Acceptance: The Courage to Tell Your Story

 Yvonne Chotzen brings her signature honesty, clarity, and lived experience to a conversation about acceptance, truth, and transformation. With a voice shaped by real life — not theory — she explores what happens when we finally stop hiding from our story and start owning it.

Yvonne speaks about the courage it takes to face the parts of ourselves we’ve avoided, the moments that broke us open, and the truths we were afraid to say out loud. She reminds us that acceptance isn’t passive — it’s an act of bravery. It’s choosing to stop running. It’s choosing to stop pretending. It’s choosing to finally see yourself clearly.

Her message is simple and powerful:
When you tell the truth, you free yourself.
When you accept the truth, you transform.

This talk is raw, grounding, and deeply human — a reminder that acceptance begins the moment we stop hiding from who we really are.

#Acceptance #TruthTelling #LivedExperience #HealingJourney #TransformationStory #YvonneChotzen #EmotionalHealing #YouAreNotAlone #MrTraumaTalks #RahSpeaks #MentalHealthPodcast #CourageToHeal #InnerStrength #TraumaRecovery #HealingThroughTruth 

Transcript

SPEAKER_06 0:00

All right, right about this time, I want to introduce this amazing, amazing soul. And you know, this is the second conference she's on here. She has been on mental health bytes, she has been on trauma talk Thursdays, those are two different podcasts, and she has been on our previous conference, Forgive Yourself. It's not that she's coming here to tell the same story, trust me, because she has lived the experience beyond. And listening to her, you really just go deep and think when you hear her speak. I'm not I'm speaking about none other than the amazing Hollywood award-winning producer Yvonne Schultzen. Yvonne shares powerful stories of clarity, courage, and personal transformation. Her voice brings honesty, vulnerability, and the reminder that acceptance often begins with telling the truth. We have been afraid to speak. So, ladies and gentlemen, ladies in the background, I want you all to give it up for the beautiful, the talented, the amazing Yvonne Chocer.

SPEAKER_03 1:23

I take you back now to April 3rd, 1936. Thousands of Jewish people hoping to get their visa signed have poured into Berlin learning that a visa station has just opened. And already the cues go past him for another half mile. His heart is broken. He's been sent from his small town by his family in hopes that that visa application that he carries in his breast pocket will be signed because the word of the death camps is now spreading, even though it's been top secret. People have been disappearing. The fear in the crowd is palpable, and Walter fears I will not be able to save my family. I'm near the end of the line. There's thousands of people here. At that moment, coming through the queue, and again, it's early in the morning, it's just light. A German officer is approaching, and people are pulling at his uniform, sir, sir, trying to get his attention. And when he approaches Walter, Walter doesn't even know where this comes from. But he says, Good morning, sir, in his very best English. And the officer is stunned, and he stops and he says, Where did you learn to speak like that? And Walter tells him his family has always believed in education and he's been studying English from a very young age. He never knew that that officer was married to an American. And in that moment, the trajectory, not just of his life, but his whole family's future changed because the officer said, Young man, come with me. He took him to the front. Walter's visa was signed, and he was on his way home with exit papers from Nazi Germany that not only saved him, but generations to follow. Walter was my father. Why do I share that story now when we're talking about acceptance? He came to Seattle after meeting my mother in New York. They saw a postage stamp of Mount Rainier and it reminded them of Bavaria and the Alps and their times of joyous youth. And so they started a family in the far-flung Pacific Northwest. I and my twin brother were the eldest of eight. But that legacy, that story of having been blessed with escape, haunted our lives. The guilt of having gotten out when eighty-nine of our family members perished at Auschwitz, that guilt permeates the next generation. And so the message I was given was, you are lucky to be here. Speaking, using my voice and my heart on behalf of the indigent. Until after more than ten or twelve years of putting others first and paying back that debt, I realized one day I want to tell stories on a stage bigger than a jury of twelve. And shortly after that, I had my opportunity because a blonde, buxome woman was arrested, who was charged not just with murder and conspiracy. It was a triangle love affair. Her husband was away at sea. She fell in love with his best friend who he had asked to look after her. And when he came home unexpectedly with a stomach ailment and walked in with a bouquet to find her in bed with his best friend, a horrible fight ensued. Her husband died in that fight. There was blood everywhere. And thank God her little child was at daycare. Christy was only four at the time. That case not only changed the trajectory of the lives of everyone involved, but also of myself, because the hate was so intense in the initial stages of that trial, that there was a change of venue. In federal court, you can get sent to any place a judge has opening on the West Coast. It was the Ninth Circuit. And so that's how one rainy Wednesday morning in downtown Los Angeles, in a beautiful federal courtroom. If you've never been to one, you should visit. All courtrooms are open to the public unless it's family court. And the ceilings are high and the judges way up high on a Diaz. And it makes you feel like, oh, the law really works. The law helps people. One after another, people were banging open the courtroom door and pouring in like crowds of people. And I wrote a note on my legal pad and I said to the prosecutor, who are all these people pouring into a case that no one supposedly knows about out of town with my client. And he whispered to me, they're all Hollywood producers. They want the life rights of your client. And at that moment I knew, I knew this was my time to reach for that golden opportunity that would never come again. And I stood up and I said, Your Honor recess. And I was down in the lockup with Kathy. She was a big woman, big breasts, high hair, and big anger at what had happened. Because you see, after Chris's murder, her mother-in-law, Mary Brown, had gone back to that small town in Alabama where Chris was from and gotten the courts to adjudicate because of the adultery, that she was an unfit mother. And from the moment of that decision, Kathy had her child ripped away from her. Ripped away. She tried everything. She tried getting a lawyer. No one in that town would take her case. Mary Brown was rich and powerful. She tried going to the door and knocking, and the second time she came back, the police were called. And the third time she came back, walls had been erected with barbed wire around them. But Kathy knew there was one time, one time in the year, when people put down their guard and everyone poured out into the community. And you can guess it, that was the 4th of July. And so she hood, she hid. She put on a black wig and she disguised herself in the bushes. Her sister was helping. Her sister's boyfriend had a car nearby, and the engine was running. And sure enough, one hour, two hours. They were playing games on the beautiful lawn in the park of that Alabama town. They were serving hot dogs and ketchup. Everybody was having a great time. There was a band playing, there was music playing, picnics everywhere. And then by now Christy was six. It had been two years that Kathy had been ripped away from her little girl. Little Christie goes running out onto the grass, chasing a ball. That was Kathy's moment. She raced out and she put her arms around Christy and she said, Baby, I've missed you so much. And she took her little girl and she raced back to the waiting car. And that began a seven-chase, six-month journey of Kathy trying to find a way to keep custody of her own baby. But you see, when you cross state lines, it becomes a federal case, not just a state case. And the FBI was on her trail. And so one night in a wild storm, Kathy, soaking wet with little Christie, walked into a woman's shelter for help. Unbeknownst to her, right behind her on the wall was one of the thousands of wanted posters that Mary Brown and her friends had posted all over the South. And so in that shelter, Kathy and little Christie were given hot showers and soup, and they were put into a room to have a good night's sleep, unaware that the key was turned, and they were locked in until, of course, in the morning, early in the darkness of dawn, the FBI arrived, and Kathy was shipped to Honolulu in the custody of agents and in handcuffs, and Christy was returned to her grandmother. And Kathy knew that she was gonna serve some time. And she said to me in that lockup in the federal the federal building where we were, she said, okay, she said, Sell my rights. Get as much as you can. And the only thing she had in front of her, of course, you're searched, you have nothing with you in the federal lockup interview room, except the marshals had given her one white napkin and a single bright red apple, brighter than the shirt I'm wearing. And she had just been about to take a bite out of it when I came in and told her what was going on. And she put that apple down and she took the napkin. The only thing I had with me was a pen because I'd run down to the lockup through the public elevator so quickly. She grabbed the pen and she wrote on that napkin, Yvonne Chocin is my executive producer. I got chills because she wanted me to get as much money as I could so that when Christy grew up at 18, she would know, as Kathy said, her mama loved her. Here's the only thing I can give you money for my story. And that's what happened. Three days later, I'm pitching at NBC with executives all around me. They're all wearing black, black, did you know Gucci t-shirts come in black and high top tennis shoes and black? Everyone was in black. And I thought to myself, I've never pitched before. Am I gonna be able to do this? And then I remembered that for a decade I put my life on the line to save people, to help them have a good outcome, to humanize them before juries. And I said, I can do this because all they can do is say no. But they didn't say no. They said yes, and not only did NBC make a two-hour movie, they made a four-hour mini-series starting Patty Duke and Martin Sheen, and it became their eighth highest ratings ever in history. My phone never stopped ringing off the hook. And overnight I was a Hollywood producer. And I used that platform for years after that to make movies of people like the story that came from my family, ordinary people who found themselves thrust into extraordinary circumstances where they had to overcome. And as I looked back on my life and the drive to tell these stories, I realized that acceptance of your story, of your validity, of your right to be here, of your worth to be here starts with one simple thing. Your story. That that message, those early messages impact you forever. And so what I've learned with story today is that sometimes those early painful messages, those early memories that for so many of us were abusive, were hurtful, we were unseen. Those things that happened to us, if we can reframe them and go back to those stories, yes, we need to tell all the trauma that happened. One of the things I do that's a strategy that is a surprisingly easy gift to give the people you care about in your life, is just to record their life story. Be curious, just as Michelle said, ask questions, and then what happened, and then what happened, and then what happened. And it's such an aha for people to just have aware listening while they tell the story, how it's been locked in them that it happened. And that recording is a gift, they may never do anything with it, but it may give them a memoir, a chance to see things differently. But then there's another strategy, and that strategy is yes, this did happen to you. But what if you retold the story and looked at that trauma, those early experiences, the molestation or the being unseen, or the being forgotten, or the physical drama that hurt you because you were present when he whipped mom, all those terrible experiences, or even some of the experiences where someone else in the family, another sibling, was the cherished one, and you for some reason were invisible, so many different kinds of traumas, emotional abuse on all kinds of levels, big and small. What if you retold that story? What did that story and those incidents do for me? So in my case, using my own strategy, I see that as the eldest of eight, as someone who, like others here, had to be a caretaker as a young person. There's a phrase for it, parentrified. Yes, my childhood was ripped off, but look, look at the leadership I got. Look at my ability to tell stories because I had to put kids to bed that way. Look at the gifts I've gotten. That not only brings a deep acceptance of what life has given you, but it allows you to have such a deep appreciation for the gifts that came and the abilities we each have because of how our early childhood fell in upon us. We didn't choose it, it chose us. But as Ross, as you said, you have to hold on to your story that belongs to you. Those were your words. So tell your stories. They're precious. They're that little child back there who's waiting for you to hear your story, your story, his story, her story, and hold it close. Hold it in your heart and tell that little person I'm here for you now. I'm never gonna let you be heard again. And embrace. The stories that came long ago that are the gifts of your strengths in the world today. So tell your stories like Hollywood. They'll give you richness, they'll give you a sense of the journey you've traveled, the road that you've taken, and why, perhaps in some way, it was a gift to you. I firmly believe that each one of us comes into this world with our own unique destiny and your stories, finding them, telling them, sharing them, drawing them out of the people around you. Whether you're a therapist, whether you're on a bus, whether you're in a networking event, what happened to you? How did that feel? Ask them about their five senses. That brings back more memories. There's a whole strategy that's very simple to use with people of helping others discover their story, and then in the retelling, perhaps design how they see the gifts that gave. So tell your stories. Know that they're the biggest gift you can give to yourself, and it helps you accept not just what's come behind you, but as each of the stories we've heard this morning show, it helps you take a new trajectory forward because you're uh you have cognizance of the gifts, the life you've lived, the journey you've taken, and perhaps it helps you take that leap to live and flourish and nourish the seeds of your own destiny. Thanks.

SPEAKER_06 24:23

You just always bring it like in a different way. This time you add it to the story. One thing you need to do before is make sure you tell us the name of that again, the that international acclaim Hollywood winning for our mini-series. You need to make sure you tell us the name.

SPEAKER_03 24:43

Absolutely. It's called A Matter of Justice. It just hit the public domain. You can see it absolutely free. Again, Martin Sheen and Patty Duke star. So look it up: A Matter of Justice. You're gonna have to see it in two parts because movies, of course, are about 90 minutes to two hours, and it's a four-hour, so you're gonna have to stop and start. But that's the story that catapulted me to movie dumb and storytelling in a way that has reached millions, for which I'm so grateful.

SPEAKER_06 25:25

Well, I'm grateful for you. I'm telling you right now, like I'm just sitting back listening to you, and like, you know, I tell this all the time, every time we have a talk on a podcast or something, it's like certain things that people go through you have inside that actually scares you. And this is this is I think this is human. Like you think like that, like, oh, I don't know how I would live if I I lose a limb. So, God, I'm asking you, please don't let this happen to me. And um, just I think it was two weeks ago, we interviewed um this amazing comedian and host and an actress who is actually she gives talks at New York University and stuff like that, and she came on the show, Trauma Behind the Glamour, and she brought her husband, and he was missing a leg. And when you hear his story of just walk going to see a game at this at the Yankee Stadium, and you're you're going to see a game, and here you are, a car runs out of control, and your life totally changes. You get what I'm saying? And this individual who I'm interviewing is telling you that on days that I don't see things going right, he's my inspiration because he has realized and accepted the fact that this thing has happened, it's not changing it, but making it making things better for me. So I saw everyone listening in Dr. Jen in the background, she's commenting.

SPEAKER_03 27:04

So I want to hear who has some amazing questions for you because everybody, I would like you to show. I was looking is this the moment?

SPEAKER_06 27:14

Yes, I actually was I came up to ask you that, and we end up going with the conversation. It's so excited. Hold on, let me get it. I had a T and then my computer froze off. One second.

SPEAKER_08 27:27

Getting it back for you right now. Can be a powerful motivator. Just ask the kid Steve Hartman met on the road.

SPEAKER_09 27:39

Every week he set himself up for disappointment. Every week, 13-year-old Jamarian Stiles came to this community center in Boca Ratone, Florida, hoping to play basketball with the other kids. And every week he was rejected.

SPEAKER_05 27:58

And then they'll just tell me, just go home and stuff. You can break someone's heart like that.

SPEAKER_09 28:04

The problem was obvious to everyone but Jamarion. He lost his hands and most of his arms as an infant due to a rare bacterial infection. But he insisted that was no reason to give up his hoop dreams. What about soccer?

SPEAKER_05 28:19

Have you heard of that sport? Yeah, hear it every day.

SPEAKER_09 28:21

Why don't you play soccer? That just seems like the obvious thing.

SPEAKER_05 28:24

You would think that I would be good at soccer. I'm really not. I'm horrible.

SPEAKER_09 28:29

Which is why, on the first day of class here at Eagles Landing Middle School, Jamarian took his case to basketball coach Darion Williams. Yeah. Said he wanted to be on the team this year. I said, all great.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

Well, just make sure you try out.

SPEAKER_09 28:41

He said, okay, great, but what are you really thinking?

SPEAKER_00 28:43

This man has no arms. Yeah. How is he going to play basketball? But man, he told me, Mr. Williams, I've never been on a team before. Even if I don't play, I just want to be on the team. And how could I say no to that?

SPEAKER_09 28:55

And that's how the Eagles got their first armless basketball player. Jamarion, number two there, quickly earned a reputation as the hardest worker on the squad.

SPEAKER_00 29:06

He was usually the first one in the gym, usually the last one to leave.

SPEAKER_09 29:10

Still, he sat on the bench most of the season. Right, one more. Until last month. Coach put him in the game with about six minutes left. And when he eventually got the ball on the far side of the court, everyone yelled, shoot it! So he did. And sank a three-pointer. And if you didn't quite see that, don't worry. Because shortly after he got the ball again, this time on the near side, for another three-pointer. At the buzzer. Jamarion Styles, the kid no one would pick, was now everyone's hero. Needless to say, today, Jamarion can play all he wants at the community center. He just made the volleyball team and has every intention of playing football next year. Really, the only thing he won't play is the victim. If I could wave a magic wand right now and give you your arms back, would you want them? You don't need him? No. Who needs hands when you've got this kind of touch? Steve Hartman on the road in Boca Ratone, Florida. Wow.

SPEAKER_06 30:22

We really, we really just spoke about that. The acceptance behind it, right? So yeah, what he says, who needs it, right? Let me bring up everyone so they can ask you a question.

SPEAKER_07 30:41

Anyone, come on.

SPEAKER_02 30:43

I feel like I felt like I was living all the themes she was talking about. Like I felt like I was there. I see how you became a Hollywood producer. I was living it with you. And when you said that was that Walter was your dad, I'm like, oh my god. It was it was just like it was like a cliffhanger the whole time you were talking, like you're waiting for the I was I've been on the edge of my seat. It was the most amazing, amazing talk ever. Really beautiful. And uh you spoke it with such heart and feeling, and I'm I'm just blown away by that. That was your dad. And I get the whole thing about surviving girls, and that's such a hard thing to overcome. You need a movie about you now. Jimmy. The Ivan Tudson story. You just do your own movie, life story. That was fantastic, absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much. I want to see the movie about you now, seriously.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

That was so powerful. I'm I'm like trying to fight back tears from the video that you showed. That there's just so much power in people's stories. And in your story, I was commenting that it's just this amazing story of overcoming. So overcoming the thoughts that you have that come from a time well before you, and doing this amazing thing, and then helping someone else overcome. It's just it's very inspiring. And I agree with Susie. I was like waiting for the end of the story, like, where's this going? What's happening? It was awesome. Thank you so much, Yvonne.

SPEAKER_07 32:16

Anyone else? Terry, you're muted. Terry, you're muted.

SPEAKER_04 32:24

Okay, can you hear me? Yes. Oh, wonderful. So, Yvonne, it's you are very skilled in storytelling, like what Miss Susie was saying, and and being able to bring a point to a cliffhanger and being able to have a person at the edge of your seat with how you deliver your message and sharing of your father's background and how that led to what you had to carry generationally, which a lot of people they they don't they don't give as much credit to the fact that sometimes we can't carry things from the programming our parents give us or the expectations they place. And in you, with you being the first of, I think you said eight children, you had what was it called, being um parentum, parentified. That was the first time I've ever heard that statement or that that frame parentified, which is I'm guessing it is your responsibility to add assistance to your parents with all your younger siblings, and having to do that you know, extra bit of giving up your childhood in order for you to be able to play adult at a child age. And so I wanted to ask you with your ability to be able to share other people's stories. I was really wanting to know from you when you found within yourself that you had carried the responsibility of giving back to the community the you're lucky to be here. And you have to give because you were given life. I suppose that may be the way that they were framing it. When you realized you had given so much of yourself, what was it for you that you said, I deserve my own attention? I deserve my own life force given to me because I was given this life. I was given these experiences, I was given all of these gifts that I have been able to demonstrate. I know how to use them wisely. I know how to use them and help people, and I know how to help people deliver their stories. What was it for you that said, I deserve me as my number one priority for me moving forward? Which of course puts you on the trajectory of capturing that moment when you knew this may be the moment that I'm able to tell someone else's story, but I can hone in something for myself. You have that moment where you have the epiphany. What was that for you, that epiphany for you? That I am my own me and I deserve me to be my own priority for once in my life for the first time in my life.

SPEAKER_03 35:23

Yeah, I think those moments of epiphanies were literally epiphanies all along the way. Like we needed to make money when we were kids. And so I loved birthday parties. So we got a big refrigerator box, cut a hole in it, and became the Chotsen troupe of birthday party puppeteers. And we got paid great. We sometimes got to go to three and four birthday parties in a weekend. Our, you know, mom would drop us off in the station wagon. We'd unload the flattened box and put it up, and all the kids had different puppets and they'd be in front and behind. So it started like that, in small ways, to enjoy what had gotten ripped away from me as the mom figure, the oldest. And I did the same thing in college. I was at uh in a very upscale fancy community. I would charge$400 a pop. At that time, that was like$4,000 today. And I'd I'd go and I'd put on these, you know, I'd tell stories. I'd ask the mom in advance what the kid wanted to be when he or she grew up, and I'd tell a whole story with Macy in the minute in the middle of it, who became a pilot, and I'd have a puppet show, and I'd get cake and lots of money. And so I I used those aspects that I felt I hadn't gotten to play and do as I advanced in my education. And another example was when I got to Hawaii to to pursue a master's degree, um, I joined a Hawaiian paddling team and a soccer team. And I did all those things that I wished I had done when I was seven, 10, 15. So I've always done lots of sports because I have a twin brother, and there was always like, you know, competition and it made me very fit, but I never got to be on teams. So that's what I did twice. So I think there were little epiphonies all along the way, and um, and that moment when I reached for that opportunity to pitch at NBC, and they said yes. And all of a sudden, I got to make movies and tell stories on such a large scale and impact people all across the globe. I was getting letters from Tunisia. I got a letter once, and what happened when such, you know, it's like you have no idea of the reach of a movie, and it's just it's it's just been the hugest, most gratifying gift of my life to know that a story can reach somebody across the globe and give them hope and lift them up. And so when you find that work, like it seems like so many people who've come today have found it's like you're playing, you're dreaming your best dream, you're living it out, and so telling stories is for me, it's candy. I love it. I love your story. I'm so curious what I would do with Michelle's story, is not open with the white flag. I would open with he put the gun to my face. My god, what is gonna happen to him now? Do you see that? It's the same story. You start in the middle of the conflict, you you use your emotions, you grab your viewers, your listeners, your audience because they're feeling what you felt, and that's science, folks. That's biology. There's proven science that when you share an emotional story, the person listening receives it as though it's happening to them. Same thing that happens when people watch movies, you feel like you're in it. That's how it lodges in your brain, and that's why storytelling is the badest connector. Stories make intimacy, stories build trust, stories help you sell without having to sell because your audience, your listener, your buyer trusts, likes, and knows you because they're part of your story if it's emotional. It's an incredible tool. Use it in your healing, use it in your narrative. When I work in a medical profession, help therapists and doctors ask that probing question. What was going on, John, when this terrible, excruciating backache started. And you might not get the answer right away, but eventually John said, It was in the middle of my 30-year divorce, and that's the aha for him. But like Susie's music and Michelle's probing and diet and healthness, that aha from his own revelation of story is another modality of healing that is just incredibly potent.

SPEAKER_06 41:14

Wow, thank you so much, Yvonne. Thank you, Terry, so much for the question. This was beyond amazing, Yvonne. I I you know, you on the podcast, the same, you did the same thing last month. Amazing. Thank you so much for doing what you do, and yes, your story, your struggle, who you are. When someone acts when you tell it into the way it happens, people actually feel it and they listen. Alright.