Behind the Curtain: Honest Conversations about Foster Care and Adoption
Each episode will feature a conversation between host Rebecca Harvin and foster/adoptive caregivers or members of the community who support foster care and adoption.
Behind the Curtain: Honest Conversations about Foster Care and Adoption
Girl Lost (and Found): Kate Angelo's Journey From Foster Care to Bestselling Author
Kate Angelo shares her transformative journey from foster care to bestselling author, revealing how small interventions changed her life trajectory and shaped her mission to help others heal from trauma.
• Experiencing stability when a friend's family took her in through an independent living program after facing placement in a group home
• Developing survival mechanisms that protected her during childhood trauma but required adjustment in adult relationships
• Navigating triggers from past trauma, including physical reactions to certain sounds and movements
• Creating communication strategies with her husband to break toxic cycles and build understanding
• Working through nonprofit ministry to strengthen marriages and prevent family breakdown
• Using fiction writing to explore themes of trauma, healing and redemption through her book "Girl Lost"
• Emphasizing that trauma doesn't define identity and healing is possible through understanding our true purpose
Find Kate's book "Girl Lost" at major retailers and learn more about her nonprofit work at her website. Subscribe to Kate's newsletter to receive exclusive content including deleted scenes from her books.
This is part two of Kate's powerful story on Behind the Curtain. Go back and listen to part one here:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2401115/episodes/17808468
Links to Kate Angelo's Book Forsaken:
https://kateangelo.com/forsaken/
Pre-Order Girl Lost Here:
https://kateangelo.com/girl-lost/
Hey guys, thanks so much for joining us today. On Behind the Curtain I'm your host, rebecca Harvin, and this is where we have honest conversations about foster care and adoption. Today, my guest on the show is a former foster youth. She aged out of the foster care system when she was 18. Her name is Kate Angelo and she once sold a lion to a circus in Shreveport after her mom realized lions weren't great house pets. We mentioned that in our podcast and the story just goes from there.
Speaker 1:Growing up, she was a bookworm, dog groomer, exotic pet wrangler, horse trainer and teenage pool shark. After aging out of foster care, she broke into tech at the height of the dot-com era, helping build web tools still powering businesses. Today, she's earned recognition as Publisher Weekly's best-selling author, cela Award winner and Amazon Top 100 bestseller. Her journey from foster care to best-selling author fuels her fast-paced romantic suspense where flawed characters discover hope and healing through life's fiercest trials and relationships. And when she's not putting fictional characters through the wringer, she's either helping writers automate the boring stuff so they can get back to writing, or creating real-life happily ever afters for couples at conferences and events nationwide.
Speaker 1:Our conversation covers her life in foster care and after and the work that they're doing. It was such a good conversation and I don't want you guys to miss any part of it that we are actually going to do Kate's podcast over two episodes. So today we're bringing you part two of the conversation. If you missed last week, please feel free to go back and listen to it. First, we'll link to it in the show notes for easier access. Enjoy the conversation.
Speaker 2:So you're getting kicked out of your foster home and I have to move you and there's no place to take you. So you're going to have to go to a group home in the next town, in Springfield, which is about an hour away, which means, like you're in the middle of high school I think I was either a freshman or sophomore at the time and been doing this foster care thing for about a year. And now you're disrupted and you're going to have to move to a whole nother city. At least there I had some friends, because I had. I knew these people in a small town, so I'd been. I was abandoned by all biological family, and now you're telling me you're going to pick me up and move me to a new city where I know no one and I'm going to live in a group home with girls that I don't know. And, um, my friend who is standing next to me was like well, can't she just live with me? She was like I'm an only child, we live in a three bedroom, she can just stay in the guest room. And my caseworker was like really, and I was like we should probably ask her parents first, Don't you think? He was like yeah, you could do that and I'm like, well, we might need to ask the grownups. And so we, yeah. So we asked her parents and they were like, yeah, absolutely. And they I had known them for a long time because we were friends and had already, you know, called them, we called them, called them mom and mom and dad, and so it was already like that for us. Anyway, they brought me in and tried very hard to make no separation between their daughter and me. They tried really hard to just you know, you have, and it was, it was. You cannot understand how amazing it was for me to have parents who cared, who said you have rules, you have to be home by a certain time, you have to do your laundry. If you like, we'll help you buy a car, but you have to. We'll pay your car insurance, but you have to work and make the car payment, which I was already working.
Speaker 2:And then I went through, so they had like a background check, but they weren't foster parents, they did an independent living program, as if I was renting a room from them, but they didn't really see it that way. And then I never saw my caseworker ever again. I don't think he was like, oh, she's fine, I'll see you later and went on to office. I mean, I don't remember a home visit. I don't remember ever seeing this caseworker ever again, Until I mean, even when I aged out, I just turned 18. And I I'm sure I had at least one more meeting with him, but I don't remember any of them Probably to like trauma, trauma blocked, or something. But I know I just didn't see him hardly ever, maybe once or twice in my whole life.
Speaker 2:I attribute a lot to the two people. One was the lady who sold my mom exotic birds. She saw how we were living and she took me and my sister to church a couple of times and planted in us the seed of what life really could look like, what other people had. And even though I felt like I was unworthy of that, it was still there in my spirit and in my soul and in the back of my mind. And then my sister just speaking up like that and saying you know she could just live with us. I mean, my life would have been completely different if I had gone into this girl's home and who knows what would happen at that point. Um, and so I managed to stay there, uh, graduate high school and then um and then age out of foster care that way?
Speaker 1:God bless them. I mean, you know, it's like a, it's like a simple yes. That's not a simple yes, Right.
Speaker 2:Especially because they didn't know what, and I don't even know if they really still know the kind of trauma that I had because I didn't talk about it.
Speaker 1:Sure, I tried just to be really good because I was so people I'm like my sister was like I'm not doing nothing wrong, yeah.
Speaker 2:My sister was like yeah, they say be home by 10, but they don't really mean that, you know.
Speaker 1:And I'm like no, no, no no, no, we're going to be home oh, I'm going to be home at 958 exactly. I'm not even going to make them look at the clock at 10 o'clock because they'll already know that I'm home um I think kids in care, uh, can do one of two things.
Speaker 1:They can either do that like I don't want to mess this up I know actually by now how bad it was and I don't want to. I don't want to, um, lose this, which is a wonderful like thing and also can be very rooted in like fear of deep abandonment, right, like I'm not going to have this happen to me again. Yeah, um, and so I will perform. God help me, I will perform. And then you have like the other side. That's like let's see how many rules I can break and let's test this. Yeah, you know, you get people who are going to test and people who are going to say, oh, I wouldn't, I don't want to come near the test because, yeah, and you know, all kids test, they always test, that's what they do.
Speaker 2:So I think it's a natural thing for the ones who are testing, because they're testing. You know, I just remember feeling. I remember one time walking out of the front door and feeling like so loved and amazing, because she had just yelled at me for not putting not yelled at me, but, you know, just yelled at me for not putting my laundry away, basically going you can't leave until you put your laundry away. I washed it, I dried it, I folded it, I put it on the dryer. All you have to do is take it to your room and put it in the drawers, not take it to your room and put it on. And she never has raised her voice at me, ever. And so all she did was just say get your stuff and take it to your room before you go anywhere. And that was like the most secure I had ever, like somebody to hold me accountable, somebody who was like serving me, like that, the structure. I just loved it. I felt so like I'm their daughter, I'm their kid, because she, it was both of us. She was yelling at you know, and and I just felt like so loved from that, and so Are they still family today? Yeah, so I still call her my sister, even though I was never fully adopted.
Speaker 2:I used to just tell people I'm adopted, because it's easier than explaining that you aged out of the system or whatever. But with what we do, with our nonprofit, it's important, I think, for people to realize that we have lived experience. You know that, not only aging out of the system and sometimes I go and I speak at schools or I speak at youth groups and people who know me they'll be like I had no idea you had a past like that. You don't look like someone who has a past like that. And it's very weird that they would think because they think I would look like somebody else.
Speaker 2:You know, with that kind of background, and I'm like there are a lot of emotional scars on the inside and some people display them on the outside and, um, you know, and I'm sure that I do in some ways but, um, yeah, I think that it's. It's just amazing that, um, it's just amazing that I am where I am now, but really running a nonprofit specifically to keep parents together to teach people relationship skills so they don't marry wrong or marry hard. I don't think there's really wrong. But there's married hard. You can marry somebody who has gone through a lot of trauma and you love them so much and you want to be there. But you don't know how to help them with relationship skills either.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm. So I had a conversation with one of my kids in the car. We were listening to Alex, but you don't know how to help them with relationship skills either. So I had a conversation with one of my kids in the car. We were listening to Alex Warren's song. It's called bloodline and it's about like you are not, you don't have to follow in the footsteps. And I had kids in the back of the car.
Speaker 1:We were just going to pick up my youngest from his daycare and I didn't know that they were listening to the song and they started asking questions about like what does this mean? Is this song? First of all, they said is this a worship song? And I said, well, it's not, but I'm listening to it as if it is.
Speaker 1:Because this is possible, because Jesus, if we work with him and agree with him that he can heal our hearts and our minds, we have a chance to to heal bloodlines and to and to not follow in the footsteps of um different generational cycles, that um, like there's so many different kinds of generational cycles, you know.
Speaker 1:And then they started asking like is this true for me too? But like there's so many different kinds of generational cycles, you know. And they started asking like is this true for me too? And now my kids are like young, like they're not, they're not old enough that I would have thought that we would have had this conversation, but genuinely going, is it possible for me to heal along the along the way? And so what I love about your story and what I love about the work that you do and I love that your mission is how can we help people heal? How can we help people not follow in the footsteps of their parents if it's not a good path to follow, of their parents? If it's not a good path to follow, how can we? How can we acknowledge our own pain and our own suffering and and really allow Jesus into those spaces and say like hey, you are the great healer, come, come heal, and then also can I get some tools, come heal, and then also can I get some tools.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean my, my experience, and I think a lot of people who come out of abuse experience experience this too is saying if look at what I went through and if that's who the father is to sit by on some throne and look down and watch somebody burning you with cigarettes and your mom say she's going to kill you, I don't want any part of that, I don't want any part of that guy, I don't want any part of that church. I don't want any part of this at all. And you combine that with your fears and the abandonment and all the other issues that you have, it's really easy for you to say I don't want that.
Speaker 2:Because of what I went through and lately I mean for a long time now I remember like the first time I ever gave my testimony was in a small gathering of women who had just come to this domestic violence shelter and then they went to church service and the first woman who came up after hearing my testimony and even then we weren't even running a nonprofit or anything I just talked to them about the healing that I had when I finally gave in to Jesus calling me, saying I'm here.
Speaker 2:I'm here and I'm not what you think I am, I'm not who you think I am, but let me show you. But you have to come for me to show you willingly. When she asked for salvation and prayed and wanted to turn her life around, that was when I really saw that model of Jesus beaten, broken, abandoned, crucified on a cross. And he says he would do it for one. And in that moment it was like the crashing of waves for me to reconcile. I would go through everything I ever went through for that one woman right there who was crying at the altar. And I'm just a human, yeah, you know that was it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. I was in Cambodia earlier this year and we were working with a group of people that on one of the last days, as the trip unfolded and as that day was unfolding, I was sitting in the back of this room and so very clearly felt the Lord say I need you to tell them your story, and it is the part of my story that I needed to tell them is not a part of my story that I talk about publicly Like I def. I might talk about it with my friends, but I do not stand up on a stage and talk about this, um, and that day it was just this, very like hey, rebecca, can you show them that you have the same scar? And can you show them, like, what your life kind of looks like right now, and and and the, the journey that you walked through with this. And so I did.
Speaker 1:And then I went to the market with my friend and she was like vulnerability hangover, and I said, yes, 100%. I am not used. I do not prefer to do this from a stage, but it was worth it. And so then, as the day keeps unfolding, and later that night we start, we have a prayer time and the number of people in that room that came up and they were like you and I. We have the same. I needed to hear you have the same scar and that I could stand in that place and say here's, what I can tell you is that nothing is wasted, nothing is wasted and that God is here. He's here the whole time, he's here through every single moment and nothing is ever wasted. The sheer beauty of that right.
Speaker 2:Everyone says like beauty from ashes and you know you have to be broken so the light can get in. And some of these great phrases no one really wants to be that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, put it on a coffee cup, but you don't want it in real life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's why, like you know, one of the big things for me is, well, that's why I write fiction too. You know, we we met through the fiction side of writing is because I'm able to tell a story about people who are broken like that, and then they have some healing, a measure of healing, but you still carry those scars through your life. You know, here I am, uh, some mumbles, number of years later that I still think about the things that I went through, that, my, that still trigger me and I've talked to my husband about it even before. I'm like the sound of you ripping your belt out of your loops, like that. I cannot.
Speaker 1:I cannot like, Kate, I cannot. You just mentioned one of my, one of my like. Oh, the physical reaction I just had to you even saying it, I cannot.
Speaker 2:Right and people don't even think about it. And I and I realized I told him. I was like, if you'll consciously remember that when you take your belt off, I will work really hard to make sure that it doesn't give me that trigger or that I regulate that. You know, modify my behavior on the inside so that we're always one of us is always kind of thinking about it.
Speaker 1:You know what I'm saying, if that makes sense, because I still literally have to plant my feet on the ground and say I am 43. I am safe. I am safe. I'm standing in my own bedroom. I am not about to experience physical danger.
Speaker 2:Yes, I still struggle a lot with, um, like love taps. You know like there's some people that will just like whatever and it's not like your hands, it's an object. So, like my husband might give me, like the love tap with the coat hanger, and I'm like Nope, nope, that's not. That is not a love tap to me.
Speaker 2:And I think about that. If that's me at this age age, think about the children who are in care, who are in your care, who came out of that. I mean, even if it's not, even if they weren't physically abused, even if it was just emotional abuse, and then you think my words can have that same effect of pulling the belt out of the loops. You know what I mean. Like why didn't we have wider belts that were harder to yank out loops? You know what I mean? Um, like why didn't we have wider belts that were harder to yank out? Like you know?
Speaker 1:what I'm saying, the widest belt ever that never comes out of those loops, you know um, yeah, I don't wear them today like it's like a, it's a piece of my, of a wardrobe that I just am, like I'm good yeah, I never really did either.
Speaker 2:I, I think I bought my first belt like a month ago or something yeah, so I have.
Speaker 1:I did because I was like okay, adults wear belts, like adult, like like occasionally, if you're gonna tuck your shirt in, yeah yeah, if you're gonna tuck your shirt and it really does complete the look, blah, blah, blah. Uh, they sit in my closet. I I think I've worn it like two or three times because I like the act of the for me, even for me, the act of taking off a belt. Like me, my own removing of a belt, I can't do it yeah, I, I feel that a lot.
Speaker 2:I feel that so much and, uh, and it's really weird because you don't think, like going into a relationship whether you're dating or courting, or engaged or married um, like we should sit down and have talks about this, because you might not even recognize it, because you haven't been taught my husband is the best at this that he talks a lot about vision, identity and purpose, and he's like we get our identity from all these things around us and there are some people who their identity is the trauma and they've never been able to get away. That is not your identity. Your identity comes from Christ. It's who he meant for you to be if the world never touched you. It's who you were meant to be in the Garden of Eden. But we have the world, and so you have to uncover who he meant for you to be, and so you have to uncover who he meant for you to be without all of that. And then and then, when you can see yourself the way that Christ sees you and you know your identity in Christ the way he knows you, then you can slowly start to see other people the way that he sees them. You can see that that thing that annoys you about your partner, your spouse, your boss, your somebody else that's close to you, your child, even it was there. It was put there for good. Like you said, nothing is wasted.
Speaker 2:One of the stories that we tell people is that when we first got married, I realized that I had, like this protection shell around me so if I fail, I didn't want anybody. I didn't want to tell anybody, because every failure might mean you know, you don't know what happened. You could get abused, you could get yelled at, you could get humiliated, you could have somebody abandon you like. Failure to me meant all kinds of really terrible things. And my husband, I married an Italian who is very passionately loud sometimes, who sometimes doesn't say Are you okay? First, you know. He just says the first thing that pops out of his out of his mouth might be like what happened, you know. And then you think you immediately internalize that to your fault. And so one time I accidentally backed our car into the garage and then and I broke it and I didn't tell him, I just like pulled back in, came back inside, put my stuff down and went on because I was afraid of his reaction. And I remember him sitting down and telling me he's like you didn't even give me the option of reacting good, you know, like that wasn't even an that wasn't even an option. You just assumed I was the worst of the worst and I was going to react in some way, that someone else has reacted in your path.
Speaker 2:And hearing him say that I was like you're right, that that's a me problem, you know, that's not a you problem. Like, even if you reacted poorly, I never even gave you the option to act good or act bad or whatever. I took that away from him an opportunity for us to grow together. And so so I told him I was like, maybe if we had like a trigger word that I could say, like I'm really vulnerable right now and I'm going to tell you something and I don't want you to yell at me. And so so we came up with like a little word that if I was like you know, hey, this is what I want you to react good, good, because I'm being very vulnerable with you and after 20 years of marriage we don't have to do this as much.
Speaker 2:But in our early in our marriage, that's how we survived a lot of those things, because it would be just this toxic cycle of he might say something in a loud like you know, oh my gosh, look what happened. And the raising of the voice and the that made me feel like a failure. And then I would either come back poorly or come back or just disappear, and then we just have this toxic cycle of trying to figure out why, why, why were we even doing this? And you know some people who live in that, for you know, five, 10 years, they're like this is the same chaos that I grew up with as a kid. You may as well bring home a lion, you know, and live with us.
Speaker 2:And he said and he's really great about he's like sometimes I just have to hug the porcupine. Like, if you're not, you just have to hug the porcupine. You just have to say I don't feel like it, but we need to physically hold each other so that we know it's safe, we love each other, we can work this out. We don't have to do it right now. It's not what you grew up with, it's not. You know, we just have to do this. And he is so great at that and I'm like that's why you're the president and I'm the vice president but in marriage and with our kids, right like it's exactly it is.
Speaker 1:I have a friend who says all the time to me it's about my heart. This has always been about my heart, like in the in learning how to parent her son. Um, and all of the joy and heartache and struggle that come with that. Um, she's like no, jesus is going after my heart and so all of my tension with it, all of my everything, attention with it, all of my everything it's about he's going after my heart and I. And hugging the porcupine is such a great analogy of, like you know, we don't want to hug a porcupine because it's like we're we might get hurt in the process of hugging the porcupine.
Speaker 2:Like it could be totally okay or it could be pretty spiky there you know, yeah and it's.
Speaker 1:You know it's no pretty spiky there. You know, yeah and it's. You know it's no small thing that we take patterns of childhood into marriage and into parenting and absolutely, um, it's also no small thing that there's redemption that's available and that there's restoration and healing that's available and it's just being willing and available and open to it for both, for us in our marriages with our kids. I said to our therapist a couple of weeks ago my husband and I are in couples counseling and I showed up and I was like, I have this really problematic belief in a Jesus that can raise the dead. And she looked at me and I was like, like, and I'm using the word problematic here on purpose and I am funny and I do use humor to deflect and I do and all of those things. Right, yeah, find me a kid right, grew up, uh, in chaos and doesn't use humor too.
Speaker 2:My siblings and I are very funny people, yeah, um, I know there's a meme that someone that I someone sent me I think I might have posted it a while back. Like you know, they say said something like you know what makes you? Uh, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and then the comment under it is like it absolutely does not, but it does make you funnier.
Speaker 1:And I'm like it does make you funnier.
Speaker 2:True, because if you can't do that, then you know. And and that's why sometimes it's like you inappropriately laugh when you've gone through trauma and other people are like how are you laughing? Oh my God.
Speaker 1:Kate, all the time. I laugh all the time when it's like, um, not appropriate or or just like in normal conversation, or I'll be like life is really hard and I'll start like I'll like start really laughing and I and in editing this podcast and editing the different episodes, it's so wild to me to hear um, when I'm like Rebecca, you just said something, like I get an outsider's perspective of what it's like, and I'm like you just said something incredibly difficult, and then you started laughing like yeah, I just totally did that earlier.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you catch it in the edit where you were saying something and I kind of laughed and I was like I'm laughing and it's a trauma thing, Right, but it's like you know what.
Speaker 1:Like, like survival mechanisms work. I tell this to people a lot when they're like what happened and I'm like no, no, no, no. Survival mechanisms are intended to protect you. Like this is there's a reason we pick up the same thing. It's because it worked. Now there's better ways of doing something and there's healthier ways of doing something, but the thing that kept us alive if a lion is literally trying to eat us in our home, it will work. Our bodies are designed to stay alive and you know, that's I think about.
Speaker 2:Like each person has some survival mechanisms everybody, you know. Besides, like it doesn't, it doesn't matter what it is like. You know we, when one of the things that we do is provide character education for adults and kids and things like that, to show them that you know God made you one way and then the world turns you into something else. But he really mean, he really gave you all these strengths. Like if we could really polish up these strengths and like get rid of the limitations that are not even like a part of your natural limitations, they're just limitations that are like secondary and tertiary to who God really made you to be. If you could just focus on you know. Like you're very charismatic but you have poor follow through. So let's work on your follow through and let's use your charisma to do what God has called you to do and accept that. You know some people might say, well, why does this pastor get, you know, 6,000 people every Sunday and this one gets 100? And it might not be charisma, or it might be charisma and it just might be their teaching style and that's okay. It's like you know, everyone is different and we can't compare ourselves to other people. You can't compare your trauma to someone else's trauma and I used to completely dismiss other people's feelings because I'm like you know, if you had been through what I had been through, you wouldn't be complaining about what you're going through. And even though it hard is hard, but hard is hard and it is, it's hard, but hard is hard and it is it's just, it's crazy. So, out of the nine siblings that I have, um, I really only know me in one other that are mostly what you would call successful, I mean, you know, graduating college or um, having a job and full-time job and things like that. So, um, the odds are not great without intervention and that's kind of why we do what we do with our nonprofit is to be the intervention to help people understand why it's important to have this education.
Speaker 2:Marriage is just one place where these things get revealed so quickly, like with your friends. They'll love you through stuff because they don't have to live with you, but your spouse has a way of revealing every insecurity, every flaw, everything. And I once saw an illustrated sermon where the pastor was on stage and he was talking and a man comes up behind him with a chisel and a hammer and he just like starts chiseling into his shoulder and he's like, hey, what are you doing? Oh, that hurts. And he's like, well, I'm God and I'm just getting rid of this flaw right here. And then he's like, but it hurts. And he was like, yeah, but look how pretty you are now that it's gone. And so they kind of did this illustration about that and it was really eye-opening to me that the Lord might allow that pain. Like you said, nothing is wasted. But the Lord might allow that pain in your life because he's trying to reveal the beauty of who he made so that other people can see what he sees.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Man. The other day I was like God I would take like a plateau or a mountain top, like do we have to do all of this in the valley? I?
Speaker 1:know, Do we have to? And again, I just did it. I just did the laughing thing, yeah, when I'm like really actually beseeching the Lord to just be present in this hard season and really genuinely saying that and like genuinely showing up to this um therapy session or, you know, just belief of like, uh, it's waiting his heart, like all of the things, and anyhow, I don't want to go into all of that, but but you know that that's the thing is that you really hard reflection to aspire to.
Speaker 2:And a lot of times I say we're the redheaded stepchild of all ministries because people love to give money to ministries that are for kids or sex trafficking or foster kids or, you know, maybe elderly admissions. But you know, when it's marriage and if you're going through something hard and you have gone through something hard people don't. People are like no, you know, it's that's yeah, they don't. It's too close to home, it's too close to home and they don't see the value because they see people walk through it and get divorced. And I'm like but did you know that by us educating people not just us but the thousands of people that we know who are doing marriage education they prevent kids from going into foster care. They take crazy messed up sick people and they turn them into healthy people I mean, god really does that but they give them the skills to be healthy, like you were saying earlier, the tools to do that, so that then they can serve kids and serve the youth and serve in missions.
Speaker 2:Nothing destroys a family, a community, a legacy, a nation quicker than the disintegration of marriage. So one of the things that we talk to the governors and business people about. For every $1 that our federal government spends on healthy marriage, they spend $1,000 trying to stem the tide of the breakdown of the family. So everybody knows that you have. You know fatherlessness equals prison and poverty, promiscuity, teenage pregnancy, the likelihood that they'll be addicted to drugs, the likelihood that they'll commit suicide. You know all these ramifications and so they put in all these programs to help with that. You know, like let's help your teen not commit suicide, let's, but this kid's committing suicide because their family is fighting and yelling.
Speaker 2:You know, like there was a court case recently set precedent because the parents were held accountable for the school shooting, murders that their son did. Because the parents were so wrapped up in their bitterness and anger with each other and one of them having an affair maybe both, I don't know um that they just ignored their son crying out, their teenage son just crying out for some help and attention and some love because he was going through really hard things at school and in his personal life, and they turned their back on that and the court held them accountable for what he did in a lot of different ways. There's other things, like you know. They had the gun and they allowed him. You know, they knew that he had these anger tendency. So there's other things, but really the core of it is that emotional wellbeing that he did not have a safe home.
Speaker 2:And so if you don't have a safe home, you don't have safe parents, you can't hardly navigate the world as a teenager because you're trying to do it on your own out there. But if home is chaos too, it's no wonder that people turn to drugs and sex and anger and violence and bullying and all the things that they're doing. And we keep throwing money at all these problems, but we don't stop to help the parents. And a lot of the times the parents are in this chaos cycle because, like we've said earlier, it could be generational, it could just be they don't have the skills, they don't have training in this area. We get more education on how to drive a car than we do on how to have a healthy relationship.
Speaker 2:And I told you before we started our podcast. I said you know that I had gone through the independent living program of Missouri and learned how to change a tire and how to grocery shop and how to balance my checkbook, which no one does anymore, right, so that was a useful skill, right, but they never said oh, by the way, you're going to have to learn how to communicate with people. You're going to have to learn to share your feelings Like, let's sit down and have a heart-to-heart talk. You're going to have to learn how to forgive, because no one ever forgave anyone in my family. No one ever said sorry. I never had a model for healthy relationships. So how am I supposed to model that for my kid? How am I supposed to model that with my friends and my and then my coworkers?
Speaker 2:you know, it's, it's an, it's a. We just keep throwing money at the problems and not the symptoms yeah, the symptoms of those, of those, those and never really truly addressing something that is as simple as take a weekend class, you know. Take a weekend, learn four skills um read, read a book we can read a book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we can, my god read a book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like, and this is the thing that, like you and I know how to do, right, right, I mean, you have become an author so we can go into that in just a second.
Speaker 1:But it's like, oh, I don't have this skill, let me go find people who do and then figure out what they do.
Speaker 1:If you don't have the skill set, like, one of the things we do actually know how to do is look around and model the behavior of other people, right? So in something as simple as, like the first time you're at a fancy restaurant and you don't know which fork to use, you and I know how to look at somebody and go, I'm just gonna watch them and I'm gonna do exactly what they do and I will completely chameleon and nobody will know that I don't know how to do this, and so, but in tool in, in tool gathering, you can we kind of go oh, I wasn't taught how to do a budget growing up, I wasn't taught whatever, right. And then you go okay, well, who, who in the world does this? And so you like, we have the self-sufficiency, self-motivation, self-whatever you want to call it, but there's a thing inside of us that knows how to survive. That's as if somebody knows how to swim and we're going to be in this water. I need to go figure this out.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And there are so many people that do not have that trait.
Speaker 2:That it's like read a book. Is it inside of you or is it? The parents did so much for you that you never had to think for yourself, Like I was all about, like trying letting my kids kind of fail a little bit. Kids need to fail.
Speaker 1:Kids absolutely have to fail. They need to struggle. Struggle is like a scientific part of childhood that is beneficial to children. So, no, I am not going to figure out how to get that cup out of the cabinet for you eight-year-old who is fully functional and capable of getting a drink of water Like and I'll look at my kids now, and one of the phrases that I will use with them is you have everything you need in order to solve that problem. And they just look at me like that is not the answer that I wanted. I'm like you have everything you need.
Speaker 2:Yeah, your job as a parent is that your children will leave your home as a fully functional adult, not on their way to becoming an adult. Like adolescence was created only in the last like 100 years. It wasn't that is correct.
Speaker 1:Think about even like the concept of being 14 and still having a chance to grow up is no, you know how it was done in the 1800s.
Speaker 2:Right, you should have a job. You know that was part of what I loved about growing up in a small town is like these 14 year old boy I had a job and I'm working hard and these 14 year old boys were like I can't stay out late. I got to milk at four 30 in the morning before school. You know they had to haul hay in the summer.
Speaker 1:Responsibility is no small thing. Having, like, I just moved my son's task at home, partly because I grew up in a very gender specific house and partly because I'm not doing it Because I grew up in a gender specific house, I just was like, hey, new chore, you're going to be taking out the trash and the recycling and I want you to be paying attention to the trash. Can I want you to notice when it is full? I want you and I'm trying to teach awareness of family, like I'm trying to teach a whole lot more than just you have a chore. It's like, hey, consistently and without complaining, I want you to be responsible for this and it's so important for kids. Okay, real quick, before we have to go, tell me about girl lost. It comes out in September, very excited about it. It's a character who experiences hardship, has some hope, has some resiliency. You have a very specific mission with this book. Can you plug it real quick?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's very interesting to write fiction, because everyone would be like you should write lots of nonfiction but fiction. I believe Jesus used parables when he wanted to reach somebody's heart. You know what I mean, and so, and telling stories is the way you pass down things. So the series is all about kids who were given a second chance. They were either in foster care on their way to to juvenile detention, or abandoned on their way to becoming a drug dealer street kids, you know, on their way to becoming a drug dealer, street kids, you know, homeless basically, and they were on their way to all these negative things. But a man finds them and he pulls them out and he puts them into his MMA gym, which is a mixed martial arts gym, and into a program where he trains them. And he trains them but with discipline, gives them an opportunity to be around all kinds of professionals in the law enforcement, and and then, as adults, they still have to deal with the trauma of their past and their childhood that they've just kind of never really dealt with. And so Girl Lost is the first book in the series and it's about a couple, luna and Corbin, who had a teenage pregnancy and Luna thought they were going to have a happy family, but Corbin wasn't ready to be a dad and was like no, we're not, we have, we can't. I have to break up with you, I'm not ready to be a dad. And he has his own baggage behind that. And so they put the baby up for adoption. And now it's 18 years later, I think, and she's coming back to see if she can find her daughter, and they're both former law enforcement, and so of course it's kind of like this romantic suspense, but also the thriller and then the drama of them trying to find, and so the title fits in so many different ways.
Speaker 2:It was just like I named books before I start writing them. Just this is what I think it should be. And then sometimes they keep my titles and most often they never keep titles. But I was like this is it?
Speaker 2:This was like, um, the main characters kind of lost, and there's a missing girl, but then also her daughter's lost, and then you know, and then it's the parable of lost sheep, of you know that what will one person do, uh, to rescue someone who's lost?
Speaker 2:But what will one person do to rescue someone who's lost, you know? And so that's kind of the premise behind the book and it's really aimed at helping people understand that our pasts don't define who we are and that we're all broken in some way, like we were just talking about. No one wants to be that cliche, but that's true, it's true and we all have to learn the truth. You know, we believe these lies about ourself and we all have to come to believe in the truth of who God made us to be. I try not to be super heavy handed with the Christian side of it because I want to appeal to everyone, but I think if you're tired of reading all the nonfiction books on the how to's, this is a great way to just think about what people like me who came out of the system, what they go through.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and fiction is such a wonderful way of exploring truths about life in general, right Like I am. That's why I'm like, oh my God read a book earlier, not just a self-help or a spiritual book or anything like that. But there have been so many times in reading I've gone to my spiritual director and been like this main character was driving me crazy, and it was because she was wrestling with the same thing that I was wrestling with in real life. I mean, I so distinctly remember reading this one book and this main character just kept complaining about how life didn't look like what she thought it was supposed to look like In real life. Rebecca Harvin was in every single therapy appointment, in every single dinner at a Mexican restaurant with friends going.
Speaker 1:I was supposed to be a history teacher. I don't know how I ended up running a nonprofit. I don't really understand this. I've never taught history a day in my life and I'm wrestling with it. I didn't sign up for this thing. And then I'm reading this book and I'm like, for the love of God, I'm so angry at this main character. Will you please stop complaining about this? And then I was like, oh, and it was another character in the book that was like, oh, and it was. It was another character in the book that was like, listen, at some point you have to understand that this actually is your life. Yeah, the Lord uses this in such a huge way. Where I was like, oh, I think we're all tired of me trying to process this Like I think this just is my life. It was just like read books are incredible ways to, um, to process hard things, curious things, things that you're all all kinds of things, so we will link to go ahead.
Speaker 2:No, what were you going to say? I was just going to say it's not like this is a hard book to read, like you're going to be in the, you know no, it's a fun, like suspenseful thriller, like fast-paced movie like all of that stuff. No yeah I try to be. I try to not do that and I try to make it like a good, like ticket to the beach or to the lake and just go have some you time and see what comes of it.
Speaker 1:You know, like you said, yeah, um, okay, at the end of every episode we do a lightning round um no right or wrong answers, um three questions. Answer as fast as you can. Okay, oh, gosh, okay, okay, what's on your nightstand?
Speaker 2:um, on my nightstand right now is a copy of lisa phillips book. Lisa phillips and laura conaway book. They wrote together, um, I think it's called rescue duty, and then, uh, one of those theragun thingies oh, like a massage gun for, like your back.
Speaker 1:Second question is what books or podcasts are you loving right now?
Speaker 2:Oh, my gosh, okay. So one book that I recently read is called the Other Sister by Jessica R Patch, and then podcasts. So always in my cycle this sounds really bad is like the 48 Hours in 2020 podcast, because I write suspense, so don't judge me, but also that doesn't sound bad to me at all, like working or walking around the house or walking my dog. Um, he interviews like the most insanely awesome people from every walk of life Um, people who've just like overcome addiction to the president of the United States or the vice president of Taiwan, to, um, you know, somebody who's a former CIA operative, who has her own nonprofit or something Just crazy. And you know, sometimes they can be salty language, but I don't mind that. He actually interviewed our Missouri Attorney General, andrew Bailey, and it was one of, like, my favorite podcasts ever. So the Sean Ryan podcast.
Speaker 1:Sean Ryan podcast. Okay, and then third question what is bringing you joy right now?
Speaker 2:Life is bringing me joy. Actually, I just really love it. I had a conversation with a man named Doug Burley who his whole life has been ministry and he said joy is in this order Jesus, others and you and like, living my life that way has brought me endless joy, even in the hardest times of when I'm like why can't we go over here? And then Jesus is like others others first, you know, and I'm like, oh yeah, why do I? Why do I have to get my way? Why can't someone else have their way? Doesn't mean you are a doormat, but anyway, so that's it. And then also I have grandchildren and those grandchildren bring me so much joy. I have a picture of my grandson on my phone from his first time on our boat and he's seven months old and he's wearing one of those life jackets that's just all around his face and he has on and all you can see is like his big feet and his little chubby face smooshed up and it's just cutest picture and it brings me joy every time I see it. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:I love that so much. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast, kate. It has been a real blessing for me to have you here today.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, and if anyone is interested in how they could support us in any way, I always tell people that you know praying for us is great because it makes all the difference in the world, and if you're interested in our nonprofit work, you can just visit our website and if you're able, you can donate there. But you don't have to. We just love people to come and find out what we're doing. And then if you subscribe to my newsletter, you can get if you go to the Girl Lost page you can get a deleted scene that did not make it into the book, but the little letter letter of why it didn't make it into the book, and you can find out more about the book, obviously, on that site and enter a giveaway and whatnot. So that's awesome.
Speaker 1:We will link all of that on the podcast show and make it readily available also on social media. So if you're listening to this and you want to find Kate, we will have all of that stuff for you.
Speaker 2:Thank you. It's been so fun, so great, so, so fun.