Gratitude Josee Brault

[00:00:01] Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Thriving Adoptees podcast. So today, delighted to be joined by Josee Brault, lovely to see you and talk to you. Lovely to see you. Yeah, cool. So healing. Healing. Healing. What does healing mean to you?

[00:00:26] You know, this is something I've spent probably even before it was a conscious thing. It was something my whole life has to do with understanding. And when I was a little girl, I always knew I was adopted.

[00:00:43] And I, but I had so adoption for me brought me to some like huge existential questions that I don't think people who are not adopted come to quite as, you know, some people

[00:00:53] only at the last 30 seconds of their life where they say, Oh my God, what am I? Where do I come from? But for adopted people, we asked that huge, most necessary question very early on. So I became interested in, I was raised and adopted in a Catholic way.

[00:01:13] That means there was shame and deuteronomy, whatever the blah, blah with the burning and purgatory and the blah and I'm French Canadian. So here, the Catholic church was more powerful than the government. It ran all of the education and healthcare system up until about 1972 and what we call

[00:01:36] the quiet revolution of the 1970s where the power shifted from politically from the church to the government. And the government began to take a more wider appeal role in those important things. But so for me, the adoption was all about Catholicism.

[00:01:55] So I had this father Fitzpatrick father Fitz was great. He was a big old Irishman. We would go to church on Sundays in the Catholic tradition. You had to like wear something on your head as a woman because God couldn't be like

[00:02:08] exposed to the I don't know what. So my mother had put a lace doily on my head that day. I felt ridiculous. I'm not, you know, I'm I'm a I'm a bit of a tomboy so that lacy life didn't. And so anyway, I asked Father Fitzpatrick.

[00:02:23] I think I was like seven or something and I said the whole thing was about like Jesus and being the son of the thing and the and that you couldn't talk to actual

[00:02:33] God, you had to talk to Jesus like he was like the secretary for the boss or something. That's how I saw it because my father was a big boss guy. So he had secretary. So I saw Jesus is like God's secretary.

[00:02:44] So I said to Father Fitz, why can't I talk to God directly? And he got very angry. I'd never seen Father Fitz frustrated. He didn't know what to do. We got all red faced and he sent me off to Bible class.

[00:02:55] So I started studying religions and I had the question of where do I come from? What am I made of? What is this experience that I'm having here? We may say that that's a difficult thing.

[00:03:07] Like I was like a little grown up in a little kid body, like a lot of other adoptees. But the I love Elizabeth Kubler Ross and her steps of grieving. And then the addition, I forget who the author is. He added the final step, which is integration.

[00:03:22] And I think that adoption sort of stretches you in ways that make you integrate these really cool life lessons. So life becomes an experience of living rather than life living me. I've been wondering what this experience is my whole life. I've gone to great lengths to do this.

[00:03:42] Yes, I've gone. I've done some crazy shit. I have. I have gone to India. I have stood in the river. I have meditated with the people in the caves. I have hung upside down. I have lit the fires. I have done the ceremonies. I have blah, blah, blah.

[00:03:58] And my I have no conclusion. I just know that I know that it's kind of I feel grateful more now. So healing to me was indicated by a feeling of authentic gratitude, not made up gratitude like, you know, people say they're.

[00:04:17] I'm not forced gratitude like spontaneous, spontaneous internal gratitude. Yeah. And then all of a sudden I started feeling like joy, just doing stupid things like watching TV, watching. I love the Big Bang Theory. We my husband, so my husband is also adopted.

[00:04:35] So we have gone through and we have unique stories and we have gone through reunion and discovery together. And you know, if you would say on paper to me, should two adopted people get married with all our attachment issues? And you know, I would probably recommend not.

[00:04:53] But he and I have raised seven kids together. We are both musicians, which I think that I attribute entirely that our lack of having killed each other or gone into deep addictions is because we're like super artsy. And if you don't have a creative outlet

[00:05:13] or a way to express the emotions that happen preverbally, I think that they get stuck in the body and you have to find a way to survive and that addiction can be a way to survive mentally. Yeah. But then, yeah.

[00:05:28] So I really am grateful to my husband who had the first he had the first reunion where when the adoption laws changed in Canada, we got a call. We were like one of the first families that got a call from social services back in the day

[00:05:42] when he was doing the search, they wanted to charge him. I remember it was five hundred dollars and he would get non identifying information. And then we had seven kids and three boys who wanted to play hockey and hockey is really expensive.

[00:05:56] And we anyway, they ended up playing soccer because hockey is too expensive. And so we couldn't afford that kind of an investment and for something that it wasn't what he was looking for. Yeah. What he wanted to know, he wants to know where he came from.

[00:06:11] And so I think based on that, that's always been our question. What are we doing here? Where do we come from? Not purpose. I don't think purpose is a question. I used to think what's my purpose and I don't need a purpose.

[00:06:26] Purpose was what I needed in my adoptive family to feel like they had made a good decision and I wanted them not to feel some sort of cognitive dissonance about adopting me. Wow, that was a really bad idea because I was a super bad teenager.

[00:06:40] When I was 13, my adoptive mother, I was knew I was adopted and I was chosen and I felt special and blah, blah, blah. Made up stories about my birth parents in my head. They were my mother, my birth mother worked for the United Nations in my head.

[00:06:55] She was a lawyer and she was saving the children of the world. And she had a briefcase and that's what in my, you know, I had made the story. And so anyway, when I was 13, my my mother, my adoptive mother

[00:07:08] told me that my natural mother was one of my four sisters. So I didn't until then know that I was related to my family. So it's a really weird experience, right? So you're you think you come from Mars and then you find out that you're,

[00:07:24] you know, actually related. And so it was only when and I never thought about looking from my birth father because it felt like disloyalty and the secrecy and the shame and the lying and we never talked about the fact that the whole family knew where I came

[00:07:42] from and I didn't. So I felt like I had been like I talked about trust issues. Oh, my God. So the fact that my husband and I have such a good relationship, I think is because we kind of healed those things.

[00:07:53] I was able to be the worst and the best of myself and he and he the same and we sort of played rock and roll through it was OK. Are you still looking for conclusions? That's an interesting question. You always think I'm not you.

[00:08:11] But I always thought if I when I found out who my birth father was and where my full biology came from, that would sort of be the end of the road. And I have no more questions. But so in this last year, I've discovered my full biology, which

[00:08:27] as as a Brit, maybe you can understand, I found out that half of me is American and I freaked out because I'm French-Canadian. So half of me is from like West Virginia and Blue Ridge Mountains. And yes, I learned the song right away. Yes. And.

[00:08:47] And and so for me, just having to integrate that and and finding out that my father had been murdered in 1969 by his girlfriend, probably after an argument, finding out about me. When I was born in 1966, so I never met my biological father.

[00:09:05] So this last year, I've gotten to know his mother's family. And it's like we have always known each other. We are such good friends. We I text them there in Florida right now and, you know, there was tornadoes happening and and storms here.

[00:09:20] And it's like we've always known each other. And that's his first cousin. So my second cousin, but most of them are dead. And so also there's this grieving thing. That's my other thing is like I'm the queen of grieving. I've had so much death that

[00:09:40] I really had to figure out what that was about, because my first one. So my adoptive mother died about 18 months after telling me she was my grandmother. So we never really had resolution. And then after that, people just like my huge family were all much older

[00:09:57] and they all died up until like last last year has just been a death fest in my life. So India was really important. Learning meditation, really important. Do you remember the first moment of gratitude? Do you remember that spontaneous gratitude moment?

[00:10:18] Yes. And it was in a moment of misery. And I remember thinking how foreign it felt. So I was I was standing. It's a really strange story. I have really strange stories. I was standing at the base of the Himalayas in the Ganges and I was pissed.

[00:10:37] I was crying. I had my mother's ashes with me, my natural mother's ashes. I I had been through. I was freaking out and I'm standing in the water and the water is very cold and clean there. There's no like cows and stuff floating in there.

[00:10:54] So the water is rushing down and I am crying. And all of a sudden out of nowhere, a holy man that lives in the cave up the road appears and he looks at me and he says something like,

[00:11:06] are you crying because you're so grateful and you feel like the love of the blah. And I'm like, no, hell, no. And I get mad at him, which is something there's like cultural rules in India and raising your voice is like a national no, no.

[00:11:21] And I was like, and I got all French on him. Both about Macon. Anyway, he he grabbed my hand and he brought me to this cave that was so dark and so quiet. I could hear the spiders on the walls and there was

[00:11:37] so he made me sit down on a mat and close my eyes and shut up. And in that moment in the dark, I felt this gratitude that was like it felt like I was never alone. Like the whole universe was taking care of me, like even in that

[00:11:58] that most despairing I just knew in that moment, it was like a feeling of everything was fine. It was really strange. And since then that can still happen. But my mindset has to be I have to do the work for the mindset.

[00:12:15] It's not like, you know, I call it like spiritual armor. You have to you have to be always in connection with that. Or else you're thinking and past programming takes over. What if you don't need to be connected to that because you are that?

[00:12:37] Exactly. But consciousness will take you away from that. It's the job of the mind to make us feel separate, right? It's the job. It's what we're here for. We were here to feel separate so that we can understand that we're not separate. You can't understand night without day.

[00:12:53] So. Right. Exactly. But it's almost like when we talk duality in that way, that that it's a mind thing and duality. When we're trying to reach the idea of what we are, what we're, what is this thing having this adoption experience? This these are all just stories, right?

[00:13:12] Concepts, but the concepts define the experience I'm having. So I had to stop saying to myself, oh, that's so stupid. Or like the way I talk to myself in my head was reprehensible and still can be. Yeah, me too. I don't think we get cured of humanity.

[00:13:32] You know, but I'm starting to be nicer to myself about that. And that's when you asked about did I have any more questions? Or one of the things about reunion for me and knowing all the sides of the West Virginia people don't want to know me at all.

[00:13:50] I'm the most liberal. I am the queen of the liberals. I am I am the most snowflake snowflake you've ever met. And so they know this. I'm a hippie singing folk music, Bob Dylan. All over the place. And so they've totally cut me off like they were like,

[00:14:10] except for one two cousins who have actually left the states and seen a bit of the world. And they said, those people can't handle you. They they are not ready for this information. But, you know, I was my father was made in in the war time.

[00:14:27] I got on some four army base and she was a nurse and he was a soldier and like a movie. Yeah, she goes home to Montreal and she's pregnant. And it's 1944. And so her boyfriend, who's a super nice guy, marries her.

[00:14:48] And the only picture I've ever seen of my dad was when he was 18 months old and he looks just like my son. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, when was that how long ago was the Ganges moment with the guy in the cave right before the pandemic?

[00:15:09] All right. So then it was the pandemic. And then I do I did dog and horse rehabilitation. I do I do. Broken things and I and I do less of that now because the motivation behind my jumping into fix all the broken things was not healthy.

[00:15:28] It's it's a stemming of people pleasing when you start to get healthier, your life gets quieter. But in those days we were doing. We had 18 horses. Dogs, people with issues and it was craziness. And so right after the India thing, I went home and then my sister

[00:15:53] in my adoption, I had four sisters and two brothers. But then I found out one of my sisters was my mother. But then the other three sisters, well, they stayed sisters, even though one of the other sisters was my mother's identical twin.

[00:16:06] We couldn't un-sister ourselves at by 13 shared clothes and makeup and probably got drunk together and, you know, it's it's a sister thing. So I could never they were never my aunts, even saying that makes my stomach feel funny.

[00:16:21] Yeah. But so I had two sisters that were close that were close in age. One was 12 and one was 13 when I was adopted. And so when I in during the pandemic, one of the very first deaths in Canada was my sister.

[00:16:35] She she had COVID and then had a heart attack from a lack of oxygen and COPD and coughed herself to death and she was all by herself. So I went from like the Ganges thing to like the deep grief

[00:16:50] that was unable to be we couldn't come together as community and or grief together. And that wow, that's that's not normal. Like that was bad. And then my brother died right after that.

[00:17:07] So during the pandemic, it was just like I was steeped like a tea bag in grief. And I'm I did yoga. I did a lot of yoga. It's considered day drinking, but I saw it didn't work out well for my family. So I did yoga.

[00:17:22] Yeah, did the yoga instead. Yeah, I guess you can do yoga all day really, but you can't drink all day every day. Well, I guess some people tell me it's going to it's not it's not going to as you say, it's not going to end up right.

[00:17:33] So they you you talked about Kubler Ross. So if people haven't heard about Elizabeth Kubler Ross, she's got this really just Google that Elizabeth Kubler Ross K U B L E R Ross R O WS. And she's got this really cool grief journey.

[00:17:54] Phase thing that you were talking about integration, some some guy adding on integration to the end of there. Yeah, they have now the sixth stage of grief, which is, you know, you get to acceptance and acceptance is cool.

[00:18:08] I can accept that all those people are dead, but it doesn't make it tenable. It doesn't make it so, you know, you aren't brought to your knees in anguish. And so you stop being brought to your knees in anguish when you can integrate

[00:18:26] the the memories of them and the good feelings of having been with them without sometimes grief is like you can the past becomes very painful, even if it was beautiful, because it's gone and the gauntness of it is.

[00:18:40] So the integration is when you can kind of carry that with you and carry all the beautiful stuff and even the hard stuff, you know, no relationships are perfect and people die. And then there's things to to find out from things left unsaid or

[00:18:56] or conflicts that you may have had in your relationship that are always good teaching moments. I don't think life is a lesson though. I don't think that I don't think we're put through all this so

[00:19:07] that we can it's like some nasty school teacher in the sky or something. No. But there are lessons though. If you're smart and you're paying attention, if you don't get caught up in the story and let the story live you. There's lessons.

[00:19:30] But the only result is that what you just said is that one of your biggest lesson? Don't let the story live you. Yeah, yeah. Because when the story lives me, I live in depression and my depressions are dangerous.

[00:19:47] They're they're deep and less deep now because I can see it more objectively, but you can't think your way out of a feeling. Right. You have to my natural mother and I had a great relationship and she died in 2013 and prior to that we had maybe 15 really

[00:20:09] good years together. And she used to say you have to feel it to heal it. And she had these like slogans because she was in AA she was 28 years sober when she passed away. And she was like the grand matriarch of the 12 step program.

[00:20:24] But she lived in slogan land and she used to say you have to feel it, you have to feel it to heal it. And that's the most true thing, especially with grief. There's no avoiding that you have to feel it and feeling it

[00:20:37] with other people having an empathetic ear. Empathy, not sympathy, empathy is for me was the most healing thing to help me feel okay in life without all the people are missing. I mean there's fundamentals right? Empathy for who?

[00:21:01] Empathy for for loss very often about grief and because grief is fundamental to the adoptee as well. It's something that's sort of implicit in our experience. We don't talk about the grief part because you don't want to be made to feel better because people will say, oh, please

[00:21:23] don't don't feel so bad. I want you not to feel so bad, but but the nature of loss in love and loss of fundamentals is going to be sadness. So the more space you can give it, the less it can

[00:21:43] take away from your enjoyment of life, your gratitude, your real gratitude. So you're talking about space for the Greek, are you? Yeah, not to obfuscate it with activity, relationship, work, thinking, thinking, thinking. Yeah, it's the it's the hardest thing in the world to do

[00:22:10] though, isn't it? Allow the grief. So that is that what integration is that? I think when it comes to Kubler Ross's steps of grieving, you know, denial anger and then you get to acceptance integration is when you can carry the lessons of that life

[00:22:43] with you and it no longer dominates your life. And I so I would say, yeah, that's part of it. Giving it space is part of what allows you to get to integration because without that, you're fighting the ocean with a teaspoon. Right? It's going to come.

[00:23:00] And the thing about it is, is it's not pretty coming to like resolution about your past, even just being angry that you didn't have your natural mother to raise you. That's a real thing. That's not a little thing.

[00:23:16] Oh, it happened when I was no, no, that's a real thing. So the more you can give it, oh, there it is. The less you push it away. And when you push away, that's exhausting on it, on your pushing away. I don't push anymore.

[00:23:36] The other thing that you talked about with story, I was when you said story, I thought about kind of decide this, you know, like not disidentifying from our story, like seeing seeing that our stories and who we are. Integration, yeah. So can you explain that? I can't see.

[00:24:04] I'm not following you. You just said you just said this marvelous thing that you saw your story in who you are, not who you are is your story. People can become when we started this whole conversation, Simon, like it's quite recent with the whole adoption

[00:24:20] waking up and you and I have talked before. And what I've noticed is there's two approaches to coming out of the fog. Coming out of the fog can be, oh, my God, look at this. It explains so many things about how I feel

[00:24:35] and how I've behaved and functioned in the world. Now, once you get that information, you can either be super mad and deny it and wish it hadn't happened and, you know, try to that's bad and blame and become a victim. You can do that. That's a choice.

[00:24:52] That's one way to go. It's not the best way, though. Or you can take it. I mean, there's going to be moments where you have to you have to be self-compassionate because you're going to see you're going to see that things can happen to you

[00:25:09] that cause pain and difficult experiences, but it doesn't have to define you later because this coming out of the fog is like a consciousness. It's moment of consciousness. You can become aware when you're conscious. That's the only time you have choice.

[00:25:28] If you're unconscious, you don't have a choice. When you're sleeping, you don't want to be driving a car. And so that when you're awake and you can see it, then you can have a choice not to be a victim of it. You take that information.

[00:25:40] When I figured out that I had I always had a very difficult time in my life, keeping steady jobs in the normal world. And I'm smart. I was in university when I was in sixth when I was 16. I have two university degrees. I am I I love physics.

[00:25:57] I'm like I'm not a dumb dumb, but I cannot keep a job in the normal world. I had no I've never I couldn't get fired because I would quit before they would fire me. I'm not in my relationships with men.

[00:26:11] I would always break up with them before they broke up with me. There was some real things. So when I discovered, oh, my God, you were given away like three times. Of course, you're going to have these weird behaviors in your relationships. That gave me compassion for myself.

[00:26:29] I stopped seeing myself as some very bad words. I would call myself in my head. And that's when I when I had compassion for that. Because we're different, right? The minute you learn something new, you become like this revised version of yourself. I think.

[00:26:50] So yeah, ego tells me ego is not your friend when it comes to this stuff. And ego tells tells you those bad things. But I think your soul or your whatever that there's a quiet thing inside you that can say you're always doing your best.

[00:27:09] And then when you come to new information, you integrate that into your understanding of yourself to create deeper compassion. And if the nicer I am to me, my relationship with my children is better with my neighbors. You know, I still can't do a normal job, though,

[00:27:28] such an artsy fartsy. Well, but do you want it? No, there's a part of me that wants to fit in the world like they told us to you and I are the same age, right? So yeah. Like there's a part of me when I studied in university,

[00:27:49] my first degree was in political science and my father was working for Piatrudo. I was driven to school by the RCMP. It was there was calamitous craziness here and people with guns and so anyway, I had a different kind of growing up in Canada than you might imagine.

[00:28:08] Yeah. And I was sent to learn political science to become a lawyer and then work in politics. I was I feel sorry for Justin Trudeau because. He was not the kid that wanted to be doing what he's doing now.

[00:28:22] You know, he was the more relaxed out of the two of us. Yeah. So. When I went into that world and I I focused ironically my studies focused on American civil rights. And when I found out who my biological family was,

[00:28:38] they were a fundamental part of fundamental part of the other side of the story. Yeah. So how how was your how were you about? You said that they didn't want anything to do with you, apart from two cousins. Yeah.

[00:28:55] So how were you about that and how are you about that now? I well, I'm not. I don't I feel so happy with the ones that I've gotten to know that I don't feel a real disappointment about the and I kind of understand where they're coming from.

[00:29:16] I mean, we I don't know what we would talk about over dinner, Simon. No. What an old an old school friend of mine. Lives in Canada, actually, near Vancouver. And his his wife is he was in Hong Kong before.

[00:29:37] And his wife is Asian and he will only go to California. And Manhattan, he won't go anywhere else in the States. I love Manhattan. Yeah. I understand. Yeah. He so. And were you so you you've got a great relationship with the two of them?

[00:30:08] I am and but the others aren't interested. No, and you don't the others are like the sheriff of the town. Some members of the daughters of the Confederacy, which. Yeah, I'm not. Did did the did the initial kind of brush off from them?

[00:30:30] Did that upset you at the time? The whole reaction was weird for me. The whole experience because I never imagined when my mother, when my natural mother was dying, she told me that my father's name was Ronald E. Benedict. You're going to love this.

[00:30:48] So I had to rap. I'm French Canadian. My name is Marie-Jules A. Boll. When you're French Canadian, you're in a box of like it's a specific culture. Kibbutkwas. Kibbutkwas and I'm not just Kibbutkwas, but on the DNA charts, I have three feeds.

[00:31:06] You're a so I'm like super French. They. Oh, but so so when I found so when my mother when she was first diagnosed with cancer, she's like, you've got to know your father's name. It was just like a movie.

[00:31:21] And I'm like, OK, and she tells me Ronald E. Benedict. And I'm like, what British? I can't be half British. This is way before DNA. And I was like, no, I can't be half British. I'm French. What is that? What a way.

[00:31:35] And anyway, then she starts dying and we don't talk about it again because there's all the seriousness of that. And then she passes away. And honestly, I don't think I would have done the deep dive into DNA and reunion until so many of them had died because.

[00:31:49] Everybody understands how weird and hard that is. And but so, yeah. So finding out it wasn't British. He didn't even know that his father was from West Virginia or from Virginia from the Shenandoah River area. From Virginia.

[00:32:06] And he didn't even know that his father was in this father. My father. So I have a lot of questions about generational trauma and about like when something like that, like you don't know who your father is, you live and die not knowing who your father is.

[00:32:23] There's this big lie, but you know that he's not your father. I mean, we know we have these instincts. Is there some sort of are we like a generation of supergenerational healing trauma healers? I think we are. Because we as adoptees today are dealing with everything.

[00:32:48] Stop they didn't even know. Yeah. So you lost me a little bit there. You said the father, the father didn't know who his father was. We know what did you say? My biological father, who was not British, but American, didn't even know that his father was from Virginia.

[00:33:08] He was my father was shot in Montreal when he went in 1969. So yeah. So he didn't even know that his stepfather was not his biological father. Oh, right. OK, right. So this confusion, yeah, confusion abounds, as some people might say. And then I met my father's mother's family.

[00:33:32] So they all had one story that was very different than the story I had. And I wasn't sure because my coming into that family was really good for them because there was a big loss with the loss of the murder of my father.

[00:33:51] And then hit his mother's death. It was a big hole. So me coming in was like everybody was there so family oriented, these people. They were so happy. And so they had stories about him that were significantly different,

[00:34:06] for example, from the French newspapers that I read and the court reports. So I was pretty hesitant to. Yeah, Mara, his image to them. So do your existential questions continue? Yeah, absolutely. I hope they do. I hope they always continue. That's the fun part.

[00:34:35] Like I got a telescope last year. Right. And now my existential questions go beyond the the reaches. I've wanted a telescope since I was a little kid. My kids all got together and got me this like amazing, amazing.

[00:34:49] So, yeah, I think I'm an explorer if they're at heart. And I mean, I explore consciousness just like I would explore the ocean. Yeah. So, yeah. So but do I have I used to have what they call existential PTSD?

[00:35:10] And that's when you think God made a mistake and that you're the mistake. And there's like there's only one mistake in the universe and you're it. And I had that for, you know, probably 40 years where I thought, oh, no, I did everything wrong.

[00:35:26] And and was it the was it the moment in the in the cave in the Ganges that led to that was a big one because that was a big one because that let me know I could be by myself with myself in myself

[00:35:42] and feel this connection never be alone. That lack of I've never been lonely since then. But I don't I don't know what was was there another was there. You said you had you've had you had existential PTSD for 40 years.

[00:36:02] So yeah, when when did something change for you in in that regard? Meeting my my dad's my bio my natural father's family. I've I really had that sense that everything was always exactly the way it was supposed to be, even though it was weird and hard for everybody.

[00:36:23] And I wasn't a mistake. I I, you know, not not even a little. So it's about meaning and purpose and your hair. Belonging. Fate. Yeah. Renee Brown says that fitting in is the opposite of belonging.

[00:36:47] And I love this idea because I feel like I belong in the world now. And maybe for a long time, I felt like I was fitting in and fitting in is when

[00:36:56] you're like a square peg and you shave your side so you can fit into the round hole. But belonging is like water. I feel like that now I feel even even in. Well, yeah, some somebody else has shared that with me recently. Sorry, I cut you off there.

[00:37:17] Somebody else shared that with me. Recently, I think I think it was a lady called a fellow doctor called Liz DeBetta. I think he was that and what struck me between the difference between fitting in and unbelonging. So you said it's the opposite.

[00:37:46] You said, Brine Brown says it's the opposite. How do you see it? Definitely fitting in is she said I think she even says fitting in is the enemy of belonging. I think she even says it like that or maybe I did.

[00:38:01] I don't know, but I would I would see it like that. You know, as a musician, I'm not I have no fears. I have no performance fears when I when I'm playing music. There's like a thing that happens where I belong everywhere.

[00:38:15] I don't need to be someone different or when I'm not doing music. It's different. And in my growing up family, it was always like trying to be someone because you're basing it on the perception of what you think they want you to be.

[00:38:32] You know, that's fitting in because you're thinking about what other people want you to how do you fit it when I play music? I just be myself. I belong and now. With more consciousness and more awareness and more calmness. I always belong unless I let my mind.

[00:38:52] I call it the cockroaches. Do you ever hear the cockroach analogy when your little thinking mind gets in the cockroaches, they don't like the light. So the light is the practice you take the extra glass of water you drink. It doesn't have to be standing on your head.

[00:39:06] It just has to be a moment of saying saying. Taking care of this is is the best thing I can do for all of it. I think that that may be the result of integration. Where you get to the place where you feel worthy of. Good things.

[00:39:28] So what's different from being on stage and not being on stage? On stage, I know what I'm doing. I have the guitar. I'm singing the song. I it's the most like natural. Everybody's got a thing that my thing is just happens to be a public thing.

[00:39:49] But everybody's got that thing that when you're doing it, you lose time. You're like totally in the groove. Do you ever see the movie Soul on Disney with John Baptiste does the music for it? Well, at one point in it's a fantastic movie.

[00:40:06] Like I recommended to all every kid from six to sixty five million. But this movie here at one point he's playing he's playing his piano, blah, blah, and he goes off into a place. And when you're doing your groove, everybody's got their groove.

[00:40:25] You it's like you dissolve and when you come back, it's like you've had a vacation from yourself. And that's what I'm saying about creativity for any person, adoptee or anybody trying to heal from. I think grief is a big thing for people, for the whole planet.

[00:40:46] And so I think that the ticket to non avoidance, feel it to feel it to heal it is creativity, finding your groove. Everybody's got to do that. I think that's like a life job. I'm really lucky because my whole life has been art and music. But what's your

[00:41:10] what's your exploration of consciousness? Or what light has your exploration of consciousness brought to what you just said? I think awareness didn't cure feeling bad sometimes, but that. The light of awareness, in other words, when I had a feeling would come,

[00:41:55] I would have a judgment on that feeling that was going to make it way harder. OK, don't feel like that. Don't be stupid. Don't be. So now when I have a feeling that comes, I'm more able to. Let it inform me as to what I need.

[00:42:15] And then so the cockroaches and meditation helps with this. I don't think I could do it without meditation and meditation doesn't have to be fancy. But the cockroaches are the dark thoughts that come in and eat away at your happiness and your ability.

[00:42:31] And the light is this even just the willingness in 12 step programs, they say in the third step. And I've been doing 12 for many years. And the third step is about awareness became willing. It's about willingness.

[00:42:51] If you just have the willingness to see it and the way you judge your thoughts and your feelings will dissolve with this. Practice. Practice means it's never perfect, right? Like I think if everybody in the whole world would would take five minutes

[00:43:15] to meditate and if you don't have five minutes, take 10. And and and just to there's nothing magical that happens. But it makes my emotions useful to me, not. I don't become a prisoner of them as much. And I'm part of that is knowing where you come from.

[00:43:38] Is fundamental. Like I haven't talked this bravely. I'm not like all cured of life. But knowing all my family, where I come from and all the stories that had to happen to get me here. I'm like, wow, I am not wasting a minute.

[00:43:58] It might not always be fun, but I'm not wasting it. That's how I feel. Yeah, brilliant. That feels like a really good place to bring it in, actually. That's good talk, Simon. Yeah, I feel like I learned some things. Cool. We just published a couple of days ago,

[00:44:28] published an episode of the podcast with a neuro anatomist. And I would suggest if you've not listened to that, listen, I would suggest that you check that out because it'll mean something special for you on the back of this conversation. Especially about Jose's. Shared. And if you...

[00:44:59] And you can listen to the episode with Jill Baltitayla. You can listen to the episode. Or you can go to the show notes and watch a TED talk by Jill Baltitayla. And essentially, she puts neuroscience, a neuroscientific explanation to what Jose's just been talking about.

[00:45:35] And essentially, it's about the two hemispheres of our brain. And the left is the meaning maker, the language centre and the centre for the Jose's cockroaches. That's left brain. And right brain is creativity. And kind of like you can... As I say that, I can think,

[00:46:13] oh, Simon's explained that. So I don't... I get that. But don't take my word for it because that recognition has... The way that Jill Baltitayla explains it on the podcast and in the TED talk has got about a million times more profundity to it.

[00:46:42] Then I can bring to it because basically she had a left brain stroke. And with that left brain stroke, it happened to her when she was 37. And she lost... She lost all her emotional baggage. And she also lost her... Yeah. She lost the...

[00:47:21] She didn't just lose the bad baggage, she also lost the good baggage. So the meaning, the expats of her magical moments in the past was gone. So she was reduced to grey rather than blackened one. So is there anything else you want to share?

[00:48:00] Something that you want to share that I've not asked you about, please. No, I really enjoyed our conversation. That was very lovely. It actually helped to ground me and helped me continue forward. I have the challenge today of doing another... So I'm painting.

[00:48:19] I do pyrography, which is wood burning, but today I'm doing a new painting. And there's nothing more terrifying to me than the blank page or the empty canvas. So I have this huge canvas I'm looking at and you've helped to centre me so that I... Cool.

[00:48:35] I'm not terrified. Yeah. Would you... I want to show you something. So listen to this, just got to get something. Oh, right. Yes, I saw that on your Facebook feed. There's a... Yeah. So check out Josie's Facebook with the link in the show notes

[00:48:56] and you can see some of the art that she does. So what is that a depiction of? Well, it's a ballerina with a dandelion skirt, but then I looked at it again and I realised that it looks like female reproductive organs. Check it out on my Facebook page.

[00:49:12] Okay. I saw it on the internet. I thought it was... It's a colopian tubes and all the other things. I thought it was Jesus. Holy hell! Oh, it does look cuspichinesque. Yeah. So it's a woman's organs, it's Jesus and it's a ballet dancer. Okay.

[00:49:37] Grounded by a dandelion tutu. Nothing... This is Shakespeare, right? Nothing has any meaning other than the meaning we give it. Amen. Amen. Thanks listeners. Thanks, Josie. We'll speak to you soon. Cheers. Bye. Thank you, Simon. Bye.