Restoration Beyond the Couch
'Restoration Beyond The Couch' with Dr. Lee Long: Insights for Mental Wellness: Join Dr. Lee Long on 'Beyond The Couch,' a transformative podcast blending professional psychological insights with real-life experiences, offering practical strategies for mental wellness that bridge the gap between therapy and everyday life.
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Restoration Beyond the Couch
Turning Pain into Purpose: Jason and Rhonda Halbert
In this episode of Restoration Beyond the Couch, Dr. Lee Long sits down with Jason and Rhonda Halbert to talk about their personal experiences with mental health and how those struggles inspired their book, The Caretaker. They share their story of resilience and how their creative journey has become a way to encourage others facing similar battles.
📖 Check out The Caretaker: Book One of The Goodpasture Chronicles on Amazon here: The Caretaker
Welcome to Restoration Beyond the Couch. I'm Dr Lee Long and today I'm joined once again by Jason and Rhonda Halbert. Together they wrote Caretaker, the first book in the Good Pasture Chronicles, under the pen name RJ Halbert. This series grew out of their creativity and became a way to process trauma through storytelling. Caretaker blends history, mystery and some therapy into a powerful read and the audiobook man. It delivers a true cinematic experience. I highly recommend it. In today's conversation we'll explore the struggles they've faced and the lessons that they've learned, and how their story has become a message of hope and restoration for others. Your path to mental wellness starts here, because we've walked a lot of miles together in a lot of different ways and I don't know. I mean it's like you guys go from a career in music to a best-selling book. I mean like wrap your head around that like a best-selling book.
Speaker 2:I don't know that we've slowed down enough to think about it.
Speaker 3:We haven't wrapped.
Speaker 2:It hasn't been wrapped around our heads.
Speaker 1:yet there's no head wrapping around it.
Speaker 2:There's no head wrapping.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the title of the book Caretaker, and that's the first in a trilogy of the Good Pasture Chronicles and I look at it as like a movement. It's like the Good Pasture Chronicles movement I like that I do like that. Right, so you guys did a post recently on maybe Instagram or one of the socials and you asked the question. Jason, like okay, the title of our book is Caretaker. The reason we named it Caretaker is take it away, do you remember?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't remember what I said I do.
Speaker 1:You said you know Rhonda was the caretaker for her mother. Yep, through her, like, ushered her into heaven. You were the caretaker for your mother, ushered her into heaven. And it's like what does caretaker mean to you? And I was like what a great. I love that question.
Speaker 3:The book didn't start off in that aspect. The book, initially the story, is about this house. The house is actually the main character of the book and we had a caretaker of the house. And as this house in this book is something very special, more special than the readers of the family knows, and we know what it's as parents. We know what it's like to be stewards of our children, caretakers of them. It was a new experience Rhonda went through it first, being a caretaker for her mother, but it really is. It's a stewardship of something precious. And so somehow all those layers came in together and we started reading our own story. We'd already written. That's what made me ask the question is is what does caretaker mean to you? Because we actually wrote it in one aspect and then it turned into something else yeah, discovering the different layers of that word, that was fun what were the wrinkles that you guys have seen from that?
Speaker 2:Like, in what way In?
Speaker 1:any way.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, this is what happens, it's all good. Um, so I think as we wrote the story uh, it just started opening up. We were in such a heavy spot in our lives and we didn't know what else to do. Um, to face every single day with the heaviness of processing taking care of my mother and processing the loss of our home and taking care of what does that rebuild look like? And that word caretaker just unfolds, it opens up Pandora's box, basically.
Speaker 1:It really does.
Speaker 2:It does, and I don't think we knew that. I think we were inspired by the word because of the journey that we were on personally. But the book itself, man I don't know how to describe it because it just sounds so cheesy it started to develop itself and the more we wrote, the more the meanings just kept going deeper and deeper and deeper. And, man, in the process of writing, I found a lot of healing in that journey of taking care of my mother and taking care of rebuilding our home and taking care of ourselves, learning how to take care of myself. I don't think I knew how to do that. Think I knew how to do that, and writing the book has become this lesson for me of understanding what caretaker actually means. On again, it's just so many levels I don't even know how to go there.
Speaker 1:So I love what you said about learning to take care of yourself. Because when I saw your post, what hit me? Cause? I was like, oh, I want to play. And I was like what's my answer to that? And I thought for a bit you know what is caretaker, what does that look like? And you know, I've read the book a few times. Listen to the audio book, we'll get to that. It's phenomenal. But the thing that struck me as I stepped back and really just let the word sit was exactly what you just said Caretaker. It's like, do we know how to caretake us? Do we know how to take care of the thing, the thing that we've been gifted, which is ourselves?
Speaker 2:I think at the time we didn't. We didn't know how. We run 110 miles a minute and our, our lifestyle calls for it, and it's more than a cultural thing, even though I know americans in general, we have a very busy lifestyle compared to other countries. But then you throw in the entertainment business and that one's like it's jacked up on 11.
Speaker 1:And it's Nice final tap reference there. Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's one of those things where, like to keep up, you just have to keep going.
Speaker 2:And we, just in our younger days, when we set the groundwork for our lives, we had the energy and we had the capacity and the understanding of, well, we'll just do this and we'll just do this, and we'll just do this and we could do it.
Speaker 2:And then now we're getting later in our lives and then disaster happening to us and realizing, oh wait, you can't sustain that, it's not forever. It's very detrimental actually what we've done to ourselves and we're having to unpack a lot of that and figure out what that looks like to take care of us, so we can take care of each other, so we can take care of our family, so we can take care of our property, so we can take care of our future. And I think that that's been the deep lesson. On top of all of that, what the story Caretaker talks about is taking care of the future, and for us, this book actually is talking about generations, and what we're doing now is going to affect our future and what we want to do is to take care of it so that it has longevity and it leaves an impact beyond us. I've never had that feeling or that desire to want to leave an eternal impact.
Speaker 2:That's actually never been a thought in my mind. I just thought, well, I'm here with this life, I'll do the best that I can, and then we go on to the next life. And now that I'm just getting older in life, I'm like, oh, I want to leave something for my kids, something of myself, not money, not property, something of myself. I want to leave something for my grandkids. I want them to know who I was, and I didn't actually know my grandparents that well. I wish I did. I knew them some. I wish I would have known them better. And I would like for the third generation, the fourth generation, to have little glimpses of who we are as people and the stories that we tell. And I want it to bring life and I want it to be a gift to the future. So I think that's even another definition of caretaker.
Speaker 1:So I think that's even another definition of caretaker. I love that. I think that you look back at the things that you guys went through from 2020 on and it's like one loss after the next. Just a random bullet taking a nephew, a cancer, dementia, covid, then I guess would it be fair to say that the final blow was the flood.
Speaker 3:I think the flood of our home was the final blow because, aside from my nephew being shot, most of the things we experienced are things that everybody would experience at some point in their life. We're not unique and trauma hits everybody in many different ways. I think the number and intensity in a short amount of time stacked up really quickly and our home was our safe place.
Speaker 2:This was our forever home.
Speaker 3:This was at the very least we'd come together into this place. And it even became more of that space during COVID Because, as we all were taken away from work and family and community, our home became even more of a place. It had already been a place of healing for our daughter through cancer. It's been a place of community and it holds all your memories. It holds the things that keep you going when trauma hits your life Right. So when that was destroyed and I'm saying destroyed, unlivable, uninhabitable it wasn't the financial impact because we could work hard again, we could rebuild on our own. We can buckle down and do it. It's what it wiped out emotionally for us. Know we can buckle down and do it. It's it's what it wiped out emotionally for us. And it took away a place of safe haven during already very difficult time.
Speaker 3:Um, and I remember talking to you early on we I think we've already discussed how we came about writing this book, and this book sounds so heavy, like if I was, if I was tuning into restoration beyond the couch, which I do and it'd be like wait a minute. Why are we talking about a book? And for us, we, we took this in this creative outlet. At first, I remember discussing this with you a long time ago, saying I feel like I'm almost copping out like this this, surely this is unhealthy. Right, I'm creating this, we're creating this fantasy world so we don't have to deal in our reality.
Speaker 3:Right, and to be honest, after years of every morning on the way to work, on the way home, talking about the update with your mother, then my mother, then my sister, and then at some point, to be able to talk about these other people, these other characters that didn't exist and build and dream together, to actually give birth to something in the midst of so much death, became such a place of peace and joy for us. Right, and I was a little bit worried about am I creating this compartment of non-reality to exist in? Right here, and we've discovered over time that for us, it was actually. What the book taught us is we were actually processing trauma during that. That's exactly right. We were taking instead of putting on each other. Here's how I feel, here's how you feel. Here's what does that mean? Well, we, literally we put them onto these poor characters, and we're not writers.
Speaker 3:I'm a songwriter and I'm a creator and ronda's a creator in different ways, but writing the written word has never been our thing. I remember hearing interviews about authors saying these characters took on their own life. Ours did, and I know that sounds really cheesy I'm rolling my eyes with you as I hear people say that. But they did. We set them up with some of our truths and then the story developed this thing and it taught us during that time, and so that's. I have no idea what the question was, but that's my answer to it.
Speaker 1:I love the answer, but I think that there's a really special place there, for it's funny when I learned or when I was. When I'm around other professionals in this field and they say, yeah, well, we're going to use wet therapy, and I'm like, oh, I don't like the way that sounds.
Speaker 2:I've never heard of it.
Speaker 1:It's called written exposure therapy and people write out their traumas. And that's exactly when we talked. It was like, yes, we use metaphors in DBT because that's what helps people. It's an experience and giving people an experience that can help drive home a different pathway. I mean, you're not only did you provide a pathway to walk through your things.
Speaker 1:I will say that, since the book has been out for gosh a year now, more than a year that what I've seen it do in my practice is that it's taken people who've been walking through their tragedies and traumas and it's given them the inspiration to one face them. It's given them the inspiration to one face them that there was. There were some people who said I've never talked about this with anybody, but there were some themes in caretaker that really helped unearth for me things that I've kept hidden for a very long time, and I think it's time to bring it to the light. And so it's already impacting people in the mental health space, right, and yeah, it's time to bring it to the light. And so it's already impacting people in the mental health space, right, and yeah, it's a fiction. I love your description of it it's some history, some mystery and a little bit of therapy.
Speaker 2:Yes, I mean, I can honestly say, without us even having known the skills that you're talking about and the education that you gathered throughout your career, not having any of that.
Speaker 2:It truly was healing for us and we're still walking lots of it out as well. But it gave us a starting point, because we were both so buried by our grief and I can't even say that word grief without feeling that lump come up in my throat. It was dark days and now we're able to laugh and talk about it. But I think the way we got there was because we wrote something that brought us life and it brought us freedom and it brought us hope, not knowing it would take us there. It was just like Jason said. It was just an outlet to get out of our heads, to get out of our pain and to be able to dream and then be able to do it together, because a lot of times we can say, okay, well, that's the way you're going to process and this is the way I'm going to process, and then somehow that actually can drive sometimes a little bit of a division because, we're not seeing the same way, but, man, I'm so thankful that this drove us closer together.
Speaker 2:It was definitely hard, but I think we're starting to see that we actually just said it to each other today. Oh my gosh, we're a really good team.
Speaker 3:We said that and it's like yeah, we were like oil and vinegar, those don't mix. I'm like, yeah, but they taste great together.
Speaker 1:You just have to shake them Well, that's what I said, I go.
Speaker 2:you have to macerate those.
Speaker 1:What has it been like with you guys working together? I mean because you're right, typically in grief, in trauma, that does tend to pull a couple apart, because not everybody grieves the same and nor should they, right. And so how has that been working together as a married couple? It's been a journey.
Speaker 3:I love that. It's been fantastic journey. I love that it's been fantastic. I don't know, and we've actually this has been a catalyst, probably more than anything else. We've had some other couples in the industry and I've thought a long time about working with my spouse and what is that like? And because there is a stigma against it professionally, because working with your spouse, at least in our industry, um, and then it's, it's hard. It's hard enough deciding what's for dinner. Get along with your future is for.
Speaker 2:What's crazy is we can't decide on what's for dinner, but we can decide and actually work together on the ending for book two, Like that's. That's crazy. I don't know how that's working.
Speaker 3:But for us it's been a mutual respect for each other's skill sets. We're very, very different people, as most couples are.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I have Elaine that I operate very freely in and too freely in, and she operates in a lane that she operates very freely and too freely in, and so we do like this, like bumper cars, and somehow it smoothed out into this lovely routine of not retaining the bad way but just the yeah, we're operating.
Speaker 2:We understand each other now. Now, this is 32 years of marriage and 35 years of being together, um, and so I don't know what that would be like if we were younger, but, um, yeah, we understand each other's strengths now. And, and there's like working with Jason is phenomenal. All I need is him in the room. I will get writer's block or I will get stomped, or I will be, you know, uninspired and I'm just like I can't do it today. Jason comes in the room and I'm like, oh, okay, I got you. Okay, I can do this, you know. And he's such a huge inspiration because he comes in with these huge ideas, right, and somebody in our life gave us this phrase of he's the wow and I'm the how. And that's what I love is he can come in and blow the doors off with his big dreams.
Speaker 3:And then I get instantly exhausted because I come up with this wild thing. We can start and by the end of it you know we're throughout the known universe.
Speaker 3:And then I go in the instant depression. This is beautiful, like how could I ever possibly achieve that? How and that's where ronda steps in, she's, she can take the next piece and take the time and go with it. And so there's a there's a little there's. In any venture, any business. You're gonna have to partner with somebody, right, and it's gonna require trust and vulnerability, even if it's on a business level, right. So why not have that trust and vulnerability that's already built in and we're able to help each other on the same goal. So for us, it's been a beautiful thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think it's incredible and the financial splits are great 100, 100.
Speaker 1:I think that's beautiful because you guys, like you're saying, you guys are an inspiration to each other and for each other and that, walking through this, it sounds like to me it's something that has been a real cohesive and drawing you guys together even more at this stage of three decades into your marriage Again.
Speaker 3:I think you know it's like this is a healing process for you, and maybe not everybody's in a position to be in business with their partner, their spouse, together. But, um, you know, you don't. You're not married 32 years without some couples therapy of some sort. So, yes, we've been through many different forms of couples therapy and a lot of times some people record, you know we're at the heights of something. It's like it's just good to take a timeout. I'm not good with a timeout, like what do we do? This has kind of become almost a timeout. It's like we're going to get back to this. We're going to focus, like we're able to put marriage things aside for a moment to work on something we love together.
Speaker 2:It's become neutral territory yes, time out yeah, care about it. So it's neutral enough to where, even when we might not be at a good place with each other, this is this project. This story is so precious to us that we're both handling that carefully, and because we do that, it brings us into this neutral zone of okay, well, we can still do this, because this means this much to us and we want to see it to the end. So that actually has been like the safety zone, I guess, for us.
Speaker 1:I think that's really an incredible thing that you guys have done in this right, because I think those listening. I hope that what we're all learning from you guys is it's like we have to be creative in finding how we relate to each other. After three decades Right, especially when you've gone through all the things crammed into. I mean my gosh when you talk about packing something in. You guys have packed in a lot of hurt, a lot of trauma, a lot of loss, a lot of really hard things all into one timeframe, very small timeframe, and, rather than it tearing you apart, it's like, okay, what's unique to us? First of all, how do we figure out how to process this thing? Second of all, how do we use our creativity? Because both of you have always both been very creative and love productions, and so how do I take this creativity? How do I fight to be with you and in that, in that center space, it's like you're creating something beautiful that's not only for you, but there's it's for everybody else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, just so that we're also not painting this perfect picture. Sure, yeah, we were hurting so badly that we didn't know how to reach each other, and we ended up going to get a brain therapy because our brains were so traumatized that we were both in fight or flight mode, and when we're both in fight or flight, we're fleeing from each other. So there was a season at the beginning of this where it wasn't so rosy and we didn't have the answers, but in the core of who we are, we knew that I love you, you love me. So there's this journey that we're doing this together. So how can we get there?
Speaker 2:And so we were grasping and reaching you know, like, what can we do? And we're asking for help, and we're asking for assistance. And so we had multiple avenues that we reached out to, ultimately getting us to the place, to where we weren't in fight or flight, we could calm down, see each other in each other's pain, and then this creativity started to come on its own and it gave us an outlet. And then that's what drew us closer together instead of pulling us apart. But the beginning, like I hope anybody who's listening doesn't think that we made all these great decisions from the beginning, because that's not how life goes.
Speaker 1:Right, it's a lengthy process, no matter what. What I love about what you're saying is that here's the caretaker theme again is that I had to learn how to take care of me. Yes, I wanted to take care of you, not in a codependent way so much, but I want to be able to care for you, and it's like that came together and created something really beautiful. That's why I think it's a movement.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:The thing about caretakers. We originally the book is morphed in a good way, a series, I mean. We sat down like the first time we spoke to you. We're like we have this whole thing mapped out. This is how it starts, this is how it ends, and that is true. And we wrote I'm laying together a thought there, good edit point for your edit right here. I might skip on there, but I had a really good one. I left a button Come back.
Speaker 1:It left me. That's why it's a movement.
Speaker 3:Yes, the idea when we wrote Caretaker. The book has morphed, but when the first idea, I was actually looking for a caretaker, like you're, in that the trauma happens so fast back to back, things would happen where this would happen. I need to process that. But now Rhonda's taking care of her mom, now Rhonda's a caretaker. Now something happens Her mom's just passed away. Not even time to process that.
Speaker 3:So the rapid fire of all that hit, yeah, and it wasn't even conscious. And then, as we wrote this book, I realized we did a. It wasn't a lie, but I've done many national interviews at this point where I've said this book is not based on our lives, that we informed it. I think, looking back, we wrote so much for ourselves. The characters are not based on our literal things, but we wrote our pain into that and the only reason I know that now is because we weren't processing the trauma. Now, as we're working on the book and continuing it, now we're actually there's scenes that come up and with the audio book that I realize, oh, I actually never even processed that. I'm weeping and regrieving things again that we weren't able to. So the book is now speaking us back, and so the caretaker, through many conversations with therapists and people that are important in our lives. It's so trite, but when the airplane goes down, oxygen masks first.
Speaker 3:And something we've learned through caretakers the best way to be a caretaker is to take care of yourself, which in some upbringings can feel very selfish and both of us are realizing this journey, that we had not been taking care of ourselves and had to let go of that for a second, and so the the idea of caretaker, even for us, has morphed, and that has even informed. What's funny is we haven't had to change the story. The story was already there. There's things that are going to happen with the caretaker that unpack all that.
Speaker 3:And this all sounds so heavy. It's really a fun book we're talking like.
Speaker 1:It is a really fun book. You know the first one is caretaker then comes servant and then last is architect, and you think about those three titles and how much significance caretaker has. And how much significance caretaker has when you named all three, where there is is. Is each book crafted around the essence of what that word means?
Speaker 3:Yes, and it's multi-layered, and so it's hard to talk about it in a sense, but just like we've unpacked caretaker has several layers and meanings for people. Sure, so does servant, and I think that, um, the idea of servant, of servant, while it has negative connotations, it's almost being enslaved and being indebted, it's a hierarchy. But, then there's servant as in serving, which is a byproduct of being a caretaker. So, yeah, that's all very purposeful and written into it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when you break down the three names, like go even further into architect, so that in itself you're carefully designing something You're creating and because you've become the creator, it's precious to you and now you care for it. So there's just so many layers of what's about to come.
Speaker 1:Which is the Ouroboros. Our symbology is all very…. Which is the Ouroboros? Our symbology is all very which is the cover of the book.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's an ancient symbol of infinity that things happen in cycles.
Speaker 2:And repeat.
Speaker 3:So for us, without giving away a lot of spoilers, it's really exciting for us. But a caretaker into servant and architect into caretaker is just a never-ending cycle and we're cycle and some fun places with that.
Speaker 1:I love that, talking about fun places, you guys put together an audio book, which is my favorite because I love to consume information and I love to consume it in an audible way. Um, tell us about that, because, coming from a guy who never listened to audio books, did you listen to audio books?
Speaker 2:You weren't an audio book reader, not an audio listener.
Speaker 3:Okay, I mean we brought it. I grew up together and, um, from a young age and in more ways than one, and we were involved uh, involved in our music department, at church and all the dramas and everything. And I had a mentor growing up. Don stayed and if, if we needed a 15 minute production with like one main character, I got you two hours 37 characters.
Speaker 3:That has seeped into my dna and it's, it's carried through like, I think, the first time ronda watched um. I think maybe eight or so years ago I I produced and wrote the opening for the Billboard Music Awards and she thought okay, hold on a second.
Speaker 1:That is one of my favorite ever.
Speaker 3:It's mine too, they asked for a three-minute song and we worked in 42 songs in those three minutes and ta-da, I mean we had like every that's a direct lineage of Dawn Stabe and the production.
Speaker 3:So I say all that to say that that's just inherent in who I am, and so definitely the wow, yes, See. So it was a surprise I we did not only do we write a book, which was a surprise the getting it out there as independent authors, and there's a whole reason why we decided to go independent with this book. That achievement, you feel like we did it. We can rest now.
Speaker 2:Let's go on vacation Woohoo we did it? Yes, and then somebody's like.
Speaker 3:Well, where's the audiobook? I'm like the audiobook. Apparently, that's a big deal. We do our research over 50 something percent of people, yeah, so I've never listened to an audiobook, so I'm like okay audiobook.
Speaker 3:so I'll go listen to an audiobook and the first one I listened. I've since learned there are many multicast audiobooks, but I listened to three books I knew, and it was one narrator reading it and instantly I'm like, well, that does not match the voice in my head and you know, the voice reading for different characters didn't work for me. So so I'm like, well, what if we do this? I gave this to Rhonda, this whole thing, like I want sound effects, I want music, I want each person to be a different voice and a different cast member. And the first time she went to how, like, how am I even going to do that?
Speaker 1:What she shifted from how to what I'm like.
Speaker 3:I got this. I record and produce music and vocals for a living. I got this. How hard can it be so skipping a lot of things we actually wrote together.
Speaker 3:We wrote a dream list of actors and voices that weren't necessarily tied to the characters but, just like the book, we were characters that were actors that were important in our lives. They evoked an emotion that left an imprint on us that felt like the same imprint of something in the story. They all said yes, which was amazing. We ended up recording them all. Um, and then the editing process happened. Yeah, it's like. You know my little three and a half minute songs that I've produced over the years. This is like 15 000 of those. I mean, it's 15 days of audio times, 12 actors and there's some math formula here. But you know, if you have henry and cusick, amy grant, kelly clarkson, michael shanks, eric avari, all giving you five lines each, and then, well, this line works with this one, but now this one, and it's all of a sudden, there's a hundred million permutations, permutations, permutations. Yeah, so I'll say it took us a year to finish the audiobook. It was a labor of love and we're extremely excited about it and thrilled about it.
Speaker 1:For those audiobook listeners we feel the love. I'm glad it's full with a score getting all the characters and my favorite were the sound effects.
Speaker 2:Mine too, you know the wind, we actually hired a Foley guy from Hollywood to do that, and it was absolutely worth it. It made the story come even more alive than how it was in my own mind.
Speaker 3:There were scenes we wrote from our own experiences that we'd written, we'd read, we've talked about. We heard the narration as soon as the sound effects came in. It immersed us in that. It was like you're nine years old all again, you're in that spot. Absolutely. The power of those senses really enhanced the story and added a weight to it that surprised even us. Really enhanced the story and added a weight to it that surprised even us.
Speaker 2:I think what also surprised me was we wrote the story from a certain point of view, but these actors don't have our point of view. Yes, so, as they're trying out delivering a line in a certain way, which is what Jason was referencing.
Speaker 2:Like we would get five versions of one sentence. It was so fascinating to hear it was coming from their perspective and their experiences and their point of view and you would just know when they hit the right line and you'd go oh, I never thought of it like that and we wrote it. That was fascinating to me and it just goes to show you that everybody's experiences changes everybody's view and there just needs to be more grace in this world for that. There really does, because we think we are so single-minded. And you must understand what I'm saying, don't you understand?
Speaker 3:where I've come from, all the central characters are all in movies and stories Right. Everything filters through that.
Speaker 2:But recording that just opened up a whole nother experience of going.
Speaker 1:Oh, there's a lot more experiences out here and a lot more voices and they've at the time, but we got through it and I'm glad we did it and now we've got all the actors going when are we recording book two?
Speaker 2:And Jason's like oh, you got to have book two recorded, it's been a journey.
Speaker 1:It's been a journey. Okay, you guys have owned three different homes, right, and in each one of those there's been some crazy stories and tales, one of which we we somewhat experienced a minor piece of this, in that we had some bees that that hived or nested, or whatever bees do, because they hived in our like on a an Eve in our house. They didn't make it in, but you guys were less fortunate and so you found I mean, how many bees were in your house in Cali?
Speaker 2:They told us about 40,000 bees were in our house.
Speaker 1:I mean that's like a whole honey factory.
Speaker 2:It was a dark cloud. You know the cartoon when we were kids you'd watch Bugs Bunny and they would show a cloud, a black cloud, flying together like that, like bees. That happened inside my house, not outside, it happened inside. And so I went to the kitchen, I think, just to get some water, food, whatever, and we were in. There was a living room, a kitchen and then like a formal living room, so the kitchen divided that we were hanging out in the back room. I go to the kitchen and I just hear this low hum. I'm like what did the kids leave on? And so I'm following the hum and I go into the formal living room and on the far end of the windows which that far wall was, all windows was just bees everywhere. It was inside. It was so loud I freaked out and I'm allergic to bees.
Speaker 2:So I grabbed the two tiny chihuahuas and the kids and I'm like come on, kids, we're going out the side door. And so we go outside and stand in the front yard. I call some bee guy and he comes out and we're all standing in the yard because I'm not going anywhere near that house, and he gets out of his car and the house is behind me, I'm facing the street and as he gets out of the car I think he's looking at me. But then I'm noticing he's not looking at me. He's looking above me and I'm like what is he looking at? And I turn around. And that's when we saw another movement in the sky coming and it scared him and he was the B guy. He was like oh my gosh. And I'm like what do I do? And he's like there's nothing you can do and so just run. Yeah, I mean, he was just like just, you know, don't go near the house. So he suits up and he gets a giant smoker and he smokes them out.
Speaker 2:I didn't want dead bees all in the house. We just wanted them gone, Right. So he smoked them out and it took some time and we there were other parts of the house that we could get to without feeling like we were going to be attacked by the bees. So we were able to go back inside, but it took some time. But basically he said, yeah, the queen decided to move in and it was an old house we love old houses and so she found an opening and it went through to the inside of the house instead of just in the heaves and so yeah, so that was our experience of live bees and in that same house we were remodeling so we were tearing down a bunch of walls.
Speaker 2:And we go to our daughter's room and we noticed this stain, like an odd stain on the wall, and we're just, this house was so old and so scary and there was there's like a whole another long story that we could write a book about that. There was an actual murder scene in the house and we actually had homicide investigated and it's an open case. So there's that story. So, as that is going on, we see this stain on the wall. It's looking like it's dripping. So we're like, oh my goodness. So we tear into the walls and it is a probably 25 pound honeycomb but it's abandoned and it's just got honey oozing out of it into the walls so it was just really creepy stuff coming on the walls yeah, it was coming through the walls, it was seeping.
Speaker 3:Okay, it's funny those are all natural things. There's nothing blurry. There's nothing supernatural about that. Bees attack homes, honeycombs get in things.
Speaker 2:They do, but I can get into the scary stuff that happened. Well, yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, so a mashup which is your favorite, I know of this story makes it into the book yes, Everything in the book was informed by real events and I say that that was a the bees.
Speaker 3:That's a natural event. The house we moved into that had 31 dead cats in the backyard. Old ladies bury their cats. Weird things happen. You stack all these natural events up over time and that's where I start to see perhaps there's a supernatural thing, using those things. Now, I am not the I'm. I'm a believer. I believe in an afterlife. I believe in the angelic, the demonic. I'm happy to live right here and not see any of that even with your wow.
Speaker 3:You don't want to be wowed by that I, I, I have no desire you're like I'm the creator of wow, I don't want anybody else, and Rhonda's like open and hoping and looking for, like she wants to see through the veil, whatever the veil is. So we're very different that way, unfortunately, from my childhood experiences I've seen so many things associated with places and homes and we've experienced our lives. So our homes are a theme there. I don't know the science behind this and there has to be. There's a science that intersects with the supernatural, but somehow homes can carry history, energy, things.
Speaker 3:We could go into quantum physics why that might work, or science, but the bottom line is it does. And so we've been a part of some homes that have carried some darker things, and we've been a part of a home our most recent home that was destroyed. People would come to our home that we've never, either first-time visitor or lifelong family friend, and say they've never slept that well in their lives before, and I'd be like, oh, it's probably carbon monoxide. No, there was a piece that came with the thing.
Speaker 3:So we incorporated those thoughts into our book, and it is not to steal them. It's. It's very blurry and the more we research it, the blurrier it gets. What is natural, what is physical, what is metaphysical? The most annoying part about being authors and writing this book we're about right now is we thought we had downloaded some things. We've had some life experiences. Yeah, we work them into a book and we're like we can't wait to share these truths with the world. We do Now we're living new things that now the book is challenging us back again.
Speaker 3:It's like oh, you believe that and I don't know if there's a therapeutic truth to this or something, but it seems, in lots of areas in our lives, when you receive a truth, it seems like at some point soon after you're going to be tested. And what does that truth look like to you? And that's where we've been recently in the book and even since writing the first book. We, for many reasons, we didn't share this our first round, but at the end of finishing the book I was diagnosed with cancer. Well, that's a very new trauma in our lives, but we've just sat in front of millions of people and said here's how we process our trauma and this is what helped us. And now it's like oh so how are you going to process this this time? What? What are you going to do in the physical that's going to affect the metaphysical in this situation? So there's a whole journey that's been with with that and even now is where the process of finishing book three. It's the Ouroboros, it's the cycles that we've created.
Speaker 3:And now we've learned truths and now it's talking back to us and our you know. So, with my cancer, am I going to tackle this purely in the physical, or are there other blurry things going on that we can build into that's?
Speaker 1:where we're at. I love that it does, I love that I somebody said to me just recently. Can I just learn the lesson so that this will stop? Yeah, and I was like this won't stop. You aren't the? The relief of this is not being withheld from you because you're not learning something. You're learning something in the midst of the things, like the Ouroboros.
Speaker 1:It keeps coming. Life continues to happen, yeah, but it's when we grow, as we face things, as we walk through them. It's about taking that, learning and applying it, like you said, to everything that we've experienced. Yeah, and then growing more and as it goes, it's like I love that that it just it keeps cycling.
Speaker 2:But I think you have to come to a place in your own life where you let go and you've got to be willing to change, because some of us like. The phrase I always heard as a kid is oh, you're going to go around that mountain again, aren't you? And yes, yes, we are going to keep going around that mountain until we learn.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So there has to come a time in your life when you just let go and you learn the lesson. Stop being obstinate, stop being stubborn and I'm speaking to myself, I'm confessing. You just have to let go and learn the lesson and change. A lot of people don't like change. I don't like change, but I'm glad I've changed. And that's the part that you have to get past yourself and you've got to know that there is a better ending to this. There is a better story coming and there is life on the other side. There is peace on the other side. But you have to be willing to let go with whatever it is that you're strangling yourself with, and you've got to let it go and realize change is good and that's where the life lessons keep coming. They don't stop. So what are we going to do with them?
Speaker 1:Right. Yeah, I think we all too often look to the environment to make us feel better, and what I hear you saying, rhonda, is that once I let go of what I'm clutching onto in the environment and I just embrace the fact that I am who I am and I want to learn and grow, and I'm not going to demand that the environment caretakes me, but I'm going to learn to caretake myself. Yes, I will get. I will get care from the environment, but I won't demand it anymore than that mountain that I'm going to go around again, cause you will may look just a little bit different, a little more palatable, a little more doable.
Speaker 2:It'll be a smaller mountain.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:Until it shrinks Right.
Speaker 1:And then that's the end of the Ouroboros. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But also I think, like like Jason was saying, I do embrace the supernatural and the freaky and I like to learn from that and I think that we can. So every time Jason and I do a book signing, I've started writing a little phrase in there listen to the whispers, listen to the whispers. I believe that there is a kind and gentle, loving whisper that if we shut down the rest of the world and shut down our own fears and listen, we will find that still small voice and there will be a place of healing coming from that still small voice. So for me, I like to write in those bits of the stories to lead people to want to ask the question is this real? I don't know. Why don't you ask what is the voice saying? Quiet your head and listen for that voice and see if you can hear that truth. So I like to challenge that. That's exciting for me. Jason doesn't like it so much, but I love it.
Speaker 3:I do. I just don't know which one of the voices I'm going to have to listen to. I'm going to be talking about the whispers on the couch podcast Healthy voices.
Speaker 1:Healthy voices a couch podcast healthy, healthy voices, healthy voices. I love that this has been so fun. Yeah, it's always fun to be with you guys. It's fun to think about where this project is, has been and where it's going, and the movement and the stirring that you guys are creating and have created. Please, more audio books. We're going to work on it.
Speaker 2:We got to get rest from the last one.
Speaker 3:We're excited because the next book is coming out this year November 18th, and it's been a challenge because, just like with any work, caretaker really just laid a foundation.
Speaker 2:And it took a lot of.
Speaker 3:We just really needed to invest in these characters and it from Caretaker Servant just takes off and now a real journey begins, yeah.
Speaker 1:I know that book too. I know Servant picks up where Caretaker left off Yep, and I'm going to challenge everybody listening go read it, it's a big cliffhanger and I'm going to challenge everybody listening. Go read it, because the end of the book you're like what have you?
Speaker 2:done to me.
Speaker 2:And I think it will be very exciting for the people who want to continue to read to see what we've done. And then I'm really, really excited about the ending. The ending takes it even further into the supernatural, and Jason and I had an opportunity to write that together, I think on your birthday, which was in June, so it was recent, and we might have had maybe two hours together and we wrote the biggest climax of the book in two hours and it just flowed and it was so fun and he's pacing the room and I'm typing as fast as I can and it was just very exciting to be able to work like that.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:So if that's book two, I can't wait for us to get into book three and start hitting those moments again and watch how this is going to end.
Speaker 1:I know you guys don't do anything small and I really thank you for sharing that with the world and not keeping that just for yourself. So thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2:I think I find it hard to know that people would actually care. They do, and it's made an impact, so thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you. I think I find it hard to know that people would actually care. They do, and it's made an impact, so thank you.
Speaker 2:We'll keep writing.
Speaker 1:And audio scoring Awesome.
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