Ivan Rodriguez, A Symphony of Survival & Success Beyond Religious Trauma | Ep 72 | Moral Combat

In this captivating episode of the Moral Combat Podcast, hosts Nathan and Zachary, alongside guest Ivan Rodriguez, delve into the complex journey of healing from religious trauma after disentangling from evangelical Christian church involvement. Ivan shares his poignant experiences of growing up in an authoritarian Pentecostal church in Puerto Rico, where church leadership was rife with conflicts and scandals. From a young age, he felt compelled to lead a double life, concealing his true beliefs due to the oppressive environment at home and church. Despite the joy music and playing the violin initially brought him, it became just another obligation to the church, pushing him to pursue his passion against his family’s wishes. Ivan’s journey towards freedom began at 18 when he left his abusive home and church, with the support of his husband, who played a crucial role in helping him deconstruct his past religious trauma. Ivan's reflection on the healing process underscores the importance of persistence, kindness to oneself, and the therapeutic power of publicly sharing one's story. His eventual acceptance into Juilliard marked a significant turning point, transforming music from a mere life-raft to a profound tool for communication and expression.

Ivan Rodriguez:
https://www.instagram.com/ivanecomposer/
https://www.ivanrodriguezmusic.com/home

Moral Combat, hosted by siblings Nathan and Zach Blaustone, is a heartfelt exploration of life's complexities, with a primary focus on healing from religious trauma. Step into their world as they navigate the realms of music production, confront the lingering echoes of religious trauma, and embrace laughter as a universal healer. With each episode, Nathan and Zach weave together their unique perspectives, seasoned with dynamic personalities that make every discussion an engaging adventure. From unraveling the complexities of personal growth to fostering open communication, healing the scars of religious indoctrination, and embracing the unfiltered authenticity of siblinghood, Moral Combat is your passport to thought-provoking conversations, heartfelt insights, and the pure joy of shared moments. Join us in the combat for morality, one conversation at a time.

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Transcript

0:00

What up, Moral Kombat fans? Hey everyone. Zachary, how are you? I'm doing great. Best day of my life. Never had a better one. You've said that every single podcast for the last year. I'm really proud of you. No, it's like six months. Six months. Ever since you were like, stop talking about your back pain. The back pain. Yeah. But back pain's so debilitating. You're on the Moral Kombat podcast. We like to talk about religious trauma. I was going to do a drum roll, but yeah. Religious trauma, baby. Why do we talk about religious trauma on this podcast, Zachary? Well, we are both PKs, AKA pastor's kids. And we have a father who's still in our neighborly town that we live in. Yeah, same county. On this beautiful Sunday, running a Sunday service. And we have some religious trauma from our upbringing, and we have healed quite a bit from talking about it. Yes, we have. And so that's why we do it, is to heal. We specifically come from the Calvary Chapel, non-denominational Christian church. Very denominational when you think about it, right? I don't know why they ever said that. And so Zachary and I have been talking for like the last, I don't know, year and a half or so. Coming up on two almost. Two years, yeah. About five months. On our own personal trauma related to religion and radicalism and being raised in a radical family to Christianity, evangelical Christianity. Yeah. Fundamentals. And we've been so lucky to recently have on different guests of all different shape, sizes. And we once again get blessed and, hey, there's a Christian term, blessed. Hashtag blessed. Hashtag blessed. Hey, Drake says it too. So it might not be too Christian. I can't believe you just said that on our podcast. We don't speak of him. Right. Shun. So we are very lucky to have another guest with us today sitting across from me as I'm about to introduce them. Anything else that we should say before we jump right in? No, no. We should definitely get right in. We think it's very important to put on a pedestal these stories of our pasts and of others that have been raised in radical religious groups, specifically, mostly all that we've talked about in our cast is Christianity. And we hope to break into other religions and other radical groups at some point. But we have a very special guest with us today. And we have both been very excited about this guest on many different levels. With us today is someone who's defending their dissertation in about, I think they said nine or, they'll tell us soon, like a week and a half or something. Getting their degree out of the Juilliard School of Music in New York, they are a composer. And also something I'd like to point out is I'm pretty sure this is our first guest that isn't white. And that is a big deal. Holy, I didn't even recognize that. Man, that shows a lot. That's amazing. I just think it's really important because for us and our podcast, we talk a lot about white Christianity. White male Christianity. And that, of course, in all of history and all of the world has had a debilitating effect on society and culture. But I've been so excited to kind of branch out of that realm and to learn a little bit. We're going to learn so much today. And we think it's really important that these stories get shared so that we all get to learn from these stories. So with you, with us today is Mr. Ivan Rodriguez. Hello. Hello. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome. Welcome to the Moral Combat Studio. It's an honor. I'm a big, big fan. So being here, it's sort of like a scary kind of exciting kind of like, oh my God, I can't believe I'm here. I know. It's the same for us though. I'm nervous right now. Yeah. Even though I've done this so many times, I get nervous every single time. Totally. And especially not having the headphones on is different. Yeah. The moment we started talking, I was like, wait, there's something, which this is our first episode, we're not using headphones. Normally when you put on the headphones, you like get into this cave and it's really securing and you're like, oh, it's so nice. I feel that I speak with headphones. I speak so like quiet, the ASMR, hi, welcome to the radio. It's a radio show. But like, we just started to learn that our, what we talk about is so intimate and we think that this takes away so much of your, I don't know, it takes away a lot when you have those headphones on. We also just like try new things. Yeah. We like to branch out into new things. Soon we're going to take these tables away and these mics and we're going to be hopefully on couches to where we can just intimately have a conversation on camera. Yeah. We would love to have like shirt mics and then just not have to worry about it. Oh, cool. Yeah. Well, I mean, this gives an aesthetic as well. It's an aesthetic. It does. Yeah. It is. The boom mic is a wonderful aesthetic, but thank you for being here. Yes. Thank you for having me. And I know you drove like almost an hour and a half to be in our studio today. And so I thank you for that. Oh, it was a very nice drive. As I told you when I got here, my straight side, because I'm a fabulous fag, my straight side is cars and I love to drive. So it was a very nice drive coming here. I like how you said that. I'm a fabulous... I'm not going to use the term you used. Okay. I know my rights. Hey, smart. Real intelligent move right there. I've learned a lot in my life. I was going to let you. Ever since I got married, I've learned a lot. So it's the marriage. Interesting. No, I've learned a lot of my time. Yeah. But I've also expressed on my podcast here that I've broken down gender. I went on a plant medicine retreat last year. My intended gender identification disintegrated in front of me and I rebuilt it, I think closer to my authentic self and I'm like inching my way closer and closer there. And so some days I'm extremely femme, other days I'm extremely masculine and it's just like always back and forth. Yeah. And we're going to see what happens this time around because he's about to go on another plant medicine retreat in a couple of weeks here. And the last time he went, we changed our name because we used to be those boys, which is great. I love the change. The change is amazing. It was perfect timing. We changed it for that reason. I just want to put that down there. But now it's like, what are we going to have to change? Yeah. What are you going to change, Nathan? What are we going to change, Nate? No, I don't think we're going to change much. No. Anyways. Let's jump into it. Yes, please. You are here. You're sitting in the hot seat, the guest seat right now. That means you have some sort of trauma. Indeed, yes. Religion is quite a phenomenon in life that injects itself in you in a way that changed you fundamentally. And if you decide to, and I'm going to use this word intentionally, free yourself from it, it leaves some wounds behind. And that really... Reveal the truth. Yes. And that's why I'm very grateful being here, because this is not just a podcast for helping people to feel identified with something or to feel that there are others like them, but it's an act of mental health for all of us when we express whatever we went through and see that it's real and see that there is nothing looming on your shoulder, that it's constantly belittling you or looking over you or judging you. Yeah. Well, tell us, where are you from? Where do you come from? I know I meant that statement at the very beginning that you not being white where you're not from America. Right? Yes. I am originally from the Island of Enchantment, Puerto Rico. Yes. I can't wait to go. I've never been. Oh, it's if you want to gain weight. That's the best place. Yes. I've had the food. Let me tell you. Oh my God. Yes. That's the thing I miss the most. More so being here in the West Coast. There are no green bananas. I seldom find plantains. So it's sad, but the food is the best. And I, yeah, I come from Puerto Rico. We are US citizens, but I see myself as an immigrant because our culture is so different. And our relationship with the United States is also very interesting, you know, just to drop a bomb from the beginning. We were- Please drop bombs. Yes. Well, I mean, I guess that's a little close to history right now that we don't like, but you know what I mean. Oh God. Yes. Bad metaphor. Bad metaphor. So we were made citizens in, I believe it was March, 1917. And then the United States entered the first world war in May, 1917. Oh, weird. Yeah. So then we were drafted. So, you know, and that's just the beginning. Our relationship with the US is very, very interesting. It is. It is. You know, what's also really interesting making this connection is we had a guest on who was a pastor in the same denomination that we were raised in Coward Chapel, whose family moved to Puerto Rico and started Coward Chapel in Puerto Rico. I know I heard the episode. Oh, you did? Thank you for listening, Ivan. I said I'm a fan. So while he was telling that story, I was thinking a lot about you coming on and being able to make these connections of someone that was Puerto Rican born in Puerto Rico versus a white family that moved to Puerto Rico to start a church. What denomination or what form of Christianity were you brought up then? It's like, what is Puerto Rican Christianity, I guess? Well, it's very interesting because being a colony from Spain and then moving to the United States, you know, the whole island, you know, after the Spanish-American War, moving to the hands of the United States, we would think that Catholicism would be the main religion. And there is a huge Catholic population in Puerto Rico, but there's also a very big, what's the term, evangelical or Protestant, that's the word, Protestant population. And the denomination that I was in is the very fiery and conservative Pentecostal. Oh, there it is. We were part of the Bethel Council, that they have church all over the world, but they have a very strong presence in Latin America. And I was raised in a very big church. You know, I remember, actually in preparation for this podcast, I was trying to find the documents of when the church was started and see the amount of people they had there, but I couldn't really find it, but the temple was humongous. We had the first floor, we had a mezzanine, and I remember the thing being full, you know, maybe to the thousands of people. I remember we had a big tradition of putting on like theater work for Christmas or, you know, Holy Week or whatever. And when we did, you know, we did productions, you know, and when that happened, I remember the church, you know, people would have to stand because there wasn't enough space. Yeah. So... Packed. Very packed, very big, very energized, authoritative, and strong form of Christianity. Wow. But in Puerto Rico, you know, I think we have a little bit of everything, you know, we have they're Scientologists, they are Jehovah's Witness, they are LDS. We even have a particular cult of their own called Mita, which is like this Christian side of this lady that went by the name of Mita. And apparently her brother received some sort of Holy Spirit or the Spirit of Jesus, something like that. I don't know the story. Cool. His last name was Aaron, of course. And when he died, his spirit went into her. And then, you know, she continued. They even had like a whole neighborhood in Puerto Rico, you know, they had a humongous symphonic band. Wow. You know, so... So it's like a popular cult that's very well known. Very popular in Puerto Rico. Specific to Puerto Rico. Wow. How interesting. Yeah, it was very... I mean, we still have a little bit of everything, but I don't know if it's because I grew up in that Protestant side that I saw a lot of Protestant people, but I think there's a little bit of everything. But the two majors are Catholic and Protestant with, I would say, more or less an equal share between Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal, and Evangelical. Okay. And Pentecostal is like loud. Yeah. Oh, yes. And there's like yelling. Oh, yes. And there's... Yeah, the work sessions are a whole scene. When I was, you know, being a pastor's kid, us being pastor's kids, and everything was church, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And there were a couple of people that would go to other churches that were, you know, sectors of Christianity that my dad would allow me to go, you know, I'd go with a friend, I'd go to like a Russian Orthodox church or whatever. Oh, wow. It was gorgeous, right? I remember going into one and being like, this is what I want to be now, I want to be at this church. And I went to my first Pentecostal experience. And I loved it. Because... Really? I loved it because we come from such a different, Calvary Chapel is like, haha, what's up, everybody? Why don't you go ahead and open up your Bibles to John Chapin? It's like the surfer, it's like the white surfer population of Southern California and like came out of the 60s. It's a very brand new, and like, you know, white men love to do that. They love to take from history and be like, we're going to do it our way now because our way is better. Yeah. And so it has a lot of history. And I loved it just because it was loud. I'm loud. It was rambunctious. It was like crazy. And I just felt like it was just different. I don't know. But... A lot of energy, too. A lot of energy during the worship sessions. Was that your experience? Is that how it was? Oh, yes. Absolutely. And I mean, traditional fire loud kind of pastor taking their jacket off and swinging it to the masses and they all falling, speaking in tongues, jumping around, all of that. Yeah. I'm kidding. I know there's trauma there. But imagine this 10 year old sitting, you know, I don't know, maybe halfway through the nave, seeing people falling on their backs and almost having a seizure and having family members praising God because that's happening. So there is... I know exactly what you're... I know what you're saying. Because you're speaking my language. It's a dichotomy that happened in my head. And one of my aunts, she's very, very devout. And she always spoke of speaking in tongues as something that you aspire to experience. And something that kind of separated you from the regular Christian to the next level Christian, you know? It was a gift. Yes. So you had to get baptized in water and then take the sacrament, communion and all that. And then some few would get the experience of speaking in tongues and all that. Did you ever, as a kid then, or did you see, was there anybody interpreting the tongues? Oh, yeah. Oh, there's a kid there. As a kid, I used to always be like, how do they really, is that really what they were saying? How did you know that? Well, I don't know how chronological we're going to go into this interview, but... Whatever you want. There were people interpreting it and there was a particular moment in the history of that particular church that there were conflicting interpreters. No way. Wow, fascinating. There were conflicting interpreters. Wait, like two people saying different things? Oh, yes. Oh my God, I love it. Which all of that kind of untangled some sort of hidden behavior from the pastor that was rather not pastorally. And very seldomly interpreted as Christian. And there was some sort of backing from one of the interpreters regarding his behavior. And that literally destroyed the church. And after that, they disbanded and there was, you know... The church you were raised in. Oh, yes. Now they have, if they have a hundred or two hundred people, it's a lot. So wait, the church broke apart because of two different interpretations of... Well, that was the show, the two different interpretations of the show. But the thing is that the pastor was being unfaithful to his wife. What's new. Yeah, correct. And there were people that kind of suspected that that was happening and there were like cliques forming in the church. And some people were calling for his stepping down and different things. And then it became common for this group of people to start speaking in tongues. And then some family member of that group of people go there to interpret saying that the people who are getting into that other group that wants him to step down, that God will vomit them from his mouth. That sounds like... That sounds religious. Correct. That they were going to be expelled from the body of Christ. Yes. You know, and then you had other, someone speaking in tongues, someone interpreting saying that all people in church are Jesus's sheep and he accepts everyone and they are... If you are... If someone is expelling you, it's not the word of God. And, you know, by that time I was in my teens, you know, like mid-teens. So I was kind of like noticing there is some sort of convenient thing happening. Something very not good, which is sad because during that same time, there was another member of church. She was married to this guy that apparently had mental health problems. And whenever this big energy happened in church, he sort of imitated it, but I think he either experienced either schizophrenia, some schizoaffective disorder or epilepsy, whatever. But he was treated as a false prophet and someone, you know, he was demonized in church. And you see this person suffering, you know, walking to the altar, suffering and many leaders in church kind of imposing hands and telling the demons to get out of there, you know. And all of that is happening at the same time. Meanwhile, I'm sitting down in this corner, like pooping myself. Why is this happening? I don't understand. And then people are saying different things. And then on the way back home, you hear, you know, parents and people talking about the issue and the language they think the kids don't understand. You're in the backseat. Yes, correct. And it's like, what's happened? You know? Meanwhile, you know, all of this is happening during the blooming of adolescence, which it gets a whole other host of things entangled in your life. Yeah. So, yeah, to answer your question, it was very loud, very loud. So then you were born in this. This is like, you were just, you came into the world and you were like, this is what we do. I go to church with my family. Was there anybody, I guess one of my main questions I wanted to ask was, why did you want to come on our podcast to share this story, this upbringing that you've been broken free from, right? Which we've learned, not everyone breaks free from this. A lot of people don't get out alive. We did. In a literal sense. Yeah. So blessings there. Why would you want to come on this podcast? When you found us, why would you want to share your story? Well, I must say, as we were talking earlier, this is, deconstructing, it's a very complicated process and more so if you're born into the religion, because you don't know anything else. Right. There are things that you just, you know, growing in this worldview, in your developmental years, there are things that get ingrained in your, the concept of how you see life. They're just, they're ingrained there by how they were taught to you. And when they have this veneer of Christianity, trying to deconstruct that is so hard. It's like changing how you see the world. It's changing reality. And sometimes you get out of church, like you said in multiple episodes, it's, you're out of church, you feel that you don't believe, but you still act with some sort of norms that you still behave from church, you know, that the way you, you saw the world, particularly regarding morality, regarding truth, how to behave in social circles, you know, how, what to communicate, what to keep to yourself. And when I found this podcast and I saw that you guys were going through the same thing and myself going through the process, you know, I'm 33 years old and now it's when I've been addressing my mental health and seeing how much all of this has affected me. Even though I got out of church... How old were you? I was, I actively got out of church when I was 17, 18, but I believed that I wasn't a Christian when I was maybe 15. Yeah. So, it's like, we correlate very closely. I was 15 when I had like this light bulb that was like, what if you're not, what if you, what if you weren't a Christian, what would your life be like? Just that thought alone was so scary, but that was like the stepping stones to being like, I don't think I am a Christian anymore. And yeah, so it was pretty young. And then you're saying that you didn't really start to addressing this aspect of your mental health or really, I guess, a lot of our mental health comes from that sort of radicalism until this, your age now, 33. I would say that I didn't start deconstructing consciously because even though I did do it when I got out, more so with the help of my husband, and, you know, I remember I had such a strict view of life and meeting my husband and having him help me experience all the things that really helped me deconstruct, but it was subconscious, you know, I was deconstructing without knowing. And now when foundational things started happening in my life regarding, you know, career success, as you mentioned, studying at Juilliard, we see Juilliard in the classical music world as this Mount Olympus of music. And when you see yourself in it, you start experiencing imposter syndrome. You're like, am I supposed to be here? More so going back to my history as Puerto Rican, we are a colony of the United States. We are taught to believe that the United States man is the one that will come and teach us and help us solve our problems, whatever they suggest is the correct answer. And now I am in a place in New York City, somehow being measured in an equal playing field with these people. Yeah. How jarring. So it's kind of like, am I supposed to be here? Maybe I'm faking it all, or this can't be it. And when you start addressing those aspects of self-value or why are you doing what you're doing or how did you enter into this place and you go back and start seeing whatever you posted on Instagram or Facebook, some member of your family is commenting, oh, praise the Lord. Yeah. Because, you know, and all of those things collide and foundational aspects of your being, my worth, how do I see morality? How do I see sexuality? How do I see relationship between people starts to change. And then when you start stripping down all of those conceptions, you are left with things that have no answer, no clear answer. Why do you feel wrong about this? I don't know. I just feel it's wrong. And what can you associate that wrongness with? Well, maybe it was a sin. And then you start treating it like, okay, that thing has been festering inside of you, maybe without the name of sin. And more so, you know, when you are raised in church, you are taught to believe that you need to reject yourself. You are not a value. Deny yourself, pick up your cross and walk. Yes, exactly. I think Matthew 19 says that there are people that are born eunuchs, there are people that are made eunuchs by others, and there are people that decide to be eunuchs for God. You know, it's like, ugh. Yeah. Yeah, really? Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. That's a very Pauline way of, yeah. So when you decide to get out and you were born in this worldview, there is a foundational aspect of your understanding of your surroundings that it's empty now. You know, you're just like, okay, how do I fill this? Either with another religion or with another worldview, whatever, in my case was music, which was another problem. You know, I started ascribing value to the music I created as if the music was me, not something I did, you know, and when you get into a place like Juilliard and people start criticizing your work, because that's the way of progress, you know, you need to put out something and have someone say something about it so you are able to see if you agree or not. Doesn't mean that it's objective, it's still subjective, but you need to confront some sort of diversity of thought so that you can decide what to incorporate or not. But then all of a sudden when you are criticized, someone is saying something about your music and you're feeling like, oh my God, why do you hate me? Right. Why, why am I such a piece of shit? You know, so why doesn't he, why can't you see that I poured my blood and my sweat on this? And then you start thinking, this is just music. This can't, this can't be, you know, this is not open heart surgery. You have colleagues, I mean, even my husband, you know, I, I love classical music. My husband loves every type and form of metal. We couldn't be more different in that aspect. And that doesn't mean we are, you know, we can't agree on stuff. So when I understood that music was just music, then I started going backwards and saying, whoa, that hole that was filled with the instructions of morality and how to correctly journey the, your life and the world now is substituted with being virtuous and devoted to art. And that now that is being deconstructed as well. So you can have a healthy relationship with music and your career, because now it's my career. I'm in debt because of it. Yeah. So what are you left with? You know? So all of a sudden, then you are, what's left? What do I feel as inherently a thing to follow and a thing to accept as good or not? And when you keep on stripping those things, then you learn that you have been driving the car in Christian autopilot without knowing. Yeah, everything you just said there is like, I can relate to so much. And I think you took such a academic route, right, in your music. But like, I did the same thing right after, you know, leaving the church, it was like, right into bands, drumming for anybody I possibly could. And Zach and I did music for like eight plus years together. We were plagued with this, you know, music was our life, music still is a huge part of our lives. But I've unfortunately been working with a therapist for many, many years, trying to rebuild my relationship to music, because so much of what happened was this need to be on a stage, the need to be like a rock star, the need to like be in front of people to show them like, oh, the music I make is for the world, it's going to help heal people. And that is a direct correlation to like that Jesus complex. And when I started to break that down, mainly when my son came into my life, it was like this epiphany that I had that was like, oh, I don't even enjoy what, I don't even enjoy this anymore. I don't even like writing music anymore. And it was like this unfortunate breakup that was really painful. And I'm still rebuilding that relationship and this podcast is like another form of, you know, performative art that kind of fills that desire, that love I have for being a performative artist. But yeah, very, very similarly. Yeah, and that happens because we confuse, that happened because we did what we love in church. And we confuse the purpose of what we did with how important it is to us. You know, if you do it in church, then it becomes a tool for a higher purpose and you need to refocus it. You know, I remember the first time I told my aunt that at first I started studying violin in the Conservatory of Music in Puerto Rico. My degree was going to be in performance, violin performance. How old were you when you started playing? When I started playing? Like music at all? Well, I've always been attracted to music. I first wanted to be a scientist, but ever since I was a little kid, I always asked for Christmas like synthesizers and keyboards. And I loved watching the Three Tenors, Fantasia was one of my favorite movies. I loved watching Elton John play the piano, all of it. So I always had this connection with music, but I started formally studying music because my mother, she was a workaholic and this is a very complicated story, but the thing is that she had a very bad asthma attack and she had to go to the hospital. She was hospitalized, intubated, and she was like unconscious for maybe a week. And I remember that was around Thanksgiving and she went under maybe a Tuesday, something like that during that Thanksgiving week. And then she woke up after Thanksgiving. You mean under like a coma? That bad of an asthma attack? Yeah. Wow. And when she woke up, she always recount the story saying that she wanted turkey because of Thanksgiving. Yes. Or turkeys. Yeah. And people telling her, well, that was last week. And she's like, oh, well, this happened, you know? But I started studying music concretely and more seriously because I was, what, 12 maybe? Something like that. And when she received that, that happened to her, she ended up with transversal myelitis. What I've heard secondhand from family members that happened to her is that some sort of virus entered her spinal cord and left a little bit of a, the word in Spanish is cicatriz. And in English is, this happens to me all the time. I love this. This happens to me all the time. That's okay. Which I don't know much about transversal myelitis, so I don't. Scar. It left a scar. Scar. Okay. Good job. Well done. Because we don't speak Spanish. This happens to me all the time. Sometimes I forget words. This scar apparently happened in a way that paralyzed her. And with some sort of physical therapy, she was able to move her hands, to slightly move her legs. But then she, you know, she ended up in a wheelchair. So my family is thinking, well, you know, these kids were accustomed to a working mother that we only saw during the weekends, basically our grandmother raised us. And me and my sister, we were only two. And the, they thought it would be a way of distract us. But little did I know that the first contact that I had with music, you know, I started playing saxophone, all the instruments, saxophone. And I was enchanted. Yeah. I was completely enchanted. Do you still play sax? I still have my sax, but once you are composing, it just sucks. Every single second out of you. You're leading. I remember everything about it. I'm actually writing right now, a piece for saxophone and piano, and, but, but, you know, I don't have time to play. I wish I miss it. But now that when I finish my dissertation, I will be able to retake all of it. Your life's really been on hold due to this dissertation, your academic career. I know it because my wife's in it right now and our sister's in it right now. And it is destructive and beautiful at the same time. You just want this to end. Yeah. Because you were like nine days out? Nine days out. Before you defend it? Before I defend it, yes. Yeah. And we were so blessed to have you explain and give us, you kind of defended your dissertation for us before the podcast, which we'll have another podcast when we bring you back and you can do it then. But I think you were saying something about your aunt and the violin. Right. So when, when you're, when we are doing this thing that we know we love, but we start doing it in church, uh, I started, uh, I wanted to, uh, go into performance violin, but, uh, I started noticing that I also like to write and I told my aunt, maybe I might want to change my degree to composition because that seems something that I like. But by that time I already was playing violin in church. So I was part of the ministry. I was, you know, dealing, doing a whole bunch of things in church, uh, and because Puerto Rico is very pop and, you know, Latin jazz centric, uh, country, having a violin in church is very rare. So it was a very important aspect of the band and of the worship, uh, ministry. So me telling that to her meant that maybe I would stop performing and dedicate myself to writing. She was very worried because then what would happen of the ministry, you know? And I remember telling her, well, and I decide to do this and I want to pursue this way because then I can write music for the Lord. For the Lord. Yeah. That's what you told her. Brilliant. Yeah. For the Lord and write music. And I dream of conducting an orchestra in church for the Lord's mission. By that time I didn't believe what I was saying. I remember I dyed my hair and I remember telling her when I dyed my hair, how do you expect me to be empathetic and, and, and deliver the Lord's words and message to people if I don't look like them, I need to be in their same wavelength, you know, the same vibe. Bullshit. Smart though. It's such a smart way as a kid to like do what you need to do and also keep your like Christian family and be like, Oh, okay. Well, you know, that happened, well, let me know and entangle everything that we're talking about, but to finish that other thought, uh, that's why the relationship that you have in your case, you sort of had to disconnect yourself from music in my case was disconnect myself from what I thought music was in me. Because if you said, Oh, I really don't like that particular piece of mine. I would be like, Oh, are you offending me? You know, it's like music became so personal, you know, so that it's completely understandable if you did it in church and it became part of your ministry, your purpose of how you, how the Lord's work happened to people. And then, you know, how, uh, influential music can be in people's experiences of, you know, you just need to play a nice power ballad in church and everyone is praising their heart. There's a reason why we start, there's a reason why churches start with music. Yes, absolutely. Right. Cause it's like long and deep breathing. So you kind of meditate, you're kind of like disassociating a little bit and the beautiful sounds. And then when the pastor gets up to do their sermon, everyone's like, absolutely, completely in the chess. And then you just have a worship break where you play all the heart stuff. And then people are screaming, at least in the Pentecostal, they are screaming, running around church, speaking in tongues, jumping, you know, it's like, and I remember the older I got and the more I played in church, the more I understood the cues and how we would in the band know what to play whenever something was happening. You know, when the pastor was preaching something intense, like, I don't know, the abomination of homosexuality, we knew what to play, what to perform. Or if he was talking about grace, that we knew what to perform. You would play behind them? Yes. Yes. You gotta build up that emotion. Yes. You know, and there were moments when, you know, we just got in or if he's like praying for someone or whatever, the slow music came, you know. Wow. That sounds so nice. It sounds like Cirque du Soleil. It's very influential because people just fall in it. They just fall in it. You know, it's the same thing when you have a pop star and they just appear and you have this wave of people just screaming, the exact same thing. Yeah. Wow. 100%. It's funny when you're saying this, when I edit the casts, I sometimes have put music behind parts of it just to see if it would, my experience while I'm watching me talk or someone else talk, and it's so different when there's just some music in the background and I take it out. But yeah. That's the power. As a composer, I can say, you know, our work is part manipulation because the music can do that. You just can't. I remember I took some courses on film music and we need to like write, you know, they give the same clip for every student and then everyone can, needs to write something and you see how different a scene can be just by the music someone writes. Your music, which are you okay if we share some of your music on our cast? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe from one of your YouTube. Yeah. Feel free. Right here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was Ivan Rodriguez's little sneak peek there. Yeah. Some of the music he composes. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things I find fascinating about your music that I think we talked about on the phone is to me, I like immediately was starting to think of like John Williams and not to like use white composers or whatever, right, but like, because I loved Star Wars growing up or Indiana Jones or like, and there is some similarities in your music that has a sort of story to it where it's dun, dun, dun, dun, and then it's just blows up in your face. Yeah. Does, did you like growing up watch these movies and hear them and then like now do you feel like they've had impact? Absolutely. Movies and video games were my main influences. You know, I had, do have classical influences, very, uh, strong classical influences, particularly of the late romanticism like Gustav Mahler or Richard Strauss or insert German white male composer here, but, and this is something that my husband helped me accept. Music is just music and what you like is what you like and fuck everyone else. You know, it's like part of the music that I loved was movies and video games. So that became part of my language as a composer. So, and then, you know, uh, as an older person, you decide where, what, what do you want to write about? it's mostly activism and, and trying to achieve racial, racial equality or some sort of experience that people can just open up and be more empathetic about, uh, and to achieve that, you need some sort of storyline. You need some, you need, you need a journey, right? So that's why it's so, uh, film ish, if you will. Right. And we love a good story. Yes. Anything that has a good story, specifically to history and all of the horrificness in history, right? A good story can lead a horrible things throughout history. If there's a good story to it, the story is what lasts. Yeah. Right. Not all the little details. Um, thanks for letting us play that. Um, yeah, I really love your music and I really hope to come see it live sometime and see you actually do the magic. See you as the pastor now. The pastor of your life now. It's good. I mean, I mean, yeah. When you're, when you're like raised and born in the church, it's really hard to, I don't want to say it's too hard. I think that like, especially you being a stage performer as a kid, as like a teenager, right? Doing that with the pastor behind them. That's what we did. Our dad being the pastor, but I was the drummer. Zach was a guitarist. Zach was backup vocals. He came in a little bit later than me, but I was like 12 years old on it. I was part of the church band. And to this day, I feel like that's kind of been something lucky about part of that upbringing was I love stage performance. I love being on a stage. That's where it started. I love delivering some sort of performative piece that is me, but I'm also pretending to kind of like playing a character, if you will, you know, and I like taking a step out of my truth, if you will, or that authentic self to be this other part of me. I think it's so much fun. And so you're doing the same thing. Yeah, absolutely. But it takes so much to separate that from the church, because you're told, as I mentioned earlier, you're told that you need to deny yourself. And once you're out of that abuse, then you regain yourself, but then who is that self that ever since you were born, you were told to deny, you know? So how do you build that up back again? Take a hike, smell the roses. Especially if that kid that was being told that is the one that found the music in the first place. Correct. Yeah, because if you see the normalcy of it, it's just you that love the music, you encounter it, you want to do it, but you're constantly Stockholm syndroming yourself saying, no, no, no, this is for the Lord, for the Lord. So building that back up, you know, it's... One of the things, and we've said this now a couple of times, but for the cast that you told me that really, when we were on the phone getting to know each other, was I really don't remember a time in my life where rhythm wasn't just kind of pouring out of me, right? Everything on tables. And it drove my parents nuts, but they were church worship leaders, whatever, some music was in there. They played guitar all the time at the house. We were just, right? Another lucky part of being born with musicians is that you have music all the time, even though it was all worship. They were writers, but it was all worship music they wrote. And one day, this thing called a cajon showed up at our house, right? It's a box drum that has guitar strings on one side. And I was 11, 12 years old. Coolest thing ever, dude. Coolest thing ever. And there was like pictures on it. My dad was like, hey, why don't you go, what is that box over there? And I was like, what do you mean? So he take those pictures off, sit on it, hit the side. And I hit it and I was just like... And he was like, do you want to be in the church band? Oh God. I was playing djembe and stuff or whatever. No, no, you were doing... I was doing djembe. You're right. That was earlier. Wasn't that epic. It wasn't that epic. It was more of here's this new drum you can play tomorrow. I love making things epic. But one of the things that I, being like the percussionist with my dad and my mom and our parents or whatever on the stage, there was like this family band, it was so amazing feeling. I was like, I felt so empowered by God, but also just like my dad supports me. He's proud of me, like all of that. And I was really damn good with rhythm. I could play with anybody. I didn't even have to think. It was just like, get me on that stage. And I would go to town and people after church would come up and be like, I just want you to know that your drumming got me so much closer to God during worship. And I would feel so gifted, so chosen, felt like I was like sacrificing myself to give to the church or whatever for humanity. You kind of were. When you think about it. But I was really good. And so it was like, and I, all pride aside, it was just like part of my, inside of me, I could just play with any sort of hand percussion. It's like, let's get it. And one of the things you said to me was, do you think you even had a choice, personal choice ever to not be the best? And when you asked me that, I was like, I've never thought of it that way. I always just thought I was, I'm just a good drummer. But as a kid, it was like, no, I'm gifted by God. This is a gift by God. And you substitute, just as you mentioned, just liking it, or I just encountered this that I enjoy without automatically. It's your ministry is your testimony. You have to do it perfect. And then you add the extra layer of being a PK and it's like, if I fall, it's a reflection of my parents. So it just has to be perfect. And then, again, with Stokely syndrome ourselves, going through that pressure, saying, thank you, Jesus, because this pressure, this is the way, this is the way, and you're suffering. No wonder you had to push it aside for a while. Because it represented, it wasn't the abuser, but it was the tool of the abuser. Once you're able to then, just imagine what you just told me, oh, look at the cajon, do you want to play in church? Just see the alignment of those two statements. It's like, oh, that thing that you like, and I'm prompting you to go and sit down because I know how much you enjoy it, and I know how great you are with it. Instantaneously, do you want to play in church? So there is this alignment of this kid, of tying up what I like, what I love, what I feel could be purpose to the church, like instantaneous alignment of, okay, and authority. Do you want to? I am asking you, I'm opening a door. I am letting you. I have the keys. Yes. And the keys, it's not even keys, it's just one single Unitarian door. This is the door, you are able, so we as humans, we use language to speak, but we use so much more than language. There are so many things encoded in just those two questions. Part of what is encoded there is like, I know you like this, and if you want to do it, it has to be here. Do you want to play in church? And there is actually, if you go back to thinking in that particular moment, you don't have a choice. Yeah, there was no choice. It is what it was. If you say no, imagine what the pastor will think of you. Imagine saying no to ministry. Or your own dad. Imagine saying no to your own dad, which represents God and church. So he said, do you want to play in the altar? So is this prophetic? How are you going to interpret this? So is it that I have this ability because this was meant to happen, and this is the way, and now it's the moment where I'm ripe enough to stand in the altar? I can't say no. It has to be the moment. It's happening. It's happening right now. The question is being asked, and I will be an apostate if I say no. And this is happening in the mind of a child subconsciously. So it's a terror relationship. You're so smart. It's horrible. It's horrible. I mean, you know, you fast forward, I was like 12 when I got the cajon. I was playing djembe by maybe 10 or 11, and then 15 comes around, and I take my parents out to dinner because that's what pastor's kids did for some reason. That's what you did. That's what I did. And I took them out to dinner, and I said, here's the deal is I'm no longer a Christian anymore. Yeah, it went really well. And they said, you know, like, over that, in that time period, dad was like, you know, you can't be in the band anymore. Yeah. I was like, wait, no, no, no, no, wait, hold on a minute. I was like, I'm just not, I'm just not identifying as a Christian. I'm still gonna go to church. I still want to play worship music with you. I love playing drums with you, dad. Yeah. And he was like, you can't, you cannot be on that stage if you're no longer a Christian. I did the exact opposite. Tell me. I remember, I mean, I told you that I am part of the alphabet mafia agenda. So I remember, you know, growing up, I always knew I was gay, always, always, always. Which was going to be my next question. Yeah, it was, I always knew. But going to that particular moment, you had, like we say in Puerto Rico, los cojones, that of telling your parents that you no longer believed. I couldn't say that, I just couldn't. And it's slightly more complicated because I also grew up in an abusive household. So when you intertwine that abuse with God, then it becomes a different thing. So I couldn't say that I didn't believe because that could mean endangering myself. Wow. Yeah. Totally. But I knew I didn't believe. And my faggy flower blooming, I got interested in lustful things. So one day in those teenage rushes of the flesh, something happened with someone that shared my gender identity. So when that happened, that was a Saturday. And it was a full-flesh, fleshy endeavor. And the next day I had to play at church on the altar. So I'm like, okay, I no longer believe, but as we all know, remnants of faith stay there. And you're like, well, okay, this is not true. This is not true. It's not true. It's not true. It's not true. But once you're in church, you're like, okay, I'm stepping in the, I am going to blow up in flames right now. You're going to catch fire, for sure. I'm going to blow up. I'm going, this is going to, and I can't, what if I don't, what if I just vomit and say I won't perform? Oh, wow. Yeah. What if I just, like, something happens? I just can't, oh, oh, I'm going to explode. It's going to be instantaneous combustion. And I put my foot on the altar and nothing happens. And you're like, yes, I knew it! It's jazz, but it's also, this is wrong. Yeah. What the fuck? What the fuck? It's kind of like, where are you? Where are you? Oh, God that sees and knows everything, right? That has these rules, too. That has these rules. You know, you said that I was, because of what I know about myself, you said I was meant to be killed. You know, Leviticus law says that I have to be put to death. Oh, we don't follow Leviticus law, but Jesus in the Sermon of the Mount said, I don't come here to change the law. I come here to fulfill the law. You know? So, if you're saying that I deserve death and everything is so serious about it, about this, you know, everyone is like, God is always, I mean, they portray God as this perverted sex imp addicted person that is every time I'm engaging of my endeavors of the flesh, he's watching. He's watching. It's like, I'm in your business. What a creeper, dude. It's such a creeper. It's so important. And then nothing happens. Nothing happens. Obviously, doubt. Yeah. Yeah. All the internal crisis, right? That's what's happening. It opens up and you're like, this is bullshit. This is bullshit. You know? So, in my case, I just lied. Yeah. Yeah. So, what happened after that? I just kept, you know, praise the Lord, you know, speaking in tongues. Yeah. Absolutely. And I even remember that there was this girl in church that she was sort of into me and I was kind of like acting into being into her just to not raise suspicions. This is the second guest we've had of homosexual, you know, dissent or whatever that did the same thing in the church to protect themselves or just to play that role. You had to. So, you know, I remember she was very, very quiet and that was the thing that was great because we didn't have to talk on the phone a lot and we just saw each other at church and we just sat together and we just acknowledge each other. Yeah. It was just that. And that's it. Which was great. I couldn't do anything else. No. And thank God that was in the late teens, so I just left after that. But yeah, so in my, I couldn't just say no to my family, you know, I, I... So then you leaving, what did that look like? Wow. I never said anything. As I mentioned, I grew up in a very abusive household. There was a lot of violence, a lot of violence in my household. So one, I mean, it happens now, one, one, I, I had been planning leaving my house, escaping is the correct. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Ever since I had the ability to analyze my situation and I was thinking, you know, I become an adult in Puerto Rico when I'm 18. So by that time I'm already going out with my now husband, but everything is, you know, no one knows anything. You know, I'm having, I'm living a double life, still going to church, you know? And when I turned 18, I just left. I had, I was singing in the national choir of Puerto Rico. I went into one of my rehearsals and I had already talked to my father, which I haven't seen since I was, what, 10, you know, or less. Why is that? Because my family... Okay. This is another story. So people, so you know, so you know with my camera, so you know what the church does. My parents' marriage was falling apart and they went to the pastor and said, well, you know, do you know the pastors are always counseling? I don't know how. Here we go. Here we go. Please. You need to have a child. You need to have a child. That will fix... That's what the pastor said? Yeah. That will fix the marriage. Oh God. You poor... We didn't say that. We did not poor thing, but you know what I mean? No, I mean, I became the image of the failure of the marriage. Because it didn't work. Obviously. It didn't work. And eight months into this world, they decide to split. Split. He split. Yeah. They decided to, you know, walk their own ways. And they also had, well, there's no way to know the truth and, and, you know, you can believe whatever side, but one of the sides, my mother's side says she experienced a lot of abuse from him, which I don't doubt because when I started living with him, I saw him at least verbally abusing his current wife. And, but, you know, I also know my mother's notorious for mischievous. Not mischievous. She's, she's very strong and very aggressive. Oh, I see. So, you know, it was, both of them were, you know, at fault, uh, but you know, I'm eight months, they're split and now I am the thing that they engage with to save the marriage that didn't save the marriage, you know? And is this the same pastor, the one that gave them the advice, the same pastor that had the, the hiccup? No, that was another pastor. That was the one that came after him. But then when that happened with that pastor, someone had to take the reins. So that previous pastor came in again. His wife passes because, you know, old age or whatever. And I think she had a heart attack while sleeping, was a very gentle death. Thank God, you know, she didn't even notice. After that, then we discover, we discover that he was seeing a, what, what people will say in the old world, a woman of ill repute, you know, like a concubine in Dominican Republic that he brings, she was basically a stripper. He brought in and like lived with her in holy living or whatever. So, you know, you can, you're never safe. He's one of the fancy people, I love that. It was, you know, and then I went in the research for this podcast, trying to find the amount of people that were in church and all that, I found that he sued the church because they promised him some money and now they didn't, you know, it was, it was all about money. Everything is about money. So, yeah, he wasn't the one that was cheating on his wife, but he had questionable behaviors as well. Oh, they all do. Giving horrible advice to his congregation, that's for one damn thing. But if it wasn't for that horrible advice, we wouldn't be sitting here now with you. So the organized chaos and the beautifulness of life. Absolutely. You know. It's true. I love that. Yeah. So then you leave. I escaped my house and I no longer step in church, you know, that was my gateway out. But it was, I was okay with that because I was already out in my head, you know, when I started having this dual life, when I remember telling my friends in high school that the normal, you know, steps for this, for a gay man like me was like going to your friends and saying, hey, I think I'm bisexual. Yeah. Yeah. He's a bisexual. And then, you know, a couple of months, you know, I think I'm gay. So I remember going through all that process and being a different person in school, a different person in music school, a different person outside my house. And then completely thinking, because I used, you know, I became an advocate and I proselytized about swearing. You know, I loved to have a filthy mouth. So whenever I was outside of my house, it was filth, you know, filth, all the bad words, all of them. And then I remember trying, going back to my house after school, trying to recode myself, don't let nothing slip, because if some of these words slip out in the natural way they are slipping out of when you're in school, you are going to get beaten, going to get beaten. So be careful. So I learned to have like this proper Christian, you know. You were living a double life. I remember before every meal, I had to like pray and I just closed my eyes, waited, you know, counted to 60 a couple of times and I just started eating. So it's a nice little meditation before you eat. I remember also in my room, we had a no closed doors policy, so I had to kneel and pray before going to bed. Another one to 60 a couple of times and then just going to bed and then waiting for everyone going to sleep and then taking the Nokia brick cell phone and calling my now husband. Hey, how are you? I miss you. I miss you. I can't wait to sing with you. With the pillow on top of my head and then all of a sudden my grandmother steps into the room, kind of like she heard something and I'm like, you're just sleeping, sleeping. So then your now husband, they're also Puerto Rican? Yes. You guys met in Puerto Rico. We met in Puerto Rico. We both escaped Puerto Rico together. Yes. We did. This year we turned 16. Oh my God. That's incredible. Yes. I think that's really beautiful too. Hearing your upbringing and the correlations, you know, the church and all this, because I feel like I suffered not to be a victim or not to blame anybody but myself, mainly because I've healed and I've really learned a lot of my past, but my relationship suffered a lot. Yes. My romantic partner suffered a lot. I thought everybody I was going to... I had multiple different, you know, romantic partners and thought I was going to marry every single one of them from the moment that I've, you know, that's like, I saw them from a distance. I'm marrying that one. If in that the way. That is the way. That's the way. But even after leaving the church, it was like, we're talking about it, it was so ingrained. And then I knew I wouldn't marry them, like being with them, right? No, this isn't the relationship for me forever, but I still was in the relationship. Like I was going to marry them and I could never get out of it. You know where that comes from, right? Tell me. We, we, we teach the New Testament in the Pauline way. And Paul, particularly to the Thessalonians, I think it was, he wrote a letter saying, well, you know, you can't, you can't sex, no sex, no. But if you can't really adhere, then you'll go, you need to marry. Oh, how many times did we see that? You need to marry, you need to marry, you marry because that's the only way. Just for reproduction. Interesting. You know, but marry. And she can't be on top of you. She needs to be below. If she's on top. I mean, even if this is, it comes even from the Old Testament, even comes from the Old Testament. Missionary. It's, there are Mesopotamian texts that say that if the man is below the woman, he could get diarrhea for a month. What? Yes. Well, that's actually true. So, you know, the Christian took that from that worldview, you know, but that belief So is that really, is that the term missionary? That's probably where the term comes from. Absolutely. I mean, I guess I could have looked that up on them, but that's fascinating. Yeah. So it's a Christian thing. Of course. It's a completely Christian thing. And that belief that if you met someone that the first stages of liking someone, it's always a physical, sexual thing, you know, it's biological, it's biological, it's mating. So that first relationship or connection you have with one person happens through that lens, but you cannot think through that lens. Therefore, you need to justify your biological behavior. And the only way to justify it is marriage, marriage, marriage, I'm marrying her. Why? Because I'm horny for it. No, no. Marrying her. Marrying her. I remember being so young in the church, always wanted to be friends with the older guys, right? The cool guys. And they were all getting married, like so young, right? Yeah. 19 felt late. Yeah. You hit 19 and you're not married. It felt late. I thought it was so cool. Oh God. So cool. Oh my God. He just got with the hottest girl in the church. I can't wait to be old enough to get married. I thought it was, I was as a kid. They build it up. I remember I can't find the letter anymore. Thank you. Because I don't want to find it because I don't think it'd be good, but it's kind of cute. I wrote a letter to my wife, future wife, when I was like 11 years old. Oh God. But I was so, I was such a hopeless romantic in a Christian sense. You know, like I would always dream of my weddings and, you know, like who's going to be my family. And that just didn't work out the way it was planned. Which is, you know, I must say that was, and I don't talk about this, and this is why I'm here to talk about it. That was part of my issue regarding relationships as a Christian. And it's something that I'm still deconstructing now. And I have the most amazing and wonderful and patient husband. Because if it- I hope to meet him someday. Oh, you must. If it wasn't for him, you know, he would, he put with all my shit and he stayed. I mean, we've been with 16 years together. So when you say all this, all your shit, right? Because now we're talking about like this embedded religious trauma that's coming out in these. What do you mean by that? Well, I didn't know that I was acting in a way that I thought it was being virtuous, but it was just being judgmental. Decisions that he made that were completely normal, comments, behaviors, going partying, drinking, or smoking weed, or anything. My judgment was so severe and I justified it saying, it's just against the law or it's morally incorrect. Why? Don't ask that. Or it's just bad or trying to be holier than thou kind of thing in a secular way. Totally. And he just had the patience to just challenge those thoughts and kind of like, hold, but what if? No, but hold, but what if, you know? And he made me grow so much. Made me grow so much. It's real love. Absolutely. Absolutely. Were they raised in the church too? No, thank God. No. Wow. You love that. He was raised Catholic, but in Puerto Rico, there is a very interesting thing. Remember we were conquered first by Spain in the time of the Atlantic slave trade. So there were a lot of particularly Nigerian slaves in the island, and they brought in with them the Yoruba religion. That went through the process of syncretism with Catholicism and emerged Santeria, which is a religion that is very active in Puerto Rico and in Cuba. And basically they believe in saints that are the equivalent of Yoruba deities, and they do a whole bunch of different rituals. They kill chickens and sacrifice a whole bunch of different things. Very interesting religion. And it's usually pseudo in silence accepted more by Catholics because the religion that went through syncretism with it was Catholicism. And some of the Yoruba deities have Catholic saints name, which were the ones that the slaves used so that their owners didn't kill them or whatever, because they could if they behaved in a non-Christian way. So the only way to save their traditions was through renaming them with Christian names. Wow. Fascinating. So that meant that in Puerto Rico, they're like some of the easy Catholics. They just believe in God and whatever, but they are also kind of spiritual in different ways. I remember going with my husband and his mother to a lady that did something that is called a white table, and she just went into a trance and draw stuff on a paper and then read your future and stuff. So Catholic people do that in Puerto Rico. Right? Yes. That's cool. But think of that in a Protestant environment. Oh, that's evil. It's demons. Demons? Yes. Are you kidding me? Yes. Imagine me getting out of church. How scary, right? It was petrifying. Yeah. It was petrifying. How fascinating. Yeah. So because of that, he went through the whole Catholicism and confirmation and all of that. But prior to doing his confirmation, he told his mother, you know, I don't believe this shit. I am doing this because of you, because it's tradition in our family and whatever. But after this, don't fuck with me with religion. I'm doing my shit. You do your shit. And she was like, okay. Yeah. And that was it. Yeah. Which, you know, I've seen a lot of that in the Catholicism, you know, religion, like it's, and growing up in the evangelical Christianity, right? We used to always be like, oh, you're Catholic. Nice try. You just have to go into a box and ask for forgiveness. Must be nice. Yeah. Right? Like you can do whatever you want and ask for forgiveness and you're good. You know? You have idols. Yeah. You have idols, all of that. Yeah. And they walk around and throwing incense in your face and all that. You look at those things now through the lens of age and it's such a shame that brought with it so much destruction because the whole ritualistic aspect of it in the Orthodox, the Russian Orthodox and Greek churches are just the same. It's so beautiful. It's so beautiful. And the robes and the hats and the incense and the process and it's like gorgeous. It's so sad that it was just... And then you, yeah, with age, right, and growth and healing, and then you try to address that trauma. So you look back at your childhood and you look back and how you judged all other religions that weren't yours. Yeah. And... You even got to the point of like, you judge other denominations. I find myself judging Pentecostals all the time. Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm a Methodist. Yeah. Exactly. It's like, do people drink? Yeah. Yeah. You're damaging the temple. Yeah. It's true. A hundred percent. That, uh, what you brought up about like, um, watching someone else drink or watching someone else party in your life or something, and then instantly thinking you're superior because... Oh yes. That stuck with me for so long. It's horrible. It's horrible. Yeah. You know, I, I, it still takes me. Still. I mean, I remember I saw the, the, the Netflix documentary, Oh, what's the name? Um, forget the name, uh, but it's about plant medicine and seeing the history of how psychedelics were demonized by the government. What's his name? Michael Pollan. Yeah. That one. How did, how did... Something with your mind on... Yes. Yes. Exactly. How to change your mind. How to change your mind. Yeah. I mean, I think that was part of the mentality, but that really reinforced how multifaceted and how, uh, univocal is church and how multifaceted is everything else. It's not just black and white. Nothing is just black and white. And you see the evidence. I love to think of myself as a very evidence-based, scientific kind of thinking person, and you see the evidence and when the evidence doesn't support the claims, like, Oh, this is bad. This is evil. This is blah. And then you see people getting healed and you see people bettering themselves. And you're like, there's something doesn't align here. You know? Yeah. Yeah. There's something about psychedelics and plant medicine to where all of a sudden, like we'll take cannabis for an example, right? Like it's just a different perspective is all it is from what this is tunneled vision. And so like, if you have a different perspective to see yourself from a different position to where you can actually judge your own relationship to yourself, then that's what can help you start to define what self is to you. Yes. And the church don't want you to be doing that. Absolutely not. So you better make those things illegal or else everyone's going to start to develop their own self and their own thoughts and learn that this shit is bullshit and just trying to control the masses. And so it's gotta be illegal. It's gotta be of the devil and it's going to bring you to, which was so impactful in our family. I mean, it was our parents, but in the church and Calvary Chapel, it was like, cannabis is the weed of the plant of the devil. Yeah. But like cannabis specifically, it was like- The gateway. Yeah. If you use that- If you use the gateway, you'll do math next. People would always say like, if you start using cannabis, you'll leave the church. I'd be like, well, that's why I started using it. That's why we all use it. We had in our church, we had yearly seminars where people came in to talk about this and with humongous projectors and stuff, like showing how evil this is. And then they mix that with, what are this, like the messages that are hidden in movies and the Coca-Cola symbol and all that subliminal messages. They brought in all of those things and how everything is laced with sex and with evil and how you need to keep yourself clean of everything. I even remember my aunt talking how she went to see The Exorcist to train herself of how to deal with situations like that. That's the place to do it. Hollywood. Oh my God. They'll teach you. That movie is so good too. I love that movie. I remember even listening to music in other languages because it doesn't sound, in our case in Spanish, I remember my aunt saying, you can't do that. You don't know if they are, you know, speaking ill of God or Jesus or, so they instilled in me the fear that if I don't understand someone's language, I need to fear because they might be attacking my soul. Oh, interesting. You know, it was that, I remember, I remember I always tell this to my husband, we could have been rich. We could have been millionaires. Why? Because I had such a huge collection of Pokemon cards. Like, oh, my son would just die right now. But not only that, look at it through the capitalistic kind of business perspective. All the ones that are six figures, I had multiples of them. Nice. Where are they? My aunt told me that to be a better Christian, we had to, because those are demonic. We burned them. Okay. What's your aunt's name? It was, it was, you know, I always think of that and I was like, I can't, this, you know, this can't be. Think of your life. Your life would have been so different though, if you had all that money and you're selling it coming to the state. Yeah. Well, maybe I would have been a douche bag and nah. I disagree with that. I wish you were rich. Okay. Yeah. When everyone ever says that shit, I'm always like, fuck that. No, I could have been rich. Yeah. No, but yeah, it's definitely. So, but your aunt's logic of going and seeing the exorcist so that they could know how to behave in that situation, you could, if you were aware enough, you could have said the same thing to her, like, no, I need to have these cards so I know how to talk to these people that use these products. But by that time I was too young, you know, then I picked that up and that's what I used later on. That logic is so dangerous. Oh, absolutely. And I've heard that logic so much in the church as a pastor, it's good seeing that, you know, people going to do things and being like, I need to learn so I know how to preach to them better. And it's like, well, you did it though. Yeah. You can't do heroin to preach to heroin addicts. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. But it's, it's bizarre because it's only a couple of selected, you know, chosen people that are the ones that can do that. Everyone else, you need to accept how weak you are. And if you leave that little crack open, the devil will go through it and will take control of your life. Yeah. So, you know, you can't watch scary movies because the devil, you can't, you can't listen to secular music because the devil, you can't read anything secular because I remember there was, there is this Latin American author, Isabella Allende, she wrote a novel, a three part novel about an enchanted forest and things like that. Very nice. And I like, I really wanted to read it. And I talked to my aunt about it and she was like, no, no, no, the one that, if you like that, let's just buy Narnia for you because, you know, we all read Narnia. Yeah. Oh yeah. We all read Narnia. So, you know, even if any, everything, everything you did, you were in danger because that's the other thing. Christians, they're always persecuted. They're always the victim and they're always in danger. So everything I did, I needed to be very careful because I was always in danger of losing my soul. Always. Yeah. Always. And that was a constant. I remember when I started accepting that I was gay, dropping myself on my knees and praying while basically drenching in my own tears and sweat, please, God, take this away from me. Take this out from me. It's traumatic. I cannot control. If you're there, if you're listening, please take it away. I can't. People say we choose this lifestyle. I am actively choosing not to. Please take it away. Nothing. Nothing. Crickets. Nothing. You know, so you align that with the fear that we're constantly being attacked. I thought I was being spiritually attacked. You know, I needed to fight this, somehow fight this because I was going to hell. I was going to go to hell. I even remember, look at how twisted, I even remember praying to God and saying, God, please, in a dream, in a dream, just let me have the experience. Just let me have the experience once and I know maybe if I have it once, I can say no to it because I am no longer seeking. I don't know anything about it. Just once. Just, just. Were you ever blessed with that wet dream? Oh, of course, multiple, multiple, you know, but I, you know, it was traumatic, completely traumatic. If that ever happened, I woke up in sweats. Yeah, totally. You know, I've always, I say this on this podcast a lot, but as someone that has, you know, did identify as bisexual, like in my mid twenties, and then I've gotten closer, like feeling more non-binary than any fucking thing, but that, but I'm really just fluid back and forth. I've always said that coming out of the church, like in yours is a different experience, right? You were like very secretive for the sake of your safety and then you and your now husband got out and, but I've always kind of correlated it to kind of like people coming out to their family is like, I'm no longer, I can't do this anymore. And the experience feels like coming out of a closet and was like, I'm not going to be this anymore. And for you, there's like this multiple, it's a multifaceted, it's multilayered. And so that sounds so traumatic. I remember being so young and finding like other men attractive and, but not even having the ability to let that go far enough to even conceptualize it, right? So there wasn't even a, there wasn't even a sexual awareness of being attracted to other men or other genders until way later in life, until there was an unfortunate traumatic experience that I had with somebody that left trauma where I was like, hey, you know what? That was really traumatic, but I kind of liked it, you know? So it was like, it was just, it took so long. What I guess, I guess you're kind of explaining it, but like the coming out of the Christian church as a homosexual man, yeah, it just seems daunting. Oh, and more so in the Pentecostal tradition, which they are, they teach in their dogma is on fear. It's pure fear all the time. So you were so scared of yourself. So they panic constantly because I'm burning and I'm burning and they preach hell in the most actively, creatively, visual way possible. Which is so abusive. Completely abusive. You know, it's like, so I know how that lake of sulfur, eternal lake of sulfur and suffering and it would suck. It would be horrible and I would be there suffering forever. Yeah, never ending. So I just never came out because it wasn't safe and it wasn't, it just didn't compute. I just needed to get out of the house. I just needed to run away. And when I run away, I went to my father and I said, I'm going to take a different approach. I'm going to tell him out of the bat. I don't know what is his religious status. I don't know anything of him because I don't know him. He's the only safety net that I can have. And I said, I had with him a stepbrother that I met when I went to live with him and another kind of stepbrother-ish, but it was just a son of his wife that he basically came with the package. So I remember that I was completely open with him. I hate that. I really need to get out of the house. This type of abuse is happening. All of this is happening. This is very bad, blah, blah, blah. Can I go and live with you? Well, you need to talk to your mom. And I was like, no, I need to get out. I'm laying down the plan to you because this is this bad. He was like, okay, whatever, blah, blah, blah. I need you to know that I'm gay and I'm seeing a person right now. Is that okay with you? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no problem. It's going to be fine. Just don't. My half-brother's name is Ivan as well because my father's name is Ivan. Three Ivans. Yes. He's so narcissistic. Oh, God. And he's like, just don't tell Ivancito, you know, because he's a kid and you just don't tell him. Having safety, I can compromise. That's fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's fine. So I go and live with my father. He knows. I remember taking a photo, giving my husband a kiss, my then-boyfriend a kiss, and putting it in the background of my cell phone. And he saw it and scolded me for that. Oh, what if your brother sees this? And then during that time, he was still paying, it's called food, the support, it's not alimony, it's the... Child support? Child support. He was paying child support. I pay it. Well, he was paying... I know it. Yes. But my mother was very, you know, she was very, you know, she was very, you know, she was very, you know, she was very, you know, she was very, you know, she was very, you know, she was very... She trained us to lie in court so they could raise the child support for him, you know, so he could pay more. So he was still paying child support. So he told me, why don't you go to court? I'm 18. Why don't you go to court and ask for them to give me permission to keep that so I can give that directly to you instead of sending it over there because we're wasting it there because you're no longer there. And I was like, that makes sense. That really makes sense. I go to court. When I go to court, you are not legally allowed to ask for this. First, because in order to be able to apply for this type of stuff, you need to be 21. You're 18. And you are not paying child support. Your dad needs to come here and ask for that change because he's the one paying child support. I tried, I tried. I looked for a pro bono lawyer and a whole bunch of stuff. And I know this because my mother brainwashed us to think that my father was evil. So I'm operating into trying to change the mentality that he's evil, but the evilness of him is still looming in my head. And I kind of felt the red flags since the beginning. But I was like, no, no, no, I'm going to keep trying, keep trying, keep trying. I found a job and everything. I found everything. And during summer, when I finally found out that it just wasn't possible and I tell him, hey, if you want the child support, you need to go to court and ask yourself. And he was like, okay, a couple of days, weeks passed, whatever. He comes to me out of the blue. I've talked to your mother and I'm sending you back. Why? Because he couldn't get the money. Wow. They've just used you your whole life. They couldn't get the money. And he was like, you need to go back there. I can't have you here. And that happened, mind you. That happened in a conversation after I went to work. And when I returned from work, all my things are under rainfall. I remember rain falling, thunder, you know, typical Caribbean rainfall. And I'm by the house calling the other kid that is my age. And I was like, hey, Jose, please open the door, please. There's stuff in there that's mine. What's happening? And he opens the door. He's also terrified of my father. He said, dad told me I can't let you in. And he's like broken down because he had some sort of connection with me. And he's my age and everything. And he sees what's happening. I can't let you, I can't let you in. Then I come back. All this situation happened. He sends me back. And I went back to him and said, I really need to talk to you. Why? You never said anything. You never told me what I always ask you permission for everything, for every single thing. I told you, I gave you the parameters who I was, what I was looking for. What could I do? I checked with you all the time. Is this allowed? Is this not allowed? The first time I drank and got drunk, I talked to him. Hey, we're going, I'm going out with my husband and we're going to go drink. Is that okay? Yes, it's okay. I'm going to leave you a key here or take this key or take my car. So the behavior was very erratic. No, his behavior was encouraging. He was like, okay, just, yeah, you can do this or do that. I always was seeking permission. And then out of the blue, this happens. I talked to him. Why? And he said, well, sometimes the way people live doesn't align with the way other people live. And, you know, if you behave in ways that the pack is not behaving like, then maybe you can't be in that. You've been voted off the island. Yes. Bring up your torch. Yeah, exactly. You're out. Uh, but it was mainly because of the money and because he didn't want my half-brother to grow up with a gay brother. You know, so all of that was intertwined. So I really didn't come out to my dad. I kind of did that process of coming out with friends in school and they were all very accepting. But then when he brought me back to my mom, my mom, which is very violent, I was like, okay, I don't know what I'm going to do. And she asked, she said, well, your father said that you were interested in men. You know, they couldn't even build to say the word. Interested in men. Are you? And I was like, yes. But that confrontational, you know, because I already escaped the house once. So I am going to be now like enslaved in the house and completely secluded or, you know, grounded forever or whatever. So what the fuck? I might as well just say the way it should be or whatever. I just said it. Absolute and utter disappointment and, you know, disdain. You felt it in the air, but she said she accepted me. Oh, you could have told me this and that. I would never be against you or whatever. And I'm like, you're saying that because of what happened prior. I left the house and you're saying you would accept me because you don't want to be in competition with your ex-husband. And he was the one who took me during that period of time. But in my household, I heard constant conversations of people criticizing gay people, saying that he deserved to die. People joking, saying that it would be ideal to take all the Puerto Rican gay people and put them in an island and nuke them. And, you know, they were so filthy. They were all pederasts and, you know, child molesters. And the bottom of the barrel, you completely did. So how do you expect me to be like, oh, yes, I'm so sorry I interrupted your discussion. By the way, I'm a fag. How? How? You know, so complete and utter bullshit. But I stayed like for two days or so and I left again, but that time with my husband and then we've been together ever since. Wow. What brought you out of Puerto Rico? What brought you here? My hubby. So oddly enough, my husband worked in an adult novelty shop when I met him called Condom World. They had a little mascot, which was the globe with a condom as a hat and his name was Condi. So I met him there and he then switched to work with Microsoft, but retail, like a store. And he was so good at the store that he was sent to Florida to open a new store there with a new team and all that. Just transitory. So help open the store, return. And he comes back from Puerto Rico, he to Puerto Rico, he leaves such a great impression that they opened another store in Hollywood, Florida. So they offer him to go and open that store, but also stay to work. We talked about it and we were like. I am about to graduate in a couple of months from my undergrad, and if you think it's better and we can do it, let's just do it, you know, and he goes there first. I graduate and the day after I graduate, we move to Florida. We stay in Hollywood, Florida for maybe a year, which is sort of like a retiree town. So there are a lot of snowbirds and a lot of veterans and they don't really treat nonwhite people very well. So it wasn't very nice. So again, him being the person he is, he was offered then to open the flagship store in Fifth Avenue, New York and move there. And we're like, oh my God, the concrete jungle, New York, and there are these two little jibado people from Puerto Rico we could never imagine living in the, you know, in the big city. So we said, yes, let's just go, let's go, let's go. I remember I drove from Florida to New York nonstop, 25 and a half hours. Damn. And, uh, we, you know, we moved to New York and there, uh, he starts working retail there and I am in complete depression because I, all of this is bubbling up. I leave Puerto Rico. All my music connections are there. I remember I substituted my identity of religion with music. All of a sudden I'm in a new place. I don't know anyone. I don't know how to develop my career. So I am in a very, very deep depression that I won't accept. I'm okay. Yeah, you're fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. So I apply for a lot of things. A lot of people reject me and I'm like, I deserve death, but I'm fine. So I decide to apply to Juilliard. No one knows. No one knows anything. I decide to apply. I just want to pass the prescreening. If I pass the prescreening, that's good enough. That means that what I'm writing, it's good enough and I can continue this thing. If I don't, then I change careers. I've always been interested in culinary arts. So I was like, okay, then I can do that. And find another purpose in life or be miserable forever or something like that. Very dramatic. Very dramatic. Of course, yeah. And I applied, tell no one. I passed the prescreening and I was like, yay, this is great. Fantastic. I'm going to keep doing this. I got invited for the audition and the interviews and I just go because I'm in the city, whatever. Yeah. I don't seek going to school. In Puerto Rico, we don't have the tradition of the fat letter or skinny letter. So in Puerto Rico, when you get accepted in any college that you send you, you know, a letter of acceptance, regular envelope. I'm not checking emails, not checking anything. Then when a letter from Juilliard comes in, in this humongous envelope, I was like, oh, this may be like promotion or whatever, because I was just there or whatever. I just put it in the counter or whatever. Yes. I'll keep on watching TV or my husband comes from work. He hasn't known that this is happening. He sees the letter. He opens it and he's like, what is this? And I say, oh, it'll be some promo or whatever. No, no, no, no, no. What is this? You got in. And I'm like, what? How are we going to pay for this? But, you know, the rest is history. Obviously, you get into such a place. I decided to accept. Of course. What a great story. Put myself in debt. How cool. But he was, you know, I remember there were many fluctuating things in his career in that period of time. And he was kind of being miserable in the store, working at the store. But he was like, I support you. You do your thing. Once you finish your degree, we move to wherever we need to move and do whatever. He was the epitome of support, love, understanding. And all of this sounds very pink and beautiful. Everyone has ups and downs, and there is nothing more beautiful to grow from than healthy conflict. And we went through it all. But still, I go back in my thought process and think, how can this feeling of complete acceptance, joy, fulfillment, safety be the work of the devil? Why this thing that I feel that it doesn't feel dangerous when I say to him, I love you. It doesn't feel wrong. It doesn't feel dissonant in any way. Why is this wrong? Why is this so wrong? You know, and all of those things kept on deconstructing my mindset. It's like, I really need to revise every single preconceived notion that I have about life. Because all of it is laced with Christianity. And I need to break apart every single thing. And I still struggle with it, particularly regarding intimacy and sexual stuff. Because for whatever reason, my church preached so much about it. So much about the wrongness of the flesh. Anything flesh is synonym of perdition. You know, it's like, you are lost. The flesh is your loss. And I remember friends from the church, because I also preached a couple of times, and I was a leader there as well. They came to me like, I have a problem with masturbation. I'm addicted to masturbation. And I'm like, no, you need to be strong. You know, you need to be strong. You need to pray. You know, we can be like the pals that, you know, provide accountability. And, you know, when I kept on growing, you know, and I started accepting myself, when they came to me, you know, I was like a cancer in church. I was like, well, but to get someone pregnant, better, you know, to rub one out. And they were like, well, do you think God will like, you know, it's like, He'll be fine, because you're not doing nothing. You know, imagine you need to get someone pregnant. And then what if she decides to get an abortion? So you're killing someone now. So, you know, it's like, just rub one out. I was corrupting people in church, you know. So, but it's still something that stays with me. You know, it's something that I still work within myself, that anything related to intimacy or anything sexual, my instant reaction is rejection, that I need to go through a process of acceptance. And this is like a decade or something after I left the church, you know. Yeah. I mean, the foundations of our true biological selves, eat, sleep, sex, repeat. Yes. Right? And that's it. These, you know, like religious trauma correlates so closely to sexual trauma. I, you know, I will never understand why people don't get how perverted that mentality is. You know, we even have Peeping Tom laws. Yeah. If you are, like, a voyeur, you can get, what's the type of felony? Like the one that it's not... I don't actually know what it is, but... You know, there are types of, you know, the degrees of wrongness, I guess. You know, like a misdemeanor. You can get like a misdemeanor for being a voyeur or whatever. But God is 24-7. Yeah. How can you, how can't you make that connection? Right. How can't you make that connection? Why is it wrong? You know, every time someone got married, I remember the saying is like, this marriage, this holy matrimony is between three. You, your wife, and God. And Jesus. You know, it's like, that is awfully perverted. We didn't know what... And the US government. And the US government. We were like, we were ingrained from our parents. Because they were the church, right? Pastor's kid. The only way, the only way a relationship will ever work is if God's in the middle, because two human beings are sinners. You're born a sinner. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to hurt each other. So, God is the glue. Yes. That holds you two together. And that's holy matrimony. Yeah. Right. And that really fucked me up for a long time. Still does a little bit. That when there wasn't the God, I mean, there was secretly still me praying, like all the time after I left the church. But like, all my relationships were tainted by that. That there wasn't this sort of glue. And so, that's like the anger was just out of control or this or that. And really difficult to like break free from that and see outside of that. And more so because it's ingrained in you in developmental years. You know, it's like the same way a kid learns a language. If you have a kid, a baby, and you speak to them in three different languages, they will grow up speaking those three beautifully well. The same way we are being injected with that religious thing. And there are literal groves in our brain that are the path of the religious training. And physical. So, to change those. It's painful. Scary. Super painful. Awful. It's absolutely awful. Yeah. But that's why on this cast I've said it so much. So much of healing or so much of healing can feel so violent. And so, we call that violent healing. Yes. It's part of the process, right? And like so much of what I've been for me right now in my current state of like my own trauma, my own growth is learning how that, which is old, old philosophies, right? That like every obstacle is a blessing. Yeah. Right? So, every sort of hardship or thing that you do come up, that feels so scary to address. And it could be so painful that I have to like get to this part and deal with this is probably why you should go there. Yes. And that pain and that obstacle is part of what makes you stronger, which I think you said earlier, and I haven't heard the term, why I want to try to remember it. It was something about, oh, healthy conflict. Oh, yes. Healthy conflict. Right? There's a difference between not healthy conflict and healthy conflict. Yes. And violence without healing is just violence. Yes. Right? Absolutely. And so there has to be both. It's like the yin and yang. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's, we, you know, people don't take this seriously. Usually when people leave church, we leave with complex PTSD. Oh, we talk about that all the time. It's real. Join us! It's real. You know, I've been diagnosed with PTSD, OCD, and treatment-resistant depression, and it's, you know, general health anxiety, and it's hell. And all of that is because of the environment where I grew up in church, mixed up with the violence of my mother, you know, which is another thing, because when you grow up in a home where God is such a prevalent figure, but you're also experiencing violence, like very horrid violence, somehow it fixes itself the narrative in your head that this has to happen, that you withstand it. And you start creating methods of survival in your head to be able to go through something that is part of the divine plan. You know, it's part of the divine plan to hear someone telling you every single night that they will kill you in your sleep, and then professing to the world their love for God, you know? And how do you make sense of all of this? You know, as a kid, how? Everything becomes fight or flight at that point, right? Everything. All out of survival. Everything. Every single thing. When you intertwine that with the religion, you don't challenge it. And then when things get out of hand, you go to the adults in the room and say, hey, you're a kid, and you're suddenly asking the grown-up questions and saying, we need to take action here. And their reaction is, drop on your knees and pray. And that's what they are doing as well. It's not like, shut the fuck up with the grown-ups. We'll deal with it. Yeah. No, no. It's like, we are all thoughts and prayers. Yeah. Thoughts and prayers. Thoughts and prayers. We're all thoughts and prayers. And what did that do? Absolutely nothing. It almost is like that's why the religion is there in the first place. Correct. Is to keep the people that want the power in power. In power. Yeah. And we see all of that in every single school shooting, every single mass shooting, everything that's happening in the world. You'll see leaders of all types be like, our thoughts and prayers go to these people, rather than any sort of direct change. Correct. Right. You know, a lot of us, a lot of us, a lot of people just go along with it because it's kind of embedded into the psyche. Well, I saw, you know, I don't have contact with my family now because it's healthy for me. I decided to do, I decided to cut the cord because I built, I tried to keep a relationship that was built on a glass stick about to break. And me trying to keep that secure was destroying me. So I decided to cut it myself. But seeing them from outside, how they themselves are bringing themselves to destruction. And the very few times where I interject and say, hey, someone needs to take legal action here. I even talked from New Jersey, talked to a judge in Puerto Rico to get one of them in a mental health hospital and all of that, you know, because no one wanted to do anything in my home. We're all thoughts and prayers, you know, and their lives were in danger. You know, it's not the argument and people screaming, it's lives in danger. And this is how religion can be so destructive. You are seeing this every day and your go-to is do nothing. Yeah. Your go-to is do nothing, absolutely nothing. I laid to you a whole bunch of legal strategies, a whole bunch of solutions. Please take one, just one, just one. You know, think that God works in mysterious ways. The Bible said it. Maybe he's working through me. Just pick one fucking solution. Yeah. No, we need to pray. And now I'm like, I cannot, I can't deal with this anymore. Yeah. I can't deal with it. I only speak to my grandmother from time to time and that's it. Well, good for you. That's really hard to do. It's awful. There's been plenty of times in my life that I've wanted to do that. And I feel lucky to not have had to have gotten to that place yet, right? Or like, what have you. But God knows when my parents kicked me out and separated me and him apart from each other, I couldn't escape. They disowned me. It was like, we're done with you. And I was like, please, no, come back. Like, I need, it was like this, I needed, needed it, needed it. It was like, it took me so long to be free of that, which I think I just learned more of that just last year of how to be like less needy for this, this need for a daddy or needy for a mommy. Because that father and that mother is inside of me to begin with. That is me, right? I am my own mother. I am my own father. And that takes insane, violent healing to learn that maybe from where we came from. And even my wife, who was brought up still in like a Southern Christian church, completely different upbringing with her parents. And she has a lot less, you know, relationship, psychological sort of, like really not much PTSD. And, you know, it's like not that hard to raise kids to be healthy. It's not that hard. But the Christian, American Christian evangelical religion does a great job at fucking that up. And then you see the, these are part of the things that really help me deconstruct. You see how Christian people bend their morality. And we never are taught to see that. No, it's like we are called to do the morally correct thing. If we define the morally correct thing means to take care of the children, to take care of your offspring, to be a parent. But you are able, you know, if I tell you, oh my God, you heard of that mother that kicked their son to the streets because he told her that he didn't want to do math anymore. And she's like, no, you can't be here. And threw him on the streets and separate them from their brother because they didn't want it. Our reaction is she's a fucking psycho. Psycho. Yeah. She's a psycho because, and her own son on the streets, because he thought that he didn't need math anymore. Right. And just change it a little bit and it sounds crazy. That's how, that's how we bend morality. Because when you all of a sudden insert the brainwashing of Christianity, then all of a sudden it makes sense. Yeah. No, it's okay. Yeah, whatever. We need to, sometimes you need that tough love. Sometimes you need, because you would be destroying your household and, and that would be what God would want. Yeah. So. Well, that is what God did. Yeah. Especially if your image of God is that same love. Correct. It justifies all of that. All of it. God's love is incredibly violent towards me and myself. Therefore, it's okay if that's the love I see around me 24 seven. Absolutely. Wasn't it God that like told Abraham to take his firstborn up to the hill and destroy him? Talk about a fucking psychopath. Psycho. Yeah. Wasn't it God that turned that poor woman into a pillar of salt just for looking at a city? And just think about the Trinity. You're so narcissistically fucked. To double yourself. You need to double yourself and send yourself. And kill yourself. And kill yourself. Yeah. For all of humanity. You know, that's one of the things that really, like the TikTok kids say nowadays, that threw me into orbit. You know, it's like, I really can't, I, you know. Every time I ask, why do we need to follow this bullshit? It's in order for you to be saved. Saved from what? And from what? Saved from a damnation that's completely made up. But that's the rational aspect. If we're going to just see the theological aspect of it, yes, we need, we want to be saved from the damnation. Who decides if we're damned or not? God. Why? Because he created the system that would get you to that conclusion. So he created me. Placed me in this world for me to be saved from something that he created. Because he created the rules, the game, the place, and myself. So this game is me trying to, God trying to get me saved from himself. This is a psychopathic, narcissistic bullshit. It's crazy. And it works. Yeah, so well. This is the thing that really kind of blows my mind. And more so when we apply this contemporary medieval Trinitarian kind of concept, Trinitarian, no, the omnipresent, omniscient characteristics of God. You know, if he knows everything... All-knowing. If he knows everything, he can't be all good. Oh, definitely not. And if he is all good, he can't be all-knowing. Yeah. It's impossible. It is. And have fun asking a Christian pastor or any Christian that question. It is a spiral that leads nowhere, and it'll be mind... They use the faith out of everything. Just the impossible question. They'll be like, God works in mysterious ways. And then it's already like, cool, this conversation's done. No, and you need to recognize what a piece of shit you are. You don't know. You can't understand celestial divine logic. I remember in that Jubilee stupid video. The Jubilee stupid video that Ivan Rodriguez was on, which was Christians versus ex-Christians that has 65 million views. Go check it out. Don't read the comments. I remember I challenged this pastor and said, you know, just tell me why is being gay wrong? Tell me. You need to know the why is wrong. And he said, I don't know why. It's just in the Bible. And I was like, but ask that question. Oh, sometimes it's not about reason. It's about the heart. And I was like, that's even worse. Yeah. So you're telling me to just accept something without any basis? And I didn't say this because he just was completely out of convincing. But just analyze that. And look how people compartmentalize that in their heads. And they negotiate what they believe, and they don't even know it. Let's just say Christianity. If someone commits a murder or something or whatever, and they go to a court of law, ask any of your Christian friends if they would accept a God argument in a court of law. If someone says, well, God told me so. Be like, okay, get this man some medicine. But the court won't accept that. Why won't the system that it's supposed to find the truth accept a divine argument? Yeah, it's fascinating. It's a good point. Because it's not a real argument. Absolutely. Yeah. Everyone compartmentalizes. You know, you wouldn't want someone to go and defend you. Well, because God told me last night in my dreams. And he told me that this person is innocent. And if your lawyer tells you that, you would say, go the fuck away and get me a real lawyer. Yeah, 100%. Why won't you be like, yes, this is it. Just go to court and say that because, God, this is what will happen. You won't accept that. So don't be a hypocrite. And don't tell me that I can't fuck someone in my ass because, you know, the Bible says so and you're not willing to put yourself through this. Fire and flames. Like this song. No. Also, if the Bible said so, then why are all the scriptures in the Vatican hidden? Oh, my God. There is like count like 600 other gospels that are like, oh, well, what white powerful man took those out of the Bible? And who decides what is canonical and not? Yeah. And who decides, you know, all of this kind of not the translations that exist that people, some apologists will say, you know, translations are not that different or here or whatever. Just read the New International Version versus the King David Version. Oh, yeah. Just those two different Bibles. And those are like translated from English together. And they've already had the opinion separate. Well, I only read the New Kings, New King James. Well, that's the only right version. Yeah, that's the only right version. Which is the most conservative one. Yeah. And it was translated and then tried. I think it was Norton Webster or it tried to do a new translation, but it wasn't accepted in the United States because when the United States went in the beginning of 19th century, went through this kind of rediscovering process of trying to get into antiquarianism and things like that, the Bible that they had was the King James. And that was the one they chose. But when you see the history of the King James Bible, I think it was in 16 something, it was written prioritizing conservativism instead of understanding. So there are even uses of the English language in that Bible that are made up for that Bible in order to be as conservative and as strict as you could be in a religious text. And the problem with that, nowadays we don't share that same worldview, but we still use text to push forward agendas that we negotiate with, whether it is abortion, whether it is LGBTQIA+, transgender, the transgender issue that I really don't understand why the fuck people care so much. It's all because we're using a text that it's not even aligned with the manuscripts that we have that don't even are the original text either. And the Bible is not univocal either as well. You know, we are all taking this text as if is the word of God. And it's just a word of a bunch of people that we decided to put together. 80 years after the son of God died too. It's not even like as he's dying, they're writing all these things down. It's like someone just was like, we should write about this now, 80 years later. Yeah. And it should be my voice. Correct. Because I'm a man and I'm going to write down. There's four different accounts. Yeah. It's completely an utter nonsense. If you go into academia and you use that same system to justify any paper, any bullshit paper that you write for whatever, people will laugh in your face. What's even more terrifying though, is they're making their own academia. They've been doing it for years. It's horrible. All the Christian schools around here. It's just like, oh, well, I love all the psychologists we've been having on and the therapists we've had on, but like you can even get trained up to almost a doctoral degree in psychology for Christians. Yeah. From Christian science. Yeah. Yeah. And it's such a facade in the whole field. Yeah. But then people, you know, they create their own universities. Somehow they get credited with their own university money and all that bullshit, but they don't go to the Yale Divinity School. No. But they present you with the real documents and things that will challenge kind of like the historicism and a whole bunch of stuff that you are, you know, they will test your faith. Yeah. They will test your faith. Yeah. You know, no, they need to go. It's this game of telling yourself the same story and you're right, period. You're just right, period. No one else is, no one else can be right. And I won't even discuss it. You know, and when you grow up in that kind of system, you learn to hate yourself. Yeah. And getting out of that is... It's tough. You have to learn how to love yourself now. Oh my God. When hating yourself is the norm, loving yourself... So scary. It's scary, but also seems... Weak. Weak. It seems disgusting. It's like, what? No. Yeah. It's so unhealthy. I will never understand why people don't see this. They just can't. Well, the hope is that they start seeing it, right? Hopefully, yes. And I, you know, and I've said this so many times on this cast, that if you're watching this and you share this, any sort of correlation to our stories or whatever, for me, I don't like to give advice. I don't have any answers. But what's working for me in lifetime, for years, has been therapy. Yes. With a therapist. And... A real licensed therapist. Quitting addictions. And when I say addictions, I'm not been addicted to things, but I mean like, you know, the things that have been told from the church, oh, you're addicted to this. Actually stopping those things, because I started them out of spite with the church, because I was like, fuck the church. I'm going to do this now. And became highly dependent on them. Stopping those dependencies and using, for me, plant medicine was a way to really break all this down to learn what it meant to truly love myself. And I'm still learning how to do that now. And I'll probably continue to learn that for the... I think we all get to learn that for the rest of our lives. And if we're as lucky to have partners that are an example of actual true love. Yeah. You know, that really, really, really helps. That's like a cheat code for sure. Absolutely. Right. That you don't have to get through this alone. None of us are getting through this alone. But it can feel really fucking lonely loving yourself for the first time. No. And again, and I tell this to my therapist, because, you know, because of this same issue, I've, you know, I've had to get into intense therapy. I had to go through a lot of different medicines. Right now I'm doing esketamine that it's also has been, ironically, a godsend. Ah, that's what I've heard. Yeah. It's been very helpful. The problem with this type of behavior is that then when you go into changing your mentality through therapy to learn to love yourself, it seems almost like proselytizing yourself in the same way that church told you not to do stuff. Yeah. It's like, okay, so I'm believing this other thing just because? Yeah. I'm learning to love myself just because? Isn't this the same behavior that I'm running away from? And in starting to learn how to separate those things, you know, like, and understanding the subtleties. It's like the argument, like, well, if Hitler drank water, then drinking water is bad, then I can't drink water. Yeah. You know, you need to understand the subtleties of everything. Understanding that changing your mindset to this healthy way of seeing yourself in a process that can be triggering because it could enact similar mind, not tricks, but beliefs and mechanisms. It's not necessarily bad, but that's when you see how ingrained it is and how dangerous it is. Because something as healthy as seeing yourself worthy of love becomes something dangerous to do or something you're not really willing to do because it's similar to something you experienced before. It's utter nonsense, you know? Wow. Anyone know how long we've been going? Yeah, I know. How long? How many do we got? Just broke two hours. Not bad. Christ! Not bad. That's not bad. That's not bad. Oh, really? We're doing good. Well, I've been so lost in your story that it's felt, honestly, it's felt pretty short. Yeah. Because it's like, I'm so fast. Something I wanted to bring up, I find super interesting. I was listening to a podcast recently, and they're finding a lot of correlations between autoimmune disorders and childhood trauma. But religious trauma is not still yet recognized as trauma. It's not a real thing. And it just, in 2011, religious trauma became like a classification, but it's still in the terms of, oh, were you, do you have childhood trauma? If you were to say, oh yeah, I have religious trauma, it's like, oh, well, no, no, no, no. It's not going to be taken seriously. You have to be abused or this, which is still very real. But something that I'm like, so fascinated with is, this is such a trauma. Like you said, see PTSD. It's so real. It's like lifelong trauma. It takes so long to get out of. And then like the correlation to autoimmune disorders. But I would love to see religious trauma higher up on the trauma scale. And I think we will see it. I think it's happening over time. And why? Because there has been so much research on epigenetics. And you know that there is like your genetic markers, which are the things that you grow up with. And then epigenetics is the things that happen to you, your surroundings, basically that can go to the point of affecting genetical markers and changing things in you, which goes into autoimmune disease. So all of those things are interconnected. People just say, well, if you had traumatic experiences that can go as deep as something epigenetic and change your buildup to the point of creating an autoimmune disease, then it's an umbrella term. It's a traumatic experience. Now we can go into categorizing those traumatic experiences. And one of them is definitely religious. And it just takes someone, you know, academia is also, I can tell you because I'm an academic rat myself, but academia is also, there are things move inside depending on what people are willing to challenge because of funding and different things. So I don't think anything Christian might be too inside academia in a way that won't get support that way. But I think there is still this mentality of ruffling feathers and trying to pinpoint things that could be too controversial. And maybe that's why they might not say religious trauma, but describe everything that could be. Yeah. Exactly everything that could be. If you, if all these boxes check, then you experience this and you're going through this process. Yeah. This is the result. What produced that could be anything. Yeah, exactly. Just check all these boxes, you know, and, you know, and actually that's what's one of, you know, that sort of mentality ruffling feathers and stuff. It's one of the reasons why I came to this podcast, because I still live with the fear of what if someone from my family or from church listens to me? Well, we expect you to share this with all of them. No, I'm just kidding. That's actually the therapeutic thing for me. We think sharing it publicly and letting these people see it if they want to, like it's not, that's not why we're doing, I mean, like you shared whoever you want to, right? But I think that that is a huge therapy, just going public about anything. Absolutely. Well, I mean, but you see how the trauma, how traumatic it can be. You look at me physically. I have tattoos everywhere, piercings. You see me and you don't think church. None at all. But I still have the fear that if, what if someone from that clique sees a unequivocal statement of church critique from my part, where are they going to think? It's like, I don't even look like it even anymore. And you might not even care what they would think, but that's built into you from a child. Absolutely. And that's the thing about the ruffling feathers and why sometimes people just don't do the thing. Why some laws are not passed or some things are rational or not talked about, or we don't say, well, trauma caused by religion is religious trauma. No, it's trauma that was adjacent to experiences inside ideological frameworks. They don't want to ruffle the feathers because we still have that issue. That thing that was so foundational, even to this country. We are a secular country, but we're a secular country was founded on Christian beliefs. We're a Christian or Catholic country either or, but same shit. When you're like a teenager or younger in the church and you come from like an evangelical, radical family and you do something sexual with your girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever, and out of guilt, you tell your parents and your parents, it's not the sexual thing you did that's traumatic. It's the church and that culture that goes, now what you did was sinful, repent. And what happens at that young of an age doing something so normal, but then it's being reinforced as hate, evil, horrible, that's the trauma. That's the culture. That's the trauma. The culture is the trauma. And if you are so lucky to be like the family of church leaders, then it's even worse because you can't be, they don't want them to know. You're staining everyone. Oh yeah. You're staining. So if you tell them out of fear because of the consequence, then you need to go into this covert campaign of covering everything. It's top secret. Top secret because the ministry of someone is at stake here. So it's even worse trauma. And then that makes you connect that sensation to the actual act that you committed that was totally normal. Yeah. Not only are they keeping it, sweeping it under the rug so the church doesn't find out, you're also sweeping all of their bad things under the rug because you... Yeah, you don't want it. Yeah. You're an agent for the... And so as a kid, you're like, I know actually the truth of my parents and they don't know. They don't know anything. Yeah. Right. And like, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Because all these different ways. Absolutely. It was fun. It was fun. Oh, I loved it. Every minute of it. No, I actually have really appreciated your ability to laugh so much in such of a tough and dark past of yours, you know. I mean, that's... It's been fascinating to see that. That's beautiful. That's the only thing you can do, you know, not as much. And this is something that I also, and everyone going through trauma or recognizing their trauma, please give thought to this. So many people say that they're thankful for their experiences because they built them the way they are. Those experiences were bad experiences. Those experiences, no one should go through those experiences. The person that you are now is built with a chain mail of trauma and you're going through a process of taking off each and every plate of armor that you have because of a bad thing. You created good out of it. It's not because of the situation, it's in spite of the situation that you became a good person. Some people don't, and you know, God knows, I mean, I've encountered myself, I face the face of death itself at my own hands because I, sometimes you just, you're like, this is just too much, you know? But in spite of all of that, we became who we are. So I learned to not be thankful for those experiences. I learned to see those experiences as the bad thing no one should go through. The bad thing that they are, and I see myself as a free agent that survived that and built himself and is trying to build himself back again from those experiences. You know? And learning that if you are going through something bad, something traumatic, and your defense mechanism is to survive, tell yourself that you are defending yourself from it, not learning and being, you know, absorbing and being like, yes, this is creating such a buff, great mentality or... That resilience. Yeah, no, no. That was already in you. You're enacting it, because you're confronted a situation that forced you to enact it. You know, that's romanticism. That's revisionism. If I could say, mic drop, you should just drop the mic and hit it on the table. Smash! Just smash the mic down. Yeah, that was very, very powerful. Very well said. And I lived by that mentality that my past is what made me do, like, made me strong today. Like, I was meant to go through that so I could be who I am today. I lived by that for so long. And it still, like, so much of this is like in the last few years that I started to realize that I started to really think like, mainly like having my own son who is split between multiple Christians in his grandparents and other family and stuff. And I'm the only, you know, we're the only ones that are like the weird non-Christian dad. The voice of reason. Yeah, like whatever. And he identifies as a Christian, right? Whatever that is. And it's like, there's been times where I'm like, yeah, no, the quicker we get him out of this situation for the sake of his survival. And it's this, there's, that's what we were raised. I was raised with that as my parents, right? They were like, no, for the sake of your survival, you have to believe this. And so, what I'm learning in my life is that like, when I feel that that's ingrained, I learned that from my upbringing that like, if it's not my way that I found, whatever that is, then it's, then you're going to burn in hell. You're going to die or whatever. When in reality, it's like, no, it'd probably be best for him to have like the diversity he has in his life is really powerful. And hopefully the voice of reason and true love, or like, you know, I don't want to say true love, but love and listening, like all these qualities that make someone, giving someone their self, right? Like you are your own person here. You define yourself. And always, there are things that we often take for granted and we presume that are understood, just communicating those things. You know, if you ever need to talk about anything, if you ever question anything, if you just, I'm here, I'm here, this is a safe space, you can question anything you want. If you believe this, great. I would rather you don't, but we don't have to instill anything, you know, just raise people with the thing that we often have the least, which is the ability to have critical thinking. If we're able to just provide the warmth and security of safety and comfort and kindness with the ability to have critical thinking, then when it happens, they will know where to go. Yeah. It's powerful. This has been good advice that I've gotten from my wife, my therapist, now you, but good God is it hard to learn. There we go again. Good God. It is, yeah, there's endless lessons from our past to learn how to not replicate the same logic, the same sort of culture, if you will. And it's really hard to change culture, right? Oh, absolutely. And it starts in the home though, you know? It really does. And again, you know, it's ingrained in you. Yeah. It's ingrained in you and that's, and I hate this, I say my therapist sees this, every time I use the word, I say, be kind to yourself. But it's being kind to yourself, understanding that when you're acting that way, it's the inner child, it's your OS, you know, you're operating under a system that has been encrypted in a whole host of different things. And it's hard to pick out the characters that we need to push away and understand that when these things are happening, be kind to yourselves and understand that why they happened, know the science behind it, you know, that these things are ingrained in your brain in a particular way, the neurons that are connected to manage that message are there for decades and it's just hard to change. That's why plant medicine is so powerful because they have the ability of neuroplasticity to break those chains and just be kind and say, okay, I know I reacted and understand why you reacted the way you reacted because of something that you didn't have control before, but now you have the understanding and just step-by-step trying to teach yourself. And now we have the tools, step-by-step to learn how to disconnect those neural pathways and learn a kinder, more holistic, frankly, more loving way of living. Because there is no more intense and absolute hate than Christian love. Oh, yeah. It's, you know, and breaking from that, you know, it's horrible. And we need to be kind to the point of understanding that there are remnants and those remnants are epigenetically there, are neurologically there, they were, you know, like branded in our brains. I was talking with my therapist, trying to, as I'm going on another plant medicine retreat in a couple of weeks, and part of the process is kind of ridding your life of all of these things that we're dependent on, whether it be podcasts. If you listen to podcasts all the time, get rid of them. If you listen, you know, like, or if you smoke weed every single day, get rid of it or try to, like, get rid of it. You know, if you're eating processed foods, get rid of it. And so, part of that for me has been breaking free from cannabis again, which was the first mother of my real life ever, Mother Ganja. And so, breaking free from Mother Ganja is always excruciating and so scary for me. And I'm now one week out. So, thank you. Anybody that's trying to quit weed, we see you. But it's the same thing. It's the same thing that happened with me with music. Breaking free from it? Yeah. You know, the same, you know, those are the crutches that, you know, we use that term as something demeaning. Oh, you have a crutch. You have a crutch, but why do you have the fucking crutch? Because you can't walk. You need it. Yeah. You need it to walk. So, we are using a crutch to help us heal the leg. And once it's healed, we can put it away. Right. But it was there to help us and we changed the way we walk, how we engage our muscles, our spine bent a little bit in order to be able to use that third leg and all that through that long process of healing. So, you need to reaccustom yourself to engage other muscles and all those things. But just the way you're saying that is, that's the soft way of looking at it. That's the loving way to look at the crutches in our lives. And I am a hard ass on myself, right? I'm a perfectionist. These are all the religious things, right? They're like the shame, the guilt, like, you know, and so quitting something like using cannabis as an example, my process is like, I can fucking do this. No big deal. Come on, Nathan. Don't be a little, don't be a little bitch, you know, whatever. And, you know, to each their own, whatever you gotta do to get, to break free from these things is fine. But when I was on the phone with my therapist and I was like, I can't figure it out this time. I can't do this. I was like, I'm trying to do this. I'm trying to work out more. Like, I don't know why it's so hard. Every time I take one day off, I'm so, cause I don't sleep. Like, and he just went, Nathan, have you tried just being softer? And I was like, well, and he was like, maybe the next time that you quit and then you start up again, maybe just love yourself. Maybe that's okay. And you feel so stupid. Yeah. I was like, I was like, I guess. And he was like, and when you inevitably do smoke again, just know that you get to come off of it again. Yes. And I was like, oh, just the energy, just that sort of softness. That was like, it's there. Like, it's not like, stop, relax. It's no big deal. You're not failing. And also, and I'm a very big, big advocate for this. Notice your language as well. Meaning you started speaking when you're talking to yourself, you started speaking about wanting to get off of something. So the subject of your inner conversation is this something. We want to get out of that something. And then when you see the progress of it, you start talking about why can't I do this? Why is this so hard? So the subject is you, not the thing. And when you say, when you notice that the subject of the sentence change, then you need to be like, let me re-say all this, maybe tough and hateful things in the context of the subject, the original subject. If we switch the meaning back to the thing that we wanted to quit, how would this sentence be expressed? And that changes the world. Like, okay, so it was hard. Do I need a quality judgment on this sentence? Like, why is it so hard for me? No. Why is hard to quit this? I can't, no, we don't need that part because we're talking about this thing and this thing has no agency. Oh, it has no agency. Oh. And then all of a sudden you reconstruct linguistically something that changes the focus instead of putting you as the element of judgment and putting it back to where it was. And then that keeps you in rails again. Yeah. It's freeing. Yeah. Cause we are taught to put that focus on us all the time. Which is so narcissistic. Oh yeah. Narcissistic, but also kind of like, you know, like Pontius Pilate, like washing our hands. It's like everything that happens, it's constantly happening to us. It's constantly on us. It's on our shoulders. And we need to always deal with that in that way. No, sometimes it's just something and you just let it happen and you treat it and engage with it in that same way. You know, like my husband always tells me whenever I engage in a conversation that way, he said, remember the sun doesn't roll around you. Yeah. It doesn't orbit around you. And it's like, yeah, that's true. That's true. Okay. But you're God's chosen people. That's ingrained. That's another one that's really, the Jesus complex and being chosen is a really hard one to let go of. Oh God. But you're all you really need. Absolutely. That's it. You are purpose just being here. Yeah. Just being alive is purpose enough. Yeah. Even, even better. You create your purpose. So you decide. Yeah. You get to decide. You're here and you get to decide. Yeah. And that's your purpose. And whenever it changes, you get to decide again. Yeah. Start anew. Keep doing it. Keep doing it. Keep doing it. Yeah. Even better. You're here for at least 80 years. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. So I was aiming for 30 and now I'm 33. So I'm way past. So you know that suppose some texts or whatever, some history says that Jesus was crucified at the age of 33. So here you are. Right. Being crucified here on the Moral Combat Podcast. Absolutely. It's very symbolic. It's true, but it's actually a very good year. The year that I'm here in this podcast is the year that I will get my doctoral degree. That's beautiful. Congratulations to that. Thank you. So soon too. Is there anything as we wrap up, you've said so many, so much, it's so beautiful. Is there anything right now off the top of your head that you're just thinking like you'd want to just, maybe you haven't said that you were thinking on your drive here? It's okay if not. No, I would want to implore people and I learned this in the academic, well, I didn't learn it. I reinforced it in the academic process of writing a dissertation. When you believe something, it's okay to search for the opposite view. It's very important. You do a research project, you start with a hypothesis, your faith, and then you look for all the data that could contradict that to really see if you were right or not. Why are you afraid of searching the contradicting data of what you believe? Just do it. If you find the thing that reinforces your faith, great. If you don't, fantastic. But don't go through life forcing people to believe what you believe based on just because. If you haven't even done your due diligence in, I would even say in a theological way, it's sinful because God, if we go through the creationist route, God bestowed upon you a thing that He didn't in the whole of the animal kingdom, and that is reason, logic, and the mind. We are able to think conceptually, we are able to think of the future and of the past that, so far that we know of, no other animal can. So if you don't do your due diligence of putting things into question and doing the reasonable, not confirmation-biased, revisionist approach of searching for something that could contradict you in order to fortify your argument, then you're arguably throwing away and burning one of the qualities that God gave you. So put it into question. Yeah, question. Putting it into question. It's important to put it into question. And actively, if you believe something, there shouldn't be any fear of finding an argument against it. What are you so afraid of? What are you so afraid of? What are you so afraid of? As he went into the camera, what are you so afraid of? Exactly, yeah. If music was such a crutch for you during your upbringing, what is music to you now? Music for me now is a way of communicating, and it was so hard for me to learn that. And in classical music, it's a very snobbish thing as well. People are supposed to compose in a very particular way, a very intellectual way, and this and that. And it was a very healing, but tough and violent way of letting go that music. It's no longer the crutch, but a tool that I have, something that I like and enjoy, and just something that I do. It's just adjacent to me. It's not me. And learning to be able to engage with it as something that I can say, hey, do you like this? You don't? Okay, it's fine. You know, something that I can just put my point of view in it, and something that can just be fun, or something that you can just enjoy or not, or play or perform, whatever. It's just a way of congregating and being together. I always say this to my colleagues when I write something for them. I want to write something for each and every one of you in the ensemble, so that you can have a moment of being together, you know? So it's a means of just creating community. But it's no longer that cork that was trying to hold the flooding like it was before. Still growing from it. I learned so much from you saying that. Music has been so personal to me. So personal, I had to put it aside. It was too painful. It sounds similar to you. And then you were able to work through that to where it's a lot less personal. So if someone's like, I hate your fucking music. You're like, I don't fucking care. I'm not doing it for you. The world has 8 billion people. At least one will like it. Yeah, there's one who likes it, and that's me. My husband always says he likes it, so I'm fine. I'm fine. That's really cool. I really hope to continue to grow in that way with my own music and to bring it back more and more. I think it's time that you ask your most famous question. We asked all of our guests this question, and Zach came up with it. And I think it's... Well, actually, it was spontaneous. I didn't come up with anything. A lot of the stuff we do on this podcast happens right on the podcast. Same thing with like the moment to read it just happened on the podcast. We just kind of do it. And this was like one of our, not first interviews, but one of the fewer first interviews. So much of our trauma comes from our childhood. Yeah. Right? And so... So to all the children, but then also like everyone's deconstructing. We've all gone through it. We just... We are going through it. This time here talking about like the struggles of deconstructing. There's no end. Is there anything you can think of that would be a piece of advice that you can give these people deconstructing, battling their faith? As generic as it is, be kind to yourself. Be kind. Be kind because there are things operating inside of you that are out of your immediate control. They will be in your control, but they are outside of your immediate control. So whenever something happens and you're going through that process and it, you know, I'm not that type of person that if something is painful, it's just going to be your prick. It's going to be fine. Just something. That's it. No, no, no. It will be painful. It will be painful. And you would want to smash your head against the wall, but keep on smashing because the wall will fall. And your head won't break. Your head won't break. And love and be kind. Yes. Always. That's beautiful. That is beautiful. Thank you. Well, Ivan Rodriguez, the composer, the soon to be Juilliard graduate, the doctor. We have so much gratitude for you, your energy, yourself, who you are driving here, finding our podcasts, the first email you sent, the vulnerability in that email. Um, we are starting to meet more and more people and in this and everyone's at different stages. Everyone's a different person. But, um, your vulnerability was like in, in your writing. It was just there. You were exactly, you were authentic. And I really appreciate that. And, um, we are very lucky to have you and our guests are lucky to have you. And, um, yeah, a lot of thanks for you doing this. And I really hope it speaks to you and your family and, you know, like your friends or whatever, however, this ripples in your life. I hope it does something, you know, going public with this and sharing your story. Cause I have no doubt it will. Thank you. I really appreciate it for you having me here. You know, I really enjoyed it. And it's I'm part of the podcast. You did it. We won't get as many views as the Jubilee, but you know, that's okay. I don't care. I'm a fan of this podcast. Yeah. And we'd love to have you back. Um, and I know that you've seen our episodes, the moment to read it in these things. I think we would, we'd absolutely love to have you back, not to share this whole story, but just to be a part of some sort of podcast where we talk about shit. And your input is very powerful. I'm down. Well, with that folks. Um, thanks for joining us for this episode 72 for the Moral Combat Podcast. Um, I guess we'll see you in a couple of weeks. Yeah, I guess so. I guess we'll see in a couple of weeks. We'll see you next time. See you next time. Cue the guitars. Maybe we'll play some of the Ivan's music on the way out right now. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you everybody. Have a wonderful day. Bye.