Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele Taraba

Gissele Taraba
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  • Mental Health

Love and Compassion Podcast-Where Gissele talks with everyday exceptional people who have overcome adversities and have wisdom to share.

  1. 4d ago

    Ep. 113 – Creating Healthy Boundaries to Heal Ourselves and Our Lives

    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. Today, we’re gonna be talking about healthy boundaries, and Our guest today is Nina Tiara, a self-growth coach who helps women stop over-functioning, set healthy boundaries, and reconnect with themselves. Drawing on her own journey of healing and personal transformation, Nina brings a no-nonsense, honest perspective to personal growth. Her three pillars are processing emotions, understanding core programming, and creating healthy boundaries. Please join me in welcoming Nina. Hi, Nina. Nina: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to share the wealth of information I have in my lived journey. Gissele: amazing. Thank you for being on the show. Can you tell the audience a little bit about how you got started in [00:01:00] this work? Nina: How did I get started? That’s interesting. I had an arranged marriage, and in that arranged marriage, actually, the arranged marriage had nothing to do it. It was just more stressful. What really happened was, as a child, I had a lot of programming. I didn’t have any boundaries in my life. I didn’t know how to process my emotions. they say a child, when they’re young, from age, I don’t know, from the day they’re born till seven, I think, the age is, they take on programming. So basically, my parents, whatever they knew, they passed it on to me. But me being a very sensitive nervous system, I absorbed it. I internalized it. And I didn’t have anybody to model anything different. My sister was younger, my brother came 10 years later. I didn’t have any cousins or anybody. That’s just the way it was in my environment at the time, okay, when I grew up. So then as I got older and when I got into a marriage at 21, I had more responsibilities. I ended up having a host of symptoms: depression, anxiety, insomnia stomach [00:02:00] issues. I had a lot of symptoms like that, and there’s a lot more I could go into. But I had a lot of symptoms that are coming up, and I was looking for help everywhere. I was going one modality to another. And then 2006, I met a woman who’s a woman’s health coach and naturopathic doctor, and I started working with her. And, she basically said a few things to me. You’ll become symptom-free. You’ll live the life you want. Your children become like you. You’ll find your soul purpose.” At the time, it was just … I was like, “I wanna get, work through these symptoms.” And what I thought was, like, maybe a few months’ journey ended up on a, from 2006, I would honestly say October 2025, I still remember it clearly what happened. Everything, like all the jigsaw puzzles just connected. I really started in tune with my emotions and having boundaries in October 2025. And that’s how I ended up finding my soul purpose after 20 years of work with her, healing myself, and that’s how I found a soul purpose to support [00:03:00] other women that are going through, And I still see it and no judgment ’cause I was there too once Most of us as women, we know how to feel, but we don’t know how to process emotion deeper. So I help women process their unprocessed emotions, feel them, and then I help them look at their core programming, ’cause that’s huge. Those in- two interact. And once we got that sorted out, then we can go deep into helping you create effective and healthy boundaries. All three of them connect together. Gissele: That’s beautiful. Thank you for sharing your journey. And I agree with you. Many of us that had programming from, parents that might have had their own intergenerational trauma and their own issues, and so we tend to hand that down. But the good news is we also tend to hand down compassion and love, and you can have that intergenerational health, which is important. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you recognized you did not have healthy boundaries. Oh. Because in this society, I think that we’ve been conditioned to [00:04:00] overgive, and so to not overgive may seem like an odd thing to do. How did you realize you didn’t have healthy boundaries, and what helped you shift ? Nina: So when I was doing the work with my practitioner, like I, I was already a very highly intuitive empath. I didn’t know this until I did my journey. So I was already thinking when things were happening, this isn’t right. They can’t treat me like this. But I didn’t know it was boundaries. And when I started, people can’t treat me like this, right? In general or the s- stuff that was happening in my life. And it wasn’t until I started on the healing journey, I realized through processing emotions and then doing, and looking at the patterns where it was all coming from, that I was really not taught anything about boundaries. It wasn’t… My family didn’t have it either. Basically, I was living on autopilot, and that was through shifting through my emotions, looking at my patterns. I realized that… And I used to think having boundaries was guilty and shameful. I can’t do this. W- but then I realized the way people were treating me people will take [00:05:00] advantage of you. I’m sorry to say this, but even your family. And there’s nothing, no shame or any guilt around it. And I learned that people were taking advantage of me for my kindness. I was an overgiver, and being an overgiver was a reason I had all these health issues because I was go go. There’s no way this nervous system, I call it, or body can take the amount of stress that I took. It’s a miracle as well because some of the things that were happening to me, like I was actually having mini seizures. I didn’t know this until later- Oh, wow … as I was healing. At night. Yeah. So now that I’ve healed, I notice that not feeling your emotions on a deep level and not connecting to your core programming, meaning patterns as well, where did it all come from? Can you understand boundaries? If I told you right away, and you’re coming as a client to me or a friend, “Hey, do you have boundaries?” They’re gonna look like They’re gonna be so dumbfounded because if they don’t know boundaries, if they haven’t done the other two steps, feeling their emotions and [00:06:00] looking at where it all came from, understanding their upbringing, their subconscious programming, they’re not gonna understand boundaries. So that’s when I realized that when I started doing the work that I was… All this stuff, I started connecting dots. I remember when my mentors taught me, told me to connect the dots. That was the hardest thing. I was like, “Connect the dots.” That took me a long time. And once I started connecting the dots and now I have simpler, more prompts and tools for my clients. I feel my mentors were very hard on me. Maybe that was my journey. But I know depending on where my client is, I want them to learn to process their own emotions, how to get to the boundary parts. But I found my mentors were very hard on me. Maybe that’s, that was my journey, right? But yeah, that’s how I realized that through my own healing journey, The way my stories had flowed, the things that happened in my life, I didn’t have any boundaries, and that’s why they happened Gissele: Yeah. Yeah. That’s very interesting. I wanted to go back on the the comment you made about [00:07:00] kindness. And I think it’s often a misconception that kindness is over-giving, and it is not. Because the kindest thing and the most compassionate thing you can do for yourself is have healthy boundaries. Because I don’t feel like other people want to violate our boundaries. They don’t wanna do hurtful things. They just do it out of ignorance or fear. And so the kindest and most compassionate thing you can do for yourself and others is have healthy boundaries. But we have been taught that over-giving is kindness. We have been taught that putting others first is kindness, and it is not. That’s why in the Bible… I think it’s in the Bible, they talk about love your neighbor as yourself, right? And so in order for us to be able to give to others, we have to be able to give to ourselves. Nina: 100%. And I actually had a aha moment, ’cause I visited somebody on the weekend that I hadn’t seen for over a year, connected to my past. And it was interesting. She brought up some stuff, and I said, “Wow.” She was absorbing that. So people were [00:08:00] seeing it because they had boundaries, or they just didn’t sit right with it. So she shared with me, like, when I was in that place, in that family, or in that system or environment, what her perspective was. I’m like, “Wow.” And so going back to kindness, I had to do more journaling that day when I got home. Actually, I was doing it last night. I was like, “Wow, do I be mean to this person and totally shut them out of my life because they are part of my life?” But I had already done this work, so that kindness part was healing myself further because this person is gonna be part of my life as long as I’m around, my children are around, and I will be connecting with them somewhere as I have grandchildren, all that. I f- I thought I had to heal that part of me, right? So yeah, the kindness is… Once you start loving yourself and you start feeling your emotion, you start understanding what happened to you it’s gonna take time. It’s not… Because first it’s gonna… It’s not gonna feel so good. I gotta be honest. This work does not feel too good. But it’s not a quick [00:09:00] fix. And, you’re nodding your head. You agree . It’s not a quick fix. I don’t… I remember when I was d

  2. Sep 23

    Ep. 112 – He Almost Became a School Shooter then Someone Saw Him. The Power of Being Seen.

    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 compassion and mental health, and our guest today is Aaron Stark, who once came dangerously close to committing an act of violence as a teenager, but his life took a traumatic turn. in his viral open letter, I Was Almost a School Shooter, and the subsequent Gissele: TED Talk that brought national attention to his message of compassion and mental wellness. He’s been featured across media outlets and now speaking nationwide, including to schools, law enforcement, survivor groups, the FBI. Aaron works to help people reach those in deep crisis to remind them that they matter. Gissele: His mission, prevent future tragedies by sharing the power of connection and [00:01:00] hope. Please join me in welcoming Aaron. Hi, Aaron. Aaron: Hey, thank you for having me Gissele: Oh, thank you so much for being on the show. I would really love to hear a little bit about how you got to the point where you were so close to committing an act of violence. Gissele: I was wondering if you could share that with the audience. Aaron: Yeah. Yeah. I first off, thanks for having me on. And anybody listening, I know this gets pretty intense really fast, but I promise it ends in a very happy spot. I was raised in a very violent, aggressive, and criminal household. My first five years of life was kinda like a Stephen King movie. Aaron: My, My, birth father was the most vicious and violent person ever. Chased us across the country, and he was we basically were hunted for the first five years by one of the most abusive people you can imagine. And then after my mom left him, got with my stepdad, and it went from a Stephen King movie to more like Scarface. So it was crack cocaine and crime and stealing and robberies. We lived a very nomadic life, so I moved usually between Oregon and Colorado, bouncing between the states. And I went [00:02:00] between, to between 30 and 40 different schools. I was at a different school every couple of months, and I never attended a school from beginning to end of a school year, ever in my whole life. And along the way, my criminal family was extremely unstable. I have an older brother who’s two years older than I am, and he became the de facto man of the house. So he had to be… Like, when we’re seven and nine years old, and my parents are– we’re getting evicted because they’re drugged out and doing all their crime. And they’re at a bar, they’re not even there while we’re getting evicted. The, the sheriff’s are at our house throwing everything into the yard. My brother’s the one that has to, at nine years old, scramble to find us some place to be, and I am one of the things that he has to find some place to put. I am, I’m not useful . Aaron: He was a very gearhead kinda kid put stuff together, fix stuff. I had a lot of intellectual loves, so I loved books and music and studying science and history. I loved all that, but that wasn’t useful to the [00:03:00] crackheads when we’re getting evicted and things are breaking. My brother was more utilitarian. And so growing up, we adopted that identity. I became the burden. I became the thing that needed to be solved. I became the problem. And I was fat. I was dirty ’cause I didn’t have any clothes. I was smelly. And I really, early on, I’m talking three, 10, I wa- I Really internalized that something is wrong with me, that I’m the broken one, that I’m the thing that’s wrong. And I started, because I was always going to a new school, I would always have a different group of bullies at the different schools. And I developed this tactic that you’ve seen movies where the guy in j- goes to prison in the movie, and he goes up to the big tough guy, and you fight the big tough guy in prison so you can establish your Aaron: pecking order. I would do the reverse of that, only I would go to the most popular kid in school and insult myself to him to put, I kn- I know I’m at the bottom. You don’t have to beat me down to get me there. I know I belong at the bottom. And it… I just really internalized that [00:04:00] something was wrong with me, and this is all before even the age of 10. And by the time I’m 12, 13 years old, my parents, they are heavily in the grips of a crack binge, and I’ve started self-harming. I’ve started cutting myself really bad, and it started as a way to regulate the emotions. My life at that time, I describe like it’s like living in a mosh pit. If you’ve seen a big heavy metal concert, you see the big swirling mass of people slamming into each other. That’s what my life was like at the time. I didn’t really have any control over the damage and what I was doing. I just went along with the violence. And I knew that I was the broken one, so I started to insult myself more than anybody else could, which made me then also start being a bully to everybody else. Aaron: I w- I became really toxic, like ins- inward and outward. I just I was… My– Everything I was saying was reflecting the inward hatred that I had. I was becoming just a toxic little mean, angry, vicious kind of kid. And the [00:05:00] self-harm kind of would calm and regulate that at the beginning but it quickly spiraled into more serious self-harm. Aaron: I’m cutting myself deeper, more and more blood. And I became homeless around th- thirteen, fourteen years old. I couldn’t take living at home with the crackheads anymore. So I would bounce from friend’s house to friend’s house and kinda burn out relationships. And at first I’d be able to stay at a house for a week, and then I’d be able to stay there for a couple days. Aaron: But by the time I’m fourteen, fifteen years old, I can’t stay at my friend’s house for more than an hour or so ’cause if I stand up off the couch, his mom has to clean the residue of the stain that I’m leaving ’cause I’m so filthy and I’m so dirty. And I gathered a group along the way, around fifteen years old, of a group of kids that I called Disaster Groupies. They were a group of about fifteen or so kids that kinda lived vicariously through my darkness. My friend at the time, I was at, partying with this one buddy who his dad paid the rent at the house, and his dad bought all the food at the house, [00:06:00] but Dad didn’t live at the house. Dad was living with Dad’s girlfriend. So the house became like a teenage flophouse. And so this house became a bunch of depressed kids navigating depression without adult supervision, and it was like how far can they push us off the edge to see how far they would go. And I was kinda like a, a evil unicorn in a way. Like a piñata of pain. Aaron: Smack me and see what kind of stories can come out. Because I was, at this time, from about fourteen to sixteen, I’m living basically three lives at once, where for a– I’m 90% homeless because I’m living at this house, but m- all my stuff is still back at my mom’s house, but I can’t be there for any length of time because it turns into violence and anger and beatings and… So I’m only at that house like maybe an hour a day. So I go there, get my stuff, grab some stuff and recharge. And I had to get out because of the– I– Immediately there’d be violence. But in that hour, I’m reminded of how absolutely worthless I am and how nothing I am and how at the bottom of everything [00:07:00] I am and how I don’t belong anywhere. And then I go to this Disaster Groupie house, and I would kinda use that pain as a party favor. The more outlandish that my stories of abuse were, the more I could entertain these kids and where I could get some weird kind of social status that way And then for just a couple hours a day at the end, I’d go to what is the only good kid in this story this kid that I met when I was 12 and he was 10. Aaron: His name’s Mike. Remember, I’m gonna tell you a little bit about him now ’cause it’s a good point to bring him in. Mike, he lived at the opposite end of one of the blocks that we moved to one day. My parents had a habit of moving to the same neighborhoods multiple times. So we would go live on like a 10-block radius in Colorado, and then like another, like two town radius in Oregon, but like 30 places in each place, and so we, I was living like a block away from, or a couple blocks away from him, and we met at a comic book shop playing the original Mortal Kombat 1 video game in the arcade. See exactly when this is happening. And so we met, we bonded over deep [00:08:00] conversation and comic books. I had a love for superheroes, and I loved science, and so did he, and we just immediately bonded. Aaron: I went to his house, pretty much never left for a week. And so like I, whenever I was in Denver, his house was like my home base. I knew I had some place to be. I memorized his phone number. He lived the total polar opposite life that I had. He had a very well-off family, very well-to-do, very peaceful, lived in this big four-story house. They he would write a Christmas list and get the things on his Christmas list, which blew my mind. I didn’t even know you could do that. I, that was an amazing thing. And so he became like the good spot. So by the time I’m 14, 15 years old, I’m filling up my reservoir of hatred at my parents’ house, then using that, that pain to entertain everybody at this, this groupie house. Then for a little bit of time, I get to be a normal kid over at Mike’s house. But his mom was the one that had to clean the stain when I stood up off the couch, ’cause I was starting to leave residue. Couldn’t stay there anymore. And that’s k

  3. Sep 15

    Ep. 111 – The Kindness Project: How One Man is Loving People One Meal At a Time

    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 gon

  4. Sep 5

    Ep. 110 – Can Grief and Joy Co-Exist Together?

    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

  5. Aug 28

    Ep. 109 – How to Be Authentically Ourselves Even With Difficult People

    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

  6. Aug 22

    Ep. 108 – Can Enemies Live Together? How One Organization Is Creating True Lasting Peace

    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 tru

  7. Aug 10

    Ep. 107 – No More Hiding: Being Authentic and Stopping People Pleasing

    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,

  8. Jul 29

    Ep. 106 – Can Self Compassion Help Us Create A Better World?

    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 w

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Love and Compassion Podcast-Where Gissele talks with everyday exceptional people who have overcome adversities and have wisdom to share.

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