In our human experience, we get to uncover universal truths about resilience, self-compassion, and the enduring quest for meaning in life.
Whether it’s childhood trauma, PTSD, alcoholic addiction, or going on a seeking path wondering why you feel so different in this world, seeking somatic awakening and connecting with your inner self can help you find liberation.
I’m excited to host Brad Wetzle who emphasizes finding beauty and joy in internal healing.
In this episode, we explore:
-Brad's journey back to his body after being overmedicated and struggling with CPTSD
-His book "Into the Soul of the World" as a memoir about his journey
-Complexities of addiction and the impact of medications on an individual
-Use of somatic practices for overcoming trauma and PTSD
-Reconnecting with oneself and finding a path toward source, spirit, and God
And much more!
Brad Wetzler is an author, journalist, and teacher. He began his writing and publishing career serving as an editor at Outside magazine, where he worked with some of America’s finest nonfiction writers.
He later turned in his editor’s pen for a writer and traveled the world writing about adventure and exploration, business, politics, the environment, sports, and wellness.
In midlife, after recovering from a long, debilitating depression, he became a certified yoga teacher and began exploring and writing about our inner landscape: psychology, spirituality, meditation, and yoga. He coaches writers to tell the story of their lives in a memoir.
Website: bradwetzler.com
Instagram: @bradwetzler
Twitter: @bradwetzler
LISTEN WHILE READING!
A: Every day there is a forgetting and every moment there is the possibility of remembering. Remembering who you truly are, awakening to your body, to the inner world and experience of being alive. Here is where you find the beauty, the joy. Here is where you free your Soma.
A: Hello everyone, welcome to Free Your Soma, Stories of Stomatic Awakening and How to Live from the Inside Out. Today I have Brad Wetzler with me. He is the author of Into the Soul of the World, an amazing book that came out just earlier this year. I had the honor to read it. He's also a journalist. He's a memoir writing coach, which I hope to talk a little bit about that work today, as well as a yoga teacher.
His book speaks to anyone who has suffered or suffers from PTSD, children of alcoholics, and those on a seeking path who are wondering why they feel so different in this world. He is here today to share about the journey back to his body after years of being overmedicated and having to relearn feeling and eventually really connecting and finding a path towards source, spirit, God, something bigger than himself that could hold him in all of this struggle that he went through. So I'm so excited for this conversation, Brad. Thank you for being here with me today.
B: It's so good to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
A: Yeah, so for those who haven't read the book yet, we're going to talk about it, but we're not going to spoil anything in terms of, yeah, they got to read it to go through the journey with you because that's what I got to experience. I think it was such a powerful journey from, you know, the way that you wrote about it in this perspective of now, like you wrote about it, looking back on it with all of the knowledge that you have now. And so we got to learn what you had learned about your experiences as you were kind of going through them.
So it's this beautiful combination of being kind of immersed in the story of the past, but with this awareness of what that actually was that you were experiencing. So for the people who are interested in this book, maybe you can kind of just set the scene for us. Where does this book start?
B: Yeah, the book starts when I was about 30 years old and working as an editor for a magazine called Outside Magazine. And I was working with a particular writer who was on Mount Everest. And so it begins with this passion I was having for becoming an adventure writer myself. And so as I was editing him, I realized this is what I wanted to do. This is what I wanted to pour myself into. And so the first part of the book kind of chronicles my journey to become an adventure writer. Yeah.
And sort of until I'm living this life, writing for many major magazines, The New York Times and GQ and places like that. So that's the beginning. That's sort of the setup for what would become a fall.
A: Yes. And I loved how you kind of weaved into that experience of that kind of time in your life where there was a lot of, I guess the word that I'm thinking of at this moment is striving. There was a lot of striving. And there were these ways that as the writer or the narrator in the book, you're kind of weaving in like the sources of that striving, where it came from in you, where it came from in your childhood.
Right. And that I think was like a theme that kind of kept getting touched back on was this yearning, this striving, this intense feeling that you had that at some times you were really trying to get away from in yourself. You're really trying to cover up that deep striving and that need that you felt.
B: Yeah, definitely. You know, I think part of that is such a masculine way of being in the world and feeling like we have to, you know, we men, especially men who grow up without good fathering, we have to prove ourselves. So part of it was sort of social conditioning.
I think that striving really nailed that word. And part of it was running away from myself for sure. I was very in my head at the time, intellectualized a lot, was disconnected from my body and was, you know, unknowingly suffering from PTSD. And so I was in a state of total running away and running, you know, toward things too, though. It was this bizarre kind of the way we run away and run toward at the same time. And now I understand a lot better, you know, the ideas of dissociation and all that kind of, you know, diagnoses. But at the time I wanted to become somebody.
I wanted to become famous. And it was just a setup, you know, it's sort of, it is sort of the classic toxic masculinity story of buying into what we were supposed to be doing as men. And I was struggling deeply, though, at the time with things I didn't understand, you know, these depressive episodes that wouldn't go away with, you know, this intense emotionality and flashbacks, emotional flashbacks.
And I was slowly, at that time, got, you know, misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and began a long journey of medications that weren't helping and were only blocking out my sense of feeling. Every year I added another couple of medications until eventually I was on 12 or 13 different medications, 23 or four pills a day.
I stuck down my throat and tell I went into, you know, at the height of my career, went into a state of collapse and hibernation and could barely get out of bed.
A: Wow. Yes. And that misdiagnosis, you know, obviously did damage in the sense that you were being given medication that doesn't have anything to do with actually healing trauma, right? But just to control certain symptoms. But beyond that, I think that what I got in the book was that that label also had some damage for you because it played into this idea that there's something innately wrong with you.
B: And that. Yeah, because having suffered from, you know, childhood, you know, neglect and abuse in the form of being a scapegoat in a family that, you know, couldn't handle me, but also was in denial about what was going on. And I was sort of the truth teller. It got me pushed out of my family. So I was living, you know, outside my body, outside my family, feeling like an outsider, even though I'm a white man.
And so feeling, you know, literally like I didn't belong in the world or in my own body. And so, yeah, the medications just continued. It just felt like I had gauze around my heart. And then at some point or my whole body just filled with gauze, you know, like medical gauze. And some point I lost my train. I thought there.
A: Yeah, it's okay. At some point, you know, you had this feeling of being kind of sealed in and trapped and separate from others, right? And at some point there may have been this real need in you to be connected again. Yes.
B: You know, the final medications, I ended up on antipsychotic medications, even though I was only suffering from depression and emotional flashbacks. And, and that put me in even a deeper coma, which then they medicated with stimulants. So I would get out of bed and I was literally a walking zombie.
I mean, you know, able to walk around and look, people thought I was probably, I don't know what people thought actually, but I was literally a zombie. And then, you know, a friend of mine, a good friend of mine, that I was a bit of a mentor to a younger man died by suicide. And as I was, it was an overdose.
And he also had been misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder, I believe he was on as many medications as I was. And I remember getting that call from his mother and going over to his house where he was still lying on the floor. And I remember sitting with his body and just having this deep feeling that I was looking at my future self unless I made some changes. And something woke up in me that day that, you know, allowed me to move forward and realize that I needed to get off of these medications. And I also knew it wasn't going to be easy. You know, it wasn't going to be something I could just do that day.
A: Yeah, I think that when you saw him and obviously you knew him very well, very intimately, you saw yourself in him. You probably saw yourselves in each other. And if I remember in the book, there was this profound kind of connection of seeing that this person suffers the same way I do, right?
And to see kind of like the end game of like, where does this path actually lead? You know, what's the result of this for this person who was so much like me? I can only imagine how impactful that was on, you know, your reflection of yourself at that time. And, you know, what you just said that I think is really wonderful and I want to talk about this a bit more is that you knew that you needed to get off the medication, but you didn't rush into that because you knew that this had for a long time had actually been a source of, in a weird kind of twisted way, a source of stability for you, an anchoring, yet you had these pills that could help you cope. And to just take completely take that away from yourself in a short amount of time would have been traumatic. And I think that, you know, your body intelligence was telling you this is going to be a slow process, right?
B: Definitely, you know, and I think I realized on some, you know, deep unconscious level. Yeah, like you're saying, how hard it was going to be, how, but how necessary it was. And I wanted to add one other point to that state of being I was in, which might be important for your listeners is that, you know, that bipolar diagnosis was very common in the early nineties for trauma and for PTSD. And it was also at that time, more so than now even, I mean, the pill was the answer.
So I was sort of in a perfect storm as I moved through that period of time, because there was just faith as in those pills, as if it was just the savior of everything. And then one other point about that is that that diagnosis. Let me off the hook and it let my family off the hook, you know, in a way that that was very debilitating in a way, what didn't see at the time. There was no path to healing apart from pills when you get that diagnosis. You know, it was a lifetime sentence to medications. And so unhooking from that whole mindset was a big part of the journey of healing too. So yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, let's forget what your question was.
A: Though we're kind of doing it. We're going into it, which is what I wanted. I wanted us to explore this, right? Because I think that when you have a history of trauma and you, you know, have, say, a scary experience, like, you know, someone close to you dying from suicide, or maybe you have a health scare, people have all these kinds of things that happen that are setting and scary. And it can be part of our trauma pattern to flee in the other direction, you know, and to do something really dramatic, you know, like I've known people who were over medicated and then decided to like quit cold turkey and went through, you know, intense, awful, terrible, like withdrawal, their life fell apart for a period of time because they couldn't even work in the state of withdrawal that they were in.
You know what I mean? Like, and then they end up back on some level of the medication to balance out. Like that is a common story of somebody who just basically says, like, hey, I'm not doing this anymore.
And they run dramatically in the other direction. That in and of itself, I think is a trauma response versus how I think that your body, your system sort of naturally approached this with more caution, which I think is, I think is a healthier way to approach it. You know? Yeah.
B: You know, and there were periods though, even going off them slowly, in which I did with a different psychiatrist, I ended up moving and finding a psychiatrist who said, you know, wow, let's get you off all this and find out who you are before we even decide whether you need to be on anything.
And that was a gift to have him. But I went through periods of even, even going, even tapering off the anti-psychotics. There was a period where, you know, even going from a half a milligram to zero would send me into crawling insects all over my legs. And I continue to see advertisements for some of these drugs. I'll just say one of them, Abilify, which is I saw an advertisement or a YouTube video the other day with a doctor who was trying to dispel rumors that it was addictive. She's basically saying it's not addictive. And it took me a long time to get even down to a half a milligram. And it was very hard to get off that Abilify.
A: Wow. Yeah. I mean, I think these medications, you know, depending on how you're measuring addiction, because I think there's a bunch of different ways to measure what is addictive, you know, we can make claims that marijuana is not addictive, but there are people out there that feel that they are addicted to marijuana, you know, because it helps them dissociate or helps them detach from their body or whatever it is that their relationship to it.
You know, says there's other people out there who say there's no such thing as food addiction, but there are people out there who feel they are absolutely addicted to hyper palatable foods and, you know, that they, that that's how they cope, you know, and in many ways, like addictions are a way to cope with an experience that we're having internally that we don't know what to do with. And so we turn towards something that's going to help us feel better.
I mean, that's one way that I see it. Can you talk a little bit about your relationship to maybe the concept of addiction or did you see yourself as an addict with all of this? Or was that something that you weren't really clear on?
B: In retrospect, I definitely identified as an addict. I think at the time I didn't. And that was, I could have used some of the tools of addiction that I wasn't, you know, using, even though my father had been an alcoholic, it didn't occur to me that I was using psych drugs as my way to numb out. You know, I didn't want to drink. I didn't drink. And I didn't, didn't want to do street drugs. I was trying to have a professional life. And so I found, you know, a doctor in a white coat with kind of longish hair, looked a little bit like Jesus, who, you know, he invited me in to his office.
I paid him and he gave me the drugs. And so, you know, and one more point about that, I do think in our culture that we just have a hard time sitting with difficult feelings. There was, you know, there was definitely I have PTSD and I have some very intense embodied feelings of wanting to run. But I also know that sometimes I got scared, you know, that I was starting to have a reaction going off the meds. And it was, you know, I needed to learn to sit with myself a lot more. And I think that's something in our culture that does lead to a lot of addiction, just not being taught to sit with these difficult feelings and being able to tolerate them.
A: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, some of that is a, we don't learn that in our home or family life. If we grew up in a family culture that it sounds like, you know, from what I remember in your book is very just ignore that. Let's just sweep that under the rug. Let's not deal with that. Let's just move on.
Right. There's subcultures of families where that's kind of the way that it's done. And that often goes alongside, you know, if there's a family member who is an alcoholic, especially one of the parents is an alcoholic, you know, that's, I think, a very common thing because that's what an alcoholic ultimately wants is for everyone to just let them continue to go on as they are without an interruption to what they're doing. You know, they want to continue things as they've been and however they behaved last night. Let's just forget about that and move on knowing that it's probably going to happen again.
Right. So we don't get, you know, for families that are growing up either with that kind of direct relationship with an alcoholic where there's no demonstration of how do I actually sit with my uncomfortable feelings. You had a double whammy of that and combined with a family that just didn't want to deal with even your feelings. When you would bring your feelings to your family to talk about it, they didn't want to participate with that. Yeah.
B: And to this day is still like that. It's really denial. It was denial was one of the, you know, it's a word that gets thrown around a lot. But to really grok and understand denial, it is a very bizarre part of the human consciousness or unconsciousness to, you know, sit at the dinner table as I did with my father, you know, slurring his speech and basically, and then drinking himself into a coma later that night, just sit at the dinner table and ask for a conversation and point to the situation and have everybody look at me like I'm utterly crazy.
And to this day, you know, my siblings, when I brought it up and I'm currently, you know, estranged from my family and it's very sad. But to this day, you know, I don't understand why they had a different experience. And I'm, I feel very embodied about my memory and I know it's true. And yet, you know, and there's a certain amount of denial that I was going through in my healing journey to accept this about my family, you know, to accept that I was in denial about my family's denial. And that was a heavy one to see.
And so there's a lot of freedom that came when I saw that they had stuffed things away, that they probably don't even have access to and they never will. Yeah.
A: And that is a really hard one because, you know, as you said earlier, you were kind of like the the truth teller. You were the one speaking out saying, Hey, like, this isn't okay. This doesn't feel good, you know, and to be met with, well, you're crazy or you're the crazy one.
I feel like that's a kind of microcosm of what a lot of people experience in the world when we start to wake up to, you know, the dysfunction all around us, you know, and the way that even our systems of government are run and all these, you know, things that people wake up to and they go, wow, this is not okay. And then they get told that there's something wrong with them. They get told that they're too sensitive or whatever it is that, you know, gets turned around to say that it's not us, it's you. Yeah.
B: Well, it's very, you bring up a great point of how we're seeing a lot of this denial in our society right now and just how, you know, just how destructive blind loyalty can be because there's a certain amount of that in a family dynamic like that when the person of authority is in denial or they're manipulating the truth and whether, whether purposefully or not either fall in line and live in the lie or you take the red pill, I guess, and you suffer the consequences which are beautiful and hard and not an easy past. Yeah.
A: Yeah. And I mean, I felt like throughout the book, you really demonstrated the struggle, like the ongoing struggle that that was for you internally, because it was the source in many ways of your sense of feeling disconnected was the sticks, disconnection that you had within your family. And you didn't really, you know, want to abandon them entirely.
You wanted to keep, you know, holding out that they would show up for you or that they would, you know, be different. And there was a sort of finding of your own strength that had to occur before you could actually let go of this need for their validation for this need of their approval, all of that.
B: Yeah, that's a great point. I had some ego strengthening I had to do. You know, I kind of had it quashed with the lies and the disinformation and the self doubt because you turned against yourself, you know, you want attachment to your family.
And but if the cost is living in a lie, you're in utter conflict with yourself and you carry that forward into life as an adult. And I was going to make one other point about that. Would you just say again, I just.
A: Oh, it was about the the the wanting your family's approval and not getting that, but having to find some strength inside yourself, which I think you used a really great, you know, phrase for that a moment ago, just about building up your ego again, so that you had something to lean on that wasn't someone outside of use approval.
B: Yeah, the other point I wanted to make, but, you know, I teach and coach memoir writers in a big part of this work or it can be is helping people to honor their own stories and to see that they, you know, when they write and when they live their story, they do not their story does not need to match up with other people's and that that was a big moment of healing for me to, you know, in the writing of the book to know that my story was true, was as honest as I could make it.
And to know that my family would see it as a further evidence of my dysfunction and craziness. It's another major kind of landmark or road sign and healing is to see and to accept, you know, that our stories don't need to match up and it still makes yours true. So yeah. Yeah, that's beautiful.
A: I love that in it. It's a embracing of your subjective experience, full embracing of your subjective experience and validating the perceptions, you know, the reality that you've lived. I mean, because everyone's going to have a different perspective and there's no such thing as, you know, trying to be objective like it's some kind of achievement to be totally objective.
We're just going to end up like neutralizing everything that we say. And that's not honest. That's not real. That's not how we actually feel.
It doesn't represent our lives to do that. So it's I think it's tremendous that you have really embraced your truth and allowed that to come forth. It sounds like something you're helping other people do through the memoir, writing coaching. And I would actually love to talk about that a little bit because I have thought about writing a memoir.
I'm sure there's people who are listening, who have thought about doing that at different times. And, you know, something that would come up for me when I would think about it and actually also came up while I was reading your book and another mutual friend of ours, memoir that came out last year too, is like, what a trip to go through your life and have to kind of re-experience some of these intense or painful or tender moments again, and bring it forward in an evocative way that is drawing the reader into your experience. To me, it feels like it would be so healing and also kind of scary and uncomfortable. Can you speak a little bit about the somatic process of writing your memoir?
B: Yeah, during especially writing the more difficult passages where I was having emotional flashbacks, I did have I did crawl back into that space. And it was terrifying and it was also cathartic to be, I don't know, sort of the author of the story. And maybe what I mean and maybe, you know, I have done a lot of somatic work and I know that you're an expert in this, but that sense of, you know, writing the book, it really, I was so glad I did somatic therapy where you learn to keep one foot in the present while you're having maybe a memory or a flashback, difficult memory.
And that kind of dual perspective became the way I was able to write the book. I don't know if that makes sense, but sort of like honoring the memory, going back into it, but typing away and staying, keeping my feet and butt in the chair and in a way that I was safe and in the present. It was a very healing experience. And to be fully honest, a lot of the flashbacky kind of, you know, memories, when I finished the book and turned it in, it felt like they had kind of faded into the rear view mirror. I couldn't write that book today now that I'm further healed from writing the book. It's bizarre.
A: I love that. I love that. And, you know, the description that you had a moment ago about having this sort of larger self to hold you in this process and that being remarkably different than who you were when you were fully in that experience. So there's almost this kind of meta being able to be half in, half out that I think is, it shows how writing a memoir could actually be, as you just said, part of a larger healing process. And do you talk about that with your clients? Do you talk about that when they're writing the memoirs?
B: I do. And in fact, I'm leaving a retreat next month in which it is sort of focused on embodied writing and telling your story from the inside out, which is, I know that's part of your tagline.
You know, I think trusting embodied feelings as the truth. And, you know, and it's not an easy place. You know, it's not something I think that somebody who hasn't been on a healing journey can just throw themselves into and do.
You know, I think it took a lot of meditation, a lot of yoga, a lot of somatic therapy. It's sort of like to be ready to write the book so that I could impold that meta self as I'm writing it. So I, you know, I don't want to turn anyone away from just throwing themselves into writing it, but I know that I wasn't ready to write it till I did a lot of the work.
And in fact, I remember several years earlier, I tried to write and I realized I was repeating, like there's a story in there when I was 12, I was in a canoeing accident and got stranded on a log and for several minutes in a raging river. And when I looked at the draft I had been trying to write years earlier, that story was repeated probably eight or nine times in like 150 pages. Unconsciously, I could not free myself from that story because I was still too unhealed. I was still reliving it too much. And I wanted to repeatedly tell that story. So yes, it's fascinating.
A: You know, I think about that as you're, you're mentioning this about there were certain, I guess, tales of my own pain or trauma that when I was in my 20s, you know, and still had not done the somatic work to reconnect to my body and be more resolved with those experiences. You know, I, you know, and you did this in the book as well. And I think that other people listening might relate, we find strangers and we unload onto a stranger and we may end up in this kind of trauma bond with a stranger who also is carrying a wound, you know, and then we end up feeling this intense connection because we are both, you know, carrying around this pain, but we don't actually find any true healing or true resolution in the connection.
It's sort of just like playing out and wallowing a little bit in our own misery, you know, not that there isn't beauty to find in those connections as well, but it doesn't lead to the same kind of resolution as you're pointing to with the actual somatic work and the therapy and the true, like, boringness of healing that we have to go through, right?
B: Right. Yeah. You know, it's that Freudian idea of repetition compulsion, which I just, in retrospect, I see it all over my life, you know, with relationships, like you're talking about finding traumatized people, trying to create a relationship with, and I even have this kind of weird addictions, not the right word, because it's something now I see as a bit of a positive, but with rivers, you know.
I nearly died on a river and I am never more at home in my body and life than when I'm walking alongside a river or stream, you know, and it's all over the book, where, and I didn't realize that until later in the process of writing, how much, you know, there's a line, one of the chapters is called The River is Everywhere, and I took that from Siddhartha, the book, where toward the end, you know, he's been on this long life journey, and he realized the river is everywhere, the river he's sitting by is everywhere, and so anyway, for me, this idea of a river and this idea of repetition compulsion, it continues. It's like, I don't know that we ever really escape it. Yeah, I hear you. I know.
A: Yeah, and I'd love that idea of the river is everywhere because it talks of it basically points to the connectedness of things, the connectedness of all the waterways on our planet, for example, right, in a very literal way, but also the connectedness of like our bodies, because so much of like our tissues are literally like these little canals of fluid moving information, moving blood, you know, and so you could talk about a river as being, you know, the arteries of your human system that's carrying information or your nerve lines moving, you know, and connecting everything in your body.
And so I really love that. Kind of going back to what you said about the trauma bonds that we create with people, right, and the way that we tend to play out these same scenarios over and over until we learn from them. And then there came this point for you with, you know, this river story in particular, that it felt like that had actually been reached some kind of completion. Can you say a little bit about that feeling of having actually created completion? What does it feel like to not have that jump out at you anymore?
B: Yeah, you know, I had to do a lot of work around this trauma bond with my family of origin, and particularly with my father. And I ended up, you know, hey, I had to realize that that's what it was. There was this attraction and this repel, you know, that's the nature of a trauma bond in some ways is, again, that running toward running away, this strong attraction is unable to let go.
At the same time, you know that it's not good for you. And I got somebody recommended a book called Leaving Home, and it's by Solani, that's his last name, C-E-L-A-N-I. And that book, without going too much into the weeds, I think he's an object relations type of psychologist. And it just made sense that I had to literally get away physically and emotionally in order for that bond to heal. And yeah, there's just a way that as long as you stay in it and can't see it, it keeps going. But once you do break the bond, or I'm much closer to breaking the bond, I don't know, I hope I can fully break it, but it feels mostly broken.
And once you do that, you can start making better choices about your relationships, because you're not reliving, you're not seeking out that bond, that type of bond and feeling. And so I think that's a very important thing. And sometimes the cost is space from people like this. So.
A: Yes, beautifully said, I agree. And that creating that distance, it's interesting because, as you mentioned, you were continuously drawn back to rivers, even though this was a place that a major kind of life-threatening trauma had occurred for you. And I wonder if part of that, because there are quite a few passages in the book where the rivers are these place of like deep connection of your body to the earth, to the sun, to the water, to the earth, all of that. And it seems like, having had this near-death experience in a river brought this kind of like, brought this connection to God. Even though it was through a trauma.
And I think that many of us have experienced that, is that sometimes our traumatic experiences, they seem like these horrible things, but there's also this way that they wake us up to something bigger than ourselves.
B: Yeah, what is the roomy line? The crack is where the light comes in. And I think there's, yeah, so I think there's real truth to that, that that river, I was drawn to it for maybe unhealthy reasons in a way or to hanging out by rivers. And yet they became the healing medicine. And because of their power and grace and the way the water moves around rocks and the sound of it vibrates in your body, it became a place where I could connect more deeply, you know, with my body and heart in a way that did bring me back to the divine, which was, you know, not my intent when I began the journey.
But that was a surprise and a beautiful surprise to be so drawn back to feeling the divine and not intellectualizing it, you know, not needing to believe, you know, so much in the West because of the way we bought into, you know, the enlightenment and Greek thought, you know, if you think you therefore you are and that destroyed the knowing, you know, the knowing experience and you cannot think your way to God, promise you, I've tried it for 50 years.
And it doesn't lead to God. And in fact, you know, feeling connecting with your deeper feeling states is where you can begin to reconnect. And I think that's the passageway to the soul. And, you know, I'm kind of a student of Eastern philosophy. And I love the idea of our souls, you know, being connected to the souls of the world.
Atman is Brahman. And so there's just a way that that feels, I know it's true. And I don't think it's true, you know, I can still get caught in reading about that stuff and over intellectualize it, but then go for a walk and you realize it's already here. And I know that's a cliche, but it is.
A: Yeah, well, and that's something that comes across in your book as well as that there's this sort of gradual spiritual awakening from, you know, as you said, and starting in your 30s, being very driven to succeed in this framework of what it, you know, meant at the time for you to succeed, as you said, being famous, you know, being an adventure writer, all this stuff. And then you end up on this adventure yourself. that's more of an internal adventure. That's this adventure of like, who am I in relation to God?
And who am I as a connected being? You know, and can you say a little bit, because you mentioned yoga and you talk about your yoga practice and, you know, but how did that evolve for you from the time Sam, sure, but when you were 30, you did some yoga or whatnot. But how did that evolve for you to where you are now in regards to yoga?
B: Yeah, I began practicing yoga in around 1995. A friend of mine had just come back from India and she was really practicing yoga a lot and I went to a class with her. But at first for me, it was largely just a moving exercise. Also, you know, I had a feeling it could go somewhere.
And so much about life is like that. Like, I remember looking at the altar with the different saints, you know, on the altar in the yoga studio back in 1995 and being puzzled and being a journalist, a little skeptical. And then, you know, and now I've got a huge altar covered with saints.
And it's just weird how things emerge like that. Well, eventually, you know, after the medication period, over medication period, I began practicing, you know, daily, and it became kind of a commitment to do that. And as I did that, the mat became a very place, you know, it became like an object of transformation.
I don't know what the psychological word is, but kind of like a teddy bear or something to a child. It became this place where it was like a crucible where I knew I was going to transform. I was transforming my body. But I also knew that I was doing something else. And but it kept leading me further down the road. I began studying yoga philosophy. I ended up, I also had this amazing experience when in 1999, I went to India on assignment, I was still, you know, in the very beginning stages of the medication journey, also in my search for fame.
And I remember watching the bodies burn in Varanasi and walking into a Shiva temple and just being kind of another moment of awakening, sort of like with the death of my friend. It just said, it was confusing. It said nothing. And it said everything, you know, to me.
And I never forgot that. And so as I began to heal, as I began further on to my yoga journey, I started to long to return to India. And I was really into the music of Krishnadas and some of the thinking of Ramdas. And it just, you know, and they had this guru named Neem Kurali Baba. And it just began to feel like Neem Kurali Baba had entered my life and was sort of drawing me, you know, back to India. And I found a trip that was actually going to the very valley where Ramdas and Krishnadas had been with their guru and just had a mind blowing experience there, end up going back to India several more times that sort of deepened my spiritual journey.
A: So yeah, that's a theme in the book as well that I loved is that there's these locations on earth, whether it's by a riverbed, you know, or whether it's in a specific holy place that we really connect in. It's like a place where it's like we can plug into the energy to the power to the grace that exists in that specific location on earth.
And if we can attune ourselves and our bodies to receive that. And it's interesting because it's like, you know, kind of parallel to what you were saying about being in this seeking mode versus opening up and allowing yourself to receive something. Seeking mode is the masculine. It's like the left brain analysis of like figuring it out, right? But then the other side of that is in order for our systems, our bodies to actually know and receive and feel, right? We have to soften ourselves and open up. And that doesn't come with that seeking energy that comes with an openness.
B: Definitely. And that sort of, I love the word receiving and I also love the word listening. You know, I began to, you know, there's that phrase or that saying in spiritual circles, like when you're ready, the teacher will come. And, you know, when you start to attune to the healing journey and start listening to your intuition, the teachers became showing up in ways, you know, whether it was, you know, a particular modality, a particular therapist, you know, a particular trip to India that was going to a certain plate, like it was, I had attuned to trusting my intuition and knowing that the next thing was going to show up and listening to that and acting on that too. You know, so yeah.
A: Yeah, I'm thinking of this idea of our mind being in service to the heart or being in service to a feeling sensing part of us so that, you know, instead of our mind leading the way just like, oh, this is what we should do next, right? This is the next thing. Instead, listening and waiting. And as you're describing, like waiting for life to bring something to you. And then in that moment that you feel that knowing then act, then let that, you know, left brain part of you take over and let the intellectual come to the table and speak, right? But it can get us in trouble when we do it the other way around because then we're just, we're living only half of our potential.
B: Absolutely. And I love the, you know, mentioning the mask that I'm feminine and there is, there was a lot of softening that I think, you know, that the therapy really allowed me to do, you know, and I think I probably do have a bit of a tender soul for a man.
I mean, I know I'm not, you know, when I look out at the world of business, I don't really, I see myself in that world of, you know, of Elon Musk or whatever the flavor of the day is and sort of our hypercapitalistic society. So I always had a bit of softness, but I had covered it up. I'd covered it up with false masculinity. I'd covered it up with ambition. I'd covered it up with pride.
I'd covered it up with medications, with running. And, you know, when I began to remove the layers off of my heart, then I started to be able to trust, and, you know, the word faith comes up a lot in the book. And it's not faith as in belief. I don't believe in that kind of faith.
I feel the faith is something you feel and it's something that you develop almost in a way with, you know, we can become more spiritual beings by developing our spirituality, not in a masculine, aggressive way, but in softening and receiving what comes next. So yeah. Yeah.
A: As you were speaking, I kind of felt like there's this trust, right? Faith and trust, kind of these interwoven, you know, experiences. Trust is not a decision. Trust is an ongoing experiential process, right?
Totally. We can't just decide that we trust or we can't just decide that we believe or that we have faith. It has to be an ongoing thing that we feel and experience and is known to us.
And that, again, is the process of being able to receive. And I think that, you know, the covering it up thing is something so many of us have done and do. I mean, I can completely relate to that, like covering up my femininity, covering up my softness, you know, and then going on the other side of things, I think a lot of women cover up their masculinity.
We cover up our fire and our force because we've been taught that that's not palatable, right? And so I feel like for me, I kind of went both directions. I went to both extremes at different times in my life where I was either covering up, you know, how much I feel and how much I care, or I was covering up how strong I am, you know, and that I have opinions or that I have, you know, an expressive side of myself that's like, you know, going to draw boundaries and things like that. And part of becoming an integrated and whole human, I think, is to allow those parts of ourselves to synthesize and to allow ourselves to be vulnerable enough to be exactly as we are and not try to cover up anything, right?
B: Definitely, you know, and that for your listeners, you know, who may not feel like they even can trust yet. I mean, it is something that can grow. And, you know, early on in my journey, you know, I just trusted that I had to get to yoga every day or six days a week, you know, and that was going to lead me somewhere. And then the next thing came that I could feel into, and, you know, then I would learn, you know, eventually you stumble upon Gabor Mate's work, and then you stumble upon, you know, somebody else that sort of shows you, but you couldn't have gotten, you couldn't have received the new information unless you had already softened and been on that journey of trusting. It's just, I said, very bizarre journey. It really is.
A: Yeah, no, I love that. It's like, it's accumulative.
B: You know, as you take the layers off and you, yeah, it is sort of a dropping in feeling.
A: Yes, dropping into the experience that is here. And what's funny is sometimes the experience that's here is that, oh, I have unconsciously been back in my old pattern. I have unconsciously returned to a former way of doing something. And I mean, it happens all the time that we uncover some way that we've been hiding from ourselves. And so kind of bringing it back to this idea that this crazy journey, this ongoing healing journey, it's progressive, it's accumulative. We have these landmark spaces, but it's this ongoing process of realizing that, you know, kind of like the Russian nesting doll, there's something underneath this, and there's something underneath that, right?
And I think that the beauty of it is that it never really ends. And in your process, where you are now, do you feel like, how does it look for you in terms of healing on a regular daily basis? What's your process like?
B: Yeah, I think it's a combination of consistency and practice. You know, I have my every morning, I have a kind of a mantra meditation practice. I, you know, even just connect with the sacred with candles and scents. And, you know, but then it's just also consciously, sometimes simply just putting my hand on my heart can remind me it activates that area and reminds me of the softness that's inside, you know, or finding yourself crying in a yoga class and realizing that you'd gotten off the path a bit and like you said, and it realizes that that's where, you know, the heart is where all of this happens.
And, you know, when I was a journalist, I had a, I remember reading, hearing people talk about the heart when I was a journalist and just sort of like rolling my eyes, like, oh, yeah, you know, you poets say that, not even though I was kind of a poet, but there's something about that word that I found as a man, you know, weak or sappy or something. But the further I got onto the journey, I began to see it. That is the essence of the journey.
You'll, you hear people say, you know, they went around the world and only to realize that they went on the 16 inch journey from the head to the heart. And it is the place where we are connected with each other. It's the place where we, you know, where vulnerability happens.
It's the place where the different polarities of, you know, the mind is a place where it's sort of either or and when you drop into the heart, you know, situations soften and the answers can appear in a non-binary way, you know, it's where it's alchemical to use a word, you know, sort of like, and so I realized that this is the journey. And it's something that you have to remind you, you know, I'll find myself eating junk food, watching football and, you know, nothing wrong with that.
But then I feel sort of this other old ways creeping in and then, you know, you drop back in, I do some chanting or I go to another yoga class where I find myself really tender again and you start to peel it back off. And, you know, there's that saying about, I can't remember if it's a, if it's a Kabbalah or Jewish thing, but sort of like putting an intention on the heart, on the heart so that when your heart breaks, it can drop in. You can't, you know, anyway, there's something about, we need to constantly be having our heart broken and not in always devastating ways, but that's where the work, that's where the heart opens and that's where we get softer and that's where we can continue on this journey with more trust, I think. So yeah, yeah.
A: And then the way that you felt so distant or maybe even mildly threatened by, you know, this heart path when you were younger, maybe speaks to you how much, you know, as you said at the beginning of this interview, that your heart was bound up, that you didn't have access to it and that there was a lot of pain there. You said like it felt like there was gauze wrapped around your heart, muffled, you know, expression, muffled connection to that space. So of course, if that's what's going on internally, you would be a little defensive when someone would bring all this gushy heart stuff to you because it was a place of unconscious pain that you were carrying. Yes.
B: And I think as men too, we, you know, there's part of this that we just don't have that many role models that are heart centered. And, and, you know, I think I, a friend of mine at a very pivotal part of my life, you know, my ex-wife's boss, I think saw that I was struggling, he handed me some tapes and it was Jack Cornfield. And the, you know, this is a man who was brilliant, who was grounded and centered in his heart, used the word heart, but I also just could feel his heart, you know, and there's a way that that mask, having a masculine model for me, like Jack Cornfield and later Ram Dass, later Krishna Dass, these men who were capable of speaking from the heart and talking about the heart, it, it lifted the, maybe the shame and protectiveness that I had around that as a man. So we need those, need these role models desperately.
A: Yes, yes, absolutely. Because I think that it doesn't connect in the same way when you have as a man, from what I understand, when you have a female teacher, there's a whole another dynamic that comes with like your, a relation to a woman, you know, maybe she represents your mother, maybe she represents your lover, but you know, she, there's not that same necessarily kind of seeing yourself in her that you can get when you work with someone of a similar gender identity, where you can really see yourself in them, you know, how does this translate to how I function to how I behave, right? Yeah. Yeah.
B: And I think a lot of us, you know, my generation, you know, even if you didn't have an alcoholic father or a narcissistic father, you might have had a critical father and in some ways and that you couldn't seem to please. And so when you find these men that are soft, softer hearted, literally for me anyway, it was like, you know, the movie went from being black and white to being color. It just sort of like, wow, I had no idea, you know, that men could speak in this vulnerable ways. And I identify as a man and I just found that was deeply meaningful to me to have to have somebody modeling open-heartedness as a man. It was crucial to me. Absolutely.
A: Yes. I totally see that just as it's not the norm in our world. It's not the, as you said, especially in, you know, past generations, we didn't have models for that.
We didn't have any consistent, you know, I don't know, like look at all the superheroes. They're generosity of like, you know, love and all these things of caring and tenderness and being vulnerable. They're, you know, they're known for, yeah, being a savior and that's a different thing in a way, although there's a connection there. I feel like we could, you know, create like a new Batman or a new Superman that had a tenderness. Yeah. But that's not the model that we saw growing up.
B: Well, it's also the reason I think men struggle with friendships is because we protect our hearts so much and, you know, that there's a fear of other men, you know, especially men who, again, who grew up in kind of toxic environments.
But I think also men who didn't. I mean, there's just a, when you open your heart, you can have better friendships. You can be more connected to the world. And, you know, I think our economy, so much about what we see in the world is sort of a function of hearts that are overly protected and almost cemented over in a way. That's the only way that war can happen is to deny the heart. It's the only way that economic aggression can happen or police aggression is to not be connected with the heart.
A: So yeah, it's, uh, there are strategies that are built around, yeah, putting on that armor and not feeling absolutely. There's whole industries that count on people being that way for sure. And I think the, you know, one of the other themes in the book with this coming back into your physical experience in your body was just the vulnerability of actually feeling after so long, not feeling.
And I think that, you know, it is such a beautiful and important read for anybody who's gone through or is going through that process of coming back into being able to feel because whether it's addiction, whether it's PTSD, whether it's, you know, any number of ways that we numb out, coming back into our feeling sensing body can be very uncomfortable. And it's not something that we often want to do alone. We avoid doing it alone. We avoid it by being in our addiction, by chasing around relationships, you know. Can you talk a little bit about that process of being vulnerable to feel?
B: Yeah, it's something that has become the center piece or the thing that feels most important in my life. And it's also something I do struggle with. I don't want to paint a portrait like I am just always an open-hearted man. It is a struggle. And well, and it is a process and it is, scary because, you know, you'll find yourself going deep with people who can't go deep. I mean, there's a certain, you know, there's a vulnerability to it. And when that happens, it makes you want to hide again and cover up your heart. And, you know, there's a certain way that a friend of mine talks about like, you know, excuse me for using the word crazy, but she just says, I only want the crazy ones in my life, you know.
I want the ones that blurt out how much, you know, suffering they are in at the party, you know. And there's a certain way that I have another friend, a yoga teacher in town who counts his good days by how many vulnerable conversations he has. And I know that in my own personal relationships, I can do a little bit of a push-pull because of the fear, not wanting to go vulnerable, but fearing of the consequences of being pushed away. And so it's not easy. And it's, but it's also, it's the path I've chosen. I think it's a path that is, you know, there's a great quote from Carlos Castaneda, you know, and I know his work is controversial now for appropriation reasons, but there's some, there's some really some beautiful stuff in his work.
And he has a quote where Don Juan, his teacher says, you know, does this path you're on have a heart. If it doesn't, it's no good. If it is, if it does, then it's good. It's not the exact quote, but essentially does your path, you know, have a heart. And it's, to me, it's the only thing that matters anymore. And I think it's true, you know, if you're on a career path or you're on a path where you cannot connect with your heart, maybe it's time for a change. I don't know.
A: Yeah, I feel you. I feel that I was at that kind of crux a few years ago before I threw myself fully into the path I'm on right now, which feels every day so full of like truth and heart for me. So I, I know that feeling of not being there, you know, doing some kind of work or doing some kind of service that doesn't feel like it's in service to, to the heart or to what's really true.
B: Well, I'm sorry. Ben, you know, we're talking a lot about, you know, words like the heart and things that, you know, that people who are on, you know, mental health journeys, all they hear about are their labels, the DSM labels. And, you know, a big part of my healing, I just wanted to add was disconnecting from the DSM and the labels.
And I know it serves a purpose and the insurance gets the bills paid and all of that, but it is such a point of view and disconnecting from, you know, living in diagnoses and speaking in more broader, more, more, what's the term, the opposite of deduction, you know, where you're putting together, you know, the heart is a concept that's so much faster than a DSM label, you know, a mental illness label and, and transcending that way of thinking would save me, you know, and I think we get caught in those diagnoses.
So if you're caught in, caught in a label, it may have a kernel of truth for you. There may be something to learn from the label, but the healing is coming outside of that label, which is, you know, I know that your work in somatic work, and I think that was finding a somatic therapist who just didn't use on any of those labels was so heal.
I spent four years with a therapist in Boulder, Colorado that allowed me to accept myself as a child of God and instead of a label, you know, and I think that, and I'm also though going to reverse on what I just said, you know, when I got the PTSD label, which happened quite late in life, that had a path of healing for me, which the bipolar did not. And so that was a huge thing too. So I know I'm talking in contradictions, but that's the way the world works.
A: So yeah, it is. And I think that, you know, a label like bipolar disorder that as you described before is kind of a dead end, it just basically says like you have to be on medication and something's wrong with your brain and it's permanent, right? There's this kind of permanence to it.
A label like that, you know, it can feel, yeah, like we're being condemned. Yeah, versus learning that you have PTSD and that this is, you know, and that there are people who specifically work with people who have trauma to help them resolve it and to help them heal it. And it's a less permanent thing. It's a less permanent label, you know, kind of along the lines of, you know, learning that you have some kind of disease. And, you know, is the label of that disease something that has a kernel of hope in it? Can you heal from this disease? Or is this disease and this label that you're being given like condemning you to death, you know?
And I think that your approach with seeking help, right, from a somatic therapist, from people, even what you were doing before where you were seeking out psychiatrists, was you looking for assistance in this process. And I think that's really important no matter where you are on your journey, that you don't think that you have to do it or that it's going to be better somehow if you do it alone. But that reaching out to get help from experts and from people who've been on this journey as well is a huge part of it. Definitely.
B: And there was a certain part of me that was wise the whole time that was maybe guiding me, you know, like you said, even, you know, the psychiatrist who is over medicating me may have kept me alive, you know, during a time when I was starting to get self-destructive and have thoughts of suicide. And, you know, so as much as I can have some anger at that path, I also see that I was seeking something part of me was seeking to stay alive. And I had to move through that period and get to the other side of it. So then I could start the next phase.
And so I think, but that takes a tuning again to, you know, in a way to this deeper sense of self that I think we can attune to more through practices and through therapy and that kind of thing. Yeah.
A: Yeah. A growth mindset, right? And that's, that's again, kind of pointing to like these labels, you know, and so many more people, adults and everyone are getting diagnosed with ADHD, you know, and I had a therapist, I was just on the show not too long ago, and we were talking about how there's a lot of overlap between PTSD symptoms and trauma symptoms and ADHD. And so is it ADHD or is it trauma, right? Or is it some interesting combination of the two, right?
If both those labels were to simultaneously exist, you know, and how helpful is it for a person to receive that label? Maybe it's a stepping stone. Maybe it starts them, as you said, on a path to self discovery, to self acceptance, right? That there is something different about them, that what they're struggling with is real in a way.
I feel like people can get very validated by a label, like, oh, see, there is, there's something wrong with me, you know, or there's something different about me. But maybe that's not the whole journey. As you're describing, that was only one piece of a larger healing process for you. And at this point, it doesn't seem like it really is helpful to you to hang on to any of those labels that you lived under for so long.
B: No, in fact, you know, I was thinking as you're talking about the ADD versus PTSD, and, you know, I know that there's a lot of talk about PTSD today and trauma, and everybody seems to be identifying with trauma. And I do think we are all traumatized by our society. I also think it's gotten, you know, a little, you know, two calling things that are trauma that maybe aren't, but the same. But my point is, I think I'm trying to make is that ADD, maybe it is, you know, trauma.
I mean, your pattern of dissociating quickly. And, yeah, I don't know where I'm going with this, except that these labels are, can be useful, but they can be very fraught, you know, very incomplete. And you could be buying into an ADD diagnosis. And really, you're, it's not ADD, but it just looks like ADD, you know?
A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, kind of coming back to your book and this incredible journey that, you know, you take us on, there's so much feeling and emotion that I feel like you express through your writing in the book. And, you know, some of your descriptions are just so evocative, especially, you know, as we go further and further on this journey with you, towards the end of the book, and you're taking us on these sort of spiritual internal experiences that you're having. And I think that, you know, the progression of this from being overmedicated, from being locked up in your heart to this opening that you experience, right, later in your life, and you're sitting here now with a much more present, open being than maybe you've ever known in your life, right? And it's felt, I mean, you took me there in this book on that process with you.
And I think that it's really something that I guess a really good memoir can do is have you feel where this person started and where they ended up and how that feels to go through that evolution of consciousness, that evolution of a person. And so I'm curious with your, the way you're a memoir writing coach, what do you specialize in any specific type of writing or, you know, because there's a lot of different ways that one could write a memoir. What would you say is your approach in what's standing up?
B: Well, I love helping people tell their transformative journeys. You know, I know there are lots of types of memoirs. There's kind of a real small slice of life. But I love helping people make sense of the journey of transformation they've been on. And, you know, as you were describing my book, I realized that, you know, one of the things I teach is to tap into desire. And, you know, early on in my book, I desired nothing more than to become an adventure writer, to become famous and to become a famous writer. And then I fell into the drug coma and I wanted nothing more than just to survive.
And then I wanted nothing more than to get off the medications. And then I wanted nothing more than to feel again. And then I wanted nothing more than to have, you know, a deeper connection with the divine. And I think, you know, that I guess one of the things that when I say that is just realizing the desire to heal has been so strong in me, you know, I think that's, I don't know where I was going with that except that.
A: Well, it took many forms. It sounds like it took so many forms. Even that desire to be an adventure writer, to seek out, you know, widespread validation, which is basically what being famous is, you and to be fully accepted in our world, you know, that is its own desire to be connected and to be healed in its own way, you know, whether it actually got you there.
But I mean, you know, there we go. It kind of, in a way, if we follow the journey, if we follow the river, it did lead you home eventually, right?
B: And it also taught me, you know, if your life doesn't fall apart in midlife, you know, that's unfortunate. I think we need that period of disintegration to unhook from that period in younger life where it really is all about creating a false self. It's all about creating a self that fits in, that makes money, that gets famous. And then you realize, and maybe the only way you realize is for your life to fall apart. And then you can rebuild a deeper, more heart connected life. And so as much as I know that my 40s look like a shit show, you know, they were the, you know, mixing the soil up for the new rebirth. And so if your life is falling apart, you know, maybe there's a way to set an intention to use this period for rebirth.
A: Oh, yeah, I super relate to that. I've had, feel like in the last year, you know, the falling apart, it still goes on all the time, right? There's still these little micro falling parts that we go through over the course of a month or a year, you know, or even a week.
You know, there's these little moments of deconstruction of like who we think we are, you know, something happens and it, you know, our world gets turned upside down. And I've been going through that the last few months. And so as you're speaking about this, I just feel like a sense of, yeah, that falling apart is an opportunity.
It's an opportunity that you just can't really see yet, you know, but give it some space. Listen, you know, have that openness to what this situation or this destruction is informing you, right? There's something there that's going to speak to you at some point if you're able to listen.
B: And there's, there's a warning to make there too, right? Because if you immediately run to Medicaid it to merely run to fix it to deny some part of that this is happening to say it's wrong, then you might miss out on the rebirth on the other side, you know.
A: Oh, yes, yes. I can totally think about this in regards to one of my recent falling apart situations. If I had just done what I maybe wanted to do, which was instantly run to fix it, I wouldn't have created the opportunity that I'm now experiencing if I had just, you know, quickly covered it up with something.
B: Right. And that's what we want to do in the West. We really want to just fix it, make the pain go away now, please.
A: Yeah, need jerk reaction. And it's much more uncomfortable, but I feel rewarding to just sit with the falling apart for the time that it needs, right? The time that it's requiring us to regroup and to actually move forward with a plan that's not based on terror and trauma and confusion and frustration, right? Moving forward with intention.
B: Yeah, and honoring that we don't, the conscious mind or egos don't always know what's next for us and allowing that space so that whatever's underneath it to come out. Yeah. Yeah. Not to be in control, you know, we're not in control.
A: I know and we really want to be. Yes. Beautiful. Well, it's been so wonderful talking with you today, sharing your wisdom, sharing about the process of writing this book and this process that you've been on of becoming and coming back to your body and coming back to your heart consciousness. It's been delightful and inspiring and I highly recommend, you know, all my listeners check out Brad's book and dig in because there's so much to be experienced there. I found his writing style to be very evocative, as I've used that word more than once now, I think. And also informative, you're very, like you said earlier in the interview, you're an intellectual. And so you had a lot of great weaving intellectual information about trauma, about PTSD, about your, you know, personal experience with it was woven very skillfully into this narrative.
B: Well, thank you. And thank you for having me on. And I would love it if your listeners would get my book into the soul of the world, My Journey to Healing, and it's available at your local bookstore.
You can order it through them or on Amazon. And it's just been a delight to be here. And, you know, people want to contact me, they can find me at my website, bradwetzler.com, that's B-R-A-D-W-E-T-Z-L-E-R, or on Instagram or Facebook at bradwetzler.com. And I'd love to hear from you if you're on a journey like that. And it's just been a joy and real touches my heart to be here today.
A: Yeah, thank you. Thank you. And, you know, I've, like I said, I've read on your website about your memoir writing coaching, and I found it to be very exciting. So if you're out there and you're listening to this and you're going, oh, I have a memoir that I've been wanting to write, you know, read what Brad has written on his website, maybe reach out to him and talk to him, get a consult, because having someone who has the skill that you have as an editor, right?
And also the personal experience, the personal transformative experience, you know, using this memoir to work with and resolve some deep pains that had a grip on you, right? I think that you would be a fantastic person to guide someone through that process. So definitely check out that offering from Brad as well. You know, I was personally interested in myself, so.
B: Great. Well, thank you for that. And yeah, writing a memoir can change your life. It really can.
A: Yeah, I believe it. Thank you again. We'll hear from you sometime soon.
B: Great, thank you.
A: You've been listening to the Free Your Soma podcast To find out more information about today's guest check the show notes and to find out more information about me Aimee Takaya and the radiance program visit www.freeyoursoma .com.
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