Restoration Beyond the Couch

Greater Than Gravity: Rising Above the Weight of Childhood Trauma

• Dr. Lee Long

Share episode

Send us a text

In this episode of Restoration Beyond the Couch, Dr. Lee Long is joined by Michael Menard to explore the lasting impact of childhood trauma and the journey toward healing. Michael shares his personal story and the wisdom he’s gained through years of growth and reflection. Together, they offer insight into how early experiences shape us and how it's possible to rise above the weight they leave behind.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Restoration Beyond the Couch. I'm Dr Lee Long and in this episode I'm joined by Michael Menard, author, speaker and advocate for childhood trauma awareness. Michael's latest book, greater Than Gravity, brings awareness to the impacts of trauma. His first book, the Kite that Couldn't Fly, tells the story of his own journey through trauma and resilience. In this episode we talk about his mission to reduce the impact of childhood trauma for future generations. Together we explore the lasting effects of early adversity and how hope, healing and prevention can shape healthier lives. Your path to mental wellness starts here. Well, welcome, mike Menard, to Restoration Beyond the Couch. It's so great to have you back on and, honestly, just to see you again. Thank you, lee. Yeah, you came on the first time to talk about your first book that sits over your right shoulder there. Yes, the kite that couldn't fly and other May Avenue stories. Yeah, gosh, what a what a work of art, what a fantastic book. Thank you, I mean you to catch people up. What was the inspiration for for that book?

Speaker 2:

So it's. So. It's been a the whole thing has been a wild journey, lee, and you've been with me most of this time, but I'm the second oldest of 14 children had a wild, a wild childhood, I think, a beautiful childhood. I think a beautiful childhood. And in my later years I found myself giving kind of a stand-up routine of the May Avenue stories, which were the most interesting, most entertaining, but I shied away from any that were dark. And then my wife Emily said hey, you've been threatening to write that May Avenue book for 40 years, why don't you do it? So I buckled down and did it and got my siblings together to agree on the content and the stories and make sure my memory was correct.

Speaker 1:

There's a lot of wisdom there.

Speaker 2:

A lot, a lot, a lot, and it began a very beautiful journey for my siblings and I because we, we, we were close going into the writing of this book. But this whole process and the learning and the conversation, which is very healing in itself, yeah, um changed the relationship and and is really helping, I guess, all of. But they decided they wanted the stories that we didn't talk about published in the book to tell the true story. So there's the good, the bad and the ugly, and so I did that and I wrote the book and while I was in the writing of the book, I found you and.

Speaker 2:

I found a small group of mental health experts who I was sharing this with and looking for some wisdom that I could maybe pass on to the readers so that there's some teaching that went on. And through that process I started digging deep into my life and talking to you and other psychologists, psychiatrists, anthropologists and when they read the manuscript they said, hey, you know, this is very serious stuff. This wasn't just a wild, strange childhood, this was complex childhood trauma and I knew nothing about that, never heard that word before, never thought of my family as having experienced childhood trauma. But it was a real stark awakening as I got into the data. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

What's so interesting about what you've said thus far is is we don't conceptualize often I shouldn't say all the time, but often we don't conceptualize the things we've been through as traumatic, because it's just what we knew. My siblings is 25 years older than me, I have another one that's 20 years older than me, and I have another one that's 11 years older than me, and people would ask me is that strange for you? And I would say, I guess I don't know that any different, though, and it's until we have the context of community that we start to understand oh, this might be unique and this might not have been okay, and that's when that starts to, I guess, surface, and that's what it sounds like.

Speaker 2:

It's been. It's just. I don't know what term to use other than mind-blowing. What?

Speaker 2:

you're saying is exactly right had, um, I lost two brothers to heroin addiction and just thought, well, you know there's a high percentage of this problem in our country. So, you know, sad, but but it happens. Um, I had a. I had a brother-in-law who I knew through through 50 years of of you know relationships my sister's husband and he would tell his stories about his childhood trauma and they were horrible, much worse than they had been, and he would just say, hey, we all had it tough, we just have to be good people.

Speaker 1:

He ended up dying by suicide.

Speaker 2:

And this was in the middle of me writing this book. So all these things are converging. And when they did his autopsy they said he was 60 years old. They said his brain looked like a man of 120 years old. It was gray and shrunken and he had four mental disabilities, three metabolic. That just kept coming. So putting these pieces together and realizing whoa, and as I dug deeper.

Speaker 2:

I was documenting all this and just going through massive interviews and research and found that well, decided that I wasn't going to make the Kite that Couldn't Fly a self-help book because I wasn't qualified.

Speaker 2:

So I just kept all that and published the book with a lump in my throat knowing, realizing what I found through that research was that my family, the 14, is a fair representation of society and that the data now shows that 70% of all adults walking around in the United States, and I would say the world, have experienced at least one ACE or one type of childhood trauma. And you know, you know the classic there's 10 types.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

And that's an adverse childhood experience.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's right. That's exactly right.

Speaker 2:

So a very I found about 2% of the of the U S understands even what ACE is. They had no idea. So I found 70% of us are crippled by it. I found that if you have six or more ACEs, you will die 20 years too soon, and that's a fact. That's not supposition. That's not saying the sky is falling it is true.

Speaker 1:

And a whole bunch of other stats about alcoholism and so on. And just to take some of the because you're exactly right, those are facts. To take some of that sensationalized potential, sensationalized thinking off of that is part of the reason why and when you're talking about metabolic dysfunction that was found in your brother-in-law, it's this. When we live in stress, it attack or it hits our immune system. Therefore, our immune system begins to decrease a bit. It increases cortisol, increases our insulin production, because when you're, when you are in fight or flight, you either need to have the insulin ready in your muscles to make them go to fight or you need to have that ready to to flight. And so there are in these internal mechanisms that make sense that we were designed this way for the purpose of survival. Yeah, when the, when the stress and the trauma and the angst and the anxiety is metaphysical or it's emotional and we can't fight anything, we don't need to utilize all of that.

Speaker 2:

It stays in our body and it takes a toll on our physicality and at least so few people understand that and know that and they don't understand why they feel the way they feel. And it's part of this research which ends up as part of the next book which we'll get to. But I found two shocking which I found what you just described, but I discovered that as a layperson not as a doctor.

Speaker 2:

And it is. You know, when a child experiences this type of trauma, everything changes. Everything changes. The architecture of the development of their brain changes, so the pleasure centers are disrupted. So that's why we have so much addiction. And another just shocking revelation from a book called Brain Energy by Dr Palmer. He's proven that those who experience trauma, it manifests itself into mental disorders, depression, anxiety and so on. Those disorders at the cellular level create pathways for biological diseases. So it's like you're just screwed. I mean, you're going to have mental illness. You're going to have. If you have a mental illness, you have an 87% probability of developing a second mental illness just manifesting itself from the first Right.

Speaker 1:

It's a waterfall.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a downward spiral that so many people are falling victim to that. You know, I see every stat, I see every health indicator now Extreme. Very differently, yeah, very differently. Yeah, we used to. I used to think it was just bad choices on some people's parts, but that's not it at all. So I, you know, on some people's parts, but that's not it at all.

Speaker 2:

So I put that book out, not expecting anything, but it's had a transformational response, and what I'm hearing more than anything is thank you for sharing. And now, for the first time in my life, I don't feel alone. Yeah, so it's. All of these things are coming in Lee, into the center of the hub called childhood trauma that are manifesting, and those who experience childhood trauma almost always find ways to isolate themselves because of the shame, because of the hurt. And we're built, you know, we're built to be relational. That's how God made us, that's right. But the minute you lose that community or talking to someone who cares, everything gets worse, everything gets worse. So it's something that a snowball that rolls very quickly down, that causes destruction and devastation.

Speaker 1:

It really is, which you know and spoiler alert there are ways in which you can heal your body. There are ways in which, if you experience trauma, if you seek help, if you seek connection, if you there are, there are bridges and ladders and pathways out of those the depths of despair there. So that you know, I've seen, I've seen folks, you know, I've been doing this for over almost three decades now and I've I've been in the, the, the mental health field, and I've seen so many people go through so much heartache and pain and I've seen them come through it and I've seen them resolve their, their physical issues. And, yes, there's always going to be a scar there. There's always going to be a scar there. There will always be a scar, yet that scar does not have to dominate your life.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think that's what you are saying, that you and your siblings are finding we, after the publishing of the book or during that process, we started to talk to people like you like to talk to Dr Chiraldi. I had this small group of people who have come to my side and helped guide this writing and this exploration. But I had one brother who has been suffering from depression, anxiety, anger and he got the worst of the trauma in our family. He got the worst and it's all covered in the book, but he um through the years he would regularly say to the brothers hey, let's, it's dad's birthday, let's go piss on his grave.

Speaker 2:

And just with anger, and I, you and we'd laugh it off. Of course we would never do that, but it just showed. And when I started doing this research and understood for the first time his pain and where it was coming from and what was happening to his body, right, you know, we all rallied around him and said, hey, here's what we found. Another brother, my oldest brother, was suffering from anxiety and depression for 30 years.

Speaker 2:

The research in the book for the Greater Than Gravity book, looking at those healing interventions that you have shared, you know we've talked at length about he decided to seek help and within seven sessions, employing EMDR, it was all gone and he had been. He tried every drug, every therapy and is a man of deep faith and has been trying to pray that away. But he didn't understand. And so, lee, the tragedy in my mind is, you know, the good news is there's a hope of healing. There is the hope of healing and it looks like. You know, I believe it's very possible. But the majority of the people I don't know how many, but I'm going to find out the majority of people who are suffering never make that connection that there's something they can do they?

Speaker 2:

live in quiet desperation. They have bad thoughts, they have eating disorders, they have marital issues. They have no idea of where it came from, so, therefore, they won't seek seek help. And you and I talked about your personal, your organization's backlog of people needing help, particularly from childhood trauma, and you said once that if we are successful in raising the awareness that we need to raise in this country, that there will be a flood that you, as therapists, could never handle.

Speaker 1:

So we need to find ways.

Speaker 2:

This is the journey. We need to find ways for a certain percentage of those who might achieve awareness and healing without the need of having a face-to-face.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

But understanding. When it comes to the point and you actually remember, lee, we drew out on a board the levels of disorders at which point knowledge and reading and a self-help book is not going to help. They need interventions and we need to find a way to get that intervention. And I've been hearing from just to tell you a very quick story a lady knocked on the door and I had my book in my hand.

Speaker 2:

I was walking out and she was trying to sell me pest control Young, energetic, beautiful young woman. And she said what's the book? What's the book? I said, oh yeah, I'm on a journey here and I just told her you know 30 seconds of, and she started weeping she's 23.

Speaker 2:

And I said hey, let's sit down, let's not talk about the bugs. What chord did I strike? And she's 23, as I said, and she said she was sexually molested by her older brother and she doesn't know what to do and it's affecting her and she believes she cannot talk to her parents about it and she knows she needs therapy but she doesn't have the money. She's saving up at 23 to find someone who could heal and so it's just everywhere. It's just everywhere. It's just everywhere.

Speaker 2:

So you know, we've talked about our responsibility, that when we open someone up, unzip them. They use the word unzip to let their heart show, right, that if we do that and not bring some remedy or healing to them, then we're being negligent. And I don't want to put myself in the category of a healer, but I can be, as you've reminded me. You actually brought the thought into my mind that I don't need to be the healer, I need to be the ambulance, I need to be the conduit that gets information to the sufferers and lead them to the solution. I'm not going to do it myself, right?

Speaker 1:

I'm not going to do the heating myself, right, and so let's. That's a perfect pivot point. So talk to me, talk to us about this, this ambulance that you've created.

Speaker 2:

Yeah yeah, this ambulance that you've created. Yeah, yeah, so it's. I find myself it's unusual for me to almost be speechless when I try to describe this journey, and I made a decision when I I'll have to tell you one of the case stories in the book to link with the reason why. So I was getting and cataloging all of this information. I now have 394 research reports and 60 books that I've read on the subject that I've read on the subject, so I put myself up with most experts as far as knowledge not the ability to deliver therapy, but what I know and the knowledge I've accumulated.

Speaker 2:

And also I have this stream of people because of the kite book reaching me and trying to tell me their story and I'm saying, hey, I'm not that guy, I'm just an engineer who wrote a book. But they believe and are pushing that I have part of the answer but I don't.

Speaker 2:

I thought I need it. So this one gentleman, his name was Trent At age 52, he turned manic, suicidal, and he had a normal life right up to that point. He just said he went crazy, he lost his mind, he tried to commit suicide three times. He's lost his family, lost his job. He's desolate, he's desperate and he doesn't know which way to turn. So I took his call.

Speaker 1:

I said, let's just have a talk.

Speaker 2:

And I said hey, you need to get to the bottom of it and, long story short, talked him into going to see his estranged mother, who's an addict. One ace I asked him about his father didn't know his father second ace and he told me that the only thing he knew that was strange was that he was put in a special school at Duke University for trying to kill his sister when he was four years old with a bat whoa he got the records found out that he was an ideal student no violence, no nothing.

Speaker 2:

Ended up talking to his mother extracting from her and she broke down and admitted that she started beating him with a spoon when he was six weeks old oh my gosh and didn't know what to do with him when he was four. So she put him in this institution just to get rid of him, right? So think about that, think about that cortisol, think about that stress response, right, yeah, it's the worst. And I've learned you know, we hear the term, you're quite familiar with the term the sacred 60 days, the first 60 days of life. How critical is the development? So I talked him into going into a couple of clinics, had some brain scans and found damage in nine parts of his brain, went through all types of experimental intensive therapy and he was on the good road, in fact ready to go on the road with me on a speaking tour once I released this next book and he was describing the dysfunction and he said Mike, it's a force I can't even describe. It's something that just pulls me to the ground. It's a force greater than gravity, and a bomb went off in my mind saying that's it. That's what this force is, and we have to create a force that's even greater than that, and so I decided to write the book and to name it greater than gravity how childhood trauma is pulling down humanity, because that's what I believe and that's what I found. Yeah, I also believe that the the world of of healers and childhood trauma are so focused on healing that next patient and the researchers are so so funneled into their lane that no one was connecting the dots.

Speaker 2:

So this layman, myself, decided to attempt to triangulate this data, and what I found is being published in this book Greater Than Gravity, and it's a book that has three parts. The first part is what this problem is, so we understand and define it. So what happens to the child's brain, all stuff that you know, lee, but this is stuff I want to get into the hands of people who don't know, right, the hands of people who don't know. The second book is about the prevalence, to talk about the epidemic. So just a couple of quick facts. And this data, lee, that'll be laid out in the book, is irrefutable.

Speaker 2:

So I cross-reference, I find multiple sources, it's from the government, it's from the World Health Organization, it's original research and found that childhood trauma is the third largest cause of death in the United States. Cancer and heart disease are the only two that takes more lives than childhood trauma, and heart disease is the only two that takes more lives than childhood trauma. 11.5 million adults have experienced six or more ACEs. They will die 20 years too soon. What that means is that there's 787 people dying every day directly caused by childhood trauma. Nine of those are children under the age of 18. Day directly caused by childhood trauma and nine of those are children under the age of 18, five of them from murder at the hands of their parents and the others from suicide Right.

Speaker 2:

So 787, that's greater than diabetes, covid and automobile accidents together, and that's every day, so it is the number one health crisis in our country. The cost of trauma in the United States is $14 trillion a year Greater than the defense budget 60% of the GDP of the United States and why has no one hit the alarm button? So I decided to write this book, and the third part of that book is called the Promise of Healing the Hope of Healing, and that talks about what we can do, what's available today and what we need to do. To do three things Raise awareness, bring healing interventions to everyone who needs it, and then drive prevention by going upstream and teaching parents how to parent. You've used the analogy that I put in the book about people drinking from the poison river and how it's making them sick, and the first thing we have to do is stop them from drinking the water. Then we have to go up and stop the pollution. So it's a very powerful kind of metaphor. So this book is oh, go ahead, you have a question?

Speaker 1:

No, I think that just to add to what you're saying is I think that, oh, go ahead, you have a question. If it's not disrupted or interrupted in some way that you're right, it does create a legacy there and that's a that's a painful legacy to continue.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the you know, you do, you do the math of the number of people that are hurt. But 40% of those who have experienced childhood trauma will exert trauma on their other children. Experienced childhood trauma will exert trauma on their other children. That's what keeps this. That's what keeps this, this monster, alive. You know, I, I, sometimes I call it the monster, sometimes I call it the boogeyman. We got to put the boogeyman down. Yeah, we've got to find a way. It's so massive, the problem is so huge. It's not an excuse to to not do it. But also revealed in this book is that childhood trauma is the number one cause for addictions, alcoholism, suicide and pathway to prison. So the numbers like 90% of all addicts have experienced four or more ACEs. 98% of all people attempting suicide have experienced childhood trauma. 94% of all males incarcerated in the United States have four or more ACEs.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and when you think about the fact that these are adverse childhood experiences, when you talk about ACEs, it's adverse childhood experiences. It's like how do you take away these adversities that are more atrocities from people's childhood? But that's the call. That's the call to action.

Speaker 2:

And I keep reminding myself that there's three prongs we have to wake people up, that's awareness. We have to deliver healing to those that are hurting and we have to prevent it. So these are very closely related. I had the opportunity to meet and interview 10 staff members from Treehouse Recovery, which is a addiction recovery organization. They have four sites around the United States with extremely successful results, and why the first thing they do is address the childhood trauma before they even try to stop the addiction. And because of that, that's the thing behind the thing, that's the thing behind the curtain that nobody brings forward. But they have a method and they have people like you on staff that bring it forward, drive those healing interventions through all the things you know, and then they say let's solve this problem. And the first thing, the second thing for solving the problem is creating a tribe or community.

Speaker 1:

And that whole process is so helpful and it is. You know, I know a large couple of handfuls of programs out there that do the exact same thing, that have are similar things, that have really wonderful results, like you're talking about. And that's the exciting thing is that, like you're saying, like there's hope out there, there's truly hope, and there's people that are on this mission of making sure that that it is well understood that we want to help you come out of that poison stream where trauma has flowed downhill, so to speak, and you've been on the unfortunate, unfortunate recipient of all of these adverse childhood experiences, and we want to help you get cleaned up, cleaned off and heading not that they're dirty, but we want to help you wash off that.

Speaker 2:

That experience Moving from the darkness to the light. That's right, you know, I just this, this um. I've, I've learned and I and I use this um analogy in the book that I'm finding that those who have suffered, you know we have two type of nervous systems. I'm just learning this. We have a sympathetic. We have a parasympathetic Right. Sympathetic is-.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, same system, two different places, it goes right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, one is a fight or flight right. And the other is love learning growth.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's the rest and digest. That's right, Rest and digest.

Speaker 2:

So I think of them as mindsets, but they really are part of your nervous system.

Speaker 1:

That's right.

Speaker 2:

And what happens when you had repeated exposure. I think of our brain as a radio station. We have two stations the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. And the sympathetic, what we hear is you're not good enough, you'll never be good enough, and not knowing why we feel that way. What we have to find a way of doing is changing the channel for them so that they can move. They don't have a hope of healing While they're in that, in that sympathetic mindset, because they're on guard, they're not going to hear what we have to say. So the things I used to think of as woo-woo or foo-foo Medicalness, breathing Yoga, activity, movement, nutrition right, coolness, yeah, breathing yoga, activity, movement, nutrition they're critical. They're critical to self-care.

Speaker 1:

So you're so spot on, mike, and I love hearing you talk about this because you know the, the. I look at the world and relationships and humanity, and even our internal sense, as everything's pendulating. Right, it's our, our oscillating, but it's there's really a pendulum. And to be in your sympathetic nervous system, we have to be there right, because if you go over to too much of the parasympathetic, you will die, and so it is this oscillation, this, this it's a beautiful thing.

Speaker 1:

It's a beautiful thing, pendulating, and it's like that's. That's the balance of breathing. It's in and out. If you hold your breath in, you'll die. Hold your breath out, it's going to stress you out until you take a deep breath, and so it's that. I just think that it's the beauty of like what you're, I love what you're bringing up, because it is that beauty of the back and forth.

Speaker 2:

And every expert I should say every expert that I trust, because I've met some that I don't trust everyone that I trust they're saying the same things, they're saying the same. The experts, you know the, the, the, the, the, the authors they're saying this, they saying the same thing. You need this comp, this basket of those things we're talking about, right, and one of them being interventions to resolve that trauma, right, but there's things we can teach people to do and and you know I started, I wear an Apple watch. Sometimes. This is all time to breathe, time to breathe, and I just shut, don't bother me with it. I know how to breathe. So I learned this research of what happens and I started practice. Every morning, I start with three minutes of silent, deep breathing and it's made a world of difference in my mentality. Just one little thing, one little thing.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

A couple of healers have told me stories about severely mentally ill people who, until they put them on a keto diet, an all-protein diet, they had no progress Right. So it's, you know, we money by money, body, mind, soul, spirit, it's all connected and you know it's biblical throughout the it's, throughout the Bible.

Speaker 1:

It is and the. The interesting thing about all of that and just you, you talked about the, the ketogenic piece of it. It is a really that that I have seen the white paper studies on that, peer reviewed studies. I have actually listened to a man who has been on the ketogenic diet.

Speaker 1:

Now, this isn't everybody rush out and get on keto, but there is, there is a scientific way that this is creating differences for people, and it's the brain loves ketones, and we learned this when kids were epileptic back in the. I believe it was back in the sixties and we didn't know what to, or maybe it was the twenties, I don't. I don't recall, but it was. We didn't know what to do with them and they found that when they fasted, their epilepsy would decrease, and so that's how this ketogenic force or this ketogenic idea of dieting became a thing, and now it can be seen as a fad diet. But that's not what you're talking about. What you're talking about is these people with it is bipolar and it is schizophrenia that where they've seen that on a ketogenic diet, the brain gets the ketones and it gets what it needs, and that five years in that, these people are not cycling through their moods like they were yeah, and it's, it's a, it can be a healing thing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's.

Speaker 1:

Now, that's not to say sorry to not keto.

Speaker 2:

It includes vegetables, it includes fresh foods, because what I'm finding is that inflammation is our enemy, it is, it's behind all diseases. The stress response increases inflammation throughout our body, our organs, our veins, constricts veins, cardiac disease, right, foods that we eat, the processed foods that we're consuming over the last probably 60, 70 years are all inflammatory. If you go on the. There was this 30 day challenge. I forgot the type of diet. It was basically a high-protein diet. A book was written on it. It's just eating clean.

Speaker 1:

Oh, the Whole30.

Speaker 2:

The Whole30. It's the same thing I read in there about what causes inflammation in our body, in almost everybody. And if you eat meat and vegetables or protein and vegetables, you will. That goes away, that stuff goes away. The brain swelling goes. It's just poison to us.

Speaker 2:

So I'm learning and again this is all kind of tight wrapped up in the book is that we've lost our way, humanity has lost our way, right, our way. Humanity has lost our way and we really are. You know, the childhood trauma thing is just one of a handful of things that modern life is using. And you know, I believe it's the enemy, it's Satan that's planting these seeds, that's destroying children, putting little time bombs in their bodies so that when they decades later, explodes into mental illness and metabolic diseases. It's. You know, we were raised. God made us to be relational Right For 10 million years. We were raised by tribes and nurtured Right and spoiled. And you know, think of the, the natives, how they always had their child with them in the, you know, on their body, wherever they, wherever they went. We've lost that, we've lost it. So it's just compounding, the stress is compounding. And we are, you know, we're the richest country in the world. We're also the also the sickest country in the world, right.

Speaker 1:

Right, and we want to point to healthcare on that, and okay, we can look at that, but it's also self-care that we need to look at, of course.

Speaker 2:

You know, dr Folletti, one of the founders of the original ACEs study, said that we're all focused on the smoke when we should be focused on the fire. That's right. And what happens if you have smoke? The natural reaction is to fan the smoke away, when actually what you're doing is feeding the fire oxygen. Right, we have to get back to that thing behind the thing. And we have to get back to that thing behind the thing. And this is all stuff I'm learning in the last couple of years and decided with the right. I now have the knowledge, I have lived experience and I have now consumed massive research. That said, I have to raise my hand high and hit that alarm and you know I'm going to use the goal to end. The goal is going to be to end childhood trauma, and I know you can.

Speaker 1:

It's, it's unrealistic, it's, it's actually unachievable, but it certainly is a good goal, though right, if you don't plan big.

Speaker 2:

You're not going to do big things right, that's right. And I also think it's it's not so much about the goal, but it's, it's, it's who you and I become in the pursuit of that goal. Right Doing you and I become in the pursuit of that goal Right, doing things for humanity, doing things outside of our what we thought was our capability, right. And you know, I'm a little bit, yeah, I'm going to say panicked, not really panicked, but in a hurry, Because now that I have this knowledge, you know there's a saying we are each responsible for the evil that we're aware of that we do not cure. So it's a heavy burden, Lee, and I know you carry that as well. You know it's just, it can consume you. That responsibility can consume you. It must.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, it can, until you realize that love covers it all. Yeah, and I cannot make anybody heal, but I can sure offer opportunities, I can offer relationship, I can offer things to people and they can do what with it, what they are going to do with it yeah, I think it's so.

Speaker 2:

What you said is so powerful um this, this element of love? Because in the book it shows it. I list in my hierarchy the components that are required for healing, and the first one based on my knowledge and learning and personal experience is love.

Speaker 2:

We have to learn how to love each other. I got to meet 10 guys that were in recovery at the treehouse, met them individually, had coffee with them and every one of them, when I parted, they hugged me and they told me they loved me. Men, 70, 50, 30, with their heart meaning it. We have telling our own family members we love them. So this has got to be part of the push. We've got to, we've got to bring love back. It sounds woo woo but. But it's so critical to our, to our wellbeing.

Speaker 1:

That's right and the only way we get there is through authenticity. Yeah, and that's the, that's got it, that's the safety right and that's that. It's that safety that all these aces, that all these adverse childhood experiences, all these traumas take away safety. It takes away felt safety and in the theory that I've spent so much of my time and research on there, is that one of the first. The first goal of this theory is helping the patient achieve felt safety, because how will we move forward if there isn't felt safety? Because you will be in a major fight or flight.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

You want to talk about sympathetic nervous system. When you don't feel safe, you're not going to be able to be in the middle. I like that.

Speaker 2:

I like that and really that translates how can you make someone feel safe? That's what you're trying to do, right? Yeah?

Speaker 1:

It's to help them feel safe.

Speaker 2:

How do you help them feel safe, right, and the first thing you've got to do is see them right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's authenticity, yeah, right. And then they have to see themselves, and that's really hard. And so the second that that second goal is perceived functionality, because they have to believe that they know that they can care for themselves, because when we're children and we experience all of these horrible things, what we believe is that the environment cannot, will not, take care of us. Therefore we're screwed, yeah, and the reality is no, the environment was just, it was just combative, not just the environment was combative. It's not about you not being able to be cared for now. You weren't cared for, and so it's learning how do I care for myself? Then I wasn't taught that, and so it's teaching people how to do that, and it's a very, very powerful, very powerful space. So so, mike, will you tell us about? So here.

Speaker 1:

So you, the kite that couldn't fly, you've, you've, you've written these amazing stories. I love them. I know everybody that. I know that it's read, it has loved it. You're a very, very entertaining storyteller, fantastic storyteller. You're a fantastic writer. And so you, you wrote the kite that couldn't fly. You're hearing all of these stories, you're recognizing the weight of your experience and that of your siblings. You start to look at what am I going to do with all of this? You've got the book greater than gravity that I know comes out sometime in this year Okay.

Speaker 1:

And so I know that there's one more piece in here that I definitely would feel remiss if we didn't cover, and that was the United against childhood trauma. Yeah, so tell us about that. That's where it's all coming together, lee.

Speaker 2:

So you know this journey. The kite, I realized. You know the moral of the story of the kite is kind of universal and I didn't intend it to be that way, but it has ended up being that way. Can a kite that couldn't fly win first prize at the Grand Kankakee Kite Contest? Right, Well, you would think no, but it did. Can a boy raised in trauma and poverty become a healthy, happy, functional human being that contributes to society? You would say no, but I did, and so have some of my siblings, but also some of them. So I excelled. Some of them collapsed under the weight of my siblings. And that's us, that's society. Some are built with more resilience. I don't know the. So I became, in my mind, I'm now the kite. I'm the kite that couldn't fly, I can fly.

Speaker 2:

And then the next book shares everything I know. But that book ends with the conclusion said we have to unite. We have to unite healers, corporations, government policy, schools. We have to unite against this trauma. We have to create a force that's greater than the force of gravity. So I founded this organization. It's now a full-blown corporation, 501c3. And I have. I have the first committee I've created is the mental health committee, which you have graciously joined. So, yeah, and we, you know it's, it's, it's still in the formation I'm. I'm going to time the release, the press release on UACT, and make it public at the same time I launch the book, and so it's going to be an organization that will have three departments and no surprise awareness, healing and prevention.

Speaker 2:

And I've got a master plan that I've pulled together of things. The things that are kind of the top of the list is to create a handful of online training courses, using my mental health board, to begin to raise awareness to different audiences teachers, social workers. There's hundreds of thousands of those in the country, but they are not informed Right. So create these educational modules that are available online. Create a master mega website. Imagine going to that website and the first thing it asks you is what language do you want to talk? You want to speak, and it'll speak to you in your language, and we will use AI governed by the boundaries we put on it of what advice that system can give people at the highest level, those with the lowest dysfunction of things that we're talking about that can be, that we know are safe, cannot hurt them, but also have them take an online test to have them determine their level of well-being and whether or not they should be. There should be a flag waving that you know. We suggest you get to professional help. Put your zip code in and within 24 hours you'll have an appointment with a healer who is certified by UACT, is certified by you act. So we are going to, we, you act. We're going to create certification training for teachers, healers not therapists, because that's a different, but we might offer that to say you know, are you, are you a ux certified therapist? Meaning, do you know the basics? Do you know the neurobiology of the sufferer? Because, lee, many don't.

Speaker 2:

Uact is going to raise awareness through billboards, advertisements. We're going to create these courses, these handful of courses that are going to be safe and available online. We're going to have parental. We're going to have mothers going home with their babies, each taking a kit with them that has some type of tangible thing that reminds them of what they have to do each day, the importance of the first 60 days, their responsibility and how, if they don't do these basics, they're dooming their child to a life of misery. Like 57% of all the births in the United States are mothers without fathers. In the city of Baltimore, 92% of all babies born in 1924 were born to teenagers without fathers. What, what's gonna? What's their future? Yeah, those girls know nothing. They're hoping grandma's gonna help, but what if grandma's not there? So the those are the time bombs that we've talked about prevention.

Speaker 1:

It's. It's such a. That's right and it's such a. It's such a painful proposition and just knowing that you act. Again, it stands for United Against Childhood Trauma. I love that. I love the United Against Childhood Trauma because, to your point, it's not condemning anyone. Love is where we have to start.

Speaker 2:

Exactly. No blame condemning anyone. Love is where we have to start.

Speaker 1:

Exactly no blame out, it's right it's. I always say blame and fault, or the B word and the F word, and we don't speak that way in my office.

Speaker 1:

I think I think, at the end of the day, it's about. It's about a loving, kind resource that is, that's an offering out to the world. Yes, and it's about making sure that people have what they feel like they need to to rise up so that this gravity doesn't hold them down so I got giant plans and ready to pull the trigger, and the launch of the book is the is really the the trigger.

Speaker 2:

I'm gonna have a big bang with pr and all that, but I need $200 million in 2026. I need $500 million in 2027 to do all these things and to have an army of people Right. So my plan you know, if each person suffering in the United States gave $10, we'd have $180 million to work with, right? It won't work that way. So I've developed a tool that allows corporations I do it for them to analyze and give you an example Johnson Johnson, my old employer 132,000 employees 90,000 of them have experienced childhood trauma. 5,000 of them will turn to intravenous drugs because of childhood trauma. 13,000 of them will die 20 years too soon. But, more importantly speaking, the corporate talk they're losing $1.7 billion a year in productivity losses because of absenteeism, from mental illness, from childhood trauma.

Speaker 2:

So I have a plan as soon as I get these books in my hand, which is this week, I'm sending a plea out to 10 CEOs Johnson Johnson, microsoft and Microsoft, salesforce, starbucks and I'm giving them their stats. I'm going to give them a very high level. This is what's happening to your. This is your employee layout and this is who UAC is. And here's a copy of the book and I'm asking you to join UAC and to be a contributor. I want 5 million each for the next 10 years from each of them. Ask big yeah.

Speaker 2:

They can say no but once a year there's going to be a full page ad in the wall street journal that says did you act? Did you act Right? And there'll be the lists of the corporate sponsors and the amount they've contributed and show the stats of how many things have changed, whatever those stats are, but you know.

Speaker 2:

bring the, bring the. Develop a movement that will get corporations. How else are we going to fund it? The government's not going to do it. They haven't spent a dime on treating or raising awareness to childhood trauma, and yet it's the greatest health. I'm sending a book and a letter to RFK Jr and saying you really want to make America healthy again, join UACT. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Mike, I think these, I think your goals and your dreams and your hopes and your passion are beautiful, thank you, and I really hope that the people that are listening to you and me right now, I really hope that they're moved to be a part of this, and the best way for them to be a part of it would be to go to you, act now, u A C T, now N O Wcom, and act with us. Let's band together, let's brothers in arms, sisters in arms, let's come together as everyone in arms and let's figure out, like you said, if everybody would just give a little, a little of their time, a little of their compassion, just give a little, a little of their time, a little of their compassion, a little bit of their, their resources. And I think that if we can come together to you, act now U A C T N O Wcom, and I think that let's go change the world.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, amen, yeah, I. I, as part of the because of the kite book. A mayor of a small town in Illinois reached out and said we have an alcohol and drug addiction epidemic in our town. It's killing people, it's destroying families. I have a hint that childhood trauma is behind it. Would you organize a town hall meeting and share what you've learned? And he knows nothing about the greater than gravity book. Right On August 15th, I'm giving, I'm going to give a keynote speech at a town hall and hope to pack the house and hope to use that as the launch date of the, of the movement, of the book, of the website. And you know, and think about communities, imagine starting creating UAC coalitions within each community, right, right. So I don't have the model, but maybe we can create a model. Maybe we can use this Wilmington, illinois as the launch test case Right.

Speaker 2:

We know one thing, Att attempting to help is not going to hurt, right.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and as long as that help is helpful. That's always my caveat, because I see so much in my field where they're trying to help and really they're not.

Speaker 2:

That's why I have my expert, lee Long and his committee to bless and endorse and agree upon. Do no harm, right, right. Because I might if it's Mike Menard, I might say things that will send somebody sideways, but it's your job and gift to do that. Right to just I can say this is blessed by this, this, this committee. Yeah, it's not mike menard, it's you. Act right right.

Speaker 1:

Well, mike, thank you so much for being with us today thank you, lee such a. You are a blessing you are. You are such a just, such a gem of a human being and I just I'm thankful for you, I'm thankful for your passion, I'm thankful for your not giving up, and so I hope that. I hope that, as this reaches the listeners, that I hope our listeners are just, I hope they see the vision and I hope they act.

Speaker 2:

So thank you for and Lee, they can reach me through the website. So you know I'll make the offer to anyone listening that if you have an idea, if you have a question, you know if you have a dollar, just call me, there it is. All right, lee, thank you very much. Good to see you. Thank you, yeah.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Dr. Lee Long

Host
Head Shot

Lila Pond

Co-host
Head Shot

Lila Pond, MA, LPC-S

Co-host