The Pain Factor

TPF #27: Adriene Caldwell - From Trauma to Triumph: Healing from Childhood Abuse

• A Project Fourtress Podcast • Season 1 • Episode 27

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 51:27

Adriene Caldwell is the Author of “Unbroken: Life outside the lines”, a story of destruction and discovery - of darkness given free rein and an innate light that refuses to dim.

In this compelling interview, Adrian shares her inspiring journey from a traumatic childhood marked by abuse, loss, and mental health struggles to a life of hope, resilience, and purpose. She discusses the importance of understanding trauma, the power of forgiveness, and the need for societal change to better support foster children and trauma survivors.

Follow Adriene:

The Pain Factor is a Project Fourtress podcast.

Project Fourtress is a secular, humanist project, dedicated to find answers to the physical, mental and emotional pain people experience, as well as offer help to deal with these issues. To learn more about Project Fourtress, please visit fourtress.org.

SPEAKER_01

Welcome to the fight. Welcome to the Pain Factor. On this episode of The Pain Factor.

SPEAKER_00

I want to just start by saying that my story is one of hope and resilience and going from just surviving life to really thriving. So while our topics may be dark, that's not my message. My message is one of lightness. I have been through so much pain in my life, but it does not define who I am. It's where I've been, not where I am now. So, surviving pain. I basically did everything wrong first. And I was jeopardizing not only my life, but the relationships that I have. I did it all wrong. I did it all wrong. And it really wasn't until I had my daughter at the age of 25 that I really got my act together. In my early 20s, I had the chance to reconcile with my mother after a decade of no contact. I actually searched for her. I did a white page search for her, and I found her last known address and phone number. And it turned out to be the phone number for a homeless shelter. They took my information and I imagined someone writing my name and my phone number on a post-it and putting it on a desk somewhere. Because my mother had lived there. She wasn't living there at that moment. But a year later, after I contacted that homeless shelter, they reached back out to me and said, Your mother is back. She's here.

SPEAKER_02

Born into a family riddled with dysfunction, our guest knows what it means to be unwanted. When her mother became increasingly unstable, she was the only person her baby brother David could rely on, despite her young age. It wasn't until a brutal attack left her emotionally and mentally shattered that she realized that to have even a semblance of hope for her future, she had to take her fate into her own hands. Our guest today is the author of Unbroken, Life Outside the Lines, a story of destruction and discovery, of darkness given free reign, and an innate light that refuses to deem. Adrian Caldwell, welcome to the Pain Factor. Thank you for joining us today.

SPEAKER_00

Hi, Gustavo. Thank you for having me. It is a privilege and an honor to be here with your audience and with you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_00

Sure.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

I'm Adrian Caldwell. I'm the author of Unbroken, Life Outside the Lines. It's the story of my life from early childhood to early 20s. And this will serve as trigger warnings for our audience. I was either the witness to or the victim of the sexual assault of a young girl, the drowning death of another child, emotional and physical abuse, extreme poverty, mental illness, homelessness, horrifically abusive foster care, bulimia, drug and alcohol addiction, pedophilia, death, suicide, and incest.

SPEAKER_02

So in case someone feels that they might not feel comfortable listening to our interview, they are well aware of what is coming.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. I was just gonna say to the audience, if anyone listening, if you get triggered, please take a moment, step away, allow yourself to breathe. And I want to just start by saying that my story is one of hope and resilience and going from just surviving life to really thriving. So while our topics may be dark, that's not my message. My message is one of likeness.

SPEAKER_02

I do believe that, and that is one of the reasons you are here, because you didn't stay stuck in pain and trauma. And I believe that you have to provide our listeners and our viewers is a uh story of success, despite the challenges. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_00

Sure. So I am remarried. I have a 20-year-old daughter. My husband's her stepfather is an amazing man. I am truly blessed. My 20-year-old is and will always be a challenge, but she is my angel. I love her more than life. And I am living a life now that I never could have imagined when I was younger. And I am just so blessed and so grateful. Right now, I am very focused on getting unbroken, life outside the lines, out into the universe, out to the public. It is a trauma memoir, but again, it's about hope and finding just finding the strength to take one step followed by another and another and to being an example for all of those who are struggling to be able to look at me and say, okay, if she can go through all of that and come out the other side doing more than just surviving to really thriving in life, I can do it too. So that's what I'm up to.

SPEAKER_02

I think that is a very good place to start. Um tell me, Adrian, what is pain?

SPEAKER_00

What is pain? Pain is knowing that your mother is not normal, that she's crazy, and the only person protecting me in my life, my grandmother, who interceded and stopped my mother, and was really the only person my mother would listen to, and losing my grandmother at the age of seven. Pain is seeing my best girlfriend at five years old get sexually assaulted by a man in the woods. Pain is seeing a child drown, watching my uncle pull her from the swimming pool and doing CPR and her not coming back. I have been through so much pain in my life, but it does not define who I am. It's where I've been, not where I am now.

SPEAKER_02

How do you survive that pain? Because we can talk about thriving, about overcoming, about facing challenges, about living a fulfilling life now. But at that point in your life, and especially being a little kid, how do you survive? What would you say?

SPEAKER_00

Oh Gustavo, I was crushed for many, many years. It has been a very long road to get to where I am today. And I did all of the things that you're not supposed to do. I drank, I did drugs, I was self-medicating, I was repressing my emotions, my feelings. I I use a metaphor of taking each trauma and putting it into a metaphorical box that goes on a metaphorical shelf behind a metaphorical door, and that is where all of my trauma lived until I started writing Unbroken Life Outside the Lines. And it forced me to take out each box and to revisit that trauma, to look at it from the full 360-degree view, to not only relive it, which was horrific, reliving it, but to make sense of it. So surviving pain, I basically did everything wrong first. And I was jeopardizing not only my life, but the relationships that I have, my friendships, the relationship with my extended family. I did it all wrong. I did it all wrong. And it really wasn't until I had my daughter at the age of 25 that I really got my act together. So it has been a long, painful road, but I am here. I'm at the end of that road, and I am so grateful and I feel so blessed because by all rights, I should be dead.

SPEAKER_02

How did you keep your sanity? Amazing. Or I mean, yes, I was going to say, did you keep your sanity or how do you how do you recover it? How do you go back to sanity?

SPEAKER_00

So to start with, I didn't. Um I have attempted suicide. I I don't know the number of times I've committed or attempted suicide. Um I was in so much pain and so much hurt that even when I was blackout drunk, so I was functional. I could talk, I could walk. I attempted to kill myself on at least one occasion, blackout drunk. And I woke up the next morning in the hospital and I asked my aunt what had happened. And she told me, she said, Adrian, you took a bottle of pills. They had to pump your stomach. And I did this without being conscious. I was in so much pain that I tried to kill myself while I was blackout drunk. So even my subconscious self wanted to end my life. And how did I retain my sanity? It's been a journey. I've been hospitalized twice, and I have had the help of psychiatrists and therapists and other treatments, but it there were times where I lost it, and to really put my life in perspective, it really wasn't until I had my daughter that I got my life together. And my last suicide attempt, I'll tell the story briefly. It's actually the prologue for Unbroken, but I put a gun to my head and I pulled the trigger, not once, but twice. And the gun didn't fire. And I knew it worked because I had fired a test shot prior to that. And that evening in the psychiatric ward of the hospital, I was laying in this room. It was off from the rest of the people. It was off from the main room, and I was just laying in the dark on the floor. And I felt this feeling of peace, of calm, serenity wash over me. And I knew, just knew from inside my body, from inside me, that I was not going to be released from this earth until I had fulfilled my purpose. And I didn't know what that purpose was, but I knew at that moment that there was one. And that was my last suicide attempt. Because from that point forward, I knew there was something I was supposed to do. And I've been trying to figure out what that is exactly since then.

SPEAKER_02

Through all these years of pain and suffering, how alone did you feel? And I am not just referring to family or friends, I'm talking also about society. About any the uh lack of any support system.

SPEAKER_00

I feel isolated to this day. In fact, in one of my psychiatric reports, it was done when I was 13 years old. It it says that I don't believe people can understand what I've gone through in my life. That I don't think that people will be able to understand my story and what I've gone through.

SPEAKER_02

But you're writing a book, so you you hope, I believe you do think that people will understand. That's my Because if you didn't, uh you would not write a book. You're trying to help.

SPEAKER_00

And writing the book has helped me make sense of my life. It's been one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life writing this book. It's taken me six years, but that isolation, that not knowing if other people are going to be able to relate to everything I've gone through, not being able to believe that there are people out there who can relate. Um, that's that's one of the reasons for writing the book, because I I have felt so alone and there I can't have been the only one to have gone through multiple, multiple incidents of trauma and abuse. So I think, in a way, unbroken is my attempt to connect with those other people to help me stop feeling so alone.

SPEAKER_02

I am a hundred percent certain that there's plenty of people that live in pain and that are struggling with shame and guilt that is uh a direct consequence of ignorance and the lack of talk about pain and trauma and so many things that we as a society consider taboo. I probably know what you're going to answer, but I'm going to ask the question anyway. Is our society prepared to deal with trauma? With any kind of trauma? Have we made any any advances?

SPEAKER_00

Well, I think so. I think through shows like yours, the conversations that are happening, because people like you are giving a platform for voices like mine. And I want to thank you for doing that. You're you're giving us a platform, an opportunity to share our advice and a chance to connect and to to really know that we're not alone out here. And society, I don't know if society's ready to deal with trauma, but I can tell you that one area that's very close to my heart is foster care. I went into foster care when I was 12 years old. And I I even went into a quote-unquote therapeutic foster home. And this was a woman who was supposedly trained in how to how to deal with higher needs children, children who've who'd been abused and neglected to the point that they had to be removed from their homes. We are not doing a good enough job of helping those kids in those situations. The abuse that I endured while I was living in foster care with a woman that I only refer to as the witch from hell, except with a B, so TBFH, the witch from hell, I have nightmares about that woman to this day. I wake up crying. And I have never, not once, had a nightmare about my schizophrenic mother who beat me regularly. Never had a single nightmare about her. So, and I'll I'll just throw out some statistics really quickly. So, foster care, in most states, if you are a ward of the state until you're 18 years old, you can attend any public state university with free tuition, no fees, no tuition. It is completely free. And it's not just university or college, it's vocational school. You know, if you want to become a plumber or an electrician, these kids graduating from foster care can go train and learn a profession. It costs them nothing. And only 3% of foster kids are taking advantage of it.

SPEAKER_02

Is that because of lack of knowledge? I didn't know that existed.

SPEAKER_00

No, it exists. I think every state in the U.S. has a program similar to this.

SPEAKER_02

But do you believe that the reason they are not taking advantage of that is because people just don't know these uh programs are not advertised or published enough, publicized enough?

SPEAKER_00

No, that's not the reason. The reason is because these kids are coming into homes and the foster parents are not trained on how to help these kids learn healthy boundaries, communication skills, relationship skills. What does a healthy mother-father relationship look like? These kids are coming from the most horrific circumstances and being placed with foster parents, I don't have a percentage, but I feel confident saying that the majority of foster parents are doing it for a paycheck. And that's not inherently wrong. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. But if they're going to treat it as a job, they should be trained for it, just like with any other job. And we are failing when it comes to training these foster parents on how to help these kids. And I'm I'm not talking about the younger kids, three, four, five years old. Those kids still have a chance. I'm talking about the kids that are 10, 11, 12, already deeply, deeply damaged, with no social skills, no boundaries, no, no role models in their lives. And we're putting them with foster parents who basically just wait until it's time for the kid to move out. To get the next one. They're not learning the skills. And until that child, that adolescent, that teenager has had a chance to process the emotions and the traumas that they've endured, they're not ready to take advantage of college, university, vocational school. They're just not in a place mentally. Most of these kids just want to be out of the system. They don't want anyone telling them how to live their lives or what they should be doing. And they haven't been given the skills that they need to succeed. They do take classes on financial management and home taking care of a home, but those are just surface level classes that are just there to check a box on the form from children's protective services. These kids are not prepared. And I'll give you some more statistics that really highlight how poor of a job we are doing. So by the time a girl who's turned 18 and out of the foster care system, by the time she is 21, seven out of 10 girls, so 70% of girls will have a baby by the time they are 21 years old. And it's not necessarily their first child. So 70% of girls getting out of foster care are starting out as unwed mothers, wed or unwed. It doesn't make a difference. And that cycle of abuse, because they haven't had those role models, they don't know those parenting skills, techniques, what it takes to build healthy functional relationships. The cycle just starts all over again. And the mother, the 20, 21-year-old foster girl, she hasn't dealt with the traumas that she's endured. So she is very likely to be self-medicating, turning to drugs, turning to alcohol, being completely unprepared to have one, if not more, children. And the cycle starts all over again. And that child goes into foster care. And another statistic that really shows where we are and how poor of a job we're doing with our kids is that in the U.S. prison population, 20%, one out of five prisoners are former foster kids. One out of five, twenty percent of prisoners. We are failing our children. I was failed. And worse than that, I was abused while I was in the system. The abuse I endured was worse than my schizophrenic mother who beat me. So we have so far to go. And we say that children are our most precious resource. We have to start acting that way. The social workers, the caseworkers, they're angels. Their turnover rate is insanely high. They're given 25 to 30 kids to manage. And these are deeply damaged, horribly abused children. Their caseloads are far too high. The foster parents aren't being trained properly. And the social workers get paid next to nothing. So, and to compound that, foster care is being outsourced by the state to companies, to for-profit companies to try to find homes and foster parents for these kids. And this is where it's almost sick. The higher the level of need of a foster child, the more damaged they are, the higher the paycheck that foster parent gets. And if that child improves, grows, develops, receives, you know, treatment, therapy, if they make progress, that foster parent takes a pay cut by that child getting better. So we are literally disincentivizing foster parents from helping the kids get better. There are so many opportunities for us to do better with our kids. It was true for me 20 years ago, and I've mentored and I've been active with foster care, and things haven't gotten much better. We're making progress, but it's too slow. So I'm I'm sorry, that that was a very long answer to is society prepared to deal with the trauma? And just from the perspective of a former foster kid, no, no, it's not. It's a step in the right direction. And it's desperately needed, but we have a ways to go. But starting the conversation, I think it's the first step, and it's a step in the right direction. And that's something. That's something. Because we can change things, we can make life better for these kids. We can do better. I know we can.

SPEAKER_02

I know that too. We can do better. And if we have been able to overcome obstacles and challenges, if we have found or have been lucky enough to access some tools and that have helped us be a better person, a better human being, handle pain, survive and thrive pain. There's not just a need for us to share that. It's a moral obligation as members of society. We cannot shut up and keep things for us. It doesn't make sense to me, and I only understood that as an adult, um it doesn't make sense to just worry about what you're going to do with your life. It feels wrong. You said that you that we are failing those children, and you said that you were failed. Coming from all that pain, coming from that background, one of the reasons you are here today living a different kind of life is because of forgiveness and healing. Where did you start? You you did mention that you had an epiphany, but where did you start? Because there's always one first step, one click after many cracks. What was the first thing that you did?

SPEAKER_00

The moment that I recognize as really being pivotal in my life was in my early 20s, and I cover this in unbroken. I had the chance to reconcile with my mother after a decade of no contact. I actually searched for her. This is 30 years ago, 28 years ago. I did a white pages search for her, and I found her last known address and phone number. And it turned out to be the phone number for a homeless shelter. They took my information, and I imagined someone writing my name and my phone number on a post-it and putting it on a desk somewhere because my mother had lived there. She wasn't living there at that moment. But a year later, after I contacted that homeless shelter, they reached back out to me and said, Your mother is back. She's here. And that's when I made the decision to go visit her. I'm in Houston. El Paso is all the way across. It's an eight or nine-hour drive to get to El Paso. And I had the chance to reconcile with her. And the biggest epiphany for was understanding that her behavior, her actions, she was sick. She was sick. It was not her fault. And she was schizophrenic. When I, it's the last chapter of Unbroken, I share about visiting my mother in El Paso. She had a government-subsidized apartment. It had furniture. She had her medication, the seven-day pillbox, on her dining room table. And she had a caseworker, a social worker, who had gotten her the housing and the psychiatric appointments and the medication. And she had gotten the help that she needed 20 years before that. But she got that help. And it allowed me to see her doing well in life. She was happy. She was content. It was something I had never seen. I had never seen my mother being quote unquote normal. And I got to witness that. And that's when I finally understood that she couldn't be held accountable for a lot of her behavior and her actions because she was sick. She was mentally ill. And it wasn't her fault. And when I stopped blaming her, when I stopped being angry with her, that opened the door to healing for me.

SPEAKER_02

It is always us that have to take the first step, regardless of where we are. Adrian, are there unforgivable things?

SPEAKER_00

The part of me that believes that people are generally good, I want to say no. There's nothing unforgivable. Because I do believe, for the most part, people are generally good. They don't set out to intentionally cause pain, inflict pain, do damage. I I don't believe that about people. But that being said, the foster parent that I lived with, I am just now starting to I haven't been able to forgive her yet because of what she did to me, but I am on the path to forgiveness. So I believe that people make the best choices they can at the time with the information that they have. For the most part, that's what I believe about people. I have to believe that. But I haven't been able to forgive her. And it's something that I want to forgive her because it only hurts me. My pain and the anger that I feel towards her, it's not hurting her. It's only impacting me. I would be doing myself a service. I would be helping myself if I got to that point where I could finally forgive her. And out of everything that's happened in my life, she's the only person that I still struggle with. And honestly, I I sincerely hope I'll get to that point one day, but I'm not there yet.

SPEAKER_02

Today, when you are faced with a personal challenge, uh in a specific situation, something that brings bad memories, that causes you fear, that makes you feel that you have failed. Because sometimes when we fight or we are trying to be better at something or overcome something, we make progress. And then it always comes down to that moment when you just break down or say the thing that you were not supposed to say, or you yelled, or you just didn't do what you were supposed to do, or you made a bad decision, whatever you can call it. And that moment seems to take away all the progress that you have made. Today what life lessons or and what life tools do you use when you're faced with such moments when you let's say get up and you you don't feel like you want to go through through the day, or you you are in uh a lot of physical pain. What do you turn to?

SPEAKER_00

It's funny that you mentioned that. Um I am 46 years old. At the age of 35, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. I had to leave my career. Um, I was a certified financial planner, senior financial advisor. I live in pain every single day. It's not a question of if there's going to be pain. The only question is how painful is it going to be for me today? And that's just one example of the hits kept on coming in my life. They didn't stop after I, you know, at the end of Unbroken Life Outside the Lines, I end the book with just having visited my mother and about to start law school. And that's how I end the book. But the hits kept coming for me in life. Not nearly what I went through as a child, but and this may be book two, I'm not sure. But I became medically disabled. My husband, he was 38 years old. He passed away in the night of a heart attack. I was 35. Our daughter was 10 years old. So I've I've continued experiencing trauma. And I think honestly, I believe that the rheumatoid arthritis, that the body physically reacts to trauma in life, the that the body manifests from the pain and the hurt that you've endured. But the life lessons that I've taken from my childhood and my adult life, some of them, these are things that I live by. And I don't want to sound trite or flippant, but these are things that help me stay grounded and remind me of who I am. One, I believe that it can always get worse. No matter your circumstance, no matter your situation, it can be worse. And I know that sounds negative initially, but if you think about it, what I am saying is come from a place of gratitude. Because no matter what you're going through, you're not going through something worse. I remember being young, being a child, going through what I did. And I would say, well, at least it can't get any worse. And it was almost like I was jinxing myself because it inevitably got worse. So you'll never hear me say, it can't get worse. I also believe that people are generally good and make the best decisions they can with the information they have at the time. I believe that happiness is a choice. I'm not talking about major depressive disorder. I'm not talking about mental illness. I'm talking about consciously choosing the thoughts that you allow in your mind. Are you going to allow those thoughts that tell you that you're worthless, that you don't deserve anything good, that you are broken, that you're damaged beyond repair? Are you going to let those thoughts in your mind control you and dictate how you behave? Or are you going to say that I'm grateful for this or that? I am going to choose to look at what I do have. Stop looking at what I don't have. Look at what I do have and be grateful for that. And my my last one that I'll share, something that I believe deeply in my heart, be quick to forgive. Be quick to forgive people who have wronged you, who have hurt you. You don't always know their story. You don't know how they grew up. You don't know what they went through. And if you can forgive them for how they've hurt you and what they've done, you're not doing anything for them. It's not about them. It's about yourself and letting go of the pain and the hurt. And it is so forgiveness is liberating it for you.

SPEAKER_02

Liberating, yes. Yes, absolutely. Those are some of the things I believe. And it's something so simple when you discover that when you realize how that works. And yet it's so hard to achieve that realization. Is there a difference between pain and suffering for you?

SPEAKER_00

I think of pain as more short term and suffering as long term. That's the difference that I see.

SPEAKER_02

This show is called The Pain Factor. I always ask my guests what their pain factor is. It doesn't necessarily mean to put a number on a scale, but I am referring to something that even today challenges them, hurts them, makes life difficult for them, or overpowers them. I know that RA is just a daily reminder for you of what pain itself is. As you said, it is not about whether you're going to be in pain, it's just how tolerable, manageable it's going to be. But all this said, what is your pain factor?

SPEAKER_00

I am blessed to have a life now that I never thought I would have. And like I said, it's not perfect, but I am so fortunate because Gustavo by right, I should be dead, and I'm not. I'm here. And my pain factor, I feel like I've I've gone through more than the average person, and I never ever compare. Trauma is trauma, pain is pain. My pain and suffering isn't worse than anybody else's pain and suffering. I never minimize someone else's pain. I do not believe it. I don't believe in comparing. But my pain has gone from hurt and sadness, loneliness, isolation, to joy, happiness, gratitude. Um, I'm living a life now that if you had shown 15-year-old Adrian the life that I have now, 15-year-old Adrian would have called you a liar because there's no way that girl, me at 15, there's no way I would have ever been able to imagine the life that I have now with all of its imperfections. And I my pain, not I'm not referring to physical pain, but my emotional pain is. Isn't over. As I mentioned, I'm still struggling to forgive the foster parent who abused me, but I am nowhere near what it used to be. And I just I thank God for that. I am so grateful. So life's not perfect, but it's nowhere close to to where it was. And it's taken decades of growth and healing and medication and therapy to get where I am today. But and I continue to invest in growing and healing. I don't think that there is a final point where all of a sudden I'll say, ta-da, I'm healed. I don't think it works like that. I think I am on a journey of healing from the pain that I have endured. And I continue with treatment. And I've done experimental treatment. Well, it's not experimental, it's been proven. But I continue to look for ways to mitigate the pain from the past. And writing the unbroken has been one of the most painful things that I've endured. It's taken me six years to write this book. And I I call it radical honesty, because I not only share the the good parts of me, I share the parts that I am deeply ashamed of. I share the fact that I broke a family up, that that I've hurt people. Um, but I'm not who I was at 20 years old. And I will continue looking for ways to grow and to heal for the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_02

What message would you like to leave for people that are in pain today? What would you tell someone that is today right where you were 30 years ago?

SPEAKER_00

Keep going. Do not give up. Just keep going one step in front of the other and the other, that you will get through this, that it is not indefinite, there will come a time where with your decisions, where you can overcome the challenges that life has given you. And I I like to stress that the decisions that you make today, if you decide to self-meditate with drugs, with alcohol, with sex, with whatever, if you are making those decisions today, they directly impact the life that you have tomorrow. So keep going and know that you have more power and more control than you may initially think. You're determining what your tomorrow looks like. You have that power. That's what I think.

SPEAKER_02

Adrian, how do people follow you? We want to add your information to the notes of this episode. So tell us how to follow you, where to find you, where to buy your book.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. So Unbroken, Life Outside the Lines. It's available through Amazon and all the major book retailers. You can reach me at Unbroken Caldwell. That's my website where I have posted my children's protective services case files in the book. You'll find at the end my psychiatric evaluation. I posted two psychiatric evaluations: therapist notes, social worker, caseworker notes, letters that I wrote to my best friend when I was 16 that he happened to keep 30 years later, photos. That's Unbroken Caldwell. And I'm on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn under Unbroken Caldwell. And to anyone out there struggling, if you need someone to reach out to, I am available. I will respond to your message and take me up on it. Unbroken Caldwell.

SPEAKER_02

We will make sure to have all that information added to our episode. Adrian, thank you for your candor. Thank you for talking about dark things in a relatable way. Thank you for being a force for good in this world. I would say that you are inspiring. And um we definitely have a lot to learn from you. And do encourage those outside, those people listening or watching this episode to just take one step. Don't think about tomorrow. There's no tomorrow, there's no yesterday. Just one step. The step after the next one does not exist. Just one. That is all you have to do. That is all you need to do. Thank you, Adrian. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you. Thank you, Gustavo. You're giving a platform for voices like mine. And we need that. Thank you for being that platform. It's been a privilege to be here with you.

SPEAKER_02

Likewise. And for everybody listening and watching, we will see you next time when we continue to explore the pain factor. Ciao ciao.

SPEAKER_01

The Pain Factory is a Project Fortress podcast.

SPEAKER_02

Project Fortress is a secular humanist project dedicated to find answers to the physical, mental, and emotional pain people experience as well as offer help to deal with these issues. To learn more about Project Fortress, please visit Fortress.org.org.

SPEAKER_01

I, Gustavo Varela, I am not a licensed medical professional, nor am I a nutritionist or hold a degree in exercise or sports medicine.

SPEAKER_02

All of the advice given on this podcast is what I have learned from my own experiences and mistakes, navigating through depression, anxiety, and chronic physical pain. Project Fortress is not responsible for any actions that may occur as a result of your listening to and implementing the advice we provide.

SPEAKER_01

Use all of the information that we give at your own risk.