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Restoration Beyond the Couch
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Restoration Beyond the Couch
Writing Through the Wounds: With Authors of the Bestselling Novel 'Caretaker'
What if the books you wrote could heal your deepest wounds? Join us as we welcome the extraordinary duo, Jason and Rhonda Halbert, who transformed their lives from the bustling world of music and television to becoming best-selling authors. Known collectively as RJ Halbert, they share an inspiring narrative about their 30-plus years of marriage, shared traumas, and how they channeled their pain into the supernatural novel "Caretaker," part of the Good Pasture Chronicles. Discover the therapeutic power of storytelling and how writing became their path to healing and hope.
Learn how Jason, an Emmy and Grammy Award-winning producer, and Rhonda, a successful music and television manager, tackled their painful childhood memories and co-authored a book that transcends genres. They bring to light the concept of generational curses and how trauma can influence DNA. Through compassionate self-reflection and the creative process, they found a way to reframe their past, break cycles of pain, and invite readers to engage deeply with their story. This episode dives into the nuances of blending fiction with real-life experiences to create something transformative.
Get an inside look into the Halberts' unique life balance of homeschooling while managing a career in the music industry. From never going more than three weeks without seeing each other to incorporating music into their storytelling, their journey is a testament to resilience and creativity. Listen as they discuss the Ouroboros Society, the symbolism behind it, and the essential role of community and love in overcoming trauma. This episode promises an inspiring blend of arts and mental health, with a compelling narrative that underscores the power of connection and healing.
To learn more, buy the book or join the Ouroboros Society visit: https://www.rjhalbert.com/
Follow @r.j.halbert on instagram
Follow @goodpasturechronicles on instagram
Phil Collins at Live Aid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPgL8YQUDeY
Welcome to Restoration Beyond the Couch, hosted by Dr Lee Long. In this episode, dr Long interviews Jason and Rhonda Halbert, the husband and wife team behind RJ Halbert and the best-selling novel Caretaker book, one of the Good Pasture Chronicles. Jason, an Emmy and Grammy Award-winning producer and songwriter, and Rhonda, a successful music and television manager, have woven their 30 plus years of life together into a supernatural tale about breaking generational curses and forging new bonds of hope. Writing this book not only allowed them to create a captivating story, but also help them process their own trauma, channeling their experiences into something profoundly healing. Join us as we explore their journey from music and television to literature and the transformative power behind Caretaker. Your path to mental wellness starts here.
Speaker 2:Welcome Jason and Rhonda, known as RJ Halbert, Just by way of introduction so that our listeners will know. Jason, I know you have won several Emmy and Grammy Awards. As a producer and songwriter, You've had great success with multiple number one and platinum selling records. What, yes, sir? Currently you're working on over, I think, two decades as the music director with one, Miss Kelly Clarkson. I think people know who she is and I know you've worked with other artists as well, and I know you've worked with other artists as well. And, Rhonda, you homeschooled your kids while touring around the world on a tour bus. I mean, that's quite the life, right. And I know that the last 10 years I know you've spent had quite the successful career as a music and television manager. And together, as I said earlier, you guys under the pen name RJ Halbert, you guys wove your 30 plus years of life together. Now is that 30 plus years of married life? Because there were 30 plus years of your life together, right?
Speaker 4:We're married 31 years and we've probably known each other for 36 ish depending on who you ask.
Speaker 3:I've known her for about 40 years. She's probably known me for about 38.
Speaker 2:I love it. I love it. So this whole life gets woven together in this amazing, I would say, riveting, storyeting story, based loosely on actual facts and events and experiences, but it is an absolutely riveting story that's told, in my opinion, in the most excellent of ways. Now, I've known you guys for a long time. Now, I've known you guys for a long time and I have to say that when you guys reached out and told me that you guys were writing this series.
Speaker 3:I was so fired up.
Speaker 5:First thing is you guys never do anything halfheartedly, like ever, fair, fair. We are the.
Speaker 2:Halberts, and we call it halbert 110, and I'm going to give a big fat amen to the halbert 110. I knew this book was going to be amazing, and it did not disappoint. Um, when you all described some of your dreams, though, about this series, I got even more excited, because people may be thinking, like why a fiction book on Beyond the Couch? Like what does that have to do with going beyond the couch of therapy or of mental health? And when you guys described some of your hopes and dreams for this, my excitement was that you guys were blending the arts with mental health and mental wellness, and I think that something that we can all agree on is that pain, trauma, traumatic things are really difficult to deal with. But the bottom line is is that that distance allows us to take an honest look at what we've experienced and give us space to maybe experience it in a new and different way. So you guys came back, came from from the art, from a background in the arts, and have you all ever written a book before?
Speaker 5:No, no, I'm actually dyslexic, and so books did not play a huge role in my life. It was hard to get through English my four years in high school and I bombed in college in high school and I bombed in college and it wasn't really easy for me to read. It caused headaches. It was constantly having to reread paragraphs because the letters would move, and so this was never a trajectory in my dreams and we've never talked about it. It wasn't anything that you know. This was a goal. It wasn't but to tie that all in with our trauma, like you said, we had some horrific experiences that just got so painful that it's almost like you can't talk about it anymore, you can't process it anymore, you're maxed out and the pain is just so deep that I can't live one more day in my own world. I just can't.
Speaker 5:I'm not an extremist, I really am not, and I'm very optimistic person all the time, very positive all the time. But that just goes to show you how deep the pain was. Was those were the thoughts of going. I just can't live my life. So it just felt so much easier to at the time what I thought was escape our problems. That may not be the correct phrase, but that's what it felt like was a relief and being in a different world or thinking about other people instead of having to think about our problems. And then, as we did that, it just kept developing and kept developing into a very challenging and interesting story and we fed off of each other on that. We both had a lot to say yeah.
Speaker 3:To be honest, like she, said there was no, that we both had a lot to say. Yeah, to be honest, like she said, there there was no master plan. This I would love to say we had an altruistic approach and that we were writing this to help people. Um, it eventually became that, but, like rana said, the word escapism it. It almost felt dysfunctional at first. It's we can't talk about these problems anymore. We're going to create this fantasy world we can escape into and, like Ron always says, we we just started by writing what we know. So we created some characters and we put them into a similar environment that we were in, in a similar situation, and then we were surprised as the characters started writing themselves and the story unfolded. That actually started speaking back to us. I was reflecting on it this morning. One of the things you just said, the idea of stepping back from a perspective, part of our process is, I'm definitely not a good writer crafting a story, so we would have a lot of conversations and Rhonda would record the voice
Speaker 3:memos and then she would write things up, send it back. And there's a scene in the book Ian Keane, the father, has a flashback to his childhood and it's a very similar scene to something that I experienced as a child not one-to-one, but the emotions were the same, the setting was the same and I've probably told that story from my childhood a hundred times. I've told it to my kids, I've told it to Rhonda, I've told it to close friends and I tend to just list things matter of fact. You know, this happened and this happened and this happened and it was my experience. There was no really emotion attached to it.
Speaker 3:Reading back the words that Rhonda put to that, it was like I was a third person experiencing what I went through, right and the thing that I found fascinating because I was rereading some chapters preparing for an interview that's coming up is I was able to feel emotion of compassion for that child that I've never felt for myself. It's because I I was looking oh my gosh, is that what he's going through? And so there were two things One, I was able to experience emotions I hadn't experienced myself, even though I lived that exact thing. And the other thing that happened was because Rhonda wrote emotions into it that gave vocabulary to what the thought process became.
Speaker 4:Oh my goodness, Should I be feeling that.
Speaker 3:Was that the healthy approach to it and why didn't I? And anyway, I'm sure you can dive more into that, but those are the surprises that came to us and I remember in talking with you about this concept of using storytelling to process trauma. It was not an intent, but, wow, what a pleasant side effect it's. Now I almost want to write down some other things I went through and then have somebody read it back to me and see what it feels like again.
Speaker 2:You know you touched on such a critical and important part of what I believe and what I utilize in my work on the couch is this idea of we experience things in our history. We experience them from the age that we were at the time of the event, but our mind still experiences it, even though we are grown up from that timeframe. We still experience it in our grownup state as if we were that child. But our mind associates well, I'm a grown-up now, therefore that must be how it was Now. That doesn't take away from the facts, because the facts are how it was. But the interesting thing is that if we can separate enough to see that, what would we give to that child as an adult? There's some real healing there and it sounds like you writing this out and hearing the emotions from Rhonda's perspective really created some space for you to. I always say love on that younger part of ourself. Is that a fair thing to say?
Speaker 5:Yeah, for me it was a similar experience as well. I was able to draw from some childhood traumas as well and put that into the book, and I definitely want to make it clear this was a 50-50 contribution, but I did do a lot of the writing, just because he has this crazy full-time job. So, as I was writing out these scenes, I just would bawl. It took hours to get through some of these scenes. It was breaking my heart all over again having to go back into those moments and relive them. But I would say in the end, the first thing I said to Jason and I've said this multiple times in interviews is, even if nobody else reads this book, this book was for me.
Speaker 5:It healed parts of me that I didn't expect, I think because of the existing trauma. When we started creating the story, I was just already broken and shattered and I had nothing left to piece together, and so the writing of this was a slow version of me putting pieces back in, because there wasn't any. It wasn't a shell of a human being left at the point that you know this thing started. So, um, this was a.
Speaker 5:This was a part of putting my puzzle back together and putting it back with pieces that I've processed, I've thought about, I've um tried to remember the details and then either forgive, let go of, not carry that baggage anymore. And so hopefully I'm not a therapist, I just did this on accident but hopefully I put myself some pieces that felt like truth and I've been hanging onto those truths because it actually changed my life going through that two-year process of writing that book. So if nobody else reads it, it's absolutely okay, because I got out of it what I needed. Now I do believe that I did receive some truth and I think truth is truth, and if it's true for me, then other people can learn from it as well. And so I'm happy that we get the opportunity to put these hard stories out and this journey of healing out, and then hopefully maybe other people can latch onto it and maybe gain or glean some of that same truth and healing that we both received as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's beautiful and I think that you know what you're describing is is a process of you allowing yourself to experience the hurt, but enough separation from it that you're not walking into it from the first person perspective, it's more of a narrator's perspective, which gives you just some distance from it, not not dissociating from it, but just enough distance from it that you can maybe gain perspective of the things that were going on around you as well, and allowing well, and allowing that truth to rise to the surface, to trickle to the top, so to speak, and scoop from that what the divine purpose, perhaps, of this book really was, or what it is.
Speaker 5:I would agree with Jason's statement of that distance allowed us and I'm just repeating what he said allowed us to see the situation that were similar enough that it triggers the same emotions. But they're not exact, they're not one-to-one, but it gave us that distance to be able to see that little person and have compassion instead of like. For me. I have a very strong personality and I do believe that that intensity that I come with comes with having to protect myself, since I was a little kid and I was able to step back from that bucket up system that I tend to carry and actually see that little girl and have compassion for her.
Speaker 5:So there's a to me. I'm usually a stiffen up. Rhonda, you got this, just keep going. And I didn't do that this time because that wasn't Rhonda, but that was a little girl that I could identify with and feel her feelings and understand where she's coming from, and I was just able to give a layer of compassion that I couldn't give myself. So, like Jason, it's like you're learning and going. Oh oh. This is like a whole different perspective and so it isn't disassociation. It is definitely a safe distance to be able to just see this overview of again it's not your life, but you understand and the understanding is what gives you that new level of compassion or forgiveness or understanding that you wouldn't have received before.
Speaker 2:That's right. That's right. That's it's so interesting because I've thought about this for you guys, as you are, as you've written this, as you've talked through the manuscript with one another, as you have done your done interviews like this and others that you've done along the way. The interviews will continue to do, and you know you think about that.
Speaker 2:This is, this is book one in a trilogy, right, and so you think I was thinking through this that you guys are are talking through your story, talking through this arc, which I want to come back to, by the way but you're talking through your story, talking through this arc, which I want to come back to, by the way, but you're talking through this story, often Fair, going back and revisiting it over and over and over again. I'm wondering if and then I want to make a comment about that in just a moment, but before I do, I'm wondering if you telling your story so many times, I'm wondering if that you found that the more you tell it that, the more compassion you give to yourself, and that it maybe the sting of it is a little bit dissipating a little bit dissipating.
Speaker 3:We might approach that differently, mostly because I have zero filter. It's part of, I think, being on the spectrum. I mean we joke about it If I run into somebody at coffee and they say how are you doing? Today? I take it so literally. I'm like, well, I had a rough morning, ron, and I didn't get off to a good start. My son's having trouble in college. Just dealing with, like I verbal vomit that. And then halfway through that I'm reminding myself, oh they, they really don't want to know all that.
Speaker 3:So that to say I've probably told every detail of my story so many times, probably to people who didn't need to hear it Co-workers, clients. It's because I do come from a lot of storytellers. That's, that's how I engage with people I love, and you know, telling your story as a form of telling your testimony. Good or bad it's, it's part of your life journey and so, in that sense, the telling it so much probably has desensitized me from the emotion of it. It's. I mean, you did a great job reading our bio at the beginning, but the way when you, when you read those things, it just it's just fact, fact, fact, fact, fact.
Speaker 3:You know there's Rhonda. Rhonda homeschooled our children on the road while touring around the world, is very different than Jason, and Rhonda fought for their marriage and sacrificed time and energy and money to make sure their family could stick together in an environment where family is not encouraged and blessed, family is not courage and bliss. So so I'd say I've lived my life just telling the facts. Rhonda and the things that she had at the book also added some emotions. That is now I'm repeating that I'm processing.
Speaker 2:Um, I don't know if that's a good question or not, but you are and it's beautiful, and I hope you'll repeat away, because learning theory says we have to hear something seven times before we interact with it, and the one thing I hope that people gain from what you're saying is is that this goes beyond just repeating facts over and over and over again. You all are talking about and this is why I got so fired up about this is that the arts connect you to a part of your soul that is just different than facts. There's just an engagement there that can potentially be upending in a good way sometimes in a bad way, but in a good way of where you truly get to experience something from a whole new place and a new perspective that hopefully offers healing.
Speaker 5:Absolutely. That's definitely what I experienced Writing it out. Like I said before, I cried through most of it. Just, there are so many emotional stories in the book and, you know, trying to be real with those emotions, that was man draining, just draining. But I felt like it was worth it. And then I think maybe the first 10 times of reading through and editing, and or maybe the first 20 times you know of reading through and editing, and or maybe the first 20 times you know of reading through and editing and fixing and all of that, I still cried. I've already written it but I still cried and I don't know.
Speaker 5:My hope and my desire was I'm capturing something that I'm hoping other people will see and maybe that's why I'm reacting to it is. I'm hoping it's a genuine experience for other people and it just keeps hitting me and keeps hitting me. So I hope that's just showing an authenticity of what we tried to put into the book. But yeah, I will say now, now that we're like almost a year since we finished it, it is becoming a little more easier. I'm not crying all the time when I read it. I have processed a lot of that now and I now do understand. I have new knowledge, I have new tools, and so it is becoming easier.
Speaker 5:I realize that there's a lot of trauma out there that I have never experienced and it goes even deeper than the pain that I've carried in my life, and I know that it's hard to go there emotionally to relive it, to try to heal it, whatever it is. Encourage, like you're saying, find an outlet that allows you to go to that hard place and process that emotion and then, when you can process it externally, you can come back around and come back around and come back around to whatever that product is that you created. It could be a song, it could be art, it could be a book, it could be whatever. Whatever it is, but you can keep coming back around to it, and that's what I did is I just kept coming back around to my book and and just process it over and over, and I took my time with it to now where I don't cry all the time. I think that's a good thing.
Speaker 2:It is a good thing, you know there's.
Speaker 2:There's a woman named Edna Foa.
Speaker 2:She is a doctor, a PhD out of UPenn, and she is a cognitive behavioral CBT expert and she developed this thing called prolonged exposure, so it's called PE prolonged exposure, so it's called PE.
Speaker 2:And one of the tenants of what she has talked about and developed is this whole idea of what you just described is that it's gentle exposure at the beginning and it's it's, it's very careful, it's very, you know, you set someone up to understand that you're safe here and you're not re-experiencing that trauma. And what the proposal is is that the more you experience, the more you're exposed to the information adjacent to your point, not just the facts, but the whole of the information, the experience that you're, that, in essence, your brain closes the loop and says I'm not still that five-year-old, that 10-year-old, that 15-year-old, I'm not, I'm not still there and I'm not. I don't have to be in a state of panic or or fear while I interact with this. And so as I was thinking about you guys going through all of this, she kept popping up to me that hey, you guys are actually doing this, whether you realized it or not, this prolonged exposure, right? And so what a neat experience.
Speaker 3:You say that, whether you realize it or not. That's been the fascinating part about this process because, to talk about this all in hindsight, we could propose that we had this great master plan and an outline to happen. And the things we did, we did research into the plot. For those who haven't read it yet, it's a lot more than just some flashback scenes and trauma.
Speaker 3:There's supernatural elements, there's sci-fi, there's history there's adventure, and so we did a lot of research into those aspects. It does take place in history, but we didn't research a lot of other elements of it. Now, on the backside of it, you've brought some things to our attention. We're researching some things that divinely. However, you want to work out the mechanics of that. Some things will reveal to us through this process that are speaking back to ourselves, and one of those is this is a trilogy, so book one. We're hopefully laying out a fun foundation we're introducing to some characters. We're laying out some things you might not understand now, but it's going to unfold into a much broader story.
Speaker 3:But one of the themes of this is generational cur not understand now. That's going to unfold into a much broader story, but one of the themes of this is generational curses and that's a buzzword that I've I've heard maybe in the last five to ten years has become more popular and we we work that into it. Now we're doing some research on the back end and it turns out there's studies that show that there's actually cellular changes in your dna that happen under extreme trauma. That can be passed down up to three generations, if not more. You know, example Holocaust survivors that dealt with food shortages. Three generations later, you have descendants that are dealing with weight issues because of food insecurities. That's fascinating to me, and we had no idea the mechanics of it.
Speaker 3:Of course we knew the concept of generational curses and we wrote those stories into our book, and so it's fascinating to me that how does our subconscious work and how, if trauma can be passed down to generations, can also a sense of knowledge and concepts ideas be passed down at a cellular level? So those are the things we're being fascinated by exploring right now, and some of the concepts. We would put characters in a situation and then we would sit there and say, well, what if they did this? What if they did this? No research involved, and some of them are just wild. There's a scene with Liana who's going with something, and the solution we came up with is the most abstract, could never happen in real life, sci-fi thing we could imagine. And then, as we're processing this in the backend, we have Dr Long telling us like, well, yeah, what happened? There is a perfect example that you can't do this without doing this, and that's that's so amazing to me. That's what I'm getting really excited about.
Speaker 5:Well, it was definitely unintentional. I do think that there was divine inspiration. I think when you get to that place of complete brokenness and you've got nothing else to work with, then where do you pull from? And I think for us which we tend to do anyway we're a bit weird. We just pulled from the supernatural, and that's a common thing, at least for me, and I think that's where the truth and the knowledge came from, whether or not we understood it at the time.
Speaker 2:That's so inspiring to me. Um, I, uh, I just I love that you guys are describing how telling your story has woven these new intrigues, these new um vision points that's probably not the best way to say it, but maybe perspectives would be a better way to say it these new intrigues I guess I come back to that word of different ideas and subjects and points of view for you guys that maybe have been foreign or unknown, but you're, you're, you're taking this, I would say, to the next level. There's that 110% right there, unintentional 110 this time.
Speaker 5:Okay, but there's something's that 110 right there, unintentional 110 this time.
Speaker 2:Okay, but there's something to that. Right, that it's it. Maybe it's unintentional, but it's super intentional because it's part of the fiber of your being. And to your point about oh, go ahead, jason 110.
Speaker 3:Under the wrong context, that could be perceived as work ethic or overachieving, or a need to conquer and dominate. You know they're going to do 100, 110 percent. For us to, however 110 percent is. We're going to live or die by this. It's just like if we believe something, then we're going to put everything we have, plus some, into what we actually believe. If we don't believe it, if it's not setting towards the goals we've set, then there's no point in doing it. So it's a zero or 110. And it's less about the work ethic, as it is just about the absolute belief and being willing to be wrong about what it is we believe we do. But you know, by golly we're going to go down.
Speaker 5:We can throw ourselves into it, no matter what it is.
Speaker 3:And that's been to our blessing and to our detriment, you know.
Speaker 4:So, when we fail, we fail accurately and publicly. Yes, when we succeed.
Speaker 3:It's the same same thing, and none of those are by our efforts. It's just literally putting in what, what we believe into it.
Speaker 2:Yeah there is a certain vulnerability that you guys are, I think is what you're. What you're saying is that 110? Isn't this going to be this effort that like it's not going to be like by your biceps? I'm going to make this good and I'm going to push this hard. That the 110% is you're going to get all of me.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 2:When I walk through this, you're going to know me. At the end of it there's a in other words, and I and I'm curious to me. My experience with you all has been it's an invitation for vulnerability, it's an invitation for intimacy, it's an invitation to come be part, right, and what I think is so sweet in all of this is that the book really is an invitation. I think it's an invitation to tell your story, it's an invitation for people to be a part of that intimacy and granted intimacy at an appropriate level, right, but an intimacy of understanding your new intrigues and intimacy of understanding your journey.
Speaker 5:It was hugely vulnerable and I think I wrestled with it probably more than Jason, because he does tend to look at things like facts it probably more than Jason because he does tend to look at things like facts For me. When it was done again, I said, if nobody else reads it, I'm good because it was for me, so I was happy to not release it. And Jason was like no, there was a purpose behind this, so you got to do something with it. But it is very vulnerable, it's very scary and I was so wounded I wasn't sure I could open the door for the world to see my woundings. I wasn't sure if I could allow myself to be wounded again.
Speaker 5:And when you invite people into intimacy, that's what you're allowing, because you either will or won't get hurt, like it's one or the other. So it was a lot scarier for me once the book was done, because it is very vulnerable. It is very intimate into the emotions that we have walked out our whole lives and didn't process until we were older. And that's just very scary because it just opens the door for, you know, especially so publicly it opens the door for criticism and it opens the door for misinterpretation and, you know people misunderstanding and that just feels very, very scary to me, Um, but thankfully I came to a place of going. I know my heart, I know my intent, um, I know what the purpose is and I'm okay with that, and that took me a while to get there, but I finally got there and allowed me to to put that 110% out.
Speaker 3:I do feel when we talk about. I hope the part that's getting through is especially after you. You know you read our accomplishments in the music industry. I hope it comes through. And I think it is that we have zero experience in writing novels short stories, anything of that level, and so our hope is that, when people read this book for me.
Speaker 4:It can be read on three levels.
Speaker 3:We really hope you enjoy the story. We hope it's a fun read. It starts an adventure. It helps you escape from a moment for your day into somebody else's world.
Speaker 3:There's also an allegorical level where I'm hoping somebody would read and see some of the things like oh, that could apply to my life, et cetera. Maybe 10 to 20 percent. It's my hope that you say, if these guys can do it, maybe I could do something like that too. Here's another tool, because there's so many tools to work through trauma and mental health, and they're all very great tools. There's talk therapy, which Rhonda and I have taken huge advantage of.
Speaker 3:Talk therapy it's been a huge part of our restoration, because it's a different step than just allowing some characters and stories unfold. You're actually talking to an expert to give you tools. That's very important. There's versions of group therapies. There's brain therapies and neurofeedback, so I hope the concept of this might actually become another tool to be used of telling a story, in a way, because, trust me, if we can do this, you can do this too, because if we would have decided to write an album about this, then that would be oh, that's easy. They know how to do music. Of course they would do that, and so I really hope this opens up that concept for some people.
Speaker 2:I love that and I do too, because what you guys have been the walk or the wandering, or the trek or the I'm trying to avoid the word journey because I feel like it's so overused the journey that you guys have just taken us on is, I think, so special in that you don't have to seek therapy to get healing, you just don't. Now is therapy a beautiful tool? Yes, and should people take advantage of it if they need it and can access it Absolutely? Are there multiple ways of going about it? Yes, I mean, you guys have talked about the audio feedback, the biofeedback, the neurofeedback by way of Sericep.
Speaker 2:That you guys have done and been big proponents of, which I think is brilliant, because that is a bottom-up approach, is what we call it in our world is you start with the brainstem, which really comes from experience, and then you go forward to what a lot of people see as talk therapy, which is using your prefrontal cortex. But what we're finding is that, even in talk therapy, that you can still access a bottom-up approach. And is where we began earlier, talking about the scene that you all were writing from a perspective, jason, that you had gone through as a very young, young man, that it gave you a whole new experience for it, and that is a bottom-up approach, but I love that the way y'all came to this in the origin is at least I think I'm stating that correctly was by way of Saraset or that audio neuro biofeedback channel.
Speaker 3:And, in retrospect, saraset. So Saraset it's not neurofeedback but it's a form of it and there's no magic bullet there, sarah said does not heal anything, Just like I. I believe talk therapy doesn't heal anything. And electric therapy, you know, those things don't do anything to me. What they do is they create an environment for a period of time that allows you to maybe process things in a different way. You know, if I pull out the driveway, get in a wreck, my bleeding out of my gut, and Rhonda asked me runs up and says what do you want for dinner tomorrow night? It's. I'm not in a space to properly make that decision to me.
Speaker 3:Sarah said calmed my mind for a period to where my brain can process things in a different way. And same thing after a session of talk therapy, it's. You know, the effects of Saraset may last a week and maybe the talk therapy when I leave therapy I leave with a different worldview than what I came in with and maybe that lasts for an hour, five hours a week, but during that time I can hopefully make some small different decisions in my thought process and thinking from an educated point of view. That will last longer and then rebuild. So the same thing with Saraset. It definitely wasn't a magic bullet in the sense of it didn't fix any of our trauma. It just gives us a way to process things in a new way that we hadn't looked at before.
Speaker 5:When we started this, we weren't equipped, we didn't know about Saraset, we weren't going to therapy, we didn't have tools. This was us scrambling, trying to find our lifeline, and along the way, people would come alongside us and say have you tried this, have you thought about this? And so I think that's where community comes into play, is not trying to walk this out alone. It's super, super important, jason, and I would not be even coherent talking to you right now if it wasn't for our community. So I give that a lot of credit as well. But I want to go back to something that you said at the beginning of this question. Um, I think that you're you're right, we don't have to have those things to find healing. But I think the one thing that we all have to have is we all have to have the willingness to change. If you're not there yet, I don't know that you'll find your healing, but it has to come from this place, and for me, just speaking from my own experience, it came out of desperation. I had nothing else. My will was broken, my strength was gone, my identity was lost, I had no sense of who I was, and so for me, I was willing to change and it came out of my desperation.
Speaker 5:So I think every person, if they're looking for healing, it's got to start with you, it's got to start with that place of going. I need change and a lot of people can't say that. A lot of people get stuck and so I'm just I know it's a challenge, I'm an eight on the Enneagram, I'm throwing it out there. It's a challenge, but it's so worth it. It is so worth it because then Jason and I literally got stripped away of everything. But when you don't give up and you go, okay, something, something's got to change here. It's it's really miraculous of how the help comes and how the healing comes and how the the brokenness starts to get put together again, piece by piece, like I talked about the puzzle earlier. So I think that's what you do need.
Speaker 3:Well, and it's a theme that came out of our book that I'm curious to know in the mental health community if there's any reality to this. But but Rhonda just said, you have to come to a place where you're willing to make change or recognize you need to make change. I actually think that 99% of people come to that point where they say I need a change what?
Speaker 3:what held me back is the physical action that accompanies that. There was a realization that, yes, I need to change, but it couldn't just stay there. There actually has to be a physical manifestation of that. Which was actually going to see a therapist, and I would say in the first few months of visiting a therapist, there was probably less result and change by what happened in the actual therapy as what it took for me to take the step each time to follow through and actually do it.
Speaker 3:The act caused a change in the mental, and that's a theme that came out of our book that we didn't intend. There was sort of a concept going into it out of a place of desperation of can we do things in the physical world that will affect our mental and our spiritual, and I want to do research on that right now. I'm calling it the build it and they will come theory, which maybe it already exists, but I had this as we are our home. One of the things that happened leading up to us writing the book was our family home flooded, our forever home. When I say flooded, not just water came in, destroyed the house is uninhabitable.
Speaker 3:And the home represents so many things to us. It's our memories there, our future memories to happen. And I remember looking at Ron and I were together and I looked at this destruction and just looked up and said, okay, god, if you, if we'll take on rebuilding the foundation of this home, will you take on the rebuilding the foundation of our lives? And that sparked an idea of if we're trying to achieve something, if we're trying to move to a different place in our lives, is there a benefit of walking it out in the physical, before you even get there it's in. I know there's probably some self-help books on the concept. If you want to be a successful real estate agent, start dressing the part and acting it out. We're taking this to the extreme in our lives right now and we put that into the book. If you're trying to achieve this goal which is really hard to do without spoilers.
Speaker 3:So please read the book and after you read the book, come back and watch this. And then you're like, aha, If you're trying to achieve set goal and traditionally the way to get there would be through these steps what if we took a wild leap of faith and did it in this step Like this is in the book? If you're struggling having a child, and did it in this step like this is in the book. If you're struggling having a child, what if you actually built a nursery? What would that do to you? It could really mess you up if you never had a child.
Speaker 3:But it could put you in a space, even physically. It could put you in a space of of belief, to where maybe the actual cells in your body would start changing because of what your brain is putting your space in, because and that that would be a good chance for Ron to talk about power of words. The I think something about acting out.
Speaker 2:The physical affects our brain and I'd love to hear from you if there's any reality to that or if this isn't our fiction there's a lot of reality to that, and what I call it, when people are on the couch, is this idea we're going to go to the edge of the cliff and we're going to look over and we're going to grieve that which we're afraid of. Because that which we're afraid of we tend to set our sights on and we don't move from. I have seen people who a friend of mine that I used to run with is. He is a fertility doctor, he's a fertility specialist and he sent me a few people that he said there's, physically, we don't know what's going on. Could you walk through the pains and the hurts? And as soon as these precious souls came to the place where they could grieve the fact that they may not be able to create that nursery, they were pregnant.
Speaker 2:Now, does that happen for everybody? I'm going to say unequivocally no, it doesn't. But is there some truth to what you guys are proposing? And I say the answer is yes, and I think what we're pulling apart here is the idea and I don't want to get too steep down into this, but is the idea that Gnosticism, which separates the metaphysical from the physical, but you're talking about reorienting them, which I think there's a whole lot of truth and evidence for that, and I'll leave it at that because I don't want to get too deep into the have seen to be true in my work on the couch.
Speaker 2:And so, going beyond the couch, here we are and you guys are writing it in a story again which is using that artistic craft that really I hope. Well, I will tell you that I'm glad we're doing this now, since the book's out, that people have had experience with it in my world where we've actually had discussions about it. We are doing a group right now in our practice where the therapists are walking through the book and we're walking through what we see in it and what it's bringing up for us, and I have different people that I treat that have read the book and we're walking through their experience with it. Just last night with a precious soul who went through the book and it brought up a lot of hurt and pain but allowed them to talk about some things that they hadn't talked about before, because it sparked memories and it's bringing all of that stuff back together for them because they're seeing it out there.
Speaker 3:And you know, yeah, thank you for writing this book like truthfully from my odd thing to hear, because I feel like we had no, no choice yeah, we felt compelled yeah, and I get that.
Speaker 2:So you guys didn't come from the, the, the uh writing world, you came from the music world and music and audio has played a a big well. Music has played a big part of y'all's lives. So I have, I know that music has played a part of caretaker, and so I have one question that I my. One of my absolute most favorite songs on the planet, probably my favorite artist, is the one and only Phil Collins. Can we all just have a moment for big we all agree.
Speaker 2:Love me some. Phil Collins, Not one of my absolute favorite songs of of Mr Collins. We'll call him with great reverence.
Speaker 5:Is he?
Speaker 2:here tonight that made it to the book. Can you give us a just a quick overview as to why?
Speaker 5:Yeah. So this takes us back to, um, when I was homeschooling the kids. So, um, we weren't on the road like 24 seven with Jason all the all the time, um, but we had this family rule that we would never go more than three weeks without seeing dad.
Speaker 5:And so, um, when we weren't thank you it's, uh, you know, being in the music business, being in the touring business, um it, like jason mentioned earlier, it's families are not encouraged. I think musicians love to live their double lives and Jason just didn't approach it that way. So I feel very blessed and honored that I had a husband who thought ahead and thought how do we make this work? And we both wanted Jason to be able to keep doing what he does, because he does it phenomenally. But how do we make it work for both of us? So that was the rule that we came up with and it worked. We're not a perfect family.
Speaker 3:There were still some flaws, but whatever, and it's so rare in the music industry. I'd already been on the road for 10 years when I was approached by Kelly Clarkson to become her music director and at that time I'd been traveling less, I'd been home for maybe about a year and a half and Ron and I discussed it and we just said I can't do it unless my family can be out with me every two to three weeks and went back to Kelly with that and she said yes, and for 20 years has upheld that and that is so rare in the music industry.
Speaker 5:Yeah, absolutely. We had her blessing and she made accommodations, which cost her money, to allow three more people to be out on the road, and it wasn't just us, it was other musicians, families were also invited, and we would almost like have to have a schedule of let's make sure the Halberds and the so-and-sos aren't on at the same time. You know so, we all had to talk about it, but, but anyway, what aren't on at the same time? You know so, we all had to talk about it, but, um, but anyway. Um, what I was getting to is um, when we're not on the road, I did homeschool the kids and um, this we have a really particular, like very sweet memory of um Jason would come home and we had this kitchen that had a computer and a monitor on the cabinet, and you know, the heart of the home is the kitchen, so I'm always in there cooking, making snacks, whatever, and Jason would come in and he would talk to the kids about the latest song he heard or have you heard this band?
Speaker 5:And so it would end up we jumped and called it Music 101 as part of homeschooling, and there's this sweet memory that I will never forget of Jason going down the rabbit hole of all things, phil Collins, because you should. And if you're not aware, there is this memorable lives in infamy performance of Phil Collins at Farm Aid oh sorry, live Aid. And he did In the Air Tonight by starting off sitting down on the stage, feet dangling, and he's just swinging them back and forth and it's the most intimate moment with the largest crowd in the world. I don't know how he did it, but he did it and it was so powerful.
Speaker 5:So anyway, Jason wanted to share this with the kids and, um, I know for a fact that that is what imparted, like literally dropped seeds of musicality into my kids that day, and they both are musicians. Um, they still talk about that day because, all things Phil Collins, how can you go wrong? Right? But that was such a sweet memory and he's such a powerful musician, he's an incredible songwriter and it meant so much to us that, of course, we have to incorporate bits of us in different songs and that one just has a very, very sweet memory for us.
Speaker 3:And we decided to incorporate songs, actually to help further the story. It's a way our family communicates. It's not the best way to do it all the time, but a lot of times if a picture can say a thousand words, the song can say a million. So a lot of times as a family we communicate to each other through songs. Even just this morning, rhonda sent him a new song to the family that conveys an emotion she's been feeling and it's a way to add more context to what we're already verbally talking about. And so in the book to me it seemed obvious we could build up suspense in these scenes or an emotion by adding lyrics to a song. And it turns out you're not supposed to do that in the publishing world. Everybody was can't do that and we're like why can't?
Speaker 3:we do that because you can't do that, so why do I want to do that? So we reached out to these songwriters and the publishing companies, and we actually got permission to incorporate these into, into our work, which has been amazing which kind of stunned the publishing world.
Speaker 5:Um, everybody keeps telling us how to, or they keep coming to say how did you that, how'd you do that? And that felt very normal for us because we come from licensing. Jason has to license music all the time on the TV show. So that wasn't, that wasn't the hard part.
Speaker 2:So that don't. Don't ever hold back on your dream Right, envision it and see it all the way through, which brings us to um one other side of the audio world. So you guys are.
Speaker 3:you guys have an audio version of the book correct, yes, and in keeping with the Harvard 110%, we decided to go all the way with them. Uh, I, actually I don't listen to audio books. I've never listened to an audio book in my life. I'm a tangible book reader and we started doing research for this and I started listening to a few audio books and it was a narrator reading all the voices. And, sorry, my parents did not read books to me as a child and so I'm not used to the one voice reading everything, and the voices in my head the healthy ones reading books are way different. So, long story short, we decided to put together a full cast, so each voice is narrated by a different actor and we've had sound effects. We have a custom score. It's truly going to be an immersive audio experience.
Speaker 3:So, uh, it's we're. We're in the process of finishing, we've recorded all of our actors, we're working on music and sport right now, and I'm really excited about that. That's so fantastic.
Speaker 2:I I've heard you say in the past, in the past, that it's uh. Or I have heard you say that it is like a, an old radio program. I heard you say that I mean, I've heard you guys talk about this and what all is going into it and all the really exciting expectations, but when I thought, when I thought of it from that perspective, I was like I'm even more excited for it because I'm the guy who loves the audio book and so for me, this is, this is like.
Speaker 2:This is like Christmas buildup for me, so I'm really excited for when this thing launches.
Speaker 3:I've been excited hearing it back. It's it's an entirely. Rhonda recorded most of the actors. She was flying around because I was at work and we work on the script and she would go out and actually work with them.
Speaker 4:And again another layer of surprise.
Speaker 3:So back to the flashback story. So it's one thing to know what your story is, another thing to see somebody flesh out words and read that back. Completely different experience hearing an actual actor put the emotion Cause cause, the narrator voice in my head, read it much more stoically. And so to hear motion put into some of these scenes whole different level of because, honestly, I didn't think an audiobook was even necessary. Now I get it. It's a whole different experience, which then brings validation to my dream, our dream that we want to take this to a tv series. Because, again, so if you can have a story, if the audiobook is adding that much more, now let's add a TV series. Because, again, so, if you can have the story, if the audio book is adding that much more, now let's add a visual to it. I think it's going to be very impactful and I don't say that in an arrogant way because we are just as surprised, but it's having an impact on us.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So certainly if it's impacting us and the things I'm feeling and getting out of the story if that can just reach a few other people, it would be amazing.
Speaker 5:Yeah, uh, for me, for me being thrust into jason's position of becoming a producer. That was wild, never done that before, had a blast. But I have to go back now and retract. I lied. I still cry because because recording Amy Grant reading the part of the mother Liana messed me up and I had to have tissues and thankfully she's such a sweet and gracious woman she hugged me afterwards. I think she realized I was so messed up listening to Michael Shanks read the part of Ian Keane, the father, and going through that scene that Jason talked about earlier, oh, so intense, like my heart's racing and I feel my body getting stiff and so I still react to the story. But, like Jason said, those actors like there's a reason they're actors.
Speaker 5:There's a reason they get paid for that.
Speaker 2:Right, Well, just imagine. Maybe don't imagine it too well, but imagine what it's going to be like when it's on the silver screen.
Speaker 5:Oh yeah, yeah, that first episode.
Speaker 2:I will be a mess again the book truly, truly has already not only changed y'all's lives and this is why I don't think it's arrogant for you to say the impact right, because it's already impacted you all, it's already impacted me, it's already impacted those people that I work with, so the impact is very real. That's factual. You guys created this society and I'm super intrigued by this the Ouroboros Society. I'd love for you guys to tell us more about this society, but before you guys talk about it, I wanted to read y'all a quote. The quote is trauma is a time traveler, an Ouroboros that reaches back and devours everything that came before. Y'all heard that quote before.
Speaker 2:No, I'm going to say it again Trauma is a time traveler, an Ouroboros that reaches back and devours everything that came before. Wow, this, the author of that quote is a guy named Junot Diaz and, just as an interesting little fact for you guys, um, he's a professor of creative writing at MIT in Boston.
Speaker 5:Stop it, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:I know Boston has, uh, a really sweet meaning in y'all's world, um so but again, this is an example of no intent, no understanding.
Speaker 5:And there's another piece of the puzzle that's wild to me we had our own definition of our Ouroboros society and the drawing and implementing that into the story, and actually Jason has an interpretation that's different than even my own interpretation, and I think that's the beauty of that kind of symbol is there's multiple layers to it.
Speaker 3:Um, so and it keeps coming back to us and even working with some of the actors, we're learning things about the oraboros even in other religions and over time, it's, it's, it has a thematic symbol throughout humanity that has taken on many forms and I love that concept from that quote, which we didn't know we didn't know again that.
Speaker 5:okay, so little insight. The drawing on the front of the book, um, came in a dream for me and I have a niece that is this incredible artist, and I called her up and just said, hey, can you help me out? I've've got this vision and all I could do cause I'm not an artist at all All I could do was find clippings online to say, can you take a piece of this and a piece of this? And I kind of want it to look like this. And so there was several images that I just kind of threw at her and, um, she came up with the root concept. Now our book designer took a little bit of leeway of changing it a little bit more, but, um, my niece and I were the ones that designed that, but it came from a dream, it was an inspiration and I'm there was an intent and a point to it and it actually tells a lot of the storyline. So I have to be careful of what what say that it means.
Speaker 5:But yeah, that's what blows my mind is a lot of this was just sort of unintentional or came to us, or a download, or however you want to put it intentional, because I think that you all, in your 110%, have great intention.
Speaker 2:It's just been inspired. Yes, that sounds better there. So so tell us about this society, this Ouroboros society. It's in the, it's in the process of expanding right now as we speak.
Speaker 3:That that comes back to something else you said earlier the concept of community. Ironically, when writing this book we were probably in the least amount of community we've been in in a while. Because of when you're going through trauma. I'm assuming it's a natural human nature, because we did it to withdraw and to separate from community. I don't know the science behind it, but in my mind I imagine when a dog's dying and it leaves and goes off, doesn't want to burden everyone else with what's happening and then in the book, unintentionally as a plot point, community becomes a very important aspect of this family's journey, which is something that we've experienced our life
Speaker 3:life.
Speaker 1:That's on the broad grand scale.
Speaker 3:On the smaller scale, as readers of books and TV series, I enjoy community. One of my favorite TV shows of all time was Lost. It highly influenced this book. The show came on once a week but I was that guy that was on the message boards and on the forums interacting. There was a whole community that came with it, the TV show Survivor, which I still watch it. I have as much fun with the community that goes with it and it was very important to me that we have a community around this which we're still building out the forum. So we started with a small community of about 50 people called the Ouroboros Society and you could apply and you could join and it was just sort of a book club discussion point where we could bounce ideas back and forth off of each other, get insight from them. They get to hear what we were thinking in the process. And now we're expanding that community and we're setting up forums online.
Speaker 4:We want to take this journey with people.
Speaker 3:Whatever bits of knowledge we've gained, we want to help people in their journey. And I want to be very clear we are not on the other side of this trauma. Even even since we've finished the book, there's been new circumstances in our life that actually eclipsed some of the other things, but had we not been through this process, we would not have been as equipped to handle that. So for us it's important to talk about. I want to be able to discuss with community our trauma in that moment, not from a vantage point of having figured it out and gone through it and solved it, but from a place of hope where we can share stories we have gone through and what we're trying to apply right now as we continue to go through it. So yeah, community, we're gonna have a big community come join us, we're really talking.
Speaker 2:We hear more from other people but I think you're talking is so great. I I think that you you are touching on some really, really critical things we do. Trauma causes a rupture and ruptures disconnect. And a great author was caught on. He's an author of I call him Dr Glenn, but I can't pronounce his last name but he was caught on a personal level and somebody asked him what do you believe heals trauma? And he said love. That was his answer and I thought that that was brilliant. I had all the respect in the world for the guy at that moment. I mean, I already had respect for him, but my respect grew, you know, as the Grinch says, by two. But it was. That's accurate.
Speaker 2:And where do we get? Love is in relationship, and one thing that you all have said is that you know talking about intimacy and you know wanting to have this community. One of the things that I want to make sure I toss out here for all of our sake, for us, for the listeners, for everybody's sake Love is unconditional. Love can be unconditional. Intimacy, by nature of its definition, can never be unconditional. Love can be unconditional. Intimacy, by nature of its definition, can never be unconditional, because intimacy rises and falls on trust, trust and sacredness and security. So as you guys walk through, you know, as we all walk through, community love can be unconditional. Intimacy never can be, and I just I love what you guys are putting out there in this Ouroboros society to this society whether you're on social media or not, has been, I think, is a really, really neat, beautiful opportunity for people to become involved in this. As you go through the forum, there's all kinds of topics or themes that you get to interact with.
Speaker 3:And it was important for me to build this outside of social media, because I'm actually either showing my age or creating something fun. I find that Instagram and Facebook, TikTok especially, is not a good platform for two-way dialogue. I'm always consuming and, yes, I understand you can look at comments, but on my phone it's a full screen of a video. It's an effort to interact on the comments. So the Ouroboros Society forum we built it's old school web-based forum. You go to your browser and you can interact in some of these topics.
Speaker 2:I love that and I really want to encourage people go be a part of this, because some of the topics that you all have, um and is it right to call them topics or are, um, I don't know, uh, themes or how would you topics works okay. Some of these topics I think are super intriguing, like, um, the metaphysical realm. Uh, has anybody had any dreams that are that? What did you say? It's not shared dreams? Yeah, like these are. This is an opportunity for everybody to really kind of tap into this different side of themselves.
Speaker 3:I think that they get to do this with other people yeah, we just brought up some ideas that came as a part of the storyline in the book and we actually don't know the answers to these things.
Speaker 3:It's literally a discussion we have an example of a shared dream sequence in the book that was inspired on some real life events, and my assumption is, as we're learning inadvertently, some of the things we've exposed in this book turns out that there are some truths behind it. I'm just posing the question has anyone else had some of these experiences? If so, is there a truth behind it? Is it spiritual, Is it neurological, Is it community cell-based? Those are the type of discussions that I find fun to pursue.
Speaker 5:Those are the type of discussions that I find fun to pursue. I think this brings me to like. The conclusion of like. What we want to draw from this book is we want those questions to come up. Naturally, we want people to talk about it, and I know we're all just dancing around this word journey, but go on the journey with us and let's ask these questions, because we don't have all the answers, but we're stumbling on something that's really fascinating and I don't want to be afraid to ask the questions.
Speaker 5:And just a little cute thing that I've been doing lately when people ask for a signed book, at the very bottom I write listen to the whispers. My hope is is that this book causes you to start listening, and I want you to take a moment and listen to those whispers. We address it in the book and we allow it, and I lean on that. I'm listening. I don't know where some of this stuff is coming from, other than the ultimate creator of this earth has created everything within beauty and power and knowledge and wisdom and truth, and that's what I'm trying to tap into. And so if I quiet my mind and I listen, I will hear. And so that's the challenge of the whole book is. Will you go there? Will you give it a try?
Speaker 3:Exploring these questions for me. We come at it from unique vantage points. But Rhonda is way more comfortable in the supernatural than I've been and I've really been focusing on this word recently. I just sent her a definition of it yesterday and I I'm I'm at the point now I want to kind of normalize the supernatural, because what's the opposite of supernatural? It's the natural. How's the natural been working? For me it hasn't been.
Speaker 3:That's part of this. There has to be, because a lot of times the natural is, is, is consensus, the natural is consensus, the natural way. And I'm not talking nature when I say natural, I'm talking about the normalized approach to a problem. So if you've been diagnosed with something and the normalized approach to it is to do A, B and C, that might be working for some people. But there might be a supernatural way to deal with that same thing. Or you maybe call that holistic. So I'm exploring that in every area, and this book does that, as can we. There might be a supernatural way to deal with that same thing. Or you maybe call that holistic curves. So I'm exploring that in every area, and this book does that, as can we with some of these topics. Can we discuss things outside of what has just become the normalized natural, and what's lying beyond that, and that's what I'm interested in exploring, Yep.
Speaker 2:That requires a moment, what you both just said, for people to just soak that in, because that's the heart and soul in my mind behind this whole discussion. It's can we create space to take a journey that we might evaluate what we've been taught, the history, that what we've been taught has been brought down through emotions, through cells, through DNA, through we. We have this from our past and from generations prior, this theme that goes through our lives, and do we ever stop to pay attention, to ask why? I remember being told a story about this lady who always cut her ham in half at Christmas, always. And then she asked her mom. Mom, she got curious. She got curious and she said mom, why don't we cut our ham in half at Christmas? She said, well, that's how you do it.
Speaker 2:She started thinking, and there there was a point in time where three generations were still living. And so she got really curious and she asked her very aging mother mom, why have we always cut our ham in half at Christmas? She said, oh, baby, because growing up my stove, my oven, was really small and you could only fit half of it in there, and she was like oh, I thought there was like some really grandiose reason. She was like no, just growing up, the ovens were really small. She used that as a way, as the daughter used that as a moment between her and her mother. That was really beautiful to start saying wait, I'm thinking about having children and I want to think about openly with you.
Speaker 2:Why did we do things the way we did? And was it and I don't want to pull out the word right and wrong but was it effective and ineffective? And it was such a moment for them to have an experience. You know, we talked about the whole idea of bottom up work it's what we call it in our world is that you start with the base of the brain and you move forward, as opposed to starting with the prefrontal cortex and you move back. That it was an experience that really changed several generations of a family, just because she got curious and asked the question why do we cut the ham in half at Christmas?
Speaker 2:And you guys have slowed down. You've slowed down. Well, maybe not, but maybe you've sped up, but you've written this I'm going to say it masterpiece that has been divinely inspired, but is slowing down to ask the question why do we do this? Now, I get that it's not fully asking that. It's entertaining, it's a beautiful story, but you're using the medium of the arts to get people for y'all even to slow down and ask the question wait, why did we do that?
Speaker 3:I think that is what we're exploring right now brings it all together. I'm being haunted right now by the quote about the Ouroboros, because that is a truth in our lives that we don't want to be a truth, our trauma, some of the things that have happened in the last three years have erased goodness of the previous however many years and, in reality, that they're both sitting equal.
Speaker 3:That goodness did happen and this horror is happening, but the ouroboros of trauma goes back and eats it, and I find it not a coincidence that we come to you with the word restoration above your head. How do you, how do you restore what the trauma has eaten? And when you're talking about trauma from a cellular level, so you're talking about the ham thing. At an even deeper level, our natural responses to things, a good portion of those, are programmed by our cells of DNA that have been formed by a trauma before. So even my response right now, to my natural response to something, is informed by something that I didn't even experience three generations ago.
Speaker 3:That has set into motion events in my life, and this is where we're at in the book right now, exploring things. We've hinted at it and I can't wait to unpack that because Marshall is he's the caretaker in the book. He has had very natural reactions to trauma in his life and in doing what you and I and everybody I know would do in the exact same situation of a trauma he's faced, that very response sets into motion events that actually creates more trauma and hurts the very things that he's trying to save, which is why I'm looking to what is the unnatural way when I say that, what is the unprogrammed way of responding and that, ultimately, the entire arc of this story is about how do we restore what the trauma has eaten and not be a part of that cycle of then passing that same trauma on to the next generation.
Speaker 5:It is ultimately about breaking generational curses. A lot of that's not necessarily addressed in book one, but by the time you get down to the third book, you're going to see this whole thread of breaking generational curses and I I believe we have the ability challenge me on it, cause I feel like I've experienced it. I wish people believed in the supernatural more than we do. I think our Western culture has tried to erase it out of modern day culture and I think the Eastern cultures, the Middle Eastern cultures, they all have such a deep, deep history that it's actually a part of their DNA. They actually believe it, as if breathing was just as easy. So our Western culture, we don't.
Speaker 5:That is something that we have to challenge people to believe, or you have to be thrust into the experience before you believe. So for us, this is like oh okay, well, we actually both come from the thought of supernatural, from different experiences. I experienced it in a good way, he experienced it in a bad way, but it both gave us a place of believing it's real. So we just feel like that there's got to be more people out there, and even those that aren't looking for something different. I challenge you. I challenge you to look for something different because it exists. I'm saying that definitively. It exists and we have an opportunity to dive into the supernatural and change our lives and change our generations and change our future. And it actually works and there's actual scientific proof exciting time for me is that we can.
Speaker 3:We can agree that we're in a fascinating time right now, where science is able to start looking into the actual mechanics of what we would have called supernatural and so like. Even just the word curse turns off some people because a generational curse what is that? A voodoo person with a chicken doing a thing on somebody? Or is that a hex? You know like no, it's the idea of a curse. You look through the lens of science and now we can say no, your actual dna changed as a result of these things and that is being passed down, which from the outside would look like oh, that family must be cursed. There's some reality to how that those mechanisms work, and we're discovering that with their studies on how prayer works, and so we can come at it calling it different things, and I think we're in agreement.
Speaker 3:There's there's a reality to it um that, whether you're from the more supernatural point of view or an exciting time where there's actually some things that line up right with that, that you can pursue, science, science yeah well, and what's so beautiful is that the you guys are represent in the two of you such a really cool blend.
Speaker 2:You know, jason, you being from the science, that let's, let's look at what are the facts when, where can I tangibly see it? And, rhonda, you're, you tend to embrace more of that spiritual piece of it where it's like you know what, I believe it. Even when I can't see it, I, I can experience it. But the beauty is is that that has not pulled you apart. If anything it's. It seems like it has really blended you guys together where, jason, you're more open to that uh journey and you know you're more you're open to that journey of science and it's it's blending that internal.
Speaker 3:I think the question for me has been that it's neither 100% view is completely healthy for me to. For me to need everything to have a scientific basis is not healthy, because it's becoming clear all the time that some things are unexplained eventually are being explained, so it's opening my mind to being open to those things without needing an actual thing every single time to back it up. The same thing living 100% supernatural and having no earthly grounding- that can be unhealthy in itself. So I think we've kind of pulled together into a nice medium.
Speaker 5:Well, I think the book actually reflects that as well. That shows you how 50-50 contribution it truly was of the things that I put in and the things that Jason put in. They're from two different perspectives, but hopefully we've blended them to where they actually complement each other and and bond each other and and create something that's trustworthy and true. Um, because that's who we are.
Speaker 2:We're so different there's 110 right there. It's that. I love that. Well, you guys have, uh, really taken us on a twisting, winding, beautiful journey today and I so appreciate your willingness to be open, to be vulnerable, to give it the Halbert 110. And I just want to encourage people go pick up the book. You can see there's the book right there. You can see there's the book right there. Go pick up the book. It's the first of three and the others will come out soon, but this story is truly the beginning of an arc of healing, of true restoration and being being that. This is restoration beyond the couch. This truly is beyond the couch. This truly is.
Speaker 2:I've always I've said a number of times that this is like group therapy in a book. You get to see people twist and turn and do windy, beautiful things, and so I encourage everybody go pick up the book. I also want to encourage all of our listeners go be part of the Ouroboros Society. That is such a unique and wonderful thing that you guys are offering out there and I just don't think that we experience enough community in our world. And just as Dr Glenn did say, what heals trauma? Love. How does love happen? It has to happen through relationship, so it will be a part of the Ouroboros Society. That is the Ouroboros, the front cover. For those of you who are listening and not watching, the front cover is the Ouroboros. For those of you who are listening and not watching, the front cover is the Ouroboros. So, jason Rhonda, rj Halbert, thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having us. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 5:If anybody needs to find the Ouroboros Society or how to get in touch with us, you can find us on all socials rjhalbertcom you can start there. You can find RJ Halbert on Instagram and Facebook and all of that. Leave us your email and we send out emails about the Ouroboros Society. So if you really want to be a part of that, you can sign up for it at rjhalbertcom and you can find your books online anywhere. Any bookstore like it's in all outlets now. So thank goodness.
Speaker 2:Yes, and stay tuned for the audio version of the book. Yes, I should say the audio production of the book.
Speaker 5:We've been saying audio experience.
Speaker 2:Stay tuned for the audio experience coming soon. All right, thanks, guys.
Speaker 4:If you found value in our discussion and wish to uncover more about the fascinating world of mental wellness, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. Stay tuned for our upcoming episodes, where Dr Long will continue to delve into empowering therapies and strategies for mental wellness. Your journey to understanding and embracing mental health is just beginning and we're excited to have you with us every step of the way. Until next time, keep exploring, keep growing and remember to celebrate restored freedom as you uncover it.
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