A Place Called Home by David Ambroz: Survival, Resilience, and the Power to Change

What happens when a child the world treats as invisible decides he will not be erased?

In this deeply moving and urgently necessary episode of A Lighthouse in the Dark, Michael Fishman sits down with author, activist, foster-care advocate, and former foster youth David Ambroz for an unflinching conversation about homelessness, hunger, childhood trauma, mental health, resilience, forgiveness, parenthood, service, and our collective responsibility to protect children.

David is the author of A Place Called Home, a powerful memoir chronicling his journey from being born into homelessness to becoming an attorney, advocate, foster parent, father, and nationally recognized voice for children and families experiencing poverty.

Some of David’s earliest memories are of living in Grand Central Terminal, begging strangers for enough money to help his family eat. He remembers crowds silently separating to avoid him and the devastating realization that, at only four years old, the world could look directly at a suffering child and still choose not to see him.

Not simply a story about survival but what it taught him, how hope sustained him, and why he believes every person has the capacity to become an agent of change.

Michael and David explore the reality of childhood hunger and why poverty cannot be understood only as a lack of money. David explains why “poverty is never about the future.” It forces children and parents to live in survival, making long-term planning impossible. Hunger affects concentration, education, health, emotional regulation, and a child’s ability to believe that a different life is possible.

Together they confront the shame society attaches to asking for help. David challenges the idea that feeding children, supporting struggling families, or providing stability should ever be reduced to partisan debate.

The conversation becomes even more personal as David discusses growing up with a mother experiencing profound mental-health challenges. He shares what it was like to be a child trying to anticipate her emotional storms, protect his siblings, manage danger, and understand the difference between who his mother was and what her illness caused her to do.

He reflects on his mother as both his harshest and most important teacher—and explains how becoming a parent himself deepened his understanding of her struggles. Leading to honest talk  about trauma, accountability, compassion, and forgiveness

Michael and David then turn toward the foster-care system—not to condemn it, but to highlight the societal role within it. David honors the social workers, foster families, advocates, relatives, mentors, and community members doing difficult work with inadequate resources.

He argues, "we are the system."

David offers a compelling alternative: what if young adults leaving foster care were provided housing at community colleges, along with education, vocational training, support, and time to build an independent future? Instead of creating a pipeline from foster care to homelessness, communities could create a pathway toward stability, purpose, and opportunity.

This conversation is heartbreaking, unexpectedly funny, deeply human, and ultimately filled with hope.

It is about surviving without allowing survival to become your only identity. It is about breaking generational cycles without denying the complexity of those who came before us. It is about turning pain into service, becoming the parent you needed, and choosing to leave the world better than you found it.

Most importantly, it is a reminder that you do not have to save everyone to change a life.

Sometimes you only need to become someone’s occasional angel.

Sometimes you only need to help them take one more breath.

Sometimes you only need to raise your hand and say, “I’ll do something.”

Content note: This episode includes candid discussions of childhood homelessness, hunger, physical and sexual abuse, mental illness, discrimination, and violence within foster and juvenile-care settings.

David Ambroz Links:

Website — https://www.davidambroz.com/

Socials — @hjdambroz

Book: A Place Called Home — https://www.amazon.com/Place-Called-Home-Memoir/dp/0306903547

Full episodes can be watched as well on YouTube @alighthouseinthedark channel.

For more connection and exclusive content please subscribe to the official @alighgthouseinthedark Substack.

Additional content is available across social media @alighthouseinthedark

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

My guest today not only embodies changing generational cycles and moving out of poverty, but rising and exposing the unexpected in the world and becoming a beacon of hope. So I want to welcome to a lighthouse in the dark today, my friend David Ambrose. Nice to see you. Thank you for having me. I have so many questions for you, David. Before we get into the book and like your life and all that stuff, I want people to get a feel for who you are. What is the thing that lights you up that people don't expect?

SPEAKER_03 0:29

Oh, goodness. I would say the thing that lights me up from the inside and shines out of my eyeballs like some sort of superpower is uh service. I feel best when I'm doing something, uh, being care of for my family or helping a nonprofit or doing something like that really makes me feel like I'm actually touching the universe.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Yeah, you've built so many different ways to help other people. I originally met you when you worked at Disney through philanthropy.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

And you oversaw campaigns and the ability for people to get involved in the world. Where does that constant drive come from? And where does it start for people who don't know you?

SPEAKER_03 1:10

The drive comes from my belief that we are all but briefly here, and the best thing we can do is leave it a little better than we found it, and that is through people and empowering people to be change agents. A lot of people want to do something, they're just not sure what to do, where to start, or how to start. And I wanted to be a lighthouse to show them the way, how to begin to do something, really bring down the barrier to be an agent of change. People think they have to be Mother Teresa or something, and you don't. Uh, it can be an occasional actor or agent of change in the world. That's how I actualized it. It came from my childhood. It was a very bumpy beginning to life, and it was the interventions of what I call occasional angels that didn't stick around for long, but just gave me enough grace to survive a moment, which is sometimes all we can give each other.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Yeah, those moments and those angels kind of redefine us and shape us as we go forward. For people who don't know, you have said that you were born homeless. Most people talk about homelessness or being unhoused in a brief period. You talk about starting that way and then going in and out of it. And your book, A Place Called Home, is just powerful and resonant and inspiring, but also heartbreaking at the same time. I found it just moving in so many different ways. Talk to us about starting that way and how that shaped your early view of the world.

SPEAKER_03 2:39

I think my earliest memory that I have, I was around four, and time is really strange when you're homeless. You know, people mark time by school or watching cartoons or having breakfast or normal things, and we didn't have any of that. We would get up in the morning, we lived at Grand Central, and not at a hotel, but at Grand Central, and we would beg on the platform. And I remember this morning, it burnt into my memory where the crowd parted as I was begging just a few feet in front of me, and then came back together behind me. Kind of like those birds in the sky that you see all moving in and synchronicity. But these crowd didn't talk to each other, they didn't text, they didn't say, hey, avoid this kid. They knew. And the reason it burnt into my memory is not that it was the first time I ever believed that I was actually invisible, and that I would have to figure out a way to become visible. Because it was the occasional generosity of these strangers that determined whether or not my family ate. And so at four years old, I sucked it up in bed, and that is one of my earliest memories. And I understand why people would avoid me. I probably would have avoided me. I had sores all over my face. Uh, Lord knows what it was. I had never showered, to my knowledge, and I was wearing rags, and I was in your face asking for money, but I had to find a way to get them to give it to me. And so my brother, sister, and I would spread out at Grand Central while my mom sat somewhere and we would beg for money. We were born that way. We were born into homelessness. I don't have a memory before. And I was homeless till I was around eleven and a half years old. And it was in and out of sometimes housing, but mostly homeless.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

It's knowing you now is a testament to both your strength, but also I think the enduring power of the human heart and character. But it's also a really good indication, like you said, you might have avoided you. And no words needed to be spoken, but a whole crowd, you feel invisible. As somebody who was briefly unhoused, uh mine is so minor in comparison to yours. But I think so many people feel invisible and feel completely unwanted by the world. How do you look back at that time and and are there vestiges of it that you still carry that kind of show up in your life?

SPEAKER_03 5:03

I could not be more grateful for the life that I've led. I look around at a world of people that are sleepwalking, uh, numb, not negative, but just not fully awake to the world as it is. And I was born unplugged from the matrix. And I realized when I was a child that uh there are rules, the only rules that actually exist are physics. Everything else is a choice. And we live in a society that can make different choices. And my childhood was the slap in the face that woke me up from what other people still sleep through, which is life. This is the universe we have, and we can really we don't have to live in a society where one out of four kids are starving, where 10 million American children live in poverty in this country. Ten million. We talk about coal miners all the time in presidential debates, but there are more baristas in LA County than coal miners in America. We just walk around and ignore it. And I childhood is a gift that gave me the awake nature of my being. And I never ever was slumbering. I just saw the world as it was because I had to to survive. It gave me the spark and it uh kept me going. It was hard. I describe my childhood sometimes as hogwarts. It would it might kill me, but it was also very magical and very exciting.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

I want to talk about that part. Scrounging for food is a big part of the book. It's a big part of what people go through. People don't understand what that's like to be looking for the leftovers or waiting for the end of the day to go out, knowing when a place closes. You do such a beautiful job of describing it, not glorifying it, but describing it and understanding the survival mechanism of that. What do you wish people knew?

SPEAKER_03 6:53

The first two words in my memoir are, I'm hungry. Very intentional. You know, I went through a lot of different experiences, but I would say the most constant companion was a hunger to my bones. People sometimes think they're hungry, and they probably are. They skip breakfast. But it's the hunt for calories to stay alive, which is a fundamentally different caliber of hunger. The fear, the lack of, the inconsistency. And then we would find places where we could get food. I always like to say I met God through food, which uh when I went to the Catholics, they had very, they were very generous, but they had very gray food. And then I went to Black Baptist Church, and it's the first time I had macaroni and cheese, and I thought this is the chosen people. And then I went to a Unitarian, and they, for the first time in my life, I had Indian food. And I just knew the Unitarians were chosen. Uh food was holy.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:55

You had to chase for calories, and that stayed with me my entire life. It became a tool that I used to disassociate when things were tough, and it was weaponized against me by foster parents. But food and calories affect so much about how you think and perceive the world. I remember being in school sometimes and I could not concentrate or think until the free lunch. Lunch in New York City, if you know all those mobile food vans, you know, falafel or what have you, you could readily get fresh, discarded food out of those. And you had to be very quick and careful because they didn't like us doing it. But kids would do it. You knew which grocery stores and when they threw food out, and which grocery stores you can go to to get free samples of sliced deli meat. Price chopper, if anyone's from New York, price chopper. So food was the North Star. It was how we guided ourselves in our days more than housing. Um, more impactful for me than the violence was a perpetual state of hunger.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

Yeah, I think we have this debate that happens a lot in this country about like free lunch and feeding children in school. I worked in education and you and I both have kind of been around this system quite a bit. How could you put it into words for people? Because I don't think they they grasp just how impossible it is to study or excel when you are unsure if you're gonna eat. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:22

Not only that, which I think you said well, it's also coupled with the things that come along with that. If a kid is hungry, what are the parents eating? What's their financial state? What's the likely status of their housing? Nothing good. So that is the tip of the iceberg above the water. It's a very important tip. But it belies what's below, which is probably more substantial. It's an ecosystem that leads families into poverty and unable to care for their children. And what I'm always thoughtful about is two-thirds of the kids entering foster care are for neglect, which is a euphemism for poverty.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Right.

SPEAKER_03 9:58

We take the kid away because the parents can't provide food or shelter, and then we spend $70,000 to $100,000 a year to care for them, which is when the parents only needed a little help. We have made asking for help and receiving help shameful in our society. And that is a moral choice we're making. I mentioned the laws of physics. That is a different choice we can make. Asking and receiving help should not be a shameful act. We all purport to worship at different temples and religious institutions. Generosity of spirit, you see it all the time when Americans are confronted with a natural disaster. They reach deep. But for some reason, when people need help like that, it's it's shameful, and I don't understand it. And even more so, children. You know, we debate free lunches at schools. I learned through my jobs that during the summer, hunger spikes amongst kids. I'm like, well, why does summer hunger spike? And I'm like, oh, because the only stable meal they're getting is through school lunches. And let's just also acknowledge they're not the healthiest option.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

No, and it's not like they're robust and like, and it's it's not a feast. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 11:05

But it's all they have. And I remember um teachers know, teachers always know. And uh I had a teacher, I remember her to this day, we're friends on Facebook. She would slip me a granola bar on a Friday. Because she a couple, and she would, she knew, and my backpack at the time was a bodega plastic bag.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Right.

SPEAKER_03 11:26

And she would go into the coat room, and I knew two to three bars would be in my bag every time I went home on a Friday. And I was only there a short time, but I remember her to this day. So if anyone listening to this thinks that kids uh that are experiencing hunger, it's a political issue. Shame on you. There's no moral justification in a society of this abundance that we should live where kids, one out of four, are experiencing hunger like that. It's it's just unacceptable.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

People don't really grasp this unless you've really opened yourself up and been willing to really listen to this. The statistics are undeniable. There is this concept of like, oh, we're giving people something for free. It's like caring for them and putting them in the system is far more expensive than providing a little bit of support up front. That's right. But also, this isn't about the expense, or it shouldn't be.

SPEAKER_03 12:20

Sometimes about values. That's right. You keep sometimes we should not be having a conversation about resources, money, when a kid is hungry, nor should we lever their hunger, leverage their hunger to change adult behavior, which is really what it's about. Not many people want to hurt children, but they're angry at the parents for being poor and needing this help. Or anger may be the wrong word, but not wanting to give it. But the reality is we can make a choice. We can choose to have no hungry kids in this society tomorrow. We could do it tomorrow. We could have high-quality schools, we could get three meals a day at public schools. Why don't we? Why don't we? We could do it. Uh, it's a choice we are making, and that's a local decision. You can all do that locally. We don't need to wait for Washington or the UN. You can make that decision in your city and your county that we're gonna do this. Schools have started doing free breakfasts, there's after school programs. The suffering of kids in our society has become white noise, unremarked and unremarkable, and we don't even hear it anymore.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Yeah, you brought up shame. Yeah. Shame is, for me, almost one of the most useless human emotions because it's not necessary in most cases. We do it to ourselves, right? And it's imposed on us in many ways. The shame of asking. What kid wouldn't ask for food? What kid shouldn't be asking for help from the society around them when there isn't support? And yet there's tremendous shame. Can you talk about overcoming that?

SPEAKER_03 13:51

Shame, uh like fear and other emotions are data points. For me, they are information. But they could not make my decision. They're information I needed to take into account. If I lived in the shame of begging, it feels terrible. Um it's embarrassing. It's it feels terrible. Like, you know, asking someone for money out on the street, it feels awful. Why would I want to do that? But you have to. And you have to subject your, you know, vanity to do what you need to do to survive. And that wasn't a decision I I was thinking about. It was to survive. You know, as I got older, there's different elements of my life that I had to confront shame as it manifests. You know, you mentioned it, it's throughout our lives, it's woven every day. Um I drive a 10-year-old car, and I my son goes to a private school, and I pull up in my beat-up, sad car. I've listened I did this for over 20 years too, so yeah. And everyone looks at me, they're like, wait, don't you work at such and such, and aren't you so and so? And I'm like, Yeah. Do I experience a little bit of shame? Absolutely. We all would. But then I'm like, you know what? My sacrifice is that my son is now going to this private school. Um, and I'm able to support my my foster children and my mom. And those are decisions I make. But does it feel good in that moment? No, but it's information. How I overcome it is I look at it square in the face and I'm like, thank you for the information. I'm gonna make my decision now. And it's like yoga, you have to practice it all the time. It is, it is, I talk about forgiveness a lot, and same thing I feel about forgiveness. You're either serving or deserving every day. And shame is shame should be information we take into account as we move through the world, but it it shouldn't stop us from doing. And shame on all of us for creating a society where kids are embarrassed because they're hungry. That's on all of us, adults.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

It's it's horrible and it's immoral. Yeah, I uh you have a quote that I love, which is that poverty is never about the future. Can you expand on that for people and bring that into focus?

SPEAKER_03 16:06

Poverty, and I would say I can't speak to all elements and types of poverty, but poverty, uh, if you are going to survive the moment you're in, you have to be focused on that moment. You can't think, oh, I should save or I should take this class too. You have to think, where am I going to sleep tonight? Who is going to hurt me and how? And how will I recover? Where am I getting my next meal? How am I going to feed my child? Those are in-the-moment decisions. Those are in a long term. And when you make it, you have to make them again the next day. And the next day. So the idea that we're going to look up and look out ahead of us is absurd. Poverty is about surviving, especially in the moment we're in. And to do that, you cannot be that far future focused. If you are truly drowning, you need to focus on keeping your head above water, not swimming a marathon. So, can you swim a marathon? Probably not. Swim a distance. And that's why I think about poverty. It is consuming and it takes up all of your brain space, especially if you're a family or a parent, and you look at your kid and you're like, I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow. I don't know where they're going to go to school or daycare. I don't know how I'm going to feed them. How can you think long-term? How can you deal with intergenerational trauma and poverty issues when you really just don't know how you're going to survive day-to-day?

SPEAKER_00 17:31

Aaron Ross Powell That was the biggest change for me. Going from living in a decent kind of suburban neighborhood and then going in and out of housing stability and then moving around into inner city neighborhoods. You know, at a at a middle class to upper middle class, or even at a private school, everybody has the assumption that you're going to go to college because they're thinking of the future because most of the basic needs are provided. Whereas when I went to inner city high schools, no one was thinking about college. There was like one or two people that you thought might go, and everybody else was just trying to figure out how am I going to make it to graduation, how am I getting home today and not getting jumped or not having something happen. Like the survival element becomes so much more pressing as a need. And I think we underestimate that when we talk about poverty. We make this assumption as if people are choosing to ignore some kind of future plan, but it's hard to plan for the future when you just have to get through today.

SPEAKER_03 18:39

Poverty is so much more than that. You know, you're not given the space to imagine or to uh do the things you want to do. It's a poverty that weaves into your DNA and affects your very out uh outcomes of your lives. Um the stress it induces on people and what that does to their heart conditions or their their ability to do anything. It is woven into every aspect of our life. It's not just about I don't have $500 in my bank account, which I think very few Americans actually do. It is woven to every aspect of your life. It is then leading to a poverty of imagination about what your life might be, or the life of your children might be, or the life of your community might be. I'm always struck that poor people give more as a percentage of their income. Yes, absolutely. Than wealthy people. And that's not an indictment on anybody. It is a fact. And when I look at that, I think they're not people in poverty are not poor of love and compassion. Um that speaks to it.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

Right.

SPEAKER_03 19:41

Uh I saw it in my neighborhoods, you know. When I was growing up, I talk about one woman in the book. Yeah, she was a neighborhood prostitute. And great stories. She's so she was so funny. She's I hope she's still alive, but she used to take out her her denture. She was, she wore dentures or had dentures. She was young. And she would like clap her teeth at us and she'd be like, I see you kids. And she would just like she this one time she took us down to get fried chicken in uh New York, and I think I was I don't know how old I was, seven or eight. And she had two boys, and she took us down to get fried chicken. And I and I said to her, I'm like, you know, they don't take food stamps. And she said, Don't worry. And she went in and the store manager came out to greet her. And years later, did I only realize it was probably one of her clients? And so he took food stamps. Right. And she would just take kids down there for fried chicken. You know, she would watch out for us. Uh her lack of income. When I walked into her apartment one time, you found a home full of love, clean, her boys fed and cared for, going to school, and we lived in a terrible neighborhood. And you walk in there and you're like, this is a beloved space. And you just felt it. She wasn't poor of love, she was poor of resources. So I think when we think about poverty, it's sort of a one-dimensional, it is so more complicated.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

I want to talk about in your home, because so often your home was kind of dark and unpredictable, and there was very little. Is that an accurate assessment?

SPEAKER_03 21:13

I would say there was none, but yes. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Well, I was yeah. So and your mom had a lot of struggles. I was kind of struck by, you know, talking about begging and trying to get things, and in the whole process of that, trying to manage mom, right? And keep mom from having these moments. What is that like as a kid? Because I think so many people have experienced that where you're trying to manage the relationship with a parent who's difficult or who struggles.

SPEAKER_03 21:42

Yeah. My mom suffers from a array of mental health issues that are exacerbated by stress. And being homeless and poor is very stressful. Uh, she's an educated woman. She was a nurse in some of the most prestigious hospitals before her onset of her mental health issues. Um, remarkable woman. And what I realized about my mom as a child is you couldn't necessarily always stop the tornado that was coming. But maybe you could direct it or diminish it or delay. Her onset was inevitable of her violence or her she would disappear into herself and not emerge for weeks. And I could manage some aspects of that by understanding what the triggers might be. So my mom was addicted to tobacco.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

I was gonna ask you about like negotiating to figure out and find a way to get cigarettes.

SPEAKER_03 22:35

Oh my gosh. It is it's it's interesting in a country that got all of us addicted and then made it illegal and disproportionately get poor people addicted, that we then took away their right to use public resources to buy the very product that we made them addicted to. But we did. And so I would go in with food stamps and uh cash them, which if folks don't know, many people probably do. It means you buy a five cent candy, you get the 95 cent change, and you do that until you can buy cigarettes. And they used to sell singles at the different bodegas and convenience stores, and I would always hide some on me in the apartments that we had sometimes, or just where I could find them. Or whenever I walked, I still do this. I look all the time when I see a cigarette on the street, in on the beach, unfortunately. Stop doing that, people. Uh and I look at how much tobacco's left. Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

Is it is it still potentially usable?

SPEAKER_03 23:32

Totally. And I can't stop doing that. There's so many things like that in my adult life where I'm like, oh, I don't need to do that anymore. But I look at it because that was really an important tool for my mom. If she had cigarettes, it was a good day most of the time. Right. Um, not the only thing, but it was an important component. And managing my mom's emotions was a huge part of my early childhood. It became, she's my most important teacher. Still is to this day.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

Now it's interesting you use that term. Because she also was powerfully driven by education and instilled that deeply in you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:11

So ironic. My mom would say things to my brother, sister, and I. She'd say to me, she'd be like, You'll be a Supreme Court justice. And I all I could think in my head was, could you send us to school at all? Like I'm illiterate. Like, could we could you just get us to kindergarten, please, or first grade? And we would pop in and out of schools, but for weeks, not much time. And uh, but she would instill that value in us. She would constantly say these things to us. You're gonna go to Harvard. She, you know, became a verbal tick. Um and what was funny about that is it wasn't backed up by the immediate things that she did, right? But it planted a seed. I don't know many people in the communities where I live that were getting that message every single day from my mom. And she taught me lessons that weren't only about grades. She I dedicate the book to my mom, who taught me to forgive and to conquer one impossible thing at a time. And my mom, I had to learn to forgive her very early on to manage her and manage our life. Because if I didn't, we wouldn't survive. And she taught me that. And I had to use that every day. You know, I was driving over here, someone cut me off, and I did this thing with my hand where I go, I forgive you. And my my kids think I'm crazy, and I do that, and I say it.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

I think that's beautiful.

SPEAKER_03 25:24

Because the physical act of it does something. Because you know what happens when you that guy cuts you off or that gal? You're pissed the rest of the day. And you carry it. Do you know what that person doesn't think about? You at all. At all. Yeah. There's so many aspects of our lives where we're we're righteously correct that we have been wronged. And the truth is, it doesn't matter. It's unfortunate. But that guy doesn't get to ruin the rest of my day. So I'm gonna forgive him. And it doesn't mean I'm magical.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

Right.

SPEAKER_03 25:51

But if you keep practicing that idea of forgiveness, for me, it's how I become a light for other people because I truly don't carry that stuff around with me. I've chosen like yoga every day to practice this, and I'm pretty darn good at forgiving the big, the small, and the medium.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Now you have this part towards the end of the book where you talk about you're in college, you're getting ready for graduation, and you have to track down your mom, who's been homeless most of the time you've been in college. But you call her to tell her thank you and that she's the reason you're graduating. For people who don't have consistency from their parents in their lives, what did that mean for you to and how much did you share that moment even though she couldn't really be there?

SPEAKER_03 26:39

If my mom had breast cancer, we would have a color in March. Uh if she became bald through chemo for that cancer, we would not condemn her.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

Right.

SPEAKER_03 26:50

Uh if she needed to be hospitalized, we would have taken care of it through programs. But because her illness is mental issues, mental illness, we collectively, we talked about poverty, we collectively decide that that's not the same. My mom's version of chemo-induced baldness was her physical violence. She had no circuit breaker between an emotion and an action. And the delusion she suffered caused even worse. I looked at my mom and I knew this wasn't who she wanted to be or who would be. The image I always had in my head is the um uh God would come down and he would put his hand through her head and calm all the voices. That's what I used to think about as a kid. And I wanted to sit across from her and just have a conversation with this person that I I don't really know. Um, so when I got to college, uh after everything, uh, I was there because of my mother. No doubt. Other people played a role, but I was there because my mom did that. I had a brother and sister also in college. I think we're the only three foster kids in America that have advanced degrees. I could be wrong, so please let him know. Um but that's my mom. You know, my most important teacher, the harshest teacher I had. Um, she taught me when I was in college and struggling. I slept in my car. She taught me to survive. And I use that to work multiple jobs to get my butt through college, you know. Nothing glamorous about the jobs that I did in college. And they got me here. She she taught me that. And when I was having that cumulative moment where I knew this was the rest of my life beginning, there is no one who deserves more credit and gratitude than this woman.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

Right.

SPEAKER_03 28:37

And I had to find her and tell her that.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

Yeah, my dad doesn't have much of a switch between the the initiation and the reaction and the outcome. Yeah. Right. And and there's a part of that that you learn to get used to kind of the volatility, but you also understand that this is not it's not personal, if that makes any sense. Like I like I don't know how to explain that to people from the outside, probably think that sounds crazy or like weird justification. But it's a guy with PTSD, it's a guy who grew up in in traumatic spaces before he even came to the United States. He didn't have that pause or filter that I think you and I have cultivated over the course of our lives. I can't claim I can't claim that I always was perfect at it, but I definitely have cultivated it, and I know you have too.

SPEAKER_03 29:27

The way I always think about it is a circuit breaker. The energy is raging and it wants to go across into an action, and you either cultivate it or not, or you physically cannot, cognitively cannot. The break breaks. The circuit breaker breaks when there's too much energy going across. And that isn't a super important thing. And I think being the you and I being the first generation between our parents and our children, hopefully are also sharing that with our kids. It is super important. And I think about it a lot of things I have to have like a visual image. And I think about a circuit breaker because I have kids, and I'm kids can be a big pain in the butt and rude and kind of awful to you at times.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

They know how to push every button. Oh my god. It's like they know, well, they are the perfect observer of you, right? And they know every pattern as you describe with your mom, but they learn us. God help me. And they also know how to test us and how to push those buttons.

SPEAKER_03 30:19

I hope when they write their memoirs, I'm not around. Especially as teenagers. I think kids between zero and twenty are they're around. And then something happens in their mid-20s where I want to have a beer with them. And it's very lovely. They be they emerge. No, there's moments of grace throughout, but truly seeing some of my older uh fosters are just remarkable people. But yeah, my mom, most important teacher, gave me a PhD in life, woke me up. I'm um I'm still taking care of her to this day. And I will until she's not here with us.

SPEAKER_00 30:54

I'm gonna ask you this question. I I don't know if I'm if I'm treading in dangerous territory, so you'd stop me. But she says thank you. Did I tell you thank you? Thank you, did I?

SPEAKER_02 31:03

Did I say thank you?

SPEAKER_00 31:04

Did I say thank you? For you, did that change the way you look at thank you? Did it make it more powerful? Did it make do you have any hesitation about that? Have you chosen a different word?

SPEAKER_03 31:18

I've never been asked that. I think I think two things. One, um, my mom manipulated people. And expressing gratitude is a manipulation. It's probably sometimes authentic, but it's also a way to preemptively, you know, someone's still deciding if they're gonna help you, and you're like, Did I say thank you?

unknown 31:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:39

You know, maybe tips the scale. But I saw my mom as a very um astute people person, and I saw how she could play people, not negatively, we all do it. We do it all day long. Um, do I really want to be nice to the clerk at something? No, I'm tired. I just arrived at the hotel. I want to go to bed. I'm tired, but of course I'm gonna be nice because I want a nicer room, and they're a human. But my mom taught me that people are susceptible. That was a super important thing. And the other thing I taught me, my mom taught me in the same vein, my mom was very affectionate as well, and she would always say, I love you. She's like, hug me with my chop liver. And I say it all the time, and I mean it. I say it to my friends, I say it to my ex-husband, because I do, and I say to my kids, um, it is free, and I don't know why we say it more, and my mom taught me that as well. The language she chose to use uh took deep root in me, and it it affects the way that I see and operate in this world, as most of our moms do.

SPEAKER_00 32:44

Yeah, I love you, such a powerful phrase, and often people either don't use it enough or kind of are dismissive in it. I didn't grow up in a house where that was a something that people were said a lot. So my children think that that's normal because I have made a conscious effort. And at the end of every phone call, we use it, right? But that has a value to it that can never be taken away, and there's a feeling when you know it's true that is unlike anything else.

SPEAKER_03 33:13

I have a um challenge that I put to myself. I have a two and a half-year-old, a toddler, as an aside. Have you heard this new word threeenager?

SPEAKER_00 33:21

No. Uh are you gonna explain it to me?

SPEAKER_03 33:24

It's exactly what it sounds like. Um terrible twos, and now three nature. I think we just need to stop pathologizing normal development. But it's a it's a funny thing. I put a challenge to myself when my child was, my son was born, that I would say I love you one million times before he was 18. I call the one million I love you challenge. And in particular, I want dads to do it. Because I think you mentioned kind of how we, I think we as men more so than women. I have no data to back that up, but that's my perception of the world. Don't say it enough, especially to our children, especially as they get older. And so I looked at my son, I'm like, I'm gonna say it. I'm not gonna say it like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm gonna say it and mean it one million times before you're 18. I did the math, it's possible. So I think about that, and it sort of sticks with me. I have a little sticket note on my fridge, and I don't even need it, but I I think about that all the time. It is a free embrace to his core. And he doesn't understand words yet. I mean some, but he just started saying, I love you, and it's it is the most beautiful thing in the world. Uh make it my ringer. Yeah. Um, it's delightful. And I'm like, wow, one of the first sentences he says, complete sentence, is a three-word phrase that I've said to him a gajillion times already. So yeah, I think uh uh love is a free commodity we get to trade in and we we husband it too much.

SPEAKER_00 34:45

Okay, I'm gonna go to uh to a different story in your childhood. There's a story about becoming Jewish in your book. And you did so late. And how do I describe this properly without because you said when I asked you about it, you said that the publisher even had hesitations over it being in the book. Talk about that decision and then the impact it had on you.

SPEAKER_03 35:11

So my first name and my last name is not what it is today. Right. My first name is Hugh. Right. And for the first roughly seven and a half years of my life, I was Hugh. And my mom went through many different um chapters in her illness. And she wasn't the most politically correct person. And to speak plainly, she was often racist and homophobic, and what's the right word for religiophobic? She had strong opinions as an Irish Catholic woman about other faiths. And she decided when I was about seven and a half that uh because, in her words, the Jews have all the money that I should be Jewish. And then all of a sudden, she started purporting that my father had been Jewish, which she didn't know who my father was. So that was just out of nowhere. And so she took me to a quack doctor who did the procedure. Um, but we were homeless, and we were living with this woman who was quite cruel in her apartment, and I did not get aftercare. It was uh an infection that almost killed me. Um my midsection turned a bright shade of red. Um the bandage welded itself to my body.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

That story is horrific and almost unbelievable. No. But so graphically true, but not graphic in a like sense.

SPEAKER_03 36:44

She had to tear the bandage off of me. It had grown into my skin, and she did that without any painkillers or anything, and then she left me in a tub where I almost drowned, um, to contain the blood. And I probably could have died. Um That was how I was baptized into the Jewish faith. And she started, she started telling me that I should look at uh other boys' penises at school when we go pee to understand what the Jewish ones were. There's an element of humor to it, but what I thought about in that moment was that Hugh had just died and that this new person was going to be harder and tougher. I didn't really understand what Jewish was or meant, but she had just converted me to something. And I think if folks think about just for a second, imagine tomorrow you start being called a completely different name after having your genitalia um hurt so profoundly. It is a violent baptism. The interesting thing about faith is I mentioned the food one, but some of my foster homes, there were many, they would convert me to their faith, which they're not supposed to do technically. No, but it happens pretty quickly. Yeah. And I always would think um, you know, if they're gonna dunk me or dip me, I could tell how deep and long I was in the water, how problematic this house might become. Yes. Yes. And it became a thing, you know. They they would call me a dirty Jew, and um, you know, anti-Semitism has been like a white noise in my life, just always present softly there. And it wasn't even Jewish. Yeah, it was forced upon you. Yeah, and my name, you know, my name and my background. But like my mom's other lessons, it taught me something because I have profound empathy, what it's like to be considered something and looked down upon and hated for many aspects of my identity. Um, but my mom having me circumcised at that age with no pain medication and no aftercare and renaming me was profoundly violent. It is one of the most important moments of my life, and I it it affects me to this day.

SPEAKER_00 38:48

I want to talk about a more positive moment.

SPEAKER_03 38:50

Wait, just for all the gay men listening, yeah, everything still works.

SPEAKER_00 38:56

David is a faithful, a very eligible bachelor. He is an absolute winner of a human being. Everything works.

SPEAKER_02 39:03

I have a stress induced six pack, and everything is highly functional and delightful. I just want to check the record straight here.

SPEAKER_00 39:11

I'm gonna do the banana of like I have yelled reviews. In in another phase of your life, an example is the Robinson sending you to camp, right? Which is the kindness of other people. I feel like we get these moments in life where when we need it most or when we're about to break, kindness shows up. Do you share that view? And like and what are some of those moments for you?

SPEAKER_03 39:40

I'm gonna ask you the same question in a second. In the memoir, I share the story of these uh deacons of the uh Methodist church where we were going, um, and they agreed to send us to summer camp. And I had never experienced a sustained environment without fear and violence and hunger. And if folks have ever been to summer camp, it's it's sort of magical. And it was so incredible. And I had this glimpse of what it was like to be a kid, uh, what other kids were doing. I think at the time we were living in a closet at the church, uh linen closet that they had converted, and thanked them for that. It was wonderful. And then when we came home, we came home to homelessness. And I remember like they sent us home with one of our art projects, which was this popsicle stick glue amalgamation of some sort, and you know, to show our parents. I'm like, my mom is not gonna want to do this. Right. And I remember getting dropped off, and we were homeless at the time, and I remember thinking to myself, like, I have to carry everything I can with me on my body. That's all I can take with me anywhere. That's that's our home. I can't carry this. And my mom doesn't care. The world doesn't care. I just threw it in the trash. Um but it was the the metaphor I have in my head was it's almost like you're off the side of a uh a boat and you're drowning, and this lifeboat comes along, and the person reaches over and picks you part way out of the water, and you go, and you're like, take a deep breath, and then they drop you uh back in the water. But you're very grateful for that breath. And that's what it was like. My life was a you know, quite often I fell below the surface of the water, but I had a straw. But these Robinsons pulled me out of the water long enough to breathe and realized this wasn't the only way to live. And I could begin to imagine and they fertilize that imagination different ways to live. And by the way, I don't say it in the book, but they in the future, when I went to college, would send me $100 every semester. They found me and sent me a check. These are not wealthy people.

SPEAKER_01 41:52

Right.

SPEAKER_03 41:52

Um, the wife is afflicted with MS, and they struggled. And ever they sent three kids to summer camp. Um, but those occasional angels, those moments where I could get out of the water and breathe, were life-sustaining, especially in my darker moments. Now yours.

SPEAKER_00 42:07

Oh, mine? My dark moment.

SPEAKER_03 42:09

Um occasional angel moment.

SPEAKER_00 42:12

You know, that's kind of what working in television was for me in some very strange ways. The set was both chaotic and um toxic to in some elements, very much like you described your childhood, but at the same time magical in others, and inspired me to be open and progressive and understand other people and consider the world from different perspectives. So that's one. The other one is going on the road and doing press for the show. Because it gave me an insight into other people, because people would come up and start sharing their lives and their world. It's my favorite thing when it comes to audience members. When they come and they tell me their experiences or the impact stuff that we do, or you know, people will listen to this episode. And they will resonate with you. And they will resonate with me, and then people will send me messages. I have chosen to stay open and let those things change me. They are little bits of light that I think are like the re-energizing part of my battery or the part that relights the light for me. I think that's the way I look at it.

SPEAKER_03 43:20

People have shared a lot about their life. After reading my memoir, they reach out to me in a million ways. Um, I'm a very emotional person. I think it's a superpower. And it really affects me. People share some dark stuff with me, but they also share that it motivated them to do something. And that is uh super powerful. And I hope people keep telling me that. And I try to amplify that. We always hear the bad stuff, and so when people share stuff that they're doing or taking action, or when I speak at someplace, like, what did you say, refill your light? Yeah, that does the same for me. I went went to speak in Indianapolis at this conference with uh it was a religious conference, and they hired me as a speaker, and I was like Are you sure? Did you Google me? Right. Um they got the right again. Yeah, they got the right. Turns out. I went there and I called my mom. My mom and I have a weekly phone date. And uh I call my mom. I never miss it unless I'm like unconscious. And I say, hey, I can't talk long. I love you. What's going on? And oh, I'm gonna go speak. I'm gonna stage in like five minutes. And she's like, Well, you're gonna F it up. I was like, that's my mom. I was like, Mom, I've been speaking for quite a while. That sounds eerily familiar for me, but keep going. For many people listening perfect. So I said, Mom, I've done this for a while. And she goes, Well, when you F it up, when the sh shit hits the fan, don't be in front of the fan smiling. And my mom has like these like one-liners like that. So I spoke at the conference and I made a connection there with this amazing reverend who we're still in dialogue. And they are helping advance some of the policies that I talk about in my memoir in Indiana. You gotta keep yourself open. You know, people may seem very different or marry this, that other thing. But if you can share that and they give that back to you, then you can start that conversation to get something done, despite my mom's advice. I didn't, I didn't f it up, mom.

SPEAKER_00 45:11

And I have found some people who start adversarily turn out to end up being good allies, which has kind of shocked me. I've getting I get a lot of hate messages, and somewhere in the conversation, a shift happens, and then people will say, Hey, I'm so sorry I sent that. And then the next thing you know, they share something real. And then they say, Sir, it's something I can do for you. And my stance is always, I don't need you to do anything for me. Be kind to the people around you. And that suddenly opens the door. I'm a big believer in random acts of kindness. So and I've watched them open other people, and then I've watched some of those people even become online friends where like we communicate all the time, and I'm like, this if anybody saw those first three messages, they would think there's no way these people could get along.

SPEAKER_03 46:00

You know how Facebook puts up your like one year ago today, they should just screenshot those and like Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00 46:05

People would be horrified with mine. Talk to me about this concept of home. Because home is a very specific and complex subject that I think lots of people take for granted.

SPEAKER_03 46:17

Aaron Powell So the memoir is called A Place Called Home. Right. And people are like, oh, because he was homeless. Somewhat. But it was more so as my life progressed. What I realized was, I caught I talked earlier about being awake to the world as it is, is that my fundamental mission of my life is to advance the interest of kids in this country and kids and families in poverty, because you can't have healthy, thriving kids if their families are not. That is like my life's mission. I I gave the commencement speech at USC two years ago, and I talked to us about a culture and a society of crooked necks, just all looking down at our phones, numb to the world, mistaking likes for activism. That's our trajectory unless we choose to get off it. We can be a culture vibrating with purpose that cures cancer and has zero kids living homeless, or we can be one that is numb and forgetting to what we did just a minute ago. Unfortunately, I think we're on the wrong track. We don't have to be. And my home is that mission, and it is fierce and bright, and it is an emotional reminder to myself all the time. We have made tremendous progress in the society, and if we don't nourish ourselves with that progress, we will not be ready to do the marathon. That is what we need to do. When I was little, I was in an office. I don't I actually do remember where it was a delinquency facility, and there was a poster of uh Dr. Martin Luther King on the wall, and it said, the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice. And I was in a young adult detention facility at 12. The youngest kid there, aside from me, was 17, and it was violent. And I remember looking at that poster being like, bullshit. Right. And what I realized as my life went on, and I discovered this mission is it's not. But the only reason it bends is because the overlooked, the downtrodden, the homeless, the children are bending it toward justice. And I am blessed with the awakeness, wokeness to realize that I am part of that bending it toward. And that is my home. That is where I find my flow, as it will. And I it's interesting because you mentioned my career at Disney and now I work at Amazon, both in the profession of corporate social responsibility. And it's interesting how my career from being a lawyer pivoted so early in my career to do impact work. Um, and all the skills that they used to judge me on in foster care. You know, they used to call me conniving. Uh they had all these words. Now I'm like, how do you operate in a corporate environment? You have to be flexible, you have to be agile in the way that you approach things, you have to be smart politically. Well, that was grounded in being in homeless shelters where I'm like, who's what's going on here?

SPEAKER_00 48:59

Right.

SPEAKER_03 48:59

Am I safe?

SPEAKER_00 49:00

How do I survive? Yeah, this is a good thing.

SPEAKER_03 49:01

How do I make this work? Yeah, you know, and I have to make it work. Like I live with this person. Work is like an unofficial marriage with some of these people. How do you make it work? So my mission is my home, and I have found a luxury mansion in that work, and I'm really enjoying myself. Don't worry, it has solar.

SPEAKER_00 49:20

It's just so funny because I have struggled with this, and actually, you just kind of changed my world in a very unique way. Because I've always struggled with the concept that other people view of home. I've never really known. The closest I've known in that movie sense that you see all the time was working on set as a kid. So when it ended, that was devastating, right? And what I realized is I've spent a life doing humanitarian and philanthropy work, kind of building home in that same sense, and didn't even really look at it that way. So thank you.

SPEAKER_03 49:56

Yeah. And what's interesting about that perception of home is it then actually influences your actual home, the home that you create, the way you treat other people in it, um, the way you you like use your home as a convening space. Like, I love having my family over my house. I love having my friends over my house, my physical home. I use my home for fundraisers. I have an amazing tomato garden that's thriving. My physical home is a manifestation of how I operate in the world, and it is a reflection of that. It has created shelter for people, it has, you know, everything from my abandoned dog that I adopted to my foster kids to the way that I operate. So it's interesting how they both intersect. But the most important home I have is the work that I do all the time to help kids and families in poverty.

SPEAKER_00 50:42

Okay, I want to talk about the foster care system. I've kind of buried this lead for a while, but this is so important. The foster care system in so many ways is shattered and overwhelmed. And yet has so many beautiful successes and is one of the best parts of our society in some ways, right? And we've both seen the best and worst of it. How do you look at that as a foster parent, as someone who has been the difference maker for people? What are the things you wish people did, and then what do you wish they knew?

SPEAKER_03 51:16

Uh first we start with some names. Okay. John Lennon, Willie Nelson, Ella Fitzgerald, Nancy Reagan. Right. Um Steve Jobs, Murphy, Steve Sherr.

SPEAKER_00 51:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:28

All foster kids. Francis Truffaut. And if we're gonna go fictional, Harry Potter. All foster kids. Sir, our concept needs to be rejiggered because the perception of our society is not of those folks. In fact, direct opposite. We have the best system we've ever had in our country right now today.

SPEAKER_04 51:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:47

Let that sink in. Um in LA County, we went from having roughly 5,000 kids in congregate care. Congregate care is a euphemism for sh orphanages slash prisons. Right. We now have 300. Right. Because of the diligent work of advocates and social workers and people that are underpaid and undervalued. Do you know how many streets we have in LA named after Kobe Bryant? A lot. Yeah. Do you know how many social worker streets in California? Are the streets named after social workers? There might be one. Zero.

SPEAKER_01 52:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:17

The system isn't the problem.

SPEAKER_01 52:18

Right.

SPEAKER_03 52:19

We are the problem. You know, folks read the stories of Mae and Buck in my book and one of the foster families I had, and they're like, how dare they? Blah, blah, blah. They did it for the money. They were abusive. I'm like, you know what? They're better than you. Because at the end of the day, they did something. And the apathy of the public, the idea that I can't do everything, so therefore I can do nothing, is cynical. It is a luxury. And it's a luxury kids in the systems can't afford. And shame on all of us for indulging in that cynicism. It is shameful. We have thousands of kids in America waiting for adoption out of foster care. We have thousands of kids that are too many kids in a house that need other placements. And if you can't foster, that's fine. I'm running a campaign that I started at Disney called Donate Your Small Talk. And the idea is, I was trying to think of something that everyone can give without starting their first sentence with, I can't because. Right. I was like, if I had to get around that, what would I say? Well, everyone talks all the time. And I just thought of like, I was actually getting an elevator and there was a person there, and they're like, oh, what'd you have for lunch or how's your kids? And like, I no one cares. It's verbal diarrhea. So I'm like, what if we use that time to talk about foster care? That's my thing. What's your thing? Animals, the environment. So donate that time. And say, I said to them, Do you know there's um I mentioned the celebrity names, but I also talk about other fun facts. I'm like, do you know there's 700,000 kids that pass through the system every day? Or it doesn't always have to be funny. We can take back this issue and make it universal. These are our collective children. My sister is a social worker and was uh LA County social worker for I think 15 years more. Now she's a school social worker and therapist. And I once asked her, I said, Jessica, what do you do for a living? And my sister's very funny. She goes, paperwork, David. I do paperwork. Right. She is she is she works on computers that talk to other computers because those computers are on Linux from the 90s. We have given these amazing professional women, mostly women, disproportionate women, disproportionate women of color, 19th century tools to do this work, to break the cycles of poverty and violence. My brother went into the army after foster care to survive and he did his service. He gets a GI bill. My sister gets mediocre pay, so that she has to have a second job. And how are her two kids going to go to college? What if we gave social workers interest-free home loans at LA County? What if we guaranteed their own loan, which would drive down the interest rate? Because if they went into default, the county would step in and pay. If the banks knew that, they could drive down the cost. What if we gave foster parents a pension after 10 years of good service? What if their kids, foster kids, foster parents' kids, bio, went to college for free? All of a sudden you begin to incentivize and reward people that are on this front line of poverty that we've abandoned. We can make different choices. The population of foster care has decreased because we've prioritized kinship care, which is putting kids with their families first. Not the ones that hurt them necessarily, but uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins. That has made a big difference. At first, we didn't even pay them a stipend, and we fixed that. Ironically, we did a lot of great work under President Trump's first term. He signed a very important bill which brought kinship care up to par with foster parenting. It's super important. We can do this, we can make different choices, and I want us to because the system isn't some sort of amorphous thing. You, every listener, watcher, we're the system. We're it. And the hundreds of thousands of kids that need us are not waiting for us. They can't, they're living. I think about like uh, you know, court cases are delayed because there's no translator. Right. Why doesn't the system have AI translation? When a foster parent has a kid that's melting down, why do they have to wait hours on a call for a mental health professional? What are we doing? We have technology and resources, we can choose something different, and I want us to. And I believe we're getting there. We can keep moving forward.

SPEAKER_00 56:18

And and I've heard you call this an inflection point. Absolutely. Right? Where we can halt the, I think you said, inheritance of poverty. Yeah. And I think that's a really important way to look at it. Because I think it totally changes both the narrative but also the perspective, as if we have a choice, it's going to happen one way or the other. You're either going to continue that cycle or we're going to choose something better. Oh.

SPEAKER_03 56:42

Indifference is not just a word. It is violent. It has repercussions. Yes. And our public indifference is hurting children. I think about 50% of the homeless, five, zero in America, were in foster care. It is higher correlation than drug addiction, mental health issues, veteran status, some of those combined. We emancipate, what a word, kids at 18 or 21 to the street.

unknown 57:09

Right.

SPEAKER_03 57:09

Is anyone ready to be independent, especially after all the trauma? What if instead we emancipated them to a dorm at a community college? You have two to three years to figure it out, skill or vocational training, transfer, housing, we own the land. These are our children. These are some of the most important institutions we have in our society. 78% of Americans, if they go to college, go to community college. We look down on them, but they truly, what if we built one dorm in each state, in the Capitol, or wherever, and we allowed foster kids to have priority in that dorm? Instead of a pipeline to homelessness, we have a pipeline to a career. We have a pipeline to an education and a future. That is possible. In fact, we're actually doing it in Los Angeles. After 15 years of coalition building, relentless positivity, even when things look dark, advocacy, getting foster kids to tell their stories, building up a philanthropic community that knows about this. We just hosted a summit at LA Community College District, which oversees nine other colleges, where this was what all was about. And we have, as a citizenry in Los Angeles, dedicated hundreds of millions of dollars on homeless college students, community college students, and a portion of that will go to build housing, of which 20% will be set aside for foster kids. One project could end the 700 kids that become homeless every year in LA County out of foster care. Who become pregnant, who go to jail, who perpetuate cycles of poverty and violence, that is their inheritance. One dorm we could change that. If we did that across the country, there are ideas like that. We can absolutely deal with these issues.

SPEAKER_00 58:49

Yeah, I agree. It's this has been an ongoing thing for me. And it's one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on. Is because you have a way of distilling this in a way that people both can understand but relate to. Thank you. And this is an important foundational thing that can make us if you want to make a country amazing or great or phenomenal again, that's where you start, is by not losing a generation of children. And we've lost multiple generations. And we've left them behind and had them inherent poverty.

SPEAKER_03 59:19

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: What do they say the best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago? The next best time is right now. These are our trees. And it doesn't negate all the other problems we have in our society, but I truly believe this is one of those investments that is morally and economically unarguable. And we we can have a different system. And that is without condemning I want people to hear this, current foster families.

unknown 59:40

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 59:40

Or condemning anyone. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Anyone in the system, because at least they're doing something. And I had some real doozies. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:47

Like anybody who's been around the system has horror stories.

SPEAKER_03 59:50

Trevor Burrus But I don't want us to start throwing stones like the villagers in Frankenstein with our pitchforks. We are the monster, not these foster parents. Our apathy is leading to these outcomes. And we we can raise our hand instead of in fist and just kind of raise our hand and say, I'll do that. Mentor, donate, do something. For the love of God, do something. Care. Learn what's going on in your county.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:11

Aaron Ross Powell Well, and you have children who've come out of the system. I have children who've come out of the system. And I think we both our lives are better for it. Aaron Ross Powell Oh, so much richer. Yeah. And I I think people don't fully grasp that part of it. Is I think people see the weight, but you don't have to necessarily step in and adopt one. Or foster. Or foster. Yeah. You can donate. You can mentor. You can respite foster care.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:38

You can take a foster kid for a weekend, so a foster parent has a break. It's called respite foster care. There's yes, I mean, do something. And if you're not sure what to do, there's something called the Internet. Use it. Stop looking at sports scores and the latest tweet from so-and-so and spend 15. I talk about civic illiteracy, but there's another issue we have, which is this profound sense of uh learned helplessness. You know, people get their ballot in LA like two months before and they look at all the judges and all the things. How am I gonna figure it out? I don't know. Look them up, spend some time, schedule civic participation in your calendar. I had the privilege of being the Planning Commission president in LA for five years, overseeing land use, all sorts of things. No one ever showed up. We were making profound decisions on the built environment in Los Angeles: housing, transportation, cannabis, home sharing. Gladflies showed up. But the general public thinks that voting once in a while, if they even do that, is enough. It's not. Showing up matters. And these meetings are online. If you're a listener, do you know what the graduation rate is in your school district for boys of color? You should. If you know the Knicks are kicking butt, which they are, then you should know that graduation rate. My mom, we were one time home, we were sleeping on a subway where we slept, and you could go back and forth, and it was dry. And I woke up and there were all these crazy people painted colors. And I'm like, mom, what is going on? She's like, Oh, it's a Super Bowl. People are going to bars to watch the game. And I'm like, what the hell is a Super Bowl? And she told me, and I said, I don't know all those, probably five. And I'm like, wait, people paint themselves colors for a sports team? She's like, Yeah. I'm like, why? She's like, because they really love the team. I'm like, does the team love them? She's like, well, not really. I mean, the players come and go, and the teams move cities, and they, you know. And I was like, then why do they paint themselves? And it stuck with me all these years. I love sports. It's not crappy on sports. Sports is awesome. But we've displaced the critical needs of our kids in our communities with this distraction, and we need to create room for maybe both. If you know the statistics of these things or your favorite show, you really should know what's going on with kids in your community. And it doesn't take much.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:56

I want to talk about hope. Hope is such a big thing for you, and it is for me too. Talk about the light of hope in your life and the impact it's had.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:05

Y'all may know uh my favorite playwright's a guy named Tony Kushner.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:08

I I pulled a quote from your book in case keep going.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:11

Tony Kushner was my commencement speaker. Uh-huh. And I, the only thought I had in my head when they said that was, where is Oprah? Um, like, who is this guy? Where's Oprah? I mean, my school was expensive. Uh and he gave a one-hour long address in 30 minutes. He spoke so fast and such a staccato, but I followed every every word and it's so profound. He talked about um, this was right after 9-11, I graduated, and he said, What can keep you moving toward a world uh toward toward goodness when the world seems hell-bent on destroying itself? And he answered his question, he said, hope. Hope is a moral obligation, an obligation to the very cells of your body, the same as eating and breathing and sleeping. And for me, hope is what kept me clawing for the surface. I was broken, bused, and almost erased. And it is what keeps me moving forward today. How can you not be hopeful? And that's how I choose to live my life. And it is not an act, it is a discipline. I can look at all the negativity, the deficits, and I'm stressed, y'all. I have I have problems. I'm like everybody else. But I don't live in them, I keep moving forward. And hope is that answer, hope is that elixir, and it can help lubricate life in a beautiful way. Because you can look towards the problem or you can see around it. And sometimes when you look around it, you find the solution through it. Um, it was just not always clear when you're staring straight faced at it.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:40

What was the moment to that where you knew you were gonna make it?

SPEAKER_03 1:04:46

Oh my goodness. Probably a pretty dark moment. Um I tell the story in the book where my mom severely beat me, threw me downstairs, pretty much almost killed me, stomped my head with a clog, and beat the living daylights out of me. And I was sitting there at the bottom of the stairs, coming out of unconsciousness. I had gashes all over my head. I mean, she had kicked the crap out of me, and I'm sure I had internal bleeding. And I was sitting there at the bottom of the stairs, and I'm thinking, I'm going to die. Um, this woman is going to kill me. And I pulled myself up, and I was in boxers and a t-shirt. And uh I pulled myself up and I trudged. I'm not even sure I was wearing shoes. I don't remember. Probably not. And I walked a couple blocks in this town to where I knew there was a courthouse. Because as far as I knew, that's where stuff happened. And I went into the courthouse, I walk in, and there's a there's swinging doors into the courtroom to the left, and I I look, there's up and down, there's hallways these doors, and I'm like, I'm going in that one. And I I walked in, I collapsed, and the judge, traffic court, it was traffic court, the judge started a process with us. Like ultimately, but it was getting up off that floor, which was really the moment when I'm like, I will not be erased, I will not be uh vanquished from this earth, I will not, and that carried me through those similar moments in foster care when things like that happened to me in foster care. Sexual violence, physical violence, psychological violence. I'm like, no, no, no, no. But it was that moment when I realized, like, oh no. Uh my light is not getting blown out here. I'm not going out like this. And I needed that. I needed that throughout my life. Sometimes I need it today. But it was that pinnacle moment for me where I was like, that is my nader and I am going to use it.

unknown 1:06:38

And I did.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:40

I remember rock bottom for me. Um I remember sitting under a bridge in downtown LA and trying to figure out my adjectives for what I wanted people to describe me as. Because I felt invisible and useless and and meaningless. And having had fame, it was an even bigger fall, I think, because it was this really awareness of like no one's coming to save you. And actually at the time, that's what I wanted most. It was I wanted somebody, anybody, to show up with a cape and save me. And I will tell you now, the best thing that ever happened to me is that nobody came to save me. But I started to find the portions of society and the people who would give me a hand up and I started finding ways to save myself. And I think that's part of when we talk about all these programs, it's part of the importance of it, is giving kids signs and signposts and roadmaps and paths back so that they can be whoever they want to be. Absolutely. Given your background with everything you experienced, talk to me about being a dad.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:51

Being a dad is awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:54

Uh I uh had a foster son and he uh came to my life as a um around 13-ish. And he is part of the reason that I rebuilt my life in my late 30s. Up until that point, I had put away all of this. I I was the mental image I had is putting all this stuff on a shelf and I would label it, and I would know where it was because it was a knowledge that I might need, but I didn't have to feel it. And that is a system I used from when I was a child. And I that that was my mental map. And my son came along and he kicked the shelf over because he needed vulnerability in order to process his trauma. And I wasn't it was not on menu for me. My lesson to him unintentionally was sort of intentionally, I should be honest about that, was the world does not care. But what he heard was that I did not care. Um and he was angry. And he expressed that, and it forced me to really come to a reckoning of I've got to deal with this. And he wanted to know information. My ex-husband didn't even know 90% of the stories that are in my memoir. My siblings didn't know much of what had happened to me after we're separated because I didn't talk about it. I didn't cry from 11 until I was 39 years old.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:10

I I had this conversation recently. I had the same thing. I had buried it. Did you bury it? And I didn't cry from about 16, 17 until about 38 when I got divorced. It was the first time my daughter, my 16-year-old, did the same thing for me.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:27

Kids broke me open. Yeah. And they will do that, and they will teach us if you're smart enough to listen. He did, and I did. And it helped me, and I rebuilt myself from that. He was not the only reason, but he was a major reason. Super important, still very much in my life. My two and a half-year-old has given me so much. One thing that comes to mind, maybe not the most important, but it comes to my mind and my heart, it has taught me even more forgiveness toward my mom. Raising a kid that parents are listening, I'm sure, is hard. Yeah, very hard. You're a combination of a punching bag and a screaming bag and a poop bag and just enough time as a hug to keep it going. And I look at my mom and I think to myself, like, you had three kids and you are homeless and sorting through mental health insanity. Like I I I have some wealth and I have a four-bedroom home, and I have a job, and it's so hard. It taught me that. The other thing, I look at my son and I I see in some respects, all we do is midwife who they're going to become. I think so much is innate. You know, my son came out early screaming, and he is so strong, and you know, someone would say stubborn. I say strong. And it has been for the moment he came out as a premium, like determined. I'm like, okay, let's ride this. You know, I want him to play soccer because I love soccer. I love soccer. And I'm like, damn it, he's gonna play basketball. And he just loves basketball. I'm like, it sounds silly, but like I can tell, I just feel it. Oh no, you know. You sort of know, right? And I was like, okay, he's going to make me go to basketball games. I was like, I have to start watching basketball again. And then the other thing, I had this funny realization. This is gonna sound terrible, but I'm gonna say it. I look at him and I'm like, you're straight. And I I think a lot of parents, you know, wonder, he's doing half. And I'm like, how could I know that? I don't know that. But I just think of my kid, I'm like, what did my mom sort through? What do parents have to deal with? And then I think, where is he supposed to go to school? How do I nurture him? He's multiracial. How do I how do I enhance that part of him? What do I need to do to be responsible? I feel like a Google calendar, like my life is about logistics for my children, and that's okay, that's where I'm at right now. Yeah. Um, this weekend was Pride, and I went to uh I had two and a half hours of childcare. I was like, okay, I'm gonna go be gay for a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:51

So I snuck out of the house. I didn't stick out of the house, I gotta sit her and then I went. I went to this like quintessential, stereotypical Hollywood Hills uh speed-oh gay party, and it was a blast.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:03

And I left after 45 minutes because the other thing that my son has taught me is there are chapters in our lives, and it's not crapping on that, but it was fun. I loved it. But I'm good. I'm good. I'm in a place where I need to be, I need to be nurturing this kid, I need to pour myself into this kid, and that's my job right now, and I love my job. That is made my mission bigger.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:24

Yeah, there's this thing where you have all these things you love. Oh yeah. And then you have kids, and then you start trying to do some of those things that you loved before, and you're like, yeah, it's still kind of good, but it doesn't compare, right? And you're like, you're like, nope, this is good. I'm gonna go back home though and I wanna go, right? Like, I want to go spend, I had two hours, I'm gonna use an hour of it, right? Because then I'm gonna drive back home so I can get back to that part.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:50

Do you know what I did when I left that party? I went and bought the book, um, how to how to potty train your kid in three days. And that's what I read. I was like, I'm like, I really need to do this. He's two and a half, he's very precocious, he knows about potty. I'm like, I need to just jump off the cliff. I don't so funny because I think like three years ago I would have gone to brunch, and now, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:11

And if you try to explain it to people who were going to brunch, they'd be like, You haven't bought a potty book? Wait, no, like, I'm like, listen, you don't understand the importance of the freedom and the things that go into this.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:21

Parents listening know diapers are expensive. And dare I say, gross. I have a dog, I have to clean up his shit. I have a child that clean up his shit, and then I have my own shit. I'm like, I've had enough shit in my life. I don't want this much. And so if I could like check one of those boxes off, but uh no mouse series. It's so wonderful, you know? And I see the same thing. My mom poured love into us imperfectly, and I am doing that into him, and I see how it's reflected into the way he operates in the world. Just confident and um a joy. I do have to get his hair cut, so I have to figure that out today. That's always an experience the first time, too. Yeah. I've been helding off.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:58

And it's like, take them someplace where they're like little kids and they're really patient and and do as don't worry about totally what the first one looks like because they won't remember very much. Just like make it a non-painful process.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:11

Uh my foster dad said I should just use clippers at home. And I'm like, that's what that's what bad parents do. I'm kidding. It's what I might do, just for his listening.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:20

Uh because people they like, oh, you put him in a chair, he's gonna sit there for 10 minutes. I'm like, no, he will not.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:25

You also have to know your kid.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:27

I know.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:27

Right? Because I had one uh one got their first haircut standing up. Oh, interesting. And it was kind of on the move, and it was mostly just a buzz to keep everything. Did you do it? No, I did not. But I had somebody do it, but I was like, I know this kid, they're not really good. It's insane. It's $40. Yeah. I'm like For the most basic. Are you giving him a perm? Right. Like, what are you doing? 40 bucks to buzz this kid?

SPEAKER_03 1:14:53

You know what though? Like he woke up this morning again and he has beautiful curls, but it's like a rat nest of knots. And I'm like sitting there, like, I can't send him to school looking like this, and I'm like picking his hair and he's like yelling at me.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:03

He's like, and I'm like And for people who don't know about curly hair, yeah. It's a thing. That's a thing. Brushing it out is a thing, and you can't take days off.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:12

Do you know how this foster family where um the mom would give uh the black kids in the home corn rose, and she taught me how to do it, and she said this thing, because I was she I wasn't doing it right, and she says, if they're not crying, you're not doing it, you're not doing it tight enough.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:28

Listen, that's how that's my teenage years, and I laugh because taking out braids and taking out roses, like that's a whole other experience. No one would expect that I'm really good at that.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:39

You gotta take care of your kids, whatever they are, wherever they're from, whatever you know background they're from, and just embrace it. I didn't know what my kid would come out looking like because he's he's sort of the United Nations. And I look at him and I'm just like, you are the future. I call them future people.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:53

You know, I think in a couple generations we're gonna have just this beautiful uh my kids don't care. My 30-year-old kid doesn't care. I think we're getting there. Gender orientation, uh, race and ethnicity. Yeah, kids, it's fun. It is all-encompassing, engrossing. I used to stay at past 10 o'clock. I don't get past 9 a.m. 9 p.m. most nights. It's like I'm done. I am starting to date again, though, for those listening.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:14

I was just gonna Okay, so let's talk about love for just a second before I let you go. Let's talk about love as two of the most like loving and giving people because we're constantly doing things in the world. It's been a little elusive, maybe because of our priorities are are sometimes other places. Talk about dating, talk about that part of it and your vision of love. I w I'm curious.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:35

The latter first, the image I always have in my head is um when my partner emerges and I'm reaching out toward them, they'll already be halfway toward me. Because they will understand and know before I even have that full thought. Call me a Charlotte. Uh, but I am. And for dating, you have to be able to picture the person on a motorcycle, everyone. So it doesn't mean they have to ride one, but that'd be cool too. It's very interesting. I call myself the king of three dates.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:01

I think we move too quickly in the first date, like, oh, that wasn't a match. We just, we just uh we're a swipe culture, and I truly believe you don't really know. First and second date are mostly performative. So you gotta slow down and give it, give it a I give it three dates if the person wants to dance as well. And then you then I have what I I like to have, I don't like to have, I've committed to have tough conversations. I don't text, I call, and I say blah blah blah. So and I not just in dating, in life, I don't white lie, I also don't explain. So when I'm not gonna show up at your house, I just say, I'm not coming. I don't need to make up a reason. Dating, three dates. The fourth date, I introduce him to my son.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:41

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:42

Because I don't have time. So if you're gonna date me, it's gonna be hanging out at my house, it's gonna be going for walks, it's gonna be going to a playground. Like, this is just who I am right now. And I need you to be cool with that. I need to know early, and you need to know early. So I have a lot of fourth dates and then not a lot of fifths.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:00

For me, people always send their representatives on dates as opposed to their reality. And so like that's my line is like everybody sends their representative, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:18:07

Please don't I tell people early on. Who's your representative? I So I don't send one, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:15

I'm like, I'm gonna be very open with you, I'm gonna be very honest, but I'm gonna expect some transparency back. Yeah, but that's the problem. Because if somebody googles me, I'm sure you know, people's perception versus or or their assumptions about you get in the way, right? And then if you bring any if you bring a representative as opposed to you, it's gonna really not work well.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:39

I'm absolutely gonna steal that and not attribute it to you. Uh it's genius.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:43

Yeah, I so I'm like, just be open and honest, but also I know who I am.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:48

I'm not for everybody. And at this stage of my life, you I need somebody who wants to go spend time with the kids and wants to go watch their events. And like when you're young, you want exciting. When you get to a certain point in your life where you really know who you are, you want to be able to spend an average day together and enjoy that.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:06

Oh my God. A relationship is one long conversation. One long conversation. Because that's most of what you're going to do in that partnership is talk. And the question I ask myself is like, do I want to be in dialogue with this person for decades? Right. And you do or you don't. You know, the sex will wax and wane. I'm a very aggressive dater. I go on a lot of dates. I'm really open to it. I I make a point of it. My porn is real estate. So I look at Trulia and Redfin and Zillow. And so now what I have to do is I have to equate my time two to one on dating versus real estate. I make myself do that. You can do the phone tracking. And so I do that because I'm like, if I don't hold myself accountable, like I am fascinated by this.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:45

So two to one dating.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:48

Dating, too. That's healthy. Okay. I don't have money to buy anything right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:52

Are you the person who just wants to, even though you're not moving, are you the person who wants to like go look at open houses?

SPEAKER_03 1:19:58

I I do look at only my neighborhood. Okay. Because I'm so curious. Uh, you know, you see these people coming out of their house, you're like, what is this den of iniquity in there? I want to see. Um and it's lived up sometimes. Tell you the story after about the dungeon.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:13

But uh Okay, yeah, I didn't know.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:15

Never stops given. Yeah. Um but yeah, I go on, I go on a lot of dates. I got a call from a match professional matchmaker, and I was like, I can't afford you. Right. And she's like, Well, she's from Texas, she's really lovely. And she's like, Oh, I represent wealthy people, and if I only had wealthy people in my database, you know, they'd never find a partner. I think she called me almost wealthy. I love that phrase.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:34

Okay. Um it's like I'm so if you're almost wealthy, I'm adjacent. Wealthy adjacent. That's where I was gonna go. A wealthy adjacent or adjacent to the adjacent.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:45

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Indeed. So she interviews me, does this whole intake process, and she's been, she sets me up in these calls with her clients. So yeah, I'm I'm as much as I can, I fit it in. And you have to prioritize that. It's like anything else in life. What you focus on gets done or not. When I mentor foster kids, I have them track what they do every 15 minutes for a couple days. And then what I do is I take that data and I put it into charts and graphs. And what I show them is we may we waste most of our days. And waste is not bad. I watch HGTV. I'm watching hacks, I can't get enough. It is so good. Waste is not bad. I watch soccer, it is not bad. The bad comes from the lack of agency. We sort of sleepwalk into it, and that's what I show them. Like, you can choose to allocate your time. And you have to make those decisions because your life will become the product of those decisions. The inattention to that allocation leads to a life that you may or may not be satisfied with, or may not be your full potential. Maybe don't want that. Make the decision either way. Don't sleepwalk into the decision. So, like, I would love the idea of being in a partnership. I have a funny dating story if we have time.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:47

So I go I go on a I go on a uh friendship date. Okay, too.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:52

Wait, wait. Okay, I need to decide.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:54

I clearly don't date enough. So what is a friendship date? So I'm a single gay dad, and I'm looking for other gay parents to get to know because it's it could be isolating. And I want to, you know, play dates. I want my kid to see healthy, happy, you know, kids as well. So I go on this friendship date, friend of a friend. It's like, oh, this couple, they're great, this is a kid's same age. I'm like, okay, amazing.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:12

Okay, so there's no intention of it becoming a romantic thing, or it's just for just for a friend.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:16

Just for friends. Just okay. Great guys. They have they have several kids. So I go on the I go on the friendship date. It's my words, not theirs. That's what I call them. Right. And we we sit down, and a few minutes in, I'm like, oh my God, they think this is a date. Not a hookup. See? This is this is what I'm asking. So I was like, oh God, what do I think about that? What do I do? Do I leave? Do I say something? And you know, all this is real time in my head. And I'm like, uh, why don't I just go with the moment and see what happens? So I'm like, okay, don't foreclose this opportunity. Just I've never thought about thruples or or multiples. Not sure still not sure where I sit on that for myself. But I'm like, okay. And then they start to argue. At first, it's that restaurant, we've all seen it. Whisper, and then it becomes full voice, and then it becomes volume. Oh no. And I'm a divorced man of a certain age. I've had a few boyfriends in my life, and I come from the childhood that I came from. I don't need to be around any of that crap. I I'm like, I am not your relationship lifeboat. I stood up, I put my hand on the table, and I'm like, I'm going to leave now. And I just walked out of it.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:26

And the bad part is we're in the same social circle. I see them all the time. And it's like this. They don't even look at me. They're just like I'm invisible.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:33

And I'm like, but what? Okay. You know. What's the thing about what you did that's really offensive?

SPEAKER_03 1:23:38

I think I shown a mirror up, and that can be really hard to see. And I get in trouble for that. That's cool. But yeah, dating in LA, you know, uh, what do they say about LA? The five hottest people in your high school move to LA every year. And people in LA are what's the other trope? We're all eights looking for 11s.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:57

Um, all this stuff. You got Michael the laugh. I mean, there's some truth to all this. There's some truth. I mean, LA is a magnet for different things for different reasons. We can all acknowledge that. It's a beautiful place.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:06

Aaron Powell Okay. I'm curious on this topic. So what's something that society thinks is normal that you think is strange?

SPEAKER_03 1:24:13

I think judging. Like everyone walks around with such judgment. As a gay person who like went through decades of judgment, I think I I really do my first stop on my train journey when I look at couples or people or have conversations is not judgment. Like it seems so normal to be like, they shouldn't have had a kid or she's settled or all the things that go through our mind. That's just not my first instinct. And it doesn't mean I'm perfect. I certainly have thoughts at times. But like I I go to kids' playgrounds and people are so judgy, just so judging.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:45

The playground is such a fascinating place. Like I as a parent. Oh, that's the wrong word. I would say like a deathmatch. Oh, look, he's fascinating to me because I it's like a psychology event going on all the time. And I'm watching people just do crazy things and like take themselves far too seriously, and then like doing it. Speaking Spanish? Just enough to get me in trouble, just enough to know how bad that's going over there.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:05

So I was in a mommy me class uh with my son when he was really young, and I was on uh paternity leave, and it was there, it was a lot of uh Hispanic and Latina nannies and me. And I was the only parent at this music class, and everyone was speaking Spanish, including the instructor, who then translated. I'm like and I speak Spanish. I lived in Spain for a while, I speak deep pretty good Spanish. And I didn't say anything, and so the women in the circle started talking about me. Which is the best ever. It's the best ever. They were loving and lovely. But uh yeah, it was a place of judgment, but it's totally fine. They were lovely. But I think the judgment thing is something that I don't I don't normalize in my own behavior. I try not to normalize. I endeavor. Not perfect.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:48

If we're there's no judgment and you could have any question answered, what would the question be?

SPEAKER_03 1:25:53

To whom?

SPEAKER_00 1:25:54

I don't know, to anybody. If there's no judgment, what do you wish you always knew the answer to?

SPEAKER_03 1:26:01

You know, I this sorry, but this is where my mind goes when you ask that, which is I really would love to have a conversation with my mother. Oh I just think about it all the time. Like I I I take care of her, I help um, I'm I've been her guardian, and uh I sit across from this woman, I interact with her, she takes up a huge part of my every part of my waking moments. And I I would just love to talk to her as a um I know what the right word is, normal is pejorative, but just like as a sane woman to be like, tell me about you.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:30

Like as an outsider.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:31

No, or like as you. I just want to like no, I yeah, as myself to be like, hey, tell me about your childhood, tell me about your first husband. What did you want to be? Did you want to be a nurse? Because uh, you know, at times like you see these glimpses of who she might have been. Right. And who she is too. And I would just love, like people say, Oh, who in history do you want to have dinner with? I'm like, mom. You know, just normal mom, just for like, give me, give me an hour. Like, can I have an can I have 15 minutes? We just could rush through it after. Yeah, where it's not delusions and fear and pain and trauma and her own suffering. Like mental illness in our society, if I if I wasn't so focused on poverty and kids would be my my thing. The way we treat people that are sick and their families who have no support.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:18

No, and they have none. And they you deal with this. They're dealing with so much of that it that you never see. Yeah. And the impacts of it on their health and their mental health.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:31

Yeah. It still complicates my life. But uh yeah, I would that's who I would want to talk to in history. After that, um, my son's middle name is Hillary. Um after Secretary Clinton, and I'm sure she listens, I would still love to have dinner with Secretary Clinton or go to a Broadway show, honestly. Um, and dinner. Uh, that would be uh amazing.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:52

Who was the lighthouse for you on your journey?

SPEAKER_03 1:27:56

Several, all women. Well, that's not true. A couple men, mostly women. My mom. Um who else? Holly. I had an incredible foster mom, one amongst many, and she was really incredible.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:11

Uh I I can I point this out in this that I want people to hear. Yeah. One of many. So if you're a good one, or if you're a person who's in inquiring about this process, you can literally be the difference for somebody. You can be their one.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:29

Yeah. So like give it a shot if you if you're Holly deserves a damn medal, and I hope everyone listening follows that advice. Um my sister.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:40

Um Jessica is remarkable. Um you know, my brother, who is probably the most honorable person I've ever ever interacted with. Sometimes tirelessly so, um, very moral. I operate in gray. Um my Spanish host mom, Gabriella.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:58

You know, when I moved to Spain, I was just a bucket of like hurt. And Gabriella in Spain, I moved to Spain when I was 17, really inherited a bit of a mess. And through her just nature got me further along that pathway. And there have been other individuals, but those are sort of the iconic. My foster dad, Steve, with Holly's, Holly's husband. So funny, because only later do I realize what a great person he was. You know, one time I he was teaching me to drive on his, if people know Datson before Nissan was Nissan, he had a non-power steering Datsun truck with one of those cabin beds. Not the easiest thing to learn to drive on. Especially not stick shift. And he would always have a cigarette in his mouth and it would bob up and down when he talked. And he would put it out through the rusted out hole where you could see the road in the floor of the car. And he would just drop it down. And so he's teaching me to drive, and I'm backing out of their driveway, and I run over the mailbox. And uh I hide, immediately I hide underneath the steering wheel because I'm like, he's gonna beat the crap out of me. Like, this is my mentality. And he comes over, he knocks on the window, the cigarettes in his mouth, and he's like, uh, are you okay? I'm like, yeah. I look at him, I'm like, you know, is he gonna punch me? Is he a contest? Is this tricky? Where it's I'm gonna get hit. Like, where's it coming from? And he goes, It's all right. I I effing hated that mailbox anyway. Fantastic. But in that lesson, he taught me something about masculinity and fatherhood, and uh he knew exactly what was going on. He was pissed. I'm sure he was pissed.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:34

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:34

I damaged the car, which is the only way he was he was a he was a handyman, he was a contractor. And I ran over a mailbox. Like he was pissed. I would be pissed.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:43

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:43

And he knew that I was such a hurt animal that if he came at it aggressively, he would do damage. Right. So he did the he made a joke. And his cigarette flapped in his mouth and he's like, I fucking hated that mailbox. I was like, oh, me too? I don't know what to do. It's like, okay, back it up, let's keep going. I was like, okay. Yeah, and he's a good one. And he taught me a lesson. He said he upstate New Hampshire, his love language was silence, but he was uh so present. He would go to work at 4 30 in the morning to be home when his two daughters and me got home from school. Didn't talk about it, just arranged his work schedule so he could be home every single day when we got home from school. And getting up at 4 30 in the morning means you go to bed at 8 means you're missing most of life. Amazing man. So he was another one that I would lump in there.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:31

Okay, how do you define success?

SPEAKER_03 1:31:34

Uh the same way I think about pain, which is everyone's Mount Everest is proportionate to themselves. And sometimes we're like, oh, your life was so hard or you're so successful. Everything is proportionate. You know, these external uh validators of like wealth or products or things that you acquire, that's sort of our default, which is understandable. It's in our head, it's sort of easy to see. I'm often in conversations where people don't know my background. For me, my life is a success. Even if I didn't have all the stuff that I have, my life is a success. I was supposed to be a statistic, and I'm not. That is proportionate to me. And so when people think about their own success or how they look at other people, it it's almost incalculable. For me, it's whatever you you can or want to achieve. Have you achieved that? And if not, why not? Um maybe it's just being, you know, a homemaker, maybe it's being uh a f a parent, maybe it's maybe it's being uh a bon vivant in their RV. Fantastic. Live your life. But to reduce it down, success to me is being awake, awake to the world, awake to your place in the world, and doing something with it. I would like to include as a caveat that you do something to help other people or the planet, or both. That to me is a measure of success. But I I think the comparison amongst each other is sort of what we fetishize to our own detriment. We sort of like scroll, like, oh I don't have that, or they're on this vacation, or you know, they're pretty. And we just feel so bad about ourselves. But the comparison is the cancer. The success is what you're able to achieve and what you put yourself and you put the time in and the work in to achieve that is success. And it could be, in the eyes of others, not important. Cool, very cool. Like, I'm not sure, I'm not sure people think um everything I do is a success. That's totally fine. I don't care. Uh I really don't care. You know, I'm uh what I call a sourdough homosexual. I often at home baking bread. Uh I was offered a ticket to go see Ariana Grande at Intuit. Alum is like, oh my god, the parking. Uh I was like, I'm not doing $75 Uber. And it was a boxy. And by the way, if someone wants to offer that to me again, just need more notice, didn't have childcare, needed to be in the mental space. I love you, Ariana. Um but I was like, I stayed at home. You just said thank you next. Thank you. Did I God? Did I really? I didn't mean that, but it's genius. Okay. Um Good sight.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:03

What did rock bottom teach you that success couldn't?

SPEAKER_03 1:34:07

I've never hit rock bottom.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:08

Ooh, good.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:09

I've never hit rock bottom. You know, I I have struggled mightily.

unknown 1:34:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:14

But I have never hit rock bottom. My perception of that is some sort of slippery slope down to uh um some sort of basement. Like I always think of when I entered foster care, the image I later had in my head is hell has a basement, and it's it was my experience in foster care. I have never hit rock bottom, and I don't plan to. And it doesn't mean people that do are bad people, they're not, is what you do then with it. But I have not failed in my life. What happened to me, what people did to me, which caused circumstances, was not me hitting rock bottom. That was people acting upon me. I have never done anything but move forward and up in my life. Um, it doesn't negate people's experience. It's beautiful when you hit that. I have several friends, for example, who are sober. And what they have done with their lives since that sobriety has changed the face of the world. Um, that was their rock bottom. But in my life, I don't feel things that were done to me or circumstances I was thrust in. But since I've had agency over my life, I've never hit rock bottom and I don't plan to.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:15

I think it's beautiful. Is there a part in life that you once thought made you unlovable that really just was being human?

SPEAKER_03 1:35:24

Aaron Ross Powell, I remember when I went into delinquency, which is uh I call it kitty jail. I don't know if you guys follow the LA County they've they've they're working on it, but there's been some issues at the county probation facilities. They call them camps.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:37

That's horrible. I it's some of our wording for some of these things is like anticipate camps. Like we gotta rejigger our language. It was designed for you to be for you not to get concerned or to be outraged by what's really happening. That's why language is so tricky.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:51

It's very 1984.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:53

I went into the lingua uh the facility and uh uh I was placed there. So kids that were there were too violent to be in normal foster care. I was placed there at 11 because I was gay. And the other next oldest kids were 16 or 17. I didn't check their IDs. I was immediately um uh sexually assaulted, beat up, terrorized, like the same day. And I remember like I was in the shower and cleaning myself up, and I'm like, I like looked up and I raised my fist to God and I was like, are you freaking kidding me? Like, on top of everything in my life, I'm gay. Now I'm like, thank you. No offense to straight people, but we have a great life. It's really fun, it's interesting, we're we're creating a new culture. I am so grateful for being a member of this community. And the other thing, but I didn't want to be that in that time. I'm very glad I am, and and that my prayers were not answered. I have a funny thing about a prayer. Do you remember the lottery was like a couple billion dollars a couple weeks or months ago?

SPEAKER_01 1:36:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:53

So I was in the shower, a lot of thinking happens in the shower, and I was like, okay, got it, let me win and I'll give half of it to charity. And then I was like, you know, finishing. And I was like, okay, 80%. And then I was like, okay, 90%. Final offer. So I went back to pavilions with my lottery ticket. Not thinking about anything a couple weeks later, and I won. Oh. $40. Okay. And the thing that taught me, maybe that was my rock bottom. I was like, next time be more specific. Because technically God did fulfill my hearing.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:26

Good people always ask for the bare minimum or not specific.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:29

Brother, I still gave 90% to LA City College Foundation. I have a uh foster kid scholarship there. Please give to LA City College Foundation. And I I gave, I gave it to $36 or whatever. I gave it to LA City College Foundation.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:44

Put the receipt on my laptop because I know uh, you know, she and the universe can see it all. And I was like, oh um fulfilled my promise. But anyway, uh so far afield from your question, but funny story nonetheless. It's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:57

Um, and actually to that point, because this is something that I ask people, which is what are the three words that describe you?

SPEAKER_03 1:38:04

Oh my goodness. Three words. Tall dark and handsome. No, um listen. Good sales pitch. Uh I would say relentless, um, compassionate.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:19

Um loving.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:21

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:22

I think that's a perfect way to describe it. The fourth would be super handsome, y'all. Just I'm on hinge. Share with your friends.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:29

Okay, what's the legacy you want the world to take from you?

SPEAKER_03 1:38:32

Oh my gosh. I want us, and I focus on America, but globally, but my work is here. I want us to not have 10 million kids in poverty when I croak. You know, it's been that way basically since RFK the original ran for president and he did his tour through Appalachia Lake. We still have that ratio. I want it to be zero. I was thinking about this the other day. The number one cause of death in LA County, in California, too, for children is guns. The second is drowning. Yeah. Drowning in a coastal city, in a coastal state. That is preventable. These things, we are, we shouldn't have these things. Every kid graduating from school, and we should fund it, should have swim lessons. Kids are literally dying by the dozens, and we do nothing. I want there not to be these kids that are experiencing poverty in our country. It doesn't mean they need to be, you know, billionaires, although that would be great. But they shouldn't have the level of deprivation. I want that to be a legacy, I leave, that I have chipped away at that, if not turned that damn ship around. And it sharing our stories is one of the ways to do it, one of the ways uh we move past the labels and actually relate to each other. You know, I have been to red states to advocate for policies multiple times. We just came back from DC where I met with the assistant secretary who's over who oversees foster care in America from Idaho, great guy. His name is Alex. I don't have to agree with him on everything. Uh in fact, I don't. But what I agree about is his vision for foster kids in this country. And I went there to work with him on it. I want my legacy to be I left the world better than I found it for these kids and families experiencing poverty. And it's and I'm doing it.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:07

Yeah, you can't do it. You've been a lighthouse for many, and you continue to be and I want to highlight that one point that you just made, too. On top of helping these kids out of poverty, is understanding that I don't have to have complete agreement with somebody to have mutually beneficial agreement on something that's important. Absolutely. That can improve this country, this nation, and bring people together. That is the secret of us being successful.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:34

Well said, sir. We don't have to agree on everything. And uh we're not going to. And that's the purchase. That's gorgeous. Let's have a beer and argue. But like we don't have to agree on everything. Like um Yeah, I'm on the board of Covenant House, if you're familiar.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:48

I've done their sleep outs for if people don't know what sleep out. Okay, so Covenant House is one of the most beautiful charities for people who don't know. They're all over. I mean, literally, I think they're all over internationally, primarily targeting young kind of homelessness and the unhoused number of people who get discarded largely as as like young adults. And they create a safe environment, they provide them all kinds of training, jobs, and skills training, and they're amazing. And then every year we do a sleep out, which is you sleep literally in a parking lot. Usually most people use cardboard. I usually tend to just suck it up because it reminds me of my own personal experience. That experience for me is always a reset. So if you've never looked them up, Covenant House is a great organization that I would encourage people to look up.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:40

Helping people is addictive. It's beautiful. Lovely, it's fun. Once a quarter, I go to a home with shelter, and we do a deep clean with my friends. We play Kylie Minogue. It's usually themed around at Diva. Uh the last one was Kylie, and we spent the entire day cleaning their commercial kitchen that they use to feed the people in their shelter. And I I don't always need to work directly with people. I tend not to. I tend to work on policy. But this is a way of service, and we have a great day. Like it's really fun with my friends. So do something. Wake up and do something is kind of the fun thing. And there's the the issues and opportunities. If you care about animals, if you care about whatever, I hope you care about kids, but you don't need to. I think I would say uh cut your safe words purple, but we have these amazing institutions called public schools.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:25

And we're shutting some down because of lack of enrollment. What if we thought about them differently? What if they became daycare centers for poor people? What if they became community clinics?

SPEAKER_00 1:42:34

Community centers, community outreach spaces.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:38

Uh what if every kid in public school, every school had a clinic where the parents could get vaccines or basic care? We could use these public facilities to reimagine how we provide aid and assistance to our society and lift people up. And by the way, long term it's economically more viable and better. So I've gone all day, sir.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:57

Well, I look at public schools that we're selling off. We'll never be able to get that land again, right? But they come with a kitchen.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:04

So we could feed people, we could be doing some kind of health care, but also we could be doing triage care for families that are in need. Instead of running to the urgent care for cuts, bruises, burns, things like that. Come to your local community and learn how to take care of those things your own, get some first aid training. There's so many life skills that would improve our society. These could be outreach centers, and we're gonna need those spaces. Or weekend playgrounds instead of getting fence off.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:33

I know LUSD, for example, they're working a lot of this. They've made tremendous progress and they're working on some of the stuff. We I support them, and um they're working, for example, on teacher housing. They're working to figure out the legal issues with opening playgrounds up for the community after hours because there's a lot of liability. But those are solvable problems. Solvable. Almost everything we deal with is a solvable problem. It is the lack of a spinal fortitude to move forward toward that solution that is the problem. It is the apathy and the cynicism, which is a cancer, but we could decide tomorrow to not have that cancer and say, I'm gonna get involved. I'm gonna do X or Y.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:08

And you don't have to do it every day. No, it doesn't have to take over your It is largely become your life.

unknown 1:44:14

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:16

But that doesn't mean that for everyone it has to be that. No. It can be an hour a week, it can be one big project every couple of weeks, or your mission for a month, or every six months you build up to something. However, you want to do it, but we need everyone to get involved. If we want a better society, we can't wait for some far off government somewhere to decide or do it, or for some benefactor to come make it happen. It is impressed upon all of us. We're all part of the situation. We have to be part of the solution.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:48

We all can be a lighthouse in the dark.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:51

Well done. David, thanks for coming.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:54

Pleasure.