The Dance of Forgiveness + Resiliency with Carl Yorke (part 2)

As we sat down with Carl York, his tale of weathering the storm of loss and sustaining sobriety seized our hearts. His emotional odyssey, punctuated by the therapeutic embrace of poetry and music, magnifies the essence of resilience and the courage to face life's harshest trials. Carl's candid sharing of the gut-wrenching journey through his son's passing pulls back the curtain on a father's love, the power of memory, and the profound healing found in the simple acts of kindness performed in his son's honor. This conversation is not only a tribute to the bond between parent and child but also a beacon of hope for anyone navigating the treacherous waters of grief.

In a society that often shuns male vulnerability, Carl's openness is nothing short of revolutionary. The episode traverses the complex terrain of emotional honesty, as Carl recounts the support that bolstered him and the companionship that surprised him in his darkest hours. We tackle the nuanced dance of forgiveness and self-acceptance, challenging the myths surrounding self-love and the weight of external validation. Carl's insights provide a compass for those seeking to understand the intricate relationship between grief, vulnerability, and the human need for connection. Join us for a raw and transformative discussion that dares to defy cultural stigmas and illuminates the path to peace and recovery.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

In the Grand Theater of Life. We all seek a comeback, a resurgence, a rekindling of our inner fire. But how do we spark that flame? Welcome to Reignite Resilience. This is not just another podcast. This is a journey, a venture into the heart of human spirit, the power of resilience and the art of reigniting our passions.

Speaker 2: 0:30

Welcome back to part two of our two-part interview with Carl York. We're going to dive back in to hear how Carl navigates through the passing of his son and as he also navigates his way through the pinball game that he found himself in, between emotions, the people that made up his life, the experiences that he had bouncing him around until he finally found his way through those resilient moments to get him to where he is today. We hope you enjoy.

Speaker 3: 0:58

His mother called me on a Tuesday morning and said you better get over here. He's dying. It was seven miles. I got over there, I ran into the house and she was on a couch with him, with her partner, and he looked up at me like this and then he died. I said Willem, I'm here and he died. So that's a great gift. That was a great gift. So there's more and more and more. I have many, many thoughts on all of this. I don't know which ones are going to help anybody, because the only real solace I've gotten out of any of this and it's not enough to train a kid for helping someone. In fact, some guy said to me if you make it through this, there's a guy coming along who will be in your situation and you can be there for him. My honest answer was fuck that guy. I don't give a fuck about that guy. I don't know who he is and I don't care about him. But it turns out that I need that guy. I need a string of those guys.

Speaker 4: 2:09

Wow. So you talked about you got sober before all of this stuff started happening. Most people would have just gone back and started drinking, and you said it was because you wanted to be present. What was it that kept you going? You get up every morning. I mean talk about resilience, getting up and making that choice between the bottle and being present. Not a lot of people can do that. What was it?

Speaker 3: 2:38

I know that's true, and I don't know if I can actually account for that. The friends helped. That was certainly okay. I think this might be a clue. I have a gigantic ego and the proper use of my ego is to stay sober Was it like a life preserver, because if I go out then I'm just like all of those losers.

Speaker 3: 3:08

Do all of us have abandonment issues? I don't know. I'm not sure I know anybody who doesn't, but my children had already been through divorce and I just couldn't heap more any kind of abandonment on them. The way all of that was unfolding, even before he was diagnosed, was not good. I had a fight to stay in their lives because of this partner that, my ex. I need to say this right now before I forget. He and I are on very good terms today and I think, partly because I didn't quite run from here's how I didn't run from the feelings I found a way to cry every day. That wasn't hard at the beginning, that was easy.

Speaker 3: 3:56

That story I told you about Willem punching me. I was actually on a date, that was a joke, but poor woman, poor her, she had no idea. And that picture of him punching me came into my head. By this time I knew what that was. It was like a little postcard and it was like a little signal that said remember this, remember those feelings that you packed away that day. Well, today's the day it's coming out. Yeah, because grief will take. No for an answer, but it won't take never for an answer. Today's the day, in the middle of this date, I said to her I'm sorry, I know this sounds cliche, it's not you, it's me, but I have to go home right now. Yeah, and I went home because I knew that was a week's worth of grief.

Speaker 3: 4:45

So then as things got, as the chaos calmed down and things started to get a little better, I couldn't flush it out as much. I heard myself say to somebody I'm going through a lot. I got this picture in my mind of going through the woods and there's people shooting at me. That wasn't what was happening. I wasn't going through a lot, there was a lot going through me. That's what was happening, yeah. So like every time I turned something around, that was like the answer and then I wasn't fighting anymore. I was trying to like get out of the way so that whatever wanted to go through would go through and I wouldn't have to carry it. It turned out I had a lot to go through me.

Speaker 3: 5:28

So on Wednesday you know the two o'clock screening I'd go to a movie that I knew would make me cry, because I was an easy touch anyway, but I'd be alone in the theater. You know it'd be dark and I could just sit there and cry really, really, really hard for as long as I could. You know what else it did? It turned me into a poet. I started writing poetry Because this guy and my therapist said I should, and so I'm not a poet.

Speaker 3: 5:58

You know, I'm really not, but everybody's a poet. If you know more than 85 words, you know, just write them down in different orders. So I started writing poetry and then my friend said, my therapist said, the great thing about poetry is it's not useful for anything except for self transitioning yourself and knowing yourself. You can't make money off it, you know it's not going to get you laid, none of that shit. You know.

Speaker 3: 6:27

I wrote the poetry and went and had lunch with my friend again. He goes. Well, now you've got to go out and go to an open mic somewhere and read this in public. I said with people there, why would I? I don't want to do that. And he goes, no, you need to do that. And I said, ok, so I did. And oh boy, you have no idea how much horrible poetry is out there, disastrous poetry, and the poets don't. They have, no, no idea. So I did that. And then I was on my way to my third Compassionate Friends Conference. Just imagine, this is a true story. A thousand grieving parents in a hotel, in a ballroom next to a wedding. Oh, my goodness, it's all a comedy to me. If it's not a comedy, then if.

Speaker 3: 7:18

I'm not laughing, I'm shooting you know it's like there, it's like really binary.

Speaker 3: 7:23

So I'm going up the escalator and there's this old lady in front of me and she's really nicely dressed.

Speaker 3: 7:27

I thought that's not how people dress at these conferences and the way these conferences work. They have these gigantic cork boards, that rolling cork boards, and you put pictures of your kids up and people put newspaper articles and anything that is their kid, because what happens is nobody will talk about it. Everyone's like I don't want to bring it up because I don't want you to start thinking about it. What makes you think? I'm not thinking about it all day, every day, right, so I'm thinking about it all. So, but at this place they come up and they go tell me about your kid, and it's like he's alive for an afternoon, like that. So we get to the top of the escalator, here's these boards, pictures on him of kids and this poor woman. She goes pictures and she starts down. You know, I couldn't help myself. I had to watch this car accident, you know, because she's like, oh, okay. And when she gets to the next one, here's the guy who had five daughters who died in the same car accident, like this, you know. And then finally someone drags her off to the wedding. You know, oh, my. So I'm on my way there to one of those and I'm two and a half years out at this point, I think, maybe see 97, maybe three years out.

Speaker 3: 8:47

I was in the Avis line at the Phoenix airport and I look over, I also fall in love, like boom, like that. I look over, I see this woman and I'm like, oh, this one's going to break my heart. She had these green eyes and she was like I couldn't breathe and I'm like I got to get out of here. Because I got to get out of here, I'm going to go get my baggage, you know, and then she'll be gone. And then it was too late because she'd spotted me and she'd just broken up with somebody and the guy sitting next to her on the airplane said yeah, don't worry about it, you don't even know, you're going to go around the corner. And there he is, you know.

Speaker 3: 9:25

And she went around the corner and there I was and I had said to the guy at drop me at the airport have a feeling I'm going to meet somebody. But I thought I was going to meet somebody at the convention. I thought I needed somebody who had a dead kid, you know, so we could. So she walks up and she starts like talking to me and I was just getting to the point where, if you were next to me in line at the Avis counter, say, or in the supermarket, you had to hear the whole fucking story, you know.

Speaker 3: 9:53

And so my therapist is like, you know, you need to strive to be superficial. I'm like she said they can't all go deep. You got to let him off the hook. So I'm like, okay, so she goes. Well, what are you doing here? I'm going. Well, I'm going to a conference, what are you doing here? Well, I'm a painter, I'm going to the Grand Canyon and I'm going to paint. And and then she kept asking me and I kept deflecting and just interviewing her and she was happy enough to. Well, it's a longer story. What happened is I married her and now we're still married.

Speaker 2: 10:25

So congratulations, that's amazing.

Speaker 3: 10:28

That is amazing. And what actually happened was I told her the whole truth, and I was terrified to do that because I was really sure that anybody who heard the whole truth that you've just heard would run as fast as they could. Yeah, so I actually wrote a piece for the compassionate friends publication, like the seven things, sort of the seven things you do to recover. One of them was Stay Sober. One of them was I answered every single card that somebody sent me, every single sympathy card.

Speaker 4: 11:11

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 11:11

I answered every single one. I thank them because you know, in smaller, like tribal societies, when somebody would die, they'd shut the whole tribe down for three days. So Willie died at her house and eventually I was on my way home and people I saw people getting gas and I'm like, don't they know? Yeah, how can they be? How can people be driving around? He just died, you know. So that was one way that I, and poetry was another one. Oh, that was the right rest of it. I started writing her poems. She really didn't want to be involved. She lived in Northern California, southern California, and I just started writing her poems and that worked, by the way if you're out there and you're single write some bad poetry.

Speaker 3: 11:59

You can even just steal it and nobody cares and be vulnerable, you know. Yeah, yeah, love it. And I think it's the upside down world where I was hurting so much. I just wanted everybody to go away. I couldn't talk to anybody and the people I knew I couldn't see, because I knew they could see right through me and it was so tender in there. But what I did instead was like I, you know, I invited more people in that way. I, you know, I responded to each one of those things.

Speaker 3: 12:31

You know, it was not easy and it didn't come quickly. Also, to understand that after a, like a death, especially a long-term illness, your schedule then opens up, right. So then there's all this unstructured time and there's a limit, I think, to how much you can investigate yourself there. Yeah, you know, there's a great book that helped a lot, called the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, and one of her exercises was she called them the morning pages. So you write three pages every morning by hand and the rules are you keep your hands moving and you're never going to read it again.

Speaker 4: 13:22

Interesting.

Speaker 3: 13:24

And it's you just dump. So I have many, many pages of I have nothing to say. I hate doing this. I don't know why I'm doing this. This is a big waste of time. This is really dumb.

Speaker 3: 13:36

And then, pop, here came something, you know. It's like oh my God, nobody will ever love me again. You know, oh my God, how am I going to make a living? Oh, you know, and all that fear that's buried underneath there. So that was one of the really important versions of how do you investigate? How did I investigate what was actually happening inside me? Because I wasn't ready all at once, and nobody's ready all at once, yeah, Because you go immediately into shock, you know.

Speaker 3: 14:08

And then you start, you think you feel, I thought I was feeling, I thought I was feeling the pain, and it turned out that that moment, that shock, wore off. I'm like, oh, oh, no, oh, I had no idea there was this much more, you know, yeah. And then there was the girlfriend who dumped me. Oh my God, that was about a year and a half out, yeah, we'd say, saw each other for about six months and she dumped me. And I called this guy my mentor and I said I thought you said that nothing hurts as much as when your kid dies and he goes. Well, there's nothing as bad as that. I said then why do I feel worse today than when he died". And he said oh, I forgot to tell you. Every loss afterwards is magnified.

Speaker 4: 14:59

Wow, nobody tells you that, nobody, really seems to know yeah, wow, I mean yeah.

Speaker 3: 15:06

So if you encourage me, I'm going to keep talking. So I'm just warning you.

Speaker 2: 15:11

Well, carl, I'm curious just in terms of what you do, if it's coping, if it's processing, if it's being present now and what's helping you, because I can't imagine that that pain ever goes away. So what do you see that's working for you right now?

Speaker 3: 15:29

That's a really good question, because probably most of the people I know don't want to hear about it. It's just really too much to deal with. They'll hear about it and they'll go oh, that sounds like, because there's his birthday, which is in January, there's his death day, which is in April, there's his relapse day, which is in February. So that period from his birthday to his death day, which we're in right now, is real dicey. I'm never quite sure. It's like Christmas. I love Christmas, new Year's, we all love New Year's and then I'm like, oh, yeah, right, and now it's his birthday. I wonder what that's going to be like. Well, sometimes it's just another day and I go thanks for showing up, and sometimes I can barely breathe, and sometimes it's fine. The day of and the day after I'm flattened. So I try to stay open to what it might be. But, like before, I have a little soundtrack of music that helps me get in touch with all of that. For me there's a scattering of various songs that have message in it, but there's a Broadway show and a musical movie called Rent, and Rent for me is hits all the right notes, because everybody in that is dying of AIDS, and there's this character named Angel, and when Angel dies so when my wife's not here because she doesn't need to, it's not going to be doing so there's part of me that would wouldn't want to say self. Pity is always not far away. I can always reach out and find that it's sticky for me. So if I get some on me it's hard to get it off. So I try not to go there. But if I do these things, sometimes I go back and read my old journals, not the morning pages but the journals you know, so that I can connect with those feelings again. And a lot of people. I knew a guy whose daughter died and he said, oh no, I just remember the good times. And then he was dead in 18 months. Because it's not his life, isn't just the good times. I mean, we're addicted to that. The whole world is addicted to that. Not the whole world, really, it's America we're just all about. We don't want to hear about the kind of? You know, this plane goes down the Long Island Sound. This must be 35 years ago and I remember this, the reporter standing at the edge of the shore, going Well, they found the first bodies and now the healing can begin. It's like no, no, the healing had. No, the healing is a long way off.

Speaker 3: 18:23

Normally you have to go in and cauterize that wound. You have to. You have to go in and flush it. You know you have to call it what it is. You know it's not a challenge and it's not an opportunity. It's a wound. You know it's a. It's a bloody, possibly fatal wound and if you don't understand that then you might miss a piece. It's like cancer. If they don't get it all out, it'll come back. And even if you do do what I did, you know, every once in a while at work I have to tell them. You know I'm having one of those days. I'm going to tell you one more thing that has really helped, and I'll stop. On this birthday, I go to work in his honor. On his death day I go to work in his honor. If I'm driving in traffic and somebody pulls in front of me, I'll let them in and I'll even say out loud, out loud that one's for you, Willie.

Speaker 3: 19:18

You know I try to do good things, yeah, consciously for him. I don't think it makes any sense, but it makes me feel like good. It makes me feel good, you know. So I don't know, say it, answer your question.

Speaker 2: 19:32

It absolutely does. Thank you, it does.

Speaker 4: 19:35

Beautiful. What a story. It's pretty amazing. I'm amazed. Yeah, when was the last time you talked through this story and told somebody about this other than with me on the phone a month ago?

Speaker 3: 19:50

Yeah, that's a real good question. It's been a while. It's been a while. I you know. For one thing, like I said, most people aren't prepared to handle it. Yeah, and sometimes there's been cases, situations where I bring it up and then I'm like whoops, you know, there's somebody who's listening, who has a little child, you know has a like a two year old or four year old, and then I see them weeping and I'm like whoops, you know they didn't need to hear this. It's scary enough out there, yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:25

Or they did right. I mean, that's the other. Sometimes it's a yeah, it's the mirror that you get.

Speaker 3: 20:31

Sometimes they need to know that I'm here, yeah, yeah, because I also get calls from people who are afraid. I just got to call a friend of a friend whose six year old was diagnosed with some kind of heart defect Sometime in his life he's going to need a heart transplant and they said you should call Carl and they were like why would I do that? And he did, and you know, the first thing I tell him is I'm not sure I can help you because my son died. Yeah, so my story is about that. But I also went through this stage that you're in, yeah, and there was a guy on a couple on our board with a son with the same cancer as Wellam and who was the same age and he died three months before Wellam did. And I became a little bit friendly with those people. This was one of those things where I said you know, you're not sure what's inside of you. You know, when his son died I thought, you know, I had that thought. It's like, well, maybe he's not like spiritually fit. You know, maybe they had the wrong thought. You know, maybe they were doing it wrong. You know the things that made me so mad when people said that to me.

Speaker 3: 21:42

Then, when Wellam died, I'm like, oh okay, you know, there it is. But I went and talked to them and that's when he found out that it wasn't 50% chance, it was a 10% chance. And he was furious, and I knew that he was furious because his child had died. But I said what would you have done different if they would have told you? You know, I was really grateful, for they lied to me. Yeah, I was grateful because that gave me 18 months of hope, you know. And he said, well, I would. There's this guy in Germany doing mononuclear, monoclonal nucleotide, blah, blah, blah. I said, yeah, what's, what are his percentages? He goes, yeah same yeah well yeah.

Speaker 4: 22:30

Well, I've got pages of notes. You know, find a way to cry every day. I agree with you in the fact that we don't do a good job of allowing ourselves to feel. You know, when we're angry, when we're sad, we just push it down and think, oh, I just need to have a better mindset.

Speaker 3: 22:48

Think about when something happens to somebody and you ask their husband or wife or sister or brother and you go how they don't? Well, she's doing, okay, you know she's actually pulling herself together. Well, I'm not sure that's okay. You know, it might be a little soon. I remember this a long time ago a prayer group in Texas, a bunch of kids and someone came up and shot a bunch of them, and this was before all of these other ones, yeah, and they had those Christian kids on TV the next day and they said we've forgiven this guy for doing that. And I thought, no, you haven't. You haven't even felt it yet. You don't even know what happened yet. You know, but that's how much of a hurry everybody around us is in to getting over with. So, three months out, when somebody said, you know, shouldn't you be over it? They actually did, shouldn't you be over that? And I said well, I think, I think you're over it. I thought so, is that?

Speaker 3: 23:42

what you're saying You're over it. Okay, well, I understand that you can be over it. I don't get to be over it, you know. But anyway, yes, yes, cry every day. What else did you?

Speaker 4: 23:53

I also wrote down brief will take no, but not never. That was powerful Because so true. It will eventually catch up with you, so I love that.

Speaker 3: 24:05

And everybody didn't have the advantage I had of being divorced, being living alone as a single dad, you know, twice a week in a shitty little apartment with a video game console and a carton of cigarettes, you know, and be this butt head on the TV, you know, because I was able to. I didn't have other kids that I had to take care of all the time. You know, I didn't have a job that I had to show up at all the time.

Speaker 4: 24:33

It sounds like harder, but yeah that part about sober so that you could be present.

Speaker 2: 24:40

Telling your why the whole truth was huge, because that level of vulnerability I don't think many people go there by choice, like with the intentionality that you did. That's, that's significant.

Speaker 3: 24:55

So our first year together. April 19th was coming that's what I'm standing, and my other son was still living in LA.

Speaker 3: 25:03

And I still had an apartment there, sort of, and I'd spent weekends down there with him on my days and like that. So I was flying back and forth every couple of weeks and April 19th was on a Sunday, and it was the Sunday. I was going to be down there and Susan said what are you going to do on April 19th? I said, well, I'm going to be in LA, I'll go to the cemetery and then I'll come back here. Okay, a few days later she goes what are you doing on April 19th? I'm like I'm going to go to the cemetery. A few days later she says what are you doing on April 19th? I'm like am I doing this wrong? Is this what it is?

Speaker 3: 25:37

Because the last girlfriend was like oh, you're doing this wrong. She didn't have kids, okay, so she goes. No, I know that's going to be a hard day for you. I just want to be there for you. I called my therapist. I said I have to tell you what this woman said to me. She said I want to be there for you. My therapist said oh, you wouldn't recognize that. That's called support.

Speaker 4: 26:02

You're like what is this?

Speaker 3: 26:07

So, but it also scared me because, like what I said before, if anybody really knew who I was and what was happening, they'd run. So I called my mentor guy, the guy that had you know years ahead of me. I told him. He said so she come to the airport, to the cemetery with you. I said, no, he goes. Why not? I said I don't know why not. I didn't ask her he goes. No, you didn't ask her.

Speaker 3: 26:30

Because you're going to go to the cemetery. You're going to fall apart. You can get on the plane. You're going to put it all back together. We're off the plane. You're going to because you don't, because you don't have any feelings, because you're a man. Yeah, I'm like, right, that's exactly the plan. He goes. So you're gonna marry her. When does she get to see that part of you? Yeah, and I'm like, oh man, I should have hung up. You're fired and I go okay. Well, what do you suggest? And I have learned to take his suggestions and said well, here's what I think you tell her waiting at the cemetery to meet her, so that he knows his old man's gonna be okay. I said that's about the corniest thing I've ever heard. And he goes okay. So I Said it to her and she said oh, of course I'll go with you. So she went with me and I fell apart right in front of her. Yeah, this is barely six months into our relationship and here she is seeing the thing that I want to hide the most.

Speaker 4: 27:42

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 27:43

Yeah, like I said, 25 years later we're still married.

Speaker 4: 27:47

I love it. Well, and I did. I don't think it's just you. There's a lot of us that have a really hard time being vulnerable and showing that side.

Speaker 3: 28:00

It's dangerous?

Speaker 4: 28:01

Yeah, absolutely you. You show that, then people know how to hurt you yeah.

Speaker 3: 28:09

They add that to how they already know how to hurt you, yeah.

Speaker 4: 28:12

Yeah, yeah, and so yeah, and you can't pretend like it doesn't exist either.

Speaker 2: 28:18

That's the other pieces. No show up in that space. You can't pretend that it's not there, which is often what we do with ourselves right, it's, it's fine, I'm fine, everything's fine, let's move along, it's okay.

Speaker 3: 28:28

Yeah, that's right, that's right. And there's a whole segments of the culture who believe that's the right way to live. My wife from the Midwest. So in the Midwest you don't ask anybody about anything except the weather and Maybe the Green Bay Packers yeah, you know how, about those Packers? And you don't tell anybody anything. You certainly don't say anything, like you know I'm scared or I'm hurting. Yeah, they'll do that, and so most people. That's why I said, I think, an awful lot of the words.

Speaker 3: 29:05

Troubles are unresolved grief. It comes out in anger when you're feeling Helpless and powerless. The only place to and you are when you are and I was I was helpless, I couldn't help anybody. I couldn't help willing. You know I couldn't cure him, I couldn't do anything the only place you can feel any energy or power is in anger. You know it's the sort of the last stop of the impotent. You know, when you're truly impotent and you have no way to affect what's going on.

Speaker 3: 29:36

And if you ask anybody who's been gotten shouted at by somebody, ask them what do you think? Is that gonna change your behavior? You know, is that making it better for have somebody yelling at you to do something? And it? And you know, and you ask the person who's shouting and half the time, real girl, I don't know. I just lost it. You know I lost it. So I think forgiveness is really probably the hardest one in many ways, because I think I think I think I haven't thought this quite through all the way.

Speaker 3: 30:10

I think maybe we have to forgive ourselves and the other people at the same time, and there's a lot of phony stuff out there. One of them is you know, you can't love anybody else unless you love yourself. Well, I think that's bullshit. I think we live. We're pack animals. We live in relationship with each other. We're constantly getting reflections from other people. I've heard people say I don't care what anybody thinks. Really you don't care what your wife thinks. If your wife thinks you know you're Scumbag, she gonna leave. What about your boss? Do you care where your boss thinks you?

Speaker 3: 30:44

do care with your boss things, yeah, okay, what about the bartender you want? You want to get, you care what he thinks because you want to get your drink now, right, so, so there's a lot of things. We say this bravado and it really gets in the way of clearing the decks. So that, not necessarily so that you can live, but so that you can actually decide whether you want to live or die, I think that's a really important decision that people are Coerced into. You know you're not supposed to want to die, but until I really admitted I wanted to die, I couldn't fight back against that. You know, I couldn't put that in perspective and go really, I don't think I want, I don't think I'm done. Yet my other son is autistic. He needs me. He's never gonna run his own life. You know he needs his mom and he needs me for as long as we can hang out. So, um, yeah, I get depressed, I do.

Speaker 3: 31:42

Oh, there's another movie I like to watch is called in America. It's a story of an Irish couple with two Gorgeous little girls who move to America. He moves here to be an actor and what they're you know. Here's another one you can write down. Everyone needs to know what they're running to and what they're running from. And what they're running from is they have a son who died and one of the things they're running from is who's to blame. I was really, really lucky that I'm not one of those people who got mad and got in the car and backed over my kid because I didn't know he was there. Yeah, I met those people, yeah.

Speaker 3: 32:19

I met them, yeah. That being said, I went to therapy one day it was on the second anniversary of his death and I said, oh, the whole world just went gray again and she goes. Well, it's pretty hard to care about anything when you're using all your energy to hold down your feelings. I'm like, why don't you're talking about you know what? I'm writing three pages a day. I'm talking to you all the time. I'm processing this as best I can and I'm not hiding anything. And she goes oh really, what about the guilt? I'm like Guilt, what guilt. I? I don't even guilt, I hid cancer. She goes. Yeah, but you were supposed to protect him.

Speaker 3: 33:00

Wow and here it came, boom boy, the water works, I so there's all kinds of hidden little pockets of things and I'm still finding them.

Speaker 4: 33:11

Yeah, it's been many years and I think that's the key. There is it. It's different for every single person.

Speaker 3: 33:19

What helps them get through and glad you said that because there's, because that's another Half myth to me. Is that okay? Yes, it is, because, yes, we're all different. Yes, we just a snowflake. Yes, yes, yes, I had a job. I had a job interviewing people in group homes. So these are people with all kinds of developmental disabilities, all kinds of missing parts. You know, what they weren't missing is a is a sort of a standard package of what people are and what they want and what they need. And I asked every single one of them you know, tell me about your girlfriend. So here's a guy who's non-verbal, who's got helpers. You know, I'm actually interviewing that the helper and the helper would laugh and go he doesn't have a girlfriend. Look at him. And then he'd he'd point at one of the staff members.

Speaker 3: 34:13

Oh he knew what I meant. Now, his version of girlfriend and mine are different, but he had the same package, so so that taught me that there's this base package that we all have and the scope and the range of needs and Treatments. It's not as great as we like to think and you know, there's a whole generation now I don't know which one it is. Is it the millennials that they're blaming the baby boomers like me for ruining? Of all the millennials? Because we told them you could be anything you want and you're really special and everything. And guess what?

Speaker 3: 34:49

No, those are the Xers, and that's the answers yes, I Mean, if anybody was really that special, they would die in ten minutes. You know, it's the. You know we have to have Pieces of us that are alike and we have to really be conscious that let's find the pieces that are alike so that we can talk to each other, so that we can be together. And the idea that everybody does a different see, that really Isolates everybody. Now they're like, oh well, I can't do it their way. They did it because we all do it different, but it's also an excuse for not doing it. It's also an excuse for, you know, well, I'm different, so I don't have to. You know, I taught writing classes and I have very. My wife has a step Person in her life who's like, wants to be a writer but won't take any classes, won't learn anything about it, and Because she's like a thing is, she's not Mozart, you know. You know she's not Beethoven, she's not Robert Louis Stevenson, she's not Sylvia Plath, she's not. She's just another one of us who I'm doing a lot of work on Investigating my great grandfather's life.

Speaker 3: 36:04

He was a lot more famous than my father ever told us and I'm finding this out. But you know what? Nobody's ever heard of this guy interesting when I search new newspapers, calm for his obituary. His obituary shows up in every newspaper in America, every small town and large town newspaper in America, because he toured from 1892 to about 1923. He was on tour constantly. He was constantly moving from theater to another. Everybody knew who he was in 1939 when he died. Today you can't find his name anywhere. He's not on Wikipedia. I'm gonna write him a Wikipedia page. That's what I'm doing there. You go, perfect. But but what? My point there is that, well, we all pass through, yeah, and if we were really all that different, we wouldn't be able to Function within the society. And the people who are really actually that different, they're a menace to society, most of them, you know, somehow they have a harder time fitting in or finding where they can fit in.

Speaker 3: 37:11

Yeah, there's a connection here. Every genre of movie has a theme to it, you know.

Speaker 3: 37:17

Mm-hmm and I'll only give you this one horror movies. The theme in the horror movies is that the monster wants to be human. And what is the difference between a monster or an alien and a human? That's the difference, and in most of the early ones, especially the monsters not even early ones. But the monsters are so frustrated that they can't be human that they start killing humans. Frankenstein, freddy, you know all of these, all of these guys. So I see another bunch of people getting mowed down and I'm like there's your horror movie. There's a guy who couldn't fit in. We enhanced the idea that he was different, and so I'm a little bit upside down in America. I don't, I'm not anti-American, I'm just Not very. Yeah, this, this whole, yeah, you can tell that this whole thing that I, I experienced it changed me. Yeah, it would change how I see things. So well, carl, I'm happy to share it with you and Appreciate you listening for so long. Holy crap you get.

Speaker 2: 38:27

Well, it's been great.

Speaker 3: 38:29

I need a life, you need a life.

Speaker 2: 38:34

Well, thank you for sharing. I think this has been wonderful. I'm so grateful that I was able to hear your story.

Speaker 3: 38:39

Thank you, yeah yeah, thank you for having me and I hope it somebody can use it and you know like that and heal.

Speaker 4: 38:47

Yeah, I think that. I think they do. You have definitely probably spoken to a lot of people.

Speaker 3: 38:52

Yeah, so I'm gonna give you one more Ramdas quote. He said we're all just walking to each other home.

Speaker 4: 38:59

Like that.

Speaker 3: 38:59

Thank you, ramdas, and thank you too, I hope. I hope I see you, you know, on the next time around the block.

Speaker 2: 39:07

Absolutely, oh my goodness. Thank you so much, carl. It has been an absolute honor. We hope that you always have enjoyed this episode of rig night resilience and our interview with Carl York. Carl, if someone wants to get a hold of you or get in touch with you, where can they find you?

Speaker 3: 39:22

Carl York at gmailcom. At C a r l y o r ke Time we'll put it in.

Speaker 2: 39:30

Fabulous, it's wonderful. Well, it has been an absolute pleasure and until next time we will see you all soon. Have a good one.

Speaker 3: 39:39

Okay, bye, bye.

Speaker 2: 39:44

Thank you for joining us on today's episode of read night resilience. We hope that you had amazing a ha's and takeaways. Remember to subscribe on your favorite streaming platform, like it and download the upcoming episodes, and if you know anyone in your life that is looking to continue to ignite their Resilience, share it with them. We look forward to seeing you on our future episodes and, until then, continue to reignite that fire Within your hearts. Oh,