Meghan Pulles on Trauma, Faith, and Finding Her Voice

on Mental Health Bytes, Rah and Dr. Tash sit down with Meghan Pulles, a powerful singer and storyteller whose music is rooted in healing, faith, and emotional truth. Meghan opens up about the moments that shaped her, the pain she carried, and how she turned her trauma into a mission to help others feel seen and understood.

This conversation goes deep into the emotional and spiritual layers of mental health. Meghan shares how creativity became her lifeline, how she rebuilt herself from the inside out, and why she believes vulnerability is the strongest form of courage.

This episode is raw, honest, and filled with heart. If you’ve ever felt broken, unheard, or alone, Meghan’s story will remind you that healing is possible and your voice matters.

Mental Health Bytes is where lived experience meets clinical insight. Together, Rah and Dr. Tash bring compassion, clarity, and truth to the conversations most people are afraid to have.

Tune in. Learn. Heal. You are not alone.

Meghan Pulles interview
Mental Health Bytes
Rah Mr Trauma Talks
Dr Tash Reddy
Healing through music
Trauma recovery stories
Faith and mental health
Singer songwriter mental health
Emotional healing journey
Creative healing
You are not alone
Trauma Behind the Glamor
Your Trauma Talks
Mental health podcast
Music therapy conversation
Women in healing
Spiritual healing journey
Overcoming trauma
Mental health awareness

#MentalHealthBytes
#MeghanPulles
#MrTraumaTalks
#DrTashReddy
#YourTraumaTalks
#HealingJourney
#MusicHeals
#TraumaRecovery
#YouAreNotAlone
#EmotionalHealing
#FaithAndHealing
#MentalHealthMatters
#CreativeHealing
#SingerSongwriter
#HealingThroughMusic

Transcript

0:00

Wow. It has been a few weeks that I haven't been on here, so I just want to say welcome to every one of you who's listening on the podcast. Those of you who support us on YouTube, Instagram, on Facebook, on LinkedIn. I just want to hope and pray for everyone of you that you're having an amazing day, amazing week, an amazing month. We just went through May, which is dedicated to May as Mental Health Awareness Month. And today we are in June. It's June 3rd. And we are in men's mental health awareness month. And you know, I am very proud because and when I say proud, whereas I tell everyone give themselves a pat on the back for bringing yourself from yesterday to today because it was a task. And I give myself a pat on the back and I say I am proud because for eight years, and yes, there's a video that in May of 2018, that while I was hearing the voices to allow others to share their stories, their struggles, how they have overcome from where they were in life to where they are today. I sat there, listened to these voices, and just took my phone and just spoke. It was when I realized that that video could have gone viral for a hundred thousand views. I was like, wow. I was like, yes, this is what's needed now. And today, after eight years, I stand here with four different podcasts. I bring a mental health conference live on a stage on Broadway. I'm the author of two of my personal books and three collaborative number one international best-selling books 365 days of connection with resilience and that I always tell everyone my quote in that book I have it sitting right next to me. Your resilience is your truth because your truth is your story. People create stuff. But let me tell you when you sit and you listen to someone's story and actually really listen, you would hear that these people cannot just create some of the things that happen to burp them in life. I have backstage with me the amazing, the beautiful, the talented, Dr. Tash Reddy, all the way from South Africa. Dr. Tash, how are you today? Good evening, Ra, all the way from South Africa. It's a cold winter and night in South Africa, 6 p.m. I'm so excited to be here. We haven't been here for a few weeks. So um I'm just so excited that we get to be on this platform again. And we have an amazing guest. Um, and I think a lot of people are going to actually relate to what we're talking about today. And I'm looking forward to it and excited about it. And I'm excited to see I missed you. How have you been? You asking me how I've been. I I'm eager to ask you how you're feeling. So, everyone listening on the podcast, I want you to know and send some love to Dr. Tash ready because she just undergo heart surgery again for the whole many time. God bless you. See, when I said it is your time to go or it's not your time to go, it's all written to how it has to go because this lady has been through it. When I said I had back surgery, she had her whole entire spine reconstructed. When I said I had this problem, she had X amount of heart surgeries. So, you see, when you think, and I say this all the time, there once was a man who had the blues because he had no shoes. Down the street, he met a man who had no feet. It's not telling you that someone else has a worse problem for you to understand to say, okay, your problem is not big. No, your problem is huge, it's enormous for you. But there is always someone else going through something that's worse, and Dr. Tash has been going through it. So without further ado, I am okay, Dr. Tash. I want you to tell them how you're doing, and I want to bring up the amazing Megan Pullis. I met her at the Grammys, the post-Grammys party, and she just shows love to every single person she comes around with. Megan. Hello, hello, Ra. Hello, Dr. Tash. Welcome, welcome. We are very eager to have a conversation with you. Well, not myself too much, so I'll leave you on Dr. Tash to it, and I'll just pop it out. Hi, Megan. Thank you for being with us again. I I love speaking to you backstage, and we had a really good conversation about life and just how people think and the narratives they create around us and what we feel we need to live up to and not live up to. But one of the most important things I want to tell all our viewers, if you're listening to us, welcome. Thank you for joining us. We have the amazing Megan Colet with us today, and she has a voice that you know touches your soul. She has a, you know, her songs are so good, actually, that she was invited to the Grammys this year, and we were talking about how it's always been my dream to go to the Grammys. But she got to go to the Grammys and um as a guest, I mean, as a guest of the Grammys, because of the song she wrote that touches the soul and speaks to a soul, and is based on her personal experience. So I'm not going to tell you about it. I'm going to let Megan tell you about what her songs are about and why she wrote them. Megan. Thank you, Dr. Tash, for your kind introduction. So I write songs that help my myself heal, my traumas. And it started in my bedroom with me and my guitar. And it just, I've been writing songs since I since I was 17. And it's just a healthy way for me to take a look at the pain and the sorrow and the depression and the grief and the anxiety and the overwhelm and turn it into art and turn it into something that I can be proud of because the emotions that overwhelm me can sometimes make me feel not great about myself, right? Like it can make me feel like I take up too much space, I'm too dramatic, I'm too loud, I'm too much, you know, and I think music just really helps show me who I'm supposed to be in this world. Have you always had a love for music, or is it something was there a trigger that made you that triggered you to go in that direction and not maybe writing a book or you know, uh doing something else, like an advocacy or in an environment, or you know, why was it specifically music? Well, my father was very musical growing up, and he was playing guitar to me like when I was a baby, and I was raised around that sort of nurturing. I was raised around the fact that music is a safe space, that music is community, and I think you know, I just I've always felt ever since I was young that music was just something that was gonna be in my life, and it was gonna be, you know, I guess I never thought that I would actually be able to speak with my music, but you know, that seems to be to be happening too. Um, which I'm very grateful to Ra for giving me the opportunity to speak on my stories. Honor Ra is amazing, and I, you know, I'm so thankful to him as well because he's been he stood by me through so many things in my life in the short time that we know each other, and I'm so grateful and just appreciative of him. And when he told me that you were coming on the show, I was really excited about you get talked about something that many I think I think it's not just young people, but I think that if even me at my age, because I still told you I'm a decade older than you are, but even me at my age can react to what you were saying and um and relate to the the lessons learned from it. But today I want you to explain to me because you when you were talking, you said uh music helped you get over the trauma, the overwhelm, the anxiety, and you you named a number of clinically um psychologically psychological difficulties that you were having. Um, so when did it start and when did you first recognize that it was a problem? So I think I'm thinking back to like when I was probably in middle school or high school, I had always had like immense anxiety. I always just had this like weird feeling that something bad was gonna happen and it was kind of just like looming over me. I was also on medication. I I was diagnosed with ADHD, I was on medication for like a couple years, and I do remember the medication made me completely checked out. Like it just took away that like that livelihood, that life, that you know, because I just felt like the medication just like it put me, it just took away who I was, you know. And um and so I think you know, that it started with that, and there were, you know, there were a lot of things growing up that that I experienced and abuse, and and that stuff really just kind of sticks with you. Like, and it's it's interesting because I was very enmeshed in my family, and I I am the eldest daughter, and so I was responsible for everyone's emotions, right? I was responsible for fixing the the conflict, and even when I wasn't ready to fix the conflict, I had to rise up and figure out like how to be an adult in that moment because I was the oldest, and I think that you know, unpacking all of that in my 30s has been the reason why I'm taking the steps towards healing because I think if I had continued in that enmeshed family, I would not be where I am today. How many siblings do you have? I have two sisters, so I'm the oldest of three. All right, it it's funny that you said that because I'm actually the oldest as well of three siblings. Um actually we were four, we were four, but um my brother, one of my brothers passed away in 2010. So now we have three siblings, right? So it uh I immediately identified with you. And I I said, okay, now I know what it's like to be the first in the family, and um there's a kind of huge responsibility uh put on you in terms of uh being responsible, right? Now I years later understood that it actually was not my responsibility at all, and nobody made it my responsibility. I did that to myself. So did you feel that according to uh you know community social stigmas, social expectations, that you were supposed to be responsible for the for the rest, for the other siblings, you mean, and keeping the whole dynamic of the family together? Yeah, I mean, I do think that ever since I was young, I was told you're the oldest, you're the oldest, you're the oldest. So that programming of you need to be perfect, you need to set the example, you can't fuck up. Like that that programming really, really impacted the way that I was with my siblings. Like it really did, like it really just made me feel like you are responsible for your sister's mental health, you are responsible for this, you are responsible for that. You have to fix this because your emotion emotionally immature parent doesn't want to, right? I think they would give me situations with my sister, my younger sister in particular, to solve problems when I wasn't even solving my own problems and I didn't even know how to solve my own problems, you know. Like I have a memory of my little sister being bullied, and my mom is just like, you need to talk to you need to fix this, you need to fix this. And I'm just like, I'm getting bullied myself. Like, I feel like I'm taking on so many problems of my siblings that I can't even address my problems, and that in itself is a toxic family dynamic, and it can really mess you up. I understand completely, but did you feel that they were just not seeing you or hearing you that like you were shouting and saying I'm here, see me, hear me, I'm here. Oh, yeah. And they were just not meeting you where you wanted them to meet you emotionally. And you know, people focus so much on our psychological state and mental state that they don't understand our emotions actually run our entire nervous system. So that is extremely important. What emotions were attached to what you were going through at that time in your life. And I and I'm I'm assuming that you're extremely young, right? To have learned that those patterns and you like you said, programming, uh you need to take care of everyone else, so your needs don't matter. And your you you're you come after everyone else. Your your well-being, your well-being is not as important as the as the others. But but just staying with that. Um, how old were your parents when they had you? My mom was 32. Yeah, my mom was 32. My dad is three years younger, so he was um 29, I think. Okay, so I ask this because so often I I find that people um, you know, I when they don't hear you, and you say, There's so many young people in the world right now who are attempting suicide, who are self-uh-harming, you know, hurting themselves, catching themselves, doing, and they're saying to me, my parents don't see me, they don't hear me. But the parents are saying to me, they're being spoiled rats because they have everything. They have they have a home, they have food, they have everything that they want. So what is the problem? And in many uh uh in many circumstances, I find that parents don't want to be accountable because that would mean they're failing in a certain way, uh, to the you know, toward their child and failing as parents. So I think it is programming as well that as parents, we have to we our first responsibility is to provide, to provide the home, the comforts, the the whatever the child needs, but not meet the child emotionally. And I understand this because I I've been through this myself, but not meet the child emotionally. Um, so what was your experience with that? Because your parents were actually um a little bit older. I mean, my parents were my mom was 17 when she had me, and my dad was 22. So it was yeah, so it was a totally different dynamic, right? So, so uh tell us more about your experience and and how it impacted you. Well, I I think that both of my parents came from trauma. They came from a lot of trauma. There was a lot of trauma around their childhoods, right? My dad's father was was an alcoholic, and then my mom's mother was like a narcissist and wasn't very nice to people. And you know, so I think when you're when your own parents are growing up in that battlefield, right? And then they're coming together and they both come from dysfunctional relationships, it's like, of course, like that's generational trauma. That's all that they know is how to like dissociate emotionally because it feels easier than facing the elephants in the room of hey, maybe we should sit down with our kids and explain to them that we came from pain and anything, you know. I just think that that there could have been more awareness of the fact that there was abuse in our childhood. And, you know, a lot of parents they don't want to face what they did to their kids. And and that to me, you're never going to heal from what you did to your children until you look yourself in the mirror and you say, I did wash my kid's mouth, that was soak. I did grab her arm, I did call her fat. You're never going to face that until you face it within yourself. And if you want to like go to your grave with all the secrets of the abuse that you did to your kid, like that's on you. But I really think that there's a reason why people are going no contact with their parents. And it really is because they refuse to acknowledge the pain that they inflicted on the child. The child, like, or they gaslight, you know, they gaslight the child, they say, That didn't happen, you're a liar, and that's like a defense. But like, you know, I just take the steps if you want a relationship with your child, and that's a strange, take the steps to to realize that you probably did hurt them because they're not just cutting you off for no reason, you know. I'm so curious. Do you um have a good relationship with your parents now? So I I have a I have a low contact relationship with my mother, like she was blocked for almost a year, and then there was another situation where I felt attacked again when I tried to get back in. Um, and I but my my father and I have a pretty good relationship, and then I talked to one of my siblings. The other one is kind of like Yeah, I was going to ask you, do you have a good relationship with your siblings? Yeah, with one of them. The other one is is almost kind of like that patient that you described earlier. She doesn't want to grow up, she doesn't want to get a job, she wants to just be famous, like you know, she takes no accountability, and and I had to babysit her for like most of my life. And so I think a lot of that resentment is still stuff that I'm working through, but I realized I had to cut her off because my mom was saying my mom was just saying that I was responsible for her mental health, and if she were to like decide to end her life, it would be on me. And it's like, you don't say that to your child, like so you know that's just got to my mom kind of estranged that relationship. Um have they have you ever acknowledged what they did or or your pain in this and why you reacted to it the way you did or responded to their their behavior the way you did? Um right. This is the thing. I think there have been some moments where it was acknowledged, but then there are other moments where I get gaslit. So the consistency of acknowledging, yes, I hurt you, yes, I care about you, yes, I love you. Because if my mother were to say that, like, you know, I I had my own pain and I didn't know how to handle it, and I projected it onto you. If my mother said that to me, there would be, there would be a healing way, right? But it's because she just wants to bury her, you know. She wants to show face and and act like she was the perfect mother. And it's like, no, like you, you were not. And you know, don't go telling family members that I'm, you know, making stuff up about my childhood when I'm not. Like I lived that pain. I still have those scars. I still have those wounds. You know, and um, so I I just think the way that the way that it's been handled is like, you know, some some days she understands and other days I get attacked again. So it's it's just it's hard. It's hard, it's very difficult. And and it's it's it's hard when behavior is inconsistent because um they don't want to acknowledge their truth. And what I found that uh in my experience is that many times they should as a mother myself, right? There was a a I have two children. My son is 21 and my daughter is 12. Now they have different dads, and um my son's dad died when he was a baby, and my my daughter's dad abandoned her basically and has no gone has gone no contact with her. So I recall they they they have a huge age difference, right? So I recall with my son when his dad died, I was incredibly um I I I almost pitied him. I pitied him to the for for having lost his dad, at you know, not even having a memory of his dad because he was a baby. So I pitied him to the point where I used to be extremely hard on him to not be a victim, right? To not have that victim mentality, not feel like, oh, you know, my my dad died and I'm this sorry kid who, you know, didn't get to see his dad. And so I was going through my own grief at that time. And it was a deep grief because this was someone I loved so much, and um, and it was a sudden tragic death. So there I was in this in this situation where I was pregnant with with my second child, and then having this a two-year-old, and then having um him die, and then having to lose my home, and having to lose. So every and then I had I lost the baby. So in my own trauma and grief, I I started being extremely hard on this child because I didn't want him to feel the way I was feeling inside, you know. To so I reversed the dynamic of um comforting him. Instead, I did overcompensate when it came to him, and I did it in a financial way where I gave him whatever he wanted. I there was there was absolutely no boundaries when it came to that. He what he wanted, when he wanted, how he wanted it. But when it came to him and our relationship, I was incredibly hard on him. There are many times now where he'll say, Mom, you whacked me, or mom, you you know, you you screamed at me, or mom, you didn't show up for me. And it's because he's telling me that I need to let go of his sister because she's going to be 13 this year. And now let me tell you how it changed to her, right? So her dad decided he wanted nothing to do with her when he when he and I separated four years ago. So what happened was she was nine years old and she adored him, right? And um, they had an amazing relationship and it broke her heart. She had to go through a paternity test, she had to go through um, you know, him saying, I don't want her, you know, I rejecting her in the worst, worst possible way because of a new relationship he was in, right? Is in, sorry. So what I'm saying is, when it comes to my daughter, I am incredibly protective. I nurture her, I cuddle her, I I I um I am so possessive of her. She still sleeps with me in my bedroom. And because I am, I feel like she's still my baby, I cannot let her sleep alone. I don't want her to feel any rejection or any any form of abandonment or any form of uh you know of feeling like she's needed any less. So please, you know, and my son said to me, Mom, you're actually you you're stifling her to the point where she she's she can't even grow up because you just want her to be this baby that you're suffocating all of the time. Stop it, let go. And I I had to sit back and think, oh my god, I'm showing up differently for both of them, right? Based on what I'm going through. So because the abandonment hurt me so much, I started responding to her the way I would have responded if it happened to me. Okay, so I'm wondering if you can now look at that perspective and and see if that's maybe what your parents were doing. Yeah, no, for sure. And I do think that they have made the decision that she is the baby and she will always be the baby, and they are going to pay for her and until she dies, you know. But like it's I I think the thing that's difficult is that I was so this was in my 20s. In my 20s, I was in a very abusive situation with a man that I worked for, and he sexually harassed me for like three years, and he like just he did very much like what Harvey Weinstein kind of did to some women and like you know, the power thing, and I was working for him, and you know, he would like make me stay late at meetings with him, and then like he would he was trying to get involved in my music career, and so he would like fly me to Miami, and that's like it was just it was just very toxic, and I was uncomfortable with the way that my father was treating me in terms of growing up, and he was like basically threatening to cut me off, and I started taking more money from this man that was abusing me, and I ended up in like he he manipulated me into a sugar daddy thing with him, which I don't even understand how that was my life, right? But like it was, and so I think you know, it's like I went through that pain to because I was so uncomfortable with with telling my father what was going on because they made me feel so bad about it. I was taking money from someone that was abusing me, I was staying in hotels and getting like and locking myself in hotel bathrooms when he got too like intoxicated and trying to grab me. Like, you know what? So I think I think I like totally understand, but also there's there's a lot of like my background that my parents, I don't think, you know. And then when I talk about that kind of trauma with them, they're like, Well, you didn't tell us, you should have told us. Like, they put it on me that I was the one that decided to get abused by a sick predator, you know what I mean? So I think there's there's like a little bit of that. I can definitely have empathy for the youngest child, but it's also like, why was I treated like that during a time when I was like, I couldn't even talk to them about what was happening to me because they didn't make it safe, right? I and I understand that completely because um, so just let us backtrack a little bit, right? Um, you have a song that that's amazing. I mean, it's touching people's hearts around the world, it's touching their souls, it's speaking to their souls, and it's called The Favorite Child. Tell us more about that. Yeah, so I was just sitting in my bedroom, um, probably live on TikTok or something, and I was uh just I was thinking about that dynamic, and I was thinking about just my my my life and and how I reacted as a kid, and like the first lyrics of that song are actually a true story. A lot of the stuff in my song is kind of true, so it's like teaching tantrums and parking lots. That's all I knew. That's like the first line, and there's a video of me as a child, as as like a two-year-old when my sister was born. And I haven't getting a tantrum. It's very like I don't think it was communicated very well that I was getting assist, right? I mean, I was too maybe knows what was going on, but I think that was my nervous system. I think that that was my you know, now that I'm thinking about it, I think that was my nervous system being like, oh my gosh, they're gonna replace me. Like, why am I why wasn't I enough? And like I think I think about this like all the time, and I'm like, you know what? I think that's why I was having attention. I like knew that their love and care and attention that they had for me was gonna just be vanished into this new soul. Um and then as soon as I started to, you know, like grow up a little bit, it turned into don't touch her, don't do that, you're gonna you're gonna break that, or you made her cry, and then the shaming started as soon as this new person came into the world. So, you know, that song just kind of talks about you know, you could have you could have chosen to be a good person, you could have chosen to be wrong instead of right, you didn't have to have a favorite child, but you did, and now I'm hurt, I'm thrown out to pasture, right? So yeah, so is this the same child that they they support now, and you said they will support her until and you don't have a good relationship with her. Um so did they ever accuse you of being envious of her? Oh, yeah, like of your of your of your attitude. They all think I'm envious. Yeah, well, she's doing music too. Okay, all right, so that you know that's turned it into a whole competition that doesn't need to happen. Yes, yes, you know, I understand that so well because let me tell you so I like I told you, I'm the oldest, and I have a sister who's 13 months younger than I am, and then I have a little brother who's 15 years younger than I am, right? So with my little brother, um I think there's an entire generation gap where um uh you know that's gone. And he and I were very close. I mean, I adore him, don't get me wrong, I live with him, I adore him. Um, but he's very close to my sister. So the two of them are inseparable. But when it comes to my sister and I, um we just cannot, we just cannot synchronize or or agree on anything. And and I'll be honest, we don't talk at all. Now it doesn't mean I don't love her, because it I had to introspect a a lot about it, that growing up, I was the oldest child, but my pa but you know, uh when I was at that stage, I had gone through a lot of trauma uh when I was little, right? And I'm not gonna discuss the trauma, but I went through a lot of the a lot of trauma because of a family dynamic that broke, okay. And so growing up, I I think that I was always the wounded child, not I think I know, I was they think that my I'm my mom's favorite child, right? And they think that my that I can just get away with anything, that um I am ever you know everything you can possibly think of, they think of me in terms of negatively. But it is because I think I gave them that narrative, right? So I she felt that she had to take be the biggest sister all along. Because regardless of what uh she did, I always got the extra attention because I was demanding it all the time. I I wasn't actually um I didn't even know I was demanding it. I was just going through bad periods in my life that demanded attention, you know, my husband dying, my husband leaving me, um being incredibly ill, having numerous surgeries, have so I was just going through many situations that required attention from my parents. But and I I get it that when when I was going through those things, I was angry and I said mean things and I did things that hurt them. I get it, and I'm totally responsible and I'm accountable for it. But I can understand that when uh when you're seen as a favorite child, um you you you you would have your siblings not like you, but when you're seen as the scapegoat, the invisible child, like you, you are the invisible child, you asked me earlier, I mean you said to me earlier, you you were not, you couldn't believe that you were in a relationship with an abusive um person. And one of the things about being the invisible child or the scapegoat is that you feel you're unworthy of love, that you cannot, um, regardless of what you do and who you are and how much you try or how hard you try, you will just never get the love you deserve because you didn't get it from the people who created you. Yeah. Am I right? Very right, very right. So you feel and so you cannot blame yourself for being, you know, I mean, it's understandable that you got into an abusive relationship because you felt that you were not capable of being loved. And you were not shown a given an example of a love that's whole, you know, and a love that's protector that will protect you, and a love that will keep you safe, and a love that will heal you. So I think that you shouldn't be so hard on yourself with that, right? I think you should just that was so amazing. I love this discussion, and um, one of the things I want to add in here too is that you hear a lot of times people tell you uh because of yourself and not healing and doing this and that, you attract people just like yourself. That is not that's not something that people I think that this is a thing that people create in their own mind because that is you do not know when you meet someone what is happening, when you fall in love with them, or what what's the background, what's the story to come. And I believe that it's all meant to be because it's all supposed to teach you something. Megan at this time we know you gotta go, and we want to thank you for the time you spent here with us, and I want to let you let everyone know where they can find you, so all who's listening on the podcast can follow you, especially find your music. So please just quickly tell them where they can find you. So um, if you want to follow me on Instagram, it is Megan Puls Music, M-E-G-H-A-N-P-U-L-L-S music. You can find um my music everywhere on all streaming platforms, um, Megan Pulis, M-E-G-H-A-N-P-U-L-L-E-S. And um thank you guys so much for having me and and this conversation. We love you, and thank you so much for joining. Yes. Go ahead, yeah. I just have to tell you in 30 seconds, in in not even 30, I just have to tell you one of the things that uh that children who feel felt like scapegoat or invisible children, one of the things they develop is hyper-independence. And I think you're a living example of that, and that is your biggest strength, and you need to celebrate that because life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you, and all you've gone through gave you such a huge strength. And regardless of the competition and music and all of that, you got invited to the Grammys, and your songs speak to the soul, and that is your gift, angel. So I want you to know that you need to celebrate yourself from going forward and just know that this worked for your good and for your best. Okay, so it was lovely talking to you. I hope to talk to you often, and I'm going to download you. Thank you. Bye. Thank you guys so much. Thank you, Megan. Bye-bye. Love you and take care. Okay, love you too. Talk to you soon. Bye. So, Dr. Tash, I have um I have a little video I could play for you, and we could analyze up that. That was my as I started. I said that the video that I sat down and I just brought it out, and that's what started everything. Well, actually, give me that pull, give me that push. Because in 2018, before I started in July, where I had my friend, I actually she came out and she spoke about having a busted retina and um being in a domestic violent relationship, and she was the very first, and you know, the setup and everything. But the story that the the message was really great, and one of the things I learned from that message was the night before we interviewed, I interviewed her and she told her story. While she was telling me, even though she was my friend for two years before that, while she was telling me, I was driving and I was like in tears. And like she the way she told me the story is like, oh my god. And then when we got on the interview, it was different. So like I try and tell people when they come to tell their story, don't tell me, don't tell me your story here, because I think the emotional part of it and knowing, and then when it happens a second time, it just doesn't feel the same way. But it all started with just this video where I actually came out and spoke, and I want you to see the elevation and the place I came from to where I am now today. Oh, because sometimes I say, Oh my god, things is not working out, or this is not working properly, or something like that. But when I thought about everything I've been through in life, it was amazing to see how far I have reached in life, and I thank God maybe I still have like a lot of shit going on. I wouldn't lie, I do have different challenges every day, and I wish this could be different, or I wish that could be different. And guess what? Every time I have a challenge, I'm like, give it some give it some time, and you would see that it's phased out if it's repeating itself, it's not working, or it never happens, that's all based on you. But trust me, I have seen where every time I I look, let's say wish upon a star, which is a ridiculous thing to say, but if like I think about something that I want, somehow, some way down the line, in about four years, maybe you might think it's long, it happens, or maybe closer than you think. Maybe it happened within a year, two years, but the thing about it, it happens, and it keeps going like that throughout my life, and it wasn't based on what somebody gave me or did for me. And I one thing I'll admit is I had my mother on my side, and she stand with me all these times and all these years. But the point of what I'm trying to get across was again, or I'm always saying that, but the thing I want to get out there is to tell you when I said how far I've reached, is like I went to Vegas, and this was my second time going to Vegas. And when I went to Ciceline Dion, it triggered me that night. Look at us. Look at where I am. Right? And you wanna see different things in the world. And it made me to think that I want to do a video where I can tell there's young guys and young girls out there who would think that they can't do this or they can't do that or it won't happen. It is gonna happen. Trust me. Just have faith in yourself and believe in yourself. And you would see how it's gonna happen. It's gonna you would be so amazed that oh sharks. If I just believe in myself, it will happen. And you would see, it will happen. You you watch all these um motivational videos all the time, and people tell you all this stuff from this, and you hear the stories and they were this on the ground or whatever. Um, like big names like Robert Downey Jr. and and uh oh favorite Bollywood act actor. I love this guy. I I I I always tell friends that when I see I have seen him in his first movie, the woman I was like, wow, this guy is gonna be a star. And then I live. I saw things like Anjon. And I saw um his movie um what it was and you know you listen to his story now about his mom and whatever happened, and and you just see him where he is today, and you think, I wanna be like that guy. You know, we are now hearing his stories and it motivates some people to do the things that they think they cannot do. But think about a story like mine's. I am just a regular guy, I'm not a Sharokan, I'm not a Robert Pony Jr. or Kim Louise, I'm just Ra. And Ra has come from a very, very, very far distance to where I am today, and I'm very proud of that, and I thank God mostly in whichever form people would think it is. I believe in God, and I believe I'm Hindu, but I believe that for each one of us, we have something that's there with us, and if you believe in it, it's gonna work for you. I'm telling you, and I just want you young people and some people, even some adults who feel their life is not going anywhere, get up tomorrow morning and dust off, and say, Hey, tomorrow morning when I wake up, or that morning when you wake up and you dust off. I'm not sure what happened to the video, but um I can't believe this is the first time I I knew the what the video said. I did not play it back. I happened to send it to Freddie last week, and I can't believe that I actually took that for eight years, brought it for the past eight years, and made it stronger because with my book Believe, every single thing I didn't know from 2018 to now that this is where my direction was gonna go. That that little video, and by the way, on the 2nd of June in 2018, I went to Sicily Leon in the VIP section. We had a mistake with the tickets, it was actually supposed to be seen the night before, and where we were sitting, supposed to be sitting, we were upgraded all the way up, even further up in the VIP section. That you get you sitting here, and Celina's right there, and things happen in some ways that we uh cannot explain, and this is where I say this all the time. And I learned this not in 2018, but in 2021, as I said, what is meant for you shall never pass you by, and what passes you by was never meant for you. And when I sit back and I listen to those words over and over, I had to understand it, I had to accept it for what it is, because many things don't go the way you plan, many things don't happen the way I had Megan just now talking. Megan spoke of all these different things in life. Many people blame people a quick, quickly, little innocently. She said, I didn't even know I was in a relationship, an abusive relationship with a sugar daddy, and all these different things. But it doesn't mean to say when people look on, they're always quick to judge the character that's there, they're always quick to judge what they think or what they perceive things to be, rather than understand. So I had to understand those words because many of the times we struggle to get where we are, and many people look you said, holding yourself accountable for the things that you do at times. I handle situations in the past that was so bad, so bad, and handle it so nicely that I couldn't believe that recently how I've been handling things was so bad that in a way that that's not me. When I look on at that person or look back, I'd be like, hell no, that's not who I want to be, that's not where I want to be, that's not who I have become. Why am I stepping back there? Or why is it that I'm allowing things to overwhelm me, especially with so many things happening in the economy, with every single thing. Why would I do that? Why would I want to treat the people that care and love me to a place where I shut them out? And it happens to a lot of us, it happens to a lot of you. This is why I allow everyone to understand the words you are not alone. It happens. No one knows, they just sit back and think they know your story, and that is where you are wrong. You are wrong because you do not live in a person's mind. You could see someone at a crime scene, they didn't commit the crime, but the reason they are there could be a million different reasons because in their mind they think differently. We have you, Dr. Tash. You could talk now. You know what you said about people don't know what's going on in the mind, right? And they're so quick to judge. And you know, what I realized is that a lot of people are so get so comfortable with the pain that they it becomes their safety net and they don't want to let go of it. So even though it's not serving them, they they're keeping it because it's doing anything else is too much work. Um, taking the steps to heal is too much work, or they think it is, right? But all it does is take a simple, a simple step, a small step, as small as it can be. I mean, look at Megan, she started writing songs uh to get rid of her anxiety and her her feelings of of being unloved. But I mean, look, you know, when we when Ross speaks about um, we don't know what's going on in people's minds, so don't be so quick to judge. I mean, the the some of the most important people, gurus and and people, uh Robin Williams, for instance. Robin Williams made the whole world laugh. But what happened? He killed himself because of the pain he had inside him. Um, so many actors, um celebrities, gurus had had immense personal problems. And a lot of people even think that I float around the air like a guru because I wake up every morning without any problems. And that's not true. I have a lot of things that also affects me. I'm human, it affects me deeply. Um and you know, Ra and I went through this period together where we we we also had this period of shutting people out because we just when sometimes you just need that time to regroup, right? And it's important to have that time, Ra, to regroup. But when you when regrouping is starting to negatively affect everyone around you and everything around you, that's when you know that you need to do something about it. And let me tell you, it can be a simple decision. I remember, Ra, I was 20 years old and I was uh in a in a high security mental institution, right? I was 20 years old. And one night uh when when they put lights out and after they gave us all our meds and kept us really medicated and high, I remember writing a list of things I wanted to do. And the first thing on my list was that I wanted to be on this particular radio station uh that is has the highest listenership in in South Africa. So I got out, I mean, I forgot about that list and I got out of of the the mental institution. Uh, and you know, for a while I was regrouping and getting myself back on my feet out in the outside world. And very soon, um, I would say a year later, I was on that radio station on the drive time show. Um I was I was 21 and I was I got to the drive time show on that radio station. And years later, I found this list that I had written while I was in a mental institution where people would think I'm mentally unstable, right? Um I was at or that I was not very lucid at the time, okay. But years later I found this list and I saw that I had written that as the first thing that I wanted to do when if I got well. And I actually did it without even realizing it. And I loved one thing that Ross said in his video, he said, I'm just a normal guy. I'm not I'm not Robert Downey Jr. and and Sharu Khan and all of that. I'm just a normal guy. I'm not I'm not any, you know, any celebrity or anything like that. But the moment you start to take the action and the step and start to believe in yourself, you'll be shocked at the things you will achieve. You'll be shocked at the things that will happen for you, not to you. It'll even if it's happening to you, you will find that it happened for you. Because it'll give you the skills and the strength and the courage and the stamina and the the world to want it so much that nothing else matters. And you are allowed to have those moments of quiet, those moments of feeling despair, those moments of feeling sadness. You are human. Don't judge anyone for that. Don't, because healing is very important. Having time to heal is also very important. So it doesn't, regardless of how famous you are, how many degrees you have, or how much experience you have in life, your soul sometimes needs to breathe, and your soul sometimes needs you to love it a little bit more, and that's what you need to do. And it's okay. Don't let anyone tell you that it's not okay. Thank you so much, Dr. Sash. You know, it was really amazing. I did not know the spotlight was on Megan because we really wanted to hear what she had to say. I had such a great honor to sit with her, interview her in person, and be a wrong aura. And when she saw us on mental health bites on Instagram live a few weeks ago, and she said, Oh, what is this? and whatever, she wants to come on. I was like, Yeah, let's give her that opportunity because her story is powerful, and that that's she's not the only person that goes through this, it has millions of people out there. Like I say this all the time millions of people go through mental stress, and everyone has a story. But recently, when I had to see the survey of 1.3 billion people, and I'm sure it's more than 1.3 billion people globally, is going through some sort of mental depression, some sort of mental disorder, something you have um uh Trevor Noah just come out and talk about his ADHD and his depression. You see, now people are opening up more. When I talk about mental health is going into a different direction where it's people with schizophrenia, you're CMF speaking out, and it's so good. People hate people with BPD because all the time they categorize them in a place where oh, they're too difficult to deal with, like I'm a Scorpio. And if I say that to some people, they will be like, Oh, that's an excuse to act like that. Well, we come with emotions, we come with certain things that we like, and if you don't like that and you don't abide by it, sometimes it's wrong. But if you decide to go ahead with it, therefore you can't stray and then expect someone to acknowledge that you don't respect them and it hurts. You understand? It comes with a lot of things, and I realize that mental health has ticked from eight years ago to now. The pathway that mental health has shifted, it's really, really amazing that a lot of people are speaking about it, but I hope they start walking it too, because that's another thing. So, Dr. Tash, I just want to say thank you for doing this with me. I think next week we have another amazing guest, and we wouldn't have a uh trauma talk Thursdays tomorrow, but definitely next week. I think we could use one of my past and old trauma talks, and we can play that video and then we can analyze it and have a discussion about that. So look up for trauma talk Thursdays, next Thursday, and mental health bites next Wednesday. You know, this is Ra. You can find me on Instagram at Mr. Trauma Talks, on Instagram, on Facebook, on YouTube, YouTube with a Z because it took up my YouTube channel. On in on LinkedIn, you can find me Rahul K. Maharaj, you can find my personal Facebook Rahul K Maharaj, and don't forget to follow us, your trauma talks foundation. Dr. Tash, you tell them where they can find you and any last words before we close off. Yeah, I'm so proud of your fun the foundation and how uh Mr. Trauma Talks is now, you know, uh your trauma talks foundation. And today I was actually putting it on one of my my posts, but I have to tell you that just quickly, everybody, you can have all the empowerment programs in the world, but if your mind is not right, you will never act it out. So it takes action. Ra has an amazing program at the moment that we are supporting it about giving helping children. And, you know, the video, I watched it before we did the show, and it was just incredible. I mean, his skills at animation is just incredible. But the the message was so important because you know, we often say you we know the problem, we know what's going on, but we're waiting for other people to come to the rescue. And as long as you do that, you wait for someone else, no one's gonna show up, and the problem is still gonna exist. So I'm saying today, be the change you want to see in the world, like Mahatma Gandhi said, be that change and support initiatives and and programs that support mental health, that support how people perceive themselves, how children, what they believe of themselves. Let's support that. Let's get on board with your your uh drama talks foundation. Let's support Ra in all that he does. If you want to find me, it's just Dr. Tash Ready on all platforms. That's what I go as Dr. Tash Ready Official, sorry, on all uh platforms, and you will find me. I have daily motivations every day, and then I have the honor of working with Ra and every week, and that's just such a pleasure for me and an honor, actually, an honor for me. And here I am, a little girl inside, well, a big girl now, but a big girl in South Africa, a tiny, tiny, tiny country, right? Connected with someone in New York. Do you know for people in South Africa, New York is like like like the place that everybody dreams of being and living in, going to. Um and here I am, this girl from New from South Africa in New York with Ra and your Trauma Talks Foundation. So if if we could connect, then your connections are also waiting for you to happen. So go out there and make it. All right. From me, thank you, Ra, so much for loving me and being with me and always having me, having my back. And to everyone, God bless. I I wish you only love, light, and blessing all you do. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Dr. Tash. Remember, those of you listening on ihat radio, on the podcast, anywhere on Spotify, on Apple iTunes, anywhere you listen to the podcast from. Remember, if you have any questions, please email us at y-le-w-r-a-h at gmail.com. This is Ra, Mr. Traumatox, and the amazing Dr. Tash Rady, all the way from South Africa. Thank you, Dr. Tash, and thank you for all of you for showing us love and for keep listening to the podcast. And Megan Paulis, I just want to say we love you and thank you for doing this with us and having this discussion. Thank you all. Love you all.