“To be a father was my way of breaking a cycle and starting over.” In this one sentence, today’s guest, Peter Gronvall, insightfully reflects on his journey to fatherhood after growing up in a cult.
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During his conversation with host Jamie Truman, Peter discusses his experience living in two distinct worlds: One world where he and his eight siblings were subjected to severe emotional and physical abuse, and another where he was a dedicated student and spent time with friends. He shares how he and his siblings persevered through these painful years, and the impact on his relationship with his parents.
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Remarkably, Peter didn’t let his experience derail his aspirations. He earned a full scholarship to college and then got accepted into Yale Law School, all the while being a source of support to his siblings. Most importantly, he became the type of father he always wanted: nurturing, empathetic, and protective.
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Tune in to learn more about Peter Gronvall and how he survived growing up in a cult.
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Purchase Vanishing Fathers
100% of the proceeds go to charity that help at-risk youths
Connect with Jamie at Truman Charities:
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Website
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Email: info@trumancharities.com
This episode was post produced by Podcast Boutique https://podcastboutique.com/
“To be a father was my way of breaking a cycle and starting over.” In this one sentence, today’s guest, Peter Gronvall, insightfully reflects on his journey to fatherhood after growing up in a cult.
-
During his conversation with host Jamie Truman, Peter discusses his experience living in two distinct worlds: One world where he and his eight siblings were subjected to severe emotional and physical abuse, and another where he was a dedicated student and spent time with friends. He shares how he and his siblings persevered through these painful years, and the impact on his relationship with his parents.
-
Remarkably, Peter didn’t let his experience derail his aspirations. He earned a full scholarship to college and then got accepted into Yale Law School, all the while being a source of support to his siblings. Most importantly, he became the type of father he always wanted: nurturing, empathetic, and protective.
-
Tune in to learn more about Peter Gronvall and how he survived growing up in a cult.
-
Purchase Vanishing Fathers
100% of the proceeds go to charity that help at-risk youths
Connect with Jamie at Truman Charities:
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
Website
YouTube
Email: info@trumancharities.com
This episode was post produced by Podcast Boutique https://podcastboutique.com/
Welcome to the Truman Charities podcast. I am Jamie Truman, your host For my Vanishing Fathers series. I spoke with Peter Brumbold. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to grow up in a cult? At the age of two, peter's father was introduced unknowingly to a cult that masqueraded as a church. Peter discusses the emotional and physical abuse he endured during his childhood, from hours of religious rants to sleeping on cardboard and being beaten with electric cords, how Peter and his siblings gave each other strength to get through the abuse, and how school became his place to escape. Peter went through the unthinkable as a child, but was able to break away from the cult, attend Yale Law School and, most importantly, become a loving husband and father to his wife and three children. This is Peter's story. Peter, thanks so much for coming on to talk with me.
Speaker 2:You're welcome. Good to see you.
Speaker 1:Let's start out. Where and when were you born? Tell me a little bit about your family dynamic.
Speaker 2:I was born in Mancato, Minnesota, in 1972. I'm one of nine kids. I'm number two of nine. I went to high school in Mancato, went to college at the University of Minnesota undergrad and then I moved to go to law school at Yale.
Speaker 1:What was the dynamic between your mother and your father when you were a young child?
Speaker 2:When I was two, when my older sister was four and my dad, by all accounts, was um kind of an all-Minnesota guy, two-sport D1 athlete, but when I was two he was teaching at our high school basketball coach, track coach, you name it and in 1974, when I was two years old, he fell into a religious group, you know make oil salesmen type. That convinced him to join a small kind of town or establishment religious group. That essentially turned into a cult and it placed us in a situation where we were immediately like in a setting where our parents' authority was undermined. The true Northen occult was always the crazy narcissist at the middle of it, the leader of it, and then my parents proceeded to have seven more kids. So we grew up essentially being constructed to be abandoned by our parents into this cult scenario. But it was that very difficult setting that we had to navigate, childhood setting that was extremely abusive physically and emotionally, sort of unspeakable conditions against children. So that was the banding work above my childhood.
Speaker 1:What are some of the rules that I know? Each kind of cult has its own rules people follow. I would like to kind of dig a little bit more into exactly what were some of the rules that this cult had. And then also, since you were two when your dad was introduced to this group, what was that like for you? Did you think that this was just normal? Could you feel there was any difference between your family and other people?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so essentially this was a small fundamentalist, hardcore you know health fire and brimstone Christian cult led by a madman, an abusive, narcissist psychopath, who broke down family dynamics quickly. There was this like very caustic, mercurial, iron fisted micromanagement aspect to it. So these cult members you join, including my parents. You know they were adults and I think they were looking for something as an alternative to whatever the mainstream options were. But it was a very black and white, rules based and very strict, harsh environment. I knew from the moment I had consciousness and whatever that age is.
Speaker 2:But this was wrong because it was physically very, very uncomfortable and abusive. It's a special type of abandonment when you see your parents allowing things to happen to their kids and they're in the room. Right, that is the ultimate protector, right, the parent. So, yes, my siblings and I, a band of nine, right, we all knew fundamentally that this was horrific and wrong, but eventually we survived and we got out and it became really a group of team oriented people, leaders, resilient, incredibly strong. But it was especially painful for all of us that it was happening in the physical presence of our parents.
Speaker 1:What type of relationship did you have as a young child with both your father and your mother?
Speaker 2:You know, under the circumstances a good one. Whatever insanity was coming out of this cult situation, we did our best. I still have memories of when I was probably two, when my dad was more in self and was smiling and willing to be a cordial father. I think it was siblings and I all kind of banded up to survive. It became a very tenuous and mistrusting relationship with my dad because he was certainly the leader of this idea and this lifestyle.
Speaker 1:You had mentioned that when your parents were first introduced to this cult they were a certain way, but then their personalities kind of changed the longer that they were involved within this organization. Tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:I lived this progression from two to six years old, when things are a little bit more tomboy-alive. We're mid-westerners, we're sincere and earnest, but as Colt stew, or at least this one did, it took on such horrific harshness and brutality in terms of the way children are treated and the adults are treated and the mentally abused and physically abused. I remember pleading as a middle schooler with my dad to look around him. He had lost his friends in the outside world. He was a well-liked person, athlete. Like I said, a beloved teacher lost his job because he was evangelizing to a student.
Speaker 2:The hardened position that he continued to take to double down on the cult was also producing what I observed to be a yielding on his part to this is the way it is. This is the way to get into heaven. It became like seeing a grown man that's, in sense, just seed control of his life. We really never felt like we had a protector number one, a provider, someone who wouldn't listen to us either, because suddenly, when I grew up, we kept asking them to take a look around. We were also in school, like we were in the public, and we were dressed differently, which is fine, but we were gone on the weekends we weren't allowed to play with our schoolmates. It made our personal lives really difficult when we weren't sitting in long meetings at this cult or working on this cult compound, but when we were back in McKinnell just trying to be kids.
Speaker 1:I wanted to touch on that a little bit about your upbringing. When it came to school, what exactly was like your uniform that you had to wear? And then tell me a little bit about the weekends. What were you doing?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean I don't want to pick on another religious group I kind of think of Amish or Mennonites. The boys had we all had kind of buzz cuts and very basic kind of work clothes no shorts allowed, college shirts, work pants, think of like Dickies. The girls had long hair and long dresses, very modest blouses, no exposed legs, very basic, non-worldly clothing. You still see religious groups who dress differently in their. It's just noticeable, but this is a form of humiliation for sure. I had to break down sort of vanity, identity and any kind of self-worth. I mean there's no soda, but the cult was located outside of a little town and it was called Shawno S-H-A-W-A-N-O. Outside of Green Bay, wisconsin. So the weekends we would drive across the state of Wisconsin. We lived in Minnesota, in Mancay, minnesota. We would leave on Friday after school and we would drive six or seven hours through the night and get there basically in the wee hours of Saturday morning. People sleep on concrete floors and sleeping bags and in their cars. There were a couple members at home nearby so people would sleep shoulder to shoulder in their basement and then the weekend would start with a very early Saturday morning meeting, which is like the religious meeting, where we would all sit and hear these fiery rants from this absolute psychopath cult leader and sing songs and read from the Bible. Then the meeting would end after several hours and then the work would start.
Speaker 2:I'm not familiar at all with rural Wisconsin which I'm not even but it was a farm, essentially, that the cult leader had settled into and we as cult members and children really just engaged in construction, building out barns and buildings, and of course there were animals. There's a lot of mud and dirt roads, a lot of steelwork, concrete work and really at all hours terribly unsafe and under horrific working conditions for everybody, for the adult men who were there and then us, the kids, who were put to work on these round the clock jobs. Some people would be in the field, some people would be on construction jobs, shoveling we get a lot of shoveling, really low-tech, awful labor, and we would eat maybe one meal a day but we would work all through the day and then there would be a night meeting on Saturday and then some of us who were still working would just work into the wee hours of Sunday morning and then Sunday started all over. Same thing Long Sunday morning meeting, the psychopathic ramps of this horrible monster screaming at us, singling out parents. His ramps were just the darkness of a psychopath.
Speaker 2:And then back to work and what would happen was, on Sunday night, exhausted, beaten up, quite literally, sometimes because of the abuse but also by the labor and terrible living conditions, we would all pile into our cars and I am certain, because I was witness to it, that these adults were very tired. They were exhausted, mentally, emotionally, physically, and would drive back to their homes and many of them were like us, many hours away. So in Minnesota, southern Minnesota, rochester and Mimecato, those areas had many families living there. They were like six, seven hours back into the night to get home at the wee hours of Monday morning and have to pull yourself out of bed and go to school. It was just extraordinarily difficult and draining in every sense of the way, routine.
Speaker 1:So I have a couple of questions, just listening to you day to day there. Could you give me an example of maybe some of the ramps that the leader performed on Saturdays or Sundays? And then also, did they end up using any type of scare tactics or anything like that to keep you guys going all day, because I would assume that's really tough to get these kids to be working around the clock.
Speaker 2:The ramps and the psalmons. Of course they morphed over the years because this star sits with no education and really just a heavy dose of psychotic behavior, depending on his mood, would tear into us. Based on usually Old Testament scripture we're all doomed, we're all going to hell, basically terrorizing families for having worldly thoughts or wanting to be anywhere but in this cult. So it was a brilliant environment of fear and the men and women who joined I know them all and don't think they signed up for this. But of course that brainwashing takes over and there were some kidnappings from worried parents to rescue their adult children out of this cult in the I think it was in the 80s. I mean it was covered by the Minneapolis news stations who carried a whole series on this of people, parents trying to rescue their brainwashed children from this cult.
Speaker 2:This was an environment of fear and then buying in right. So you know, fortunately, my dad's one of those people who just went all in and just ceded his will in his children and his own life and his happiness and his meaning of life to this person, this psychopath who just frankly, has just ended up destroying these families at their core and destroying childhoods along the way. So it was like a blistering rants of black and white, hellfire and brimstone were all doomed and various families were treated differently based on favoritism. Others were viciously attacked. You know, my family was one of those viciously attacked. I was physically viciously attacked my whole childhood there. But also our family was sort of picked on brutally because we, you know, had light in our eyes and we have been fired and we had will, our own will.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sounds to me when you're talking. If you had any question, or if you questioned anything or saw anything outside of it, then you were deemed bad and not a favorite. What was the dynamic with your parents going on during the weekends? Were you with them or did they separate the children from the parents?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'd all sit in the same room, divided by gender in these meetings, but there was no family clustering happening as soon as we got there near scattered, essentially the Everyone's off doing what their role is to do in this communal situation, although nothing felt communal because it was all pointed at this, this mobstress at the center. What makes it really particularly acute, too, is that this abuse and the terrific conditions happen to us and while we are on the same property, are in the same rooms or within eyesight of our own parents and our parents friends. So it's the opposite of families being together. I mean, it's at, quite literally, the dividing of families and, you know, basically daring a parent to stick up for one of their children, and I live that and then when you guys came back to your home, and then Monday mornings you went back to school.
Speaker 1:What was that week like? Did you kind of go back into normal every day activities?
Speaker 2:sort of you're still a kid in a cult with a bad haircut and Awful clothes. Right, you missed out on your friendships. You know Things that normal kids would do on weekends. You know that my kids do and see their friends and spend time with them and play sports and all that stuff gone. But you know, school became a sanctuary for me. I was where I could not get beat up and Learning came very naturally and I was a very hard, hard worker too. So it was a sanctuary. But no, it's never normal. You live with like this deep dread in your body Because of the abuse and because you're trapped. You know it's wrong. Like we all knew, this was horrifically bad.
Speaker 1:Do you think, because you guys lived so far away and you were able to see other Families living a different type of life, that helped you kind of see a different, like the light, as you say. And then also I wanted to know what was it like as a child on those Thursday or that Friday morning, every Friday morning, when you know that you inevitably have to go back?
Speaker 2:So we lived in a nice neighborhood, in that kid of Minnesota right Very neighborhoody family. There's the Minnesota you know town. So yes, we saw how people live. We'd sneak out or over to our friend's house and watch TV or Speak down to 7-eleven and get candy bar. We kind of lived in both worlds and we were never like purely in this prison, although I was taken from my family and parked on this compound For many consecutive summers, for the entire summer break I was basically a prisoner at the cold compound of a hostage. But my parents, you know, give me up. I was demanded that I stay there.
Speaker 1:How old were you when that happened?
Speaker 2:I think I started when I was six.
Speaker 1:Oh, my gosh okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I slept on cardboard. I drank out of puddles. I Survived as best I could. I was viciously cattle prodded and beaten with electric cords. I was tormented by this man who they took a lot of joy in beating me up and locking me in dark rooms. It was a full hostage situation, but it was a man and a child, so imagine how sick that was.
Speaker 1:What was that like when you would come back home? How did you get through those transitions?
Speaker 2:My wall will feel like I missed the smell of my house. I missed sleeping in my own room with my you know, we never had our own room to do it a big family, but it would just be like you just feel like, okay, I'm back, but it's. I never lost sight of the fact, though, jamie, that this is like.
Speaker 2:This is not right right and my, my parents allowed it to happen, and there's a lot there. You know, you're just in this Twisted nightmare and so you make the best of it. Right? It's the siblings, my brothers and sisters. We became such a source of strength and humor and Resourcfulness since we were real little, and we're still like that today. It's just, you just find a way to find hope and then you keep going.
Speaker 1:When you're there, at six and seven and eight, when you're so young, did you have a hard time understanding why your parents or why your mom didn't come to help you?
Speaker 2:It did change flavors over the years, but it was like this is the way you get to heaven, this monster, he has this sort of beacon. So obedience and subservience was like the virtue on Friday nights. I wouldn't wait for the moment I could get a glimpse of my mom and my siblings when they would show up like everyone else on a Friday night. I would wait for those moments and try to get to glimpse of her or see her. It's all twisted by religion. I mean this fanatic religion cause parents to abandon their children in broad daylight in front of them. I guess I can map it only back to what that brainwashing must have been for them.
Speaker 1:What was that like when you were coming towards the end of high school? How did you see your future? Did you plan to have any type of relationship with your parents at the time? What was that like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, you end up reaching kind of this Crazy equilibrium with parents who are putting you through this horrific experience. Right, I had done very well in school, so I was able to get college scholarships and I went to the University of Minnesota on a full ride academic scholarship. But I wanted specifically that we really stay there. Of course I wanted to run away and leave, but you know, I was staying close to my siblings. My college experience was Very serious because I was still going on weekends.
Speaker 1:I was still continued through the weekends in college as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know you're still kind of under that spell. There's a lot of fear and I was being treated better because I was physically bigger and my visa is, you know, all being powers and Will not go after someone that could resist them. My physical life was better in the sense that I was not getting these horrible things and be set upon me physically, and I got my siblings right, my brothers and sisters younger than me, that's my older one. I needed to be around them. I just felt we had this such a bond and I really wasn't until after my college years, when I moved to the East Coast, that I was able to make that break and During these years, what was your?
Speaker 1:because it seems as if you know a lot of this has to do with this really Amazing bond that you share with your siblings and you stay, even in college is just, you know, your siblings are still there with something that you felt you needed to continue with them. What about your relationship with your father at the time, or your mother?
Speaker 2:Well, there again physically present. My dad went through a series of just I'm sure it's a well-worn script lost his job, alienated himself from his own parents, and my mom did the same thing. So you just end up calcifying this little group. You know it's us against the world, but you know, really just had a band in the idea I would ever respect him. He wasn't coming to help me, he wasn't protecting us, he wasn't making good decisions, even for like, even by like, any standard. It's like to have a family of nine kids that is happy or safe or parented. It just became public, this lifeless, pathetic person in our house that we all, frankly, it's all.
Speaker 2:It's very disappointing, right, because you want to have that you know, I want to have a father figure, you know, and what I've learned about what who he was before called sounds like you would have been like that.
Speaker 1:You know, without kind of losing it in terms of this Perfect thing, that this whole group came as an adult looking back, why do you think your father was susceptible to this sort of brainwashing and it was brainwashing.
Speaker 2:We can't put our finger on it. In fact, again, this is all before I had sort of any consciousness of my own, but I have learned that he was, like I said, he's a his an athlete. He's a beloved high school teacher. He's an outdoorsman, a lot of friends and an interest outside of the home, like you know, outdoors Kind of is all American, like Minnesota guys, and I don't think he ever even wanted to be part of a church or a religion. But something spooked him, maybe this absolute distigable nightmare of a Monster who convinced him pulled on something, whether it was an insecurity about the salvation, or I don't even even know the narrative or the words that were used. I don't really know.
Speaker 1:From listening to you and you're telling your story, it seems as if you having this large family and having all of these siblings Was extremely helpful for you to get through it, because you all seem to lean on each other. So I want to know. First off, you have to tell me the line of girls to boys with these nine and then tell me what was it like with that many siblings Going through this all together. You don't hear that very often of anybody. I'm one of six and people think that's a lot.
Speaker 2:Nine is a whole different level it is. And you know I get the same questions I'm sure you do, like oh, are you Catholic or you Mormon? And like I have another category for you to explain. No, five to four girls win. They always do, right, jamie. So yeah, five sisters and three brothers. You know I'm a student in history.
Speaker 2:You read about Communities under siege and the family dynamics, with children finding a way to play in a war zone. You know, and we found joy with each other. We found strength with each other. There's a lot of improv comedy happening. We all learned how to cook at a young age, to run the house in. The house basically ran itself Because of us I mean, frankly, because of the leadership probably of some of my sisters, but we all had very special roles in the family with each other. We were sympathetic to my mom along the way because I feel like she was kind of along for this, this ride, that she never signed up for a minute at the time. They just have the strength of the means to do anything about that. But that story ends well because all of us are out, all siblings are, we're out, we're driving professionals and my mom is too.
Speaker 1:And was there something that specifically happened that made her kind of open our eyes to oh my gosh, this is something that I want to be a part of anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I think there are two things that work. The cult had sort of calcified into just be a very caustic, abusive Environment, for the conditions just kept getting worse and worse and worse. I'm certain that contributed to you know folks leave it, including my mom also. We were. You know her children were adult children who had entered, you know, life after death and you know we had contact with her and I think that she saw that you know she really needed to be with her family and that was a wonderful, I think, influence as well. In fact my sisters give them all the credit Really did the whole thing, went and picked her up, gave her a soft ending back in their arms and our arms and she got to be reunited with her mother, our grandmother.
Speaker 2:So it was a combination of just these deteriorating conditions, I think, of course her adult children and she's thriving, basti in the globe for many grandchildren and it just fills my heart. I mean, of course you have to get through the talking it through like mom, what was all that, you know, but to see her living her years, thriving, and that's think about how many kids she has, and she's got more great. I couldn't tell you how many grandkids she has. But I should know that. But I've got three for her, so we're all out and you know, I think every one of my siblings has their own version of this because we all had to leave Under our own sort of personal timing. We've always encircled, you know, this group of brothers and sisters, each other in that type of care and outreach for each other, and we still do. We're highly Vocal and passionate group and we're very, very, very close still.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can't imagine you guys for family holidays. It's a lot of people, it's a lot of lives.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a big thing, getting dinner, that's for sure but it ends in a way that just gives me kind of this rock hard foundation who I want to be and I'll kind of bother I want to be so what was that transition like from when you had graduated from the University of Minnesota and then you said that you moved out?
Speaker 1:He's, what was that like? Because you have been doing this your entire life. So tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:I I moved because I got into a great law school and I wanted to study law and Harvard and law school on the same day Actually, and that was really exciting for me. I thought that was kind of my cue right, that was my sign. So I chose to go to Yale law school and I moved out. I just started class and and was a law student and Again. But then I've been in college, you've been sort of I've looked more mainstream, I was wearing normal stuff.
Speaker 2:I certainly in my mind I had left this place, but there was never any kind of this cognitive dissonance about what am I doing, like you know, emotionally or belief-wise, and it that that represented like a quite literally a physical separation from. Also for my crew, though, like I missed my siblings and some of them were still in, some were somewhere you know already, you know getting out and and embarking on their journeys. So I did have me in our time and abandon together about trying to be in contact with some of the ones who are still in. You know they're kids, right, that was tough, but going to law school out east just really was that severing event and so two questions.
Speaker 1:I want to know why law, why did you decide to go that route? And then also, what were your relationships like?
Speaker 2:Honestly, in retrospect, I don't practice law now. I did practice at the very prestigious law firms and then embarked on a business career where I am now. I also teach at Georgetown Law School, so I'm in contact with that, with education, which I'd love to do. Honestly, I was a good writer. I loved to read. I mean, I was a voracious reader as a kid because we didn't have television or radio or we had reading and each other and art and music. As siblings I had a whole academy. Academically that really is drawn towards math, physics in particular. I thought about maybe studying for medicine but ended up just doing really well in my major and got into great law schools and I didn't really think that this was gonna be like the thing I did for the rest of my life. These are like small little steps forward. I nailed it and it worked out and now everyone is listening In my classes if they're still listening in my classes or no single career is your landing spot right, but it was the path I chose just to climb out of that madness.
Speaker 1:Well, what are your relationships like, cause I could see that that could be a little bit difficult friends-wise or romantic relationships, any type of relationships you're having with other people because you're coming from this situation that is very kind of unheard of. A very small percentage of people go through this and I would think that it might be somewhat of a difficult and you tell me experience for people to understand kind of what you've been through and why you think certain ways. So tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:You're kind of living two lives, right. You're living one life in the public, right, and trying to be a kid, trying to sit and having friendships, relationships, but then you have this secret, right, and you have this horrible part of your life that you feel embarrassed about, right, I mean I wouldn't say I was overly shameful, because I don't think we felt shame, but it's like this awful thing that we knew we had to live with. So the friendships I think were meaningful. I mean I still have friends right now who I've met in seventh grade. Right, I'm still myself and I can. You know I'm an empathetic person. Relatability and connectivity are really precious to me, truly. The friendships I have, I think about trying to sit in. I can get another schooler.
Speaker 2:I don't think my judgment in relationships was certainly clouded or duplicitous. Does that make sense? But living with this, like the two worlds thing, it's tough. I mean it's tough to reconcile that. But people are curious, people want to know, like, where were you last weekend? Or you know your family's a little, you know, of course it was known in my hometown that your family's different, you know, but nobody really stepped on our toes. I mean there were a lot of families that probably set up different profile, but it did add some complexity to the way that we engage with people. You know we have like a weekend relationships or long relationships. College was much easier because it was like a fresh later me and you know it was really I was the hyper focused on my school or I wanted to do well so I could take that next step that I described. But now it's certainly like having to reconcile all that like post trauma has been an amazing journey, but it certainly was there and had a deal with it.
Speaker 1:You know, I did want to ask you a little bit about how you met your wife and what that was like getting married, because you grew up looking at your parents and all of these other families. What values are you taking from them or what do you want to do differently? Tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:I think I always had a very decent sort of social emotional IQ even through all this. But certainly close call I was able to meet four really great friendships. I'm still some of my closest couple, very close friends who I grew up with in the call. But I'm sure there's impact, of course, from trauma. But you know, I was yearned to be a father and I felt like I was a big brother, sort of sometimes fathered to my real young siblings. But I'm a giver, I'm a helper, I'm an empath. So when I met my wife, you know, like other relationships I had, you know, along the way, nothing fell out of the ordinary or forced. We were set up in Washington DC. When I came to Washington to practice law, my now wife was just graduating from GW University. We were set up as mutual friends. That's how we came together.
Speaker 1:And then what was it like for you kind of navigating marriage, not having parents or people around you to look at and use them as sort of someone to say, you know, this is what a marriage is, this is how I'd like to see my marriage, or was there somebody even growing up that you did see that you thought you know what? That is the type of marriage that I'd like to have.
Speaker 2:No, there was not a single. I mean, I probably looked at friends whose parents you know, who got non-cult people who I thought, gosh, I wish I had a dad who patted me on the head or smiled at me. Yeah, I was still merging from this situation and the fact that our wedding not all my siblings were there because they weren't out yet. My mom wasn't there because she was not out yet. So my wife's from a very traditional, awesome family. She's got one sibling and absolutely lovely parents. So you know, she had to deal with the whole box of crazy when it came to this developing story. So I was locked on the aisle by two sisters and my one brother. But again, it was a work in progress.
Speaker 1:So you've gotten out and you've accomplished so many great things, but what was that moment when you found out yourself that you were gonna be a father?
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, this is like my life starting over. It almost cleared literally. I'll get into that a little bit, but something just I mean this was instinctual to everyone but for me personally, I was craving fatherhood, probably because I was craving childhood and to be a father was to me my way of breaking a cycle and starting over, and it was just the most joyful, like moving thing and still is fatherhood for me, because I knew this massive thing. I could break. The other thing, I didn't wanna be right and so I had no role model right. All the fathers around me were broken people who allowed their families to be in harm's way, their children to be harmed, and so fatherhood to me was a very profound thing that I could just cut across that circle.
Speaker 1:And what are some of the values that you wanted to instill in your children that you did not get as a child?
Speaker 2:I think number one safety. Okay, like just the unconditional people say, unconditional love. What is that? To me, it's safety, it's security, it's giving them confidence to ask questions, to make mistakes. All three of my kids are very kind, they're empathetic, they're conversational, they're safe. I mean it sounds so basic, but we're a family of curiosity, asking questions, being kind to everyone, and I've got already have a lesson story that brings tears to my eyes about being my children engaged with adults across the spectrum. The same way they would talk to you, talk to me.
Speaker 1:It is interesting listening to you and you have mentioned the word safety several times, so that seems to be a really big moving force of, as a father, what you want to provide for your children, which is incredible. And what has it been like since you had so much of just the you know, quote-unquote normal childhood activities taken away from you? So what's it been like living through your children's childhood with them and seeing them enjoy those type of activities that you were never able to Be involved in?
Speaker 2:so there's two sides. That one is, yes, they're living a life of and I'll go up to safety for a second. It's like this emotional safety too. Like they can, you know, be curious, make a mistake, let's talk about it. Like let's learn how to cook. Like just being intellectually safe, emotionally safe, being them that lead this life right night, coming from the depths of trauma and poverty and the unspeakable physical conditions and mental conditions to provide this life for my, my kids, is, it's it every second of the day. I'm mindful and grateful for seeing this happen and seeing them experience Housing, and it's my, it's my best version of a good childhood for them.
Speaker 2:I'm sure I've got, you know, blind spots or or frailties in the way I'm a father, but I'm doing my best. You know, and I'm watching them at this Foulhood, that I really would have prayed. The other side to that, jamie, is a trauma side, because it might be me or now, but Washing my son I have two sons and a daughter when I was on, was like four years old, I was watching him in the backyard and like just complete all of something he was doing, probably outside, you know, holding a butterfly or something, but it almost took my breath away, quite literally, when I looked at him and I remembered Exactly what I was going through when I was four, same age and it I almost not breathing Because I almost had to reach it, almost retraumatized me to see, like my boyhood in their boyhood and to know, gosh, how far this is from what I went through as a father I Was. I was thinking to myself how could someone put a four-year-old in the suit it's my four-year-old boy, a four-year-old boy into the harm that I was placed and is your father still involved in that organization Barling now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I haven't had contact with him since sometime in the late 90s if you were to Speak to your father today, what do you think you would say to him, or how would you feel about seeing him?
Speaker 2:You know, I don't know. I mean there's no tension or conflict in me about it. I think I have just come to peace with it. It's a. It's really sad, it's a really tragic life to have this wonderful family and Throw it away. It's so pathetic, just so, just so pathetic. People wish they could have children sometimes and can't, you know, and wish they could have freedom, and they can't. And here this person threw it all away and actually kind of put us through these decades of absolute hell. Well, I don't know, I mean I don't, I don't really have anything to say to him.
Speaker 1:Do you feel that the way that you brought up made you as a parent? Do you think that you were More protective or extra cautious of people around them and what they were doing? Do you think that had any effect on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe I thought of it that way. You know I'm probably the easy, is it on the more laid-back of the two parents, I think you know more permissive. That's a great question. I think that I'm really enjoying how unstructured Parenthood is at times, but also being, like you know, pretty resolute, pretty decisive, and you know I have really good ideas. I think maybe some bad ideas, but pretty resolute about, you know, helping guide the kids and mostly just towards towards character stuff, maybe like the education of calm, and they're getting great education. That's the most, most important thing in my house and they're tremendous athletes all three of them, but being able to see how impactful we are as parents. They're not always acting like they're listening, but they're listening. Well, let them make mistakes, you know I mean only have joking like seriously, go be a kid. Like go, I got you back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do say that a lot with people who are talking about parenting and it's just they. They pretend like they're not listening, but they are definitely watching. They may not be listening that much, but they are watching everything that you do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's for sure, that is for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what would your advice be to any young men out there that are struggling with either an absentee father or, like yourself, like a very complicated relationship with their father?
Speaker 2:I found sanctuary in my school and those sort of proxies for parents, if you will, really, I think, from boys we're not encouraged to speak up. Maybe girls too. I'll just be for me. I didn't feel like I could. It's kind of hard to ask for a mentor, but I would say the number one thing to do is find a mentor and just ask, and people do want to help. I've been that person that's been at that help and I sort of live my life in. You know, kindness is free right. So a young man who is struggling with In a fatherhood or lack of fatherhood dynamics I'm a challenging dynamic. Think about who in their lives we could go ask for help. Maybe it's a coach, maybe it's a high school teacher, maybe it's a high school you know administrator, maybe it's a neighbor, and People are good by nature. In my opinion. People want to help. I just got the wrong side of that for a long time.
Speaker 2:But ask around ask for help, ask for advice, ask for mentorship, ask for ideas.
Speaker 1:Looking back on your childhood, was there anybody like you mentioned? Was there anyone that you looked up to?
Speaker 2:My teachers. Admittedly, they were sympathetic towards our situation. They didn't probably know the gory details, the graphic nature of everything, but there was sympathy amongst my teachers, always, elementary school, middle school, high school and then, remember, my dad used to teach at my high school, so my high school teachers were his Contemporaries. Who or like? Where is that guy like? He's got deep and he's, and so as his kid we had especially kind of warm harbor with them and I can I won't name them my names, but there are six or eight teachers who were friends with my dad before he went down that path. So, yeah, it was a very safe place to be, not only school because it's a sanctuary, because you're, you have air conditioning and you get to have lunch, but because there are people there who were kind. I was nudged along to you know, by many of these teachers to hang in there.
Speaker 1:And before I let you go, Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you think you know so much now?
Speaker 2:The one thing that I really have found the power of Jamie is in really the mindful, intentional contact I have with myself, right, and so this whole journey was, you know, survival, challenges, challenges, challenges, but even as an adult, in the business world, as a father, being intentional and mindful with what I want to do. What are my goals? And then not even my potential or business goals, just things that are on my plate to think about. I'm sure that you have heard a version of this, but I'm very intentional and mindful about writing theory, seasons. It could be a year, it could be six months, it could be two years All the things that are on my mind, the things that relationships I want to reconcile or things I want to accomplish you know, accomplish as a person, either me, or as a father or as a spouse.
Speaker 2:It's remarkable the resounding things that happen when you visualize them right and then you put them down to paper which is my experience, what I do and then you read them out loud and they become sort of thoughts and chemicals in your body and they come to pass. I'm an optimist. I also am very encouraged by our ability to shape our environments and our futures by dreaming it, and I have a stack of memos this long, so it's from the first one I made. I think that I'm sort of intentional and thinking about and they change. It's just like a snapshot in time, right.
Speaker 1:How long have you been practicing this?
Speaker 2:Well, I think literally writing memos myself since probably 2001. But before then I'm the mindfulness, of course, was really a fundamental part of how I I dragged myself through what I did. So just the gratitude and the intentionality of how I approach my life and those around me. It is something that is to me, it's timeless and it all comes back to the individual, the strength of the individual and those and again, the community and the family around them.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for talking with me and it's really an inspirational story of what you've been through and what you've been able to accomplish and what a wonderful father you've been able to become and teach your kids some really incredible values that, unfortunately, your father did not instill in you. But I do have to ask you on a lighter note do your kids, do they know all of their cousins' names, or is it too many? Do they forget them? No, they forget.
Speaker 2:No, they don't. They know them all because my three brothers live in this area, so we can see their kids, and then my sisters all kind of end up gravitating back towards the Midwest. But yeah, we know all their names, although Thanksgiving dinner is going to be pretty darn big.
Speaker 1:That sounds like a lot of fun though Big families are a lot of fun. A lot of fun All right, well, thank you again so much and I will talk to you soon All right, thanks, Jamie.
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