Why You Still Feel Broken After Trying to Heal — What Personal Growth Requires to Finally Feel Whole

In this powerful Mother’s Day special, Joe opens up about inner child healing, emotional wounds, addiction, forgiveness, and the silent pain many people carry for years. Through raw personal stories and heartfelt reflections, he explores how childhood experiences shape our self-worth, relationships, and ability to heal.

This emotional conversation is a reminder that true healing begins when we give our deepest pain a voice and that forgiveness is often the result of healing, not the first step. A heartfelt episode for anyone learning to break cycles, heal deeply, and become the generation of change

Transcript

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If you felt lonely, isolated, disconnected, with an empty feeling inside and just yearning for more, knowing something is missing, then this podcast is for you. So here's your host, Joe Mittigga.

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Hello and welcome to We. My name is Joe Mittigha, and I'm the host of the We Podcast. Well, it's Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day to everybody around the globe. And I want to just publicly thank all the mothers for all the amazing things you do for the world, quite honestly, for your children, for your spouses, for your families. Happy Mother's Day. And I just want to say how honored I am to have tremendous numbers of friends who are great mothers. I've got sisters, I've got good friends, I've got friends of friends. And I wished every one of them a happy Mother's Day, and I want to wish you a Happy Mother's Day. So it's Mother's Day weekend. And today's episode is why do you still feel broken after trying to heal? It's so appropriate, quite honestly, that this particular topic would come out for me on Mother's Day. Because today I'm going to talk about the relationship I had with my own mother. And even though my mother was always physically there, my mother was never emotionally there. Even though my mother would have done anything for anybody and was always physically there, spiritually, she was pretty void. And does that make her right or wrong? No, like I've always said, there's no right or wrong here at the We Podcast. We're just gonna, I just share honest stories. And just so everybody knows about me, and welcome to everybody here that's new. I'm just a guy. I'm just a guy. I'm not a teacher, not a preacher, certainly not a researcher, none of those cool things that titles of people out there get to rely on. I'm just a guy. And I tend to share my experience, strength, and hope with the world. And I have to say, the response for you as the listeners have been just amazing. And I want to thank you. We are making a difference. We are truly healing humanity because that's my ultimate goal is to heal humanity by helping people remember that we're all created in God's image. But the challenge of this whole God's image thing is it comes through us from the feminine side of self. And that's a wonderful part, and it's great and fabulous and powerful. The challenge is the other aspect of the feminine side of self is the emotional sense of self. And quite honestly, if you truly want to heal, you have to get into the depths of the emotions sometimes. And today's episode, I'm gonna do just that. I'm gonna talk about where I am right now, where I'm going, what's happened for me. And of course, at the end, I always share my stories. And I just want you to know that I'm grateful that you're here. It's really been an amazing journey. We're on our 28th episode and just exciting things ahead. So happy Mother's Day. And I have to tell you, my mother passed away five years ago. And for everybody listening, please understand as I'm telling stories, if the person I'm telling a story about in my world is still alive, I changed the names. So I might talk about Johnny or Susan or Fred. I don't know a Johnny, Susan, or Fred, but it's just it'd be a boundary cross for me to share names of people that have been in my world that have helped me grow and I've created spiritual and emotional relationships with. But the people who have passed, my parents, for an example, I have no problem telling you their names. I have no problem sharing the truth. Why? Because I'm gonna say straight up, my parents were good people. They were really good people. They worked hard, they were always there, they were around. I never was spanked, I wasn't in an abusive household. But did my parents' ability to love me cause me wounds? Yes, why? Because their ability to love only came from the physical side of self, the male side of self. And that's what we're going to talk about. And why these types of topics are so important is folks, humanity is waking up. Humanity is waking up to her feminine side of self. She is. And as that happens, the emotional component of you is being needed to be addressed more and more and more. One of my most popular episodes out there is an episode that's called The Moment You Realize Your Mind Can't Heal You. And I get I get into it in that episode because there's so many people out there that will do these positive affirmations. I want you to repeat after me and say this and say that and say this and say that, and everything's gonna be hunky freck and dory. Well, you know what? If in fact that was true and it's working for you, please keep doing it. Please keep doing it. But for the other 99.9% like me, a positive affirmation doesn't do a damn thing. It does not change a thing. Nada. Is that a bad thing? No, no, it's not. Well then, Joe, what the hell do we need to do? I'm gonna tell you, and that's my path, my process. I remember the first time I heard positive affirmation. You have to understand, I'm in my 60s. So the whole new thought movement was less than 40 years old. I remember when Wayne Dyer, Marion Williamson, John Bradshaw, people like that, didn't exist and then they existed. We didn't even have internet, we watched them on PBS, and they they brought the whole concept of changing your mind will change your world. Did it work back then more than it does now? Yes. And how do I know it's not working? Because if it worked as simple as it is projected to work, there'd be no crime, there'd be no loneliness, there'd be no hurt, there'd be no angst, there'd be no drug addictions, there'd be no alcoholism, the emotional side of self would be healed in humanity if the positive affirmation concept worked. It doesn't. I got a report the other day that says that the we podcast is being listened to in nine countries. I'm a nobody with nothing. And uh I I just I use chat a lot to talk to me to just educate me about this industry. And I put the rankings of we into an AI, and the AI said back to me, it said we podcast is statistically impossible to be as successful as it is. But it is because you're willing to be authentic, and I'm willing to share from my heart, and I'm just gonna have to tell you today, this has not been an easy day for me. Yesterday was not an easy day today. Today's Monday, the day after Mother's Day. Now, my mother passed five years ago. Um, but yesterday, I was really missing her. I'm not getting, I mean, I grieved all day. Now, for me at this point in my path, emotionally and spiritually, when it's time for Joe to grieve, I just grieve. And I put headphones on and I'll listen to the same song over and over. It just breaks the barrier from the craziness of my head and penetrates my heart. But yesterday I was grieving my mother, and I was grieving the loss, I was grieving her friendship, I was grieving, quite honestly, how she helped me through the years. And I need you to understand, was I emotionally close to my mother? I trusted my mother. Yes, I had deep respect for my mother. Yes, was she easy? No. Did I say no? I wish I have to be careful because my podcast has got has gotten rated explicit. Because right now, I really what I really want to do is I want to put about 700 very aggressive cussing adjectives in front of how challenging my mother was to be around. But would she have died for me? Yes. Would she have given me a kidney? Yes. Was she always there? Yes. Did she emotionally support me?

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No.

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And what the Wii podcast is about is to help all of us understand. We are multidimensional beings. We have a higher sense of self, a human sense of self and an inner self. The higher sense of self is your higher power. Call it what you want. I'm not getting into that arena. Way back when, if I said God in my in a sentence, the hair on the back of my neck would raise. I couldn't do it. I, if God was in the word in the sentence, F blank U was also in the sentence. That's where I was. Now, today, all these years later, I consider myself a God guy. And I'll tell you why over time. Today's today, and I've done a lot of different podcasts. So listen to my different podcasts, Gratitude to Grace and Modern Day Monk, and all of those podcasts out there, they talk about my spiritual process, my spiritual awakening. And was I ever pursuing God? No. No, I never was. I just wanted to stop hurting. And that's why today I can speak so clearly, because today, from a place of wound, from a place of hurt, from a place of addiction, from a place of loneliness or aloneness, I don't have it that anymore. It just isn't who I am anymore. And years ago I drank every day. Years ago I smoked marijuana every day. I went to jail three times because of those deep, vacant, angst-filled experiences. And now I don't. But the answer on how I went from there to here was not through God, was not through a higher power. My higher power never rescued me for you, codependents out there. God's not codependent. God's going to give you the strength and courage to feel what you need to heal. And that was my prayer over the years. And yesterday, for whatever reason, and I'll tell you, I'll share the reasons where I am today. And then I'm going to get into this, into the deeper parts of this particular conversation. But I want people to understand that we are emotional beings. And if you're sad, please just cry. Get safe, get sacred. If you've got a partner in your life, have them take care of the kids for a while. Get in your spot and grieve. Because if you do, you're going to feel better. And I can tell you for myself, it kind of took me by surprise. This is the fifth, I think, Mother's Day, fourth or fifth, that my mother hasn't been here. And I didn't grieve those other days like I did yesterday. And I'm still sad today, to be honest with you. I'm pretty empty today. So today's podcast is, I have to honestly say, I'm sad. I'm empty, feeling kind of lost all morning because I knew today was the day I had to do this. I pray for strength. Dear God, give me the strength. Dear God, give me the courage. Get in front of the mic. I used to argue, but I don't anymore. The one thing I've gotten good at, I don't push back against my higher power, even if I don't want to do what it's guiding me to do. But today's one of those days. And the relationship I had with my mother, was she always there? Yes. Was she hard to deal with sometimes? Yes. Did that mean I didn't love her? No, I loved her deeply. I really did. So I want you to hear you can be in difficult relationships with your family, your parents, your kids, your neighbors, your daughters, your sisters, whoever, and love them also. Because that was me with my mother. Same with my dad. You know, there's one of the podcasts that says Wayne Dyer quoted, it ends up being, it's my story, it's my inner child's story, which I'm going to share different times in the future. But that particular podcast, I was guided to share that podcast the day after my father died, a couple days before his 90th birthday. And I share all about that. If you haven't listened to that, listen to that one. It's in the title, it says, Wayne Dyer quotes Jesus. And was I a Jesus guy? No, hell no, I wasn't a Jesus guy. But I do have deep respect. And I have deep respect for all religions. You have to understand that. And I need people to know that your religious positioning, your higher power definition, that in which you call the power greater than you, which is guiding you. My question isn't what you call it. My question, are you following the it? And I get to ask because I follow my higher power. You think the day after my dad died, I wanted to get on the podcast and grieve in front of the whole freaking world? No, I didn't. But I was guided to do it and I made it. Listen to that one. Make sure you buckle up. If you're not accustomed to a grown man crying, listen to that one. Wayne Dyer quoted Jesus. Well, today, quite honestly, I grieved so much yesterday. I don't know. I'll probably make it through today without too many tears. But I feel empty. I really do. And that's okay. I don't fight it anymore. I understand we go through process. And the relationship I had with my mother, I'm going to talk about that. Also going to talk about this concept of change and what the world's going through in the psychic death process. Because right now in my world, right here, May the 11th, I'm going through a massive psychic death. And what is psychic death? Psychic death is the emotional consequence of your world changing inside out. And that typically is created when your external world is changing rapidly. My external world is changing rapidly. I've been a single dad for 11 years. My past wife and I, we had a solid relationship. We separated, went our separate ways. Both my kids live with me, both my boys, Joseph, 19, Ryan, 14. Those are their real names, by the way. And I've homeschooled them both because they're both elite in their extra activities. My oldest is an elite baseball player, my youngest is a modern-day Mozart. And so we homeschooled so in turn they could do their work, satisfy society's needs for education, and then pursue their passions and their dreams. And I created that environment. And in doing so, my oldest son and I, Joseph, we were together every day, like literally, even when we were, my wife and I were married, she had she's an intensive care nurse. So she worked two 12s. So 40, and I stayed with Joseph. I had always had businesses I could stay with my oldest son. I was his caregiver at home. So 40% of my son's young life, he didn't see his mother. It was only me. Every day of my son's, he's been around me somehow, somehow. And is that a good thing? Sure. Is it challenging as it's all changing? Yes. Was I smart enough four or five, three or four years ago to start backing up? So it's not dramatic change. Yes. As my oldest got his license, I stopped going to every baseball game and doing everything. I produced autonomy instead of dependence. I produced a young man who was independent, not a boy who was needing me. And with all that being said, is it still hard as it changes? Yeah, it is. So my oldest is just he's got one more test. He's graduating high school. Baseball was our major part of our world. He played his last high school series this past weekend. His team was awesome. They fought hard. My oldest is a catcher who can pitch. He asked his coach to do the impossible catch game one, pitch game two. And the only reason they didn't win is because the other team had five, five players, friends from kids. It's so bizarre. I'm rooting for both teams. I've known these boys since they were little. Five of these boys, two of them, they had they had the MLB scouts watching. And my son's team, good boys, good team. And they made it to the Elite Eight, but they didn't make it into the Final Four. So his baseball's over. So think about it. That's a world that I was in the center of from a parent, from a dad, from a participant for years. And it's over, literally over. That chapter of my son's life is over, which means my chapter in that position of my son's life is over. And he's moving on to college, and I'll share about that in a second. So if you're in a place right now where your kids are moving on because they're graduating and you're grieving, please know you're okay. Dad, please know you're okay. You can be proud as punch and sad at the same time. I am ecstatic for my oldest son, Joseph. I am so proud of him, the man he has become. I am so proud. And I'm feeling loss because his world is moving on. I'm happy his world is moving on. I'm excited that his world is moving on, and I'm grieving the loss of his world moving on. We can do it at the same time. We are multi-dimensional beings. And a joke I always had with my kids. And for those of you that are closer to my age, there was a movie called Vacation with Chevy Chase that was out, I think 70s or 80s, I don't know. And he drove this whole Winnebago. And I used to tell my kids, all I ask of you as you get older and go out into the world is you be productive members of society. Because if you don't, if you're not, I'm gonna buy a 1972 Winnebago. I'm gonna drive and pull it into your driveway and honk the horn, honk honk, send out the kids. I'm gonna come live in your driveway in a 1972 Winnebago. If you're not, if you don't become productive members of society. I'm here to say that my oldest son at 19 years old has become an absolutely productive member in his society. The people look up to him. He's the captain of the team. I'm super proud. And today I'm sad because he's moving on, and my life is in psychic death. As far as the relationship I had with my mother, when I tell you she was not freaking easy, she was not easy. She was strong, she was strong-willed, she had no problem telling you what she felt, right or wrong. Did she care? No, she just was gonna tell you. And why am I sharing all this? Because I'm gonna get into the rest of the story. We're gonna have, you know, we I talk about multidimensional human self, higher self, inner self. The higher self stuff's pretty cool. Creating a relationship with God, spiritual awakening, spiritual growth, all that fun, really light, really exciting, brings a lot of joy into our conversations. Well, sorry folks, this isn't one of those. This is a conversation today about the depths of pain. I'm gonna talk about sex addiction. I'm gonna talk about, I'm gonna talk about the concepts of sex being used in traumatic experiences, the rapes, the incest, the nonsense that goes on in that world. I'm gonna talk about how sex has created this delusional ridiculousness that human beings say that sex equals love. I'm gonna talk about how men and women alike will interact with a sexual partner because of their fear of being abandoned and lost and label it love. Well, that's where this topic's going today, just so you know. And how I get there is we have to go through the process of where the spot is in time where some people have to keep going deeper and deeper and deeper. That was me. Most don't. But if you're one of these people that still feel broken after trying to heal, well, you're one of those people that have to go deeper. If you're one of these people that the trying to heal, what does it really mean? It means that you've changed the patterns, the unloving patterns of your external world. So you're not drinking every day all the time. So you broke up with a relationship that doesn't work. You've stopped screaming at your kids on a daily basis. You changed the job that you hated. You're doing the things in your external world that you truly believed would cause you to feel more happy, more harmonious, more content. And it worked, you know, numerous times with simple levels of awareness, simple levels of therapy. You can basically grow emotionally, spiritually, enough to where when you unfold the next part of your life, you feel good. I see it all the time. And I for most of you, that's probably what it happened. But for those of you that watch yourself attract the same type of partnership over and over, you see your same cravings come back, even though you try to stop them. You see the same sense of aloneness, loneliness, darkness, even though your bank account's full or your job is okay and your kids are doing great. For you, for those people, those people listening right here, right now, this episode is for you. I hope everybody listens all the way through the end, because even if you're not the person that needs to go to the depths of yourself to heal, you know somebody that does. And I hope you'll, I hope you will share this episode with them because it's gonna help. Also, make sure that you tell people about our website, wepodcast.global, because through that website you can sign up for my email list. Got several books coming out. Sooner or later, you're gonna see me on Good Morning America and places like that. I've got a PR lady that I asked her the other day, I said, So what are you gonna do? What do you do? She says, Joe, it's my job to make you famous. I'm like, what the hell? If you knew me, if you knew me, the last thing on the fricking planet is Joe wants to be famous. What does that mean, famous? That people know your face because somebody puts your ass on television. No, the personal Joe, the real me. All I really want, hold hands with a woman that loves me, sit on a lake. That's what I really want. That's the real Joe. That's the real me. I look forward to someday having a female partner that loves being in front of the camera because we would make a great pair. I love being behind the camera. I'm the guy that will go to an event and sweep the floor, take the trash out. And typically at these points, I end up being the keynote. But why am I the keynote, for Christ's sake? Why? Because I've become practiced at hear listening, hearing, and then living. The listening that Joe does is I listen to a power greater than myself. I can ask for strength and courage, ask, listen, live. That's kind of my tagline. Ask, listen, live. And I can listen and then I can share. I'm doing it right now. Literally. The way I do these podcasts, I have notes. My podcasts are an hour, hour and a half. My most popular podcast is a hundred minutes of me talking. How the hell do I do that? It's not Joe. I just channel it through. It's not Joe. And that's why people are so drawn to it, because the divinity in me is speaking to the divinity in you, and it's resonating. And I hope you understand the We podcast is not your typical normal, let's go have a good time little fill the day podcast. It's not, it's a library of information that a power greater than me wants you to hear. And I hope you revisit episodes. I hope you, if you can't make it through an episode because your buttons got pushed too badly, please know that I'm sorry, not in a sense of guilt, but in a sense of empathy. I'm sorry. I know it can be painful. I do. But ask for strength and courage. Go visit that episode again and listen to them over and over and over. I promise you, the more you listen and follow the different things that I'm suggesting, the more you can heal parts of you that you never even knew were an issue. And that's my goal here. That's what I want. And so the process and why this particular episode is, you know, it's it's kind of perfect that it happens on Mother's Day because most, most, if not 80% of our deep issues, the reasons we still feel hurting even after we heal, they're either mom issues or dad issues. And today I'm talking about mom issues. And I can tell you that the personality that I had with my mother, she was always there but never there. She was always physically there, but never emotionally supportive. I never heard I love you ever until I was 35 years old. I never heard I'm proud of you ever, like literally ever, until recently. A couple people have told me they're proud of me. It doesn't matter as an adult? No. I tell myself that. Does it matter as a kid? Yeah. Why? Because if no one tells you you're loved and no one tells you you're proud of they're proud of you, then you're in an ever-seeking cycle of trying to get somebody to acknowledge, somebody to share, somebody to support and give you validation. That's where good boy comes in. That's where good girl comes in. Good girls are looking for daddy to tell them they're beautiful and they're wonderful. And because as a child, as a little kid, as a two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve-year-old child, you can't do it for yourself. So you need the external world around you to share that with you. So if you're one of these people that finds yourself in an adult environment, always being the good girl, always doing what everyone says, always scheduling your world around their plans, always afraid of speaking up because you don't want people to get mad at you, those are good girl issues. Is that a bad thing? No. Welcome to the crowd. But can we fix it? Yes. How? We have to get to the reason why it's there. And today's episode, we're gonna we're gonna get into more of that deeper into the episode. The source and how you heal the source of not good enough, the source of good girl, the source of good boy. And with my mother, the relationship I had with my mother, she was strong. I mean, I get my strength from my mother, that's for sure. I'll never forget one time we had a conversation that turned into a knockdown, drag out, cussing, screaming match. Why? Because she had a nephew. I had a nephew who was addicted to heroin and he was robbing her blind. Not blindly. She knew he was doing it. I went there one day and said, Mom, you have to change the code on your garage door. Johnny, which is not his name, Johnny is coming in and stealing from you. I know, but I can't do it. I'm like, what the hell do you mean you can't do it? He's family, Joe. Family's important. I said to her, I looked her right in the face. I said, you're killing him. You are part of the reason he's gonna die. She looked at me with big eyes. She didn't even flinch. F you Joe, who do you think you are? I'm your mother. He's my nephew. I said, Mom, if you keep supplying him with money, he keeps buying drugs. You're supplying him with money because you don't have the balls to lock the garage. And it only went up from there. My mother was committed. She was family all the way. She cussed, I cussed, she screamed, I screamed. I was right. She wasn't. Later, later. I calm. I call her. This is typical, my mother. Mama, I just wanted to call and apologize for my behavior. You know, I got carried away. This is me talking. I got carried away and I apologize for getting so aggressive. She says, Oh, me, me too. No, no, not really. I meant everything. I meant everything I said. That was my mother. I apologize. She basically says, F you, you needed to apologize because you're wrong. Now remember, what was I trying to do? I was trying to get her to keep my nephew from stealing everything she had of value. He took her wedding ring. He took her wedding ring. She was 80. She never did, she never did lock the door. Never did. By the grace of God, that that young boy that we were talking about here now is in his mid-30s. Um, got into sobriety young and um made it. He did. His brother, not so lucky. I'll never forget getting that call. My past wife gets a call. Joe, you gotta talk. It's your sister. My sister's on the phone. Joe, Joe, Joe, you gotta come, you gotta come. I'm going to tell mom. My nephew's dead. Fucking dead. I'll never forget walking in that door. I've never seen angst like that ever. My sister holding my mother's head. My mother was so close to all of us. And my nephew was dead. And I'll never forget that. That vision of two women just in angst, just in angst. I dropped my knees and griefed. Not that I knew the boy that much, I didn't. But the two people I cared more for in life themselves had lost a child. And the interesting thing about it, this boy, like most, he was doing the drugs. He had stopped at this point, and drugs didn't kill him. He was born with a disease in his heart. And one night he sat on a couch, put his feet up, um, was getting ready to eat frosted flakes with a with a with a bottle of beer. That so reminded me of me. And he never woke up, never flinched. His roommate saw him like that, feet up, crossed, frosted flakes in bowl, beer unopened, arms crossed. That's how they found him. It was just his time to go. Did any of that matter? No. The grief of losing a child devastating. My mother's was never the same. My sister, God rest her, God bless her. I mean, she's been an Al-Anon for 40 years, and they made it. They did. Her husband, sober as me, would for months grieve in the shower. That man did. Months. So if you lose somebody, you're grieving, frickin' grieve. Get a safe place. Find someone to hold your hand. Find someone to hold your head. You have to grieve. And it's okay to grieve. I grieved all day yesterday. And that grieving process of the loss and the psychic death and the missing of my mother and all of that, it's all part of humanity. It's all part of being fully functioning. And that's why this podcast is exploding because I just want to tell you the truth. Sometimes the days are on cloud nine. I can't even describe it. We podcast at one point was 131st rated on the global charts, an Apple, living the impossible. I was in cloud nine. Yesterday I was in really deep grief. Is it an either or no? It's all the above. So if there's something in your world that's causing you problems, if there's something in your world that is you need to grieve about, if there's something in your world that you're sad about, please take the time. Please get support. Please grieve what you need to grieve. Now, I said that I wanted to get into addiction and codependence and good boy and good girl. And why is that important? Because sex addiction, where's it come from? What is it? Sex addiction is the interactive behavior pattern between two people, where the vibrational interaction that's having, the sexual energy that's flowing, is for most people the highest vibrational energy they ever feel, especially for men. For a lot of women, women are so much more connected than men are typically because women, most women, you have this, you have this open, this open bellied sensation, the chakra, your open chakra in your belly. Even if you're emotionally closed down, a lot of women can be intuitive as heck because their stomachs are open and their stomachs are open because that's where you birth children. Literally, women are the source of life. Women are the reason humanity exists. So when men out there, look at that woman that you're sitting next to and understand how precious she is, how uniquely different she is. When you're having a bad day, big guy, ask yourself, can you make a baby? And when you say no, then take your bad day to a meeting, take your bad day to a friend, take your bad day to somebody else. Because the female partner sitting next to you, she's having her own challenges. And women, you have to understand your men have no idea what you're going through. Mad, glad, sad, and scared? Are you kidding? Most men only know the mad one. And they only know rage from a place of projection. Sad and scared, most men, it's absolutely bullied out of us. Big boys don't cry, my dad used to say. So, women, I'm asking, please have patience, have empathy, have compassion for your male partner. He does not know where you are, and he does not typically know how to support you. Even 20-year 12-steppers who are have have created a relationship power with a power greater than themselves for 20 years, they don't necessarily know how to emotionally support you. They don't. Why? Because 12-step meetings are not about emotional growth and emotional support. Interchild work is emotional growth and emotional support. That's why I was never pursuing a God. I was pursuing healing. I wanted to feel better. I needed to heal the depths of me. So the question is, how do you do it? And this whole, oh, tell yourself, I have to stop. I'm learning this real thing for those of you that don't know me. Oh, I don't know, a month, two months ago, I learned the concept of the real. Now, everybody on the planet except me, I think, knows about it. My kids make fun of me unmercifully. Well, I didn't know what the hell it was, didn't know, didn't care. Well, now, every once in a while, I check because I I watch things, I watch the growth of the podcast, and I watch my social media exploding, not because of me. Please, dear God, understand none of this is because of Joe. I'm just a normal guy. But the exposure and the message is resonating globally, literally. So, but I keep seeing these faces, these same faces with 20, 30, 40 million followers saying the same thing over and over. I want you to say blah, blah, blah. I love you. Oh shit. Does that make you feel better? No, might make you seem a little better in a moment. If it worked, we'd all feel better. How do we do it? But the trick, the truth is it's time to reach the reason you feel empty in the first place. The reason you feel vacant in the first place, the reason you feel lost, lonely, dark, sad. There's a reason, and it's not in your head, it's in your heart, and it's not in the first layers of your heart, it's in the depths of your heart. And that's why I say all the time, we have to give a voice to the deepest parts of ourselves. And that's what I'm gonna share with you today on how I did that. It all starts with listening to your glass empty voices. And what are glass-empty voices? The glass empty voices are the voices in your head that you're gonna hear that are not favorable. The I'm too fat, I'm too ugly, I'm too skinny, I'm too this, I'm too that. I heard a powerful speaker the other day say, you know, the way you talk about yourself, no wonder you see yourself a particular way. And this woman was getting these big old aha's. I get it. Yes. And the reason the Wii podcast is exploding, that there's three really big followings out there. One of them shows you how you see yourself, one of them shows you how what you're feeling, and the other one shows you what to do. But none of them show you the solution, the answer to why you can't. The answer, folks, to why you can't do something is not because you're lazy, it's not because you're stuck, it's not because you're holding on, it's not because you can't forgive. It's none of those reasons, it's because you're hurting, literally. Now, is the adult listening to this podcast necessarily hurting? No. No, probably not. You might be, but probably not. Well, Joe, if it's not my adult hurting, who's hurting? It's all part of the multidimensional sense of self. The part that's hurting is a deep inner child. I call it the inner child. You call it what you want, a deep inner you. How do we get to the deep inner you? First off, you have to be willing to go. Secondly, if you don't have to, don't do it. But thirdly, for the most of for a lot of you, if your world externally is great and your adults feeling good, but you still feel like you need to heal, it's because there's deeper parts you're not even aware are there. Literally, my forgiveness episode. I want the very first reel I ever watched. And again, I won't mention names here, but this particular host was abused badly by a grandmother. And one of the new thought movements of people of 40 years ago, 30 years ago, is shaming her. So you just need to forgive. I wanted to come through the fricking screen. First off, the new thought person, I didn't even know she's still alive, but you can't forgive until the part of you that was abused has done healing. Forgiveness is not an action step. Forgiveness happens as a consequence of healing, taking action steps to heal. This particular host has been in the self-awareness world forever, but no one has ever taught her how to give a voice to the seven-year-old in her who was beaten by her grandmother, who was abused by her father, who was neglected by her mother. No one has taught this global figure how to give a voice to her deepest part. Oh, but I know what that part's thinking. No, you don't. And even if you did, that doesn't help the part. The part needs to have a safe environment so that aspect of you, the deeper part of you, can speak. And when that deeper part of you speaks, eventually the healing process starts there. It doesn't end with her with that part talking, it starts there. Well, how do you get to that soft voice? And why is that voice always so hard to hear? Well, it's so hard to hear because it's soft, it's gentle, it's a child. It's in my world, my first voices were an 11-year-old and then a six-year-old, then a four-year-old. Today I'm going to tell you the story about when I heard my four-year-old in me for the first time. I'm going to tell that story here in a little bit. And it's through all of this work that I've done, the deeper part of me that the consequence was I remembered this power greater than myself. That's why I know that your head, your mind can't heal your heart, can't, because your pain's not in your mind. Your pain's in your Heart. How do you do it? You have to hear the voice. You have to give a voice to the deepest part of you. Well, how do you do that? Well, first you have to listen to all the big voices, the shame-based voices, the guilt-based voices, the hate-based voices, the I'm not good enough voices. And we've done this exercise numerous times. You write all those voices down. You get a piece of paper, have still your dominant hand, and you start writing those voices down. I'm not good enough. I'm too fat. I'm too skinny. I'm a white guy. I'm too old. I'm too this. I'm too that. My very first voice, the first time I did a first step, was I don't have any voices. That was literally my very first voice. And I just kept listening. 12 legal size pieces of paper later. Bullet point, bullet point, bullet point. In the future, we're going to be doing global workshops and walk people through this. And a little bit of a caveat, just so everybody knows. I'm going to start, I'm really excited, I have to tell you, because middle of June, we're going to add a second episode per week to the We podcast. And it's called Voices of We. And what the Voices of We is going to be launched on Mondays. And then this podcast, like we're doing now, will always be Thursday mornings. But Voices of We is going to be over time where we interview people and have people share their experience, strength, and hope. Have people share the angst of their world. Have people share the depths of their challenge, the reality of their failures, and of course, celebrate their glories. But for most people in the world, they need support through the strength part of life, not the celebration part of life. So I've already talked to a couple of pretty big celebrity names that want to get on the Wii podcast already. I told them no. Why? Because they're not willing to tell me publicly what they did on a Tuesday morning. Now they'll get on the podcast and tell everybody, the whole frickin' planet, what to do. Just go do this, be motivational, all the bullshit. Excuse my French. That just makes me mad. Why? Because it doesn't help. If you have to be motivated every day, there's a reason why. And it's because you're hurting. So voices of we are going to be interviews with people where you can hear their challenges and what they did on a Tuesday morning when it was dark, what they did on a Thursday night when they couldn't stop drinking, what they did on a Sunday morning when they realized that their religion didn't fit anymore, and how they managed on the other side. Now, the great news about that particular thing is I was guided. All of you have heard the story. If you have listened to any of my podcasts, you know there's this one particular female who I've never met. I saw her on the 20th of September, 2022. That's where this whole journey, public journey, re restarted. And several times. I call her my red hawk because she's basically a messenger. I've never met this woman. Now, I've got a woman who I'm getting ready to do a presentation with her with her group called Alive Collective. And the founder of a live collective knows this woman, my red hawk. She knows her. And which I didn't know at the beginning, but, anyways, they know each other. And sure enough, I'm getting ready to present. And this is a woman I want to thank. I need to thank this woman for being her. She lived her divinity by sharing of brighter tomorrow. She shared from her heart by speaking emotionally in an interview. My divinity re-engaged, my heart reopened, and unequally yoked came pouring through me, where the concept of the we was developed through that book, Unequally Yoked, all because one woman had the courage, and I want to shake her hand. If she'll let me, I want to hug her neck and thank her. She's rare. And I really will eventually. Anyways, sure enough, my friend said sends me a text. Hey, such and such is coming to the event. I'm like, oh my gosh, that's gonna be amazing. I finally get a meter. And then literally, 15, 20 minutes later, oops. Sorry, Joe. My system had a glitch. I saw the name of your Red Hawk, but the email was different. I'll be, I'll go, what the hell? Same thing. I immediately go online that night because that's what I do. This woman comes in my world, it's God's way of being my Red Hawk. I come up with the idea of voices of we. What is voices of we? I know that people can connect to my voice, my style, my passion, my bigness. I cuss. I'm softness, I'm working on it, folks, but softness is not my normal. It's not. Well, I've got a woman, hopefully she says yes, who's gonna help on that particular in those shows and those episodes, Voices of We, it's gonna help balance Joe. And this woman is a powerhouse, conscious, beautiful, connected, strong, articulate, a doctor, doctorates, and lived the experience, had a brutal public divorce, you name it. I'm not gonna steal her thunder or steal her show, or steal her interview. She's gonna be my first interview, and then she's gonna start interviewing me. So the voices of we is gonna start off with this powerhouse female interviewing Joe, and I'm not even gonna know she's gonna ask. All questions are valid, and she and I are gonna dialogue back and forth. So you're gonna hear a male side and a female side. You're gonna hear my feminine voice, you're gonna hear my feminine side, you're gonna feel her male strength. You're gonna feel my bigness, my passion, my roughness a lot of times, and which comes out in strength. And you're gonna hear it, you'll feel it, you'll hear it in her. She's got this power, but she's soft. I told her the other day, empowered innocence, rare. My Red Hawk, empowered innocence. That's why I was so drawn to her. Voices of We, it's coming here in June. Back to this story. And I say that because I'm gonna do it live. Write out my voices, whatever they might be, and she's gonna interview me. And we'll do numerous episodes like that, and then we'll transition into having more and more people on there, different people. So you can hear different stories. And in the voices of we, we're gonna talk about relationships, love and relationships with this one host that's gonna counterbalance. And then we're gonna talk about addiction recovery, the opioid crisis, and the alcohol addiction world. That's gonna be one of the episodes, and we'll intermix them. And then we're gonna talk about transition. This Red Hawk for me launched her family, sold the business three or four years. Now she's reinventing herself by giving back in a brand new business. I want to hear the dark. I want to hear the difficulty, I want to hear the story. She's living it, but we're gonna have those types of stories. I've got several not celebrities, but musicians and singers. I think I've told you one of my on my dream list, a woman named Amy Manford, that when I was grieving my father, this young woman, she's out of Australia. I can say her name because she's a public figure already. I haven't asked her yet, but I hope she says yes. Because I want to hear her challenges. She was just Christine in the Phantom of the Opera in Australia, elite of elite. And what were her challenges? I don't know. You're gonna hear it on the on voices of we. So in the interviewing process, right, she's gonna ask me all sorts of questions. And in that world, you're gonna hear the voices, my voices. And in the beginning, the reason you have to tell people your voices, you write them down and you tell people the voices, is because eventually the voices that you're hearing, those big ego, I can't this, and I'm that, and I'm not good enough, and all of those voices, which are not the pain. Those are the voices that people out in the world literally believe you can change the mind of that voice. You can change that voice. No, you can't. You can't change that voice. Why? Because the voice isn't the source, it's the pain underneath the voice that's the source. How do you get there? You better have some therapy at this point. You better have some help because eventually, for Joe, the voices went from criticizing me to criticizing everybody else to direct, literal, hateful, angry, directly pointed at my mother and my father. Source figures. So the voices went something like this in the beginning. I'm not good enough. Nobody's gonna want to read my book. Joe, you're a drug addict. Joe, you're a loser. Joe, you can't keep a job. Joe, you can't, you know, whatever. Joe, you're a sex addict. Joe, you're an alcoholic. Joe, blank, blank, blank, over and over. And then one day, one day, and I was warned, and that's why I had to get off drugs and alcohol, because it was coming. Wasn't before that, was coming. And my sponsor Nancy kept saying, you know, Joe, you ought to think about going to the AA meeting. I remember thinking, what does she want from me? Like, literally, I was 15 months with no drugs and alcohol, and she still wants me to go to an AA meeting. What the hell does she why? Well, I didn't realize at the time she knew what was coming. And because an AA meeting basically is where you create a relationship with the power greater than yourself, literally. And I had no relationship with any power greater than anything except me and my ego and my fortitude, my strength, my bigness, bulldozed all the time. But what I didn't realize was I needed to have some relationship with a power greater than myself, because I was rapidly moving into the place of feeling the depths of Joe. That whole human self, higher self, inner self, the inner self part, the part where your deep emotions live, where it comes in the feminine side of self, where the emotions and the spiritual sense of self all connect that part. Well, folks, the reason you have all those unloving voices about yourself, or the unloving voices about being codependent, or the unloving voices about being an addict, the reason you have all those unloving voices is because there's a hurt part underneath there. What does that hurt part sound like? You never hear it until you get the other voices out of the way through a first step. Then you get to the fourth step. And the fourth step basically is the discovery step. The reason you share your voices with somebody else is because when two or more are gathered, God's there. There's a power greater than yourself there. That's what the second step is. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. What does sanity mean in this particular definition? Those big self-defeating voices, we become aware that we have them. Insanity is when you don't even know that you don't even know that your entire life is being guided by your glass empty voices. You don't know that you don't know. That's insanity. Saint, second step, come to believe that a power greater than yourself can restore you to sanity. The sanity is when the part of you sees how insane the voices are. There's two of you now: the insane voices and the part of you that can identify them. That's a spiritual awakening process. It's all part of the spiritual growth process when you become aware of your own voices. Eventually, though, then what happens is you have to get into why is that part have so many glass empty voices against you? And the anger pointed inward is why esteem is so low. I'm not good enough. I'm too fat. I'm too ugly. Nobody will listen to me. Nobody cares about me. I'm all alone. You're never going to be successful. Think about how degrading that is. Think about how dismissive that is. Think about how your own voices are tanking you on an ever-ending loop. Why? Because the voice doesn't like you? No, because the voice is repeating a hurt inside you that believes that. How do we get to that hurt? That's the inner child work. Getting to the hurt is the inner child work. Now, my Nancy, my counselor Nancy, knew I was getting closer to the true pain of my inner child. That's why she wouldn't let me drink and drug and come to therapy anymore. And I told you the story way at different times. I just changed my timing. That's when February happened in 94, and my sexual abuse memories happened in April of 94. And I started getting, I stopped drinking and drugging, and I was doing inner child work, and the anger of was coming out eventually, and then the grief started happening. But all through this process, it still felt as though me, it was me doing it, the adult me doing it. That's what it felt like. Nancy knew I was getting closer to the inner child in me, the deeper part of me having emotion. And in the very beginning, that emotion was rage. Literally rage. And I say that because when I first felt it, when I first heard it, when I first heard that voice start coming through me, it started pointing, it started pointing that anger specifically at events in my past where one of my parents were vacant or not emotionally there for me or couldn't support me. And in the beginning, anger was so my dad was so easy to be mad at. He was just easy. He was big personality, loud, boisterous, fully controlled, completely domineering, easy to be pissed off at. My mother, I couldn't be. She was always there. How can you be mad at somebody who was always there? How could you be mad at somebody who trusted you could always trust? How could you be mad at somebody? That's when I became aware that my mother was always physically there, but my mother was never emotionally there. And eventually, that's where my anger came in. A while in. What's sex addiction? Taking your rage out on another human and calling it love. What's sex addiction? What are you craving in sex? You're not you're craving the interactive behavior pattern between two people where a vibration's happening in your body that feels better than your normal, that feels better than your status quo. Folks, where rage or sex addiction is acted out is because of rage towards one of your parents. Period. Rage. Now that's for most. Sometimes sex addiction is acted out because of a rage that you have inside you towards a perp. If you are sexually abused as a child, whether you know it or not, the child in you who's feeling so powerless because they were violated deeply, darkly, hatefully, that part can be so violated it doesn't even know that it has emotion. You give it a safe enough environment long enough, that emotion will come up. It will. And that emotion is going to be rage at first. It will be. Rage eventually. Grief, maybe first, fear for sure, because good girls don't get mad. Big boys stay in control, which are fear-based beliefs. Eventually, we get beyond the fear doing this work long enough. You create a safe environment long enough for the depths of yourself, and eventually that part will start speaking. I will never forget it. Anger at my dad was easy. It was older parts. He was easy to be pissed off at. And I got to some of that grief pretty pretty early. Anger at my mom, no way. My little kid was way too afraid. And but eventually, that's exactly what happened. Let me get back into something that is very controversial. And I hope you're subscribing because this is a fact. Rape, incest, sex done completely inappropriately, men on women and girls, and women on men and boys, all of that, 100% of that disgusting, hateful behavior pattern is anger. It's based on rage. Where does it come from? Abandonment and neglect as a child. Now, hear me. Do I justify the behavior patterns of somebody? No. We live in a society, you do something stupid like cause another person harm by sex, I will be the first one to take you to jail. In fact, I was. Through all my work, through all my therapies, through all me getting through on the other side of some of my sex addiction, a friend's brother. He was put in jail for incest. Not incest. Wasn't with his family member. It's with a girl, young girl. And what happened was he they have these chat rooms. And in these chat rooms, FBI agents are on the other side. And my friend's brother was talking. I'm not going to say lured. He was there. And the agent on the other side said, Hey, big boy, why don't you come and we'll have some sex together? But I have to bring my six-year-old with you, with me. He's like, fine, I don't care. Meets, meets outside a mall, comes up, meets him, SWAT team comes in on the ground. He never got out of jail again. Never. 11 years later. I'm interacting with him. There was never, there was no, he never literally touched another physical human being. So there was no actual victim. This was all intent. And the law says, I don't care if you do it or you intend to do it, you're going to prison. I'll never forget, I had the capacity to support. Why? Because I knew those voices. Now, I've told you on this podcast, I will be as open and as honest as I can be. I was addicted to freaking everything. Everything. Drugs, alcohol, sex, relationships, money, working out. I was addicted to everything. I acted out everything. I'm just grateful they didn't have the drugs back then that they do now. I would be dead if they did. And I can honestly tell you, the only thing I never did was sexually act out on a young person. I never did that. That always seemed like really stupid to me. I don't know. So, but for the grace of God, I have to say that. I am grateful. I don't know if you ever heal that. I don't know. I don't know if you can ever heal the remorse of that. I'm grateful to say that I never did it. Because if I did, I'd apologize ahead of time like I've done before, and I'd tell you right here, but I never did. Now, did I have crazy ass thoughts about young girls? Not young, my age. I was young. I was in my 20s. Did I have crazy thoughts about girlfriends at the time and females at the time? Yes, I did. I really did. I could extrapolate it out to where if I could have such hateful, hurtful, aggressive sexual thoughts, I could see how this man could do it. His just got cloaked into, cloaked into a whole different level. But I was able to love him anyways. He kept, he'd say to me over and over, Joe, there was never a girl. There was never a kid, was never there. He was stuck in addiction, is what he was. Would he have acted out if a child was there and that was a real life scenario? Probably. He would have. Was he gonna act out on the child? Probably. I don't know. Did he? No. Would he have? Probably. As far as I'm concerned, he's fortunate that he went that the FBI swarmed in because he never had to live through that, the other side of that. And I took him. I was the guy who took him to prison. He went to court 110 months in federal penitentiary. 110 months. I was the one who took him to jail, literally. Did I support him? Yes. Did I love him? Yes. Did I understand where I was going? Yes. Did I agree that I needed to go to prison? Absolutely yes. Why? You're the one who did it. Now you have to suffer the consequence of your act. Now, I'd visit him every once in a while. And he had massive spiritual experiences. This was, gosh, now 20 years ago. He spent 11, 11 years. He's 10, 15 years out now, and active member of society. He had massive spiritual experiences in there. Now, why do I say all that? Because the voices in his head, extreme. The voices in your head, probably not as extreme. But I can tell you folks, the voices in your head, if you have unresolved deeper issues, they're the same. They just sound differently. For men, a lot of times it's the sexual act, it's a sense of closeness. It's a sense of being held. It's a sense of feeling something that's other than angst and pain. Sexual vibration. And what people call love is not I love the other person. It's I love the vibrational sensation that's being created inside of me because I'm interacting with the other person. Now, of course, our codependent says it's the other person. It's not. It's the vibrational energy of sex that you're loving. And for women have the same thing. Women have the exact same thing. It acts out differently. I would say there's equal, if not maybe more, women that will have sex with a man because they don't want to make him mad. Good girls do what they that what they're supposed to. I'm his wife, so I have to I have to satisfy all of the nonsense. Basically, that's just good girl acting out. It's controlling. I'm going to give him sex because if I give him sex, then I'll get what I want. Passive aggressive behavior. A lot of it, it is. Now, does it look like that on the surface? No, it looks like you're being a good wife. No, you're being a control freak, is what you're being. You have sex and you don't want to have sex, but you're doing it anyways. You're lying, first off, to your partner and you're abandoning and abusing yourself. The question is, why? What part of you is hurting? And it's the part of you that hurting is the little kid. So in the beginning, I will tell you, when I first started hearing the rage voices around my mother, it was uncomfortable. I mean, it was like really uncomfortable because it was scary. Scary for me, scary for my little kid. And but I had to get it out. And I'd have, I had a back, I had the end of a an axe handle, a shovel handle, and I would beat the bed. I'd hear whatever came. I never cloaked, I judged, I never made right or wrong. I just let it come. Even the aggressive, I blanking blank F blank blank blank you, mom. I blank blank blank f blank blank blank mom. On and on and on. I remember when I called my counselor Nancy at the time and told her what's happened. She just kind of chuckled. She says, Yeah, Joe, I know. I knew it was coming. And I said, How? Like, why? My mom never did anything to me. She was like the only person that was ever there. She says, Joe, it's not that she wasn't physically there, she couldn't emotionally support you. And when I learned that, it took me a while, folks. I would spin. My ego was so big. But I need you to hear me. You can love somebody and still be mad at them. You can respect somebody and them still have neglected you. You can have a kind interaction with somebody who was not kind to you in your years ago. Why do I say it? Because folks, we are waking up. There is a feminine side of you waking up more and more every day. There is deeper voices in you that need to be heard so they can emote. And that voice eventually turned into my little kid. When I first did interchild work, the 11-year-old was missing my dad, his abandonment with my dad. And he's just easier for whatever reason. He wasn't around that much. So it's easier for me and my little kid to have emotional consequence with my dad. With my mom, it was harder, harder to see, harder to feel, harder to experience. So if you're sitting here and you had a parent that had physical challenges, had schizophrenia, had whatever it was, we're not judging the parent. We're talking about you and the needs you didn't get. Not why you didn't get it, but the needs you didn't get. I had a friend of mine whose mother was had true issues, had true mental challenges, and had some physical challenges. So as a little girl, she had to play mom early because mom just couldn't do it. And it was hard for her to be mad at her mom. And I explained, I said, it's not, you're not literally mad at the human. You're mad at the circumstance. Hear me, folks. You're not truly mad at the person or angry at the person or you're mad at the circumstance. And if your mother or father wasn't there and they couldn't be there for you, it doesn't make them right or wrong. It makes them human, especially back 30, 40 years ago. Eventually, what happened for me, and this is where it just kept getting deeper and deeper and deeper. And then one day out of nowhere, I hear this little boy in me, and I would call it like eras of time, a four to six-year-old. And I heard this little voice saying, I want my mommy. I want my mommy. I want my mommy. This voice in me kept saying that over and over. I didn't really know what it was, to be honest with you. I was so accustomed to big and bad and bold and angry and pissed and rage and F this and F that. And all of a sudden I hear this, I want my mommy voice. And it took me a while. I never really could figure that out. Then out of nowhere, I have a memory of being four years old at a lake. Lake Barron. Now, how the hell that came to me. This is literally 57 years ago, I'm describing right now. No, what am I talking about? 59 years ago. I was at Lake Barron. And my dad had taken me to the lake. And fun day with his son. The problem was my dad had his girlfriend with me, with him. And oh no, my parents were married. And I say girlfriend, was she literally his girlfriend? I don't know. I didn't know his personal life. I just know that my dad had me when he was 26. So I was the fourth child. So my parents got married at 18 and 19. So by the time my dad's 27, 28 years old, he's got four kids, full-time job. Takes me to the lake with this young woman. Her name was Audrey. And both of them are dead. So again, I don't mind sharing their names. Audrey was just this young, young girl, worked for my dad. And the challenge was they freaking lost me, lost me at the lake. And with my mother, when my mother, because that's what we did for fun, would take us to the lake. My sisters, my mother would always put bows in their hair because my three sisters and me, my mom was like a fricking hawk. She watched every move. She knew where all four of her kids were at all times, the whole time. She always knew. And she put big bows in my sister's hair, so it was easier for her to find them, find her daughters. Well, I'm just four or five years old. I go playing in the water. Next thing I know, I'm lost. And I keep hearing this voice. I want my mommy. I want my mommy. I want my mommy. And the next memories I have, I don't remember how I got out of the water. The next memories I had, I'm in the lifeguard stand. I'm five or six. And I'm like terrified. Like in my brain, where, you know, my mom is my guardian. I want my mommy. And instead of getting my mommy, I got Audrey, a young girl. And even though it felt weird, it felt comforting. Now think about how freaking screwed up that was for a five-year-old little boy. He wants his mommy and a 20-year-old little 20-year-old female, 21, 22, however old she was, comes instead. Now, did I do anything wrong? No. Did I feel guilty as hell the rest of my life? Yes. Why? Because why, if I wanted my mommy, but somebody else showed up, and that somebody else, I felt better because the somebody else showed up, felt like I was doing something wrong. Literally. That whole process continued. And they take me home like nothing happened. Of course, my dad didn't tell my mom where we were. I was too young to tell my mom what happened. She found out later that I got lost. She was livid, mad. I was terrified. I thought she was mad at me. Until therapy. 30 years later, the four or five-year-old in Joe thought my mother was mad at me because of the circumstances that happened. Why? Because that's what happens to kids. As a kid, you're the center of the universe. You don't know what's going on. You blame yourself for everything, literally. So think about how screwed up that was. My dad, married, takes me to the lake, young, beautiful female. They lose me because they're not paying attention to me. They find me. I want my mommy. And another female comforts me. And it felt good. Of course it would feel good. Is there anything wrong with that? No. Could my four-year-old little brain comprehend any of it? No. Was that where the abuse happened? No. Two days later, when my mom found out the truth, she was livid. She was livid at my dad, not me. Did I know that? No. All I knew is mom was mad. No mom meant death for a little boy. Literally. My entire life. I lived with that guilt. That's my entire life I lived with that shame. My entire life I lived with that fear. And then the anger that I felt, and this is all part of the inner child work. It doesn't matter what the belief is. We just let the emotion come out. And I was angry. Like, why wasn't my mom there? It's her fault. That was the first awareness. Of course, it was never her fault, but did a four-year-old know that? No. So the anger, the frustration, the confusion, all of that. It's a type of sexual abuse, quite honestly, even though there was no sexual interaction, is a type of truly abuse, neglecting sexual abuse because of the circumstance of it all. And a big part of that is what caused Joe's sex addiction over the years. As I started listening to that little boy, and I just let him talk. Nancy, I had support. And folks, please, if you're going deeper into the depths of yourself, if you're going deeper into the depths of your emotional sense of self, please make sure you have help. Please make sure you're with somebody, a professional, because they need to be able to help you hold a safe space so you can grieve and you can rage and you can get everything you need out. Why? Because when that part feels safe, it's going to come. And when it comes, it feels like a fricking tidal wave. Are you okay? Yes. How do you support yourself? Make sure you have a relationship with a power greater than yourself. Ask for strength and courage. Did I know any of that when I was going through this initially? No, I learned all that later. Nancy, Nancy Carter was the woman that saved my life. She was my therapist and my sponsor for all those years. Nancy was my higher power. I'd call her. She was always there for me, always, until she left after I wrote my book. But that whole process, that was one interaction of numerous. Now, Joe's path was about healing the reason why I felt lost and alone, healing the reasons why I felt broken, healing the reasons why I felt lonely, healing the reasons why I had addiction to everything. That was Joe's path. May or may not be your path. If you can change your external world and change your behaviors and do it on an on basically just changing the physical and you feel better, great. Please understand you don't have to search for deeper stuff. It'll either come to you or it won't. If it does, make sure you have help. If it does, make sure you have help. And trust me, folks, if I can heal the depths of me, anybody can. It all goes, it all comes full circle. I will never forget. There were numerous other stories. I'll get into those stories over time. Numerous other stories about my sexual addiction. And when I say sexual addiction, what did it really mean for me? It was like I craved it. Why? Because it felt good. Why? Because typically I didn't feel good most of the time. I didn't. And I'm telling you what, folks, I have been free of that 20 years now, literally 20 years. I will never forget the time I was sitting in my car because I'd have all those crazy voices. When I would see a group of girls, I'd have all these crazy voices. Now, again, this is 30 years ago, 25 years ago, and I'd have all these crazy voices. I will never forget the time. I'm sitting in a Wendy's parking lot. I see these group of young girls walk by, and I didn't think anything. I just turned. I called my counselor, Nancy. I said, Nancy, Nancy, Jesus, you're never gonna believe what just happened. It's like, what, Joe? What happened? I saw a group of girls and I didn't have all the crazy thoughts. She laughed. She never said much. What was that no thought when I saw females? What was that? It was a reflection of the hurt little boy in me feeling better. Why did I have all the crazy thoughts before? Because the crazy thoughts were covering up the hurt little boy. And if I would act out the crazy thoughts, i.e. addiction, then I was acting out the thoughts instead of embracing the little boy. That's why, folks, when you have addictions to whatever it is, we have to help. We have to change. You're going to need a power greater than yourself to support that process. But once you remove the addiction out of your life or the codependence out of your life, there's deeper stuff that needs to come forward for a lot of people. And trust me, if I can, you can. Mine was massive. I was the only dual addict codependent I've ever known. I was the king and queen of both. And I could give you story after story to prove that to be true. Today, I'm happy to say it's not the case. Move all the way forward. 2022. I am drawn to this female. I feel her divinity. I feel her heart. Literally. I can hardly, you know, I like I can sense now I've been single for almost a decade. I have a lot I could give a woman when God blesses me with that in my life. And I, at the point, I didn't know what this person looked like. And I'll never forget, I feel this experience, and then I go back where I saw her name the first time and I see the pictures, and I was like, oh crap. She's beautiful. And you probably say, Why is that an old crap, Joe? Because I said to myself, how in Christ's creation am I ever going to meet a complete stranger who's living her divinity connected in her heart and absolutely beautiful? How am I ever going to do that? How am I ever going to meet that person? Truth is, I haven't done it yet. That was September 20th, 2022. Maybe someday. Maybe someday. I've got an entire, I came up with this mantra, don't spook the Don't Spook the Stallion, which I'm going to talk about that later. I'm creating an entire script. It's going to be a Lion King type movie, Netflix movie, over the next couple of years called Don't Spook the Stallion. I'll share more information about that. But you know what, folks? We are the generation of change. We are the generation of change. We have the capacities to do it different. Tell your kids you love them. Tell your kids you're proud of them. And if that's uncomfortable for you, I get it. You know what? Text them. Text them. I do it all the time. Oh, I tell my kids because I'm practiced. My youngest, I'll text him. He'll say, Thanks, Dad. I love you too. My youngest. My oldest, he won't even reply. I know he got it. How do I know he got it? You see the little thing. They're just different. Good or bad? No. Am I doing it because I need anything in return? No. How can you be the generation of change? Give to your kids or your family or your sisters or your brother or your mother what was not given to you. How? Add and I love you every once in a while. Add of add, I'm proud of you every once in a while. Add, I can hardly wait to see you every once in a while. Add that into your vernacular. And I understand it's hard. I do. And that's where you this is what I had to do in the beginning. Now, my past wife, she said it all the time. She was so sweet and kind. That's why I married her. For me, it's hard. It was. So if it's hard for you to tell somebody you love them, don't do it face to face in the beginning. Do it text. And if you're afraid to do it, that's where you ask your higher power, your divinity for strength and courage. Dear God, give me the strength and courage to tell this person I love them. Dear God, give me strength and courage to tell this person I'm proud of them. Dear God, give me the strength and courage to be a better me by changing, by being the generation of change. Both of my kids are elite in the world because I was able to emotionally support them in a way that I was not emotionally able to support them. Their mother is a big, I love you, I'm proud of you, woman. She's been a great mother to these boys. Even though she and I went our separate ways, she's been there, she is there, and she celebrates them all the time. And as a consequence, my kids are growing up with high self-esteem, high self-worth, high self-value. And what are they doing with that value? They're learning from young. Why? Because they are the generation of change. They're the generation that's living our change and they're giving back. My oldest, his teammates call him Papa because they've got a problem. They come to him. If he doesn't know the answer, he comes to me and then repeats it back. So, folks, thanks for being here. If you can make it through a podcast like this, I applaud you. You are truly a spiritual warrior. We are on the beginning side of healing humanity. Humanity is waking up to the feminine side of herself and the emotional side of self is here to be healed. It's here to be acknowledged. It's here to be embraced. It's here to be felt. It's here now where you take the time, like I did yesterday. I missed my Mother deeply yesterday. I did. Hadn't grieved like that in a long time. Why yesterday? I don't know. I didn't ask, but I didn't have the courage to spend the day grieving. And today, even though I felt empty, I felt sad, I felt vulnerable, I feel a little lost with my son and that whole my whole world changing. I still had the strength and courage to share on a podcast like this. How? Because Joe's so special. No, no, because Joe practices what he preaches all morning. I said, Dear God, please give me the strength. Dear God, please give me the words. Dear God, please give me what it takes to share with humanity today. So that together we're healing. Together, we're changing. And together we're healing humanity. One smile at a time. Happy Mother's Day, everybody. And thank you for your support.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:08

So that's it for today's episode of the We Podcast. Head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week that posts a review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes will win a chance in the grand prize drawing to win a $25,000 private VIP day with Joe himself. Be sure to head on over to WePodcast.