Healing Trauma Through Story with Indie Author and Publisher Joshua Lloyd Fox

Are you ready to embark on an extraordinary journey with Joshua Lloyd Fox, the indie author and master storyteller who began his writing career at 40? Grab your headphones as we navigate through the fascinating chapters of Joshua's life, including his diverse background as a soldier, aircraft mechanic, and technical writer for the US and foreign militaries, to his profound insights on faith, transformation, and creativity.

Strap in as Joshua opens the doors to his world of personal transformation and the therapeutic power of storytelling. He enlightens us about the process of creating one's own narrative and the significance of the creative process in our personal growth and connection with others.  Whether you're a writer, a reader, or simply someone yearning to understand your own journey better, this episode promises a treasure trove of wisdom. Join us for an unforgettable conversation with Joshua Lloyd Fox, a true testament to redemption, transformation, and creativity.

Learn more about Joshua Loyd Fox at the links below:
www.joshualoydfox.com
www.watertowerhill.com
www.heathermillerhorror.com
www.linktr.ee/jlfox

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:20

Hi guys, welcome to Language of the Soul podcast, where life is story. So, as usual, I'm going to introduce our producer, extraordinaire and newly named I guess Renaissance woman, Virginia Grenier.

Speaker 2 0:40

Sorry, I keep getting new tag lines.

Speaker 1 0:44

Oh, it'll evolve. We're going to get to this.

Speaker 2 0:46

I'm sure it's going to evolve this phrase here called me the lash lady, since I had my lashes today the lash librarian.

Speaker 1 0:57

Say hello to the folks for Jane.

Speaker 2 0:59

Hello everyone.

Speaker 1 1:00

Okay, and before I introduce today's guest, I want to start by saying we really struck gold today. Again, we're doing two episodes back to back and I feel like both our guests today will inspire for sure and again illustrate or exemplify a big premise of both the book and the podcast, language of the Soul, in that the creative process in general, but I think writing in particular, is cathartic, we all know that. But more importantly, it transforms. It transforms ideas and, by extension, one hopes right, the paradigms of society at large are impacted. So I think this is a great example of the personal catharsis, then the catharsis that can happen on the part of the patron and, by extension, the shifts in even policy, not just paradigms and thought forms but policy. So in that spirit, I'm going to do my best with your intro, but feel free, joshua, if I butcher it to clarify anything I got wrong.

Speaker 1 2:05

But today's guest, I'm going to rattle off your books first this time, just so we don't skip that. I think Joshua identifies as an indie author, very successful one, that has a lot to teach us about building a publishing company from square one. But we'll save that for later. And the titles that I've got are, I guess, the Archangel Mission series and there's four installments, with one upcoming. I had not chosen amongst you to build a tower. One becomes a thousand and from what I understand, the upcoming installment is onto this mountain. And then we have a short story collection called the Book of the Tower and the Trader. But, most importantly, I'm going to read your bio and forgive me if it sounds like this is a very dated reference, but the dating game. I read it earlier and it just sounded like I was reading either kind of an OK Cupid profile or sound a little bit like the dating game from the 70s. But here's what I've got. Here's the part that sounded like the dating game.

Speaker 1 3:19

Joshua enjoys cooking, hiking, the venerable hobby of pewter soldier casting, which I'd love to ask about later. Pewter soldier casting it can be found with a good tabak cigar and an even better Kentucky whiskey next to a wood fire. On most evenings he lives for his family, his vision and the journey God has led him to. The past few years he's been a soldier, a master aircraft mechanic, a cook, an amateur MMA fighter and most recently has worked as an engineer, a technical writer and an SME for the US and foreign militaries on missile defense systems. Needless to say, that is very diverse at first glance, so I would love to hear what you think the common thread is and how it led you, at the age of 40, to become a writer. So welcome if I haven't said it correctly yet Joshua Lloyd.

Speaker 3 4:13

Fox, what an intro. You know, reading that and writing that, I'm a little embarrassed when other people read it out loud why you know well, all of that is absolutely 100% true. You know, I did all of that. But it's difficult when and we'll talk about the book I wrote about like imposter syndrome to keep reminding myself that you did do all that. Take some credit, you know. But yeah, no, that was perfect. Thank you so much. The only thing I would say is archangel.

Speaker 1 4:49

Oh, sorry, did I say archangel. Yes, Okay gotcha, don't worry about it.

Speaker 3 4:55

Well, archangel missions are my fiction series, but you've said all the names correctly and in order. I appreciate that.

Speaker 1 5:03

You have a short. Did I mention the short story collection? I was intrigued by that as well.

Speaker 3 5:09

Yep, that's on Amazon, vela, so it's a companion to the series. It's a series of episodic short stories called the Tower and the Trader, and I get those names from the only two surnames in the Bible were Mary Magdalene, or of Magdal, which is of the tower in the Hebrew, and Judas Iscariot, or the Trader. So the premise of the short stories were that there was these two families who have fought down through history the tower family and the Trader family. So that's why I named it that.

Speaker 1 5:45

Love it, the Montague's and the Capulets right.

Speaker 3 5:49

I think it was Kurt Vonnegut that said there's a million ways to write a story, but only about four or five places to get to in them, Nice.

Speaker 1 6:00

Yeah, well, you know it's funny. I recently read that Iscariot and Magdalene are the only surnames in the Bible. It's a really great premise, for Is it a series or just the one story?

Speaker 3 6:15

No. So right now on Vella there's four short stories that equal about 10,000 words and I write them as I can because I'm writing the actual novels. I'm really weird. I can't stand series authors that take 10, 15 years between books, while that's OK because they deserve to write. Millions of followers, tv shows, whatever. There's a little bit of responsibility, I think, on the author's part to go ahead and not die before you finish the series, right?

Speaker 1 6:49

I get that way. Sorry about stranger things.

Speaker 2 6:52

I'm like really yeah, but at least stranger things just continue on the whole time. I was thinking was Martin.

Speaker 3 6:59

Yeah, oh yeah, martin. So I'm thinking, but it started with Jordan. Jordan, I'm sorry. Robert Jordan wrote the Will of Time series and passed away. Luckily, he knew it was coming, so he named a successor and it was finished brilliantly by another fantastic author. But if he had not, if it would have been a surprise, there would have been millions of people out there going oh huh. So yeah.

Speaker 2 7:26

Sorry, Robert, were you going to say we cut you off?

Speaker 1 7:29

Oh, just that. I mean it's in streaming. There seems to be a long way especially with the pandemic in between seasons and it is for me it's kind of weird to binge watch a full season or two seasons and number one, watch those kids grow up on stranger things, right, it's kind of haunting to realize how quickly the time passes. But anyway, I feel like I'll be old and gray by the time the final season of Stranger Things comes out. But I want to go back. I know you get a little sheepish about the bio, but I did skip over, I think, an important part that I would love to follow up on later because I think it'll be of real value to our listeners. And again, forgive me but I'm going to go back to you. Being an old fashioned boy from West Texas who now splits his time between Northeastern Oklahoma and the East Coast with his wife, author and editor Heather, is it Dourity?

Speaker 3 8:19

Dourity yes that's my actual, real. That's my real last name.

Speaker 1 8:23

Got it Okay, and their children, friends and as many pets and books as they can surround themselves with which, by the way, sounds like heaven in my world. He is also owner and publisher, and here's what I really wanted to make sure to get to the owner and publisher at Waterhouse Hill Publishing LLC, which I know you've started from the ground up. And then the final tidbit is you've started your own masterclass series titled Joshua Lloyd's Mastering the Journey. So I'd love to get to all that.

From Rock Bottom to Redemption

Speaker 1 8:49

We'll see what we have time for, but I guess one way I'd like to approach, you know, gleaning, mining your brain, is I was listening to a former podcast interview and again I found that you hadn't really started writing until the age of 40. And I know you had some trauma and I know you're a veteran and a lot of this. I think you're right. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you're working through a lot of this through the writing process. So was there a pivotal moment around the age of 40? What drove you to want to tell your story and share it with the world Are your stories?

Speaker 3 9:26

plural. No, you're absolutely right. So obviously, books have been the biggest part of my life, my entire life, and you Allude it to the fact that I had some childhood trauma. I did. I lost both my parents at the age of eight. A group in the group home system had a stepfather figure who was a substance abuser, and and it.

Speaker 3 9:51

Well, it's all in the book, but what happened was is through all of my early child or early adulthood, military marriage, children, whatever I didn't, I didn't solve the issue stemming from that childhood. I just Reactively made decisions, poorly most of the time, and let life Come at me rather than me go at life. And it all came to a head in my 40s. Well, I was actually 40 years old. I was in a place where I never thought I would find myself completely alone, had just lost a job, had just lost an apartment, had just lost a relationship, and at 40, with literally nothing that I had worked for in my physical world, I didn't see a reason to stay on this planet.

Speaker 3 10:44

And, and, and I'm, I have a very strong faith, although I'd never throw it in anybody's face, and so I, my faith is mostly Yelling back at God, going why, why, why, right. I, my faith is a questioning faith, not a blind faith, and I love that and I like to speak to that. You know, in a little bit. But I got to that place where I made it that ultimatum with God and said, listen, there's no reason for me to be here. You haven't shown me one thing, one reason. I mean, I have beautiful children and I've done all this crazy stuff, but that does nothing for me today, and so I think that's a milestone in the spiritual journey, by the way, isn't it?

Speaker 1 11:25

Not so much why has thou forsaken me, but shaking your fist to God, you know I Do you think it's a milestone.

Speaker 3 11:32

Well, they definitely say you need to hit rock bottom to see the Absolute right, right.

Speaker 1 11:38

There's also the idea of the dark night of the soul, right. And then hearing that still small voice in the darkest hour. I'm just a big fan of the universality of all those milestones. Sorry to make it about me, but I wrote something recently which shares a lot with your work. You know it's, it's mythic fiction and it's based on Manoan religion, basically. But I absolutely just I realized at one point, you know, my protagonist never goes head-to-head with Zeus, who turns out to be the antagonistic force, right? So I literally created this dramatic scene where the clouds part and the head of Zeus, you know, thrusts between the clouds so that he could shake his fist at Zeus and you know, and say why do you have it in for me, god?

Speaker 3 12:20

You know that that very event happens in the Bible with Job. Yeah, of course, at the end of the Bible, and God very Judiciously goes who are you to ask me anything? Were you there when I set the stars in the sky or the parameters of the oceans? You know? And then, and my favorite line of the entire book of Job is Job saying I'd only heard of you before, but now I have seen you with me in my eyes and I know nothing.

Speaker 1 12:49

The thing about Job is it has so many levels to it, right, like you, can be interpreted in a number of different ways. And apparently I lived it for a while Like someone had to explain it to me. Like one person said you know all the. You know the fact that your art department caught your garage on fire. It was just in the making of one of my films I. It only got worse.

Speaker 1 13:10

Trust me, I lost everything, a lot like you, pretty much everything but my life, and I had to dig my, dig my heels in and say, no, god, I'm not done yet. I want to co-create with the universe, I'm not done here. So, but long before that has somebody explained to me oh no, this is the story of Job and you're living it. And he said at one point it's about the judgment of others, it's not so much testing your faith in God. So anyway, I've just heard so many interpretations of the meaning of it, because isn't it true that Job, you hear the counsel of the gods kind of discussing the plan of how to test him, something like that yeah, so I have always said, because Before I lost my father, he was a Baptist preacher and you know I grew up in the Bible.

Speaker 3 13:53

I don't want to turn this into a hugely like Christian thing, but no worries. In the beginning of Job it's literally God is talking to Satan making a wager on whether or not Satan could Could make Job turn his back on God. And God said you can do whatever you want, just don't take his life. And I have always said if Job was a party to that, he would not have ended the book the way he did. If, if Job was down there going, are you serious like right now, like everything that I lost? My kids died, I was attacked in my body, I lost every time I owned and he was built on a wager.

Speaker 3 14:32

I believe Job may have gone back and spoke to God a little differently at the end. Instead of on his leg, you know, on his knees. But Now, after I've been through everything I've been through and we'll go back to finish the story, I'm the same way now. I'm like, okay, absolutely, I actually have no real say in any of this and trying to hold on to it like, like crushing a bird in my hand, it has done nothing but cause pain and suffering.

Speaker 1 15:00

Yeah, and.

Speaker 1 15:01

I think, you hinted at this a moment ago. You know, we know the tip of an iceberg right, and so who are we to make decisions for our own life, when, in fact, having faith that we can be used purposefully with somebody with, I don't know, a little more perspective, like God or collective intelligence? So that's why we surrender and hopefully do the bidding of, you know, collective consciousness as we understand it. That's, that's my way of a very limited perspective. So, yeah, let's get back to your story, because I want to hear how it led to. I'm guessing there was a pivotal moment where you decided to Tell your stories.

Speaker 3 15:38

There was. So I made that ultimatum with God and I was actually at peace with it. I was actually very happy about it, slept the whole night through the night before. Had it all planned because I'm a planner, it was. It was gonna be a nice, a nice exit out.

Speaker 3 15:52

But I woke up that morning, realized in a few things after getting a full night's sleep for the first time in a while, I did not want to be gone from this world, and the idea that I had allowed myself to get that far was Shattering to my brittle spirit. And so I called my best friend, who shouldn't have answered the phone at the morp. At the moment it was six o'clock in the morning where she was. She never even kept her phone on, but she answered it on the first ring. All she had to say is did you tell your brother?

Speaker 3 16:24

And and I have a brother that's been through all the same stuff I've been through and I broke down in ways I've never broken down before Called my brother up and I came to realize I really wasn't alone, had never been alone. I've been surrounded by love my entire life. That I took for granted, and so and so that day, then talking to my therapist the next day I decided that my children never really knew who I was and it what I needed to do with Anything else if I got to this point, because I still was kind of on shaky ground, but if I really did want to leave this earth at another point, I needed to at least write down why I don't want to.

Speaker 3 17:05

I don't want to leave my kids questioning like why we don't understand, nobody saw coming, you know. And so I started writing with my brother my brother, let me borrow a little word processor. I had no money, no home. I was sleeping some nights in my car in Florida summer and I I was started writing down my story. By the time I got halfway through writing down my story about two, three weeks later, I had a new job. I had a direction I had.

Speaker 3 17:33

I was going back up to Maryland where my children were, and I was finishing my story. And so about four weeks after I got back to Maryland, I was sitting on a Friday night in a Barnes and I mean in a Starbucks, living up to the stereotype, and I and I wrote the words, the end, on the easiest story I could tell, because it was my story. Everything changed that night, dominic, everything TD Jake said until you have the taste of finishing, you will not respect yourself. And I never realized what that was like that night as I drove home, having written six weeks, you know 80,000 words of just literally just my story in chronological order. But it changed. I finally felt like I did something living up to my potential, hmm, and I had been chasing that high Ever since.

Speaker 2 18:31

So sorry, go ahead, virginia, I was gonna say to me it sounds like by sitting down and you know right, writing your personal story, you know, and people could say you know that's your version of self expression, like that was your way of starting that healing process in your life.

Speaker 3 18:48

Oh, in so many ways, in so many ways. And so what I did after that? It was finished and the writing bug got me, but I knew I, I knew I wasn't finished with that story because it had no conclusion, as that was my reaction when you said the end.

Speaker 1 19:04

I thought is it ever really the end, especially when it's narrative nonfiction or, you know, extremely autobiographical.

Speaker 3 19:11

There it's yeah, you spoke a moment ago about milestones and turning points right. Mm-hmm, that to me the conclusion of that book. And then I sat on it for a year and I wrote the epilogue 12 months later to make sure that the things that I had learned from that moment and in that time frame, those Very, very, it was almost like it was almost like being 13 again and like seeing the world in whole new colors and you know. But I wanted to make sure that those lessons that I had learned and the faith that I had built and the direction I was going in had stuck. And so a year later I wrote the epilogue, got it all Edited, was learning the book world. At that point, you know, I look back now it was like being in first grade and I've just received a PhD, so, but I was learning the, the industry and I was able to put out my autobiography and then my first fictional book together the next January.

Speaker 1 20:09

So yeah, you had a pretty. You had a pretty quick arc. I think I heard in the podcast four years. Right from the first time at Barnes and Noble, you had the Guts right to try to get your book on the shelves. You built all the way right to the point of launching your own publishing company in four years. Is that right?

Speaker 3 20:29

Yeah, so this last July 4th weekend was four years since I started riding shaken amazing.

Speaker 1 20:34

Yeah, I guess I'm always a little, I Don't know. I'm like when Sylvester Stallone picked up a paintbrush at the age of 40 and was suddenly an artist. It's always amazing to me. So did you identify as a writer at all previous to writing?

Speaker 3 20:51

at the age of 40, okay, so Any great writer is a great reader first off. So books I have. I had this really funny story just to segue. But I have this funny story I was watching when I was married to my my ex-wife. We were watching one of those shows that was like weird collectibles, right, people that are collective weird things and. I turned to her and I said I don't collect a thing, I collect nothing. And she goes are you serious? Right now, our house is decorated in books. She was.

Speaker 3 21:18

I secretly throw them away when they're like moldy or tattered or you've read them a hundred times and that like started a whole argument about how could she throw away my babies. So so books have been a part of my life in like not even recognizable. And so when I was in college I started out my undergrad in psychology but I wrote for the, the newspaper at Wayland Baptist University, and I was doing, I was doing articles on the literacy rate in America. I was updating old writings from the English department head of her stories in World War two. I was just doing, I was just immersing myself in the gift of writing that God gave me.

Speaker 3 22:01

And but life, right, life gets in the way and I never could finish anything. I would start little things here and there, like I'm, like I'm gonna sit down and I'm gonna write a book and I would give, you know, three, four thousand words to one of my professors and they would be like you got the gift, like you need to be writing. But I never could. You know, I had the military stuff and then I became a military contractor and then more children and there was never time to fully sit down and embrace the reason I was put on this planet again, still reactive, still see, that's what I, that's what I read into the pivotal moment.

Speaker 1 22:39

It's kind of when you connected with your craft that you had been honing, I guess, with that sense of purpose. You know I call it finding your voice. There's always a real clear moment where you find your voice, your authentic voice, and then you're driven to share it.

Speaker 3 22:57

Well, I tell there's so many great quotes out there. The two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why or who is it. Td Jakes again said the only way to have no is Steve Harvey. The only way to have true joy is to be doing the thing you were made to do. That's what joy is, and you know at the age of 40, after a ridiculous life, that joy has made every day since like worth, worth the living, worth the hard work, worth everything.

Writing and Healing Trauma Balance

Speaker 1 23:31

Wow. Well, virginia, I do want you to jump in at any time, but I'm going to follow what might seem like a tangent, but so much of your story. Again, I watched an entire podcast with you and it really resonated with me. I just identified with so much of it. So it might seem like a tangent, but I think it'll come full circle.

Speaker 1 23:50

You mentioned reaching out to your brother and being really touched when you realized you weren't alone in your trauma, and so I come from a dysfunctional family. I'm not going to make it about me, but we all have our story. So I identify as somebody that comes from dysfunction and alcoholism and a long line of that. But you know, sharing with your siblings, you have unexamined trauma, right, like, oh OK, all four of us read the adult children of alcoholics in our 20s, but then we kind of put it down and moved on. And but I do find that, like with my sister, sometimes we process and we vent and we compare notes and then we both reach a point where we're like no life is short, it's water under the bridge, right? Just, let's reframe the narrative. And that's what our podcast is all about is we're in control of our narratives and we're meant to write our own song, right?

Speaker 1 24:40

So I guess my question for you is this when I, the act of writing is always cathartic, no matter how you slice it. So I might be writing about certain themes, but there's always an unexamined level that I'm working through, whether it's ideas or feelings. There's a catharsis, but I also feel like I'm perpetuating the narratives when I write about them. I'm cementing narratives, and that's why actors are always in therapy. Right, when you embody a role, it's hard to shed that skin. You need to be in therapy as an actor. So how do you strike a balance between purging something through the catharsis of the writing, of the creative process, and realizing oh, am I like? Am I telling that story one too many times? Am I projecting on you or do you relate to that balance that you have to?

Speaker 3 25:25

strike. No, no, I, you know, this is something we think about, and when I say we, I mean the conscious collective of people that are on this journey, that we're all kind of drawn to each other, and it's like there's this whole world of people that are just totally unaware of the deeper currents of life and even, like you said, their own traumas or issues or anything. So that's how they need to dig in the dirt a little bit. Right, you have to. You have to, or else again, like I did for 40 years, life you're reacting to life, not controlling it. So so it's very difficult for me, dominic, to read that first book. I break down, crying reading a single page. Even thinking about reading it, it's like going back to all those therapy sessions where I was breaking down. Now I'm a huge proponent in my book has a lot of addresses and emails and stuff like that, a lot of things in the back of the book for a very specific mental health diagnosis called complex PT or complex PTSD and or CP which I related.

Speaker 1 26:37

I related to that too. Of course I knew about PTSD, but I had never heard of complex and I thought, well, that's the story of my life. What day of my childhood was not full of cortisol and adrenaline? You know when they're not crying on anxiety. When have I ever felt safe? So I must have it on diagnosed because I related to that.

Speaker 3 26:57

And so and I said I've said this before because I'm a huge proponent of it I took the most severe kind of therapy somebody in that situation could take. It's called ETT emotional transformative therapy. It's lights and colors and a rewiring of your brain. And so that balance is actually a lot easier for me, because that therapy worked. It's legit science, it legit works.

Speaker 1 27:23

How do you feel about microdosing? Have you heard of what's the different studies in microdosing to treat PTSD?

Speaker 3 27:30

Yeah, I have, and I've read a lot into the people who are pioneering, the what is it? The M, mdm.

Speaker 1 27:41

MDM and A.

Exploring Psychedelics and Therapeutic Benefits

Speaker 3 27:43

Yes, and I'm a proponent of using CBD for pain and mental health. I think if it's naturally occurring in nature I think there's a line in a movie that says no pills, no powders. If it came from the ground, we can probably, you know, have some use out of it, right?

Speaker 1 27:59

Well, I've done enough shrooms and acid to kind of know the pitfalls and the. You know the ups and the downs. But I the thing that intrigued me is there's something called the default mode network, right, and it's what distinguishes us from the collective right or deep, actual roots, the field of pure potential. You know, we need to limit, we reify the information around us so we can all exist, right, coexist in some kind of reality known as consensus. But otherwise, I don't know, a squid could appear in your driveway at any time. So I'm being a little facetious. But I think what micro dosing or hallucinogens do is they break down, I think by shifting serotonin levels. Right, the default mode network, that kind of maintains the status quo and you feel immersed with every particle of the universe. You know, you feel the interconnectivity. So I don't see how that could be a bad thing.

Speaker 1 28:54

In my I think a lot more people should be micro dosing.

Speaker 2 28:57

I was. I've said too much. I was going to make a comment. It's. It doesn't shift serotonin.

Speaker 1 29:02

Sorry, this is oh, it doesn't.

Speaker 2 29:03

No, it doesn't shift serotonin levels. So what happens is when the neurotransmitters happen. It actually is more of a blocker. So it allows serotonin to stay in your system. It doesn't allow it to re uptake right away.

Speaker 3 29:13

Sorry, yeah it, it, it, oh wait a minute, I'll.

Speaker 2 29:16

you're talking about um solicitin or so, when, when um the serotonin goes into your system, typically it'll go. It'll re uptake into um, you know. So when the in the synapsis area it will re uptake um after you know if. If it doesn't hit all the neurotransmitters because so hard to. It's very complicated. I'm trying not to complicate it for a reason. I've seen this. No, it's, it's really.

Speaker 3 29:47

It's a little bit easier than that. So SSRI selected serotonin re uptake inhibitors are chemicals like um, cichalapram and stuff like that. It keeps the serotonin um affecting your entire system longer.

Speaker 2 30:01

Yeah, so it keeps. Yeah, so it keeps serotonin in your system longer. So what happens is is it hits the different little neurotransmitter signals. You know it hits the receptors.

Speaker 1 30:11

Right.

Speaker 2 30:12

And so. But what happens is after. It usually happens because there's only so many the the rest of serotonin where you uptake. So what happens is when you take certain medications or do certain types of treatments it puts block, the blockers will go into those spots instead, so the serotonin level stays. So it helps even kill you out a little bit for a little bit longer, versus having the serotonin go back into your system and basically go into a neutral kind of status, to where you don't fill that serotonin, so and I'll take that one step further.

Speaker 3 30:41

What ETT does, uh, while also acting as a a serotonin um in hip or uptake inhibitor, is it? So? What it does is when you have a memory and your memory is stored in your like reptile party or brain and in your peripherals all your memories are containing your peripheral vision Um, it rewires. So what that means is when you have the same memory and you and I talked just recently ago about, like the CPTSD, where your body, your autonomous system, was always active every single day. And now, as adults, when we have those same memories, the same hormones flood our brains. The fight or flight causes stress, causes depression, and we act, we act out because of that on our, now that we're adults, usually on our children, loved ones, coworkers, whatnot.

Speaker 1 31:31

So what what?

Speaker 3 31:33

ETT does is you can still have the memories, but using colors and rapid eye movement, um in your peripherals, bringing back the hormones? Is it it allows you to have the memories without the bad hormones coming out?

Speaker 1 31:52

So this is the therapy that you underwent, correct?

Speaker 3 31:55

Yeah. So I went through ETT with Dr Mitchell Ross in uh, boyden Beach, florida. Little shout out it. Literally you put your head in a black box with lights and colors and, um, he has a computer program next door to it. It sounds like something like CIA brainwashing, but it starts out very, very um, this is crazy man. It starts out very calming. He has a board or he has a picture on the board that's just the rainbow and it's the most vibrant hues of this rainbow. And it's on cardboard, so it's not like a computer screen or anything. And he has you stare at the entire rainbow, because what he needs to do is figure out what your color cortex is, or your and I'm going to say this wrong, because I'm not a, I'm not a practitioner, but I'm not even joking I would be staring at a specific color, say it was blue, the very most vibrant blues, and he would bring up a question. He would literally go. I'm not even joking, he would go.

Speaker 3 32:50

So you're an eight year old boy. You just lost your father to cancer. You watched him die. They put you into a boy's home where you were getting beat up and sexually abused. Did any adults like hug you and tell you it was going to be okay. And I'm sitting there like I. I want to break down right now just saying that. But saying those words and seeing me, like seeing through my own eyes, but also like step, step outside of myself and seeing that little, that little eight year old boy.

Speaker 3 33:18

I can. I can now tell that story without completely going to pieces because, no, nobody hugged me, nobody, nobody told me it was going to be okay and that caused a lifetime of dramatic brain hormone issues and so so isn't that?

Speaker 1 33:36

isn't that literally the definition of rewiring an air like re?

Speaker 2 33:40

framing a narrative.

Narrative and Emotional Therapy's Power

Speaker 1 33:41

It's reframing narrative, but it's creating new neural circuits right, right.

Speaker 3 33:44

And so when he would ask that question and I would think about that and, of course, start breaking down the, the, the color I was looking at and in my case it was the blues and the oranges it would turn great. I'm not joking at all. In my eyes, my brain and my eyeballs turn that color great. And he told me ahead of time he goes. When that happens, let me know, right, hold up a finger or something. So as soon as it turns gray, he'll go. So what'd you have for breakfast this morning? And I'm like what we were literally just talking to my like most, like, most abusive part of my childhood.

Speaker 1 34:21

Right and I want to know what kind of bagel I had.

Speaker 3 34:24

But there's, there's a true science behind it. It's, yeah, it sounds amazing. And then, as soon as the, as soon as he asked that question, and my brain clicked, the color came right back. And there was no tricks or gimmicks your, our brains, do this to us. And so, and here's the craziest part, dominic, everything I've been through, all the stuff I've been through I needed like four sessions of this, Of course.

Speaker 1 34:48

Well, yeah, and I was like. I was like, okay, I'm ready to go find my purpose.

Speaker 3 34:54

Now there was. I had to get back down to the bottom of that hole. That happened a few months later, and that's again a part of the therapy process, like you said, you have to get. There's always that that I don't even know what to call it. There's always that moment you're either you're either gone or you're going to push through, and and that's what that was. And so, yeah, I'm a huge proponent of the science behind emotional transformative therapy, right?

Speaker 1 35:21

Well, if I can tie it a little bit back into the premise of the book, which I believe is the premise of the podcast, I just want to make sure I understand, because that did get pretty technical right and it almost seems like the creative process in the confut cut-throat the creative process, the creative process, the creative process, the creative process, the creative process, the creative process, the creative process, the creative process and catharsis that can result from it, is an alternative right to really hardcore, intense therapy. So somebody that's clinically diagnosed with PTSD would certainly benefit from that, or even micro dosing. But I think people that don't identify, you know, as having clinical PTSD we all have some degree of trauma, right, and where none of us is exempt from I would call it the knee jerk reactions to our database of learned responses, you know. Or I guess Eckhart Toll would call it the pain body, if you want to use a metaphor, right, we all have varying degrees of it. So I think the creative process is a great therapy personally, but I want to go back a little bit and distinguish, because what am I hearing?

Speaker 1 36:21

Anyway, I'm getting a little weirdness in my headphone, so like if we have our lizard brain right and all organisms have, you know, responses all day, every day, to stimuli, and only the ones that are, you know, associated with heightened emotion or heightened physiology get mapped on the database right To determine future responses to the threat or the opportunity, whatever the stimulus is. Well, our extremely advanced limbic systems mean we can actually have new responses to novel stimuli that we didn't inherit in our DNA right, and those get embedded, and this is the basis of epigenetics we add to the database during our lifetimes. But we're also the only organism that can internalize the beliefs of others vicariously, right. So that's a big premise of my book. Is that storytelling. All day, every day. We're absorbing storytelling, whether it's the status quo, socialization, propaganda, actual art, literature and cinema, like fish in the boiling water or crabs in the boiling water. We're just absorbing it all day, every day, unexamined. Does that make a little bit of sense?

Speaker 3 37:40

Yeah and sorry. We kind of went on a segue with the science there. No the very Well.

Speaker 1 37:45

That's why I wanted to trace it back, because I think our power lies in understanding that we adopt beliefs all day, every day, vicariously, unexamined, and we get to reframe those stories through the narratives we tell ourselves personally, but also the narratives we tell ourselves as Americans. Right, are we really the westward movement? Are we really the land of opportunity, or is that just a bowl we put?

Speaker 3 38:13

on things. Anyway, no, you're exactly right. You know I started. The very first line of my book is I am first and foremost a storyteller period and I have always believed that lives can be changed by examples of that exact same thing. Right, we teach our young with stories. Jesus taught in parables. Every single science has a story behind it, and it's usually a very human story. So you're exactly right, there's a difference between people who are conscious of the ability to write their own narrative and there's people who literally wake up in the morning reacting to everything around them. No, medicine, medicine, yeah, exactly. And so I do my own video blogs and stuff, and one I did that got a lot of traction was writing your own narrative, making your own identity. You know, and again, if you want to, just you can talk to almost any way of this. But if you go back to childhood trauma, a lot of people are like well, I'm a survivor of childhood trauma and I'm like why are you bringing that up every time you introduce yourself?

Speaker 1 39:21

You didn't survive anything.

Speaker 3 39:23

You're still living within it, or I've never been an alcoholic, but I assume that the best way to know that you're recovered from alcoholism is you can go have a drink without losing control, right, yes, you stop telling that story. You stop telling that story. You stop believing that about yourself. You create your own narrative or go your own identity.

Speaker 3 39:43

Tell a new story, yeah, and we can wake up every single day. The Bible says this you can wake up every single day and write your new story. Every day is a new opportunity, every moment this came up in this morning session.

Speaker 1 39:58

Right, every moment is an opportunity to swap out the lens through which you view it, and I think it's usually from fear to love I love. Marianne Williamson says a miracle is the shift from fear to love, kind of against all odds, if you can take a breath and do that in the moment, it is literally a miracle, you know.

Speaker 3 40:18

My favorite quote from some of the best motivational speakers in the world is the battleground is the mind. It's not about the external. It's never about what people say about you, or what you have or don't have, or how you feel or don't feel. The battleground is in the mind, because the mind creates reality.

Speaker 1 40:36

Yeah.

Speaker 3 40:37

When you can shift your mind to a narrative of what you want your life to look like, instead of what it is, you make that come true, and it's the craziest thing that I never even knew until all of this, the last four years.

Speaker 1 40:52

Well, I think that's why you often hear you know mantras or affirmations are helpful. But I think you might relate to this. Sometimes it's like pushing a boulder uphill right, or pushing a wet noodle if they're so hardwired. So to me, meditation disentangles the counterproductive neural circuits, if you want to call them that, that keep circulating and then you create room for new thought forms and paradigms. I think it all worked, whatever works for you, you know. But some, some say affirmations are not necessarily the way it just meditate Deepak. Every word out of his mouth is meditate.

Speaker 3 41:30

Yeah, meditation is pretty awesome. I definitely started studying it and have a daily. It's part of my daily grind now. But I will say this what I mean by that meditation, affirmations, whatever is is literally the. Everybody has a different way of learning, everybody has a different way of doing. To me, affirmations, meditation, however you want to call it, all of that starts with your mind needs to see reality different. First, whether you do it through meditation or through affirmations or the law of attraction or whatever you want, I don't care if you believe in laying on hands from some holy roller, whatever works for you.

Speaker 3 42:10

It's all doing it's all doing the same thing. It's changing the synapses in your brain to see what's going on around you in a different way.

Speaker 1 42:19

Yep, yeah, and snake oil salesman and walking on hot coals like they're the master storytellers, right? Because they understand how all of this works.

Speaker 3 42:29

Yeah, and you see, people can use those, those powers, for good or evil. So if you know people that can change a narrative in a con, a conning kind of way, they can and you wonder, like, how do the people get away with this?

Speaker 1 42:42

How do people start colts, how do people get Well, we're Virginia and I promised we weren't going to talk about Trump this time, but but how do people like Hitler get make a higher country believe what he believed in?

Speaker 3 43:00

They go back after the Holocaust and everything and be like, why were you okay with any of that? And they can't even answer it. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1 43:06

Well, to me, it's because we are wired for storytelling and it's a story that was told about a national identity, about who the bad guys were, and I won't go too far down that road. So it is propaganda, which is just another form of storytelling. But the problem here is that the masses may not understand that we learn more in the narrative realm than the didactic right. So when we're faced with persuasion, political persuasion, we tend to dig in our heels, fall back on confirmation bias. Identity politics right, we resist in every way humanly possible, whereas story right appeals to not the logos but the ethos, right, Exactly, yeah. So story, story, story, If you want to rule the world tell a story.

Speaker 1 43:56

And again I go back to.

Speaker 3 43:58

I go back to the fact that even Jesus himself gave lessons in a story format right Parables. They're the easiest to understand, but they're the easiest to persuade with.

Speaker 1 44:10

Well, let me ask you a question because you're way more immersed. My nephew is a minister and he's actually going to come on. I'm very excited about this. In the writing of my book it clicked for me. I tell me, if this is true, that all Judeo-Christian Western European anyway literary criticism came out of liturgy, right, People just told stories around the campfire. It evolved into myths, legend and folk tales which arguably, if you're Joseph Campbell, evolved into religions. But we didn't really start analyzing what was going on here until later, and I think it was liturgical tradition, you know, formed the basis by which we understand metaphor and archetypes and all of those things Does that make?

Speaker 3 44:55

sense. Yes, so if you look at the form of society, even hundreds or thousands of years ago, the community, the only time the community was together, was a time of religious storytelling, like it's the campfire, right? Yes, so everybody's getting the same story at the same time, in the same way, and so the very first printing was religious text. The very first thing to come off a printing press was a Bible, right? So, yes, you're exactly right.

Speaker 1 45:27

Well, there was a time when they weren't mutually exclusive. I think we've gone down a really scary road where you know Thomas Aquinas, for example, it was the cutting edge of philosophy and thought and academia, and now it's almost the polar opposite right, faith and empiricism is the way I would put it.

Speaker 3 45:48

Yeah, I will agree with that. I don't want to get on a soapbox here. I do have my daddy's genes to be a Southern Baptist Bible thumper. However, again, I don't like to throw it in people's face. I like to see the sociological and psychological ramifications of what comes from that form of storytelling, and it is such to your point, it's almost. It was cutting edge at one point and it seems almost in reversal now. But the problem with that is you have so many adults whose mental health issues stem more from religious or church or the church called abuse then, or even conservative, the Visilim, or even like the shame that came from that, rather than freedom, how it's supposed to actually be. So, yeah, no, it's the way I put it is.

Speaker 1 46:45

There's some well earned disillusionment with institutionalized religion. It's very well earned, right? I don't know. A couple bloodbaths and a couple things done in the name of religion, and then the molestations. In recent years, more people have left the religion of their upbringing than in any previous generation. But why throw out the baby with the bathwater is how I put it. We need to embrace. We're learning, we will learn. Nuance is my, my wish, if that makes sense. You know, I think a lot of people parse between a personal spirituality and institutionalized religion, and I don't think that's a bad thing.

Speaker 3 47:22

Yeah, I've only begun going back to church and it took a story teller on the stage to bring me back because of my own experiences with with the church as a child.

Speaker 1 47:36

Is that where the abuse happened? Not to pry, but yeah, so I.

Speaker 3 47:41

So, dominic, this is going to be in the. I'm literally writing the sequel to. I won't be shaken, and it's called shaking the worst. This, the state of California, lifted statute of limitations on childhood sexual abuse in the recent, last recent years. I found out about it three months before the deadline. I had no idea. I was researching my recent book and I ran across an article of the boys home I was in in California had been had already been sued. The priest was already in federal penitentiary.

Speaker 1 48:15

And had there been a class action suit.

Speaker 3 48:18

There is now Okay and and I'm a part of that and that's what I put it literally in the lawsuit that I wanted to still write the the end of that part of my story, and so, yeah, that's literally ongoing right now. In fact, the state representative from Berkeley and another state representative actually just because they lifted the statute of limitations for three years now there's new legislation, legislation in California, to get rid of the statute of limitations altogether.

Speaker 1 48:47

Wow, that well, I'll get to that in a second, but I want to make sure I understood something you said. You said you. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you thought to be able to include that in your book. Was there an NDA or a gag order, or you know?

Speaker 3 49:02

Yeah, so there's two things that the Catholic Church is doing in the state of California right now. One, all of the so when you sue an institution like the boys home I was in, it's actually controlled by the arch diocese of Northern California. So the arch diocese of Northern California has gone into bankruptcy or they're claiming bankruptcy with you know, I think that they said they had like $149 million in assets and $149 million in debt, so they've claimed bankruptcy. So now my lawsuit is moved into bankruptcy court and then the other half of that is yeah, they don't want it. There's going to be any kind of settlement outside of court there. They want gag orders and victims to not come out in like in the news and stuff. They just like take your paycheck and go live your life.

Speaker 1 49:50

And yet you were able to get that clause included where you were able to write about it.

Speaker 3 49:55

Well, we, we haven't gone to settlement or court yet because of the declaring bankruptcy in the Archdiocese of Santa Rosa, but yes, it is in the paperwork. I told my lawyer I'm not even going to do it because I'm probably the only one of these 100 cases that have written a bestseller about my entire life and two chapters was on my time at that boys home. So yeah, I definitely put it in there. I don't even want the money, I want to write the end of my story.

Speaker 2 50:25

So I'm going to bring this back a little bit full circle instead of Dominic this time. So, speaking of that, I'm just kind of you know, because obviously you know we're talking about storytelling and stuff and I'm just kind of curious like how you see storytelling, how it's been a tool for you and dealing with, like the trauma, the mental health challenges you've had, and and how you hope that affects your readers and even other writers who you you know, because you're obviously doing your master class.

Value and Kinship of Creativity

Speaker 3 50:50

Yes, great question. So in the last four years I have built and have been included into a community of writers of multiple genres. That is a whole new family, and so I can answer your question in two parts one personally and second externally or intrinsically. So, personally, writing my stories is living. My purpose gives me joy. Every single day. I don't set an alarm clock in the morning anymore. I jump out of bed ready to go, and it's crazy because I have packed days of my routine now. So you would think I'm kind of tired, but I'm not. I can't stop writing. I can't stop. I've now. I'm now publishing, other authors writing so their dreams come true. I want people to feel what I feel. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 51:39

You're just you're high on the creative process.

Speaker 3 51:41

Absolutely, and I'm now I'm I'm remarried this year to a woman who's the exact same way. She, her life is booked and she was so much more successful than I was when I met her. But we're like building together and man I, that's the ultimate creative.

Speaker 1 51:58

so sorry for interrupting you, but that is the ultimate in the creative process, when you're growing in real life and then in real time it's, you know, like art reflects life, so the things that land with people and transcend are things where you transform through the creative process in real time and it's reflected in the work. Does that make sense?

Speaker 3 52:18

Oh, absolutely. And then to answer the other half of that, the more external or intrinsic value of the creative process is finding the people who are on the same journey looking for the same thing, doing the same thing and building together.

Speaker 3 52:37

And the craziest part about and you're like, oh, you've only been doing this for four years, what makes you think you can write a masterclass? Well, let me tell you, those four years have been the craziest four years of my life, despite everything else that I was doing. I thought I got down four years ago in Florida. No, the worst down I've ever been was this year and climbing back out of that, and so it's life is circular.

Speaker 3 53:08

Things come back around. You're never uphill all the time for the rest of your life. There's always downhills, valleys and peaks and valleys. I don't think life would be interesting if it wasn't that way, but the value I see in the creative process personally, like I just said, I have the joy. But externally there's so many people searching and on that same journey and just the fact that we're not alone in it is the craziest part about all of this, because you can truly think that you're a maverick and you're still by yourself, but you're building all this strength inside from the honing of the hardships and stuff. But we're all doing that. And then when you have a small group, come together and I always say, like Jesus and his disciples, they were all executed right except for John, but they all face the same thing, the same way, and man does it make it easier every single day.

Speaker 3 54:02

So when the words don't flow as easily or I get bogged down on a book but I need to work on this other book, like it just makes the process easier when you're not alone in it.

Speaker 1 54:13

I want to react to that real quick. There's a momentum that happens when you're manifesting all day, every day, right, so you do find your peeps and you attract those who are called to receive the message, but also those that are on a similar path. So I love that. But I also love the idea of feeling a kinship with my muses, the dead ones from the past, if that makes sense. You know, especially during the pandemic, when you know we were also isolated, I really, more than ever, just resonated with all my dead influences and I feel a real kinship with them. Does that make sense?

Speaker 3 54:47

No, it does. So I tell this really funny story and I don't want to say cuss words on here, but I read Go for it man. Okay, so I read the biography of Robert Frost, apparently one of the greatest poets to ever. Blah, blah, blah, blah right.

Speaker 3 55:02

And I always say like I've written some of my own poetry in the same in Derry, new Hampshire, where he lived, and I read that thing and I'm like this dude was a bitch man, like he was, like he couldn't do anything for himself, and we built him up as this great litter. So that's the negative part of it. But so what that tells me is these men and women were people too. They were humans too. They had the same issues. They wiped their butt the same way.

Speaker 3 55:28

They probably had the same jealousies. They had the same, you know maybe, bad childhoods and they turned it into ability to write. Just because their language is different, we see it as more, you know, a higher hooter toot. That's just how they talked in those days. They were no different than us and that's given me so much confidence, and even in my own writing, not to the point where, like I like, open up a book by Chaucer and be like I would have done this completely different, but that, like you said, I am connecting to the people who came before me, whose shoulders I'm trying to continue to build on.

Speaker 1 56:03

Well, you're part of a tradition. But it also sort of gives permission that you're not effing crazy, but also that it is a valuable contribution, because I have this premise that you know the evolution of our noosphere. It's called this postulated sphere of our ideas, ethics, morals, principles, codes that we live by, right, which becomes policy and laws. The evolution of that noosphere is as important as that of our biology. We would have been extinct a long time ago if our ideas didn't evolve. And that's getting a little bit into the iron rand territory as well. But you know, when I feel a kinship with the dead ones, it's not necessarily the romantic notions of what it is to be a writer. I don't necessarily buy all those romantic notions we're not all supposed to martyr ourselves for a cause. But I do feel like it's a form of permission, that it's a valuable contribution.

Speaker 3 56:57

And it also helps you get rid of the imposter syndrome a little bit. Right To say, and I love the line from Great or Dead Poets Society that says that you know that we're all allowed to leave a first, that we're all allowed to write if anything. And people do that in different ways, right? People do that by business or their children or even just in their community in the smallest ways.

Reflections on Life, Purpose, and Legacy

Speaker 1 57:22

Yeah, I love that distinction that we're wired to be creative. It's a human impulse, but it doesn't mean you have to be a sculptor or a rocket scientist or an inventor. It just means your own authentic contribution. But you mentioned, you know, we all. I don't want to put words in your mouth, not necessarily to have a story to tell, but we can leave a verse as a transition. Do you have a piece that you're prepared to share with our listeners, I do.

Speaker 3 57:49

It's literally the introduction to my autobiography and I think I said the first line earlier. It's not even a page, a full page and a half, but it tends to get what everybody likes to. It gets people interested in the story. So I'm happy to read it.

Speaker 1 58:06

Please do. Yes, I've got my hot cocoa ready and everybody sit back.

Speaker 3 58:13

All ears so this is the first introduction of I won't be shaken by Joshua Lloyd Fox. I am, first and foremost, a storyteller, in order of tall tales, a collector of life lessons, if you will. My life has been consumed with stories and I've used them primarily as an escape from my actual circumstances. All my life, I've wanted to do nothing but tell my stories to wrapped audiences and share them with the joy these narratives bring me. All my stories, this one is the most important. This particular tale begins the year I celebrated my 40th birthday. It was a milestone that went by quickly and it was largely unnoticed by the world.

Speaker 3 58:47

See, as I tell this tale, I have prematurely gray hair. I wear a full beard which also shows signs of gray. I'm six feet three inches tall, dark and, some say, handsome. People who know me always remark on how intelligent I am, but I'm not sure if it's because of anything other than a well-spoken nature and ability to carry on a conversation. However, I do have a tested, edictic memory. My eyes are dark, brown, and my mother used to tell me that they looked as if they were made from wood grain. I know all these things because that's what my eyes see when I look in the mirror, but there's no way these things could ever encapsulate who and what I am.

Speaker 3 59:20

When I look around the coffee shop I'm sitting in, I don't think that, logically, I'm different than any person here. Every person has problems, everyone has relationships of some form and everyone is loved by a God. I went a long time in my life not believing most of that. I went through a large portion of this lifetime thinking I was different, and not in a good way. I feel no real connection today with anyone here, or anyone in the world for that matter. See, when you hate yourself, it's incredibly difficult to rise to who God made you to be and fulfill your purpose. See, my purpose is to write. I've always heard that when you aren't fulfilling your purpose, you don't have joy, and when you can't feel joy, you'll never be happy. But I'm finally learning how to be happy.

Speaker 3 1:00:00

For the last two years, my life has been completely turned upside down. Each and every day has been a battle of defeats and conquest. My emotions have ridden that roller coaster for better or worse, to the point where I almost ended it all. I'm not afraid to admit it. See, I gave God a final ultimatum he had to bless my life in the way that I wanted him to, or else I would kill myself. It was my last act of defiance.

Speaker 3 1:00:22

My whole life had been a struggle every single day and I was tired. I was so tired of it all. I was weary in my bones and my mind could not fathom going any further. But if God had blessed my life that day in a big way, I wouldn't even have noticed. I had made up my mind, and if there's one thing I am, it's decisive. But I was to learn a very important lesson that day and every day following it. It was not yet in his time. I was on a razor's edge. I couldn't see the future he had in store for me, because if I had, I would have been scared out of my mind. I had no idea that by the time I told this story, god would give me the miracle that I had desired for what seemed like forever. As I sat down to tell this particular tale, I had no idea that my life would be bigger, grander and much richer than I could have ever imagined. I just had to go through fire to get there, a fire that almost destroyed me completely. This is my story.

Speaker 1 1:01:14

Damn, damn.

Speaker 2 1:01:16

Yeah, that's actual.

Speaker 1 1:01:18

That's awesome. Yeah, I love the theme. It's come up a couple times today but the theme of God knowing better you know, or, if that makes sense, serving a greater purpose when our perspective is limited Something you said in there really brought that home. But thank you for sharing. I mean, those are very, very intimate details and I think it will inspire readers to want to know more. We're putting your links in the episode description. Do you have a preferred place for people to go for the Archangel series or some of the narrative nonfiction?

Speaker 3 1:01:56

So my Link Tree is pretty much the link to my entire platform. It's just the normal Link Tree with JL Fox, super simple, five letters, but, and that'll get you into where all the books reside. And now the master class, the Water Tower, hill Publishing, my wife's stuff and I'm sorry, I know I sound different, like my entire vibe just changed Again. Reading that always invokes such a. You know, it's not a depression, it's not even a sadness, it's just glad I did that work and I'm not continuing to do it today, you know.

Speaker 2 1:02:38

Yeah, I'm just curious because that was very impactful and I know from you, know reading up on you, and you know the emails that we had back and forth a little bit that legacy is a big thing for you. So what is the big thing you want to convey to future generations with what you're doing?

Speaker 3 1:02:59

You know it, looking ahead, you always have to look behind.

Speaker 3 1:03:03

And my biggest driving force, besides leaving a legacy for my children, as I look at my, my own parents my mom was gone at the age of 36, my dad at 63. Neither of them, I believe. Now, of course, you know, again I don't have the bigger picture, but I believe neither of them fulfilled the things in their life that they wanted to, and they left nothing behind them except for about four or five pictures and their own children. There is no proof that my parents existed on this planet. And so, going back to that line about writing our own verse, leaving you know, leaving our Page, so to say I definitely don't want my children to feel the same ways I do, thinking about what I don't have from my parents. I want them, if anything, to know through a written, through the written word or everything else, that I'm trying to do, that, even if I, even if I, if I got hit by a bus today, I did enough in the last four years that my kids would have a solid Understanding and truth that their father existed on this planet.

Speaker 1 1:04:17

And that's, that's my legacy, that's what legacy is leaving a mark, so that we're not all just dust in the wind. It's really beautiful and, to put it in like more clinical terms, I feel like we all inherit sometimes the baggage of our parents, but sometimes it's just the unfinished business of our parents. And Again, the retelling of Icarus that I mentioned earlier, the Minoan Bronze Age, minoan Mythic fiction novel I wrote it was largely about that. You know how I think most people interpret Icarus as moderation, don't fly too high, don't fly too low. It's about hubris, right, knowing our place in the universe. To me, when you connect all the myths, it was clearly about redeeming the bad blood of the father, the sins of the father. So he wanted to fly higher, right as a way of redeeming his father, but of course he crashed and burned. So I just feel like, if you look at epigenetics, we are meant to right, carry thought forms further, but also finish the unfinished business of our parents. Does that relate a little bit?

Speaker 3 1:05:21

Yeah, and both good and bad ways, my, I Receive my gift of, or my ability to write, probably from my, my mother's side, and so much more from my father's side, and, yes, it's, it's like finishing their work, maybe right, a good way to put it, but that could go another way in like the, the cycles of abuse, the cycles of, you know what we like to call how, ancestral debt, or right right.

Speaker 1 1:05:52

Historical baggage right.

Speaker 3 1:05:54

But there's another one the family curses or the the generational curses, right. Where do we get that term and why is it so socially accepted that there's such a thing as generational curses? Well, because mom didn't go to college and she died young. So I didn't go to college and I died young. You know what I mean, but it's, it's nature and nurture.

Speaker 1 1:06:12

So when you learn about the mechanics of epigenetics and you know that's why I feel like, that's why we're storytellers, because they were talking about epigenetics you know, if you look at the scarlet letter before we had words for it it was talking about exactly this. And so if we're meant to be cycle breakers, if, if your parents had an inclination toward depression, maybe it is your lifelong mission to create the chemical balance Right that will be passed on. So there's, like these, methyl groups that are created that squelch or express Every gene on the DNA strand, and what we do during our lifetime actually matters. It's not just chemical influence, chemical environmental influences, but it's energetic influences through the gates and channels and the cell wall. That's otherwise known as thoughts and feelings Stories to transform thoughts and feelings so that we can work with epigenetics. To you pass something worthwhile on. Sorry, I'm hearing a lot of noise in the background.

Speaker 1 1:07:13

Yeah, it's my chair, I'm sorry I got no, no, no Anyway. So we've got your links. Thank you, I really want you to hear this. I mean, that is some intimate stuff you shared and it's really impactful and hopefully inspiring. I hope people want to learn more, but I'm just honored that you would share it with us. So thank you so much.

The Journey of Self-Discovery and Publishing

Speaker 3 1:07:32

Thank you for asking. I really do. I had an agent at one point when I first started down the traditional publishing route. But I had an agent actually sent me down after reading shaken and she said Are you gonna be able to answer questions about this? Like I don't care that the writing may not be your best or the page and the trim and all that stuff she goes. Are you gonna be able to get into an interview and let people and ask you questions? Because you are saying things From a male perspective, then there might be a lot of people thinking it, but not very many people are saying it right, and so I had to. I mean, that's a, that's a gut check moment.

Speaker 3 1:08:11

Hmm and so. So again, I do appreciate the affirmation of that, but I almost feel it as a passion project to explain just why and what I'm doing here.

Speaker 1 1:08:21

No, I love, I love your vulnerability right, and that that's what we're here for right here. Like we said, it takes a village. So the fact that you've opened your veins for us, I think, is of major value to the listeners and I'm honored personally.

Speaker 3 1:08:37

So keep up the vulnerable.

Speaker 1 1:08:39

Keep the vulnerable approach. I like it.

Speaker 3 1:08:41

You know, I don't, I don't know any other way to be. I I've been too honest into the in the past in Relationships that after the relationship was over I was taken as like what a lie, a liar, a con man, all this other stuff. Because I spoke my dreams out loud but they weren't in the reality yet and so it was like I'm gonna be an international best-selling author and blah, blah, blah. And then they're like this dude's just full of crap and he's always just spouting all this stuff. Well, you know what?

Speaker 1 1:09:12

years later, here I am you say it enough, you say enough and it becomes your reality. I love it. Yeah, that's that's the nature of right Shifting paradigm. You gotta gotta envision it first, then you have to put those words out. We were talking about what the bleep earlier. Right words are just vibrations. Thoughts and feelings are vibrational. So I love it. I think you're on the right path.

Speaker 3 1:09:34

Not that you need my approval, no, no. No, and I appreciate it, but there's so many people saying it, you just have to listen. There are people shouting that exact Concept from the mountaintops and there's so many, there's so much blindness to it. It's crazy, it's just, I think there's a shift again.

Speaker 1 1:09:53

We can wrap this up soon, but again Mary Ann Williamson, whom I love Of, kind of hit the nail on the head when she said there is a shift, yes, away from institutionalized religion, but there's this re embracing of spirit, personal spirituality, and it's largely because we don't have a daddy. Look at our world leaders, or at least the top, the militarily powerful Countries in the world, right now there's really a lack of leadership. So we are looking for more. We're looking for to return some currency to the value of experience, or what's otherwise known as wisdom. Right, and I think we're part of that movement just keeping the dialogue going. Again, I've said before, whether we answer every question or not, at least we're asking them.

Speaker 3 1:10:37

Yeah, and hindsight's, 2020, and when you can turn hindsight forward. That's what I call wisdom and I like that. Yeah, I like with that, with that mindset, that personal movement is also growing rapidly, but that's nothing new. I think people were trying to find healthiness in group and kind of found out Recently that even if you go back thousands of years in religious texts, your purse, your religious Relationship is in a closet by yourself, not out in the open, and Jesus spoke to that. And you're right. That movement for the self, you're, you're, you're, you're a universe unto yourself. You can create your own reality within your own brain. It's, it's true. I like that Harrison Ford line in the Star Wars where he's like the force, all that stuff. It's true, it's real. And so I tell people all the time this, this movement towards creating your own narrative, writing your own story. This world and life doesn't have to tell you what your life is. You tell you what your life is and then go and do so.

Speaker 1 1:11:42

Well, speaking real quick, we. I keep saying we're gonna wrap this up, but I'm having fun here. So you know, when you talk about Star Wars, for me what it brings to mind is the heroes journey, of course, right. Joseph Campbell, george Luke, has very much said. I modeled the entire you know series, however many there were initially intended to be. He modeled the whole saga after the heroes journey. So I would argue, every story is a hero's journey, right? Every character arc is a hero's journey with very similar milestones. So, again, to trace it back to the, the concept of the podcast, I think when we spend two hours in a movie theater Identifying with a protagonist a faulted protagonist, right, with an arc. When we spend 273 pages in a novel With a protagonist with whom we identify, we transform along with them on that yellow brick road journey, right? So anyway, I just think all stories are heroes journeys and we're yeah, you're saying it.

Speaker 3 1:12:44

So I I recommend that you look up a video series. It's not even a series, it's a. It's a 20-minute lecture that Kurt Vonnegut gave to Tollages for 35 years, on the arc of a story. And you're saying it, you just you're not.

Speaker 1 1:12:59

You're not alone in saying it, right of course it's a, it's a school of thought and it's a, and I'm part of that religion, for sure. Anyway, virginia, do you have anything you want to add? And I would say, joshua, if there is something we haven't hit on that You'd like to share, please, please, speak up.

Speaker 3 1:13:19

No, I, I appreciate everything. I, you know my journey is evolving every single day. Even today was a milestone for my wife and I and water tower hill publishing. Our first Combined book came out. It's already. It's already hitting pre-sales and numbers we couldn't even we couldn't even imagine so. Every day's, every day, is a journey that we refused quit. So I urge anybody that needs some motivation or needs, if anything, a light at the end of any kind of a tunnel, please feel free to get on to our platforms or my platform and see what we're doing. There's so much information for free. You don't have to buy my books, but if you do, I appreciate it. But there's so much information that I've given in the last four years by the vulnerabilities you know, personality I have, that maybe Could shed some light on somebody in that, in that rock bottom, asking those same questions to the good, to you know, whatever their God is.

Speaker 1 1:14:19

I Think you already inspired a bunch of people today, but next time I'd love to have you on again and see how your publishing company evolves and your future launches. So if you're willing to come on again in the future, I would love to talk more about again how you learned the indie Publishing world from the inside out and how you've built a publishing company from the ground up. We didn't even get that. But yeah, come on again and if you're, if you're willing.

Speaker 2 1:14:44

I am Love that. Yeah, this was a lot of fun.

Speaker 3 1:14:48

It really was.

Speaker 1 1:14:49

Thank you so much, virginia. Should we do our sign off real quick, joshua? We're trying a little sign off and it worked really well last time, so hopefully our luck will hold up. Here's the thing. Just give me a number from one to 352 108 108.

Speaker 1 1:15:08

So while I'm flipping through and finding that page, just to Tie this back into the book that inspired the podcast and we did it this morning with our last episode I just randomly flipped to that page in language of the soul and read the very first paragraph at the top and my hope was synchronicity would play its part right, an alchemy would play its part and it would fit the theme of the episode. And it actually. It really worked less time. So, fingers crossed, I'm on page 108.

Speaker 1 1:15:40

Modern culture is in the process of reframing its narratives, the tropes, stereotypes and Images that constitute social conditioning. Inclocation is inevitable. Ideally, however, the images to which a child is exposed can be cruelty free, reflecting the interconnectivity and oneness that evolution demands at this moment. Once social conditioning is fixed, it's more difficult to reverse hardwired beliefs. That is definitely related to what we've been talking about today. This goes for ideas and models. We deem both positive or negative Unsavory ideas. Those that threaten to erode innocence, as touched on earlier, require context. For example, consider that society is in the process of ushering out slut shaming, a favorite tool of patriarchy to oppress women. The exoneration of sexuality in general has experienced an arc, arguably from the sexual revolution of the 1960s through today. The AIDS crisis curbed enthusiasm for a few decades. Otherwise it's been a steady arc. The shame that Judeo-Christian culture has ascribed sexual impulses has proven largely destructive. Removing fire and brimstone from the already challenging life of an adolescent going through puberty seems to be the order of the day. Well, that went down an interesting tangent, huh.

Speaker 3 1:17:00

Yeah, but so, so, so blatantly true with my almost day-to-day Work and mindset and the things that are in my own lexicon of what I work with, with other and for other people Do you want to expand on?

Speaker 3 1:17:15

that it goes back to writing your own narrative and creating your own identity. First off that was your first point you, your narrative, is controlled by you. Yet For, I would say, the mass majority of people, their narrative is controlled by the world around them, including you know. If you have parents and teachers and stuff that say negative things to you, you believe those?

Speaker 1 1:17:34

or right.

Reclaiming and Creating Your Own Story

Speaker 3 1:17:35

We internalize Messaging from our environment, sometimes so moving yeah, internalizing and believing, and that's the craziest part, we give respect to people we wouldn't let park our cars. It's almost it's almost a natural human condition to believe the negative Rather than to put your foot down and go. Absolutely not. What you just said about me is not true at all.

Speaker 1 1:18:00

I'm actually this right and when you well, reclaiming Founders, I love it. Yeah, reclaiming your essence, not just self worth, but your essence and then the second part is the.

Speaker 3 1:18:12

You know you spoke about the Judeo, judeo, christian shame of, or adding the shame of even sexuality into adolescence and stuff that that messes up neural pathways for the rest of your adult life.

Speaker 1 1:18:25

Wow, yeah.

Speaker 3 1:18:27

And and so no you, that page 150 was perfect. I love this, so write our own stories, right exactly you, you create, you create who you are, and it starts in your brain.

Speaker 1 1:18:38

Yeah, okay, well, I hope we've inspired somebody out there. I really do. Thank you so much, joshua, I know. Thank you, Yep and Virginia. Thank you so much always and Out there in cyberspace. We'll see you next time. Remember, life is story. We can get our hands in the clay and, to mix metaphors, write our own story. See you next time.