterday.” And with that, she took my hand in hers, and a connection was made. Karen: And from there, I began going into Port Authority Bus Terminal every other Sunday with my sons to give sandwiches, and we got to know people, like Lucille and Ar- Karen: Just as a way of lifting, lifting their spirits, and it certainly did. [00:05:00] But then I became curious about homeless people. In New Jersey, I had heard there were homeless people, but I didn’t see any. The thing about that is you don’t see homeless families. They try to stay out of sight. But I began volunteering in the city of Elizabeth at the Salvation Army in the soup kitchen, and there I met families who were working but homeless, and I thought, “How can that be? Karen: Does the religious community know?” Karen: After I met Millie, I told my two sons, were then 10 and 12, about Millie. And they said to me, “Mom, let’s go into the New York City and bring more sandwiches to people like Millie.” They had the open hearts of children. Yeah. They just wanted to do it. So we made 25 sandwiches and brought them in to Port Authority Bus Terminal, and [00:06:00] gave them to people who were sitting on the benches. Karen: And this was on a Sunday night. Essentially anybody sitting on a bench in the upper floor of Port Authority Bus Terminal was not waiting for their bus. They were simply homeless. And we got to meet people like Abe and Arthur. Arthur w- was a World War II veteran. Karen: When he opened his jacket, he had medals with- pinned inside his jacket, and he would tell war stories to my two sons, and he was like a grandfather figure, and then we met people like Lucille. On the good days, she would say, she was a first-grade teacher, and she’d say to my son, “Doug,” d- study hard. Karen: You don’t wanna end up like me in Port Authority Bus Terminal.” And on other days, when maybe she [00:07:00] was off her medication, I don’t know, but we were the CIA or the FBI, and she screamed at the top of her lungs, so the nicest thing we could do was just, just, leave her alone. That started my outreach to homeless people, and and I also invited them to my house for Thanksgiving dinner. Karen: Now the only thing about that is I, I– Three weeks before, I would go in and give them bus tickets in a little envelope with the invitation to come for Thanksgiving dinner. I didn’t think anything about it at the time, but my friend reminded me, Karen, you admit that you’re not a very good cook, and you’ve never cooked a Thanksgiving dinner.” Karen: But I don’t think about those things. I just kinda g- lead with my heart. And so we had eight people who were homeless [00:08:00] come to my house for Thanksgiving dinner: Arthur, Abe, Lucille, and John, and others. And it was just one of the nicest Thanksgiving dinner e- ever, because everybody talked about Thanksgivings past, and Karen: they were very appreciative of the dinner, and Gissele : I was just gonna comment on the fact that, most people would ignore people that are suffering. Most people would just pass by, not even notice. And one of the things that I think is beautiful about your story is that you’re willing you had been willing to notice the suffering of the woman who was there and was hungry. Gissele : You notice the suffering of the veteran, who we obviously have forgotten about because as a society, why aren’t we taking care of our veterans who’d fought for us? And also more importantly, you said something that is happening right now, which is many people are working, and they’re still not able to make ends meet, and they’re [00:09:00] experiencing an invisible suffering. Karen: Yes, an invisible suffering. That’s so true. Gissele : And to notice someone suffering. Sorry. Gissele : To notice someone suffering and to be willing to extend a hand because most people would not have invited them to, to their house. I probably would be one of those people that would be, like, afraid, who would be like, what if they steal something or what if something happens? What helped you get over that fear? Gissele : Or did you even not think about it? Did you just do it because you thought it was the right thing to do? I know that I have been very fear-based in the past, and that really has closed my heart and prevented me from being as truly compassionate as I want to be. Karen: It’s interesting. Karen: I, I saw you tear up at the thought of people suffering and no one reaching out. I reached that point of tearing up, but it drives me to just do something and not really think about it much. I have to say that I have very good instincts because- … Karen: I’m not gonna bring my children near people who are wild [00:10:00] or, you know- Yeah Karen: not on their medication or whatever. I know how to stay away from danger. But when I get to that point of sensing this deep injustice that, how can we allow so many people to lie on the streets, some without, y- enough clothing, hurting in bad weather how can we allow that to happen? Karen: That catapults me to try to do something. It’s like a reflex action. So- Yeah, that’s what drove me to start reaching out to people in New York City. And then from there, I wanted to find out what’s happening in my own community in New Jersey, and that’s when I began volunteering at a soup kitchen and a shelter, and that’s where I met families. Karen: And many of these families were working. The shelter was [00:11:00] full which it usually was. Not enough not enough beds for all that are needed. It’s hard because the minimum wage hasn’t been raised since 2009. It’s still at $7.25 per hour. Karen: state of the housing in the United States is that you can’t afford an a fair market two-bedroom rental with the wage you make. Most renting families below the poverty line now spend at least fifty percent of their income on housing. Karen: So along comes a car repair or something that needs to be fixed in the apartment or a medical bill you have to pay, and they have to make difficult decisions. Do I pay the rent or do I do this or that? And that’s why so many people are precariously housed. Gissele : what upsets me about the situation is that is [00:12:00] how we’ve created a society that has all of this income inequality, right? You’ve got people that are exorbitantly rich, and then you’ve got people that are barely getting by. And then we’ve allowed these corporations and we’ve allowed these organizations to not raise wages, to not pay fair benefits, to not give people a living wage. Gissele : And what I say that we’ve allowed it is basically we continue to fund these corporations with our money. We continue to support them. And so at what point are we responsible for making sure that we are helping each other? And I think your life is a beautiful example of how we’re responsible for one another in the sense that if we truly wanna create a better world, we have to care about one another as if we would be caring for our immediate family Karen: That’s it. Karen: You’ve gotta see your neighbor as part of your family and bring them in. And I think that most people are compassionate, but they don’t know what to do oftentimes. [00:13:00] And so in forming Family Promise back in 1986, I formed the first program that allowed communities of faith to come together and take turns sheltering family for a week at a time in rotation with each other. Karen: That’s something they could do. So the typical church, let’s say, was doing it once a quarter, and they would house families in their buildings for a week at a time. But it was much more than just shelter. There they began to relate one another, and even their own children that came with them would play with the children in the program. Karen: And I remember one time a woman related to me that she had volunteered with Family Promise and brought her children. And so her children, just got down on the gym floor and were playing where… with homeless [00:14:00] children. But then on the way back home, her daughter said to her, “Mom, when are we gonna go see the homeless people?” Karen: Families don’t look like homeless people on the street, and- Gissele : Yeah … Karen: that, that’s a tragedy, Gissele : Yeah. It’s a tragedy because we’re supposed to be, in, in a developed country, right? In a country that is supposed to be enable people to have opportunity, enable people to be, to be able to rise above their circumstances. Gissele : At least that’s what the capitalist perspective has been, right? That everybody has an opportunity. But the truth of the matter is, if your wage hasn’t gone up, if you’re underemployed then you don’t have an opportunity. And if there’s a whole bunch of nepotism as well or there’s a, this lobbying that prevents you from increasing wages or giving benefits before you leave the country, then you’re not necessarily gonna be able to rise by your bootstraps because the system will work doubly hard to keep you down. Gissele : And so [00:15:00] it makes it that much more challenging, it feels. Karen: Yes, definitely. When people are making low wages, they can’t… They have to make difficult decisions, which is very hard on a family. Yeah. They have to decide whether they wanna celebrate their child’s birthday or, pay the rent or fix something- Yeah Karen: in their apartment. Y- they’re forced to do this. They’re living a very different way than, They should have to Gissele : Yeah. At what point did the organization grow to that many people that you were supporting? It started off as small sandwiches. At what point sorta did it balloon into this bigger than life organization that’s supporting 180,000 people is quite a number of families, so- Yeah Gissele : it’s Karen: incredible. It’s for several reasons. One, the model is replicable. In every community, there’s people who are compassionate and wanna make a difference, but just are wondering how they’ll do it. [00:16:00] And in every community, unfortunately, there are families who are homeless. And when I started the program in 1986, and at the end of that year, about 70% had found housing. Karen: What we do is not just shelter, but it’s help families holistically and help them find housing. But at that time nearby counties said to me, “How do we start this program?” So in Morris County, Terry Rahill of St. Patrick’s Church came to me and said, ” I like what you’re doing, and we would like to do that in Morris County.” Karen: So I taught him how to build the network, and then Carl Bost in another county nearby came to me and said, “How do we start the program?” And again, I showed him. So it grew organically at first, but then I got calls from [00:17:00] Philadelphia, so I went there. And a call from Columbus, Ohio, so I went there. But then it just kinda caught on, and I what I did was have my own sales force, so to speak, and these were dedicated volunteers who would meet with clergy one on one in a particular community. Karen: And then they would host a community meeting where we’d go out and speak and hopefully get people excited about the prospect of volunteering and forming a network, which is what happened. And then I hired more of the staff to do some of the work. So one, the program works for homeless families, and two each city has what they need to start the program. Karen: You just need you just need to know how to do it. So that’s pretty much how we grew. And the nice thing about that is a lot of [00:18:00] these affiliates go on to create other programs. Like in, in Augusta, Georgia, Gary Billings in Billingsley, a pediatrician developed a day center for kids. He saw how in the heck can families, Find housing if, or jobs if they had to take care of their kids. Karen: So now he has a separate… First it was in a church building, and now he has his own building, ’cause people in the community heard what he was doing and liked it, so that he has his own separate day center for families in the program, and they even accept families not in the program. So it’s a wonderful thing to see how it blossoms. Karen: It’s like a plant that begins to grow upward, and then spread goes out to form [00:19:00] branches of other kinds of programs. And other things that have been developed by our affiliates are a pet program in Phoenix, Ohio, mean in, in Phoenix, Arizona. They saw thatFamilies would not come into the program because you’d have to make a difficult decision, come into the program and leave your pets behind, or stay with your pets and don’t have shelter for yourself. So they created something called Pet Promise, and that meant that anybody coming into their program could bring their pets, and they had a they built like a kennel on the outside of their day center and so families could walk their dogs, play with their dogs. Karen: They didn’t have to make that difficult decision. So l- lots of innovations come out of once people get involved. The mystique [00:20:00] of who’s homeless and who’s not, the veil is torn away, and they can see families with children that need help, and they respond. Gissele : Yeah. That’s what happens when a community comes together with care and with heart, right? Karen: Yes. Gissele : are you okay talking about your accident and talking about… Is that okay? Karen: Oh, yeah, that’s okay. Gissele : Oh, okay. I just, I wanted to shift gears because the topic is really about finding happiness even during difficult moments. And so I was wondering if you could share a little bit about the accident that you went through and how you’ve been able to come on the other side with a still very positive and happy perspective. Karen: Yeah. I retired from Family Promise in 2016, and on February 12th, I remember the date, 2019, I was sitting beside the pool in Miami Beach, and I was waiting for my cryotherapy appointment. And [00:21:00] cryotherapy, for those listeners or viewers who may not know, is extremely cold temperature therapy, and it’s supposed to give you energy, which people said you… Karen: At that time I had so much energy. But it also helps you lose weight, makes you feel good. Anyhow, I had done it about 30 times, both in where I live in New Jersey and down in Miami. But this time when I y- got there for my appointment, the person at the desk said, “You’ll have a new attendant. She’s been with us for four weeks, but she’s been well-trained.” Karen: And so I thought, “Okay, that’s fine.” I guess I should’ve second-guessed that, but I didn’t. And once she put me into the chamber, it got really cold, and I said, I’m cold, I’m so cold.” I, I don’t remember saying that, but she says that’s what I said. And so she went around and she opened the door of the [00:22:00] chamber, but rather than standing in front of it, she stood behind it, and I fell out. Karen: I must’ve been frozen like a popsicle, ’cause I fell out and hit my head on a raised ledge. I didn’t lose consciousness, but I hit my head hard and I couldn’t feel anything from my neck down. So I had the presence of mind to ask for a phone, and I called my two sons, and they came down, and I had the surgery. Karen: And, I’ve come out of that okay. I was in the hospital in Florida for a while, and then I wanted to be transferred to Kessler Institute, New Jersey, ’cause they’re one of the best in treating people with a spinal cord injury. And the good news is that I had an incomplete spinal cord injury. Karen: Incomplete means you have a chance to walk. If you have a complete, [00:23:00] then you’re really, married to your wheelchair So I, I had therapy there, and then I, as I say, I transferred to Kessler, and after a while, I got my own apartment. And yes, I don’t know. I don’t feel depressed. In fact, I’ve never even cried since I had the accident. Karen: Why? Because my faith is strong, and Karen: thoughts, and I have wonderful aides who help me. I have a wonderful assistant in Jen, and my two sons and their children are nearby. So I don’t… my happiness is not dependent upon my walking. My happiness is dependent upon making up my own mind to be happy and taking it a day at a time, and that’s really what I’ve done. Karen: And I, I do volunteer speaking at different events. And so I feel [00:24:00] my ministry that I started way back when I was just a little over 12 continues, in giving sandwiches to people who were homeless, and then founding Family Promise, and now speaking around the country. Karen: And so th- I once heard somebody say, “Serve or suffer.” In other words, if you have this in you to serve and you ignore it, you ultimately suffer, ’cause it’s an expression that you have to express. And I s- today I volunteer. I volunteer on a task force in my town of helping homeless people, and I’m pleased to say that out of 25 that were homeless in this community we’ve housed 20, and that’s quite miraculous. Karen: But that’s what can happen when a community comes together Gissele : That’s so beautiful. Thank you for [00:25:00] sharing that. Yeah. And I just wanna praise your extraordinary strength. I know that when I’ve had difficult moments there’s times when I, in the past, have struggled with negative thinking and not having that strong faith, right? Karen: Yeah. Gissele : What helps you have that faith and not waver when doubt maybe shows up? Karen: Okay. At one time I didn’t have that faith when I was in my 20s and early 30s, and I guess I learned from that, and I think I’ve grown spiritually. I have a sense of myself being a spiritual being having a human experience. Karen: I guess that’s really key. In other words, I’m beyond the person Karen, here. There’s a spirit that’s really the driver, so that gives me happiness. I feel very happy, really. Yeah. But it’s… That’s not easy. A- as I say, when I was in my 20s and early 30s, I couldn’t do that, and I had to had some trials, and then just [00:26:00] decided and this was through taking their various programs, two spiritual programs and fellowship, that I decided I was just gonna be happy or at peace. Karen: And I think that’s what’s, that’s what’s happened. Gissele : And I think what you’re saying is very important, so I wanna reiterate it, and it’s the fact that you made a choice. You could have chosen bitterness, you could have chosen sadness, So you chose to be at peace, to be happy, and it’s a choice we have to continuously make. Gissele : And that’s what I’ve also learned about my journey as well, which is that I have to choose. I have to choose happiness, I have to choose peace, I have to choose compassion, I have to choose love. Because it’s so easy to fall into despair, hate , anger, blame, and all of those things. And so it’s a choice, and it sometimes can feel, for myself in the past it has felt difficult. Gissele : And yet it always ends up being the best choice and the best outcome [00:27:00] when you do. I wanted to ask you about the person who was involved in the accident and forgiveness Karen: Yeah. I- I’ve even forgotten her name now, but she called me I guess about a week after I had my accident. And she felt very bad that she felt somehow maybe she had caused it. And I said, “No, not at all. You just were not well-trained enough. It’s not your fault.” Karen: And I said I don’t blame you one, one bit,” or you did what you could.” And she thanked meprofusely because she had… was filled with a lot of negative feelings and blaming herself. And I said, “No don’t blame yourself. It’s you just were not trained in the right way, and I don’t blame you. Karen: I don’t blame anyone, so please don’t blame yourself.” And that really released her. She felt, Gissele : Yeah … Karen: she felt freed And in fact, I [00:28:00] never did blame her or think anything of it. Don’t blame anybody. Karen: What’s the sense of blaming? It’s not even in my frame of reference to, to blame anyone, and I guess I could look at it, but what does that do? Karen: I don’t know. I just don’t go there. I just don’t go there. So this is yet another test in my life, where I’ve grown stronger and more at peace than ever before. And people would say how could you be at peace when you’ve, y- you no more can do exactly how you were doing it, and you’ve had this severe accident?” Karen: But it’s peace within myself and the ability to still reach out to others. Like the other day, I was in the mall, in Short Hills Mall, fancy m- mall, and amid all the designer stores, there was this one man who sat on a bench or an in-between area of the stores, and he [00:29:00] looked, like he was suffering a bit, but he had things to buy. Karen: And so I was with a couple of friends. We were walking by. I said, “No, let’s go back.” So I went back, and I bought he had a whistle, and I bought a whistle and some other things, and ended up talking with him for about 20, 25 minutes. And so that’s a simple act of kindness, but other people were just walking by him. Karen: So I have a way of, of just knowing people and their needs and how much it lifted his spirits. He said, “Thank you so much,” and I want to think that we made his day better because we stopped, and we just didn’t buy… even just buy something and be on our way. We sat and talked with him, and something as simple as that. Karen: So you have to have your eyes wide open and your heart open as well, and you’ll find opportunities to make a [00:30:00] difference, and you’ll find out in the end that the rewards go to you because it makes you feel good. That’s not why I do it, but that’s how it happens. Yeah. Gissele : Yeah. Yeah I love everything that you said, and it’s so true. Gissele : You’ve gotta be willing to notice, so aware and have an open heart to notice because as I mentioned earlier, there’s so many people that are suffering in silence in that they’re, they feel invisible and are invisible because people don’t see their suffering. And to be able to notice that can go a long way to someone, make them feel like somebody sees me.” Gissele : And the majority of us are so in ourselves or in our phones or in our problems that I think it makes it hard, but I think what you’re sharing is the power of helping others even To the extent that you can go a long way in helping you feel more abundant, more generous, more- Yes … happier [00:31:00] because you feel you have something to offer, and you can help someone else who is suffering as w- may potentially as well. Gissele : And so we all have something to give. We all have something to offer, whether it be a sandwich or whether it be, a conversation, or whether it be, like something monetary. I think you, you’ve given us the opportunity to reflect on the power of noticing and the power of caring for other people. Gissele : And I b- I agree with you, that it does have positive effects for us as well. I don’t think you can do something for someone else and not feel positively impacted. Karen: Yeah. I was a beneficiary of someone’s act of kindness, which I wasn’t expecting. I was on a business trip, and there was bad winter snowstorm, and my driveway, I’m sure, was gonna be completely covered. Karen: But when I got in the cab and got towards my house, I saw that the driveway was shoveled and the walks and the [00:32:00] and the front steps, and I thought, “Oh, my sons must have done that.” But when I got to the door, I saw a little note scrunched in, into the door, and it said, “I hope I didn’t mess things up, but I know you were away, and I shoveled your driveway and walkway.” Karen: And, and that was from Chris Jordan across the street. And that just had a profound effect on me, so much so that I couldn’t bring myself to throw away the note. And I took it and I put it on the table when you w- when I walk into my home, and then I had it in other places and I kicked it around. Karen: I just couldn’t bring myself to tear it up or throw it away. So he had a profound impact on me. He prob- well, he thought he was doing nothing, but I guess that, wow, I don’t know this neighbor at all, and look what he did for me. That’s [00:33:00] just a wonderful thing. So it, yeah, it can have a f- he didn’t think he was doing that much, but to me it meant a lot, yeah. That he cared enough to do that, really. Yeah. Gissele : Yeah. And he noticed that would’ve been helpful, right? Somebody without asking. And I do believe in the law of karma, that, you’ve put out so much positive world, that positive comes back to you. To be honest it’s also caused me to reflect, and I’ve reflected on this many times in the past since we were talking about homelessness and we were talking about low wages. Gissele : I kinda had to have a real conversation with myself about the kind of world I was helping create. And my parents, and specifically my mom grew up in poverty, and so I was really taught that poverty, lack thinking. And so I always wanted to pay for things as cheaply as possible, which led to me obviously going to places that pay as cheaply as possible and, you know the circle, which is then they pay as cheaply as possible and then, so on and so forth. Gissele : And so I was sharing with someone else that, my husband has a business – Yes … and we would attract people [00:34:00] that would wanna pay as cheaply as possible. I would complain “I can’t believe those people. They wanna pay as cheaply as possible . They don’t wanna pay for quality.” Then I was like, ” Wait a minute . Gissele : I’m doing the same thing. I’m helping create that circle of businesses that wanna pay as cheaply as possible and so on.” And so I had to say to myself, “Am I willing to be generous ? Am I willing to get beyond my fear of lack and pay generously because I value people, because they deserve ?” Gissele : So that people pay, because we also deserve, because my husband does a great job and so on. And so I really had to reflect on how interconnected we are. And so I think from the perspective of all of the amazing things that you’ve done, it’s no wonder that you’re attracting all of these positive things, because you are a person who puts a lot of love out there Gissele : And I also wanted to go back to how extraordinary it is to take life adversity such as the accident that you were mentioning, and being willing to say, “Okay, where can I grow from here?” What’s the gift [00:35:00] in this moment? And that’s difficult, especially if you haven’t been trained to, to have that mentality. Gissele : If you came from that mentality where your radio station is one of lack, which the majority of people in the world have, which is why the world is the way that it is, to look at things in negative, like plan for the worst, all of those things, then inadvertently we also get stuck there. Karen: Exactly … Gissele : yeah I think that you choosing to say, my happiness doesn’t depend on external circumstances,” that’s extraordinarily- Karen: True … yeah. No, it doesn’t. I don’t know, it just… I feel comfortable being me, and I guess I’m blessed with good family and friends and aides to help me. Karen: That’s all part of it, though. And it’s like I have an extended family here- … since my accident. Gissele : Yeah. Karen: Was a hidden blessing. I never really thought anything like that would happen, but I appreciate everybody around me, and my assistant [00:36:00] Jen is just amazing. She does so much. She goes to art class with me. Karen: I paint with my left hand. My right hand is my dominant hand, and that’s how I used to paint, but now I paint with my left hand. So she goes to art class with me and helps me with the paint, and we talk about it, and she also does writing for me, and accepts flowers and she does just so much, so I’m blessed to have her in my life. Karen: But perhaps I attracted her because, I’m positive . I don’t know, but it just goes round and round. Gissele : Yeah. Karen: Yeah. Gissele : And in and a heart full of gratitude tends to attract many blessings. Yes. Yeah. Beautiful, yes. And Karen: I love your Gissele : pictures behind you. Are they… Those are yours as well? Karen: Yes, those are ones- Yeah Karen: that I painted. I have many here. Oh. Those are ones that I painted before I had my accident. And it’s something I enjoyed very much. The one [00:37:00] directly behind me, that large one is something I painted when my sons were just two and four- … during their naptime. And you really can’t see it, ’cause my head’s in the way, but there’s a path that goes through there and out. Karen: So it’s a symbol of moving forward and flowing and moving out to something better. We’re rising up. And I didn’t know at the time, because I was very depressed. I had just gone through a divorce, and other things were happening, so I was depressed, terribly depressed. But you wouldn’t know it from the picture, ’cause it’s bright and light. Karen: Yeah. So yeah, I enjoy the painting very much. Gissele : And thank you for mentioning that because, challenges do happen, right? Y- you mentioned you went through a period of depression. And so it’s not, it’s about us not feeling our difficult feelings, but you, we still have to choose whether or not- Yeah Gissele : we’re gonna continue. [00:38:00] You have to continuously make a choice for peace, for happiness, for joy, for love even though it feels sometimes overwhelming. I also love the fact that even after your accident, you’ve continued painting. It’s not like you’re like I can’t do that anymore.” It’s how can I do this differently? How can I still do something that brings me a lot of joy, but maybe it looks in a different way?” Karen: Yeah. Yeah, I was able to do that with Jen’s help and the art classes. And yeah- Yeah … I feel fulfilled that I can do it. It’s a little more impressionistic than you see- … the paintings behind me, because I don’t have control over my left hand as I did with my right hand. Karen: But I enjoy it. I enjoy the class and the people in the class. Gissele : If there was one piece of advice that you could give to someone who might be having a hard time finding the joy in the moment or finding the happiness in the moment what would you tell them? Karen: I would tell them to be kind to themselves and to go within, and to [00:39:00] know that what they experienced in the past doesn’t have to continue. But they may stumble a bit. You don’t go from being where you are immediately into bright happiness. You take your time and just appreciate each day. Karen: Take in, breathe in the good and exhale the bad, and just take it a day at a time. Really, a day at a time. And if you can do that, it can build. And believe in yourself. Believe in God. Believe in your friends and family around you. Yeah, that’s what I would say Gissele : Two more questions. What do you want people to get out of the book? Gissele : Can you talk a little bit about it? Karen: Yes. It’s meant for more finding, following your heart and finding your purpose. I would hope that they would get out of the book a sense of inspiration that things are possible if you put your mind and your [00:40:00] heart to it. Yeah. There’s all kinds of examples of people who have done that in their book. Karen: I tell my story, and then I tell the story of others who have made a difference and have inspired people on their own, and in turn have felt blessed and healed by their outreach to others. Gissele : Love is such a transformative power, is it not? Karen: Yes, very. Gissele : I’m asking everyone what their definition of self-love is. So I’m curious as to what your definition is Karen: Self-love is being kind to myself and taking time each day to recognize my accomplishments for that day. Don’t let the day go by without taking a glimpse backwards to see how perhaps you’ve touched lives or surmounted hurdles. Yeah. Gissele : Yeah. Yeah. It’s amazing how when you start to do [00:41:00] that, like taking the saying that I’m proud of myself. Gissele : Whenever I’ve overcome, I’ll I’ll say to myself, “I’m proud of myself. I’m proud of myself for doing that.” And what I’ve noticed is that I’m more likely to say that I’m proud of someone else. I’ll tell my mom ’cause she’s learning to live on her own. I’m like, “I’m proud of you, Mom, that, you’re living on your own. Gissele : You, you’re learning and you’re facing some fears.” it’s amazing how what we give to ourselves we can also give others then. Karen: It’s Gissele : So Karen: true. It comes back Gissele : And so the last question where can people find you? Where can people work with you or get your book? Anything that you wanna promote. Karen: They can buy my book on Barnes & Noble, Amazon, bookshop.com, and also they can go to Karen Olson. That’s O-L-S-O-N author.com. And that’s Karen with a K-A-R-E-N. Gissele : Thank you [00:42:00] so much, Karen, for being on the show and for this great conversation and for all the amazing things that you do. You’re an inspiration to all of us, myself included Thank you, Gissele Gissele : in just, helping me remember power of helping others and that we have to choose even despite- Yes … the challenges , we have to choose to be more loving . We have to choose to be kind. We have to choose be brave. We have to choose peace and joy and happiness because then when we fill up our own bucket, then we’ll be able to help fill other people’s. Karen: Yeah. It’s being good- Thank- … to yourself so that you- Yeah … then can reach out to others. Gissele : Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much

TRANSCRIPT Gissele: [00:00:00] hello and welcome to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content, and if you’d like to support the podcast, you can go to buymeacoffee.com/loveandcompassion. Gissele: Today, we’re talking about creating true community, and We’re talking to the Society for the Involvement of Good Neighbors, also known as SIGN, which has been operating in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, and surrounding communities for the past 57 years. Gissele: The organization operates 23 supportive programs for individuals and families of all ages and employs over 120 staff. Its CEO, Andrew Sedley, has been with the organization for the past 15 years. Previous to his work with SIGN, he worked in the healthcare sector in mental health, addictions, and public health. Gissele: He convocated from the University of Regina in 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in social work. And as a lifelong resident of Yorkton, Andrew recognizes the value of the [00:01:00] not-for-profit sector in building community and supporting individuals and families within the community. Please join me in welcoming Andrew. Gissele: Hi, Andrew. Andrew: Hello, so glad to join you today Gissele: Oh, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I was recently at the Yorkton Film Festival, and I heard about your organization and how community has come together, and I just had to talk to you. I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about how SIGN got started. Andrew: in 1968, we had four local clergymen that had come together and they’d seen the needs in the community really wanted to develop something that could provide more than what the churches could provide at the time. They’d seen a lot of individuals and families that were struggling, and they sat down around a table, and they came up with this great idea of an organization that could serve the community needs, and we’re gonna call it Society for the Involvement of Good Neighbors because we know as good neighbors, we’re there for each other, we help out when needed, and support each other. Andrew: And so they started from that conversation, [00:02:00] and in 1969, they opened their doors. And, the first executive director at the time was Elton Davidge, and he was a long time member of the United Church here in town. And so the very beginning of our organization started more faith-based but from then has moved on now to more of a funded through government and that sort of thing. Andrew: But one thing that they always wanted to do, and I’m a huge history person, so when I got here 15 years ago, we have this room for archives, and they kept every single newspaper clipping and, and so just I read, I spent a week reading the history of this organization. And one of their first meetings the four clergymen had was they wanna have the finger on the pulse of the community. They wanna know what’s going on in our community and how can we support those individuals and families in need. And from 1969 when they opened their doors until today, that’s really what we want to focus on is making sure that we’re meeting the needs and supporting individuals and families that need those extra supports. Andrew: [00:03:00] We’ve we’ve changed. I’m a lifelong resident of Yorkton, and so I’ve seen kinda how we’ve grown, we’ve diversified, and as in many communities across this country, we’re seeing a lot more needs and a lot more people in crisis and needing supports. And from the very humble beginnings of those four clergymen to where we are now, one thing that we wanted to keep always was what is the needs in our community? Andrew: How can we develop programs to support those needs? And kinda go from there. Andtheir first foray into providing supportive programs in Yorkton was a counseling program. And now we have counseling now, but back then when they started counseling, they had it over the radio. And so every Wednesday evening for an hour People would call in and talk about what’s going on in their lives, and guessing the whole community probably listened as well. So not very confidential off the start. Andrew: But, uh, Now, 57 years later, we’re still providing counseling. Andrew: It’s confidential, it’s free, it’s rapid, it’s when people need [00:04:00] it. But that was our first foray into supportive programs. And the other piece that this organization always wanted to work on was advocacy, and advocating for those in our community that need. And our first advocacy project that we did was back in the early nine- I think it was 1970, and it was advocating the city council to bring in crosswalks. So it was something where there was a young person that was hit on one of our main streets the members of Sign had heard, seen other communities that had crosswalks and advocated to city council to say, “Hey, let’s look at starting crosswalks.” So that was our very humble beginnings was looking at, providing a one-hour kinda counseling per week call-in show and advocacy for crosswalks. Andrew: And from there, like I say, we’ve just diversified and like you mentioned, 120 staff now that we’re providing supports to individuals. And last year alone, we’re just planning for our annual meeting and last year we had 8,123 unique individuals that accessed one of our [00:05:00] services. We’re a community of 17,000, and so Andrew: it’s amazing, The supports that we’re able to provide and where pe-people feel comfortable coming for supports because there’s always stigmatization and that sort of thing too. But we really want it to be that welcoming, open place for everyone to come and meet other people, have supports, that sort of thing as well. Gissele: This is so beautiful because, even from its very beginnings, it was based on true community caring and truly looking out for one another. Can you just say a little bit more about the kinds of services that you provide? And are they all funded by the government, or do you sometimes have to go above and beyond what the government envelope gives you? Andrew: As many nonprofits know across this country we do go above and beyond. So we do receive some funding for some of our programs through government, but we do provide a lot of extra supports and that sort of thing. So when I look at some of our programs that we offer, we provide programming from everywhere from prenatal up to our seniors. Andrew: We provide low-cost [00:06:00] transportation for seniors in the community to get out to medical appointments, go for groceries. Our drivers, what they’ll do is, yes, they take the individuals to the appointments, but they’ll walk them in, check them in, they’ll carry in their groceries. And the real focus of it is one, we wanna make sure people are getting to their appointments and that sort of thing. But what we’ve found is that a lot of some of our older folks in the community, their families moved away And, for them to still be feeling included in their community and that sort of thing, it’s us picking them up and getting them out to their seniors groups, activities and really building those relationships. Andrew: When I started 15 years ago, I wanted to spend a day with each program just to find out a little bit more. one of the programs I’ll always remember is our senior mobility program because I sat in the back seat and our drivers would come pick up the seniors, and they would start a conversation on the way to the doctor’s office. Andrew: The driver would walk them in, check them in, come back about an hour later. They’d pick them up once their appointment’s done, and they just continue [00:07:00] on the conversation. And the relationships that we’re able to build with our seniors and our drivers i- is so important and really reducing that isolation. As seniors, as they grow and if they’re in their own home still, they can become quite isolated, family’s not around. And yeah, it’s a transportation service, but what we’re really doing is really trying to reduce that isolation. And we hear from seniors all the time just how they’re so thankful to have us around to be able to even just to have conversations with and that sort of thing. Andrew: We, Some of our other programming we offer in-home family support, so going in, doing home visiting, working with families and parents ensuring, that parents have the skills that they need to raise healthy children. We work with individuals that have long-term mental illness doing job coaching and independent living supports ensuring they can live on their own and be independent. Uh, brain injury programs involving again independent living and ensuring that those individuals are able to have the supports they need [00:08:00] to be able to, go grocery shopping and budgeting and helping out with their apartment or their house or that sort of thing as well. A number of our other programs include family resource centers. So in a couple communities, we offer centers that families can come to, and there’s drop-in and play. There’s programmed activities we’ll have public health come in, uh, and do different s- activities with the parents. Mom and me yoga, dads bird birdhouse making cooking classes, those sort of things. And it’s really become a drop-in center for individuals that just, when you have a new baby it can be tough and, if everyone else is working and that sort of thing, y-you feel quite isolated. Andrew: So again, we have new moms, new dads coming together and meeting other new moms and new dads and just being able to network that way, but as well learning some really good tips and tricks on early childhood development and ensuring that we’re able to raise our kids the best that we can. We have a early learning center, which is a licensed [00:09:00] daycare facility and a really unique story is with our daycare center. So back in 1982, which is aging me a little I went to the daycare as as one of the kids. My mom worked in the daycare as a daycare teacher. Andrew: My dad volunteered for the organization. Andrew: That was part of the reason why I came from health overto SIGN was I knew the good work that was happening and involved just growing up with knowing and hearing about SIGN and that daycare ran from the late ’70s until the mid-’90s. And we do this with some of our programs. Andrew: Once we’re– they’re viable, they’re sustainable, they’re working well, we’ll hand them off to the community to continue running, and then we’re able to then look at, okay, what are some new programmings that we can start and that sort of thing. So the daycare I went to, we handed off, uh, mid-’90s, but then early 2012, we started to notice there’s a need again in our community for daycare spaces, and so that’s when we started the process again of developing a new daycare. We have programs [00:10:00] that provide life skills for young people. So kids aged 12 to 18 providing mentorship skills being able to ensure that, that our young folks have those healthy adults in their life. And so our staff will be tho-those mentors and f- and help them, support them. Andrew: Maybe it’s their… the kids are having trouble with school, getting in, going to school or whatever it may be. And so they’ll work with the kids on, what do we need to do to get you back to school? Or, what do we need to build those skills so that you’re ready for the workforce when you graduate? Andrew: Or what do you wanna do after graduation? So providing a lot of those life skills and supports as well for individuals. We do also offer counseling for individuals affected by sexual violence, sexual assault and, we also provide some preventative education going out into the community and talking to individuals and letting them know, about consent or about what is a healthy relationship and what does that all entail. We provide counseling as well for domestic violence, so those that are [00:11:00] affected by violence in their family. Has there been generational violence? Those sort of things as well. And so working with with those individuals too that need those supports. One of our n- I’d like to say newer programs, but we’re now 10 years in, so I can’t even say too new. Andrew: But Andrew: Triple P Positive Parenting, which is across Canada, Andrew: SIGN has always been a pioneer with starting out programs provincially. We were asked by the provincial go-government to pilot Triple P Can- or Triple P Parenting here in, Saskatchewan. And so there was us, Regina, and Sandy Bay. Andrew: so we, we ran it for a number of years, and now it’s across the province. Centers across the province that are now offering that Triple P Positive Parenting support to to parents. And we also offer for those that can’t travel to Yorkton or that sort of thing, we provide training across the province virtually as well. Andrew: So we’ve received some funding for online registrations and be able to virtually work with folks [00:12:00] from the very north of the province down right to the border, the US border. And so again, really trying to get that information out. And one of great things about that program too it’s not mandated. Andrew: It’s not because, I’m a bad parent or I don’t know. It’s Andrew: really focusing on, what are some tips and tricks that I can do, What’s the bedtime routines? I have s- temper tantrums when I go shopping. What do I do? Andrew: And so our staff go and work with the families and the parents we also provide childcare. We’re trying to reduce the barriers. So while they’re in going through the sessions, we’re trying to you know- provide that childcare. So we’re reducing barriers, we do transportation, whatever it takes to ensure that we can get those supports for individuals in need. And th-the Triple P program as well is, like I say, it’s been recognized kinda worldwide. And we’ve quite involved in the province with really opening it up and getting more sites here going with it as well. Another program that we’ve [00:13:00] offered, and again, this is from the late ’70s is a adolescent group home. Andrew: For young people aged 12 to 15 that may not be in the best healthy situations at home, we provide that healthy home for them whilewere working with parents on different issues and that sort of thing. And, it’s it’s a 24-hour staff facility, but really what we want it to be is we want it to feel as much as a home as it can be for those young people. Andrew: Um, We’ll have them registered in dance and football and whatever it may be that, are their interests really try to be those mentors and supports for those young people while they’re with us. The goal always is more short-term stays. Sometimes that happens, and sometimes they are a little longer. But the goal really is that family reunification . And then we have some of our other programs family preservation, family support programs. Both of them will work intensely with those families. So if there is a young person that may be at our group home we may be then providing some supports to those families, ensuring, they’re healthy enough to be [00:14:00] able then to reunify with the kids as well and that sort of thing too. Uh, we also have before and after school programs. So we heard from parents saying, ” We have nowhere for our kids to go before school or after school. My work d- time doesn’t match up with the school’s time.” Andrew: so we sit down, we kinda hear, what these issues are and then look at how do we operate it? Andrew: How do we support them with it? And so we have before and after school programs at three different schools that we offer for families that go to those schools and really try to, again throughout this all is looking at the needs in our community and then kinda, developing programs to meet some of those needs. Gissele: How do you keep your finger on the pulse though? Like, how do you get feedback from the community? Andrew: So this is an– this is one of the Most amazing things. I don’t really know. It’s not a magic wand approach. It’s a let’s sit down and have discussions. And so I go to– I sit on provincial tables where some of the larger centers are, like, amazed at what do you mean you can [00:15:00] just talk to the healthcare or you talk to, mental health or s- education or whatever it is?” Andrew: And this community, and this is way before my time has always just looked at doing work in a collaborative way. We don’t need to own a program. If there’s a need in the community and I see the need, it doesn’t mean I have to start it. Maybe there’s another partner within our community that can start it as well. Andrew: So we hold usually it’s quarterly meetings where we have agencies come together and we’re talking 25, 30 different agencies here in Yorkton that come together and Andrew: talk about these are the needs, and then coming up with what kind of solutions can we, we do with these needs. It’s from what I’m told, a different kind of way of doing things in the community, but it’s the only way we’ve done these things, is we sit down and we have conversations. I I think we’re so much stronger as a community when we work together than when we work in silos. And we’re constantly giving [00:16:00] tours of our organization or our facility to government ministers and that sort of thing and they ask that same question how do you make this work?” Andrew: And it’s, we just sit around a table and we come up with ways to, to deal with the issues that are happening in our community. And we’re not perfect. We still have ways to go with it. But uh, it’s very easy for I think any of us in this community organizations to just pick up the phone “Hey, let’s sit down and discuss.” Andrew: We’re after the same goal as a community, so why aren’t we Andrew: working together on it? Andrew: And I’ve had other communities in the province that have asked me to come and speak and it’s very simple. It’s let’s sit down, have conversations and once you build that trust and you build those relationships with each other, you know that, it’s we’re able to then work with one another and make our community a better place. Andrew: And so for us it’s… For a lot of people it sounds foreign this fact of just working with other agencies and organizations. But I’m 48 and that’s just kinda how we’ve always done things in this community. I think we’re so lucky to the people that [00:17:00] came before within SIGN, within some of our other organizations that really built that culture in the community of getting together and coming up with collective solutions We don’t each have to own it. Andrew: It’s all of ours, and we can all play a part in solving some of those issues Gissele: I love that S.I.G.N., from my perspective is really founded on true caring. True caring for other people, the people in the community. And, as you were talking the… You know that quote, The quality of a society is based on how they handle their most vulnerable members and I think that’s S.I.G.N., Gissele: right? You’re looking after people with mental health issues. You’re looking after, new parents, and parenting is hard, so to get support. The elderly people. I have elderly parents that don’t live in the same community as me, and transportation is a huge issue. And so yeah, the fact that all of you came together in true caring is really admirable. Gissele: And it got me thinking as to why is that so rare? when I think of my own story, I grew up with, traumatized parents and, there was so little [00:18:00] trust in the community. They didn’t even trust their own family members, let alone the community, and I was taught not to trust people. Gissele: I was taught survival, and I wasn’t really taught to really care about my neighbor. It was seen as a competition, right? That life is a zero-sum game. What do you think contributes to your community’s perspective on we’re in this together, this collaborative approach, instead of the traditional zero-sum game perspective that is usually supported by, the larger public? Andrew: I, I think it comes down to a few things. Number one the the leadership that there is within this community, I think they’re leading the way by, always wanting to be collaborative and being a part of it. From our mayor and city council all the way to– They’re working with us. They see value in the role that supportive agencies are providing. When I look at each of our agencies, it’s just kinda something that everyone’s bought into. We’ve seen our community change where we have more people moving into Yorkton and just, housing’s an issue , and [00:19:00] where do we find enough affordable housing? Andrew: And we’ve worked together on a number of projects where SIGN has started a housing support program to work with those that are homeless or hard to house. We helped another agency with writing a proposal to get funding for the ho- a homeless shelter. We work with the city, on developing a joint project to get affordable homes built where we can go in and provide supports to individuals that are living in the homes. Andrew: And it’s just always kinda- If we’re doing it alone, we’re not doing it correctly. Gissele: Yeah Andrew: need to be doing it with everyone else. And, our city back in 2010, we had floods throughout our community and many people were Gissele: Oh, wow Andrew: and we lost, a whole block of houses. Individuals had nowhere to go. It was kinda just, it happened and everyone just jumped into action, so we had a quick meeting with everyone from you fire, different supportive agencies and we ended up housing [00:20:00] individuals within a week. We transformed some of our office building into residential spaces so individuals were able to have somewhere to go and be able to still kinda live their lives un-until they could get through the process of whether it’s rebuilding insurance, all that kind of stuff that’s Andrew: affected too. And again, it’s just we never know when something can happen to us and if we have good neighbors around us that can reach out and support however we can, we know we have a better chance of being successful with it. And we’re one piece of this community but this community as a whole sort of thing is how we really make things happen here in Yorkton. Andrew: And we when I talk about our our building that we use to house people even that it was a gift from John Remai who owned a number of hotels across the province and so Andrew: it, it was an old Travelodge. And Andrew: so he had come to SIGN and he said, “I’m getting out of the hotel business.” I know what you do in the community. I think Andrew: it’s so important that this [00:21:00] continues, and we wanna donate the hotel to you.” And the previous executive director, Tom Seeley, at the time had said okay, we can look at it. We’ll talk to the board.” And John’s no, I need an answer today.” And John– or Tom said, “No, we gotta go back to the board.” And the board had deliberations, and they thought about it ’cause all of a sudden there’s a 60,000 square foot facility and, how do you run it and operate Andrew: it as a not-for-profit And everything else? And the board eventually did decide to take on that gift but what we did was we asked community m- partners to come together and look at de- coming to have their offices with us. So we have a center now where it’s a one-stop shop. Andrew: So the, uh, we call it Sign On Broadway. It’s, the old Travelodge. We have a high s- an alternative high school in there. Andrew: We have our Sign programs. We have partners such as Saskatchewan Abilities Co- Council, Andrew: the, Andrew: Big Brothers Big Sisters. We have private counseling teams. We have [00:22:00] psychologists, psych-, nurse practitioners through the health authority, public health nurses, and so really this one-stop community shop. And again, it was just community going to them and saying, “Hey, we wanna do something, and we see value in it,” of, someone has a need in the community, w-we go to one place now. And been very successful in I think even just referrals. So I– let’s say go back to my previous life in health, we would refer somebody to a service. Andrew: And the way that we would do it is we would fax a referral over to whoever, and, about a week later, I get a call back from a client saying, “They never responded to me,” and the client’s quite upset or whatever it may be and maybe the other agency didn’t receive the fax or whatever happened. Andrew: So now what we simply do is when we’re working with an individual and they need other supportive services, we walk them across the hallway and introduce them to that service, and they’re able to right away look at book- book an appointment, meet with that person and we’re really trying to reduce some of [00:23:00] the the issues that individuals go through when trying to navigate systems, ’cause systems, Andrew: aren’t easy. Andrew: And so, By us as a community coming together and saying, “Yeah, you know what? We’re gonna, we’re gonna locate our offices within this one facility,” it makes system navigation so much easier. It’s able to as well build relationships with organizations and programs And so we’re able to now, build those relationships even stronger by being in, in the same hallways as, let’s say a nurse practitioner or a doctor or, um, a psychologist or whatever it may be. So really trying to have that one-stop shop for, our services plus the other community services right there as well. Gissele: I love that. And it’s so true. The research does support that co-locating services results in better uptake Gissele: Of services. And again, also my background is also social work. I know about long wait lists and struggles to get access to services, especially for vulnerable populations. And so having resolved that [00:24:00] issue I think is amazing and again, founded on true caring. Gissele: Do you think that part of the fact that you are able to work so collaboratively has to do with the size of your town? Do you feel because you’re a smaller town that maybe it’s easier to come together? And how will you manage that as the town grows and becomes more popular? Andrew: So I think definitely the size of the community, does help us quite a bit. Like I said, I grew up in this community . We know everyone. when we have a community event it’s full of community members. And so the size of the community definitely does help. And as we grow as a community one of the the main things we do is and just for an example, we have a community paramedicine team that’s just started last week here in Yorkton. Andrew: And, so they’re gonna be working with some folks. And so the first thing they did was they came here, we had a coffee, we learned about it, connected them to the collaborative groups that are meeting, quarterly. Andrew: And it’s, as soon as an agency or program starts in the community, we wanna [00:25:00] make them feel welcome. We want them to know that, “Hey, we’re here for you, Andrew: and, we see value in the supports you’re giving.” And really want to, I think, make sure that it’s not We can never be competitive. And I think a lot of times some agencies we may feel like, “Oh, we gotta compete against this one. We’re competing against Andrew: funding.” and right off the bat, I think we’ve always come from the mindset that it’s not competitive, but we’re able to be- make this community even better by having this person or this organization on board. And it’s quite common as soon as we a new agency or like I say the community paramedicine team coming it just, it’s as soon as they start, it’s, “Okay, let’s set up a meeting and kinda go from there.” And it was great actually. I didn’t get a chance to set up a meeting. Andrew: They were already at my doorway sort of thing on their first day saying, “Hey, here we are, who we are.” but I think looking from the mindset of not competition, but doing it more as, you’re a part of this team and we all play a role in this community and and getting away from that. Andrew: And [00:26:00] it’s tough because there are limited dollars available for different supports and that sort of thing. And but one thing I think that we’ve really done well here in Yorkon is we don’t fight over the dollars. It’s, if someone can do it and they think, they have the, the building in place, they have whatever it may be, it’s where they’re supporting them. Andrew: So half the time I’m writing support letters or sitting down and helping with proposals that, that don’t affect my organization. But in a way it does because you it’s affecting the families that, that we’re working with, or it’s infecting the sen- or affecting the seniors we’re working with. Andrew: And so whatever it may be thing, we want to ensure that we’re a good teammate and that we’re welcoming not only to our community members, our individuals, our families, but to agencies, organizations that are starting up here in the community as well. Gissele: And I think to me, this is the way of the future. I think this is the way that we’re all gonna survive, is coming together in true collaboration rather than this competition, this zero-sum game perspective. And the other thing that I love about your [00:27:00] organization is that you work hard to see people, right? Gissele: To make sure that everyone in the community is seen and supported. And I think in a world right now where people feel so lonely and divisive and isolated, I think that’s so important. I wanted to ask about what have you seen in terms of of social media and iPhone use in your young people and the distractibility, and how has SIGN been able to address issues of connection to media and technology that maybe isolate young people away from the community or their families, Andrew: Yeah, it’s it’s something that I know you’re hearing about nationally as well as provincially. They’re putting out a poll as well here in the province of Saskatchewan regarding social media and children under 16. for us, we have our Triple P parenting, which has– they have actual programs on screen time Andrew: and Andrew: So it talks about brain development and those sort of things, and really kinda informing parents as to, screen time and, if we’re just throwing a phone in front of a child’s face [00:28:00] to, keep them quiet sort of thing, not probably the best way to, to do it and that sort of thing. Divisiveness, I think, is something that we’ve just seen more and more within our community. Um, For us, I know one of the things that we focus on is just welcoming everybody into our organization. It doesn’t matter what background you have what you have Andrew: we wanna be as inclusive as possible knowing that when you come through our doors, we want you to feel safe. We want you to feel welcome. I look at even just when you walk through our doorways and just the soft feels that there is when you walk in. Andrew: And we know a lot of individuals that come for services have dealt with a lot of trauma Andrew: and, We wanna make sure we’re not triggering and we’re not, doing anything that could affect them. And we know that, by being as welcoming as we can be letting people, the first thing we do is, we ask, “Do you want a coffee, a water, a tea?” Something, just something simple to reduce, some of that anxiety, that sort [00:29:00] of thing. But the divisiveness that we do see within social media it, it’s something that if we could sit around a table and talk, I think we’d be able to make a lot of progress that way. It’s something though, I think, that is continually an issue. And like I say, our Triple P parenting has a- actually a program that just focuses on that screen time with our young kids. [00:29:22] Creating Flourishing Communities Gissele: That’s beautiful. And I know I want my audience to understand the importance of what you’re doing ’cause, yeah, it sounds like a nice community model da. But, I wanna reference an interview I did with a a mother who lost her son at Sandy Hook, Gissele: And she’s spoken to a lot of young people that would-be school shooters. Gissele: And, when she asked them, “What contributed to you potentially going down that route?” they said, “Not feeling seen.” Gissele: And so the fact that you have a community that is willing to see all aspects of their people in true caring, you may not have an elderly parent or you may not have a young [00:30:00] child anymore, but that doesn’t matter. Gissele: You understand the whole concept of interconnectedness and how like you said, your program, you might not get funding for a specific program. Somebody else might get it, but it positively impacts you by increasing the flourishing of your community. And so this is kinda how we get out of war. Gissele: This is how we create flourishing communities . And so I just want my audience to understand how important it is. What are some of the challenges you faced in creating a collaborative community, and how do you get around some of those issues? Andrew: I always get a laugh ’cause when people ask me this I do two things. I say , “We gotta focus first off on our community champions ,” those that are Andrew: Go go. Andrew: whenever you’re looking at doing anything you’re also gonna have people that are against, whatever it may be. Andrew: I call them CAVE people, citizens against virtually everything. It doesn’t matter what you Gissele: I love that. Okay, yeah. Andrew: We don’t focus on them right now. Let’s focus Gissele: yeah. They’re afraid Andrew: eventually we’ll get them on board,[00:31:00] Andrew: but let’s focus on our champions right now. And, Andrew: we’ve done in my, my role here as well as my past role, a lot of community development and the focus really is on let’s focus on these community champions, get some involvement from them. When we look at even our young people what we do and in my previous life through health when I– we worked with young people and youth engagement, we wanna engage our young people. we, um, as adults we think we know what’s best for them always, but we never ask them, you know, “What do you think about it?” Andrew: And worked with youth and developing youth councils that work with city councils Gissele: beautiful. Andrew: be able to provide some of those supports. And I still think back to, this is probably probably 16, 17 years ago now, but I was going to develop youth committees that could, work with city council and that sort of thing. Andrew: the way that I was able to get youth to come was pizza. Go to the Andrew: schools, wherever sort of thing, free pizza, get a whole bunch. And so kinda did these different sessions, [00:32:00] and the only kids that kinda continued were the ones that were the skateboarding crew and that sort of thing. Andrew: And a lot of the kids that, the adults or the schools weren’t really looking at much as you’re thinking like they were the best kids. But meeting with these kids and getting their ideas and their input and, they ended up developing a whole bunch of things. They wanted to look at ways to, how can we reduce substance use in the community? Andrew: And so they came up with let’s have activities in the evenings and that.” They did um, pool, free pool parties for youth in the community. they got city council to– They went to city council and presented. They got a snowboard park built in the community. They a skateboard park some different things like that. Andrew: And actually the first year the the city ended up doing civic recognition awards. And so their citizen of the year was a 16-year-old that was the chairperson of the Gissele: Wow Andrew: Because we know that if we [00:33:00] involve our young people in decision-making, in being a part of solutions, we’re gonna Andrew: be a lot more successful for young people. If it’s just us adults sitting around the table, we’re gonna fail. We’ve done that for how many years, and we’re not Andrew: successful. So the biggest thing when we’re working with our youth is we need youth voice. We need youth involvement in it. We had surveys done. I’ve worked with an organization out of Minneapolis, it’s called the Search Institute, and they have what they call the 40 Developmental Assets. Andrew: And they’re 40 building blocks that they say young people need to be successful. And, So you know, we kinda have done surveys over the years within our communities throughout the east central part of Saskatchewan to find out where are our young people right now. And I know when we would go and release those results in the evening to a public forum sort of thing, we’d have our young people and our adults there. Andrew: And, um, one of the biggest things that we’ve seen was there was a low number of youth that said they felt valued in their community. Gissele: [00:34:00] Yeah. Andrew: And you know, that was a point of, adults right away would stand up and say what do you mean? They’re valued,” and that sort of thing. And the kids are saying, “You know what? We’re not being listened to. and so it was amazing to see that just switch turn where adults now start involving youth. Y- in the city of Yorkton now, we have a large youth group of 12 to 18-year-olds that, Gissele: Oof. Andrew: are working with city council, with city administration on youth activities and programming. We had, and it’s really interesting we received some funding through a family foundation a number of years ago to run a pilot on youth resiliency and how do we get youth involved in the community and that sort of thing. And so we ran it for two years and the funding was up, and we’d seen the value, and we didn’t know what do we do? Andrew: We don’t wanna just leave the kids high and dry now. Andrew: And so talked to our partners at the city who said, “This has been amazing . We wanna take it on and fund it now.” And so it was really, able to keep that going in our community. Local [00:35:00] government saying, “We see value in it,” and then continuing to fund it and have it running today still. And again, it’s just when we’re working with our young people, I think it’s so important that we hear them, that we listen to them, and we listen to understand them, that we don’t just kinda listen to, yeah,” Andrew: and then move Gissele: yeah. Andrew: Get down to actually finding out, what are some of the issues? What do you see as solutions? What do you need as supports? And by us, working with our young people we’re seeing success that way Gissele: Oh, so beautiful. And you’re creating the next generation of champions, right? You’re creating the next generation of flourishing citizens, and so it’s a huge investment that pays dividends. Gissele: it’s so incredible how often young people are disregarded, right? And they have so much wisdom. That was one of the things I learned within the field. They have so much wisdom if we would only listen to them because they are the future. Gissele: And I also loved the fact that when the funding dried up, you’re like, “Okay, so who else?” Instead of leaving the kids high and dry, it’s who else? But [00:36:00] often with organizations the funding dried up, therefore we can’t do anything.” And so you’re willing to think outside the box and say, Gissele: this is beneficial. How else can we do this?” And that is the essence of problem-solving with a focus on the community needs, not with the f- funding leading, Gissele: Which I think is so essential. So essential. Yeah. Andrew: Yeah, Andrew: absolutely. And a lot of times, when there’s pilots running you’re trying your hardest to, get the results Andrew: If funding does buy or dry up, that we’re able to then do that. And it kinda just reminds me as well of our rapid access counseling. Andrew: So we offer free rapid Gissele: Oh, yes. Andrew: So this is another program that we piloted. so we ran it Andrew: Wouldn’t it be nice we had walk-in medical clinics? So when I have a cold, I can just go there, pick a number, a doctor will see me or whatever it may be. I’ll get an antibiotic or whatever it may be, I’m on my way. And it diverts people from emergency rooms, that sort of thing. And so we said why don’t we do something like that would then divert [00:37:00] people, from mental health, which has long wait times as it Andrew: was, or through the emergency room, which is quite expensive?” Andrew: And so we ran it for about a year and a half, and we kept every piece of data that we could. And we sat down with the minister of rural health, uh, for the province and kinda just gave him the information. This is what we were able to do. This is the amount of people we served. We we do session ratings, so we do outcome rating scales and session rating scales where the individuals will kinda mark where they’re at, how the session went, all that kinda stuff as well. ‘Cause we did it in mental health back when I was there, and so it was like, “Okay let’s do the same sort of thing, Andrew: but let’s do it when people are needing it in crisis.” So if I need to talk to somebody right now, how am I gonna do this? I don’t wanna go and have to wait a week or something like that. Andrew: I need to talk Andrew: to someone right now. And so we said, “Okay, let’s start it up.” And we started out very– It was an office with a number that you would pick up, and you would wait for your counselor to come. Andrew: And so we did that, [00:38:00] like I say, for about a year and a half, got some great data, took it forward to government. Government seen the value in it, and they ended up funding, I guess it was 12 organizations and 52 sites across the province is where now, we’re now offering– operating this what we call rapid access counseling. And, We’ve Andrew: moved away from the go in and pick a number, but now it’s just simply you go online, you can book a day and time. Andrew: You can choose what counselor you would like to see, male, female, whatever it may be. If you can’t see someone in person at two o’clock today because that one’s booked or this one’s booked you can connect virtually with any of the ones across the province as well. And really trying to make it as seamless as possible where individuals can get those counseling services when they need it. And the best thing is it’s free of charge. So really wanting it just, no barriers whatsoever. If you don’t have a computer, we can do it over the phone. If you don’t have a phone, let’s come into the [00:39:00] office. However it is that we can do it. And we travel out to, like I say, those 52 sites across the province. Andrew: And so it’s a collaborative approach again. So this isn’t just a SIGN thing. So SIGN’s a member of what we call Family Service Saskatchewan, which are SIGN plus 11 other like-minded agencies that are similar to that. So on a Andrew: provincial level said, “Okay we’re gonna run this pilot.” So we were running it already, so we had another organization out of Regina and another one out of Melfort. And so they all kinda– we all kinda kept the same stats and the data with it. And now from that’s where these 12 agencies are now funded, those 52 communities across the province, and continuing to look now at how do we service the north, the northern part of our Andrew: province. Not be great internet coverage Andrew: And we’ve started embarking on a northern strategy to come up with recommendations that we can give to government to say, “Hey, this is what we can now do in the north as well.” And so, Constantly kinda looking at how can we [00:40:00] do this, but not doing it on our own, always going back to that collabor-collaboration. Andrew: So whether it’s locally, whether it’s provincially, we know we’re stronger when we do it together. And so that’s been our mantra. Our focus is always, how do we partner up and do the best that we possibly can for individuals and families Gissele: Yeah. it’s so important. So I wanted to go back to the issue of getting mental health funding and offering for free, because I think this is such an important point. I always wondered why, at least in Canada, the government funds physical health but not mental or emotional health when it’s all interconnected, right? Gissele: many doctors say that stress causes many illnesses and diseases, so why wouldn’t you invest in mental health and emotional health? And I think that’s what you’re showing is that there’s a huge need, and then those people don’t end up in emergency room. They don’t end up in those other clinics where they’re not getting serviced. Gissele: And so I think that’s really important, and I hope that the… we learn from this and then expand that as a, as an [00:41:00] option for people because some of the most vulnerable people don’t have the funds to be able to access or may not have employment that has benefits, right? There’s always the assumption of oh benefits can cover it. Gissele: Often benefits is like one to five sessions, and there’s once you’re done your five sessions, then it’s over, and you’re like I’m just getting started.” Like if I met you as a therapist, I might not get to my truth by five sessions. I just met you, right? And so the need for us to fund that support I think is really essential, is really like bravo. Andrew: Yeah. absolutely. I think we look at the health budgets across any province, and they’re the highest budgets that we have, and Andrew: it’s really focused on that physical health. But we’re seeing more and more now investments into mental health, into addictions. I think there’s probably a lot more we still can be doing, but we are starting to– We’re starting to talk about mental health, Andrew: and that is something that we haven’t really done a good job of. Andrew: As males especially, Andrew: And we’re starting to hear more and more men, talk about it and coming [00:42:00] for services. And one of the interesting things is traditionally counseling it’s always been we’ve seen more females than males come into our counseling services. So when we started the rapid access counseling and tracking, tracking all the demographics, all that sort of thing, we’re finding a 50/50 split. And so we started asking the question what changed?” it’s always been more females have been attending males. And what we found was after asking the questions was it was prompt. Andrew: It was right away. I wasn’t having to wait. One person Told me, “It’s like when I go Christmas shopping, I wanna go into the mall, grab what I need, and get out.” Gissele: yeah, exactly. Gissele: Here, take “That’s what it was like with counseling. I went in, I got what I needed, and I got out.” Andrew: but I don’t know if the male brain’s wired differently or what, but seeing more men reach out for service, which is good. We wanna be Andrew: able to, Because we, as males, a lot of time we don’t talk about mental health. And so when we see more [00:43:00] males now reaching out and feeling comfortable re-reaching out, whether it’s through media campaigns or programming or whatever it may be, but we are starting to see that demographic now attend more for for counseling sessions which is important. Andrew: We also provide some services for individuals that family members that have been affected by someone that’s committed suicide. And so we Andrew: have, A separate program that works with individuals within 24 hours sort of thing of a suicide then RCMP or whoever may have , they’ll refer people over our way to ensure that we’re able to provide those supports as well. But it’s something that we’re seeing more and more, and I think the need’s gonna get bigger. Andrew: And I’m hopeful that, our governments and leaders and decision-makers really invest in mental health. You look at physical health to mental health it’s all in one and we really need Andrew: that investment Gissele: Yeah. Yeah. for sure. And again, I wanna emphasize how important it is that you’re seeing a rise in men accessing these services. [00:44:00] The primary crimes committed in this world are by men, Gissele: right? Unfortunately, domestic violence, sexual assault, war. And so it is these men that are the ones that need that service. Gissele: And I’m not saying that women don’t commit crimes. Absolutely they do. But the majority of the more horrible crimes are committed by men. And so them getting access to the service is really important. Why do you think from your perspective that men struggle, have struggled so much with being able to get supports for mental health? Andrew: And it, I think a lot of it too is just, our, the upbringing of males. As children we’re told don’t cry,” or, we’re told you don’t, act this way or that way because, you why are you showing emotions?” Sort of thing, Andrew: right? I think for, one thing is, when we don’t show those emotions we may just end up with utilizing one emotion, which could be anger or whatever it may be once, once they grow and that sort of thing Andrew: it’s I think a lot to do with how there’s this idea that males, are brought up to be [00:45:00] tough. this is the way that you need to be and really, having our young people, young males know that it’s okay to show emotions and we’re here for you. But, If we kinda say, “Nope, act like a man,” or, however we kinda do that as we, we have throughout the years sort of thing it’s tough, I think, for males to to show those emotions or reach out for help because, that means I may be vulnerable and that sort of thing too. Andrew: And so really trying to change that mindset of, when we’re growing our young people, our young males, that, it’s okay To have those emotions and it’s okay that mom or dad or aunt and uncle or whoever it may be is here for you and able to support you. And it yeah, I think it, it’s just, it starts from the very beginning where we’re, you don’t play with dolls, you do this, or you play with a truck. Andrew: And I think it’s just really changing that, that whole perspective of how we raise our young people. Gissele: it’s much easier for them to depersonalize. It’s so much easier for them to dehumanize, ’cause first they’re not connected truly to themselves, and so then you can’t really connect to [00:46:00] other people and have true caring because you’re not accessing those emotions. Gissele: You can’t empathize. And so I think it’s interesting that, you lead an organization as well as a male who, who’s, was in social work, ’cause it’s also a very w- very woman-based profession, that are leading an organization that is focused on true caring and it’s focused on true true connectedness. Gissele: How has your background and your experiences led you to wanna do this work and wanna work in community? Andrew: Like I say people always ask me, “So why did you leave health and pension and all this kind of stuff to go to the nonprofit world?” Gissele: Yeah Andrew: And I always go back to, I grew up with this organization. Like I said, I went to the daycare. Mom was a teacher at the daycare. Dad volunteered doing plumbing even though he wasn’t a plumber, Andrew: but he would help out doing that sort of thing. Andrew: I went to Andrew: all the staff barbecues and that growing up. I had the little T-shirt with the sign logo on it when I was eight years old. And when I finished my [00:47:00] university and started out in healthcare, I started out as an addictions counselor, and so did that for a number of years and then into mental health, into public health doing community development. And and when the opportunity came I was like, “You know what? I I worked with Sign so much when I was with health, with the previous executive director,” ’cause we have this collaborative table that we’re always meeting with all the agencies and he really encouraged me and said, “This would be a great step for you.” Andrew: And so I kinda– I threw everything to the side and said, “Okay, I’m leaving that security. I’m leaving that. I’m going to a nonprofit world.” And I’ve loved every minute of it. when I look at what we’re able to accomplish and I loved my previous role, my previous work that I’ve done within government, within health. There’s a lot of red tape and decisions, can Andrew: take six months, a year, two years to, to come to fruition. So when I came over to the nonprofit side or [00:48:00] community-based side, I found that we don’t have to wait two years to come up with a decision. We can, sit around the table. Let’s look at doing– trying this out. Andrew: If it works, great. If not, we’ll try something else and kinda go from there. And so the fluidity that I’ve found in the nonprofit world, and it’s just made it so much easier for us to really make positive change within the community. And it, So for me, it was it was a bit of a risk making the move. The best possible move I could have made. I now have, 119 other family members. We talk about this organization being a family, and it truly is. We we’re, we look out for each other. We try to ensure, we’re supported. One of the things or a number of things that we tried to do is looking at, recruitment retention because Andrew: a lot of people are like “You we graduate from university with a degree in social work and we wanna go to government.” And, and so what we’re really doing is looking at, how do we recruit the best possible individuals? How do we retain the [00:49:00] best possible individuals? And, we’ve become, a lot more family-friendly. What we’re Doing is, everything from providing family leaves for staff members to being more flexible. Looking at, Andrew: One of the things that, that we started as well was, Gissele: a policy that at 5:00 phones are off, that managers don’t be emailing after hours sort of thing. Andrew: If there’s something important, you can contact whatever, but you’re not connected to your phone. This disconnecting from work policy is what we call it, Andrew: and it’s just simply that it’s okay. Live your life. You have a family at home. You don’t need to be connected 24/7. And our younger staff, the ones that are just starting families, that sort of thing, love it. They think, “This is amazing because I have an employer that’s not… I don’t have to be connected 24/7 to this Andrew: phone. I can turn it off knowing that when I come back to work in the morning, I can deal with whatever there is that may come up.” And that’s How we used to do things before [00:50:00] cell phones, before email, and that sort of thing as well. Andrew: Really looking at how do we be more flexible, family-friendly for our staff as well. And we’re seeing, that’s actually working. We each year at our annual general meeting we do staff awards for, 5, 10, 15, 20 years sort of thing. This year we have a 30 year, a 25 year, Andrew: 15 year. Andrew: And so we’re keeping our staff here, which is really important because as nonprofits, it’s tough to do because we can’t pay the wages that government can. But if we can provide that environment where we’re flexible, where we’re family-friendly if you have, um, a sick child at home, let’s look at ways that we can make it work. Andrew: You can work from home or whatever it may be to deal with whatever may be coming up. But really trying to be more flexible for our staffing body because they do amazing work, and they go through a lot each day as well when it comes to working with individuals that are traumatized and that sort of Andrew: thing too. Supporting our staff however we can and providing hopefully the [00:51:00] best possible place they can be at to showcase their talents in the community as well. Gissele: Yeah, and basically you’re embodying the values that sign has, right? Like the true caring for families and community, and the only way that you’re gonna retain people is if you do that too. I think that’s one of the challenges I’ve always had with not-for-profits is having worked in a number of not-for-profits before I went out on my own is the issue of like they’re always begging for money. Gissele: They’re always like strapped for money. And to me that, that was just s- such a shame because there were so many not-for-profits providing amazing services, but then when the funding would dry up, then They couldn’t be able to provide the services or they were limited as to who they can offer, which is why I think your model is so innovative, is the fact that you’re like, “I don’t wanna be limited by this funding. Gissele: How do we come together and make this happen as a community?” Whether it be fundraising or whether it be like, pooling your money together from the funder. I think it, it ensures that nobody gets left behind, Gissele: And I think that really is essential. It really is wonderful. Andrew: Yeah, [00:52:00] that fundraising is always a key component when it comes to it. And we do kinda some of the normal ones, the golf tournaments, those sort of Andrew: things. But, but we do it a little differently. So we involve other not-for-profits in it. So we do Andrew: partnerships and, make it even bigger and better, so it’s not just one organization, but other organizations that Andrew: are also, Profiting from it. Andrew: And the other piece, and it’s really seeing a change in the nonprofit world, is looking at social enterprise and, how can we impact by going through a social enterprise experience we’re able to raise some funds that way and not being as reliant on government. Andrew: So like I mentioned, having a facility that houses all the organizations, there’s, rents and those sort of things that we’re able to, now utilize then to help raise funds and revenues and that sort of thing too. So Andrew: Yeah Andrew: it’s, definitely the nonprofit world is changing. But I really see such great positives for the future for nonprofits here in Canada. Gissele: Yeah, and even as you were talking about social [00:53:00] enterprise, I was thinking about, a colleague of mine, and we were talking about it was a particular time when we were strapped at our not-for-profit and we’re like, “How do we raise funds?” Gissele: And it was like, “Can we use these funds to buy a Tim Horton’s which would then funnel these funds back, and then we could work…” You have to think outside the box and creatively. We ended up not doing that obviously ’cause We’re not allowed to do that. Gissele: But how do you get creative and think outside the box Gissele: Fundraising has got to be a lot more creative nowadays. It’s not where we do the hotdog sales Gissele: Yeah, Andrew: or that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. We really have to look at being how can we be more creative and kinda taking a business approach when it comes to how do we raise some revenues. We, Yes, we s- we engage our donors. We do hold some larger fundraising events, but then look at from a business perspective, are there other things that we can be doing that can raise some of those funds, the revenues? Because we can’t be reliant on government. There’s a lot of risk of, as an organization, if you just rely on government funding. At any moment, that government funding can dry [00:54:00] up. you know, we’re all contracted for our different supports and but, a change in government or whatever can just affect that really quickly. And so always being mindful of, how do we build, reserves? for us, we own two or three facilities here in Yorkton. Um, for nonprofits, there, there’s a risk that because government doesn’t cover capital, and so it’s okay. They’ll cover the programming, but how do we ensure that, we have capital, that we’re continually putting money into reserves because we know boiler systems go. Andrew: We know that, rooftop air conditioners, whatever it may be. So we’re- It’s constantly kinda looking at, okay, from a business sense, we want to ensure that we’re putting in, 80% of our unrestricted funds into capital, 20% we put into programming, so that we know that if a program, um, may lose its funding, we have some monies available now to keep it going to find out where do we, how can we keep this funded if it’s something we see as valuable within our community. Andrew: And, Andrew: so [00:55:00] always kinda looking at it yes, you have your social work hat looking at it kinda from that community needs level, that sort of thing, but then also putting on kind of more of a business hat and that sort of thing. So we’ve even diversified now where, it’s having a CPA that’s involved with our organization now that our chief financial officer that, that does a lot of that work and ensuring that we have those minds as well as our social work minds and coming together to, to make sure we’re gonna be sustainable. Andrew: This organization, we’ve been around for 57 years, and part of my role is how do we make sure it’s another 57 years, and how do we build that while still providing the programming that’s needed within our communities? And so it’s of a, uh, a juggling act at times, but when you surround yourself with strong individuals, caring, compassionate, those with the knowledge and experience from the business side that’s where we really see huge success within the not-for-profit world Gissele: And this is where I go back to the concept of community responsibility, when you see organizations such as yours that actually are [00:56:00] providing services that work, as a community member, I wanna contribute and I wanna support your organization because it’s working. Gissele: It’s working for my community, it’s working for the kids, it’s working for the seniors, and that positively impacts me. And so I’d rather invest my money in a, in an organization such as yours than s- an organization that, perhaps is polluting the environment, isn’t necessarily supporting people and, wellbeing, maybe using cheap labor. Gissele: And so I think it’s really important for us as community members to make sure that our dollars are going to improving, our communities and also other people’s communities too, to stop thinking of the world as, this is just my community and my people. We’re all positively impacted by all of us, and so if we could just, community supporting communities, including supporting something as amazing as Signs. Okay, so a couple of more questions before we end. I ask everyone on my podcast for this season what their definition of self-love is Andrew: [00:57:00] taking care of yourself and Andrew: taking time decompress and Andrew: knowing that, no one’s Andrew: perfect. Andrew: we– And it’s okay being able to surround yourself, with family, with friends, whoever that person is for you that you can do that decompress and that sort of thing with as well. working in this type of field, we need to have that ability to be able to decompress at times. And so whether it’s for me personally it’s this time of year it’s going out and golfing. Andrew: I’m a horrible golfer. But it’s, for me it’s a way just to Andrew: forget about everything that kinda happened throughout the week sort of thing. Andrew: But just being able to take time for yourself, Andrew: getting out and getting some exercise, fresh air surrounding myself, like I say, with the people that are so important to me whether it’s my spouse, Kendra some of my friends, But having that opportunity just to, know it’s okay if things didn’t work out totally perfect this week. We still had a lot of positives and knowing, what those [00:58:00] positives are So I think a lot of times what we do is we can be very critical Andrew: of ourselves, and I think, being able to get past that, being critical and realizing that, “Hey, I made a difference this week, and this is how I made a Andrew: difference by A, B, C, or D.” Andrew: And, you know, reframing the way that we think Andrew: can really truly make a difference Andrew: Yeah, and I would say that’s true self-kindness, right? To be able to look at a more strength-based approach. Last question, where can people find you? Where can they work with you guys or donate, or anything you wanna share with the audience? Andrew: Absolutely. So we have a brand new website. you can see it at www.signyorkton.ca. Um, right there it has a listing of all our programs , our history, our mission, our values, everything that’s happening for this upcoming month. You can register for programs online and just, yeah, learn more about the organization. Andrew: We do have our Donate Now button right on the top as well. We do recognize [00:59:00] that our donors make a huge impact on what we’re able to do within our community and we do appreciate that as well. You can also give us a call, (306) 783-9409. But the best way is through our website, through social media. Sign Yorkton is our… If you search for that on social media, whether it’s Facebook, it’s Instagram we’re able to you’ll get caught up on what we’re doing, what we’re involved in, and learn more about this unique but Andrew: I believe important organization here in the province of Saskatchewan. Gissele: Oh, thank you. Thank you, Andrew, for being on the show and for sharing your wisdom and telling us about SIGN, and continue to do the amazing community-based work. It’s incredible, and, I hope people replicate or adjust or make their own model, but truly founded on caring. And thank you to everyone that tuned into another episode of Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. Gissele: See you soon

TRANSCRIPT Gissele: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the Love and Compassion podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. Gissele: And if you’d like to support the podcast, you can go to buymeacoffee.com/loveandcompassion Gissele: Are you struggling with an interracial relationship that other people don’t accept, or have you survived or are struggling with intense and traumatic family and relationship challenges, or if you’re just someone who has the courage to follow your dreams against all odds. Today, our guest is Annie Waxman, author of Accidental Rebel: My Story of Interracial Love and Loss. Gissele: In the late 1960s, she was a young, white, and privileged high school cheerleader who accidentally fell in love with James, the Black star basketball player. This was a time of deep racial tension in the US, and especially in a small town in Kentucky where she lived. Gissele: [00:01:00] Accidental Rebel is a memoir of the journey of their secret relationship, which, when dramatically discovered , changed her life, her family’s life, and the small Kentucky town forever . Please join me in welcoming Annie Waxman. Hi, Annie. Annie: Hi there. Thank you for having me. Gissele: Oh, thank you very much for being on the show. Gissele: we’re talking about race relations. you would’ve thought that it was the 1960s, but I think people still struggle with those relationships. People still struggle with accepting different races, as we see with what’s happening in the US, and so I think this conversation continues to be unfortunately timely. Gissele: I was wondering if you could, tell the audience a little bit about how you fell in love with a basketball player and how that impacted your family. Annie: Okay. the story is about, race, shame that I was told that I was, giving towards the family and the [00:02:00] town. Annie: And forgiveness. I think forgiveness is also what the story is about. And, trauma, young trauma. I was, a young girl, very popular in high school, and, I did something that, my parents did not agree with. I was with a Black guy, and,they did not know that I was with him. I was sneaking around, uh, initially, and then many years later, up in, well into my 20s, I was still sneaking around, from my family and from them knowing what was going on I never was raised to talk poorly about people or to make any derogatory comments about anyone. Annie: so it was kind of shocking, when my father and my mother, reacted the way they did when [00:03:00] I was caught, really caught, with this Black guy. we had, gone in a car. I used to meet him in the cemetery, Annie: He would run through the back, and I would drive through the cemetery, and that’s how we would start meeting. Annie: rumors were starting to surface that I was seeing the basketball player. and I didn’t even tell my best friend about it, who was also a cheerleader. So that indicates that I knew that probably it was gonna be problematic for a lot of people So, my father, who was quite powerful and very well-known in the state, had Annie: Police cars following me. Mm-hmm. And, and they followed me to that area of town. and we had gone into a house there, and, we [00:04:00] were together. It was kinda the first time we’d been able to be together in actually a real location. though we do, did go down to an old stone church that was way out in the country at times and meet there. Annie: so my father was knocking at the door, and, um, I told James to run, because everybody was saying, “Your father’s out there,” you know. “I don’t know, he looks crazy.” And so long story short, I told James to run. He ran out the back door, and I gathered myself calmly and went and opened the door, and my father, threw me out of the house down the stairs, the concrete stairs. Annie: There must have been about 10 of them. Mm-hmm. And at that time, my father, who unfortunately was a [00:05:00] philanderer a bit, he and his girlfriend were with him, and she spit on me. And my father got me in the car and drove me home, where we lived in a very nice subdivision in that small town. And- Pulled me out of the car and said, “Tell your mother you’ve been with a,” the N-word, uh, which was used, you know, back then. Annie: So it, this is kind of the journey that I was on. I was 16, and a lot happened to me that evening, July 26th, 1969. And every year I think about that day and what happened to me, and that was 57 years ago. So I felt it was important to write this book and [00:06:00] get my story out there, and maybe it might, um, show some other interracial couples what other couples went through to maybe make it a little bit easier for them, though I’m not sure it’s really that easy at all still. Gissele: I was thinking about what you said in terms of, like my parents hadn’t really said anything until I was dating someone, right? Yes. And so I was thinking people don’t believe that they’re racist until, until somebody wants to join the family of maybe a different race and then that really kind of shows you how you really feel, right? Annie: Exactly. Gissele: Um, did, did James experience the same thing with his family in terms of him dating somebody white? Annie: Uh, no. now my father had out that he was gonna kill him. Oh, wow. So he hid out for, for quite a while. but his family did not have a problem with it As far as I can [00:07:00] really remember, I think that there were other, people in the Black community, older people- Mm-hmm Annie: that had a problem with it and thought that, you know, um, we should stick with our own kind, which was the term used. Mm-hmm. but, not like what my parents did. And that’s just a very small slice of the story of what happened to me. Um, and I don’t really know how far you want me to go with it Gissele: It’s as far as you wanna go. Gissele: I mean, it must have been really difficult for you to continue the relationship, ’cause obviously you continued it ’cause you ended up getting married. so take me to the next stage in terms of, what made you wanna continue forward? Was it your love? Was it just the need to prove everyone right, or was it maybe a little bit of both? Annie: It was a little bit of both, yes. You know, we’ll show you. Mm-hmm. You think we went through all of [00:08:00] that and it’s gonna end? And really the problem with that is that then I didn’t really, and he didn’t either, we didn’t really realize we weren’t really good partners together. Gissele: Mm, ’cause you were 16. Annie: I was 16. Gissele: Yeah. that’s young. Yeah … Annie: we forged on we were together about … we were, 30 when we, when we split up. it was very traumatic time. I had been put in a psychiatric ward for a week my father He shot at me with a gun. Annie: Oh. And I was being choked. And, uh, then, the whole town was coming together and coming to the house and telling me I’d shamed the family and shamed everyone, and my body was supposed to have been at the [00:09:00] funeral home. a small town, rumors can swirl, and- Mm-hmm … that’s really what was happening. Annie: But I was pretty popular. and he was as well. Uh, but not on the same outgoing, let’s say, level, you know? Gissele: Yeah, Gissele: I’m very sorry that you had to go through that. That must have been so difficult to feel like everyone’s against you, right? You were only 16. You were only following your heart, and had people not judged, it probably would have evolved as it would have had, right? Gissele: But people’s fears and their prejudices are, always make things worse. Exactly … Did you end up staying in Kentucky or did you end up going somewhere else- No … just because it was so- No … difficult, yeah? Annie: No, I did not end up staying. I was sent away to a Catholic boarding school for bad girls- Oh Annie: my senior year in high school. and unfortunately he had to stay. He could not leave. He was not of wealth or, or anything. [00:10:00] so he had to endure staying in the town. so I’m, have a lot of empathy for what he went through- Yeah … ending up with this white girl, with this, the dad and this, you know, to this day I have a lot of empathy for him. Gissele: so when you were sent to that home for girls-was it for your last year- Year … of high school? And then- My senior Annie: year in Gissele: high school. So then were you able to come home, and then Annie: I, then I came home. I, and I tried to, go away to college somewhere else. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Annie: And I didn’t get in, so I had to be in Kentucky. Gissele: Mm. Annie: Uh, but I, I got into the school furthest away from home. Gissele: Mm. Annie: so I was happy about that. I kinda hated my parents at that time. Annie: for what they did to me really. Gissele: How was your ex-husband’s family? did you spend any time with them? Were you- Annie: I only met [00:11:00] them once. Gissele: Even though Annie: you were married for a while? But you have to understand that we were secretive until- Yeah … we got married, and, um, and we were 26 years old. Annie: So my family didn’t know. We moved away. we were hiding out in an apartment in a way that, it was really- Wow. Gissele: That must have been tough, yeah. Annie: It was, um, and that’s when it, I got to the point where I can’t do this anymore. The secrecy was affecting me, and I just could not do it anymore. Annie: And so I just one day just told my parents I was with him. Gissele: Hmm. I Annie: didn’t- Couldn’t hide … so how long were Gissele: you married for? Annie: two years, and we lived together- we lived together 10 or 11 years. Gissele: Oh, okay. And you weren’t anywhere near his family. You moved away somewhere else ’cause you couldn’t Annie: be in the town. Annie: Yeah, we moved away because his family [00:12:00] lived in the small town. Um, and- Gissele: Hmm … Annie: it, yeah, it’s pretty, pretty bizarre, uh, how it all happens. But, you know, I just needed to release all of this from my past. Hmm. I need to let it go. Gissele: did James ever talk about how difficult it must have been for him to stay behind? Uh, the reason why I ask that is because- That must have caused a lot of friction in your relationship. Gissele: It’s not like you could both freely be able to be yourselves. That’s a lot of pressure to put in a relationship, especially a young relationship. Annie: Exactly. You know what? he was pretty closed down. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Annie: and I think that he dealt with his anger of the situation by, drinking too much. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Annie: And, I think really that’s where some of his alcoholism stemmed [00:13:00] from. I’m not saying he’s like that now. Gissele: Yeah. Annie: But, ’cause we all change. Gissele: Of course. Annie: he was never very communicative. When we left Kentucky, when we were 24, even moving, to California, he did not ever really feel comfortable holding my hand or being close with me out in public. Annie: It was just, uh, something that I don’t think he could ever get over. I think he was, had some issues with his Blackness being with me, that I didn’t even see at the time. But having written the book and looked back on the years, I really feel that, I feel sorry for him really that he had to endure- Mm Annie: uh, that we both had to endure what we did. Gissele: Yeah, it’s so difficult. I [00:14:00] have friends who are LGBTQ, and my friend can’t go with her partner to some countries. They will get hurt if they’re holding hands walking down the street. Gissele: Exactly. what kind of fear must be going through you that you’re so bothered by love? It doesn’t matter. Exactly. have you ever been able to have a conversation with family members now that are able to look in retrospect back or do they still hold some of the same beliefs ? Annie: Well, my parents have passed, and that’s when I wrote the book. I did not wanna write the book while they were alive. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Fair. Annie: Oh, fair. Uh, yeah. I didn’t wanna do that. believe it or not, no one really ever said anything about what happened that day- Gissele: Wow … Annie: except my dad when I was in my 50s and I was divorced, looked at me and he said, “You know, that never shoulda happened, that day.” Annie: And I looked at him and I was shocked. No. And I said, [00:15:00] “No, you’re right. It shouldn’t have.” And that’s the only thing that was ever said about that. in the ’50s and ’60s we were brought up, like, there was a code. You don’t say what’s going on in your family. Mm-hmm. You know, what will the neighbors think? Annie: It was- Gissele: Yeah … Annie: truly, um, and they were a product of that, and- Mm-hmm … I just, I forgave them. I just, for me, it was forgiveness for them because I know they regretted it. and this is, is such a small portion of the very traumatic things that happened that evening, uh, with both my parents and with me. Annie: But I feel like they just, they just kinda did the best they could, and they were in this … My mother was European. She was [00:16:00] brought over from the war as a war bride in World War II. My dad was a pilot. And so it was like it was almost drawing attention to herself as well- Mm … ’cause she was trying to fit into this small community. Annie: And then so I go and do this, and then there’s focus on her as well as, as the family. And it was, it was a different time. I wish it was a little more different, than we see these days. But, yeah. my sisters have not been comfortable with me with this book. they don’t like speaking ill of the dead is what the comment was. Annie: but my parents and I were close in the end, and, and I’ve have forgiveness for them. that’s really what I choose to remember. but [00:17:00] it happened. Mm. And I’m sorry that I had to speak about that, about them, but my sisters are not comfortable with any of this and have not read the book. Gissele: Hm. Annie: And we are very close. It’s not something we talk about. Gissele: Yeah. It’s interesting how that happens, right? We tend to- censor ourselves, but it actually prevents us from really being truly close. And how, in speaking about those instances, you’re not speaking ill of the dead, you’re sharing your story. Gissele: Exactly. Now, your parents’ perspective of that story might have been different. Yes. It might have been through their lens. It- Yes … doesn’t mean that you are saying something negative, but we have that viewpoint that the kindest thing to do is to just censor ourselves or mute ourselves. But that doesn’t- Let it Annie: lie. Gissele: Yeah. Just let it lie. But that’s not compassionate to ourselves. Annie: not what I could do. Gissele: Yeah. Annie: I’ve been in therapy 16 years. [00:18:00] Yeah. This trauma that I went through has affected every decision I’ve ever made in my life. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Annie: Every decision. Mm-hmm. Except for now. Gissele: Yeah. so I wanna go back to, you get married, right? You’re together for a number of years. Obviously, there’s alcoholism. Um- Annie: Infidelity from him. Gissele: Oh, okay. it must have been difficult to make the decision to separate given how hard you worked to be together, right? Can you walk me a little bit through that process of having to make the decision to let him go without feeling like, well, they won. Gissele: They were right. Annie: Yes. Yeah, boy, did not wanna do that. Mm-hmm. Did not wanna prove that they were right- Mm-hmm … so to speak. Gissele: Yeah. Annie: we got married, and I don’t think he really wanted to get [00:19:00] married. I think we were kind of, well, okay, now we need to get married to finish this. Mm-hmm. And w- he was not a good communicator. Annie: Mm-hmm. So he was pretty shut down. So there was never really an eas- after all those years together and living together, he was never really a great communicator. So when it happened that my father, believe it or not, said that he would pay for the wedding. Oh. Now, this is years later, years later. Gissele: Yeah. Wow. Annie: That’s why I’m saying people can change. Gissele: Mm-hmm. That’s important. Annie: People, if you want to change, you can change. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Annie: So he ultimately got us on this rollercoaster of getting married. Okay, well now you gotta get married. And I think that kinda made him feel better to know [00:20:00] that- Mm-hmm … you know, okay, well I did this, but now they’re getting married, we can let it all lie and it’s over. Annie: And you know what? Mm-hmm. He was exactly like my father. I married my father. He was an alcoholic. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. he was a mean alcoholic, and he was- Mm-hmm … not very communicative. My father was working all the time. He was never home. I mean, so, um, I married my father, and I realized after I did that, I knew when I was standing there at the altar, I knew that this is not gonna work, but we had to finish it to move forward. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It’s, it’s so interesting that, we tend to be attracted to people like our parents, and the theory behind that is in order for us to address our trauma. Annie: Yes. Gissele: Like sometimes if we can’t address it with our parents, we’ll address it with our partners. Annie: exactly. [00:21:00] Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Annie: Yeah. Gissele: Um, so I wanna talk a little bit about forgiveness, because it’s very, very important. What got you to the point that you were able to forgive your parents and also your partner with whom you divorced? Annie: You know what? I was raised by a European mother- Gissele: Mm … Annie: in a small town. Manners, treat people kindly. I mean, it just, it was ingrained in me, and I did not want what happened to me and I guess at that time that I felt I had brought to the family and broken up the family, so to speak. Mm-hmm. I didn’t want to be the cause of that. Annie: So I, myself, okay, when you go through something as traumatic as that, you either move forward and become stronger, or you [00:22:00] fall within yourself. And so I wasn’t made of that stock, and I got stronger, and I just said, “I have to keep the family together. We have to be together.” And so I just went through years. Annie: I’d had not had therapy. I just ignored it. I, often probably drank and smoked pot to deal with some of the trauma. You know- Mm-hmm … anything to really not dig in there. And so I forgave everybody,and I think it’s okay, and I feel good that I did that. But I’ve had a lot of therapy. Gissele: Yeah. Gissele: Therapy’s very good. Annie: and it’s gotten me to where I am today, and it’s gotten me to the point where I could write this book. Gissele: Yeah. as you were going through therapy, were there ever any parts where [00:23:00] you felt like you had to forgive yourself? Annie: Uh, yes. Yes Gissele: Can you talk a little bit about that? Annie: let me see if I can think of what that was. I wasn’t really an activist, you know, when I was young. I didn’t really plan to be an, a rebel- Hmm … so to speak. And so it was truly accidental, you know- Hmm … forging forward with this, um, mantra, you know, interracial couples can make it, and we can all be together, and it’ll work out. Annie: So I think that I decided that it was okay for me to forgive myself for kinda creating a possibly unhealthy situation with him. [00:24:00] Gissele: Yeah. Annie: I was a part of how unhealthy it was. I’m not throwing it all on him. Mm-hmm. I had a lot to do with that too. it was like in Kentucky, it was like 1967 before they even took interracial marriages off the books of being illegal. Annie: And this was- Mm … ’69 when this happened to me. I this was, very close to when I was going through this, that there were still things like that on the books. And there was that, case with, Virginia versus Loving, and it was a white man and a Black woman who- Mm … had gotten married and were taken out of their homes and put in jail because they had an interracial marriage, and that’s what Loving versus Virginia was, and that was in 1967. Gissele: Oh, wow. S- Annie: so when you think back about what was [00:25:00] really going on just around that time that I was doing this, you can kinda think about, the South and what people were really thinking. Gissele: Yeah, of Annie: course. And what my family was thinking. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Yeah, they must have felt a lot of pressure in terms of the law- Yes Gissele: which obviously, made it difficult. and it’s so interesting when you think about the situation now. You know, we went from legally overt racism to covert racism and back to overt again. Annie: Yes. Gissele: Right? It seems to me like we’re back to overt, right? Yes. I’m curious as to your thoughts about what’s happening in America right now with all the ICE raids, and Gissele: if you have seen some shifting in terms of the racism you experienced, Has it gone underground, or does it just look different? Annie: Well, you know, I’m in California, which is- Mm-hmm … a wonderful state and a [00:26:00] Democratic state. And, so we don’t see as much here, but I do know in Kentucky, ’cause I still have my best friend that lives there and I do still have relatives there, that have never said one word to me about what happened to me. Annie: Mm-hmm. It’s like it never happened. I think that with, with race, I think right now it’s gotten a little worse. I think there’s less tolerance for people that are different. I know in this state or people that we associate with wherever they are, are like-minded like we are- Gissele: Yeah … Annie: there’s a lot of hate going on right now. Gissele: Yeah. Which you would have figured since the 1960 we would have learned, right? Just, it just went underground, right? Gissele: And this is why I think this conversation is so important. you dared to share your own story [00:27:00] even though it made people uncomfortable. Now, granted, I mean, I can totally understand you wanting to protect your parents to some extent, right? Gissele: but at some point you do have to own your story because if you don’t share those stories, then we can’t look at ourselves as a humanity, and that’s the thing. People don’t wanna do that. They’re like, “Let it lie. Don’t say anything. Hushity hush.” Yeah. And the reason being is then you can’t confront the truth. Gissele: You can’t be uncomfortable, and then you can’t be forced to change. And the fact that since the 1960s we’re still facing racism, and all these other isms in a very different way, but still they’re there. Yes. I think it’s- It’s disheartening. And at the same time, it’s a call to change. It forces us to change Annie: Exactly. Annie: it’s pretty disturbing. Exactly. Gissele: Yeah. And but I think the challenge is we have to look at ourselves. Annie: I agree. Gissele: And that’s probably the [00:28:00] most difficult part of it, right? Like you were talking about, your family. You said that there’s no vocalizing of any racism, right? Gissele: We like everyone. Yeah. Until there could be somebody who joined your family of a different race, and then all of a sudden everything that you said you believe in goes to the crapper. Yeah. And I think that is what we’re seeing today with those raids, right? Gissele: You see a lot of what I call lateral violence. Annie: Yes. Gissele: Other people of the same ethnicity signing up to be in ICE, right? to deport other people of their same color. and that’s like, wow. They’re Annie: also being lured financially. Gissele: True. True. Yeah. Annie: Yes. Gissele: True. Annie: They’re being lured financially- Yes Annie: as well. Gissele: and that is a very, very common strategy. I was born in Peru. Annie: Oh, Gissele: uh-huh. And I came to Canada when I was 10. Annie: Uh-huh. Gissele: And in Peru, the corruption was more overt, Gissele: And all these politicians would go to the poorest parts and they would go and [00:29:00] say, “You know what? We’re gonna feed you. Give me your vote.” And then every year, without fail, it was the same thing, and then they would vote for them, and then the people would not do anything, right? Annie: Yes. Gissele: And so it’s interesting how we’ve created this world where people are oppressed economically. Yes. Then the incentive is economic so that you can- Yes … then oppress your brother. Annie: Yes. Gissele: Which is- Annie: Very common in Latin America. My son actually lives in Latin America. Mm-hmm. And so, yes, it’s, it’s- Gissele: Yeah … Annie: very common, yeah. Gissele: And you know what? The other interesting thing, and then I wanna go back to your story. Annie: Yeah. Gissele: The other interesting thing too is one of the biggest things that I hear from the Hispanic community about why they are so anti- these other Democratic politicians is that they’re so afraid of socialism. Gissele: I know we’ve had this conversation before, but the truth of the matter is, when I was in South America, the governments tried to pass off communism as socialism. And so what would [00:30:00] happen was that the governments would take all of the resources, and then they would- sparse it out so nobody had. Gissele: It was like people would have to do line-ups for food. They had to do line-ups for resources. you would have, like lights out and all of these other things. So people associate that with socialism. Annie: Yes. Gissele: And they think that’s socialism, but what really asking for is a democratic socialism, which is no one gets left behind. Exactly. We share the resources. Exactly. That doesn’t mean the resources are gonna be taken by the government as it was in Latin America. The- Annie: Exactly … Gissele: people that were enjoying all the resources was the government. Annie: Right. Right. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Gissele: and so people are afraid of socialism, but that was not socialism. Gissele: It was sold as socialism. Annie: Well, I think a lot of the Hispanic community, certainly,I know quite a few that voted for Trump that were men that would not vote for a woman ever. Gissele: Mm. Mm-hmm. Annie: Ever. [00:31:00] Gissele: Fair. Annie: Now, it’s interesting, though, Mexico has a female president. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Uh, Annie: but they would not vote for a woman, and some of the women felt that, that they would be better off. And so now everybody regrets it. Everyone I’ve talked to has said And we’re like, “Didn’t you listen to what the words were from this person?” So here we are. Gissele: And I think that’s where our own isms come up, right? Gissele: when we immigrated to Canada we came quote unquote, “The right way.” Which means, we paid $20,000, we had all our medicals- Right … and everything in order to come to Canada. We had to have skills. And so- Annie: Yeah … Gissele: we came the right way. And then there’s pe- well, that came in different ways, right? Gissele: so there was refugee people that came and got, a whole bunch of things for free. And my parents, I think to some extent resented that because they fought so hard. Yes. And then you’ve got [00:32:00] people … we never knew anybody, but you got a lot of people in the US that crossed the border illegally. Annie: Yes. Gissele: And so the desire to punish, the desire to say, “Well, I came the right way. You should- Yes … have come the right way therefore,” but not taking into consideration that they might not have had the resources- Right … or the way- Annie: So true … to be Gissele: there. Annie: That’s what’s- Yeah … happening here. Other people have said that, “Well, we came the right way.” Gissele: Yes. “ Annie: So they’re gonna come in and take our jobs,” Gissele: Yeah. it’s that zero sum game- Yeah … that we’ve been taught. It’s that- Yeah … that everything is limited. You know, like even … And if you think about … I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the rhetoric of white supremacy. Annie: Oh, yes. Gissele: Really interesting. Gissele: The rhetoric of white supremacy is that lack. So even though white men right now run the world, there’s always we’re gonna be the lesser race. We’re gonna lack. There’s not enough for us. All these people are taking our jobs. Right, right. And what is obviously being seen [00:33:00] in the US is that nobody wants those jobs. Annie: How ridiculous … Gissele: it’s this, it’s that rhetoric of there’s not enough. Even though white people are the ones who have had the most power. Annie: Exactly. Gissele: So it’s this fear of not enough, this fear of lack, the fear of the other that has perpetuated and has made our world worse. Annie: Yeah. Gissele: Not better. Worse. Not Annie: better. Right. Gissele: Not better. Absolutely not. Not better. Annie: No. No. Not better. Gissele: It’s, it’s, it’s crazy. It is, it’s crazy. Yeah, we’re Annie: pretty messed up here right now. Gissele: Yeah. But- my hope is that as your book Accidental Rebel, and I wanna get back to it, it’s showing who we’ve been? Gissele: Is that showing the kinds of things that we’d allowed? Because, in our family there is that same thing of Cosa Nostra, right? We don’t tell anybody else, but that’s lonely and isolating and oppressive, right? Annie: Exactly. Gissele: so being able to share your story is really [00:34:00] important. Gissele: so are you in good terms with your ex-husband now, or you’re better terms? Annie: I have not seen him since 1980. Gissele: Oh, okay. So it’s been a while, yeah. Yeah. Annie: Yeah. And he does live only 11 miles from me. Gissele: Oh, okay. Yeah. Annie: But, you know, LA’s so huge. Gissele: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Annie: Yes. Gissele: No. Annie: Yeah. Though I do know, a little bit about him now. Annie: I think he’s changed. I’ve been told. Gissele: Throughout this journey, there must’ve been an element of you that was like, “F you, I’m gonna do this,” because you said. So there’s a level of, you were talking about the rebel, right? Gissele: Yes. The desire to do and to follow your heart and to make decisions for your own, which can be isolating sometimes, right? Because people are so desperate to belong, they’ll go with the- Yeah … current against themselves. Annie: Yeah. Gissele: What do you feel- led you to keep going in the face of that, all of that resistance? Gissele: and has that [00:35:00] helped you in other areas? Annie: You know, I became a little hard. Gissele: Mm. Annie: And brazen- Gissele: Mm … Annie: also. and I’m wondering if somehow it fed me a little bit. Gissele: Mm. Annie: I think on some level I was getting back at my dad for never really being there and always- drinking and not a- not accessible. Annie: And I, so I just really became very brazen. I did things, uh, that I think about now that scare me, you know, that I can’t believe I did that. But it just, it’s on some level it empowered me- Gissele: Mm … Annie: uh, to move forward without a care. Yeah. I really feel I was doing [00:36:00] that in college. Annie: You know, I was hitchhiking and to other states. Mm. And I mean, I was not that girl when I was growing up. Gissele: Oh, wow. Annie: Not that girl. Just, sweet, kind, never did anything that my parents would react to. I mean, it was spare the rod, spoil the child then. we were whipped- Mm-hmm … and- Gissele: Yeah Annie: I became a real rebel, kind of the- Mm … black sheep of the family, so to speak. Which my, actually my father was in his family. Gissele: Mm. Interesting. Annie: Yes. Mm. Yes. Yeah. Gissele: But there’s an element of freedom, is there not? Like, a small element of freedom in the sense that sometimes you can get so trapped with what people think you should do or, you know, fit in this box and do what everybody is doing. Gissele: Uh-huh. there might be an element of freedom in going against the current and doing what it is that you would want to do instead. Has it served you [00:37:00] in other areas of your life, or has it been a hindrance? Annie: Um, well, my husband now, calls me and my sisters the hard-ass sisters. Annie: Because we had– this happened with me that affected them. Gissele: Yeah. Annie: And, we grew up, uh, with an alcoholic parent that eventually- was not there. But still, I do think it has benefited me actually. Mm-hmm. Um, I’m considered pretty strong. I am strong. I’m outspoken. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Annie: Um, and I react to comments that are made that I think are not appropriate or are mean-spirited But I’m not sure I would’ve been that girl if this, if that didn’t happen to me, in 1969. but I think it [00:38:00] actually has served me well and made me, uh, the person I am today, and I actually like who I am. Gissele: Mm. Mm-hmm. Annie: I’m kinda like, “Well done, Annie. You got through. ” yeah. You made it. You wrote a book. You told your story. And now I kinda feel like it was such a cathartic experience, I can just … I’ve been able to kinda just go, “Ah,” you know, “Okay.” Gissele: So the writing of the book helped you sort of unload a lot of that, the trauma- Oh Gissele: that you experienced, yeah. Annie: Yes. Yes. Yes, it did. Gissele: what is the message that is, that you’re trying to communicate? Annie: I think it’s just an important slice of history- Yeah Annie: this story. if an interracial relationship or anyone that just wants to know anything about the past with race, Gissele: Mm. Annie: [00:39:00] And I I’ve been told it’s a really worthwhile read. Gissele: Mm. Annie: And, It’s also an Audible. Yes. Yeah. Gissele: And it can be found on amazon.com? Annie: Yes. Yeah It can be found on Amazon in hardback, paperback, Kindle- Mm … and Audible. Yes. Gissele: Do you have a website? Annie: Wow. You know, someone else asked me that. You know- … I’m just an old chick Annie: That wrote a book. Gissele: Awesome. Annie: You can find it through all Gissele: the major, all the major publishers then. Annie: Yes, Barnes & Noble- Wonderful … Gissele: last question, what’s your definition of self-love? Annie: Okay, self-love. Annie: I think it’s knowing yourself is self-love. I was thinking about this. accepting yourself is self-love, and continuing to work on [00:40:00] yourself- Gissele: Hmm. Mm-hmm … Annie: is self-love. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Annie: Yeah. To be a better human in this crazy world we’re in now- Gissele: Yeah … Annie: with compassion and care for our fellow man. Gissele: Yeah Annie: that’s what I think. Yeah. Gissele: thank you for sharing your story, for that little piece of history, and for the mirror that your story is holding of how much we have changed and at the same time haven’t changed. And the hope is that we’re able to look at ourselves not with rejection, but with compassion and say, “You know what? Gissele: That’s who we’ve been, but I’m not choosing that anymore. I’m willing to change. And I can change not by hating myself, by having compassion for who I’ve been and, you know, who I choose to be.” So- Absolutely … so thank you, Annie, so much for coming to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele,

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