S6 EP19: Machan's Story - From Yokohama To New Jersey, Finding My Identity!

In this wonderful episode, Machan Taylor traces her journey from postwar Japan to the world stage with Pink Floyd and Sting. Uprooted from an idyllic childhood in Yokohama, Taylor was thrust into a New Jersey suburb where she didn’t speak the language and felt utterly alone. And yet she learned to turn devastation into song. And wrote her book, 'Naked Out Loud' is a meditation on identity, perseverance, and the courage it takes to come to terms with, and reveal one’s true self. Machan speaks from the heart, talking openly about her feeling of 'not being enough' and discussing the benefits she gained from her discoveries with psychedelics. She bravely invites us to ride along with her through her life story!

Site: www.machantaylor.com

Book: https://a.co/d/0fLrLInd

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to another episode of Well That Fucked Me Up. I am your host, Luke Colson. And today we're joined by Machan Taylor. Machan, nice to meet you.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Yeah, same here. Thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Thanks for coming on the show. We've been talking about locations. You're in upstate New York.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Correct. In a tiny little town called Kerhsen in the woods.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Just south of Woodstock. So amazing.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Yeah. Yeah. I visited Woodstock last year. It was just my beautiful. Well, um, thank you. Thanks for coming on the show. Every week we have a guest to come on and chat about surviving life-changing events and experiences. And that can really take any kind of turn that you like from can be anything from childhood to now to last week to a series of events and experiences to a one-off situation, but really things that knocked us sideways that not the train off the track, so I always say. And then we like to focus on the journey, like how we how we got things back on track and the lessons we learned and and where we are today. So with that, where would you like to begin? Oh my god, how much time do we have? 30 minutes. But you know, listen, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that you have several things and we get stuck on one of them, and then we'll just have a part two. That's not a problem.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Yeah, I I do. I have a boatload. Like I think I think a lot of people do. Um, yeah, you know, life, life is challenging, and if you live long enough, you're going to have quite a few different challenges in your life. Um, you know, I'm I'm gonna be 70, and I'm saying this publicly now because I'm I'm trying to embrace it, the reality of of age and aging, right? So at this point in my life, there have been many, many difficult moments um that I've worked very hard on processing. And in fact, uh the book that I that I just recently released, uh called Naked Out Loud, is all about this, in fact. So um I think maybe what I'll bring up at for the moment is, and it's sorry if I sound nasally, I'm getting over a terrible spring called. Sound good.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

And also and also we'll definitely love to like talk about the book, and we love to focus on our guests, you know, plugs and and whatnot. And we can definitely reserve some time for that at the end as well, make sure that there's like links to where our listeners can find such things. But yeah, tell us more.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Yeah, so um it, you know, it really wasn't until maybe a decade ago. Um, I mean, I was aware, of course, of my own personal story, but the beginning, the roots of the story are I was born in Japan. My mother was Japanese, I'm half Japanese, my father was an American army officer, and he was stationed in Yokohama after World War II.

SPEAKER_02 3:15

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

So he so I'm a I'm a war baby, right? Um, so I was born in Yokohama. My older sister was also born there. She's nine years older than I am. And then um, you know, my father being American, at a certain point he needed to find work because he retired from active duty, from military active duty, and we could no longer stay in Japan because he was what they call a gaijin. You know, he was a foreigner, and so he needed to find work. So he found a job in New York and he was from New Jersey originally. So my family picked up, I was four and a half years old. My parents took my older sister and I, we got on a ship and sailed across the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco, got on a train, traveled across America, and ended up in in New Jersey.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

So do you have any recollection of that at that age, or is that just that was sort of a story that you now know happened, but you weren't sort of a part of, if that makes sense?

SPEAKER_01 4:27

I have I have very, very clear memories of my grandmother, of family members in Japan. Wow. I love I loved my grandmother, and in fact, my grandmother is the person in my Japanese family, were the ones that called me Machan. Oh so Machan is like an honorific, it's like a nickname because my original name was Margaret. No way. My mother what my mother was an um Anglophile, so she she loved the royal family, so I was named after Princess Margaret. It's all coming back now.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

You know, the the the old the old English names sort of associated with like older people are coming back into fashion now. You've got Alberts and Ethel's and Deirdre's and Margaret's and it's all it's all the rage now, you know.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

So I know it's so funny, it's so funny. But I anyway, I always hated that name.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

So so um at a certain point in my life, I adopted Machan as my legal, my legal name, you know.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

Right, right, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

But but anyway, so you know, I honestly at that time coming to America in 1960. Wow, there were there were a lot of very anti-japanese feelings. Really, it was still very, very um palpable in society. And so my mother, you know, experienced quite a bit of discrimination, my older sister and myself, when I was young in grammar school. And um, you know, I never I never really felt like I belonged. And um, so I always felt like an outsider and you know, really struggled with trying to fit in. And um, you know, as soon as we came to the States, my father immediately said no more Japanese because that was my first language. I didn't speak English, you know, when we came here, and neither did my older sister. So, you know, at that time, you know, my parents felt that was the right thing to do to get us to assimilate, to become American.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

Um, but for me, in hindsight, and through many years of therapy and you know, working on this stuff, I realized that it it's like my identity was stripped away.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Of course it was. That's so tough, isn't it? And what's extraordinary is that you're saying you're far essentially you all left Japan because your father was ousted for being an American, and then you arrived in America, and you guys were kind of rejected for being Japanese, and that's exactly wild, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and you know, it was such a funny time because um there were still post-World War II anti-Japanese feelings, yeah, and the culture, when you think about the 60s, um, you know, it was such a tumultuous period in American society with um the burgeoning of the civil rights movement, women's lib, um, you know, uh consequently, uh the Vietnam War, and then all kinds of turbulent things going on during that time in the 60s, going into the 70s. So these are my prime growing up years in America, you know. Yeah, and um, you know, lucky for me, I found music. Yeah, um, my mother was a singer, all of my mother's family were musicians, so that was sort of in my DNA, and and so singing and music became sort of my superpower to to find my identity and to find a place in the world.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

And and that was really, I think, a big survival mechanism for me was music.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

And was that something you were doing as a as a child through school, or was that something you found where at what point did that kind of click? And did you always know that you had that in you?

SPEAKER_01 8:50

It it started pretty young. I mean, my mother was always singing and had music on in the house, and my older sister was a singer as well. And um I was in, I was put into Catholic school when I was grammar school age, and I started singing in the church choir. So I quickly became a soloist, and you know, by the by the time I was eight, nine, ten years old, I was singing for weddings and funerals and all kinds of stuff. But you know, it became something that I could feel a sense of of power and belonging and identity, you know.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

So that helped almost like that was kind of like medicinal for you, you know.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

That's uh uh absolutely, absolutely, and it's really what carried me through an entire career, um, you know, uh, you know, quick fast forward of not only, you know, singing in bands and uh growing up playing in bars and all that stuff in New Jersey, New York, and the whole New York metropolitan area, but eventually um becoming a professional. And then I toured with, you know, Pink Floyd, Sting, Pat Benitar, George Benson, uh lots of lots of different people. I did studio work in New York and I lived in LA for 10 years at a certain point and and worked in the studios there, and but I was touring a lot as well.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

So that's uh that's an incredible resume. And I've got some connections to a couple of those. So not to name this. I uh grew up with the children of the of Pink Floyd. So I'm friends with the Gilmores and I'm friends with the um the waters. And actually, Harry, Harry's out here, the son. I know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

So uh he's I just I just saw Harry. How can I? We actually we actually worked together in Europe in January.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Right, because he's still touring music, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

And then, yeah, so that's just that by chance because one of my best friends used to be their road manager for like three two or three decades. That's why. And then my girlfriend's the god the godfather to my girlfriend's kids is Stuart Copeland from the two.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

Isn't that crazy? Oh, that's great. I love it. The circles go around.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

And my father, my late father, he was a singer and he was in musical theater. He was on the stage in the wet in the West End and on Broadway.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Amazing. Isn't that cool?

SPEAKER_00 11:36

Amazing. That's fantastic. I love that. So so how how is that? How was touring with all of those incredible humans?

SPEAKER_01 11:45

It was it was fantastic, you know. I especially now, you know, with hindsight being 2020, I was incredibly lucky. I had a really good run. Yeah. And you know, I mean, I was I toured with Pink Floyd in 1987, 88.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

So it was the 80s, so it was crazy.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Yeah. That's like pink as well, isn't it? That's incredible.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

But it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun, you know. But but, you know, kind of getting back to what your podcast is is all about in the story, you know, even though on the surface of my life, I was able to really create um, you know, a good career for myself. And on the on the outside, maybe it looked pretty, pretty nice and pretty glamorous. Honestly, I carried with me that feeling of being an outsider all my life.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

Gosh, it's like lasting effects of childhood trauma, basically, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 12:50

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

So tall.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:53

And how would that and how did how how did that make you feel? Like, how did that manifest itself? Like how did that how was that in everyday life as you were going through your life and growing up? And it must have been a kind of a horrible and slightly lonely feeling.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

Yeah, you know, it's and I'm sure a lot of people struggle uh with not feeling good enough, not feeling whatever, whatever that means. I'm not pretty enough, I'm not talented enough, I'm not skinny enough, I'm not, you know, whatever it is. I think a lot of people struggle with that feeling of not, you know, uh not living up to snuff, as they say.

SPEAKER_02 13:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

And and and probably more now than ever with social media, I can't. Um with the internet, with, you know, I mean, I I teach at university, so I see a lot of young people really struggling with anxiety and their mental health.

SPEAKER_02 14:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

And and I would guess that is going on for a lot of kids, you know.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Yeah. Did your did your that those feelings for you, did that stem from this feeling of uh losing your identity? Or was that other things at play that kind of led into this feeling of not good enough? I'm very I relate extremely well to that, by the way. And that was from my parenting. My father was not particularly encouraging to me. In fact, in a in a in a pretty pretty awful way. I just was never felt made to feel like I was going to amount to anything, you know?

SPEAKER_01 14:45

It's terrible.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

It's horrible because as a child, you need parental support and love and affection and comfort and safety. You don't have the that that is just like you went through at a very young age, that is going to have a profound and lasting effect on you until you realize what's happening and start to do something about it.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Absolutely. And, you know, to to sort of add on to my initial um childhood trauma, when we came to America, you know, my dad being an ex-military guy was, you know, he he was pretty um macho and very, excuse me, very um disconnected from his feelings. And he he was an alcoholic. And then later showed um other maladies of gambling and womanizing. So it was very tough. It was very tough for my mother and for for all of us.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Well, you're speaking, you're speaking my language too. That's the same as my my dad. So alcoholism was a huge factor in my lineage, and um, including me. So I I got clean and sober seven years ago. And you know, good for you. I had to had to break had to break the cycle because it was killing everybody, it was like decimating our entire family, you know. And I I fall blind, I would never become that person, and God only knows, you know, trauma catches up with you, and if you don't know what's happening, you you sometimes find alternative ways to deal with your anxiety and your depression and your feelings, and that was how I dealt with it until oh god, it it was a mess, you know. But my father would drink, his tempers would come out in in awful ways. Some that some days I wouldn't want to come home after school, you know.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

Again, your home should be your safe place. And then my mum, she doesn't love me talking about these things, she listens to the podcast, but he same womanizing, uh gambling, he lost a lot of money. He lost he lost all our money, actually.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

So it's the same, it's the same. It's I I mean, it's incredible how this story is so similar. Yeah, except you're except you're not Japanese.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

Yeah, yeah. Well, I am I am uh my mom, my mom is okay. So my mom is Egyptian, she's half Egyptian, and so she was a refugee, so she came over from Egypt and uh initially they went over in the war, came over to um amazingly to Libya, and she lived in Libya in Tripoli for three years, and then Gaddafi came in and that all went to shit, so then she came to England, right? So I didn't it's kind of interesting, I wasn't aware of that. I you know, my identity has just been I'm uh I'm the son of a half Egyptian, half English, and my dad's Australian, and I'm born in London, and that's all I knew until I came to LA 10 years ago, right? But she definitely felt all kinds of things about her identity and uprooted and you know, living what she knew and loved. She loved Cairo, and then suddenly she's in on the south coast of England with a new life being sent to boarding school. So, you know, there's all sorts of commonalities here, and it's again, yes, life is is crazy when you think about it. Like the things that we all have to adapt to and and change, and that's why all I all I when I think about my teenage boys, and I'm like, gosh, they've got this all to come. But if I if me and their mum, who and we're very good and very close, and we're she's around the corner, we can do our best. That's all we can do, right? We can give them stability, we can give them um a sense of like level-headed calm, and we can let them know that this is a a safe space for them. So if they don't have the volatility of an alcoholic dad or uh uh uprooting and moving to another country, or you know, that at least they might have a whatever will be, will be, right? We don't I don't know. I don't know what what relationships will come into play or what you know who knows. But right you you had such a big up uprooting, and especially with your father the way he was as well, it's yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

It's tough. Yeah, you know, and I know it's not you know anything uh anything special in that uh trauma is part of life, trauma and trauma comes in all different shapes and sizes. Um, do you know the work of Gabor Mate? Oh, he's brilliant. I I would really recommend his books and and his lectures, but his thing basically is you know, trauma is not about the thing that happened to you, it's what it's it's the result of what happened to you. You know, and and everybody's different. So, you know, if you happen to be really sensitive, which I think I am and I was, yeah, and so it really affects you deeply. And and then you realize that these these traumas that these experiences that have left these uh scarring impacts, yeah. Um at some point we have to take responsibility for the for for those effects, right? How how those things affected us, we can't just live life blaming our parents or whatever destiny.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

You have to you have to make you have to find the source, figure out you're right, the impact, and then you have to try and start to heal because otherwise you're excuse my language, you're fucked. And life's too short to go through being completely traumatized forever. How how did you exactly how did you deal with that?

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Well, so to backtrack for a second, you know, when I was touring and you know, living the rock and roll life, honestly, I drank and partied a lot, and you know, it was the 80s. I was doing cocaine and pills and all kinds of stuff. You know, I had my my rock and roll, you know, jaunt.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

Your rock and roll era.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

My rock and roll era.

SPEAKER_02 21:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

And and and look, it's you know, a lot of it was fun. But you know, unfortunately, it doesn't heal it doesn't heal you. It doesn't fix the problem.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

Is it cool? It's putting a band-aid over a bullet hole, they say, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:55

It's exactly so you know, so eventually With years of therapy and work and um and then the big turnaround for me, honestly, was 2020, right? Was COVID during COVID, which is a crazy time to have done this. But I was very interested in psychedelic assistant therapy, and it took me a while to find the right person, but um I eventually found someone who is a PhD therapist, yeah, psychologist, and does this work on the side because technically it's not it's not legal yet in New York.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

It's not, is it? That's what can confuses me. I've had quite I've had a couple of guests, I actually had a uh a uh business on here, and they were pro I'm you know, I I'm sober, but I'm not a sober podcast by any means. Like I'm here for all sorts, like everything, everything and anything. I'm not here to like disregard any um any way in which people like do their healing, right? Or how sure journey through. Um, and that was confusing to me because they had a whole business and a website, but it's like, well, hold on, is this legal? What and that's the m is that the mushrooms? Is that the cybercillin? Or how where's that coming from and why are people able to do it if it's not it's not legal? By the way, I'm talking to a man who spent a lot of time on ecstasy cocaine. God only knows what for about two decades. So you know no judgment here.

SPEAKER_01 23:33

Yeah, yeah. So um, well, there's mdma, which is ecstasy, the street, the street name is ecstasy, and um psilocybin, which is very popular, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:47

So which is like the hallucinogenic.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

That isn't a hallucinogenic, whereas ecstasy or mdma is not. No, that is that is uh categorized as an ethnogen, I think that's the right word.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

Makes you feel great, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

Because it's heart opening, it's a heart opening, it was designed for couples therapy.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

You know, it was designed to also design for raving in the 1990s in England.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

Well, it became that.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

Yes, exactly. Recreational use, but in my in my uh opinion, which is why, by the way, and you know, again, I'll promise I'll let you talk, and don't worry about the bottles. We're gonna we're going over time because I'm having a lot of fun. My concern, my why I don't go near it is because I, you know, drugs and me were great friends until we weren't, and any sniff, no pun intended, of um that feeling of ex from Molly from MGMA, or any sniff of a kind of an open brain wave of like what you know, acid or LSD or or mushrooms do. I'm terrified that that's gonna be like, oh, I I remember this. This is great. I'm gonna get going again, you know.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

So I'm I know I don't I don't think it would do that now, now that you've been sober too. And you know, let's not forget that Bill, um what's his last name? Who who yeah, he did acid.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Oh yeah, yeah, he did classic. He did um sober about doing acid, yes, correct. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

But you know, I mean, there's a lot of uh clinical studies now that that um psychedelics are actually helping people to heal from addiction.

SPEAKER_00 25:45

Yep, that's wild, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 25:46

I mean that's it.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

That's completely wild to me. But anyway, so you COVID you embarked on doing this.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

I did, and I you know, I had thought about it for a really long time, had done talk therapy for a very long time, and of course I knew my story, but I felt like I wasn't really getting to the core of what I needed to get to, and so I found this woman. My husband drives me down to New York City during lockdown, and I go to this person's apartment. You know, we were all vaccinated and checked ourselves for COVID and all this stuff, and I did my first journey. Wow, and and it was so transformative. Wow, it took me back, and in fact, my book opens up with this.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

Oh wow, that's a great place to start your book, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

And it it took me back to Japan, it took me back to the original trauma, losing my family, my grandmother who I never ever saw again. And I was able to go back to that place and that original injury and and really hold that space and heal it in a way. Yeah, I was so amazing. It was so incredible.

SPEAKER_00 27:18

Are you is it opening up memories and like revisiting your subconscious, or is it putting or is it putting an experience in front of you so you're able to make peace with it? Did that question make sense?

SPEAKER_01 27:33

I think so, yeah. I mean, it it can certainly bring things up that perhaps were not in your conscious mind. Yeah, but for me, what it did, because what you know, MTM it does, and this is why it's so successful with with veterans and PTSD, um it it sort of decon deconnects, that's a word, yeah. Um, the default mode network in the brain. So you're able to look at your pain and your trauma in such a way that it's almost like you're objectively dealing with it. So maybe the pain comes up and you really need to go there and feel that, which is what happened to me. Um, but it's not so frightening and it's not so overwhelming.

SPEAKER_00 28:29

You know, it's you being are you being guided through it or are you left on devices? Like are you being sort of talked to like the therapist who's saying, embrace this feeling or now go back to where you were five? Or it's sort of like talk, it's sort of like therapy taking you on a journey while you're feeling the feelings.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

It's like talk therapy on steroids.

SPEAKER_00 28:51

Or on acid or on MDMO.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 28:55

Because obviously, like I so I did, I really did. I took a lot took a lot of drugs, and you know, for me, the you know, alcohol and cocaine is one thing because you're kind of doing those like more socially, and then I used to started drinking in my own time, which was a whole nother story. But in my 20s and 30s, it was like ecstasy and MDMA because it was a beautiful soothing, it was calming, it was peaceful. Yes, and from not just from a mental standpoint, from a physical standpoint, you feel like euphoric. But I guess if you're just doing that again, it's a band-aid over a bullet hole. Because let me tell you something, you take that many drugs to feel that way, you are not gonna feel great the next day, right? Absolutely, yeah. And that would then accentuate every negative feeling, and the negative feeling and the anxiety and the depression would be a deeper trough than it was before I took the drugs in the first place. And then, of course, what happens is you need more drugs and so on and so forth. Before you know it, you're a complete, you're a complete fucking mess, right? So it sounds like it's more of a kind of a more um apportioned journey. And then how many of those do you do? Is it a one-off thing or do you go back? And how did that work for you?

SPEAKER_01 30:09

It can be a one-off thing for a lot of people. It wasn't for me. Um, I chose to go back, but but here's the thing: um, when you're doing it as a therapeutic treatment, um, what's really important is the lead up to the session. So you have a number of sessions to prepare, then you have the journey. Um, you're guided through this experience with uh a trained, you know, person.

SPEAKER_02 30:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:39

Um you're you're so they call it set and setting. The set and setting to me is very important. You know, I'm on laying down with an eye mask. There's someone there with me. You know, if this is going on for six out, seven hours, you know, of of work because you do an initial dose and then you do a boost. So it goes on for six, seven hours.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

Um, and it's very intense.

SPEAKER_00 31:09

Does it buy by, or does it just like six or seven hours? That's like a day at work. It's crazy. It is work.

SPEAKER_01 31:18

That's and then there's I know, and then and then there's what they call integration. So then you have, you know, a session or two or whatever you need to integrate and process what came up. Yeah. And my therapist, she during the whole session, she's taking notes.

SPEAKER_02 31:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

So then I have all the notes, everything that we've talked about, everything I've said, um, because you probably won't remember a lot of it. But it's very transformative work. Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_00 31:51

And so through this, over how long, a year, two years, three years, or immediately you started to really just be able to like throw off the shackles of this trauma that had been just squidging like in a negative way, just over you for all of all of your life up until that point.

SPEAKER_01 32:08

Yeah. Yeah. You know, it was it was pretty, pretty immediate. Wow. You know, that I felt a sense of relief.

SPEAKER_02 32:18

That's incredible.

SPEAKER_01 32:19

And I I felt a sense of healing. And then it just sort of continues, you know, you keep working on it and and keep nurturing that sense of healing. You know, it's like any wound you have, I mean, it'll scab over. And then it takes time for it to come to heal.

SPEAKER_02 32:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

And um, but I can say now, after, you know, doing a number of sessions, um, you know, I still have I still have that little place in my gut where I feel um that memory of my child self and the trauma, but she doesn't run the show anymore.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

It's really interesting. I mean, we're again, we're I you know, I've the lot since I sobered up seven years ago and I started on this journey, and you know, hence the podcast to talk about these sorts of things. I'm really enjoying this conversation, by the way. It's just like childhood trauma is like I get choked up just saying the words childhood trauma because it it it ruled and nearly ruined my life. Like the PTSD that I carried with me from my childhood, from what what whatever that was, where that came from, just feeling utterly fucking terrified every day of my life, not feeling safe, scared of the world, not feeling like I was equipped. I didn't feel like I was equipped to be alive. That's not normal. I just thought that's how everyone felt. Oh, I can so identify through that all of my life. I didn't understand why everything was so hard, and I didn't understand why I assumed that I was going to fail at everything. I didn't have any self-belief, and it's like, you know, working through all that has been amazing, upsetting, elating, traumatizing, but I only just scratched the surface, and it's like ah, you know, childhood Luke isn't running the show, but childhood Luke is like, I see, I see and feel childhood Luke every day, every day still, and he's lonely and he's terrified, and it's like I'm sad, like I'm sad for him, and then I have to remember, well, hold on, that's me, right? That's me, yeah, and I can do something about that, and so life is good today, yeah. And it's like there's regrets, there's regrets from you know the the things I put people through at the absolute height of my addictions, and but I've made peace and amends with everyone. My kids are in my life, and you know, and and life goes on, and there's plenty of time ahead to enjoy myself, you know, and that's life. Yeah, has to be there has to be a place for enjoyment in life. It can't all be a fucking chaotic struggle. It can't be exactly and that's exactly that's how I felt for decades, you know. So again, it's a similar time I mean, you know, you've got a few years on me, but uh we've had a similar timeline in that we've we've spent the majority of our lives up until this point feeling this sense of not belonging.

SPEAKER_01 35:40

And it's it's wild, and it's it's so hard, it's such a hard uh I don't know, it's I don't want to say it's a it's not a character flaw, it's just it's it's a fractured, it's a sense of feeling fractured as a result of the things that have happened to us. Um and you know, there there is this this um art, it's an art form actually in Japan where it's actually considered very beautiful to take a broken cup or a vase or something and you put you put it back together with gold.

SPEAKER_00 36:30

With gold, yeah, beautiful, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

And and though so those broken parts of ourselves um are really, you know, I see now at this point in my life, those are the bits that make us who we are, and and the beauty of who we are, because we've lived through those traumas, we've lived through those difficulties, and it's made us stronger. Correct. You know, it's actually made us better in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_00 37:03

Yeah, I know. It's interesting that it it's hard. It's like, would I would you want to start your life off like that again? No, but having had that experience, it's made you someone very special, having got to terms with what you what happened to you and how and coming through it and working through it, you then then that's when you start to feel alive, right? That's when you start to feel really alive.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

Exactly. And you know, yeah, that broken, like the broken cup that gets put back together with gold. Um, you can see the broken bits, right? They don't they don't go away, yeah. But but the beauty is honoring those pieces, you know, that brokenness and how we put it back together, right? That's what is important to recognize. So the healing is important to recognize, of course.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

I feel like the heading for this podcast episode is Finding My Lost Identity or something. Very nice, very amazing. Um just to wrap up, tell us about your book. Tell us about your book.

SPEAKER_01 38:12

Yes, yes. So I can't believe I actually wrote a book. I never thought I would do this. Congratulations.

SPEAKER_00 38:20

When did you write your book and how in God's name did you when did you decide and how did you manage it? I'm always amazed.

SPEAKER_01 38:28

I have no idea. It just sort of I just I sort of I just sort of started writing and journaling, and then one thing led to another, and then over two and a half years later, it turned out to be, oh, and I this is the book. I don't know if you can see it. Yes, it's kind of blurry. Oh yeah, naked out loud. Naked out loud. Anyway, yeah, um, yeah, it's you know, it's it's some of what we've talked about, and um uh just my personal evolution and how I ended up where I am now, uh, which is in a good place, I'm happy to say. Yeah um and it's it's very vulnerable. It's to me, it feels very raw and very honest. And um, you know, at first I was a little freaked out about putting it out, but but there was something very cathartic that happened in the process of writing it and letting it go into the world because now I feel like I'm free, I'm freed from it.

SPEAKER_00 39:34

Yeah, it's funny, isn't it? I mean, when I started doing this podcast, I created this podcast with my friend Kyle, and I was a bit like, God, I'm really putting everything out on the line here. And was I gonna mention that I was a you know an addict and this, that, and the other, and alcoholic? Yeah. Was I gonna mention this? And then like it's been five years of doing this podcast now, and I I don't I just I have nothing to hide, and there's something very, very cathartic about that as well. It's like I love talking about this stuff. I love getting this stuff. I love I love talking about mental health and and having a fucking nightmare and feeling like I was gonna kill myself. And you know what here this is people are in dire need of help, they're in a bottom of a pit, they can't see a way out. And to hear stories of people who have had burdens like yours or had epiphanies or found their way out of a constant feeling of depression or rid themselves of anxiety or what whatever the story is, that's that's why people it's really important just to have honest conversations, you know.

SPEAKER_01 40:50

Absolutely. And you know, I've been thinking a lot about this as well. And um the title of my book, Being Naked Out Loud, and what that means to me, is exactly what you're saying, in that I think this is what the world needs, is more of us talking about our truth of who we are as human beings and the fact that everyone has pain, everyone has suffering on some level, and and it's time for us to start allowing ourselves to be vulnerable with each other and be honest. And can you imagine if we lived in a world where people in power, such as our administration right now, if we actually had people in power that were accountable for who for their actions and for themselves, I mean, it would be a very different world.

SPEAKER_00 41:52

Yeah, I agree. I mean, empathy, empathy, honesty, trust, and like having that as part of your like personality traits are great, you know, and you're right, we don't have we don't have that. People have lost sight of that in recent in recent times.

SPEAKER_02 42:11

Yeah. Yes, indeed.

SPEAKER_00 42:13

You know, it's good. I love these chats. I mean, I love this. So uh if you're listening to this podcast, uh the link to the book and anywhere we can find Machan. Machan? Machan. Yes. Machan. Yes. Machan.

SPEAKER_02 42:26

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 42:27

Margaret. No, just kidding, not Margaret. We'll be in the show notes, and we'll make sure there's links to any social website or um your book link so our listeners can come find you.

SPEAKER_01 42:40

Perfect. Thank you so much. This has been great. Loved it.

SPEAKER_00 42:43

I've really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

SPEAKER_01 42:46

Me too. Thank you. Thank you, Luke. Take care.