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Explore your curiosity - Interesting people with fascinating stories.
Life consists of three things:
-The stories we tell others
-The stories others tell us
-The stories we tell ourselves.
Dechelle Parker, welcome aboard to the show. So happy to have you today.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I'm so happy to be here today.
Speaker 1:So, quite a few years ago, you decided to do something quite unique. You decided to be a social worker. Why was that?
Speaker 2:It's an interesting story, but it was really a drive to use my lived experience to help others. And so becoming a social worker was because I saw social workers in my home. I saw social workers working with my family, and I also saw the discord with my family around the social workers, what they said when they weren't there, what they said when they were present, the efforts of the social worker, and it was always very intriguing to me.
Speaker 1:What was your personal experience of your social workers? And give us a little bit of the spectrum, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's funny that you say that. One of my master's theses is actually titled that Child Welfare, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. And so that's very interesting because that's exactly what it was. And so for me, my mother actually was in foster care herself growing up.
Speaker 2:And then as a child or teenager, I should say, had other family members that had child welfare in their lives. And so my mother was a foster parent at various points. And then myself as an adult, I actually adopted a child. And so I was involved in the system in that way as well. So when it comes to social workers in our lives, when I tell you it was all around me, it's all in through me, there's no other way to say it.
Speaker 1:What was your kind of best memory, if you will, tell us a story about kind of the most powerful memory when you think about, you know, the most meaningful social worker in your life? What was that moment?
Speaker 2:Well, that is a good question. I think the most meaningful social worker that's made a difference in my life, I have to narrow it down to one, So I'll go back to the earliest. There was a social worker. I don't remember her name, but I do remember her coming to our home on several occasions and it was to support my mother and being a foster parent and looking after the children and things of that nature. And I just remember how warm and kind and sweet and engaging she was.
Speaker 2:There was a lot going on in my mother's house. There was things that were known and unknown to people. And I just remember how she made me feel. So it was less about what she said or did, but how she left me. The feeling on the inside is what made the most difference.
Speaker 2:And that was something I wanted to be able to create for other people.
Speaker 1:What's that feeling? How is it different from, let's say every day?
Speaker 2:Being seen. It was being seen and being heard and being experienced in a way that I don't think I was getting from anywhere else. And that feeling is almost indescribable. It's like a glow that comes from the inside when you feel like you're really validated and understood in a way that everybody in the world can't. And so that is a feeling that I remember way back then, but it's come up several times throughout my life, especially to present.
Speaker 2:And now I understand that feeling. I get it and I know how to hone it and go after it at any given time, at any given moment. But back then it was, it was something that was very unfamiliar to me and I really appreciated it.
Speaker 1:Do you think this this and this is maybe a guess on our part, but do you think that this lack of being seen, this loneliness, is this a common problem or is this just, you know, nobody feels lonely or not seen?
Speaker 2:That's very common, especially in today's fast paced society where things are moving much more rapid than any of us are able to deal with and it's more information being poured into us than we have the capacity to comprehend or take in. So there's not really room to be able to see and validate and feel and experience people on that very, very deep level. And as a child, that absolutely was not happening for me. And I think my village, my parents, everybody around, it wasn't because anyone was being malicious or trying to not see or experience the children and their family. It was because they were just doing what the best they could with what they knew how to do and slowing down and pausing and experiencing things.
Speaker 2:That was luxury. Everybody was trying to survive and doing the best that they could. And so it wasn't something that was even valued or understood back then. And so to be able to experience that, it was absolutely on purpose. It was on purpose.
Speaker 2:It was all divinely ordered.
Speaker 1:Do do you remember the moment where you decided that you were going to be a social worker?
Speaker 2:Funny you should say that because I was, I was going back and forth. I was vacillating between being a gynecologist or a social worker. And so I knew I wanted to work with women and families and like that just really fascinated me to know Anne. But when it came down to actually choosing a major in college, I decided that I didn't want to go to school that long to be a gynecologist. And so that's how I ended up choosing, social work.
Speaker 2:The joke is absolutely on me because I'm still going to school today. I went to school for years, like after that undergraduate experience. So I never stopped going to school. But I do think this was still divinely ordered. It wasn't meant for me to be a gynecologist.
Speaker 2:It was meant for me to be a social worker and walk this path.
Speaker 1:What's the most meaningful case or experience or moment that you had?
Speaker 2:Actually, I've been doing social work and child welfare and the youth justice spaces for over twenty years. So there's several stories that have touched me. I mean, towards the end of my career where I've kind of transitioned out of social work and into full time coaching now, I would at the drop of a dime. Just seeing youth or seeing families engaging with the system would literally spark emotion in me in a way that it was difficult to keep doing my job. So the stories and the touching and the feeling, all of those things has never really stopped.
Speaker 2:But I'll say one of the most memorable stories is when I first became a social worker and started working with birth families, the primary families who were impacted by the system and had their children taken from them. I was working with this particular family and there was a little girl that was in school. She was in foster care and she would act out in school every day on a regular basis because she wanted me to come see her. And so going through this early in my career, tons of cases that I had to attend to, and this one little girl that was just so taken or enamored with whatever I was providing her, that she was literally acting out on purpose, threatening to stab herself with a pencil at school. Like it was every single day for weeks that this was going on.
Speaker 2:And that little girl actually ended up writing me a letter and drawing me a picture. And with all of her words spelled incorrectly, she told me I was the best social worker she'd ever had. I still have that picture to this day. It's framed and it is one of the most memorable moments that I've ever had as a social worker. It brings tears to my eyes still to think about it because it was so powerful and touching.
Speaker 1:First of all, thank you for sharing that story. It's, it's, it's difficult work. There, There are times where things don't work out as well as we hoped. From the stories, and I don't want to call them failures because they're never failures, right? The story is still being written at every moment.
Speaker 1:But what are the cases where you wish it could be a better outcome and, you know, do you have any regrets in those cases?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say being a social worker and the reasons you get into the field juxtaposed against the system itself and the way these systems are designed and the very fact that a system cannot raise a family, systems cannot build communities, systems cannot validate and see individuals the way we need to be seen and experienced in order to really spark transformation or change. Living in that world where those two are coexisting but not meshing means that the entire time you're doing the work, it's difficult work. And you're faced with these kinds of obstacles and experiences every day, all day long, because you see the families, you see what they need. You also understand the system and your role and what you can and cannot do. And you work in the gap.
Speaker 2:That's what you're doing all day long. So it literally rips at you to work in the system when you're in it for the right reasons. And so given that it's a number of stories that I can draw from a number of experiences, whether I'm talking executive experiences or frontline or anything in between. But I will say one of the, one of the most pressing memories is again, early in my career, these things really stay with you. I was working with a family and I was very happy that the mom in this instance was taking to me.
Speaker 2:She was talking to me and speaking to me and engaging with me and calling me to share things on a regular basis. And this is not all cases are like that, right? You are a social worker, you're representing the system. And the way people take to you can look very different depending on what their experience has been, regardless to what you're doing in that moment. And so, because this particular mom was taking to me and it was kind of rocky in the beginning, I began to align with her and believe her and believe in her in a way that created bias in me.
Speaker 2:And so as I was working through this case several months in, we ended up finding out that this mom was actually abusing alcohol and abusing her children when she was under the influence heavily. And this was happening the entire time she was being very engaged with me. And so after the fallout and kind of everything happened, I was talking to one of the children and I said, why didn't you tell me this was going on? And plain as day, they said, because you were so connected with my mother, you wouldn't have believed me. And so that moment that sticks with me because again, you're working in the gaps.
Speaker 2:You're trying to do the best you can. I was very young at the time. It's not to say that mistake couldn't happen when I was older or more seasoned in my career, but that again is one of those stories that stays with me because while having a connection with mom and being engaged in that, what is an important piece of the puzzle is not something you can't do, but to do it to the detriment of the others is not the best way to go about it either. And so that was an example of where my bias got in the way of me actually doing the best for that family at that time.
Speaker 1:It's an impossible job. I mean, you're trying to balance really your basic tools, which is empathy and love and caring with this idea of risk mitigation. So you're both looking for the best and the worst in people at the same time. I mean, that sounds impossible.
Speaker 2:Yes. You have described the system. Like, that's why it's, you know, to many, they say it's broken because the way it's designed and what it's intended to do, it's very difficult to do that. And then you have individuals working in the system trying to do that, and they're just people too. And so at the end of the day, have systems that are under resourced, underfunded, and give you impossible tasks, and you have to get up and go to work every day and do the impossible.
Speaker 2:And when you don't do it well or you don't do it right, you're caught to the carpet for that.
Speaker 1:If you had to change one part of the system, it's a law or a process or a policy or whatever it was that you think that might kind of help push things in the right direction, what would that be?
Speaker 2:It is impossible to pick one part. The way these systems are set up, and it's not just the child welfare system, it's not just the youth justice system. We're talking healthcare system. We're talking religious systems. We're talking school systems.
Speaker 2:We're talking like all of these systems. All of it. So they're intentionally designed to be interwoven and complicated and comprehensive in such a way that if you move one part of the system, three other things over here fall down. So to try to peel back one thing, which is what much of my work in the last decade has been about system reform. And I've been very enmeshed in it, working with folks all across the nation around youth justice reform.
Speaker 2:And what I saw over and over again is that when you improve this piece, that meant this went to haywire. Right? And you just repeated that cycle over and over again. So it's it's tons of things to do. There's tons of work happening.
Speaker 2:There's groups, grassroots groups, there's cabinets and all kinds of, people who have great campaigns and intentions and all these things. And then there's the group that says, you just gotta destroy it and start over because you're not gonna be able to unravel it. And to be quite frank, I don't know that that's not true. The problem is, what do you do in the meantime? If you destroy what we have, what do you do in the meantime while you're trying to build something new?
Speaker 2:And so at the end of the day, you have to have both coexisting at the same time.
Speaker 1:To destroy it, you know, the problem is that I always ask the question, well okay, so let's assume that we've destroyed it. What do we build the day after?
Speaker 2:The world. I mean I think it's aspirational. I think what I do like about that particular sector is that they're getting you back to dreaming, to imagining, to connecting to intuition and spirit and trying to reimagine something. And when you're stuck in a system and a cycle of doing things the same way, it's very difficult for you to step out of that and say, what would be better? And so what I do appreciate about the abolitionist space is that that is what they're doing.
Speaker 2:They're saying, step back for a minute, let's tap into the imagination and connect to intuition and let's imagine what it could be like. That's so difficult for people when you're just stuck in the day to day and you're just going through the grind and you're hustling and you're moving through. You can't even take a moment to pause and breathe and say, what could be better? And so I do appreciate that aspect. And there's lots of things, grassroot things, people with ideas and things that they want to get off the ground, and they're helping in their own way, whatever that may look like.
Speaker 2:And then you have the complete opposite end of the spectrum that says the systems are designed perfectly. They are what they are, and they're they need to keep operating because we need jails and we need places for kids to go when they're being abused in their home. We need an educational system or we need this. The problem is, from my perspective, is that everybody has these individual opinions, right? And so trying to find one way to go about it, to fix a myriad of things, that there's a flaw in that approach.
Speaker 2:It's not going to be one way to fix different things. When you look at just a variety I can just take five families on a caseload and each of those families need something a little bit different to make what they have going on work. And then when you look at the systematic, the roots of some of these things, this stuff goes back to slavery and beyond in terms of how these systems were designed and why they're designed the way they are. So if we can't even have a conversation about race and what the roots of these systems are, we can't unravel it to begin to think about what the future could hold where it could have a variety of ways and approaches to be able to touch on these problems. But the way it's designed now is just surface.
Speaker 2:You're getting to the surface level of stuff and nobody's unraveling the roots. And when we try to get to the roots, fear rises up. And then when people act from fear, you get all kinds of irrational things happening, and that's the world that we're living in. And that's the unfortunate part. You can't choose one way.
Speaker 2:One way is not gonna be able to fix it. But to admit that you need to dismantle it and do something different means that people have to admit that what they've been thinking and believing is wrong and that is the root of the problem right there.
Speaker 1:Do you think that, let me ask you a very pointed question. How much does a social worker make on average?
Speaker 2:Oh, pennies. Pen tees. Pennies, pennies, pennies. Okay. When you think about social work, at the end of the day, there's a variety of jobs that are in the social work field, but you're talking, you're get at the high side, you're gonna get $60,000 a year.
Speaker 2:And that
Speaker 1:is not This is a job that's dangerous. It can be. This is a job that is we described it as almost impossible. Right? You're balancing incredible skills or you're making very little, maybe even less than the 60 if you're earlier in your career.
Speaker 1:Is, is this part of the problem? So you're doing this incredibly difficult job. You could be paid much more to do an easier job.
Speaker 2:Yes. Yes.
Speaker 1:Why would anybody take this job?
Speaker 2:It has to be heart led. It has to be heart led, but that contributes to why there's so much turnover and difficulty in the field, with continuity when you're working with families and things of that nature. But it's bigger than social work. When you look at capitalism and the way our society is structured, the folks that are making the most money are not the ones who are having the greatest impact. One are most underserved.
Speaker 2:When you think about the totem pole, right, you can't get anything in the world without having a teacher, but teacher and social workers are at the bottom when it comes to payment. So it's, it's bigger than just the moment, right? It's bigger than that particular profession. It has to do with the paradigm through which we operate in the world. And let's be clear, that's a construct.
Speaker 2:That's something that's created by people. And so it is something we could fix.
Speaker 1:And we should say that, you know, different teachers in different parts of the world are paid different salaries and we know that there's different models in other places of the world and we know that they work better or worse. And we also know that we're paying, you know, take healthcare for example, we're paying a lot of money into the American healthcare, probably one of the top in the world. Are we the top healthcare provider in the world? No, we're not. How much we're putting into the system and how much we're getting out of it?
Speaker 1:So, so that's really concerning. Do we see that same gap in the educational system, in the social worker system compared to other places?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Absolutely that's there. And that's, that's created. Like we have to understand that that's on purpose. Poverty is created.
Speaker 2:When you think about the pyramid structure of capitalism, you can't have the top without the bottom. And so while we have these systems that are designed to uplift and bring people out of poverty and all of these aspirational ideas, the reality is in order for the capitalistic structure to survive, you need the bottom of the pyramid. Otherwise, it falls. So it's an illusion.
Speaker 1:We in America are on the extreme side of the capitalistic spectrum. On the other side countries like Belgium, Netherlands, Finland, Iceland, they're much more closer to a more social structure, right? Know that extreme capitalism doesn't work. We know that extreme socialism, meaning communism, doesn't work. But we know that the things that are somewhere in the middle, let's say between America and the European countries, we know that that spectrum works.
Speaker 1:Because, you know, we've got countries for hundreds of years that kind of operate inside of that narrow spectrum. What are the things that you kind of look at Europe, you look at The States, what are the things you might move a little bit towards the European spectrum?
Speaker 2:I would definitely say, and if I would describe this spectrum, I would probably say it's selfish versus selfless. Right. I would describe those as the opposite ends. And if we can move things toward, more towards the selfless, right, because any extreme, right, is not healthy. I definitely agreed on your point, but if we could move more things towards that selfless side, as opposed to that selfish side, I would say the first thing I would want to jump into is religion and education.
Speaker 2:Think about the fact that everything that we know is something that's been told to us or poured into us by somebody, whether it's media, your parents, your village, whatever that looks like. And so when it comes to what we believe, right, the divisiveness, if we had that spectrum going more towards the selfless side and less divisiveness, I think that would be a huge piece of it. And then the educational part of it, that's something we legally have to pour into our babies from the time they're yay big. But if we're packaging things and telling them stuff that perpetuates the selfish side of things, then that's just creating more problems. And so when it comes to our spirituality and what we're believing, if that is something that is less divisive, right, and more selfless, and then if our education system could mirror that, I definitely think those would be the two systems that I'd start with in terms of shifting the paradigm and moving them along the continuum more towards that selfless side.
Speaker 1:Would you argue the removal of the separation of church and state?
Speaker 2:I think, I think it's less about either or. We had a situation prior to that where they were mixed up, right? And then we said, no, that can't happen anymore. We have to separate them. At the end of the day, I think both are extremes that shouldn't necessarily exist.
Speaker 2:I do think that there has to be some level of spiritual, divinely ordered, intuitively guided efforts in the way we structure our economy and system because that's where the love is. That's where that selflessness comes from. The world is where all the ego and the selfishness and the competition and all of that is created. But genuine, just pure love intuition that comes from whoever, whether you call them God or the earth or it's a woman or the universe. I don't care what you describe.
Speaker 2:Or if you say that it's nothing, doesn't matter how you describe it. The point is whatever that intuitive influence is from you, that's going to influence you to be selfless and understand that we're all connected in one way or another. We are mirrors of one another. And so if I hurt you, if I exploit you, if I lie to you, then I'm doing that to myself. And if we all operate from that premise, then things will be much better.
Speaker 1:I have a difficult question to you. Does evil exist? So when I am trying to operate within an ethical position, right, I'm trying to pour in love, I'm trying to do the right thing, and I'm being abused or taken advantage of, what's the right operating system?
Speaker 2:I don't think any of us have the right answer. We all have our opinions, right, and our insights and our thoughts based on our experiences. And so I'm no different than that, right? I'm someone who came up with her own experiences, right? Raised by a single mom, Black single mom in an urban community.
Speaker 2:I had a father from Mississippi. He was present, but not really emotionally present. And so I come up and, you know, poverty and food stamps and all these kinds of things. And then I go through the system, I overcome stuff. I get degrees and all these things and I establish really establish positions and things.
Speaker 2:So I'm kind of like the American dream, right? I came up from here and was able to accomplish this. And so my experience and my feedback is going to be based on that. So given that, I really think at the end of the day, dark and light exist. Everything has its opposite.
Speaker 2:There's the male and the female, and I don't mean gender, right? But there's everything has its opposite. And so when it comes to the darkness, you turn on the light. That's, that's, that's the answer. And it seems very simple.
Speaker 2:It's hard to apply because you have a very complex world, but at the end of the day, you have to turn on the light for any kind of darkness. And that's the only way you can combat it. And so that is from me as an individual social worker working in the system, right? Part of this is I have to advocate. I have to tell the truth.
Speaker 2:I have to speak out for what's needed. And that's a major role of a social worker. But when I think about where I am in my career and what's happening now, that's my own story. Much of the things that have happened in my past and in my life that I've been exposed to, these were secrets, right? There's a lot of shame.
Speaker 2:Talk about, you know, let the world know, you don't talk about what goes on in my house, stays in my house. Like, these are the way ways that you're raised and the stories that you're told about how you're supposed to be. For me being in this space, writing a memoir, telling these secrets and telling these stories, right, that is me stepping out on faith and shining light on the darkness. Everybody's not gonna like it. It's gonna make people uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:These stories are, some of them are very dark, traumatic stories, but this is my way of shining light on the darkness, not perpetuating the same cycle. It's difficult. It's me choosing to be different. It's me risking, right, my friends and my family and people saying, why you say that? How could you talk about yourself or your mother or your family in this way?
Speaker 2:Right? There's people are gonna have that opinion because when you shine light on darkness, everybody don't take to that kindly because you live in the dark and don't even know that you're in it.
Speaker 1:You talked about this element of taking personal risk. We were in a situation with sexual harassment. We chose to disclose and to report. Other executives in the organization didn't do that. They they looked the other way.
Speaker 1:We lost almost $250,000 because of that, because we were retaliated against. Nothing happened to that CEO to date. So you know I look at the situation, it's real, I lived through this. We did the right thing so we could look our border in the eye and we could sleep at night, but the price was massive. It was massive.
Speaker 1:It was the time it was life changing money. And and I look at this and I'm like, is there is there like is car I believe in karma. Is karma a real thing? Is justice a real thing? I'm not I'm not certain anymore.
Speaker 1:So how do you what do you say to a person? And I'm just one example. There are millions out there who are seeking justice and they just can't find it. And yet we tell people do the right thing. Somebody's doing something bad, you know, shine the light.
Speaker 1:Then you pay a very heavy price for shining the light. If it's women who report themselves, if it's other people who report about something that happened and still get hurt, like it just doesn't seem that the justice is being served. And yet we're telling people do the right thing. How do you reconcile these two things in your mind? And again, this is not the show for easy questions.
Speaker 2:I get it. And I actually love it. I do love it. Because at the end of the day, I think it has to do with perspective. It all comes down to perspective.
Speaker 2:And so when you talk about these cases, when you talk about and I'll take it back to myself, or to use that as an example. The price I'm paying in terms of exposing myself in this way, being this vulnerable, letting people know that this kind of darkness was happening in my life, in my world, in my family's world. And there's, I'm writing more, so I've got more darkness to like expose and shine light on. And there is the risk there. However, my perspective is about what I win, what I got from it was my own liberation, my own healing.
Speaker 2:Right? So I won't necessarily, I don't have to make a lot of money. Right? I may not make friends and my family as a result of telling these secrets and these things, but that's not what I see as the win. Right?
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, shining light on the darkness is ultimately the good thing. And so I sleep well at night. I'm liberated from this stuff. I'm healing.
Speaker 1:You're touching on something incredibly important. Let me ask you this question. Sorry to interrupt. How do you define happiness? How do you define the win?
Speaker 2:I think happiness, just like sadness, is fleeting. And so I think chasing that is definitely not the thing. It's going to come and go with moments and things of that nature. The real, the real thing that you chase and you want to sit in is joy. And joy.
Speaker 1:What's the difference between happiness and joy?
Speaker 2:Happiness is external. Joy is internal. Joy comes from you and your connection with your higher power and understanding that you're living and walking in your purpose. Doesn't mean bad things are not gonna happen. Bad things is gonna happen.
Speaker 2:It's the world. That's what the world is for. Like, if you wanted it to be just all happy things, all joy, all the time, then you should be wherever else that is, whether that's heaven for you or utopia or wherever else, but that's not what earth is about. Earth is about experiencing all of these things. And so I think the misconception of always being happy and having external things always go your way, we don't learn and grow from that.
Speaker 2:You have to have trials and you have to have tribulations because that's how you grow your character and your person and you become a better person over time. But even as bad things happen, you can still have joy when you understand where you come from and you have that connection to that higher power and you understand that everything happens for you, not to you. And when you can have that kind of perspective, you can find joy in even the darkest moments. My father just died, like not about a week or so ago, and I have a mom in hospice. Right?
Speaker 2:I like I life is not perfect. Everything happening is not just happy, happy, happy, but I still sit in joy because I'm connected to spirit, and I understand that the things that I'm doing is on purpose, and I'm walking in my divine truth. I know what it's like to not do that, to shrink yourself and dim your light and be ashamed of things, and to walk in that. To know that is how I know joy. And I might not be as appreciative or understanding of this joyful, liberated space had I not walked in darkness.
Speaker 1:This concept of joy and versus happiness or feeding pleasure, we've heard this before on the show. Another guest called it pain versus suffering. So he used the negative version of this, right? Pain is unavoidable, suffering is a choice, right? I think this is incredibly difficult to do.
Speaker 1:I think I'm learning recently how to do this better and better, but give us a very tangible example. Your parents, right, in that moment of extreme pain, how do you choose joy? What's the actual decision? What's the thing that you do to be in that moment of joy, even though there's clearly pain all around?
Speaker 2:It's not something you probably know how to do early on. You probably have to go through painful things a number of times and then realize where the choice lies because you may not clearly see it early on. I know I didn't, and many people that I engage with or speak to don't necessarily get that early on. Something you have to live long enough, right, to be able to experience and understand. But I'll give you an example.
Speaker 2:With my father recently passing and my mom being in hospice, me writing this book and kind of being in this current space, I have things that I'm doing in a community, places that I'm showing up and I could leave with disappointment, right? That maybe my father was not able to see me do X, Y, and Z, or that my mom is not able to physically be present with me, or maybe family members are working or something like that going on. And so this is the thing that's happening, right? I'm disappointed that my family, right, is not showing up for me in a way that I want them to show up for me. And that means that they don't love me.
Speaker 2:They don't prioritize me, that I'm not valued, that I'm not worthy to them. That's the choice. The choice is to make it mean that. And that's where the suffering comes in. So even though this disappointing feeling may come up, I can acknowledge that feeling.
Speaker 2:I can say, okay, I see you, but I am not my feelings. My feelings come and my feelings go. And if I let my feelings dictate my life, I would be without a job or employment or all kinds of things. You wake up in the morning, I don't feel like working, but you better get up and work. You're gonna do something.
Speaker 2:So you don't let your feelings drive the bus. They're there. You acknowledge them there and then you let them flow. The choice I make is not to make it mean I'm not worthy, that I'm not a priority, that I'm not valued because that's not true. Just because someone can't show up for this thing or that thing or whatever that is, you don't have to make it mean all of those things.
Speaker 2:And that's something I didn't learn until later in life, that I had that choice, that I could do that. And now that I practice that on a regular basis, doesn't mean I don't get disappointed. It doesn't mean negative feelings don't arise. But when I see them, I catch myself. And I say, okay, it's an opportunity to practice, right?
Speaker 2:This feeling came up. I can make it mean this, or I can make it mean this. What choice are you going to make? And I have that power. I have that power every moment of every day.
Speaker 2:And I choose not to suffer.
Speaker 1:That's incredibly interesting. What I see in my personal experiences is that you have a lot of power of interpretation and you know, you can interpret your, the world around you or your feelings in many ways. You can interpret it as, oh this person doesn't value me or you can interpret it as, oh this person is under a lot now, let me make this moment special because that might be all I have. And honestly, I look back at my own situations and I can't really say, you know which is the right interpretation. There's no way to say this is right or wrong.
Speaker 1:So in the essence you're just choosing between suffering and joy is kind of how I've internalized it. So again we don't have any any correct answers here on this show, it's just maybe tools or thoughts to help guide our audience and maybe even ourselves as well. Michel, first of all, thanks so much for coming on the show today. This has been absolutely delightful. There's one question we ask every single one of our audience, the only scripted question on the show.
Speaker 1:And it's if you had to go back, it's a hard question, to the most difficult point in your life, what advice would you give yourself?
Speaker 2:Interestingly enough, there's several, so many difficult moments, right? But the theme in all of them is that I would have to tell myself, don't internalize what's happening and keep following the light. That would be the best way to go about it because regardless to what it was, they're very difficult situations. And I write about a lot of them. And through that process, this is what I've learned.
Speaker 2:And I've written letters to my child self in these various situations. And that's what I say over and over again. Don't internalize it. You don't have to carry that weight. Let it change you.
Speaker 2:Let it grow you and follow the light. The light is in all of us. Figure out how to quiet the noise and follow that light and you'll be fine.
Speaker 1:And one last question, tell the audience the name of your book and where to find it.
Speaker 2:My book is called Why She Like That? It is One Woman's Journey Through Generational Trauma and the Healing Power and Going Back, And you can find it on Amazon.
Speaker 1:DeShaun Parker, thank you so much for joining the show today. It was an absolute delight.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.