#1724 - Growing Up Without One Of Your Parents…

Absent parents leave an indelible mark on the psyche of those they leave behind. This subject is laden with emotional complexity and deep-rooted consequences that ripple through every aspect of life. In this episode, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros discuss growing up without a father figure, pursuing male approval, and how these experiences shape their lives as adults.

Link mentioned:
2024 Annual Next Level Hope Foundation Father’s Day Event!
https://www.gofundme.com/f/2024-annual-next-level-hope-foundation-fathers-day-even

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Show notes:
(2:51) Growing up with scarcity
(6:04) The importance of inner work
(8:31) Transforming past trauma to triumph
(15:31) Significance and healing
(18:50) Meet like-minded people and jumpstart your journey to achieving your dreams while optimizing your life. Join Next Level Group Coaching. https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/monthly-meetups/
(20:09) Finding meaning in pain and self-belief
(23:53) Be better and do better
(27:54) Keep doing the work
(29:43) The concept of anti-f

🎙️ Hosted by Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

Next Level University is a top-ranked daily podcast for dream chasers and self-improvement lovers. With over 2,100 episodes, we help you level up in life, love, health, and wealth one day at a time. Subscribe for real, honest, no-fluff growth every single day.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Next Level Nation. Welcome back to another episode of Next Level University, where we help you level up your life, your love, your health and your wealth. We hope you enjoyed yesterday's episode, episode number 1723, an Important Thing to Understand About Time Today. For episode number 1724, didn't title it because Alan and I are just freestyling it, but we're gonna. I'll title it and you'll see a title. It's probably gonna be something along the lines of I don't know what it was like growing up without a dad.

Speaker 1 0:36

My intention for this episode is not to make it sad and tearful and any of that, but we were talking about why we have the Next Level Hope Foundation and the inspiration behind that, and I was listening to a song recently and you and I have been discussing this a lot. We've been discussing the internal stuff. The internal stuff, the business and the sales, like that's a part of it. But there's a lot of internal stuff underneath that affects the way all of that happens and the way you feel about yourself and your traumas and your triggers and all that stuff your deepest exiles. So it's a song, by Token, and it's called Pink and one of the lyrics in the song is I remember when you told me I never grew up with a dad that was a man.

Speaker 1 1:17

That's why I'm so quick to idolize the men. I see and you and I were talking about this recently how sometimes it's hard to stick up, hold the energetic ground when you and I are talking with men. And when I heard that in that song, I was like, ah, that resonates with me a ton. I think I I don't know, I don't know if idolize is the right word, but I definitely look up to men more than I should. For sure that don't necessarily deserve it Way less than ever before, because I never recognized it. But when I heard that lyric it was like that makes a lot of sense to me, that when you don't, when you grow up with the scarcity of something, you look at it different. I mean, think of it like this okay, you grow up without money yeah, you assume that money is money is going to fix all your problems?

Speaker 1 2:18

yeah, and that's because it would fix a lot of them. It would fix a lot of them, but it, but it's all of them.

Speaker 2 2:22

It will not fix all it's it.

Growing up with scarcity

Speaker 1 2:23

But it won't fix all of them. It will not fix all of them, it's. If I had that, my life wouldn't look the way it looks Fair Fair In many regards it wouldn't. I think for me and I'll speak for myself and shout out to anybody out there who grew up without one both, whatever your situation was of your parents, I think that's it for me is well, if I can get close to this man, that'll prove whatever that I was worthy, that I am capable. I can't even imagine having a close relationship with like a father figure. You and I have a really good relationship, but we're the same age. You're not a father figure.

Speaker 1 3:03

I mean, you've taught me many things in many ways, but that's always yeah, that's always been really weird to me and I think one of my deepest fears is disappointing men more than anything. I think that we were talking recently, maybe on here too, about how that's a huge fear for me. My deepest fear, my deepest exile, is disappointing others. I think it's disappointing men more than anything else, honestly, because I think that's who I seek approval from in a different way. And when I go on podcasts and there's women hosts, it's always phenomenal, it's amazing. But sometimes when I go on and there's men hosts. It can be this dance for me, and then sometimes there's a hangover after an emotional hangover.

Speaker 1 3:51

So, yeah, yeah, it's a, it's an interesting. It's an. It's an interesting, interesting thing to to kind of sift through. So I thought again in the, in the nature, in the uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Again in the nature, in the, what's the word I'm looking for, I don't know, in the direction of just talking about what we're experiencing and what is on our minds. I thought I said to Alan you want to do an episode on something like this? I know it's deep. But he said, yeah, let's do it.

Speaker 2 4:16

There we are. I have no idea where I want to go with it though Same Same?

Speaker 1 4:25

I don't think it's. I think it's really hard to. It's really easy to forget how many of your behaviors today and how many of your connections and the way you approach things are based on things that you just Not even you don't remember. You couldn't remember it because it wasn't one thing, it was a series of things that happened from one thing, and it's just. I think this is why awareness, I think this is why therapy, but this is why the inner work is so important.

Speaker 1 4:56

I said this to you today. I said, yeah, I saw someone I know is having a kid soon and I said I feel I'm scared. I'm scared for the kid, not because this person's a bad person, I don't mean it in that way. They just haven't done the work. They just haven't done the work and they don't understand why certain pieces of them are the way they are, because from their childhood, something happened and they never had the opportunity, had the courage, felt the responsibility to look in the mirror. But that, now more than ever, it's like.

The importance of inner work

Speaker 1 5:28

All I am is a series. I'm a representation of all the things I've experienced, I've been through, I've seen, I've heard, I've felt the very high highs, the very low, lows, all the in-betweens, and then it's okay. What stuff stuck long enough, the positive and the negative. And then it's okay. What stuff stuck long enough, the positive and the negative, and that's really my current thought process. Is the self-worth for sure, right, feeling abandoned as a child? That can't be good for your self-worth, so that's always something that's been on my radar. I think the reason I doubt myself so much is that, if you could go back to being a child and thinking okay, my dad left because of me Again, not logical, obviously, I was a baby, right, I didn't know better, but that Now I'm just starting to connect dots, and I think if this episode can help someone else connect a dot, then it's worth doing. These are the hard ones for me, understandably. So Talk about success or Well. The situations are also drastically different. Right, you and I have similar situations, but very different.

Speaker 2 6:37

One thing that did come up for me and I want to provide context. Sometimes it's challenging on these microphones because we have listeners that have known us for years and then we have listeners that are new simultaneously. But we have to cater to the new because we can't presuppose anyone's life circles around our story, because it doesn't. So I'll catch everyone up for context, because what I'm going to say isn't valuable without it. Quite frankly, for the first, okay, so the shortest possible version of this is after 26, I got in my own car accident. My father passed away in a car accident when he was 28. When I was 26, I got in my own car accident and I questioned everything. I was physically okay, but I had to question everything, and that's when I got into self-improvement rather than just achievement. Again, this is the shortest possible version. And I remember I called my ex-girlfriend, who I was with for four and a half years, tail end of high school, early college, and I said what did you notice about me? That was a blind spot. What did you notice about me? Was there anything that jumps off the page? And she said you never, ever, ever, ever, ever talked about your dad. That's one thing. I was with you for four and a half years and back when you're younger. Four and a half years is a long time because relative to how old you are, that's a quarter of your life. So when I was in my early twenties, you know she was there with my 21st birthday, that kind of thing. And by there I mean she saw me the next day massively hungover, next day massively hungover, but she said you never, ever talked about your dad. And so the interesting thing now is I talk about my father. My real last name is McCorkle.

Transforming past trauma to triumph

Speaker 2 8:13

I took my stepfather's name around seven, lazarus and then my stepfather left at 14, took his entire extended family with him. We didn't really talk to the McCorkles during that time my timer's going off. We didn't really talk to the McCorkles during that three to 14 age because we were trying to be the Lazaruses. And then he took all his extended family with him and I haven't seen a single one of them since, including him. And then my mom and her aunt got in a fight. Her sister, my aunt, her sister, my aunt Sandy and I got ostracized. We got ostracized kind of from her side of the family, not kind of definitely. And I've only since seen one of them, and that was seven years later, eight years later actually. And then at that same time my sister moved out, so the McCorkles I don't see the Lazaruses left the Higgins family, my mom's side, gone, and so by the time I'm 14, I it's just me and my mom in that big house, low-income, man-of-the-house type of thing, and I unpacked all that in my 30s with my therapist.

Speaker 2 9:23

And what is the takeaway from that? Holy crap? Talk about abandonment issues. I mean, emilia and I have studied attachment styles a lot now mostly her, but we do relationship talks, coaching, and I study all these things now to try to coach effectively. And attachment styles there's avoidant and there's anxious and then there's secure, and in the developmental years children need a secure attachment style. They need someone who they're certain will be there. Now I've since analyzed Kevin's life upside down and sideways. I've analyzed mine. This is a public medium so I'm not going to air any of his stuff out, but at the end of the day, I think your MIMO was your secure attachment style, I think my sister was mine and I think that we both have a common wound of abandonment, but the way we reacted to that was very different.

Speaker 2 10:26

Definitely of abandonment, but the way we reacted to that was very different. I aimed higher, work harder, get smarter, believe in myself more, maybe even to a extent. That's insane, but it's still significance based because we felt insignificant from the abandonment. How insignificant that I feel at 14 years old. I mean, I lost my entire stepdad's side of the family, my entire McCorkle side. I haven't seen at all. And that's a big family. John, jim, joe, jane, joan, jeanette, my brother, my father had five siblings. It's a big Irish Catholic family.

Speaker 2 10:56

I don't identify with Irish Catholic. I'm not. I don't identify with any religion. I don't belong in any one of the categories. I never really have.

Speaker 2 11:05

You and I are at school. Everyone else has dads. We don't know what it's like. No one wants to talk about it because my dad died. So it gets weird whenever you talk about it. Not to mention, I'm avoiding it anyway because I don't want to talk about it, because it makes me sad, even in this moment moment.

Speaker 2 11:22

And so where do you belong? And so what do you do? What do you do when you, when you feel hopeless and helpless and lost and abandoned and insignificant, and so the only thing I ever knew to do was to just try to achieve more, because it seemed to me like if you achieve more, you have more significance, and that's true. So that worked real well for a while, until I realized that achievements were empty without love. And so now that's obvious. But back then, you figure, when you're a young man particularly I'll just speak for us, because we were born in the US but, like young men, the guys who got the girls back when we were young, when I was 14, and all that happened, all that happened, the guys who got the girls back then were the athletes and the ones that were big and strong and competent and capable Reckless, Reckless usually Very reckless, yeah, and so what do we do?

Speaker 2 12:33

You know, you find a way to be significant. And then, after the car accident, I I was achievement oriented and improvement oriented and significance oriented, but it wasn't self-improvement, it wasn't holistic, it wasn't personal development, it was, it was career and professional development. And so then I flipped the script and turned it all the way to self-improvement. And then I went broke with kev and we went from really successful and significant to completely insignificant again but fulfilled as hell, really seriously super fulfilled, going. How do we play this game? Because we're gonna if we don't become more successful, we can't keep doing this right. And then. So we started coaching for free, and then we did 50 bucks a week and then we did 75, and you know, then we started 50 bucks a week and then we did 75. And then we started company Next level podcast solutions, next level social media, business coaching. I went from fitness coaching to mindset coaching, to peak performance coaching, to life coaching, to business consulting, to all these different things.

Speaker 1 13:37

Whatever you need.

Speaker 2 13:39

Figuring out who we are. The one thing that never changed is coaching, but now it's business coaching, and so, yeah, it's been a hell of a journey, but it's very clear that we dealt with our pain differently.

Speaker 1 13:51

I remember I told you this behind the scenes. I remember one of the things I would do when I was.

Speaker 1 13:59

I don't know. I think the first time I started, I think the first time I drank was like 16, I think when I was like 16, 17, 18, 19, I used to get drunk if I was in a group of people and I would run away Because I always wanted someone to chase me. That was always a thing. That's how I got significance. If I run away and you care enough about me, you'll follow me and make sure I'm okay.

Speaker 2 14:23

That was always a thing.

Speaker 1 14:24

For me that was a, that was a significance based thing, and I never knew that at the time I was angry and I remember I used to punch cd cases because they that they make my knuckles bleed more than anything. I just used to hammer them and I bleed all over the place and it was like this is cool. I don't know why I thought that was cool, but I was just very, I was very inwardly angry. I don't think I was. I don't know if anybody would have thought I was an angry kid, because I wasn't. I didn't act out in school, I didn't really. I don't know if I had a temper. I didn't get into fights, I wasn't rebellious. I, I wasn't rebellious. I was very quiet. For the most part, right, but this is my, this is my ultimate thought for this episode.

Significance and healing

Speaker 1 15:08

I wonder how many things that we, the collective, us collective humans, think to ourselves ah, that probably doesn't matter that much, or that probably didn't affect me that much, or that probably didn't matter that much, or that wasn't really that big of a deal, or I don't really have to take that super seriously. I wonder how many of our big I don't want to say hang-ups big things, I'll put it that way. How many of our big things that we're dealing with today are the stuff that we said, eh, it's probably not that big of a deal, because I never thought this was that big of a deal. You just get, I got used to it, I got used to it, I'm okay, I'm 10. Well, I haven't known I've never, I don't know my dad. So I'm okay, this is my life.

Speaker 1 15:54

Okay, I'm 12. I'm 15. I'm 18. I, a young man. Now I have jobs and I have partners and now I have my own place. Oh, cool, interesting. Okay, now I have my own place and someone lives with me. Okay, now I have my own place and I'm married and I have a little family. But I can understand how you wake up and you're 45 years old and you have no idea what's under the surface. Yeah, that has got you. It makes total's under the surface. Yeah, that has gotten you. It makes total sense. Of course, of course, of course. I never. I wouldn't know any of this if I wasn't in, if I didn't have a podcast about self-improvement. No way, no way.

Speaker 1 16:35

And the best thing ever for me and I'll tell this story quickly, because I've told it before, but I had the opportunity to meet my dad when I was 27. And I didn't want to do it. It was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. When I read the message, I threw my phone on the floor and I fell on the floor and I said there's no way in hell I'm doing this, not a chance. One of the reasons was because I had said so many terrible things about him, because I never thought I was going to meet him. That was one thing. I said so many negative things about this person and the other thing was I was so afraid For that experience. I didn't know what to expect. There's not a lot of who do you talk to about that? There's people, I'm sure, but I didn't want to do that. I did not want to do that at all, and that was one of the best things ever, not because we formed a tight relationship. I told I don't know if I said this on the podcast or not, but this is who I am, so I will.

Speaker 1 17:30

The first time I met my dad in person I'm getting ready to leave and I was. I think I was 27. I was 27. And he's like hey, you smoke weed by any chance I said I love it, huge fan. And he gave me a bushel of weed to take home. I have not seen this man. This is the first time with the understanding that this is my father that I'm seeing him, and he gave me a bushel of weed to take home. This is my life, but it was one of the best things ever to meet him because it gave me context of the person that has so much control that you've given so much control to doesn't deserve it number one and is not capable enough of handling. That's what I, when I left. I left lunch that day it was like, ah, okay, okay, okay. What does this all mean? Makes a lot of sense? Does this all mean makes a lot of sense?

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Speaker 1 18:26

everything's starting to make a lot of sense and just by seeing him, something unlocked and something got, got reconnected and it gave me a new perspective and I think it's just the same. We did an episode recently like sometimes the monster in the closet isn't a monster, or something like that. It was kind of the same thing where I don't have love for this person. I don't love this person. I've never said I love you to my dad ever. I never will. I don't talk to my dad anymore, I won't say never, but I can't foresee it happening.

Speaker 1 18:56

But leaving that day it was like, oh, I have made you into this monster that you could never possibly be. It's just the fact that I had to find a way to cope with why you weren't around. So I'll just make you as terrible as I can. And I want to be empathetic and I want to be understanding. And look, you have your own stuff and I am more of a man than you are. I'm a much more well-developed man than you are and I will reap the benefits of that and you will most likely, unfortunately, go back to a life that you don't enjoy.

Finding meaning in pain and self-belief

Speaker 1 19:31

But I at least got to experience what it was like and what the lessons were for me, and hopefully he got to experience what the lessons were for him too. That's all I can hope for, but that was one of the best things I've ever done, ever of all time. I'm not telling you if you had an absentee parent that you should go see him. I'm not saying that, but I do think, especially if there was, like you know, abuses or whatever it is. I didn't experience that. I experienced absenteeism. That was one of the best things ever of all time for me and I can't suggest that enough. If it feels, if you feel pulled to it and you know it would be the right thing, but you're scared, that might be a sign, is all I'll say.

Speaker 2 20:16

I did reach out to my stepfather.

Speaker 2 20:22

We have been in contact via Facebook Messenger, but I've never seen him since 14. And he, I just needed to face whatever it was and I asked to get lunch and he hasn't come back to me and that's okay. I'm not just saying that's okay because it's not okay. I, as long as I did the, it couldn't be. I'm avoiding this. Yes, I didn't want it to be. I'm avoiding it because I'm too scared and so I had the courage. It took me a long time and that's what I did. I just let's go see. I wanted to have that similar experience to what you had with your dad. I don't think it'll ever fully go away. I don't think it'll ever fully be okay, but I would say I'm grateful for what I did with it and for everyone out there listening. It's hard for me to share things when I'm emotional, but it drove me.

Speaker 1 21:37

Same.

Speaker 2 21:38

It drove me, it always will and it always has, and I don't know if there's another way to make a. I know I playfully say like life sucks. It drove me, it always will and it always has, and I don't know if there's another way to make a. I know I playfully say like life sucks. I actually think that for a lot of people that's true and I think that despite that, you can make a meaningful life and I'll never not think that. I think that this whole you know things are going to work out and life's really good and and you know, we all can achieve our dreams and all's really good and and you know we, we all, can achieve our dreams and all that stuff. I don't, I don't know if that's true. It's not. I think it's inaccurate.

Speaker 2 22:13

I think life it sucks less than it used to in history. I think, statistically speaking, most of us have a higher quality of life than most people did in the past. But if you study history, it was really brutal. It was really brutal, it was really rough, and that doesn't mean it's not good too. There was lots of wonderful things mixed in with all the bad.

Speaker 2 22:26

I understand that, but I think if you're too far on, the life is great, you're delusional. And I think if you're too far on, all of life is terrible. You're delusional. It's not true? Wonderful things happen every single day and bad things happen every single day, and the only thing that I've ever learned how to do there's certain things where I can intellectualize all day. I can teach you physics. None of that's going to matter in this. What matters in this is listen. Are you in pain, you hurting, you feeling it? What are you going to do about it? You're going to let it drive you to be better and to do better, or you're going to let it beat you and that there's no other option.

Speaker 1 23:11

Well, and be better and do better means something different to everyone. Maybe it's having the courage to go to a therapist, maybe it's you know, it's something different for everyone, I think. But I agree, I agree, I don't know. I don't know why you and I have been talking about this for seven years. I don't know why some pain makes people and some pain breaks people. I don't know that. I do not know if I'll ever have a relevant answer for but I do agree. I think it's a piece of it. I think.

Be better and do better

Speaker 2 23:42

It's self-belief and I don't mean to interrupt you, kev, I just if you don't believe in yourself, you're not going to invest in yourself. People don't. You don't invest in companies you don't think are going to grow. You don't invest in houses you don't think are going to be worth more. You don't invest in a car that you don't value. It's self-worth and self-belief. We found the answer. We know the answer. It just seems too simple. If you have low self-belief and low self-worth, you'll take every escape. And I had low self-worth, but I had enough self-belief to invest in my own future. When things got really hard and really painful, I still had self-belief. I still believed in that bigger, better, brighter future. But I didn't necessarily understand self-worth whatsoever. So that's only a later thing. But if you're out there and you're in pain and you're struggle, bussing, I don't know. That's the one thing I'll never lose. I'll never lose.

Speaker 2 24:42

I joked with Kev. I said you didn't have a silver spoon, yours was rusty. You had a rusty spoon. I heard this on a book once is hilarious. He's like you know those people that start start off life on third base. I couldn't even see the baseball field I. There's something about that that I have a lot of reverence for. I don't think you can, I don't think you can teach that. I'll never not have that. I'll never not have that I'm. I'm grateful of what I I'm not grateful I got abandoned. I'm not grateful I lost three families by the time I'm 14. I'm not grateful for a lot of the stuff, no, but I am grateful for what I did with it.

Speaker 1 25:18

Yeah, yeah, it's so hard. It's such a hard thing to experience and like one of the things I try to do and, again, don't take this as a lesson for that deep, deep, real stuff. But I try to think to myself when this is over, it's not going to, it'll be easier when it's over. I try to do that often Now, again, that kind of directly contradicts what I said about things sticking around for a long period of time, but when I'm suffering, I try to think to myself like yeah, it's only today, like tomorrow's a different day, tomorrow's a new day, and it works in minutes and moments. Obviously, it's not going to work with stuff that we talked about today, but that's helped me a lot when I just think I went to a party on Saturday and I tore it up and I very rarely, you know I'll have a whiskey every once in a while, but I do not very often get drunk what I would consider drunk and I was not feeling it Sunday.

Speaker 1 26:22

I was not feeling good, but I was like Kev, you're going to be fine in 12 hours. You're going gonna be fine in 12 hours. You're gonna be fine. Just understand that you did this and this is your own freaking fault, so just deal with it and just understand that. The the I guess connecting to yesterday's episode. Time's gonna help this now.

Speaker 1 26:42

It's not gonna help everything, so please do not connect everything not if you do it again as soon as the hangover's gone.

Speaker 2 26:48

Well, no, that's fair. That's fair, and trust me I won't Last thing before we go.

Keep doing the work

Speaker 1 26:54

If you are a good person and you're trying to do good in the world, whatever that means to you, and you're working on yourself and you're working on your self-belief and you're working on your self-worth, and you want to help other people and you want to lift other people up and you value other people and you're a kind soul and you have a big heart, keep doing the work. Keep doing the work. It's going to suck, probably. Yes, there's going to be times where it's brutal, but that's kind of par for the course. You don't get to decide what happens to you. You can't decide what you do with it and unfortunately sometimes that's getting through it, getting over it, getting around it, getting out from underneath of it is harder than it happening in the first place, Unfortunately no-transcript stuff.

Speaker 2 28:15

Anti-fragile is the idea that the more you try to tear something down, the more you try to attack something, the stronger it gets. And I've tried really hard in my life before I even learned that book or that concept. I tried really hard to no matter how much I was torn down, no matter how much I was abandoned, no matter how much I was hurt, no matter how many people attacked me, I've tried really hard to get stronger and smarter and become better through all of it. And it doesn't mean I'm perfect, it doesn't mean I didn't make so many mistakes, it's not even funny, but I would say that I always found a way to get stronger, smarter and be better, and with obvious ups and downs, but the trend line is up. And I think that if you can say that All of you out there listening or watching to this, watching to this, watching this, if people are trying to tear you down, if you're being disrespected and treated poorly, there's a lot of injustice in the world I think that you can use that. You can use that as fire.

The concept of anti-fragility

Speaker 2 29:26

I'm uh, I'm a Scorpio and a lot of people think and believe in all that. I don't know, I haven't studied that enough, but I do know that I I have a fire. They say, well, you're a fire sign, so you're very intense. I don't know. I'm not going to go down the Scorpio rabbit hole, but what I will say is say is, I've got a fire and that fire never goes out. I mean, if anything, I dial it down. Very rarely do I show the whole amount of fire. It's burning and it's burning bright and it, believe it or not, being torn down actually puts more logs on it and it helps me try to create a company and and a community with you, kev. That actually is the the opposite of bullies, the opposite of not taking responsibility, the opposite of unjust and mistreating of people. So it would. It's not a coincidence kevin and I are. We created a holistic, self-improvement company of heart-driven individuals with candor about the realities of the world. That's because that's what we needed. That's exactly what we needed and we.

Speaker 1 30:44

Same town, same middle school, same elementary school, same middle school, same elementary school, same middle school, same high school. Alan and I played spin the bottle with Alan and the popular girls in like fourth grade or whatever sixth grade. So we've known each other for a minute and it hasn't always been this, trust me. I wanted to put them down a couple times a couple times for sure next level nation.

Speaker 1 31:08

If you are interested in supporting the Next Level Hope Foundation, our wonderful charity for children of single parents, it started out for fathers without dads, as you can tell from Boys without Sorry boys without fathers, fathers without dads, those boys Fathers without grandfathers, those, boys could be fathers sans dads in the future.

Speaker 1 31:32

Potentially We'll see what happens, but it's obviously a cause that's near and dear to our heart because we want to help everybody level up and it was a challenging weekend, challenging day for Alan and I. We used to go fishing together on Father's Day.

Speaker 1 31:48

We'd go fishing on the big pond, small lake that Alan grew up on. So it is the 15th, it is June 15th, it's the day before Father's Day and if you are interested in donating, alan and I are matching $600. We already put in our $600. We'll have the GoFundMe link in the show notes. We're going to get food, we're going to get snacks, we're going to get all sorts of stuff. We ordered shirts today, we have Beanie Babies, we're renting out the YMCA, arts and Crafts, pizza, all that happy jazz. So if you want to take part in that and support us, we would very much appreciate it. We'll have the link in the show notes.

Speaker 2 32:22

This is a duality, because I believe so much in choice and freedom and just I want you to do what's aligned for you, but I encourage everyone to please not put anonymous. It means a lot to us when a community member contributes and I really love to know who's contributing, because I think it's really awesome, I think it's a great thing, and so please put your name and we know that's not why you're doing it. Yeah, we know, that's not why you're doing it Exactly.

Speaker 1 32:48

So don't feel like that's it.

Speaker 2 32:50

But I think it's meaningful to see your contributions and I just love to see them. So thank you so much in advance. And yeah, it's really making a difference. It's good and we hope to be there for these kids in a way that we didn't have. Father's Day always sucked. I always hated Father's Day. I didn't. It wasn't my, I wasn't a fan.

Speaker 1 33:13

Never, Even when my stepdad was around.

Speaker 2 33:14

I wasn't a fan. I don't think he ever wanted kids to be honest, and so yeah, now it's become awesome.

Speaker 1 33:21

I never even knew when it was.

Speaker 2 33:23

Same man, Everyone knew.

Speaker 1 33:24

When it was was if it wasn't for Next Level Hope Foundation.

Speaker 2 33:28

I still kind of don't. It comes up quick. It comes up quick.

Speaker 1 33:32

I got to come up with a new outro because we're not plugging the next episode, so I don't know what it is. I'll come up with that. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you, and at