Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele Taraba

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

  1. 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,

  2. 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

  3. Jul 22

    Ep. 105 – Want More Peace In The World? Try Unconditional Love

    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

  4. Jul 15

    Ep. 104 – How helping others can help us become happy when we are struggling

    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

  5. Jul 5

    Ep. 103- Can We Truly Create a Community Where We All Care About One Another?

    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 facil

  6. Jun 22

    Ep. 102 – Have We Really Changed? Love, Race, and the Prejudice We Still Refuse to Face

    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

  7. Jun 9

    Ep. 101 – Can Authenticity Help Us Create a More Loving and Inclusive World?

    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 talking about authenticity, and Gissele: We’re talking to Alexander Kopelman, who’s a writer, social entrepreneur, advocate, and coach who has been devoted 40 years to advancing social justice and personal empowerment. As the founding president and CEO of Children’s Arts Guild, Kopelman helped create and grow a nonprofit organization that supports children in exploring and developing their authentic selves. Kopelman has authored and co-authored 10 books, including For Real!, helping children remain their authentic selves in a limiting world. He lives in New York City with his wife, daughter, and very small dog. Please join me in welcoming Alex. Hi, Alex. Alex: Hi, thanks very much for having me on.[00:01:00] Gissele: Oh, thank you so much for being on the show because this is such an important topic in terms of authenticity and how we can cultivate that in children. I was wondering if you could get started by telling the audience a little bit about how you got into this work. Alex: sure. It’s really, very much a life’s work and, very personal to me. I, grew up in the Soviet Union when there was still such a thing until I was 13 years old, and came to the United States as a refugee, not knowing any English. Um, and the process of, creating an identity as a teenager in a new language really gave me, I guess a glimpse into, how choiceful identity is and, the kinds of decisions we make as we, think about who we are, share who we are with other people, and, find our way in the world, and in the story that we tell ourselves about our own life [00:02:00] and, the people around us. Gissele: Yeah. Uh, you know, your story resonated so deeply with me because I had a very similar immigration experience. So my sister and I and our family came to Canada from Peru, and I came when I was 10. And I saw the journeys that my sister and I both took. So for me, I completely erased everything that was different ’cause it wasn’t popular to be Hispanic when I immigrated to Canada. Gissele: You know, now it’s, like, cool and… But when I immigrated, it was like, it was weird, or it was different. And I wanted so desperately to belong, I completely erased my culture. And my sister sort of took the other path, which was she actually held onto it so tightly, and I found that she had experienced bullying because it was different. Gissele: and so I so resonated with your story because it reminded me of my experience. And we do so much to wanna belong, right? It’s so ingrained in us to wanna belong, but to our own detriment. And it took me a long time for me to come back to that culture to [00:03:00] embrace those aspects of myself. were you able to keep aspects of your culture, or did you find that you completely, you know, 180 like I Alex: I had a similar,experience to yours. You know, people ask me, “Oh, do you still speak Russian?” And I do, but, you know, I have to, uh, preface it with that I speak Russian the way a 13-year-old speaks Russian. And, I made a choice.to me it was very much about either I could become fluent in English, which also equated in my mind to being, indistinguishable, that I would, I would not be standing out, which was very important. Alex: or I could hold onto some Russian and some Russian culture, and I went full on to being, uh, as fluent as I could be, as not Russian as I could be. there’s a backstory there because growing up Jewish in the Soviet Union, was, very much about being an [00:04:00] outsider. we were considered an ethnic minority. Alex: Um, we had, our ethnicity stamped in our passports. we stood out because we are dark, dark hair and dark skinned, and we were called names on the street by people who didn’t know us, for being Jewish. So there was a real sense of, the danger that goes with being an outsider. and then I arrived in the United States and I was suddenly a white guy. Alex: Um, and you know, I also didn’t speak English. my definition of being Jewish was very different from the definition of being Jewish here. Alex: so it continued this process of all the ways in which being, an outsider Was undesirable. So I went about trying to be as American as I could possibly be. Alex: and as I said, as indistinguishable as possible. Gissele: Yeah. Let’s talk about your path back to authenticity. [00:05:00] one of the things I noticed in general, when we try so hard to belong, we can sometimes violate our own values, our own humanity in the desperation just not to be different. What helped you come back to being more authentically yourself and actually wanna do work on authenticity? Alex: You know, it was coming to the realization sometime in my probably mid-20s that I was completely lost in my life. I had no idea who I was, what I wanted, how to want things, how to go about getting the things I wanted. Um, and part of what I identified at that point was that the– my relationship with being a man was a big aspect of that sense of being lost. Alex: I did not understand what it [00:06:00] meant to be a man. I, in many ways, felt ashamed of being a man, rejected, what I believed it meant. so I went about searching for that part of myself, where I could feel comfortable, in this fundamental way that I, I did not have a choice. I could not… Alex: so I, found, a men’s group through The Mankind Project, which is, now an international organization that sponsors Alex: men’s Alex: weekends around the world. Alex: Uh, there are now, I think, 20,000 men who’ve done one of those weekends, and what I found particularly useful was, the group that I was connected with after, the weekend. Alex: I’ve been a member of that group for 25 years, and that’s been transformative because it allowed me the safe space to think about, what my story was and how I felt about it, and to [00:07:00] see other men struggling with similar issues. And for us, really, the similar issues was just the fundamentals of feelings of, how difficult it is for us as men to experience and express basic feelings. Gissele: Mm, mm. I love that you said that, and it’s so fundamentally true. I think as a society, we’ve done such a huge disservice to our boys. I have one of each. I have a boy and a girl, and what I saw was a world that basically did not allow boys to engage in closeness without sexuality and,engage in dealing with difficult emotions that were beyond anger. And so if you limit the scope of which people can feel, I think you get what we see in the world, which is why I think your work is so important. And in particular, I think it’s important because the messaging that [00:08:00] I feel that children get in general is about belonging and conforming than it is about authenticity. Gissele: Can you talk a little bit about, how systems are impacting our children right now, especially our boys? Alex: Yeah. You know, I think We’re all trapped in this way of thinking about childhood and children that we’ve kind of evolved, and I think a lot of us recognize that it’s not working very well, and yet we don’t quite know what to do about it. I think that Alex: that conflict between belonging and authenticity is somehow baked into this conception of childhood, and it doesn’t have [00:09:00] to be. Belonging is a fundamental need. We are social creatures. We depend on others, not just in our childhood, but throughout our lives. Interdependence is just part of being human. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Alex: children and children’s development, it’s particularly important because in early childhood particularly, that developmental partner who serves as a mirror is critical to the way that we understand ourselves and ourselves in the world. And so if that mirror is distorted, if what we get from the mirror is the need to satisfy the adult’s needs rather than to listen to our own needs and satisfy those and ask for and have our needs met, that becomes a very difficult bind [00:10:00] for children to navigate. Alex: There was this lovely book that- helped me think about this, that I found probably 25 years ago, called “The Betrayal of the Self.” So the idea of, cutting off from parts of ourselves in order to get our needs met by others, can start very early, and it is very, very damaging to the way that we are in the world. Alex: And if you put the messaging of, gender socialization, of, expectations from society in general into the mix, what we learn to do is to listen to everything from outside of ourselves rather than our own inner voices. And if that continues, the inner voice gets pushed further and further down, and it is much more difficult to find. Alex: And it creates, conflict that is, um, [00:11:00] outside our field of vision, and, we begin to act on things that w-we don’t even understand where they’re coming from. so I think that’s fundamental, and a lot of that is, is also built into our systems. You know, our education system is a good example. Alex: And I’m referring to the one here in the States, but I think that education systems around the world have a common trait that we see children as raw material that is used to create the widgets that our economies need, right? we’re thinking more about what the labor force requirements are than about who are the human beings in our classrooms. Alex: And, you know, this is a vast generalization. There are wonderful schools that approach this stuff very differently, but for the most part, in general, we tend to treat children as incomplete human beings who are just on their way to [00:12:00] becoming human. And that’s a very strange message if y

  8. Jun 4

    Ep. 100 – Choosing Love After the Unthinkable

    TRANSCRIPT Gissele: [00:00:00] Choosing love after the unthinkable. 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 we’d also like to take an opportunity to thank Yorkton Film Festival for voting our podcast Best Podcast Nonfiction for 2026, and Latin Fest Best Latin Podcast for 2026. Scarlett: Wow Gissele: Scarlett Lewis is the founder of Choose Love Movement, a non-for-profit whose programs have reached millions of children and educators across all 50 US states and 135 countries. Following the tragic loss of her son Jesse in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, she developed award-winning programs that teach people of all ages essential life skills rooted in courage, gratitude, forgiveness, love, and compassion. Gissele: Scarlett is also the author of several books, including Nurturing Healing Love and From Sandy Hook to the World, and her work extends into schools, [00:01:00] homes, communities, foster care, corrections, and youth programs. Recognized with numerous honors and awards and featured by many major media outlets, she continues to speak internationally about the healing, resilience, and power of choosing love. Gissele: Please join me in welcoming Scarlett Lewis. Gissele: Hi, Scarlett. Scarlett: Hi. So happy to be here. Thank you. Gissele: Thank you so much for being on the show. Your story is so powerful. I was wondering if you could get started by letting the audience know for those who might not know about Sandy Hook, a little bit about Sandy Hook and what happened to your son, Jesse. Scarlett: Yes, absolutely. First of all, thank you so much for having me and introducing this to your audience. It’s really exciting. So on December 14th, 2012, so that was 13 years ago, my six-year-old son was murdered in his first grade classroom alongside 19 of his classmates and six educators in what is still the worst mass shooting in an elementary school in the US Scarlett: after that, [00:02:00] I realized that what happened was 100% preventable . I just knew that inherently, and it turns out that is accurate. And w- I decided that I would spend the rest of my life in search of how we can keep our kids safe and well. So that was the beginning of the Choose Love movement Gissele: When you say that you believe there was 100% preventable, what do you mean by that? Scarlett: I mean that in every case in every school shooting, there are always signs. and other people had feelings and saw issues that went unaddressed. And the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting is no different. There were signs and things that were happening along the way. Scarlett: One of the things that really bothered me personally in this situation in my own son’s murder, was that there was [00:03:00] never a motive assigned to that school shooting. And a lot of times if you follow these things there aren’t motives that are identified, and that really bothered me because I kept thinking, “If you don’t know why somebody is doing what they’re doing, how can you solve it?” Scarlett: And it turns out we haven’t. And so what I did was look at what was currently in place, and a lot of times in our current system, we are very reactive and we focus on the problems. So even in school shootings, if you look at the Department of Homeland Security’s Pathway to Violence, it starts with a grievance, and then it escalates up, ideation, preparation, a few other steps to the attack end. Scarlett: We’re very focused on the attack end with a billion-dollar industry that has grown up around active shooter drills and hardening schools. And I looked at that and I thought it’s [00:04:00] interesting that we do that for other things too, as, as well as mental health and substance abuse.” And I thought, “Wow, if you shifted part of your focus,” because that’s very important. Scarlett: There are fires. We do have to put them out. But if we shifted some of our time, energy, and resources to the grievance end to address in a proactive and preventative way the root cause of the suffering, th- then we actually can reduce that suffering and potentially stop not only school shootings, but substance abuse and mental illness and so many of the other society issues of despair And so that’s where I’ve really focused my efforts because I saw that not many people were doing that. Scarlett: That’s not traditionally in our methods. And although I will say, great news, it [00:05:00] is becoming more of a focus, and really because we’ve seen nothing else is working. When Jesse was murdered, I had lots of opportunity to speak on behalf of lots of different initiatives that were going on before my son’s murder, and I thought, “You know what? Scarlett: No thank you,” because those haven’t worked. They didn’t work for my son, as well as his shooter by the way. And flash forward 13 years, they’re not working now. So I think a lot is in addressing the root cause. And this is a simple concept, but simple isn’t easy. It does take effort, and it takes all of us. Scarlett: But you know what? We benefit as individuals as well as a society. We’re responsible for the world that we’re leaving our kids. And so this is actually a way that everyone can get involved to help create a safer, more peaceful, and loving [00:06:00] world Gissele: I love everything that you said. There’s so much to unpack. I think the first thing I thought about was the fact that in many systems, not just like you said when you deal with a school shooter, even with women and violence the police wait until something has actually happened in order to offer protection. Gissele: So we wait for something to occur and then react instead of being proactive. The other thing I thought about is the fact that like you mentioned, there’s a lot of invisible suffering that happens. And the school shooter, I think his name was Adam Lanza and and all these other children that are going through all of this suffering basically unnoticed ’cause there was lots of instances where that potential could have been stopped, but it wasn’t, Scarlett: Oh, Gissele, can I even make, can I mention something there? Gissele: yes, please do Scarlett: When you say that, that’s very profound because in my research I’ve also spoken to school shooters because I wanna ask them what I don’t think anyone else is asking, “How did [00:07:00] we fail you?” Gissele: Oof. Yeah. Scarlett: You’re a Gissele: And what was their answer? Scarlett: You’re a child, in essence, and you weren’t born a mass murderer So how did we fail you along the way? Scarlett: What were the needs that you had that weren’t met? And with all the conversations that I’ve had, I can boil it down to one thing. It’s that they didn’t feel seen. And if you think about it, that takes a bit of effort. Instead of saying as I walk by you, “Hey, Gissele, how you doing?” And walking right past, it means pausing. Scarlett: It means being present in the moment, looking at you, hopefully in the eyes, and saying an open-ended statement s- to make you realize that I see and value you. If we treated every interaction as a sacred occurrence, which it really is, it would change humanity. And I think this is so [00:08:00] important. What I’m talking about are not difficult things. Scarlett: They’re really actually very simple, and they’re also led by a message that my six-year-old son left on our kitchen chalkboard shortly before his murder that I found after, which profoundly changed my life and also informed everything that I’ve done every day since. Those three words are nurturing, healing love. Scarlett: Phonetically spelled, because he was in first grade and just learning to write. I didn’t walk around saying those words. He wasn’t learning it in school. I believe that it was a message that came through him. But I immediately recognized it as the solution, and we know through now decades of research that connection or lack thereof is at the root of almost all suffering, including school shootings, mental illness, [00:09:00] substance abuse. Scarlett: And there are things that we can do to facilitate connection and teaching kids these essential life skills is so vitally important. B- in essence, giving them an invisible tool belt that they can use for the rest of their life to be able to learn, grow, and be strengthened through painful events. Scarlett: Because we’re gonna be experiencing pain. That’s part of the human condition. Nobody escapes it. It’s something I have in common with every single listener out there. Physical, mental, and emotional pain, we’ve all had it. We’ve all had our hearts broken. Maybe just a little crack, maybe shattered like mine. Scarlett: But in actuality, that pain has a purpose. It’s there to help us grow. There’s a science behind that as well. And if we don’t know that, we fear pain [00:10:00] because nobody wants to be in pain. And we do everything that we can to resist and avoid or w- maybe even numb ourselves. Scarlett: But in reality, if we can raise kids that understand that pain has a purpose, that are present with those difficult feelings, which is getting harder and harder with cell phones that give us an immediate dopamine hit through scrolling. But if we can be present with it and get curious about what that pain is offering us and learn and grow from us, and then go through this formula that we’ve developed to let the painful parts go, but to bring forward that wisdom we benefit from it, believe it or not Gissele: Yeah. Absolutely. I wanted to mention the fact that there are many systems that we have, including the school system, that really doesn’t allow the getting to know each and every child. It’s like we have many sy

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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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