Ever wondered how a pivotal life decision can trigger massive personal transformation? Christine's fiancé, Tony, joins us for an intimate conversation. Sharing his story of how loss became the catalyst to personal development and massive life changes.
Tony shares his story of spiritual exploration with mushrooms and how it has helped him manage his emotions and deepen his understanding of himself and his relationship with Christine, and his children. He also shares how MDMA has enhanced their relationship by creating a safe space for challenging conversations and emotions.
We navigate the effects of his life experiences with his parenting style, exploring how he cultivates empathy and presence in his interactions with their children. Christine and Tony both reflect on their changing understanding of consciousness and the universe, and how this has impacted their personal growth. This episode is a testament to the power of a conscious relationship, mindset, personal reflection, and the courage to challenge societal norms.
Don't miss out on this powerful conversation that candidly explores the misconception of psychedelics in relationships. And get to know a little more about the mysterious Tony we are always referring to.
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Use code OTHERSIDE15 for 15% off of our favorite mushroom gummies!
Our Website:
https://linktr.ee/seeyouontheothersidepodcast
Ever wondered how a pivotal life decision can trigger massive personal transformation? Christine's fiancé, Tony, joins us for an intimate conversation. Sharing his story of how loss became the catalyst to personal development and massive life changes.
Tony shares his story of spiritual exploration with mushrooms and how it has helped him manage his emotions and deepen his understanding of himself and his relationship with Christine, and his children. He also shares how MDMA has enhanced their relationship by creating a safe space for challenging conversations and emotions.
We navigate the effects of his life experiences with his parenting style, exploring how he cultivates empathy and presence in his interactions with their children. Christine and Tony both reflect on their changing understanding of consciousness and the universe, and how this has impacted their personal growth. This episode is a testament to the power of a conscious relationship, mindset, personal reflection, and the courage to challenge societal norms.
Don't miss out on this powerful conversation that candidly explores the misconception of psychedelics in relationships. And get to know a little more about the mysterious Tony we are always referring to.
Colors
Use code OTHERSIDE15 for 15% off of our favorite mushroom gummies!
Our Website:
https://linktr.ee/seeyouontheothersidepodcast
Welcome back to another juicy episode. Speaking of juicy, see you on the other side and I am the interviewer today. This is so bizarre. How do you feel it's weird? It's not my place. It says a little weird. Do a good job. I will do my best. And today we are talking to Christine. Hi, I'm Nia. This is Christine and Tony, her fiance.
Speaker 2:Hello.
Speaker 1:My partner, life partner I don't know what else to say your fiance, your partner. If you've ever heard us talk about Tony, this is Tony.
Speaker 3:I kind of hate saying fiance, because we've been together for almost seven years. We have businesses together, we have a kid together. Your partners, we are. It's weird to be like this is my life.
Speaker 1:I know what I was going to say. That almost sounds like worse than fiance. Nothing worse or better.
Speaker 3:But then it's like fiance, but we've been engaged for six years. So yeah, here we are.
Speaker 2:That's why, most of the time, if I'm talking to somebody that I don't know, I'll just call her my wife.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I usually just call my husband. That's so easy, that's so easy. The labels are like Right, and we live that life. Yeah, but there's just not the paper.
Speaker 1:You're not going to. You're not going to be like. This is my twin flame. That's some shit. You would say. This is my soul connection. We were written in the stars. Actually, though I think you were.
Speaker 3:Where I checked you.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the reason we wanted to talk to you is because, well, first let's start at the beginning, not of your life, but when I first came across Christine the second time, like back two years ago, was it two years ago, a year and a half ago, two years when she did her first journey and she came home and she said to you hey, so I met up with Leah and I think I'm going to do mushrooms. What were your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:My first reaction was hold up, let's, let's, let's do a little research into this and I was, like I've heard of people I know of people who did psychedelics and were never the same, like they did something to their brain and never fully recovered from it and kind of the same thing. I think that a lot of people think about having a bad trip.
Speaker 2:Yeah Something like that, and I mean like because Christine's always like that she's. She's just very open to, as you know, like doing just about anything if she thinks is going to help her.
Speaker 1:She's an experimenter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so she was just ready to jump in with both feet and I was like you know, hold up let's. You know, let's talk about this. And she had already made her mind up. It didn't matter at that point.
Speaker 1:What I said? I don't think so yeah.
Speaker 1:That's interesting because when I, when I told my husband about it, he's just like yeah, sure, whatever, like, didn't really like, he was just like I mean, if that's what you want to do, like, go for it. Like, but I've had, um, yeah, there's a lot of people that I've guided who's like husbands, want to know more, and it makes a lot of sense to me that you would like want to know and that you were doing your research. But also what you said, like I think what you said is still true, but in a different way. Like you've known a lot of people who did it and they changed and they're not the same.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't I don't, I don't really think.
Speaker 3:I know people, or at the time, I knew people that had like personally had done it for like growth, like to you know I think they were doing psychedelics and a lot of other things and very recreationally Got it. That's what he was around and saw.
Speaker 2:Okay, and it was acid. Really, I think is what it was. It wasn't even mushrooms.
Speaker 1:I was literally just going to say so I do this, I go on tangents, but we were. We were my husband and I were talking about one of his friends from years ago. He was his roommate when we first met and everybody like is like this guy's a weirdo. He like talks to people, he like like in his head and they would joke that he always had like something on his shoulder because if he would get too fucked up he would just be like having conversations with like himself on his shoulder.
Speaker 1:And when we were in Cabo last week, Jason was like you know, I used to think he was like super, fucking weird and I think the acid did that to him. But also he was always happy and he didn't give a fuck what people thought about him and I think that was the acid. But we used to like make fun of this guy because he did so much acid that it like fucked with his brain a little bit, but like he's always happy, he's a good guy, Like he's just, he's a weird. But I look at the way people talk about me now versus what I was three or four years ago and I'm fucking weird. Same, You're weird, You're getting there.
Speaker 2:Not that weird. Maybe not that weird.
Speaker 1:You're weird dirt than you were.
Speaker 2:I've definitely done a lot of stuff in the last couple years and I never thought I would do that for sure.
Speaker 1:Okay. So let's talk about that, because you're maybe a little bit of hesitation going in. You're obviously, like you know, christine's made her mind up. She's going to do this, no matter what. Let me tell you where I thought. When we started this thing together, when we started talking back and forth, I was very in my head about what you thought about me.
Speaker 2:Oh really.
Speaker 1:I was. I told her this. I said I was afraid that you thought that I was a bad influence and I was like he's going to hate me. He's going to hate me Like here. I am Like, oh, now that you've done mushrooms, you should try this. But I was also like I remember meeting you out at the pool one day and it's and I, I don't know maybe I thought oh, that was when you guys were talking to the rice. Yeah, but that was weird.
Speaker 1:You thought that was weird. That's still weird, but I remember having a conversation with you and I know my shit, like I'm like no, this is the dose and this is how often, and this is what you should do.
Speaker 2:Oh, we all work because we don't talk about mushrooms.
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, yeah, because you were asking me all these questions and I am curious, like, what did you think of her hanging out or being friends with someone who probably was not someone she usually would have hung out with?
Speaker 2:I mean, I didn't think that you were weird. I don't think I thought you were as nearly as weird as you think that I thought you were.
Speaker 1:Oh, awesome.
Speaker 2:So I that I like I never thought that you were you probably think you're weird now.
Speaker 3:I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2:I mean, I do remember, I remember that you know we knew each other at the gym and and then when we ran into you at Simply tie, simply tie. I didn't really see you close up, but I saw you. You know, I think Christine went outside and talked to you, yeah, and I did see you and I thought you looked a lot different. Just better, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then when Christine ran into you after the gym closed, you know, I think that that I'd kept telling her when the gym was open that new doors would open when she closed the gym, and I kept saying it over and over again, cause she was like I don't know what I'm gonna do, I don't know what my life is supposed to be, and I just kept saying you don't know, because this is where you're at right now and once you close it, then new opportunities, new doors are going to open and it's something that you've never even thought about. That, will you know, come to you. You remember me saying that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I got sorry. I got something in both my eyes, oh, okay.
Speaker 1:So it sounds like you kind of knew what you're talking about, because it's we know that you're older than her. You don't look older than her, by the way, and you don't look older either, christine. I can get my foot out of my mouth real quick, but you've you've lived more life and so you've had these things happen to you where, like you've had, you've watched something fall apart and you've gone to something better. And, christine, technically it's happened with you, like with your divorce, and then finding that, like in the middle of that divorce, like you probably didn't think, like you were ever going to find something better. We talk about psychedelic life.
Speaker 3:We talk about psychedelics being the wild wild west. Online dating. That shit is wild. You both had to do that for a while we did. Oh my God. What's funny is he remembers me from Bumble, what? But I swiped.
Speaker 2:I think you remember me from Bumble.
Speaker 3:Whatever, I swiped no to him, but then we actually. She literally went into my Facebook profile.
Speaker 2:She could do it right now and tell you every picture that I had on Bumble.
Speaker 3:You also? Can you also know that I'm super good with faces, but we met in person, yes, Wow, wow.
Speaker 1:And this person telling her you're like, just because this fell apart, like it doesn't mean, like this is going to be like this forever.
Speaker 2:Something else is going to happen for you, yeah, cause I was in a similar experience.
Speaker 2:I mean, I had a business that I closed in 2012 and filed bankruptcy and was kind of at rock bottom, and so I knew that you know, other other doors were going to open, and I felt like for her it was going to be even more so because she has so many contacts and people are really so drawn to her. And I just felt like that every with all the people that she knew that had come through the gym and that had been through nine round, which she was at before she started six packs that that people probably had had ideas for her that they had never even talked to her about because she was the owner of six packs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I say that a lot to people. It's really hard to like let things go. But sometimes when you let something go, that's when, like the other stuff, it's almost like a test. And I know I don't know if you talk this way, but I say it's from the universe all the time, but it's almost like a test from the universe saying like, oh, we have more for you, but we need you to let go of something first.
Speaker 1:You know, and sometimes when you, when you can't let go, like it's almost like a giant, like shove out the window. Like you, you're not going to let go of this. We're going to, we're going to force you to let go.
Speaker 3:And I totally will own. I really struggle with letting go with things because I wanted to be a really hard worker and I didn't want to let other people down and I didn't want to be seen as like a quitter.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Cause I was trying to talk her into closing the gym a couple of years before I mean, you know, even before and you and I have had lots of talks like that.
Speaker 2:Even before COVID. You know she was stressed out by it and I was just like you know, like it's, it's not worth it. You know, if, if it's, if you're not happy doing this and it's not giving you what you want, then do something else. And she was like no, I don't want to be a failure. And I was like, yeah, failure. Like you built a business that you know had hundreds of members and changed people's lives, and you know there's no failure in that, it's just finding out you know more about yourself.
Speaker 1:You're like a really good, like you could be like a mindset coach.
Speaker 2:I've done a lot of mindset Like um. Like business oriented Like yeah, no, I'm very, I'm very big on mindset. Mindset is probably something that is that I think about on a regular basis, and I talk about it on a regular basis too.
Speaker 1:So we need to set up a dinner double date, because I try to do this whole mindset thing with with my husband and it's like it's not. It doesn't come as easy for him and I was like, well, of course you're going to fail, because you keep saying you're going to fail.
Speaker 2:Right, like it's that simple.
Speaker 1:It's that simple Like if you're sitting here telling yourself you're not good enough, then you're never going to be good enough, right, um? And that's not like manifesting woo woo shit, like that's mindset.
Speaker 2:Right, and I think that there's you can manifest those things too.
Speaker 2:Like and it's and it's not necessarily a woo, woo thing, but I, I, I like, I do think that you, you manifest those things by the way that you look in yourself and the way that it makes you react in situations. And you know, like, one of the things that, um, that I remember telling Christine when COVID hit, and I was like you know, there's, there's something good here, you just haven't found it yet. And I was like they're, you know, we just have to find the positive that is in this. And, um, you know, one of the positives that came out of it, um, was that, you know, she was able to change the business and start doing personal training and, um, you know, they had the PPA loans that that came out and they, those really helped, you know, her to, you know, sustain business because she thought she was done, because the gym was closed for three months.
Speaker 2:And so you know, so it was just like okay, we you know this happened.
Speaker 2:Now we need to find like what's what's the other side of it, and you know, and, and I think we did, and I think that she did a great job of of, you know, keeping that business going for the, you know, through the pandemic and struggling through all that and changed the model of the business because it went from I mean, I think that she I mean she, I mean she had about 150 members, you know paying anywhere from 80 to $150 a month for their memberships to six months later, because that, you know, everybody was on contract and so they kept paying. But every time they would renew, they would, they would drop in six months later. I think there were probably 40 people that had memberships.
Speaker 2:And then she hung on for, you know, another a full, like year and a half, after the pandemic started.
Speaker 1:I know. And it only stopped, really because it was killing her because, well, it was killing her, but it was that was.
Speaker 2:you know you want to talk about the universe, so she was. You know she was having all these reactions to her body. She had a UTI for almost a year and like the rashes and everything and she started getting those rashes. That was like I think that started around Thanksgiving. She was getting these rashes and we ended up going to the emergency room Thanksgiving night, I think wasn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know so. So then she went. She was going to see another doctor who was more of like he wasn't really holistic, but he was not a traditional like takes insurance type medicine. He gave, you know, like peptides and things like that that he would, you know, try to treat things with, besides just giving antibiotic, wow. And so she was walking out of out of that doctor's office. Well, we had been in Florida, we had just bought the first house in Florida. We went down there that was like the first week of December we were setting that house up and then, while we were down there, the rashes went away and then she came back to the gym and the rashes came back almost immediately as soon as she walked into the gym. It's almost like listen, bitch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're telling you what this is and we need you to listen.
Speaker 2:And so when we were in Florida the first time she was having a conversation with her, she was going to talk to the owner of the building and I told her because the lease was up the following September, so it was like nine or 10 months, 10 months later I guess and I said you know, just talk to him and tell him that we're not going to renew the lease and tell him that if he wants to start marketing it, that he can and that you'll leave whenever he wants you to. Because she was at that point she was just going to hang on until our lease was up. And so she told him that. And then we came back home. She had a doctor's appointment. While we were in the doctor's appointment he called and I was like, and she was like, she looked at the phone, she was like it's.
Speaker 3:Reza, the building owner.
Speaker 2:And I was like, well, it's not going to be anything bad. Like talked to him, so we got out to the car and I don't remember if you called him back or if he had left a voicemail.
Speaker 2:I called him up and I was there like listening, because with him he loved Christine and he hated me, so we played that up, we played the good cop back up, so like I would handle all the like negotiating type things and if there was any kind of like difficult conversation I would have that with him, and then she was always, that was, jason with me in the business.
Speaker 1:I never did those things.
Speaker 2:And so so he told her when he called her. Oh, and when we're in the doctor's office, they were like you need to take a month off of work.
Speaker 3:So they were like no matter what you do.
Speaker 2:No matter what you do you need to take a break, and so she was prepared to you know, to step away from from the gym for that, and then he had called and he said if and this was like December 14th I think, and he was like, if you went out of the lease, I'll let you out. You have to be out by the end of the month, and so we had like two weeks to close that gym down.
Speaker 2:But I got COVID and well, and we were still, we were still finishing the house. So we had to make another trip back to Florida to finish setting the house up, because we had a guest coming in and in like a couple weeks, and so so we flew back down to Florida, set set, finished setting it up, got the pictures taken and everything, and then rashes went away and then we came back, rashes came back and we closed the gym down and then it was Christmas Eve. She was not feeling well. We were going to close the gym on December 26. It was like a Monday that was going to be the final class. She was going to do like a goodbye thing Everybody come in and on the. It was actually it was December 23.
Speaker 2:We always get together with my family on the 24th, on Christmas Eve, and so I was like go get a COVID test because you wasn't feeling well. And I was like just go get a COVID test just to check. And she was like I don't have COVID and I was like, well, yeah, but we're going to be around, you know family members and stuff, so just check it. She had COVID. So Christmas Eve, christmas Day, we're in quarantine by ourselves. And then on the 26th I still didn't have it and so I went and we didn't have that final class and I just closed the gym up. We had movers that came in and I worked that entire. Well, I worked on Sunday, I guess Christmas Day I went out there and worked because I couldn't do anything else Take him stuff apart.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God.
Speaker 2:On the 26th we finished. I had some movers come in, they moved stuff into storage and I got home that night and I wasn't feeling well and then I just thought I was tired because I've been working so much. And then I had COVID.
Speaker 1:And you got COVID. I'm a universe, yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's how the gym closed and it was that fast and but it was, you know, literally. The doctor said you need to take 30 days off. This is obviously causing something. We walked out and she talked to the landlord and he said you have two weeks closed in the gym.
Speaker 1:See, that's what I'm saying, that decision had he not called and given you an out.
Speaker 2:No, cause she didn't want to be seen as a quitter or failing, so she was going to see.
Speaker 1:It's almost like this is your opportunity right here. We're handing it to you Like. Please make the right choice.
Speaker 3:I was more willing to kill myself Then let anyone down, then to let someone else down. I would let myself down over and over and over and over again.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I want to get into um. I thought about this a lot because you know, I got a lot of women and some of them are married, and something that always happens after a trip is there comes a point where it is the woman saying to the man evolve or get left behind. I'm doing all this work and I need you to step it up and this isn't. This isn't in your case, this isn't particular in my case. It's almost every person that I guide this happens to and it's almost like it needs to come with a warning label, like I'm not saying you're going to get divorced after you do this, but I'm saying like you're going to need a partner who's also willing to do the work, and sometimes that looks different than what you thought doing the work looked like.
Speaker 1:So you know it's funny because, like there's a lot of parallels in our world and Christine and I have this like super traumatic, chaotic childhood. You know lots of like issues that are like obvious, if you like, sat down and asked about our life stories and then you and my husband, like you didn't look like you had it so bad. So I'm not putting this on you, but I think for our relationship he was like well, you're the one with the issues, because you're the one who's depressed and you're the one with anxiety and you're the one who had the fucked up childhood. So I'm fine. And about six months after my mushroom trip, I'm like no, motherfucker, you're not fine, you got some work to do. I'm doing, I'm holding up my end, like I need you to step up or we're getting a divorce.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I want to know how that happened for you, because Jason did another, did his first mushroom journey close to a year after my first one, and what made you decide to do it and why? Let me back up a little bit. What did you see different in Christine before you did your mushroom journey?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we had some of those kinds of conversations. I don't think Christine was ever like. She was always like I want you to do it, you don't have to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But I think that you would get a lot out of it, and I actually said something similar to her at one point about my trauma not being as bad as her trauma. I may have even said I didn't have trauma.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I remember.
Speaker 1:She seems to remember a lot how does that work for you.
Speaker 2:But the change that I saw in her and it started when she closed the gym Well, I guess she did the mushroom journey, like two months before she got here, yeah, not that long after. But even after she closed it, there was still just a weight had been lifted off of her. She still was having a lot of anxiety. That was, I think, her main thing, that we all saw, or that I saw was her anxiety that it was over the last three years had really gotten pretty bad.
Speaker 1:Like debilitating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say debilitating, but it was close.
Speaker 3:I would have. I had panic attacks.
Speaker 2:In the middle of the night.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's hard. It's hard to be with something like when you're seeing somebody have a panic attack because there's really not much you can do, no, and so. I would try to we wake up in the middle of the night she would be having, she would just be sitting up. She might not even wake me up. A lot of times she wouldn't wake me up, but if I did wake up. I would see it. And then try to have her breathe or whatever to get through it.
Speaker 2:But that had gotten progressively worse over a few years and then, after she did the journey, it was, and I would say the other thing was, is that she was? She had a lot of anger in her. Yeah, and we used to joke when we say she ran hot.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:She can still run, hot yeah she still does.
Speaker 2:It's a warm summer.
Speaker 1:It's like a lukewarm.
Speaker 2:But yeah, she just had like this anger in her and it would come out in a lot of different ways. But between that and a lot of the anger, I didn't necessarily know at the time like where it was coming from or that it was even. You know, like not just how she was, like you know, you just think, oh, that's just how a person is.
Speaker 1:Did you really even know at that point, like, where it was coming from?
Speaker 3:I mean, I knew I had daddy issues and I had wounds there and I would use a lot of times a lot of humor about those specific situations which would make everyone else feel incredibly uncomfortable, but then, in moments when it was like a trigger or reaction, it would come out as anger for sure.
Speaker 2:So when she did the journey it was again like just this cloud lifted off of her. I mean she was so different and she was not like she wasn't angry really anymore. Her anxiety got. I mean it went virtually nonexistent. I mean I think she still has times where she gets anxious or feels anxious, but it's rare that it happens now post-journey, and so I saw that change and she just seemed more relaxed and happier.
Speaker 2:And so I saw that change and I think a lot of us saw that change, Even our friends. The one friend that kind of coined the phrase that she runs hot was the one that also came up with the new one that she's more of a medium simmer now that she was hot. But yeah, it was a pretty dramatic change that I saw in it and it had a big benefit to our relationship too.
Speaker 2:And we were able to have, I think, more productive, like when we fought, like it was just more productive. It wasn't just like anger and then me getting angry because she's angry and I don't understand why she's angry, and then nothing ends up. It just ends up being a fight about nothing, and so I think that it helped our relationship in that way too.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I don't mean to get into the trauma. I know the trauma of what happened, but you grew up with two parents who loved you and very different situation, but you lost both of them and so, while your childhood maybe wasn't traumatic, that's still something very traumatic for someone to go through and for someone to have to watch as an adult especially. So is that something that you ever considered before doing a journey? Did you ever think that maybe that was something that you needed to work through, or work through in a different way?
Speaker 1:Or did you think that you had done that?
Speaker 2:You know, I think that I had kind of done that, or I thought I had kind of done. I still think that I had. So my mom died 2012. So 11 years ago she died of honey-puncities. It's a degenerative brain disease, kind of like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. It's kind of like all the worst of all those diseases kind of piled into one. And so she had been sick for a long time. She was in a nursing home for eight years, and so you kind of watch this person just deteriorate slowly over time.
Speaker 2:I think that when she was diagnosed I was probably 22 at the time, and so it's drawn out and it's different with that, because with that disease it's hereditary, so you have a 50% chance of getting it. So I'm 22. I know that my mom's sick, and now I'm thinking all of a sudden, I am too. And so it's like you started thinking, OK, I've only got 12 years to live my life. And I think that that's where my mindset thing kind of really started, because I thought again, there's nothing you can do about it, and so it's like what's the lesson?
Speaker 3:you can learn with that.
Speaker 2:And the lesson is that life is short and you don't waste opportunities. If you want to do something, to do it, because you may not have an opportunity to do it the next day or the next year.
Speaker 3:So for me.
Speaker 2:Shortly after that, I was working at UPS. I had a, I think, what most people thought was a great job. I started out of high school working at UPS and was promoted moved into a full-time management position. And I was 25 years old and I was working in a cube. And if people that start working out there at the hub, I don't know how many of them actually get into a full-time position, because at the time they used to only promote people from within.
Speaker 2:So you couldn't just really you could. It was just very difficult to get hired in from the outside, but it was probably less than a fraction of a percent of people that got to the position where I was at from all the people that start as part-time people, working nights, so, but I wasn't really crazy about it. I kind of wanted to own my own business and do something on my own and in my mind I'm thinking in 10 years I might not be able to do this, so now's the time to do it. So why live your life doing something that you don't want to do? So I quit and I started up a business.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And I don't think that I would have done that if it wasn't for Huntington's disease, and so that's always kind of been in the back of my mind. It's like there's a silver lining to it in a way, because it has allowed me, over my life, I think, to not stay in situations where I wasn't really happy for too long and, in a way, when I got divorced, which was eight years ago, I guess now that was in my mind there too, because I'm like 40 years old and it's like again you don't know how much time you have left, and is this really how you want to spend what days you have left?
Speaker 2:in a relationship that's not satisfying you, it's not growing, it's not evolving, and so it's like why continue to live something that you don't want to live, and so that's. But anyway, I guess back to the trauma. That was my initial trauma, and then my mom died in 2012. And then my dad passed away in 2016.
Speaker 2:He had cancer and we found out and I guess it was 2015 that he had it had a really rough year of having he had just bladder removed had chemotherapy and then eventually I think it was about a year- and a half almost two years, I guess, he lived and then he passed away.
Speaker 2:And then the next year is when I got divorced, also in 2012,. The same year it was the same year my mom died was the year that I closed that business, that I'd started and filed bankruptcy. So in a four-year period of time I had closed business, bankruptcy, mom died, dad died, got divorced Like loss after loss, after loss after loss, and in the middle of all that, again mindset thing 2012, my mom just died.
Speaker 2:I wasn't really happy. I was working at Honeywell now in this office that I literally used to have nightmares about, because when I had digital lifestyles, we did contract work for Honeywell and I literally went into the office one time to pick up some blueprints and was like this is the most miserable office that I've ever been in.
Speaker 1:It was like before I worked there.
Speaker 2:Have you ever seen Joe versus the Volcanoes?
Speaker 1:It's been a long time.
Speaker 2:There's a scene in that movie and I just actually thought about this. There's a scene in that movie where they're in an office in the beginning and it's like the lights are flickering. It's got the old fluorescent lights and they're humming.
Speaker 2:Like almost comical worst work setting ever this office building was in the industrial park and it was on the second floor of what is essentially a warehouse and it was awful and I literally had this vision in my head of having to work in that office and how terrible that it must be. And it went from that to closing the business, filing bankruptcy and then being unemployed for a few months and not knowing what was going to happen. I thought I was going to lose my house, no-transcript, supplying for jobs, not getting anything back. And then I ended up reaching out to somebody that I had known at Honeywell that we do more for, and they hired me.
Speaker 1:Damn.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so I wasn't, I was. So, a year later, I'm still not happy, like you know, I and I remember thinking to myself again you know I there's.
Speaker 2:I guess I could do something about my career situation, but you know there's not. That's not going to be a quick change or anything. You know that. And my mom just died my, you know I'm not happy with my marriage and I just didn't feel good. And then I was thinking, you know when was the last time that I actually felt good? And that was back in like 2008 or 2009. I had lost weight and and so I thought, you know, like that's one thing you can, you can easily control, you can control yourself, you can control if you eat healthy, you control if you go to the gym, like there's, that's a hundred percent within your control. And I was like that's something I'm in control of, and I was. That was when I was the happiest. That I remember was whenever I was active and, you know, working on myself, and I was like that I'm going to start doing that again and I went back to the gym and and and over the period of probably nine months.
Speaker 2:I mean, I lost like 60 pounds, Jesus yeah, and and I think that that really started, you know, to it changed a lot of things about it, made me feel better.
Speaker 3:It made me feel more confident.
Speaker 2:And and I think it set my life into a different direction at that point.
Speaker 3:Hold, I'm about to pee my pants.
Speaker 1:Sorry, pause, I didn't know you all took bathroom breaks. She usually doesn't. She's done it a few times. I didn't know any of that. This is fascinating, especially the mindset stuff. Yeah, like I think sometimes it takes. Okay, I was asking my 15 year old in the car yesterday like what he would do if you had a year left to live. Like I, that type of stuff, like I ask questions like that all the time, yeah. Like would you still love me if I was a worm?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've been asked questions.
Speaker 1:But I asked him that and he's like well, I don't know. And then I start going into what I would do and I think that when that, when you're faced with that reality, like you really do have a different you, it's almost like you're forced to have a different mindset, because you can either sit in that well, this is my life now and I'm just going to live it out and be miserable and sad and, you know, depressed, and you know I could die any day, but then you look at the other side of that and you're like or I could live every day, like it's my last, I could make these choices that will make a difference in my life, like you already went through like such a transformational journey. I didn't, yeah, and I continue to do it.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know, even you know, when I left Honeywell last year this year, you know that was me getting in my mind of like you know why. Why am I doing this? I'm not, I'm not. I'm like what am I getting out of this at this point?
Speaker 1:So, even though and this is just like a human thing, like you, know that that you can let something go, and you, it's worked for you so many times, but it's still possible to sometimes get stuck.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, happens often.
Speaker 2:And I, and I think that most people would probably look at me people that know me I would be curious to see, like I don't actually know, what my closest friends actually think of me, but I know that they think that I'm I'm a little crazy, but but, yeah, I mean, you know, I've gotten stuck in situations and you know, and, and Christine, even like when we were talking we were talking last week, I think and she said that I have a tendency to get stuck in situations and I, you know, and, and I and I, I, I do. But I think that part of it is that just my process of going through and like I'm not going to make like quick decisions typically, yeah, like I will make big changes.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Like massive changes, yeah Like quit your career Right, get a divorce.
Speaker 2:But yeah, but it's not going to be something that I'm going to do on a whim, you know, like it's going to, it's, I'm going to sit on it and I always like to let my subconscious kind of sit on things and like, if there's like a big decision that's coming up, then I need to make. A lot of times, I don't, I, I, I don't even know that I do this intentionally, but I won't make it, and then I'll wait and see if it comes back up again. And then, if it comes back up again, then it's like okay, now maybe this is important and I need to think more about it, and I still might not even make a decision, and I'll wait to see if it comes back up and then, if it comes, and then make the decision.
Speaker 1:I love that You're kind of more spiritual than I thought you were, but you probably see it in a different way. Yeah, I don't think he thinks that he is, but he is. I think you probably like you logic it, like you you turn it into logic, but I I feel like that it drives Jason crazy because I'm like it'll work out.
Speaker 1:It always does, it always does, and if you believe it's going to work out, it will work out. And the same thing with like decisions. I'm like if it's for me, it will come back. If it's not, then it's going to keep going and I'm not missing anything If I don't. If I'm like stressing out about making the right decision, I'm not missing it by not making a decision right away. It'll come back around.
Speaker 2:Right, but I think that you have to have that openness to realize when it's coming back and you have to realize that, like when it's time to actually make that change.
Speaker 1:See, I call those signs. Yeah, I'm like. The microwave says 1111 and you just called me. It's a sign, but I don't think it even matters what you call it. It doesn't, it really doesn't. That's what. That's the good thing about it. Like, you can call it whatever you want.
Speaker 3:Right, if it's like your belief system, then message. It's the same mentality, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but, but like I remember, you know, like telling myself, like when, when I went through bankruptcy, and I was literally telling myself like this is going to be the best thing that's ever happened to me.
Speaker 1:And it was.
Speaker 2:And that was at the time when I was like it was, I was at my bottom, but I but I knew I was at my bottom and and I was, and I was, and I was saying like this is, this is going to open up a new chapter, and you just have to be open to that new chapter and and and. Like I would tell myself that that and I told my family. I was like this is going to be the best thing, like it, you know just.
Speaker 2:I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what the next thing is going to be.
Speaker 1:Do you feel like they thought you were a little dilulu?
Speaker 2:Um, probably yeah.
Speaker 1:It's a. It's a very weird. I think that people think that about the way that I look at life is that like I'm delusional? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, I would tell Christine that when she had the gym and I'm and you know, and I would be like, look like, this is this is not, this isn't who you are, you're not this gym, like whatever it is that that happens, this is just a stepping stone to get you to where it is that you know you're supposed to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. No failure in it. I was telling them when you were in the bathroom, like I was, like I didn't really I didn't know any of this stuff, and to to think that, like, when you're faced with like a life or death situation, um, you kind of have to, like you either make a conscious choice to live in the now or a conscious choice to live in the low part of it. And a lot of times people don't get to that because they're not faced with this life or death situation. You know what I mean. Like that's the thing that like pushes people into this. Now, what are you going to do? Right, you know it pushes you into the other side or you get stuck in the same place, yeah, yeah. So he kind of already went through this like heroic journey. I'm very into like heroic journeys right now, the heroes journey.
Speaker 1:So you already you've already done that before mushrooms Like it's just before we even met, before you even met. It's just so. No wonder you were like already like such a good guy. No, you were ever bad, but it's just like. Okay, this makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:Now than I used to be, that's for sure. I've had a lot of growth over the last 10 years, 12 years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. So the mushrooms for you weren't like the life changing thing, but they were another journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was like bam bam bam, and the thing about, like, I'm not a spiritual person, or I wasn't a spiritual person. The mushrooms for me were just. They just opened me up more.
Speaker 2:I think yeah, and in it my journey was a it was a spiritual journey, I guess in a way, but it wasn't like spiritual in like necessarily like you know, people that have passed in my life coming back and talking to me, or like God talking to me or you know anything like that. But it was very spiritual in like. There was a lot in it about my mom and then in the universe, which I think some, but after, after my journey, my, my thoughts on it are that the universe is what people are trying to explain with Christianity, but it's.
Speaker 2:it's not Christianity, it's just the universe, not the universe works.
Speaker 1:I absolutely fucking agree with that. I think there's a lot of stuff that gets taken out of context and it's like this is black and white and you really know, like, the meaning behind it. You're like, no, this is just a, it's just something that you can read and you can use it as a tool. And it's not black and white and it's not a rule, but like it's a really good lesson, right, yeah, I agree with that. So your journey I think you did it the same day Christine saw her ancestors for the first time.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah 100% yeah.
Speaker 1:So what did you? What did you think?
Speaker 2:So I was, I, you know the day that we did it. I mean, I was, I was really scared and leading up to it, you know we had. I'd done a fair amount of mushrooms leading up to it. You know cause over the last. So I guess that was you that was about a year after you did yours right, so yeah.
Speaker 2:So over that year, like you know, we had microdose quite a bit and you know we did like two grams a couple of times and I really like really not much. I've never really had much like.
Speaker 3:There's not been much impact on me when I've done, but I think when we did two grams we were not in the right place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, but, but, I, but, but I did.
Speaker 1:So not a lot of introspection, like it wasn't really like yeah, and there was a setting for that type of hallucinations wasn't happening.
Speaker 2:I didn't feel like you know, like, like I was anything I didn't feel any different than what I normally would Damn, and the only thing I remember about that one was was when I went to the bathroom and I did see the like. The toilet paper in the toilet was like like I could see it moving and it wasn't moving, but that was it Okay.
Speaker 1:So you saw a little wooey. Yeah, a little bit.
Speaker 2:But but anyway, so so we had done you know had had had some experiences with it before but, I was still really I was scared to do five grams.
Speaker 1:Why do you think people are afraid? Why were you afraid to do it?
Speaker 2:I mean, you know, I was. I didn't know what I was going to see, I didn't know how I was going to react to it. You know, just I didn't, you know. I guess those were the main things.
Speaker 1:I think that's what a lot of people are afraid of, because I think we say a lot of times like it shows you your shit. And sometimes I'm like, well, if it's your shit, why are you afraid to look at it?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like you know, it's there. Yeah, that was the other thing, like not knowing, like what shit it's going to show you.
Speaker 1:There's some shit in there that I don't want to see. Yeah, so I think that that's. A lot of people are afraid. And another thing I want to bring this up because I you've done it now, but I remember at one point you said you were afraid you were going to quit your job. Quit your job.
Speaker 3:We said that. I said that to Henry, to Henry, and Henry was the first interview we had ever had You're right, you're right.
Speaker 2:And I remember what he said.
Speaker 1:What do you say?
Speaker 2:It sounds like he's already made up his mind.
Speaker 1:So, and I do tell some people will come to me and say, like what if I want to divorce my husband? And I'm like, do you want to divorce your husband? Right, it might give you some clarity.
Speaker 3:I've sat with people and just that happened.
Speaker 1:Literally so it's. It's not going to make you do anything that's not already in your subconscious or something that you've thought about before. Like it's not, like yeah.
Speaker 2:And, as it happened, I I had, right before I did my journey, I had decided to quit my job, and that was another mindset thing, but I decided it. But then I part of my motivation of doing the journey was to let that be part of it, to see like what would come out of that. And I didn't know if it would, you know, change my mind and make me think not to. I mean, actually it was maybe the opposite. When I actually did it, I thought it might tell me that I should not quit my job. I didn't know.
Speaker 1:Like you needed just a little bit more clarity.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I thought maybe that would give me some more clarity, and so yeah, but I don't know.
Speaker 1:I was just asking about, like, what you were afraid of. Okay, yeah, so you answered that, but like, so what did it end up? I think to what you were saying, like what a lot of people are afraid. I think we've said this before. My husband was afraid he was going to end up like me because I got weird and I got woo woo and I got like super into the universe and shit, and I think a lot of people we've said this before. There are some people on Instagram and Tik Tok who are very open about their psychedelic use and they're very hippie into things. Don't care what people think, they're just unapologetically themselves. But because those are the type of people who are open about it, people look at that and they're like, well, I don't want to turn into that and we have to remind, like you won't, that's just who they are.
Speaker 2:Well, what's funny is is and I would also say that, before you know, before Christine meeting you, like I was, I was never like a plant medicine person at all.
Speaker 3:Like.
Speaker 2:I've never really liked weed. You know, I did it a fair amount, like in college, and I've done it a few times, you know, since then, but I've never really loved it and I prefer to drink and to do marijuana, but it's so, so like the, even the mushrooms, and then before that, we, we had done MDMA. That was before your mushroom journey, we did MDMA and a couple of times I guess probably three times before.
Speaker 1:That's your favorite.
Speaker 2:That kind of is.
Speaker 1:It's our favorite too. Like if I had to choose a favorite, like we've said this a hundred times, like that one's our favorite Right Cause it's just it's, it's fun, it's easy and it's love but it's also like, as good as it is for for like one person alone, like for a couple, it's like the most insane connecting, like healing experience.
Speaker 1:when you're doing it intentionally and I don't know if you can do that like, not intentionally, like, but you know what I mean Like, if I'm doing that with a stranger, it's probably not going to be the same as if I'm doing it with someone that I'm like in a relationship with Cause now, it goes much deeper than that. But yeah, that's like our favorite. But for me personally, mushrooms are my favorite. But for anniversaries, birthdays, date night, I mean I'm making it sound like we do it that often. We really don't like every few months is like our gig, but we're every three months. So let me go back to this, because you you did this before you ever did mushrooms and you were never a plant medicine or like I'd never done.
Speaker 1:I'd never done any drugs other than other than so what did it take for you to like be open to doing MDMA?
Speaker 2:I kind of feel like I know the answer, but Um, you know, I guess Christine had talked about you know how, how, and I've heard you talk about doing it. Um, and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm actually trying to think like I don't, because I was kind of scared to do that for the first time too, because I had no idea, like, what that was going to do. But but I had also taken like the two grams of mushrooms before we did that.
Speaker 1:So and you were like, oh, this isn't what I thought.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so, and so, when I did the MDMA, I kind of thought that it was going to be more psychedelic, I guess, than than what you know it was. Um, but I don't really know what. Do you know what was like?
Speaker 1:The deciding factor.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think that we had just been talking about it and you know, you knew that Leah is like really loves it, and talked about how great it is.
Speaker 1:I think the winning point for everyone is like you will have the best sex of your life, yeah, even if you don't have sex, yeah, and it's hard to explain. That's so hard to explain to someone, but it was just, I think, for women. They hear like, oh, we're going to connect, like deeper, yes. And then for the not saying you, but a lot of men are like the sex is going to be even better and like you're going to be more experimental, yes, you know, and then you do it and then it ends up being both and then you're like, oh, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess, I guess it probably that probably it didn't hurt, that's for sure. But you know, but we have, we have a great sex life without MDMA, so you, do and so we have to say that as a fact, but I think it's, it's so.
Speaker 1:That's what I mean too. I'm like it's not even really about the sex anymore when we do it. No, it's not. It's not when we now.
Speaker 2:I'm especially it's, it's more of just like you know, like I think it's. It gives you a chance to reflect and see things you know in just like, especially in the other person's viewpoint.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then where they're coming from more you know, I know that that. I would say that, christine would agree with that that you know that I'm much more empathetic and don't get neither one of us get emotional. I think what one of our faults is is that we both, you know, are emotional people and so like when, when we have a disagreement, you know, a lot of times it's not real productive, whereas when you have that conversation or that you could have that same disagreement on MDMA, and it's just not going to escalate you know, I think it creates safety.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like, I've never done it in like a therapeutic setting, but I would be interested to see how that's different than when you're doing it at home with someone you love. I was going to save this. No, I'll save it. No, I'll save it. Okay, yeah, it's fine. Well, no, okay. So we just did.
Speaker 1:We just did MDMA last week in Cabo and had a really I wouldn't say it's a difficult conversation, but we had this conversation and it was just so easy to have. And the next day, literally at breakfast, I was like you know what's weird is, I used to want to do MDMA so we could have those conversations and it didn't seem hard. But I feel like it wasn't that hard to have that and I would have that conversation with you at breakfast right now and I would have had it before we did MDMA last night. Like it makes it.
Speaker 1:It's almost like creates a safety net for these difficult conversations, because you're not hearing it as an attack, but it almost worked as like a practice. And he said the same thing. He was like you know, I was thinking that like while we were talking about it, I was thinking I bet we would still have the same conversation, not on MDMA. So it's almost like it's working that part of your brain. It's like a muscle that you haven't worked out in a while, and the more you do it and the more you have these really difficult conversations, the easier it is when you're not on the drug.
Speaker 2:Yeah, was you agree?
Speaker 1:I've never thought about that before. Oh, you have, or you haven't. Haven't, no, haven't, yeah, I don't know. That's what's going to take on this.
Speaker 2:You do realize that, like it's possible to have conversations and not feel attacked.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And then it's coming from a place that's like much deeper than you ever thought. Yeah, like it's not about like the surface thing. It's usually about something much deeper that's harder to talk about, maybe.
Speaker 3:Right. That's my favorite part about MDMA is, I think that there have been a lot of times where I don't probably handle it in the right way, but I express something that's bothering me or hurting my feelings, and in a sober state he's can be very quick to be like you know, well, this doesn't make sense, and you know, just react like a logical mind yeah, and then on MDMA we can have that same conversation and he's like tell me more, like and more like, and I get to go in deeper because it you're right, and I say this all the time it's never just the situation at hand, right, it's, it's triggering, but it's triggering a deep wound, yeah, and he doesn't necessarily know what the wound is.
Speaker 1:Well, and it's like, it's almost like you've got this permission now to like dig deeper and you've got this blanket of love wrapped around you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I get to like talk about it and continue to talk about it and continue to talk about it, like in depth, and him too.
Speaker 2:But I think that the other thing that you said that like I don't know how deep the wound is I think that the thing that we've discovered is that you don't know how deep the wound is either.
Speaker 1:That's a good point, true that, because it's like we know we have these deep, deep, deep wounds, we, we, we realize that, we're conscious of that, but it's like when you really sit back with it, you're like, oh my God, and not only that, but it was this and this and this and this and this, and then just kept piling on and so it's really even deeper than like what I thought it was. I don't know. Yeah, it just gives you that blanket. So I want to know how and you don't have to like go into like details or anything but how different is your relationship now versus pre psychedelics? And I know you already said, like her anxiety and all that stuff, but like your relationship, like the two of you together, like how has that changed? Has it helped it at all?
Speaker 2:No, I think it's helped it a lot. I think that it has helped us to have a better understanding of where each other are coming from, and I think that we've we've learned together you know about, about, like, how deep some of these things are and how they don't necessarily have anything to do with the other person you know.
Speaker 2:So it's like you know, I may overreact in a situation and it may trigger something in her, and it's not necessarily that, like I overreacted, like if I was having that conversation with you, it may not impact you at all but it triggers something in her because of something that happened to her in her past, and then I don't know that, she doesn't even know that, and then you know it becomes more, and so I think that it's just allowed us to get to know each other a lot better and understand each other, where we're coming from and like and for me it's been a lot of it's that you know, the things that that maybe she's even saying when we're, when we're when we're having a serious conversation, don't necessarily have anything to do with me.
Speaker 2:And it's not necessarily personal with me, whereas before I would have probably taken it personal, that it was like, whatever it was was you know directed at me, but it's not. It's not really directed at me.
Speaker 1:Right. I think, if anything, it creates a lot more empathy. I try to say that. I mean there's so many different people out there with so many different wounds and you know Jason struggles, I think, a lot with empathy, and I don't want to say it's because he's autistic, but that is definitely. It doesn't help. Like it's, they have it's. I don't want to say even they have a hard time. Like he has a very hard time understanding that someone else's brain doesn't work the way that his does, or that someone else's feelings don't work the way his does. He sees it. He sees the way I am. He sees the way our kids are. He sees it. But even that it's very hard for him to understand. Well, it doesn't bother me. So why does it bother you? It's so hard for him to put himself in someone else's shoes or to put himself in their mind. I mean, that's hard for anybody, honestly.
Speaker 2:So I feel like that's something that I've always been really, really good at, but until you know, my relationship with Christine. I didn't realize how I really wasn't that good at it. Oh because you know it's it, it just it. You know, like it's always been, a strength of mine is to, is to be able to to see, like myself, from their position, and but you know, I think that it's just, it's a lot deeper when somebody has a lot of trauma.
Speaker 1:Well, that kind of goes into what I wanted to ask you. Next, because we, christine and I had, we were on a podcast last night as guests and one of the things she asked was about us being parents. And I think that I wouldn't talk about that with you, because one of the things I realized was I didn't even realize I could have been a better mom until I became a better mom and I'm not saying that I was a bad mom, I just wasn't as present as I am now with my children and it's it's hard to like, it's a hard thing to admit to, because to know that, like for like 14 years of being a mom, I wasn't a present mom, I was. I was in survival mode. I think that psychedelics have really, really helped me be a more conscious parent, a more present parent, a more empathetic parent. What has it done for your parenting that is different than the way you parented before?
Speaker 2:Well, I think that for me, because I have a 21 year old and 18 year old and now a four year old, and, you know, having two children that are, you know, now entering adulthood, you know you start to see the way that the things that you did when they were younger has impacted them as an adult.
Speaker 1:Oh damn.
Speaker 2:So it's that's been that's been evolving in me really since I met Christine. I don't think that I necessarily even realized a lot of the things until you know, I saw it through her eyes or heard it from her like what she saw, and you know, and so it's that's. I've changed a lot in that regard over the last eight years. Whereas you know I was, I was a lot more, you know, short fuse and you ran hot, I ran hot too. My mind would. My mind would typically like it would.
Speaker 2:It would it would just simmer, and then I would explode.
Speaker 1:Got it.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't explode in like you know physically do anything, but you know I might explode and yell for sure. Or maybe you know grab the steering wheel really hard or, you know, hit the steering wheel or make an impact or something. Yeah, yeah, she told me, that's why I used to throw my phone all the time, like when I was, when I was in my like early thirties. There was a period of time when I had digital lifestyles and I actually used to talk about carrying a phone, just so I could throw my phone.
Speaker 1:This is before, like thousand dollar iPhones, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, these were yeah these, these were they, were they? Yeah, they were. Like you know and I at the time we had like these, like contractor style phones.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, they could handle it. Yeah, but probably run over that shit and it still worked.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I, I remember, you know, back then, especially I, if I got really mad, like it would be like some kind of outburst, you know, throw something, yell, you know, kick something, you know I don't know but and, and so you know, I, I, I think in my, my older daughter is very similar to me and she's very stubborn and I'm, I guess, stubborn, and so I guess, and so like we butted heads a lot and she would push me, and she would push me harder than just about anybody else would push me.
Speaker 2:And and you just you know, I would get that mad, and then I would, I would you know, like erupt and you know one of the biggest eye-opening things, I think that you know I've discovered over, you know, the last eight years, is how that impacted my other daughter, which that never happened with. So like I don't I don't think that I've really ever like yelled at her, probably the way that I yelled at my 21 year old, but she would see me and the 21 year old, but she went 21 time but she would see me in my older daughter fighting and and then you know, and I think that in her mind, like she, like that really impacted her.
Speaker 3:She's sensitive, she's very sensitive.
Speaker 2:And I, and that's probably a part of the reason why she's so sensitive. And so you know, I think that you know, whereas my older daughter is very quick to express her emotions and let you know how she feels, my younger one doesn't, and she has anxiety, and so part of me thinks that like a good reason maybe, why she has anxieties, because over her, you know, younger life, she learned to just keep her mouth shut and keep it in because she saw what happened if you let it out. And so she, you know, and I think that that was you know has probably had a lot to do with with, with me.
Speaker 1:I think that's huge. A huge realization to have. That's some self awareness and it sucks.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I mean when you realize that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know so. But but I think that you know, and and now realizing how you know, because when Christina and I first got together, like if we had a fight, like I might react the same way. But now realizing you know how much that that impacts the other person, even if you're not like saying anything mean to him or you're not, you know putting your hands on them or whatever that it still can be, you know, abusive and you know and and you know trying to control that, that that rage that you get inside when you get really upset because, you know, having an awareness of you know how that's impacting other people.
Speaker 1:Well, let's, I want to say something about that really quick, because self awareness a lot of people, I think, think it is just like well, yeah, I do this thing and this is probably why. But there are four levels of self awareness and there is, like, the awareness of what you're doing but also why you're doing it, the awareness of the impact that it has on other people, the awareness that that it is not an in line with the person that you are wanting to be or the person that you are proud to be. I can't remember what the fourth one is, but it doesn't matter but like the awareness of I still don't know why.
Speaker 2:I don't know where my like that comes from in me. And I did think that the journey might actually show me that, but maybe one will, but it really didn't yeah.
Speaker 1:That's a hard one, though. Like when you have to sit with things and like dig and, dig and dig and figure out why you're doing it. Like that's a very it's not an easy thing for anybody to do but there always have to be a why no. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3:They're really dead, because that may be, the case with me because, like he's Italian, his dad was Italian. His dad had a short fuse to, I think that's. You see that with a lot of Italian people, yeah, and so I didn't know if that was a factor. But I think then getting into a relationship with someone who was a victim of abuse was probably very eye opening, because there were times when we first started dating and I was like, no, sir, you ain't gonna do that to me.
Speaker 1:So the parenting thing cause you know, I saw you get like a little bit emotional having that like realization, that like, oh shit, I did that, I said this last night and I can repeat it because it's not our podcast that's coming out, it was we were a guest on someone's podcast.
Speaker 1:But you know, that was a really big thing for me is realizing I could have been a better parent. And knowing that like I don't have as good of a relationship with my 15 year old and I've always said it's because he never talks and because he's he's very quiet and shy and realizing like, oh, it's because I'm not asking him questions he doesn't talk. But literally had a conversation with him in the car I told you this yesterday but also asked him like does it bother you that I talk so much? Does it bother you that I ask questions a lot? And he was like no, I like people who talk a lot because I don't have to. And I was like, oh, I don't annoy him, like he likes it, because then he doesn't have to talk and he does talk, but like you just kind of have to dig a little bit, think about that.
Speaker 2:When you're in a situation like you, you're in a room with a bunch of people that you don't know and you feel like you have to say something, like you're more than happy when somebody else is carrying that conversation, because you can just sit back and not have to and I like joked with him because he's also like he's.
Speaker 1:you know he's into a girl right now and I was like I know I didn't tell you that the first day. He told me that in the car. I love my car days with him.
Speaker 2:This is the best.
Speaker 1:I learned that going through divorce, I never used to think about it before, but that's like. The most quality time that I spend with him is like running him around from brand practice, running L to gym to the gym, like it's a.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of conversations that happen there too, really, because you're the way you're sitting, so you're sitting both face in the same direction. You're not facing each other. It's not intense, so it's it's a, it's a much like it's like a safe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it makes it a safe space to have a conversation.
Speaker 2:So yeah have a difficult conversation and it's not as intense because you know, and then you're also you have other things to face. You're physically moving in the same direction. So it's like you guys are moving in the same direction.
Speaker 1:There's a whole psychological thing to this that is wild. Well, one of the things that we were talking about I was, I was trying to help him like talk. I said, well, you know, when you talk to this girl, like she's probably, if she talks a lot, she's probably going to have a lot of open ended questions, and you know, I know that you don't like them. But like, let's work on that. Like like she's going to want to know things about you because she's probably going to tell you everything about her. You don't even have to ask, she's going to tell you. And we're having this conversation and I'm like you know, when he says I like people who talk a lot, I was like, oh my God, that's why Jason wanted a second date, because I talked the whole time and he didn't have to. That's exactly it.
Speaker 2:But I've never thought about that before either, but I could see it for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now, I see it now in my son. But just realizing like we're I'm closer with my 15 year old than I have ever been, and that guilty punch in the gut, that was like that realization of like oh, I'm the reason we weren't close before, like that hurts. But then also and I'm going to tell you this too, because it like completely talk about mindset, mindset shift. I think having the awareness now and being different now and having your children be able to come to you and say these things and you saying I know that I did that and I'm sorry for that and I don't want to be that person anymore, is a gift that a lot of us are walking around wishing we had with our parents, with our own parents, because how many parents?
Speaker 1:I am a. I was a perfect parent and I didn't do anything wrong and that's not my fault and you can't blame me for your addiction and you know it's. It's hard to hear as a child.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:And so many of adults.
Speaker 3:So many of us adults wish we had, you know, a child, we had a parent who were just, who was just like. You know, I was really struggling, I didn't do the right thing and I'm so sorry that that impacted you. Right, but a lot of times, you know, kids and even adults will address their parents or say, hey, that hurt me. They're like, okay, I guess I'm just the, just the worst mom ever and it goes them into the victim, this victim mentality.
Speaker 3:So I know that you know you feel shame and guilt for those things, but how huge is it that you actually can reflect, be aware, take accountability, apologize to your children, but also that you're showing your children that evolution is possible.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think that that's something that they, if they don't take anything from me, they should take that. Yeah, but I think that you know that they, they do.
Speaker 3:They look up to them.
Speaker 2:And you know, and I've had those conversations with both of them, like you know, like you know, I'm sorry that I did a lot of the things that.
Speaker 3:I do or did, and, and I think that you know, I've told.
Speaker 2:Christine, like how good is it for Kai, our four year old, that he gets this version of me and her versus. You know like what the version that my older kids got right is a major advantage over them.
Speaker 1:I could imagine even where, when he's 14, like the evolution that you will have made from now to 10 years from now. Like you're just kind of on this trajectory of growth, and I think that that's what everybody should be doing is like you should be constantly like it's okay to get stuck every now and then, but like you should be constantly striving to like do better in every area of your life and to know that like oh, wow, and this is going to get better. That's crazy. And but you're giving him a gift.
Speaker 2:But in so few people do, though. I feel like, like, especially when you know, when you see that change happen in yourself, and then you know you see other people and how little that they actually change. You know so many people. I feel like get stuck in in everything.
Speaker 1:Let me ask you about that, because I think sometimes I feel a little well. I don't want to say I feel I don't feel judgmental. I think my husband thinks I'm very judgmental of people who are stuck, and it's not that I just it's easier for me to see because I'm doing the work where other people aren't, and it's easier for me to decide whether or not I want that person in my life. Yeah, it's not a judgment and I'm not like you should be doing this and you should be doing this, but it's like, well, I'm doing this stuff and you're like still there and I just need somebody who is on the same trajectory as I am, because I need people in my life that are going to hold me accountable, that are going to push me to grow, like mentors and friendships that are positive and inspiring. So I don't get stuck because I know myself and if I surround myself with people like that, I'm going to get I'm going to get stuck. So it's wild to hear you say like you see that more in people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I just think that it's just. I mean, it's human nature for most people. Most people like living in the comfort zone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's hard to get uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's something that it's almost like a muscle. I feel like that, like you work that out, like being uncomfortable and putting yourself in those situations, that like once you do that and you realize that good comes out of that, then it's like you almost look forward to it, like doing something else. That's uncomfortable because you know that it may it's not going to feel good in the moment, but you know that it's going to help you and you're going to grow because of it.
Speaker 1:I think that that's why, like it's not this, this healing journey is not about being healed and we're we say this so many times but, like you know, I know you've been struggling for the last six weeks, but you're not swallowed by it. Like you know, it's like this like difficult moment. It's momentary, it's a small blip in, like the rest of what's happening and what's going to happen. So it's easier to get yourself out of those moments and to push forward. So it doesn't mean it's easy, it's still very difficult, but like it's easier to like tell yourself okay, I'm feeling anxious right now, or I'm feeling depressed right now, or this thing just happened, or this loss just happened, but something's going to come out of this, so I need to be prepared for that other thing, right, yeah, I think when you go through it enough, that's why, like shadow work, everything, every like body is so afraid of shadow work and I'm like it gets easier. It's still really hard. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:I'm not saying it's easy, no, it's still really rough.
Speaker 1:It's shadow work. You've done it yeah.
Speaker 3:You've done it.
Speaker 1:You don't even know, yeah, it's just kind of like sitting with the dark parts of yourself.
Speaker 1:Oh okay, yeah, and really understanding them and it's. It's interesting because Christine did compare me to you this morning because I'm not a run hot type of person. Never, I've never been that way ever in my entire life and it's been coming up lately and I mean, you listen to the podcast. You know like there's this part of me that like blows up and I am aware of it and I am aware of why and I am aware of how it impacts other people and it's still very scary, yeah, and that's the scary part of me that I wish I could completely dissolve myself from.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's something that, like when I've gotten really angry, like it's like I hate that side. Yeah, I do not enjoy it.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:And that's something that you know. Like when those moments come, like now, I can start to feel them coming and then, like you know, try to re-center myself, like there's like a I don't want to say a break, but it's almost.
Speaker 1:This is new for me, so this is. It's still very, very hard for me to. I mean, you were in bed with Christine the other night when I was like I'm about to fucking rage.
Speaker 3:Can I just say my favorite thing that you did. I was like okay, like do we need to go, like do some breath, work or meditate or whatever? And then I go Leah, what are you doing? And you don't respond for a while. And then you respond like two hours later and you go Ragen, what you doing? I forgot about that. And I go oh no, I did it Cause.
Speaker 1:I, I did it yeah.
Speaker 3:Because I literally was like Leah what are? You doing.
Speaker 1:That's the thing. Like it's, like it's, I can feel it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And and I'm you know and and so like, what again? And I'm conscious of those moments now, especially if they're not like, if it's not like something in the heat of the moment, so it's like if, if, like it's. It's a little bit different if, if I'm having a disagreement with Christine, yeah, um, but like I am, I physically am telling myself, or mentally telling myself, like, are you going to let whatever it is that's going on impact the way you feel and is it worth it? And and I, and I will tell myself those and those situations and um so like with my ex-wife, like Christine will say to me like I don't know why this doesn't make you, make you mad, and I'm like it does.
Speaker 2:It infuriates me, but I'm choosing to not let it bother me, Like I'm not going to go there because I don't want to go into that that side.
Speaker 1:Well, because it's like taking your power away.
Speaker 2:It takes your power away when you get that angry. When you, if you don't get angry, then you have. You have the power, but when you get angry you lose control, and then in my mind that other person has one, and so it's like I'm.
Speaker 1:I'm.
Speaker 2:I'm physically or mentally telling myself those things on, on, on, like it happens multiple times a week, probably Like our, and it could even be something that's not even you know like that big, like maybe it's something that happens in business or whatever, where somebody says something that you know pisses you off.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And it's like are you going to let that impact your day? Are you going to let that impact the way that you, that you feel and and and I'm, you know, consciously telling myself like, no, I'm not. And there may be moments where I get really mad at something and I'll even start to, you know, maybe react or respond, and then I'll tell myself that and then calm yourself down and then it's like just move on.
Speaker 1:See, that's that's hard for me right now.
Speaker 2:I feel like I have a toddler. It's hard, this is, it's been, it's. It's taken 10 years to get to, you know, to to that point for me and and seeing like this aside of me, where you know, maybe I our our overreactor. You know, I say things and it's funny because when I worked at Honeywell, I would say that all the people that know me well would say that, that that I probably run hot and and and. At Honeywell I have had a lot of conversations with a lot of people and and they would just, be like you know, you always are so even keeled all the time.
Speaker 3:Oh, do you mean at digital lifestyles? No, at Honeywell, oh.
Speaker 2:Honeywell, people would say like I'm even keeled, like people that you know because you're on meetings and stuff all the time and you know, get a phone call afterwards and somebody's like man, like I can't believe. Like you stayed so calm and I'm like if they could have just seen me in the background like physically pulling my hair out or you know whatever.
Speaker 1:I'm like, I'm not.
Speaker 2:He was under there because it's like it's bubbling up like clawing its way out.
Speaker 1:Oh see, okay, I need you to be my like mindset coach for like how to, how to not channel it. I know how to fucking channel it. I don't know how to calm her down once she like starts poking out.
Speaker 1:I don't know, it's, it's, it's it's coming handy and I'll say this like we had a situation with our lease um right before we left for Cabo, and that's a situation where you said earlier you dealt with the bad stuff and and like, christine, be the good guy, good, hot, bad cop. I was never one to like be mean to anybody, but I was like, oh, you're going to fuck with me, all right, I'm going to have this conversation with you. I would literally drop my rent check off under the door because I didn't want to run into the like the guy there, because I just didn't like interacting with him. But this day I was like I'm going to fucking channel my rage, I dare you to fuck with me, and I said what I need to say I did really fucking good.
Speaker 1:I came home and I was like I'm so proud of myself. I'd never in a million, things like that scare the shit out of me. Like I don't like confrontation, but it's like I channeled this rage for a confrontation. That needed to happen because this guy was being just a fucking dick, and it worked out. I was like, okay, if I can just learn to like, use it when I need to Like, because I'm not trying, I can't get rid of it. I'm never gonna be able to just get rid of it. She's part of me, you know.
Speaker 2:But you just have to have that conversation in your head.
Speaker 1:Like is it worth it, Is it time?
Speaker 2:And is it worth it? Like, do you want to let this person impact your day? Yeah, Cause to me it's very rare that somebody else should be able to impact how you feel.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like in general it shouldn't happen, maybe in a relationship with kids and things like that, like it happens, but people that are outside of that, like they should not be able to. And then the other thing that I've realized is that a lot of times when people are, you know, acting a certain way or doing certain things, it's them, you know, they're just they're just projecting it on you, yeah. But yeah, my mindset and I think is something that I'm really trying to talk to my daughters about on a regular basis, that's huge.
Speaker 1:That's you recently. That's huge.
Speaker 2:Okay, Manifestation cause. I think that manifestation is real and I'm really interested in that too, Like I've been doing a lot of research on manifestation and like how it actually works, Because that was something that I always thought was kind of bullshit. Maybe that's why we're you kind of witnessed it.
Speaker 1:Like you've been a product of it, you've watched it for yourself, you've seen it happen, you've. I feel like that's what spirituality is is like having this experience. That's really hard to explain to other people, but you know it worked for you and that's why it's different than religion, because you're not going out here telling everybody else Like this is the way that you have to do it, and if you don't, and you know-.
Speaker 2:Well, when I went through my journey, I had that feeling. I was like and you were talking earlier about the hippie friend or whatever that talks to themselves or whatever and there was part of my journey where I like saw somebody, what like that, and I was actually like you know cause? Like part of mine was that, like all of the day to day stuff that we're dealing with, doesn't matter Like it's like.
Speaker 2:life is much bigger than what we experience on a day to day basis and we're just like part of this, the universe, and like, literally, if you look at the universe and you look at, you know galaxies, you know how they look and how the universe looks, and you know how you know cells look, and it's like we're all just part of this. One thing that is the universe and that our spirits are just like we're, what we are as physical people on earth, is just like a moment in time for our spirit and that that is not who we are Like we're more than that.
Speaker 3:We were here, we were who we are before.
Speaker 2:We were on earth and we were.
Speaker 1:We were on top of things.
Speaker 2:And we're who. We were both after.
Speaker 1:You got that from your first mushroom trip. Yeah, I think that's pretty incredible, but I also can. I I think that we say this they give you what you need, not what you want. But also I feel like they're never gonna give you anything that you're not ready for. And for Jason, his third mushroom trip was very spiritual. His first two he had to dig through the muck before he ever got to a place where he was open to that spiritual, like we are one with the universe, but also a blip in the grand scheme of things, Like it was. It sounds a lot like yours in that like realization, like coming out of it and realizing like this doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:Right and so, and so None of this matters. Yeah, it doesn't. And what I was also thinking was that hippie person is actually the person that hasn't figured out because they don't, because they don't actually like, they're not worried about money and Constructs.
Speaker 3:Materialistic stuff and fitting in a box.
Speaker 2:Fitting in and what other people think about them or whatever.
Speaker 1:Well, what does that work? Homogenous, like everyone trying to be the same, like everyone trying to fit in, and like having this realization that you're like I wasn't meant to fit in, Neither were you. We're all supposed to be different and we're all supposed to be uniquely ourselves, and expressing that and that's what makes it beautiful Like trying to fit in with everyone else.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Is doing a disservice to yourself, but also everyone else.
Speaker 3:That's why it's so ironic when, like you know, people have made fun of us or make fun of others because they're being weird or they're doing things different. Like being like everyone else is some flex, because to me, I'm like oh, congratulations, none of you are being authentic because you're just trying to do what's cool or what you think like society expects you to do and you're judging people because they don't care about that Well, that has to be exhausting, like feeling like you're always having to like put on this mask to be accepted. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like I mean, I know it's exhausting because I did it, I've been there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sucks. I did it and what's wild is I was like applauded for it, like I was put on a pedestal because I made it look like my life was perfect and I fit into the mold of this picture perfect American family and everybody looked up to me and literally I would come home and like cry my fucking eyes out because I wasn't happy. So what are you winning by fitting in what was in it for me being accepted? So you had this like very spiritual experience. You said your parents came up Like what was?
Speaker 1:Well and also again context.
Speaker 2:I'm basically an atheist, like I don't really believe in God. I don't believe, like, in spirits talking and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So for me, I think, having that experience that I had, it was spiritual, but it's funny because it didn't feel spiritual, it just felt like exploring, like it was like learning things, like I was like I would come out of it. And I never really understood what Christine would mean when she was like when you're in it and out of it and then so like I would kind of like come out, which, if you've never done a journey is, it's kind of like daydreaming, I guess, like almost Like it's like a subconscious.
Speaker 2:You're like in your subconscious, almost like you're not sleeping, but you're coherent.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so, like you know, but I would come out of it and then like think about things that I saw, and then I would be like all right, I need to go back in, I want to learn more about that, and then I would go back in and I mean I was in mind for what? Over three hours.
Speaker 3:It was like three or four hours where he was like in, in it, wow. And he came out once to like go to the bathroom, like you, okay. He's like, yeah, going back in, going back in, oh really. And then there was one time he came out and he's like looking for a picture. I'm like, okay, what picture? What do you need? And to be like, looked at it, looked through his phone, whatever, but he's like, okay, going back in, bye, going back in.
Speaker 1:And I was just like okay, yeah, it's not. It's not at all what you thought.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Yeah, would you do it again?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I'm definitely will do it again.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:Matter of fact, after I did it I was like I would do it again tomorrow if I could. I was ready to go back and do it again.
Speaker 1:Well, don't get all like cocky about it, because you might have one knock you on your ass with it. I'm afraid of that. Still, I'm still afraid of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I still think that.
Speaker 3:My last one knocked me on my fucking ass.
Speaker 1:I feel like it's, if you get too cocky, like it'll do that. So you know, I know going in, that not all of them are going to be beautiful. Yeah, and some of them might be dark, but I am of that mindset that, no matter what it is when I come out of this I'm going to have something Right and that's why I do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and so I guess back to your question about my parents so you know. So I'm not like I don't know what to believe. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3:That's why I say like that's why I don't think you're an atheist, but I don't believe in God. I don't believe in God.
Speaker 2:I know that.
Speaker 1:I don't, I still don't, yeah, I don't. I feel like the word spirituality is weird people out, especially atheists, because he's an atheist and I was agnostic and it weirded me out because it reminds me of religion and I'm not religious Right. But I think spirituality is just, whatever you make it, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so you know, I didn't really have much with my dad, but I did have quite a bit with my mom, and you know and. I have. One of the things about her was that she was in a nursing home for a long time and I didn't visit her nearly as much as I should have when she was in there.
Speaker 2:So I have a lot of guilt about that, and so a big part of my journey was just forgiving myself for anything that I've done and that were not perfect, like nobody's perfect and, you know, like it's just part of being human is to make mistakes and, to you know, to have flaws and to you know, to forgive yourself, and so that was a big part of it. But also I saw my mom and she was.
Speaker 2:She was like she was dying, she was on her deathbed, but it wasn't sad and it was because it was like that's not who she is Like now, kind of having this view of like what we are, which I still don't really know, that, but like knowing that or not knowing, cause I still would say I don't know, but you know feeling like like that we are, you know, just part of this universe that's, you know, constantly growing and moving or whatever. That she was not.
Speaker 2:That person in that body was not all she was, that she was this was just like a snippet of like her journey, of who she is, and that it was, it was almost like, and the analogy that I came out of it was like when she died it was like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, Like the caterpillar goes away, but then this butterfly is born and you don't mourn the caterpillar when that happens.
Speaker 2:And so that was kind of the feeling that I had about my mom when she died. It was like it wasn't sad, it was just like this is just her, moving on to the next stage of who she is. She's not physically here with us anymore, but you know it's not something that was. It wasn't sad at all.
Speaker 1:Like her soul's journey. Yeah, Like. I know the words are like weird for you, probably, but I think, yeah, that's like how else would you explain that? I mean the butterfly analogy, like that's a really good way to explain it, but I just feel like she's moved on from this plane, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then the other thing that the other thing that you know that I felt was like that mushrooms were like a way to tap into the universe and that it was like kind of like a portal to the universe to really have an understanding of, kind of like, what's going on And-.
Speaker 1:It's almost like you get to know a little bit of the secrets, yeah.
Speaker 2:It was kind of, yeah, it was. And then the other thing that I felt was is that she was actually my mom, was the portal to the universe for me.
Speaker 3:So, like, and it was weird because like, I had this vision of like me coming out of her, but it wasn't like me, coming out of her body, it was like that inside her body was the universe.
Speaker 2:It was weird.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, so after this Christine talks to you into going to see a medium, yeah, and you are probably. You're a little bit more open, I think, than Jason is now.
Speaker 2:But I'm still not buying it, even going in Like I'm very skeptical. I'm a skeptical person in general.
Speaker 1:He has to. He needs logic, he needs why's, he needs like reason. He's very black and white. He's going to go see her in November.
Speaker 2:I need to see it Like I need to like, I'm not just gonna you can tell me something while you want, and I'm not gonna believe it.
Speaker 3:You need to experience it when you tell me something and I'm like, okay, yeah, right, I believe you.
Speaker 2:You need something on TikTok and she's like, did you know? And I'm like, where did you get that? She's like, oh yeah. And I'm like, okay, that doesn't mean, it's a fact.
Speaker 1:You're like Austin. You said that before. You're Austin, I am Austin, you're literally Austin. I love that. Okay, what did I just ask? Oh?
Speaker 3:Jenny.
Speaker 1:So you go and see this medium and have this experience because, again, like you're that person who's like you're open a little bit, little bit.
Speaker 2:I mean, I never would have done it if she wouldn't have bought it for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I guess I had heard Jenny on the podcast before that.
Speaker 3:My fucking girl man. I love her.
Speaker 2:But yeah, that caught me off guard a little bit.
Speaker 1:You had a very good experience, didn't you? Yeah, yeah, how I feel like and that's kind of the thing Like I feel like you and I are just sitting on this other side and when people have these experience, we're like uh-huh, you get it now right, Uh-huh.
Speaker 3:I still remember I still remember your face when I came out of my first journey. You do, oh, my gosh.
Speaker 1:Your first journey. Yes, oh, what would I do? I will never forget it.
Speaker 3:I was like, yeah, I came out and I was like and you're like right.
Speaker 2:I know right Well that's kind of how she was with me too, cause she was like she wanted to talk to me. She's like so what happened? And I'm like I can't even talk right now, like I can't. I can't put words together.
Speaker 1:You're like. You should know this. Kristine, Can I get a talk to you, Can I?
Speaker 3:also backtrack on the mushroom journey. Something that popped up for you was he was like I gotta talk about this.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, well, that was. The other thing was that I felt like, cause, you know, cause I was like I like and you said something earlier in the beginning of the interview kind of along this and it, but it was. I was like why do people not know about this? Like, why is this? Why is everybody not doing this? This should be, and then, and then I was like I need to quit doing what I'm doing, I need to do something with this. And then I was like, no, my job is to to do that through Kristine and to like allow her to do be the person that's gonna spread. You know, the, the gospel.
Speaker 1:But I think that that's why it's important that we have you on, because here's the thing I've said this before I think that Kristine and I were, in the universe, conspired and put us in positions where we were able to be open about it immediately, are not worrying about what our families thought of us being removed from that judgment, not worrying about our bosses being removed from that judgment. And it's wild, because the people that we know who have done this, they're, they're, they're pretty big in the corporate world, and one's a lawyer and there's nurses and doctors and a principal, and just just there's a lot of people in this space who are not in the position that we are in.
Speaker 1:And you can't just talk about it, but they come out of it and they feel the same way, like why isn't anybody talking about this and it's not everybody's job to.
Speaker 2:Well, and then another thing that that I remember feeling was like how the fuck is this illegal? Yeah, and who are people, who is any person, to say that this is against the law and that you shouldn't be able to do this? Good point and, and and it was just like, and I just remember thinking like fuck them, Like anybody that thinks that this is illegal, like you have no right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or that it should be Right, and who thinks it should be Like? You don't understand it.
Speaker 3:No no, they have?
Speaker 2:they have no, like, no clue, but it's just like. Who are you to keep somebody else from going through an experience like that and learning more about? Like themselves themselves and other people in the world around them the world and the universe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, make, it make sense, tony.
Speaker 2:It doesn't I know.
Speaker 1:It really doesn't Welcome to the weirdos. He is a weirdo, oh I love it, and I mean that in like the best way possible.
Speaker 3:Like.
Speaker 1:I know I'm fucking. Here's it. I say that a lot. I know I'm weird.
Speaker 2:I know I'm not weird Like to me, like the people who think I'm weird are the weirdos, like y'all, are the weirdos, the thing that I've also over the last year learned is that that the people that really think that it's like, really weird, I feel like are the ones that are judgmental of it are probably more of the minority now, cause I feel like that more often, not like if I do tell somebody, even if it's somebody that I wouldn't expect to understand, or be like, oh, that's interesting that they're really interested in it, like there's a lot of interest in psychedelics right now, yeah, especially, you know, psilocybin mushrooms.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot of it. But I think that that's why your voice and your story matters even more, because we this is one of the things that we say often this should not be a last line of defense. This should you know the clinical trials that are happening, the only reason that they're able to do clinical trials and they started with end of life patients because no one's going to experiment and have these clinical trials on healthy, well people, and then it's kind of grew from there. Okay, well, now we're going to do it for mental health. Now we're going to do it for depression. Now we're going to do it for treatment, resistant depression and anxiety and addiction. But what about the people who are just Okay, right, I don't mean to like say that about you, but it's like I mean, I think that I generally you were okay, yeah, so I didn't have.
Speaker 2:I wasn't on any medications or you know, depressed or anxiety.
Speaker 3:You were struggling.
Speaker 1:You didn't have this traumatic childhood, you didn't have this like big crazy it wasn't an end of the line for you, for Christine and I both, it was a what the fuck else have I?
Speaker 2:got to lose?
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and that's how I've done everything and it hasn't worked, and for you it was just like a okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, yeah, and I've seen, I've seen how it impacted her. Yeah, and, and you know, and it's like you know, I want both of my older kids to you know, to do this Like I think that they would benefit from it.
Speaker 3:You know I'm not going to push it on them.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But you know it's and that's. That's a whole other thing, cause it's like you know it's always been like well, how, how do you talk to your, your, you know?
Speaker 1:teenage kids about mushrooms and. You want me to tell you, you want me to give you some advice. I did it yesterday with my 11 year old.
Speaker 2:I mean I've been doing it. No, I know, but but go ahead. I mean no, it's not advice.
Speaker 1:I just thought it was funny, cause I showed Christine a video from yesterday, like my 11 year old, saying I'm not going to do drugs. I'm like I need you to say that again. I'm going to keep this on camera, I'm going to record this and I'm going to show this to you every year because I'm telling you like you're probably going to do drugs. Austin is me cause.
Speaker 3:I won. I won my dare program.
Speaker 1:He's, he's so he was like why would I do drugs? Drugs are bad. And I was like but what makes them bad? Austin, like you know, I'm like I, I and I literally said to him I said I'm going to be honest, you're probably going to do some drugs. I just want you to know what you're doing and why you're doing them.
Speaker 2:Right Before you ever do them and to make sure that you're doing something that doesn't have something else in it.
Speaker 1:That's really the biggest risk. Do it safely, you know, with any of those, yeah, and do your research, and I don't want you to keep it from me because you think that you're going to get in trouble for doing drugs. If anything, I want you to come to me because I'll help you find them. But no, I'll help you do them safely and I don't want you to feel like you're going to be in trouble for experimenting. He's an experiment or two, by the way.
Speaker 3:He's a, he's a five. So yeah, he won't. He won't think that forever. No no, but glad you got that video.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I and I. He was like you're going to forget about this video. I was like nope, I'm going to show it to you every year on your birthday and I'm going to ask you if you've done drugs yet. Cause I also said to him I was like you do drugs every day, like you're addicted to sugar, just like me.
Speaker 2:Caffeine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I was like you do drugs, you just. You just have a different understanding of what drugs are.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Than what I think a lot of people do. So where are we going with that, jenny? Oh yeah, I mean and we've talked about the experience that you had, like Christine brought that- up.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, so we did a whole fucking episode on it. Yeah, we did an episode on it.
Speaker 1:So the next question that I have, and I promise we'll wrap this up. I know it's like you got stuff to do with your busy person I've booked out till five o'clock. Oh heck, yes, we'll be here till five.
Speaker 3:Well, we do have to pick up our kid. One of us does. We got to eat too.
Speaker 1:So something that has come up a lot with Christine is how much she is, was or has been in her masculine and this language might sound weird to some like being a conscious masculine and being a conscious feminine and having like both sides and understanding that there's like a duality there and that duality is important. And so just because she's the feminine female in the relationship doesn't mean she shouldn't have masculine qualities, like we should all have an equal balance of both, so that the feminine masculine relationship is also equally balanced. Are you picking up what I'm putting down?
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Okay, so she was so far in her masculine and her journey has been trying to be softer, be kinder. I mean not that you weren't kind, you were always kind.
Speaker 3:But like I mean, I wasn't, I wasn't till, I wasn't.
Speaker 2:You were always generally a kind person.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, but but fuck around and find out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So I guess my question is like how have you helped her, how you supported her in becoming more in touch with her feminine side? What does that look like for you? I?
Speaker 2:mean I was in the relationship. How have I helped you?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, let's ask you Christine.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, I think that's it's. It's very deep because obviously I've spoken openly about having that father wound and then growing up with a single mother who struggled I didn't have, you know, she didn't date or whatever all while I was growing up and she's deep in her masculine, very deep, and so I was somebody who was very aggressive, very black and white with my thinking. I kind of hated men and I'll just kind of be honest about that. I dated men and I had like long-term monogamous relationships with men but there was like I have such a good front of being very hard and tough and I'm like I feel like sometimes you know me better than I know myself. I'm not like it is.
Speaker 3:It was a protective shield that I had and like when you truly get to the deep depths of me, I'm actually incredibly sensitive and I am a crier and I I can be really soft. It just I get to be soft and I don't. I've never felt safe enough to be that way, never In any type any relationship that I've had with, whether it be my father, whether it be with somebody. I was in a relationship before Tony.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe because you've always had to be your own safety.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I, I, you know I got into relationships where I did not trust them. So I did not trust myself to let my guard down and show that soft, vulnerable side who I really am. Yeah, because it wasn't safe to do so. So I think you know, were we talking about this yesterday, that video where it was talking about how relationships work when it's either a man and a woman like love each other equally or the man loves the woman more than she loves the man.
Speaker 3:And I think that when, definitely when we first started dating, he 100% loved me, more Like obsessed with you, so obsessed, and I do like it was.
Speaker 3:It was a thing where we met and we just met randomly. I was out with my girlfriends, he was on a fucking date, let's just say that he was on a date, but we started talking, we just randomly started talking and then we just went our separate ways and for him I'm speaking for you, but correct me if I'm wrong Like we walked away from that conversation and he's like, yep, that's her, Like that, that's, I'm going to get to know her, I'm going to whatever. And he reached out to me and and he eventually I was very resistant but eventually got so we could go on a date and I was still very, um, I was, yeah, and I was kind of mean to him because there were times where he would just like he was reliable. He called me.
Speaker 1:You motherfucker.
Speaker 3:Wow, how dare you wanted to hang out with me, like. There was one time where he was like I'm out with my friends. You know, you should, you should meet up with me and we can go for a drink, and I'm like. Well, I'm like.
Speaker 3:I'm not going to hang out with you and your friends for the first date. And he's like no, I would like leave them and we could go hang out. And he's like and so then I was like you're not going to leave your friends for me Weird, no, and but he just constantly showed up and he was consistent and he was kind and he was nurturing and I hated it.
Speaker 3:It made me feel really, really, really uncomfortable and it it kind of annoyed me so there would be times where we would be in the car and he'd be like talking, like getting to know me. I'd be like can you stop talking for like five minutes? Can I just have like some quiet, like I was. It took time for me to let the guard down.
Speaker 1:Wow, a lot of time. But think about that Like I know that we've. You probably hear people talk about it. You see like memes about it, you see like TikToks and stuff, about how, when you are someone who is used to people treating you poorly yeah, I was used to getting treated like shit by men you have someone who comes along and treats you well and it's so out of your comfort zone that you like self sabotage because you're like there's no way this is happening.
Speaker 3:I also had such low self-worth that I subconsciously thought that I didn't do that. I was not deserving of this person. He was so much better than me.
Speaker 1:But think about how many women get stuck in these like toxic relationships, because that is their belief system, that is what they have experienced and they don't allow themselves to experience the other part of it because, even when it's real and genuine, it terrifies them. It feels uncomfortable. But I want to say, are you?
Speaker 3:okay, yeah, no, I'm just like thinking because being in, I got something in both of my eyes again. Damn, I'm not crying. Must be my room. Yeah, being in a safe relationship has helped me heal a lot of those childhood wounds that I never even touched before him, and he was the one who encouraged me to go to therapy Once we did research about mushrooms. It was so supportive and even when I was in my journey I know he was probably texting you he did Are you okay? Is she okay? How is she doing? Yeah, I know there are huge parts of Tony that does sometimes annoy me because I feel like you're not my dad.
Speaker 3:No just your Zaddy. He is literally my Zaddy and my phone.
Speaker 1:I know, I know we're in flood and everybody else knows.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, but like and I'm not trying to sound weird, but he feels like this father voice I'm annoyed that I have never had.
Speaker 3:So he's really protective of me and he really cares about my feelings. And you know, even in the past when we've gotten an arguments, he was the one who always, like, came back and was like, okay, like, let's talk, and like, because again that guard was, it was up and that shell was super, he was deep and he just never gave up and always, I feel like, saw me in ways that I didn't even see in myself and saw this light in me that I didn't see in myself. And you know, without him I don't think I would have opened a business, I don't think I would have, you know, done this mushroom journey, gotten help, touched my childhood. I would have continued to stay angry. But just having that safety in a man has taken time, but it's really allowed me to let my guard down and realize that, like he cares about you, you're safe, he cares about your well-being, he cares about your feelings, he loves you, like so unconditionally, and that is just something that I've never felt before.
Speaker 2:So I think that she said a couple of things that I was thinking when we first started dating. I think that one of the things that she was most attracted to was that I was a good dad. Yes, to Ava and me. And it's funny, though, because there were a lot of times where, even though that was what she was attracted to, it also became like resentment, in a way that I would see it come out, where she would sometimes get get bitter yeah, like I was a good dad and I could see it and I could feel it, and it was because she didn't have that. And so there's just like and even still today, I feel that way with Kai yeah.
Speaker 2:Even still today, with with Kai, that still kind of happens, where I can see like there's things that will happen and she's like, you know, like it makes me mad that I never had that, you know. And then the other thing was is that, you know, I think that we really needed each other. I think that she needed that in me and and, and I needed what she had, which was, you know, she's also very loving and she she is Christine's going to talk, so like if there's something that's bothering her, it's going to get talked about. There's no, not talking about it, it fits, you can. I can physically see, like if she's upset, like I can tell by the way she's moving, literally her body language, just the way that she's holding her posture.
Speaker 2:I can say it I can see that it's like something is getting ready to come out and and and I think that that I needed that, because I'm not somebody that typically is going to like to talk about you know my feelings or you know emotions, or if you know, if I hurt your feelings and if you act like you're okay, then I'm not going to bring it up and we're not going to talk about it.
Speaker 2:And so she's forced me to, you know, to have those conversations and that's been really good for me too and as a parent and, you know, trying to then have those hard conversations with, you know, my older kids too. And and then the other thing was is that I in retrospect now, because we're out of it but the first couple of years of our relationship it was, it was very volatile, like we fought a lot and and there were points where where I, when we weren't fighting, it became uncomfortable for me because I'm like when's the next fight going to happen? Because it's like I know that the other shoe is going to drop. Like you know, this was a good couple of days, maybe a good week, but like when's the next big?
Speaker 2:and I think you're on edge the whole time, and so I kind of do that.
Speaker 2:But then what it made me realize later, when I got, you know, as as our relationship you know it evolved and improved, was how much like her entire life was like that. Like her whole life was chaos with her. You know her sister and the abuse that she had growing up with you know abusive father and then being in relationships with you know guys that weren't good and like it was. She was just accustomed to that chaos. And so I think that we just came together and were the right fit for each other because, even though, like the, I didn't like the chaos I was able to to to grow with it, I guess, and grow out of it, and we did that together.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so.
Speaker 1:I want to the thing that you said about like the female can't love the male more, like the woman can't love the man more. We should probably clarify that, because I think there's like a reason for it and one of the reasons it said and this was like from a therapist saying this like the reason, and I, and I truly believe it, I do the reason is because when a man truly, truly loves a woman, he is going to go above and beyond and he is willing to do the work, which is which it sounds like that's what you were doing, like you were just like I'll do whatever you need, you know, like you were willing to put in the work and the effort to make sure she was happy. And a woman does that anyway, whether in the relationship, whether she is like head over heels and love with him or not, she's going to do that anyway.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I fought in relationships where, like they cheated on me and they like they weren't willing to evolve, change, grow.
Speaker 1:And I like still fought for it. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Until I was just like okay, I'm like so permed out, like I can't.
Speaker 1:And I really think it like just has a lot to do with that feminine desire to be accepted and loved by the masculine. It's like we're going to do that, no matter what relationship we're in, because we really, really are trying to get that connection.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:No matter what it takes yeah. And now we want the approval and we want to be seen as that.
Speaker 3:Have you seen those TikToks where the woman is like I'm with this, this guy, and they make me feel so safe and they take care of me that I feel like I get to turn my brain off? I haven't seen those.
Speaker 1:Now, okay, Well, your TikTok must be different than mine.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well that's kind of how I feel. Yeah, that's how I feel Like I feel really protected and taken care of. And I know this is weird and you've seen it. Yeah, it's almost like I turn into. When I'm with him and we're alone and at home, I turn into a little baby.
Speaker 1:I'm just a baby, I'm just a little baby, I don't know anything.
Speaker 3:I don't know anything.
Speaker 1:But like you get to take your armor off, Well, you get to let someone else take care of you, instead of being the only person who's ever done it.
Speaker 3:Well, and I feel like I kind of get to be a kid who's taken care of. Yeah, I think that's weird.
Speaker 1:I never got to really experience that those are the kind of daddy issues that I'm like. I wish everybody had daddy issues like that, because then you would choose the man that you wish you had as a dad. But then there's the other daddy issues where you end up getting into the same abusive patterns and the same toxic relationships. And I've done both Because your dad was that.
Speaker 3:Yeah Right, you've done both, so you're saying there's a chance for a child to fall. Can I ask you a question? So people always have like this? I feel like they have this. I feel like people either love or hate me and they really love me or they like can't stand anything I fucking do and they think everything is annoying. What do you think is like? Because not everybody sees the version that you get to see. What do you think is like a common misconception about me?
Speaker 1:Good question, Christine. This is why you're the interviewer on this show.
Speaker 2:I think that you're hard, like you're tough.
Speaker 3:But I feel like people know that. But no, I mean, that's a misconception.
Speaker 2:I don't think that you're as tough as you are. That's the misconception. It's not that you are. I mean you are, You've been through a lot but also, like you have a tough shell.
Speaker 1:You know what I think? I think if anybody gets to see the softer side of you, that person is incredibly lucky because it also means that you're safe enough for you to be around. So you know, if anybody sees like the tough side, like they're not wrong, that's what they're seeing, but honestly, like you're not the right person to see this offside, you don't deserve it. You don't get to see it.
Speaker 1:So, I love I've seen both. I know I probably haven't seen it near as much as Tony has, but like I've seen it. I've seen your golden retriever side and I see your feral cat side a lot too. You guys are such a good balance. I love your relationship. I love this. I want to thank you for coming on and sharing your story, and I know you think that it like there's not anything profound.
Speaker 2:Well, that's why I told Christina, I was like is this going to even be interesting? I don't know, no you're so interesting.
Speaker 3:I've loved talking to you. I'm so happy that I get like some of my favorite people in the same room and we get to have this kind of a conversation. I just want to say that.
Speaker 1:I think we should do this more often. I would I mean again, people think you and I hang out all the time and it's like no, we've had like one double date with Tony and Jason.
Speaker 3:I also don't think that people understand how much of a loan. Like, I'm kind of a loner and you're very much so an introvert too, so it's like when we, when we do something, it's usually because we're like working or recording or whatever. And then I'd go back into my hermit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, your hermit mode show. Yeah, all right, we'll come out of it for a date night every now and then. I would love to, I would love to you just come to your house, totally. Yeah, I'm just coming to your house so you don't even have to leave your hermit shell. Yeah, can we do that, tony? He works from home.
Speaker 3:He works for home. He needs to get out.
Speaker 2:I like to get out every now and then. So, yeah, I don't, I don't.
Speaker 1:Well, that's Jason too. Yeah, he likes to get out too.
Speaker 2:He's stuck. So no, I've enjoyed. I've enjoyed coming and talking to you guys too. So if people enjoy it, then maybe I'll come back.
Speaker 1:Come back after your second journey.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's talk about that when you get there.
Speaker 1:Okay, To all of our listeners. Tony does not have a social media. He does he has 17 followers.
Speaker 3:I think I have. Well anything. Is this 17? I have probably more single digits.
Speaker 1:You might get like 20 after this. But yeah so, Tony, everybody Christine's lover soulmate, your twin flame, your Zaddy. All right, we'll see you guys on the other side.