LDS Podcast "Latter-Day Lights" - Inspirational LDS Stories

Raised in Isolation. Denied an Education. Saved by Faith: Calvin Bagley's Story - Latter-Day Lights

• Scott Brandley and Alisha Coakley

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What do you do when the people who were supposed to protect you… become the source of your deepest wounds?

In this unforgettable episode of Latter-Day Lights, author Calvin Bagley shares his extraordinary journey from isolation, abuse, and “no-schooling” in the Utah desert to faith, healing, and freedom. Once a boy who hid from the school bus, Calvin now helps others overcome trauma and reclaim their lives through faith, therapy, and unconditional love.

His new memoir, Hiding from the School Bus, reveals how the power of Christ—and the courage to face your pain—can turn even the darkest beginnings into a life of purpose.

*** Please SHARE Calvin's story and help us spread hope and light to others. ***

To WATCH this episode on YouTube, visit: https://youtu.be/rIV2k1etHsQ

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To READ Calvin's Book, "Hiding from the School Bus" visit: https://hidingfromtheschoolbus.com

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To READ Scott’s new book “Faith to Stay” for free, visit: https://www.faithtostay.com/

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Keep updated with us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latter.day.lights/
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/latterdaylights

Also, if you have a faith-promoting or inspiring story, or know someone who does, please let us know by going to https://www.latterdaylights.com and reaching out to us.

#LDSPodcast #ChristianStories #LatterDayLights

Scott Brandley:

Hey there, as a Latter Day Lights listener, I want to give you a very special gift today. My brand new book, Faith to Stay. This book is filled with inspiring stories, powerful discoveries, and even fresh insights to help strengthen your faith during the storms of life. So if you're looking to be inspired, uplifted, and spiritually recharged, just visit faith2stay.com. Now, let's get back to the show. Hey everyone, I'm Scott Brandley.

Alisha Coakley:

And I'm Alicia Coakley. Every member of the church has a story to share, one that can instill faith, invite growth, and inspire others.

Scott Brandley:

On today's episode, we're going to hear how a childhood of abuse and no schooling propelled one man to become a loving father and a trauma-informed leader. Welcome to Latter Day Lights.

Alisha Coakley:

Yeah, yeah, of course. So, Calvin, we were we're on three different time zones here. A couple hours in the past from me and an hour in the past from Scott. Tell everyone, where are you recording from right now?

Calvin Bagley:

So I'm recording from my home in Las Vegas, Nevada, where I have lived most of the time since after my mission.

Alisha Coakley:

Oh, okay. Gotcha. So not before your mission?

Calvin Bagley:

No, actually, I was raised in northern Utah outside of the area of Vernal, Utah.

Alisha Coakley:

Oh, okay. Gotcha. Now, did you move to Vegas for a girl? Did you?

Calvin Bagley:

Yeah, well, I wish it was that cool, you know, but I did meet the girl in Las Vegas. Does that count? Okay, good. I moved to Las Vegas because my older brother was here and was giving me an opportunity to get on my feet uh after a pretty uh interesting and difficult upbringing.

Alisha Coakley:

Okay, gotcha. Well, this girl that you met, tell us if did you have any married kids? What are you doing for my wife Carissa?

Calvin Bagley:

Uh she's from Idaho Falls area. Actually, Shelly, for those of you know who know where that little uh smaller town is, wonderful place. Um, but she had come to Las Vegas because she had a full ride scholarship to UNLV. And I had come to Las Vegas because I had a connection with my brother and his wife, and they were helping me to get into school after being raised without schooling. And we met at the institute building, and it was a long time. Uh, we did it wasn't a courtship. It started out with just you know getting to know each other and then life took different directions. And then later we reconnected. Um, so we knew each other for the better part of oh, I don't know, eight, eight years or something before we were married. And now we're married, uh, live in Las Vegas, have two children. Uh, my uh son, my oldest son is 13, my daughter is seven, which you know, I'm kind of like an old dad. I'm 50 years old. I turned 50 a couple weeks ago. That was actually the lunch of my book happened on around my 50th birthday. But I'm so happy because I think I'm a much better dad in my 40s and 50s than I ever would have been in my 20s.

Scott Brandley:

I just turned 52, just at the beginning of August. Oh, happy birthday.

Alisha Coakley:

Well, and apparently you have some vampire blood in you.

Calvin Bagley:

Thank you. I guess my daughter's really into vampires because of this, you know, that uh uh all this Disney stuff right now. So she would consider that a compliment, and I do too.

Alisha Coakley:

Yeah, that's awesome. I was shocked when you told me your age just now. I was like, wait, what? I seriously underestimate it.

Scott Brandley:

Thank you.

Alisha Coakley:

That's great.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah, I got a lot more white in my beard than you do.

Calvin Bagley:

Well, you know, just I when they say it keeps you young, I don't know if it makes you older or keeps you young, but having a seven-year-old, you know, I all my friends are young, so I feel young.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah, right.

Alisha Coakley:

There you go. I feel young still.

Scott Brandley:

I can't believe I'm 50, but I don't feel it. That's good. Yeah.

Alisha Coakley:

Well, let's let's let's focus on you. Uh Calvin, why don't you just go ahead and tell us where your story begins?

Calvin Bagley:

Sure. You know, I I I recently wrote a book uh called Tiny from the School Bus, and it tells the story of my life. Um, and I wrote it really for my family and for my loved ones, uh, and kind of a memoir piece, and it it may have uh meaning to a broader audience. And so I'm sharing it and being very open about it, even though it's very personal. And so in a way, I've kind of opened my heart up and my soul and and shown it to the world. But uh it starts in uh a small area outside of Vernal, Utah, uh, where I was I was born. I was born in the Vernal hospital, but my parents didn't live there. They lived out on a ranch, a Ute uh tribal ranch very far away. My father was um the foreman for the tribal ranch, and it was 20 miles down a pothold, you know, road for oil field road, followed by 20 more miles down a dirt road. And there was my family there, you know, uh kind of at the end of the world outside of Vernal, Utah, with no neighbors and no one around us. And the only time that that my family left this tiny little ranch was to go to church. And so out of that became sort of this necessity of homeschooling the children. And I was the seventh of nine children. So I was born in Vernal. My parents brought us home, brought me home from the hospital out to this uh, you know, this very small uh ranch house out in the middle of nowhere that was actually really a trailer house. And my my mother really suffered from depression, I believe, uh undiagnosed and postpartum depression and what have you. And she handed me to my sister, who was 14 years older than me. I was just turning 14 when I was born, and said, you know, this one is yours. And I really believed that my my I've realized now that my body believed my sister to be my mother. And she provided all the mothering for the first years of my life. And out of this necessity, living so far in the middle of nowhere, we were homeschooled. But it wasn't, you know, it started out as homeschooling. And my my sister, who's the oldest and many of my older siblings, they attended some school. But by the time I was old enough to learn to read, schooling just wasn't happening in our home any longer. And instead of it being homeschooling, it's what I call no schooling. I mean, we were no schooled. There wasn't, there weren't books, there were, there weren't um, you know, study guides or anything like that. There, we didn't have lecture time. We literally just worked and stayed hidden from the school bus. So that's why the title of my book, Hiding from the School Bus. When the school bus would come by, we would hide. And my parents said, you don't want to be caught by the school bus. It's going to take you to school, it's going to, you know, you're going to learn these terrible things. Everyone at school is bad. They didn't, they had a deep ingrained uh suspicion of all institutions, whether other than other than religion, particularly, you know, the church. But other any other institution like the government, uh, healthcare, schools, all of these things were bad and would teach you evil. And so my parents began to get these more and more extreme beliefs the longer that they were isolated in this place. And it started out as, you know, we're going to uh homeschool our kids, and then it turned into uh chocolate is against the word of wisdom, and wearing shorts even for boys is wrong. So I was wearing, you know, playing church basketball in jeans because, you know, I couldn't wear, I couldn't, wasn't allowed to wear shorts. And there were many of these other interesting and bizarre boutique beliefs. And so I call the kind of upbringing a fundamentalist upbringing, but it lacked polygamy. I mean, my parents went, we went to church every Sunday and we practiced uh the religion, but um, and we practiced our faith, but they had all these weird things that they had added to it that weren't really part of the Church of Jesus Christ or Latter-day Saints, but we were raised with those, with those beliefs. And they would come home from church and and talk about everyone else that was the church, all the things they were doing wrong, and how no one else was living up to the standards and only us. But at home, I was I was being abused. Um, and there was there was physical abuse, there was sexual abuse, there was all kinds of verbal abuse and things that were happening in our home. And so for me, I there was just this disconnect that I began to realize very early on that what was being taught in church and by my primary teacher and other things was not what we were living at home, even though my parents professed that we were the holy ones, we were the most, you know, righteous, or or they were doing it the right way and everyone wasn't. And so this was the tumultuous upbringing that I was experiencing as a child that really created in me a lot of question about whether I was good enough or whether I knew anything, or whether the church was the place that I wanted to be when I grew up, and um, and many other very confusing things for a child. So that was kind of my my beginning. Um as I got older, I wasn't hiding from the school bus anymore because I feared it or or believed exactly what my parents were saying. When I'm by the time I was a teenager, I realized by associating with other kids at church that I really didn't know anything. And if I did argue with my parents to the point that they allowed me to go to high school, which you know, no one in my family ever went to high school, but if I if I somehow succeeded in that, which I wanted so badly, then I would just make a fool of myself because I I knew that I knew nothing. I didn't know times tables. I when I was seven years old, my sister, who was 10 years older than me, so my third sister, she taught me to read. I went to my mom and I said, Mom, I I really want to learn to read. And my mom said, Well, I guess I guess you're ready. And I was seven years old. And I had inadvertently, because there were some remnants of our of our education prior, remaining in the house. So in in the house, around the top of the living room, was the alphabet, but I didn't know which way it started. And so I would I walk downstairs and I would start on one side of the room and I would work all of my way around and try to memorize it and prepare myself to learn to read. And so I memorized Z Y X W V U T S R Q P O M and M L K J I G F E D C D A backwards because I didn't know which way it started. You know, today people laugh when they say, Oh, that's a great party trick. And it is, but to me it has a lot more meaning. You know, I really didn't know. So um my sister helped me to read and she taught me to read using a phonics course. And that was the that was the full education that I received, essentially. Um my father always said, teach a child to read and they'll learn everything else when they're ready. And I hate to say that in a way I proved him right on that, on that point, because I did learn things later. And I go on to graduate from college, which was which is a mountain that I climbed, but um for many of my siblings it didn't work out so well. So um when I was uh when I was eight years old, uh I was baptized uh in the church as as as eight years old, eight years old, eight-year-old children are, you know, typically. And that began my personal relationship with my Heavenly Father, um, where I began to feel things for myself that had been talked about. And there was a lot of teaching and preaching in my home. Um unfortunately, a lot of it became very triggering for me later because it was accompanied with anger and fighting and and and other violence. But, you know, my parents would do scripture study and other things, but it always had this heavy weight on it. Or family home evening was like a fight, and just there was so much fighting and so much anger and all these things happening in my home. But refuge was at church. And my my earliest primary teacher, her name was Wilma Robb, and she was a saint, just a wonderful woman in her like 70s and just loved the children, loved me. And in one of the tragic moments of my childhood, she was in, she had been, she'd gone to town, as we said when I was a kid, with my family. Um, this was when we had moved to a place that there were some people around, not that many. And on the way home, we were in a car accident, and my primary teacher, Wilma, died after having uh been, you know, been struck. We struck a horse, and the horse came into the passenger seat seat and and crushed her. And and I saw my primary teacher there, um, just not even looking like herself, completely, you know, it was a terrible scene. And it just broke me, just completely broke me. But I knew that Wilma loved me. And sometimes I wasn't sure that of love in other places. And those things, you know, the feelings that I had, um, being baptized and being confirmed a member of the church, uh, the teachings of Wilma and others led me to begin to have my own testimony and begin to separate my parents from the gospel. And it's one of the things that makes, you know, there's there's a very, very well-known um memoir by Tara Westover. It's called Educated. Literally, millions and millions and millions of people have read it.

unknown:

Yeah.

Calvin Bagley:

And she was raised in a very similar situation as me with the with kind of this extreme religious belief and homeschooling and what have you. She was raised in south uh eastern Idaho. And many of her stories, I I could, I could tell you, are so much like the stories I grew up with. And many of the people that her family knew, um, my family also knew because the homeschooling was kind of like this tight-knit community at the time. And so, yes, people like the Singer and SWAT families that uh that bombed a church. You know, those were those were friends of my my father. They practiced polygamy, and my my my dad didn't didn't condone that, but almost everything else he he had common ground with them on. And in fact, at one point he wanted my sister to marry one of their sons. So we were close to all this extremism and what have you. And so my point about the about Tara Westover, for example, is that it's much easier and it makes a lot of sense to just throw out your beliefs and throw out your parents' beliefs and throw out the the church and everything with all the bad things that happened in your childhood. And you know, if someone's listening and that's the situation that you feel you're in, you know, how could good people supposedly right, church people hurt me? Right, right, then I would say to those people um that God is greater than that, and that faith is greater than that, and that there is peace in following what you know is true in your heart. I love the I love the quote, you know, doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith or doubt your belief. But so for me, I uh I continue to follow and began to separate my parents and their beliefs from which were somewhere true to the true beliefs of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And uh I eventually uh prepared for and just prepared to serve a mission. And I sort of uh I say in my book that I disinvited my parents from that. And what I mean by that is I told my parents I was going to go for me and not because of them or for them. Because as I became a teenager, you know, I'm gonna have my own rebellions, and my rebellions would be different than a lot of people's rebellions. My rebellion was I got a job, and my my my mother really didn't like that because she felt that uh you know, having a job and money and everything would expose me to bad influences, and that that had tainted some of my older siblings who had all rebelled. I mean, they had all essentially run away and done and done things that they considered my parents considered rebellious um to different differing degrees. So um I received my mission call and it came in the in the mail. I opened the packet and it says, you know, Elder Bagley, you've been called to serve a mission to be representative of the church of Jesus of Jesus Christ, and you've been called to serve in the Brazil Kuritiba mission. And I looked at that and said, Oh my gosh, I'm going to Africa because I just had no understanding of world geography or anything, you know. So I was like, wow, I'm going to Africa. And I was so excited, and and you're going to speak Portuguese. I'm like, what is that? I just, it was, it was amazing. It was so exciting. So, you know, I pull out a map and I'm like, oh, okay, South America, that's cool too. And I I go, I went into the MTC in the missionary training center in Provo, Utah. By the way, I'm used to telling my story to people that are not members of our church. And so which has been so enjoyable to get have the opportunity to expose people who usually don't know or understand the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and think of it differently than what it is to have an opportunity to explain to them all of the similar beliefs that we have and faith in Christ and things. So if I if I say some things that you're like, well, that doesn't really sound like something someone would say, you know, exacrament meaning. Well, I I really have been enjoying and and finding common ground in my in my uh vernacular of how to speak to people who are not members of our faith about our faith. So it's been really fun. But um yeah, so I when I went to the missionary training center, I I had to learn Portuguese, which was I was so excited about, but I really had to learn English because I didn't know what a noun was and what a verb was and what a conjugating a verb meant. I I didn't understand any of those things. And so that was my first. I would say the MTC was my first um educational experience, true educational experience, where I sat in a classroom and was instructed and had to learn something. And and for me it was it was Portuguese. And I went to Brazil and I became very good at Portuguese, had some incredible spiritual experiences. I write about a few of them in my book. Uh, wonderful people, wonderful experiences, and also some interesting experiences where some of my companions challenged me on some of the beliefs that I didn't even, I they weren't necessarily beliefs that I held, they were just beliefs that had been taught me by my parents. And and they were cult, they were cultural in nature. For example, my my parents believed that Star Wars was evil, that that there is no, you can't have the force because the force, you know, says that power comes from one source and that the that the user can make it good or evil. And they said I thought that that was uh very blasphemous, that you know, good is from God and evil is from Satan. And so they would not allow anything to do with uh Star Wars. And so I had this companion that really challenged me on that and uh some other things. And and and, you know, it's not to say that the that the theology of Star Wars is perfect, but uh we can find good in a lot of things. And he kind of taught me some of those, some of that, you know, and uh challenged me on some things. And so yeah, but my missionary experience was incredible. And I came home from my mission, and uh all of my companions were going off to college, some were going to BYU, and some were going to, I had a companion that was going to Stanford and some really, really prestigious schools and things. And I was saying, I I need I want to make more out of my life. And so I got home from my mission and went to a store and purchased a study guide for the for the GED. And sat at home at nights. I worked in the day, came home at night, and would study and study. And after several months, I I took the GED exam and I passed that exam. And just before my 22nd birthday, I got my high school diploma in the form of a GED. Awesome. My father, he saw that and he said, you know, what do you need to do that for? You do you need someone to tell you that you're smart? Is that is that why you need to do this? So he still was not um supportive of what I was doing. So at that point, I said, Well, now I'm gonna try to get into college. I I don't, you know what? If I can just get there and take one thing at a time, I can figure it out. And so I I went back to the store and I purchased the ACT study guide, and it was like a big book, you know. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna study to take the ACT exam. I study for months. I showed up at the at the at the you know at the for the test, and I'm sitting in this room with 16 and 17-year-olds who are getting ready, you know, doing like juniors in high school and what have you, getting ready to take the the their ACT. And the great thing about the ACT, by the way, is you can't fail it. Everybody gets a score, right? So I didn't fail it, but I did so poorly that you could pretty much say that I failed it. And my score was a 16, which was so low that I did just so much. You can't, you can't stuff, you know, 12 grades and 12 years of school into your head in months and and understand it all and and do it on your own and everything. And so I was really let down. It was it was a very depressing, major letdown for me. So I'm I it's the month that I'm turning 22. I've been home from my mission for a year. I I I've got my GED, but I don't feel like I'm any closer to school. And and there's an aspect of this that I'm sure someone could relate to. You just don't feel like you're good enough. You don't feel like you measure up. Everyone around you is normal and you're not. You're different. You know, you're I don't want to say stupid, but you feel stupid. I mean, it's a strong, you know, a word that's not a line. If my daughter's listening right now, she's gonna be like, Dad, you said stupid. You know, you just don't feel like you're good, like you're good enough. Uh like you like you are normal. And all I wanted in life was to be normal. I just honestly, I just wanted to to feel like I I I could be in a conversation and understand what was being said. You know, I had a missionary companion that said something about the Holocaust. I had no idea what he was talking about. I I did not know what that term meant. I didn't understand about World War II, even though my grandfather had served in World War II. I just I just had no understanding of the world. So after I failed the ACT, my older brother, who was, you know, my one one of my parents' more rebellious children, had sort of like repositioned his life and had married this wonderful woman, had gotten married in the temple, and you know, he had a he had had a son prior out of wedlock, and then he sort of just kind of changed his life around. And he said, Listen, why don't you come down to Las Vegas, which is where I still live today? Why don't you come down to Las Vegas? We'll help you out, we'll give you a place to stay. And his wife was a registered nurse and she had graduated from college, and he said, Julie, we'll help. She's going to help, she's going to help you to learn and to and to um get into college. And I said, I'll do that. So I left this little town up in Utah. We had moved to a little town by this point called La Pointe, the small town outside of Fernal. I came down to Las Vegas, and my sister-in-law was incredible. She went with me to this store called Learning is Fun. And we purchased these all the all the books, grade books for math, because that was my biggest challenge. I just did not understand math at all. And she opened the books and she's going through them saying, Hey, you know what? Where where do you understand? Like what level are you at? And we went all the way down to third grade. We got down to third grade. That's the place that I understood math. It was like very, very, very basic addition, subtraction, you know, multiplication, throw in a fraction, and I have no idea. So we purchased those gradebooks, and she sat with me at their kitchen table on nights after long days of work and would explain things to me that I could not figure out in those grade books and help me to prepare. And then arranged for me to meet with a college admissions counselor at UNLV. And I went in and said, you know, I've been declined by every school I had applied to because I I had no transcript. I had done terribly on the ACT. And this counselor, she said, you know what, Calvin, I love your story. I appreciate that you're in here talking to me. I explained her. I've been working my whole life since the time I was a child. I had no education. I've I've everything I've accomplished at this point, I've I've kind of figured out on my own. And she said, We can't admit you to UNLV, but we can allow you to audit classes. So come to school and you can go for two semesters and audit classes. And if you get a passing grade after two semesters, then we will admit you and those and those classes will count toward your degree. And that is how I got into UNLV. Yeah. Okay. That's awesome. Yes. So really cool. I wish I could say that from there it was like smooth sailing and what have you, but you know what? It wasn't. Um it took me over 10 years to get my my degree in business administration. I I wasn't accustomed to classrooms, lectures. You know, the first time I ever took a test or wrote a term paper or anything was in college. And so it was a lot to adjust to. And so I took some, I took some some deviations. And one of the interesting, interesting one ones was that I became a flight attendant for United Airlines because I was, I my sister had married a flight attendant for Delta, and he told me what he was doing. I said, that sounds really fun. So I ended up moving to Chicago and became a flight attendant for United Airlines and had this really incredible experience where it was just flying all over the world, experiencing all different cultures, living with people of totally different backgrounds and totally different experiences in life and beliefs and what have you. They all became like my like my closest friends and family. And learned this love for um travel that has stayed with me my entire life. You know, I've been to all 50 states and all seven continents and things and um just absolutely love to go places and see things. And but in the back of my mind, there was always this thing, you know, you you can do more. Not to say that a flight attendant isn't a lot. It was amazing. I loved it, but you can do more. Go back to school, go back to college, you know. And then I was a flight attendant when 9-11 happened. I was in a plane, on the runway at O'Hare, getting ready to take off when when uh everything ground to a halt. And back then, you know, the best, the best cell phones weren't even blackberries yet. I mean, they were just you know flip phones. And so um it was it took a long time, many hours for us to return to the gate and to even understand what had occurred that day. And so that's one of the interesting, you know, stories that I write about in my book. And after that, I said, okay, it's time for me to go back to school. And so I returned to Las Vegas, and this time I came with a different intention. And by this point, I was in my late 20s, and that is when I met my wife, um, or kind of re-met my wife. We had met before, but and we spent time together and eventually we're married, and was, you know, hands down, the greatest thing that's ever happened to me. Um, but I come back to school at the UNLV, I graduate with my business administration degree, begin to work for uh a bank and do a whole bunch of things at the bank and eventually start my own business. And um, and we we begin to, my wife and I struggled with some things, we struggled with some fertility and what have you, but you know, that's why I'm 50 years old and have a seven-year-old daughter. But now we have a our son and our daughter. Um, we have our little family here in Las Vegas, and we have our business, and people uh work with us and for us, and we we built this culture around taking care of people and loving people and doing what's right for people, regardless of whether it's you know um difficult. And our company grew. We help people with Medicare, actually, is what we do. We're we're an insurance agency that helps people with Medicare. And we've helped over 60,000 people in all 50 states to choose their Medicare insurance now. And these things kind of began to grow um out of uh out of this belief of you know to always do the right thing. And in in church, uh throughout all of this, uh I stayed. I stayed and I stayed and I stayed. And my testimony grew and grew. And we were so blessed. I mean, I connect the success of our business and our personal life and everything to the gospel and the church. And about uh, well, I guess it's been six years ago since I've been released. So uh six years ago. So prior to that, I was called to be a bishop and served as the bishop of my ward. And that was an incredible and the most difficult and challenging and wonderful and terrible experience of my life. And uh, you know, I I I I wouldn't I wouldn't wish it on on anybody, and I would wish it on everybody.

Alisha Coakley:

I see Scott over here just nodding. Yup. Yeah, right?

Scott Brandley:

I'm going like this. I was the best.

Calvin Bagley:

Yeah, it's like no one should have to do that. And everyone should do that. Everyone should have to do that. Yeah, exactly. It was really, it was really a challenge, and um um, but uh but a great blessing. And I was blessed with so so incredible people and relationships um during that time. And so, you know, I all of this to say that um that the only reason I'm here is because I I felt the hand of God throughout my life. If if I mean there's so many places where I was just so close to uh to um I don't know, just giving up, giving up on my faith, giving up on my beliefs. But that that just those experiences of feeling, the warmth of the spirit, you know, when I was baptized, when I was confirmed, serving on my mission. Wow, I mean, it just the experiences of blessing people and teaching people and those things just gave in me this belief that I that I clung to, even at times of despair, when I was like, you know, I'm never gonna be able to go to college, I'm never gonna be normal, I'm never going to, whatever. And I feel like it was it was faith that led me through, which I just that's why I've told my story, honestly, because so many people give up on the faith. And then about maybe five years ago, it was after I'd been released as a bishop. So I was released as a bishop over six years ago. So about five years ago, I had a little more time and I said, okay, now I'm going to focus even more deeply on my business. And I began to join different business networking groups. And I found myself in this group called Genius Network with a man, Joe Polish, who is a very well-known uh business leader, uh connector and everything, and uh, a man I've come I've really come to love. And I'm in this room listening to incredible business leaders. And there's a business leader that I really, really looked up, look up to, and he had written a book that we I I led my business based on his book. And it's called Traction, and his name is Geno Wickman. And he is, if anyone who's in in business um can appreciate like who Geno Wickman is, you know, um, look him up. He's amazing. If you don't know who he is, uh he's coached so many people in business and taught um people how to do how to scale and grow their business and someone I just respect. And we're sitting in this room, I'm I'm just so excited. I'm gonna learn from this great business mind. And Joe Polish of the Genius Network, he has this saying. He says, sell them what they want and give them what they need. And he's talking about entrepreneurs like me. He's like, you know, get them in the room and they think they want to learn about marketing, and then you're gonna tell them, hey, you need to, you need to deal with you're the problem, right? Why is your why is your company not growing? It's because of you. You're the problem, right? So in this room and he goes, Listen, I'm gonna tell you a story. And he starts telling us a story about going to a conference where someone tells him to like look inside of his heart and visualize this and open his heart and see what he sees inside. And he just sees darkness and black. And and he's and he kind of takes us through this similar exercise. I'm in this room with just, you know, about 100 people. And I close my eyes and do the same visualization and I understand where it's coming from. And I see inside of me shame. And I don't know where it's coming from and this lack of of love for myself. And I'm like, I mean, I have, I fought and fought and fought. I did things that that didn't seem possible. I I got my education. I stayed, I stayed in the church when almost all of my siblings and other people, you know, have not. I became a bishop and I served and served. And I loved my congregation. I loved my youth. I sent so many young people on missions and I just, you know, they're like my my they're like my boys and and and young women who I and many of them also went on missions. They're my girls, you know, like I and why don't I love myself? Why do I see darkness inside of me and shame and guilt or whatever it is? I don't know what it is. Why don't I love myself? Because other people are opening their hearts and they're seeing rainbows and butterflies and bunny rabbits and unicorns, or I don't know what they're seeing. Light, happiness. Why, why am I not seeing that? And that led me to my most recent part of my journey and also the reason why I then said, I'm going to tell my story. And it was to find out why I'm feeling that shame and guilt and why I don't love myself. And it led me to counseling. And I I always had avoided counseling because I was a fur, I was concerned. I I say I had gone to maybe three or four different counselors and they would do like talk therapies and stuff like that. And it just didn't seem like it did anything. And um, it also concerned me that so many of them didn't share my beliefs. And finally, I found someone who shares my beliefs, who shares my faith, and who also um is, you know, counseling people and helping them to work through traumas and what have you. And that was the right mix for me. And so I began to do some work to understand why my body react certain ways. Like when my wife says, all right, guys, let's let's have scripture study. I want to have scripture study, but why do I why do I feel tension not understanding that my body is reacting as if I'm sitting in the home as you know, a child in my in my father's home. And it doesn't realize that that's past. That happened a long time ago. But it it's not in the past for me yet. And so that this experience of working with a therapist who who brings faith and Christ and and my beliefs and shares them with me and brings them into this with me has been uh an incredible experience that has led me to a place where I have been able to release a lot of those things, understand where they're coming from. You know, sometimes triggers still happen. I never liked the word trigger, but now I understand it. I didn't I didn't realize that that was that that that was happening to me, that my I would have reactions to things, almost visceral reactions to a word or a saying or or a perceived flight or something. Um, because I had not put my own traumas into the past. And I'm not perfect, I've got a long way to go. I'm still working with my great therapist John, who I love so much. And and the and I've followed so many, I mean, there have been so many incredible mentors in the church and in business and in life. But I've gotten so much better. And the thing that I can tell you that I am most proud of personally, you know, aside from my family, of course, is that today I can say I love myself, that I that I can see um all the different parts of me, whether it's the part that was hurt, the part that was angry, and the part that was that was being shielded, and the part that's sad, and the part that feels like it's not good enough, right? I I've seen all those parts of me now and embrace them all and say, you know what, I'm very proud to be where I am today. And when I when I was able to work to the to get to the point where I could really love myself, then I look back and say, wow, everything that happened is okay. And I wouldn't change any of it. I wouldn't change the fact that I didn't have an education and I had to struggle and fight for it. I wouldn't change my parents and some of their wild, you know, off, you know, wild beliefs. I wouldn't change it. I wouldn't change losing my primary teacher in such a terrible way. And I wouldn't change that. Or else I might not arrive where I am today. And so throughout this journey, Heavenly Father has put in front of me the right people, the right opportunities. I call them the ladders to climb, the right ladders to climb helped me to arrive here, knowing that I would that that I would progress and that I could progress and become here. Not not pushing me here, not saying I was predestined to be here, but giving me every opportunity to be here and probably farther than I am, but I made it to here. And I'm I'm very grateful for that. And I feel like like my greatest, my greatest accomplishment to this point outside of outside of my faith in Christ and my wife and my children, is to reach a point where I love myself and can brace everything, embrace everything that has brought me here. So that is my the arc of my story. That is my what I what I'm sharing in my book, you know. I would call it a nutshell, but it's a really big nutshell that has brought me to to where I am today speaking with you.

Alisha Coakley:

Wow.

Calvin Bagley:

Oh my gosh.

Alisha Coakley:

You know, it's it's so funny because I I feel like we're kindred spirit in a sense. And not that I mean I my upbringing was a little different, but there were some things, you know, like I I did have some sexual abuse and stuff that happened, and and my parents, I love them tough, but that's okay. It really is okay. Like you said, it's not okay that it happened, but I'm okay, right? Like it's one of those things. Like I've done the work to to to do that at this stage in life. And and my parents too. My parents have always had kind of a uh well, my mom was she was always like, Yeah, get educated, but my dad was like, College, he had a very specific saying, college is for people who are overeducated and not very nice. Let's just say that, right? And it was almost like this uh this hardcore belief from my dad that if you didn't physically work hard, you know, like if you work smarter, not harder, that must mean that you're not a good person. That must mean you're taking advantage of other people. If you're charging too much for your services, it means that you're taking advantage of the little person and then not that you're actually getting paid for your skills and for your education. And and so I had a lot of like issues around money and education growing up that it kind of threw me into this whole weird state for from the age of 18 to 40, where I'm like relearning all this stuff, and I'm like, and when you're talking about your body and how your body reacts to things, oh my gosh, that happens all the time. And I hate the word triggers too. I feel like it's just overused and used improperly now. Uh and so there there are very um real things that happen in my body to certain words, situations, people that look a certain way sometimes, right? Like the ones who resemble some of my abusers from the past, that I just instantly I don't know what to do. You know what I mean? And and it's so hard to kind of take yourself and be like, okay, wait, this is what's happening. Calm down, brain. You're safe. Everything you're feeling is stuff that happened a long time ago. That's not gonna happen right now. You're older, you're smarter, you're safe, you're you know, and it is like such a struggle. So to hear the things that you've gone through and to see how far you came, that's just not only amazing to me, but I think that so many people have worked so hard to try to make everything easy for the next generation, right? Like I know I do it for my kids, unfortunately, because we grew up in a rougher neighborhood and I had to struggle for a lot of things. I gave my kids a lot. And now my almost 19-year-old, he tells me he's like, Mom, he's like, I've got friends, and they're talking about they had to deal with this and they had to deal with that, and I'm sitting there thinking, I don't know, the worst I have to deal with is my parents tell me I have to clean my private bathroom. You know what I mean? Like share the bathroom with anyone, and it's like, oh, did I mess up by giving it giving too much to my kids, making it too easy for them because now they don't know how to struggle, they don't know how to, you know, work hard for something. In not all of them, but you know what I'm saying? It's like one of those like bands, like I just flipped flipped it over and how do you how do you as a father avoid that, or do you? Are you kind of in the same boat where you're like, here children have everything?

Calvin Bagley:

I totally relate. I totally relate because I mean it's hard. I I worry about the same things about, you know, they say hard times create strong people or hard people and soft times create soft people or something like that. Um, I do worry about that, and and my wife and I try to be very intentional. But my wife also had to teach me, and I I read about this, how she taught me to love our children because some of those things I equated with with love uh erroneously. And, you know, my my kids, yeah, they're they're really not struggling for anything. That's the truth. I mean, they have chores and they have responsibilities and what have you, but not like the struggles that I experienced or that you're talking about. And I'm very happy that they won't hopefully, you know, will never struggle with the types of abuse that I struggled, that I struggled and experienced. Um, but not to say that they don't have to do hard things, right? So I tried, I tried very hard to teach my kids to do hard things. Like just uh Saturday morning, so yesterday, my I I took my daughter, she's seven years old, I took her for a jog and and was talking with her about because she's like, Oh, I'm really tired. I'm kind of getting, I'm kind of getting a side ache. And I was telling her, you know, there are people that can, their mind can push them past, it can push their body past. And I started talking to her about people who run a hundred miles and all these other things. And she was like, Okay, okay, all right, yeah, I'm ready to run again, you know. So try to teach them those things uh and to be and to be strong. But uh hopefully, you know, the advantage that I that I feel like I gained from from struggle, I hope that they gained from love. And you know, we'll we'll see, you know.

Alisha Coakley:

Okay, I'm gonna bother you for that. That's amazing. I I love that thing so much. Can you repeat it one more time?

Calvin Bagley:

Um, I think I said the advantage that I gained from struggle, I hope that they will gain from love.

Alisha Coakley:

It's so good.

Calvin Bagley:

I love that.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah, that's really good.

Calvin Bagley:

You know, Alicia, there's another thing that you said that uh that uh made me think for a minute. You were talking about you know being having reactions. I really hate the word trigger because it's being used improperly so much right now. But but having reaction and reacting to things, right? Um, there was there was a there were two books that have helped me so much, and they informed me in in in different ways, but one of them informed me in helping me find the right therapist for me. And so that one was the body keeps the score. It's a great book. So many people have read it. It talks about how the science and some of the therapies, but the science behind why our body reacts to things and that literally in ourselves, we can have there, there is memory within cells, almost like our entire body has a brain, right? And and our our right down to our cells, they've proven can have reactions to things because it's afraid that that the trauma is about to happen again. And so the body features score is talking about how to put the past in the past and teach us some therapies around that. So that's an interesting uh secular book. And then the other one that has been a great blessing for me, um, and you know, we're we're here on Latter-day Lights, so I obviously the scriptures, the Bible, the Book of Mormon, you know, the doctrine that comes for the Great Price have blessed my life infinitely. But speaking of secular books, there's one called The Power of Now, and it's by a philosopher Eckert Tolle. And some people consider him a religious leader, but he's not he's not connected to religion, but you know, he's a he's a um uh philosopher, German philosopher. Eric his book really helped me to quiet my mind and to just observe. And it for me it has so many connections to the gospel because I don't believe that my mind, that I am my mind. And I don't believe that I am my body. I believe that I am my soul and that that I have a mind and a body. And that's you know, we talk about that we are we we we we live in the premortal existence and we came here to have the immortal experience. So often we get caught in our mind, and we think that our that we are our mind. And he goes to great lengths to to dispute that and to say you your mind can just run crazy and you have to you have to control your mind, but you can't control your mind by thinking, because if you're thinking, that's your mind. And so he teaches the way to control the mind is to observe. And he talks about the we are the observer. And I think of the observer as the spirit. And so I my spirit is the observer, and it and when my mind starts to go crazy, and when I start to feel tension rising in my chest, that's my mind and my body. Then I just observe it. What am I thinking? What's passing through my mind? What am I feeling? And in those moments when I have that trigger or that reaction or whatever we're going to call it, as I've gotten better about observing what that where I've become tense in my body, which is for me is usually in my breathing in my chest, and what is happening in my mind, I don't have to change it. I just have to see it, just observe it. And then it resolves.

Scott Brandley:

I was gonna say, you're you're gonna go from someone that had no education to uh like this major philosopher as you get older. It's my progression.

Alisha Coakley:

I was just saying, and not only like that you have it, but you're sharing it. I love that you're like out there, you see you're speaking, right? You're sharing your story with other people, not just in your book, but in speaking engagements. Is that correct?

Calvin Bagley:

Yeah, so now you know, in in because my company's been very successful in Medicare, I have become a leader in my space. And I travel around. Uh this week I'll be in last week, I I was in Los Angeles, excuse me, I was in Los Angeles and San Diego on two different stages. And next week I'll be in um San Jose and in Orlando, and I have an opportunity to speak, and usually I'm speaking, and I go to Washington, D.C. and get the opportunity to uh speak with policymakers and politicians and things like that. And usually I'm speaking about things that I see that need to happen in Medicare and how to uh improve that program from the from the perspective of insurance agents and the people that we serve. Because we work with every insurance company. And so we're not focused on what an insurance company wants. We're we're looking at what our clients need and then we're representing them instead of the insurance company, instead of the government. And so we represent our clients. And so it gives me a good perspective to take back to Washington. But my point is that in doing that, it has given me a platform to also share um insights and what have you. And just last week, I had it was really incredible. The I was on sitting on a panel, and uh the the uh person leading the discussion, he said, Hey, Calvin, I we have a question for you now. And you know, I'm expecting everything always related to Medicare. And he says, We uh I read your book, Hiding from the School Bus. And and then he led into how does this relate to some things in Medicare and this and that and the other. And it just gave me an opportunity to share and connect my life experience to what's happening in in business. And that that opportunity is happening more and more often. And that's been great. And then and then releasing the book also has led me to being on a lot of podcasts. And most of the podcasts that I've had the opportunity to be on are Christian podcasts, where I'm sharing my story and sharing my faith in Christ and talking about my beliefs, and usually with with people of other Christian faiths or non-denominational, not non-denominational Christian faiths and what have you. And so it has been a really, really great experience and opened up a lot of opportunity for me to share, you know, our our beliefs as members of the church and to connect them because people, there's so much, I mean, we're we're 99% that we have in common, but everyone wants to focus on the 1% that is different, right? Wow.

Alisha Coakley:

Yeah.

Scott Brandley:

So what's your like uh now that you've written the book and you've kind of reflected on your life and things as you've written it, like what do you see going forward? What was what do you think the future holds?

Calvin Bagley:

That's a really good question. And I get asked that quite a bit um because you know, usually people release a book with a purpose. And my purpose really was to tell my story, and it's a lot of it is legacy for my family and my friends, because I have held most of this in the story that I shared with you. Many people close to me have no idea. Um, and a lot of people look at me and particularly in today's like political environment and everything, and they think, well, you know, it's probably born of privilege and what have you, because he's had great success in life, business success I'm talking about. And so I how do you how do you dare that? And so I I I I said, I'm I'm going to share the whole picture and the whole story in a way that that everything can be shared. And but I didn't have this idea that, oh, this is going to be, I didn't have this idea that this that this book itself is going to be, you know, New York Times bestseller or that everyone in the world is going to read it. I I really wrote it because I wanted to share to the people close to me and give them the experience of of what my life was and what I'm very proud of of accomplishing in my life. And then my heart is open. And my and my, you know, if there is if there is more that that that our father in heaven would have, if there's there's more that is meant for the book, then I'm open to that. If as far as it is as it is meant to go is is a few select people who and or even just the people who know me and now understand me on a different level, I'm I'm happy with that too. Um so that's where I am today, is just just open and willing to receive whatever, whatever occurs. Um, you know, in business, I I'm I'm known as a quick start. So like I like to start new things. So I I'm always starting something new. I now am involved in a laboratory that does lab testing for uh, you know, that does molecular testing for for samples instead of growing things in a petri dish. We're like using you know science to discover very quickly what's what's in a sample. And uh so I and I'm always starting new things. And so in business, I just I just want to keep creating. I just love to create. I love to create and to make new things and to create um community with people, and that's what I'm going to continue doing. And if if the book is a part of that, then that's great. If it isn't, I'll tell you what it has done for me. It has allowed me to open up and share my story and made me completely open. And so when I'm on stage and I'm talking to people, or if I'm in a group, or if I'm with my with with colleagues in business, I feel like I have officially given myself permission to be myself and to be completely open. And that has is enough if that's all that that comes from it. That's awesome.

Alisha Coakley:

Wow. See, we are kindred spirits, and so is Scott. Like Scott is always starting new stuff, and he's really good at starting stuff and being successful. I'm really good at starting stuff and being like, that was fun. Let's do something else.

Scott Brandley:

Oh, but I feel like we're kindred spirits too, Calvin, because we have a very similar story. Like really, like I didn't start out in the middle of the backwoods, but we went on our missions about the same time. Um, I got a degree in business administration, I'm an entrepreneur. I love it. Yeah, it's crazy.

Alisha Coakley:

I love that. Well, I just I man, this has been such a good one. I always like when we have, I mean, I love all of our guests, right? Don't get me wrong. Like I always feel something was meant for me in these stories, but uh truly with you, I just feel like you are such an inspiration of how to grow, how to use your past and and your your hardships and stuff like that in order to become more of who Heavenly Father wants you to be, and how to just be positive about the things in life that are thrown your way that Heavenly Father allows. I think that's one of the things that I I try really hard to remember is that God doesn't make things happen necessarily as much as He allows things to happen and then He course corrects when they do, right? Or He just keeps us on the course as long as we're like doing what we need to do. And and while yeah, like I I totally agree with you that there are so many things that have happened in my own life and that are continuing to happen now that are hard and ugly and unfair. If it means risking everything I've learned to change those things from the past, I'll just keep them. You know what I mean? Like I'd rather just keep them than just knowing where I am now and how much I've grown and learned. Because I wouldn't want to risk I wouldn't want to risk a little bit of just I discomfort, I guess, is really what it is, right? And maybe that's a a mild word, right? But I wouldn't want to just get rid of some discomfort or some trauma or some whatever else, like it means getting rid of all the things that had left me at this point.

Calvin Bagley:

That make you you, right? The past is in service to you. It it is in service to you, whatever it is that you want to be, to mean or to be. So if you want to be a victim, the past is in service to you, and you can be a victim. If you want to take the past and turn and turn it into more and have it inform you and help you to become more, it's in service to you. And then the past, and because you can't change what happened, but you can change the meaning and you can decide what it means. And so whatever it is that you want it to mean, it's in service to you.

Scott Brandley:

I love it. You've got a lot of good.

Alisha Coakley:

Bumper sticker number two.

Scott Brandley:

That's like four, that's like four or five, finally.

Calvin Bagley:

That's probably what the block is. Yeah. My bumper sticker website is ldsbumper stickers.com.

Alisha Coakley:

Hey, that'll be our next project cohesively.

Calvin Bagley:

Yeah, yeah. Here's here we go. Quick starts. I'll fire it up.

Scott Brandley:

Awesome. Well, Calvin, um, do you have any thoughts before we wrap up? Any final thoughts?

Calvin Bagley:

Or oh, I really enjoyed this. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to share my story and and to be here with you guys. Um, really enjoyed it. And I hope that someone finds some inspiration. Uh, if if you want to learn more about my story, you can just go to hidingfromthschoolbus.com or search hiding from the school bus anywhere that you read or consume books. And uh and you know, I it's it's a very heavy story. And I've had some people tell me they get into the first the first few paragraphs and say, oh my gosh, uh, I don't know if I can read this. I promise that uh it turns out with a happy ending. But uh yeah, that if if it if it interests you, then then look it up there on honeyfronteschoolbus.com. And I hope that something I said today can be a benefit to someone.

Alisha Coakley:

Perfect. And we'll be sure to put the the links for those in the description so anyone can just click and find. But man, this has been so great. I love this. I like when my cheeks are hurting at the end of the show. As opposed to having all my makeup cried off. So this has been fantastic. You are just such a delight.

Scott Brandley:

So I was just gonna thank him for for coming on and and thank everyone for tuning in to to hear Calvin and his story today. And if you have a story that you'd like to share, go to latterdaylights.com or send us an email at latterdaylights at gmail.com and we'll have you on the show like Calvin.

Alisha Coakley:

Yeah, and absolutely, listeners, please make sure that you guys are commenting on here. Let us know what your favorite pump for sticker moment was. What we should make for for the world to to have. Um tell Calvin just you know what you think of his story and and the life that he shared today. And uh be sure to do that five second missionary work. Hit that share button. You never know. Who needs to hear exactly what's talked about? So, all right. Well, with that, we are gonna sign off until next week. Uh, Calvin, again, thank you so much. You're welcome to come back anytime and chat with us. Share any other story with us. We would love it.

Calvin Bagley:

Thank you, Scott and Alicia. I appreciate it.

Alisha Coakley:

All right, guys. Well, that's all we have for you today. Make sure you join us next week for another episode of Latter Day. Talk to you later.

Scott Brandley:

Bye bye.

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Scott Brandley

Host
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Alisha Coakley

Co-host