SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to the moment. And the belonging we build anyway. I'm Dr. Danny G, educator, storyteller, leadership coach, and consultant, and founder of Wired for Belonging. This isn't a conversation about success. It's a conversation about what it costs and what it takes to rise anyway. Business and belonging is a part of the broader Heartwired ecosystem, including Heartwired Leaders, a leadership experience focused on belonging, burnout, authenticity, and building more human-centered lives and systems in an AI world. You can learn more about Heartwired Leaders at drdanyg.com backslash Heartwired. But this podcast is where the story underneath all that lives. And in this episode, I'm joined by my cousin Gary. Gary is a social worker, a mental health leader, a father, a husband, a writer, and someone who has spent much of his life carrying responsibility, sometimes before he ever had language for what he was carrying. This conversation moves through a lot of that. We talk about growing up in a family shaped by hard work, poverty, addiction, domestic violence, survival, and love. We talk about what it means to be the oldest child in a complicated home. We talk about how the helping professions can become a calling, but they can also become a lot of cost. We talk about secondary trauma, stress, compassion, fatigue, leadership, fatherhood, discipline, resilience, and the deep family patterns that taught so many of us how to keep going even when we were tired. And we also talk about Gary's book, Origins of an Empty Chair, and what it means to turn pain, memory, and survival into something that might help someone else feel less alone. This episode is about what we carry, but it's also about what's handed to us, what we choose to break, what we choose to transform, and what happens when care becomes not just something we received, but something we build our lives around. So let's pull up a chair. Here's my conversation with my cousin Gary. What I've started with to start all of these now is a biscuit check, which basically means right now, today, like how are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 2:48

I think everything that's going on at my employer currently, I'm the vice president of clinical services currently. It's pretty stressful. You know, we're at the end of a seven-year mental health contract. We've been the mental health provider for 50 years, and there's a pretty good chance that it might not go that route this way. Funding cuts, different things like that. And so just making it really hard to survive in the community mental health game. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

And you've been doing that how long now?

SPEAKER_02 3:12

20 years in August. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

And so let's start back because I known you, you're my cousin, so known you for a long time. But we both went in our own paths. And so this is be really fun to get to catch up with you. But just growing up in your family and where you grew up and how you grew up, just take me through that and how you ended up getting to clinical search. You know what I mean? A vice president of there was a long path there.

SPEAKER_02 3:39

And yeah, I definitely an interesting path. I go back to childhood, obviously. We were around each other quite a bit, but not a lot at the same time. Right, exactly. So it's like we we crossed paths considerably, but it wasn't like we were just together a lot. But childhood was rough, you know. Dad had substance abuse issues, mom was a workaholic, loved her to death, but she just work work. Dad obviously cheated on mom several times, let the drugs take the best of him. And I felt myself just being this perpetual peacekeeper my entire childhood. They'd split up, I'd be begging them back together. I always felt like that was my cog in the wheel. But I guess it was about the third time that I witnessed him attempt suicide that I was kind of like, something's wrong with this dude. He can't get right, and I just kind of had to step away at that point, set a really hard boundary. When I went to school initially, social work wasn't a thing even at all. Uh I wanted to be on the drug task force, got into the criminal justice program there in the local university, and really ran that all the way up to a degree, couldn't find a job anywhere. And it was actually your mom was like, Hey, you should go talk to them over here at this locked unit. They like big guys. You're like, I'm a big guy. Yeah. And that's kind of what took me to the clinical side of things. Ironically, as I went through that process and I started to gain an education, I started to really understand what was wrong with my father. And it was pretty eye-opening. It didn't change the fact that he chose those things over the family, and it certainly didn't wipe away all of the trauma that we experienced throughout childhood. So but all in all, that's kind of a quick and dirty summary of how it got me to that point.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

You mentioned your mother being a workaholic. Do you have any sense? So you've got a father who's dealing with all of this, right? And you've got a mother who's throwing herself into work. And so, how was that like for you?

SPEAKER_02 5:40

It was difficult. I was an athlete through school, and interestingly enough, I think it was pretty much into my senior year before I really ever got mom to any of the games. Dad was absent, he could be there, he just chose not to be, and that made it really quite difficult. Mom was trying to look out for us the best she could. She and she grew quite successful even through that. She was director of the ER at one point. She uh was an instructor at the university for nursing. She's now an APN, so she's really pushed herself to a great place. Absolutely. And I think that's where my work ethic has come from. I deal with domestic abuse. I've seen her just walk through fire and come out the other side and be successful, and that's what pushes me.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Yeah. Yeah, your mother is your mother, my mother, so Aunt Bobby. Correct. I think about the three daughters in their family just, and then our grandmother, you know, and just you go back and think about the cycle that they went through.

SPEAKER_02 6:39

They did not have an easy childhood either. Did you not? We certainly grew up in poverty, and it's interesting to say that now, but everything that I do, it's like I will not let my child have the upbringing that I had. And everything that I do is a step towards showing her that resilience can get you to a better place.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Yeah. And so we saw them struggling and going from job to job, just trying to provide for us. And so what do you think you learned from your mother? You mentioned hard work, but is there other things that you think you learned from your mother specifically as you were growing up?

SPEAKER_02 7:10

One of the things I think I learned that really has taught me so much in life in general is just that no matter how hard things are, you can walk through them and be okay on the other side. And she's been through so much. I mean, you know, and she herself, she was younger, she went through an early pregnancy with me, right? She's 15 going on 16. I come into this world, so that doesn't make things easy. I remember her working at Shoney's when we lived all the way over, I guess it was around Pulaski, Tennessee, and Lawrenceburg.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

I can still remember that Shoney's.

SPEAKER_02 7:44

Yeah. When we were clearing the stuff out after Randy passed away, we found her little Shoney's bear in one of her bosses. Did you really? Yeah, that really brought up some memories.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

And even at Shoney's, she wasn't just a waitress. She didn't become like a manager.

SPEAKER_02 7:55

Exactly. And that's been her path all along, but I think that's that thing. She stepped through abuse and she still stood there with us to try to take care of us. I remember just a brief period of time when we were younger being in that batters women's shelter there in Pocahontas. And that was just a terrifying thing to just feel like you didn't have anywhere else to go in that moment. And so you land in this strange place where it's just a bunch of cots. It looks like a concentration camp.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

And you know, how old were you in, Gary?

SPEAKER_02 8:27

Probably eight, ten, something like that.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

So you can remember that.

SPEAKER_02 8:31

And and that's just stuck with me. I've remember that for a long time. But mom has she's walked through it even the last few years with Randy and everything that she's dealt with. She's continued to work full time, even with him in and out of the hospital, in and out of the nursing home, all of the health stuff that's came with it, and it's taken its toll on her. But each day she just she prays and she works and she steps forward. And that's just something that has really instilled a lot of hope in me and trying to just make myself understand that no matter how things can get at work or at home or wherever it may be, that you can keep walking that direction and you'll be fine on the other side.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

That resiliency that runs through our family or through our blood really is yeah. And it's hard to explain because the things that the stories we hear too about their experience. I just I can still vividly remember when we moved from Biggers Reno, Arkansas to Pocahontas because my mother lost her only job in Reno at the truck stop. Yeah. And so when she lost that, she was kind of doing home health. We moved there and she did not want to live with my grandmother, her mother, because she he she was not in a good situation with who she was with, and she would rather have us live in a homeless shelter. And so we went to Brad there. We lived in that. I remember being on the bunk beds, and I remember you couldn't bring food in. But so my mom was like with the barely any of the money that she had, we were getting a McDonald's and eating fries and the hiding in the car to eat them. But that sticks with you. But we got out of it. And my mother and your mother and our family, they work so hard. Um I think that is why we work so hard to help other people.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Because we know what it meant. And a little bit of that, where do you think because you've you take a being a vice president, but all your roles really taking a lot of responsibility? I don't be an older, you know.

SPEAKER_02 10:31

I think I think again, all the way back to childhood, I felt like I was a caretaker and a police taker. And so as I was pushed into this field when law enforcement wouldn't have me for whatever reason.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

That's right. I remember law enforcement. I would thought I was like, I thought Gary was gonna become a cop, which made sense given everything he would you know.

SPEAKER_02 10:50

And it was in my head, I was like, if I can become a police officer and I can get out here and make this drug task force, then I can clean some of these households up, and these kids won't went without what I'm through. And that was what was in my head. But then it was like six months. I'm applying for all these places, I'm not getting any callbacks, then I go take the test for JPD, I pass it, but then they hire all these other people in, and so I'm just like, what?

SPEAKER_00 11:14

And you're also like, I need to get paid, I need money.

SPEAKER_02 11:17

And so all of that to be said, found my way into working an overnight position at Med's Health Health Systems at the time, and I just fell in love with the population, and these are all people that were criminally insane, and they've all committed some type of crime, they've been court-ordered treatment. And it was my boss at the time, Carrie Thompson, he's the one that was like, Hey, you do really good talking to these guys and calming them down. Have you ever thought about being a therapist? I'm like, Hell no. And and so he's like, Man, we'll pay for you to go back to school. And I was like, Sounds like a deal. And so it was Carrie Thompson and Sherry Harp at the time really pushed me and got me all the way through the program. Things just fell into place. But going back to your question, I think that all of this stuff comes down to my family is littered with caretakers. Yeah, yes. They're all individuals that are cut from this cloth of the helping profession in some way. Yep. And so I think that's just we've watched it our whole life, and it's part of who we are now. We just want to see the best in any scenario, and I think that we think as logically as we can about how do we help this situation.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

And with that, talk about has that felt like because you're taking that on, especially with what you you said about the criminally and then who are going through many struggles, what they've walked through. That's a lot to listen to and carry. So, how have you the cost of doing this work? Can you talk about that?

SPEAKER_02 12:49

Yeah, it was ironic. My research paper in my graduate program was over secondary traumatic stress. Um, talking about the prevalence of PTSD symptoms in people that encounter other people who have dealt with traumatic situations. And it's definitely one of those things that you just kind of desensitize yourself to some degree. Yeah. And that's that's a difficult part about our profession, about the nurse nursing profession, is that you tend to fall into these little buckets. You got your people that just they start to utilize whatever, maybe alcohol, maybe pills, whatever it is, they start to numb themselves through substances. Yeah, but you really get yourself into this period of compassion fatigue, you spend all your time listening to these horrible things and trying to help people, but we're all not always the best at helping ourselves on the back side of that. And so it's finding balance. I think that's what it comes down to is that when you work in a field like social work, you have to have a master class in taking care of yourself on the backside of that. And if you don't have that awareness, you are going to crash and burn.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Yeah, and it's especially the higher you go in the work, and then you're supervising individuals who are doing this work. So then not only are you carrying that, you're then supervising others who are carrying that. So then if you're not role modeling it, then they're not right. Yeah. So how do you do that in a leadership position? Are you have you had to learn that through the ranks? Have you just I struggle in that?

SPEAKER_02 14:14

I I've been called out just recently because I'll be sending emails at like two in the morning. Like, oh, Mr. You need to take care of yourself and have balance. And so that that was interesting. You say to them, have balance, yeah. And they call you on it, but I think it's just that thing that all of us, when you look at the day, and we've got we've all got the same 24 hours. Right. And when you take your eight hours of sleep out of there, and your couple hours of meal time, and so on, and then you throw eight hours of work in there, you don't have a lot of time for family and yourself at the end of that. And so you have to be really direct with how you utilize that time. And so much of it, I did 75 Hard a few years ago, uh great program for somebody that really wants to teach themselves you're capable of more. And I went through that whole process and really learned that it it's just about setting strict boundaries with yourself, you're going to follow through. It's a discipline thing. Motivation is fleeting, yeah. And and I see that a lot, but that's the thing about self-care, is like the root word is self. Yeah, you know, ain't nobody gonna get on the treadmill for your ass, nobody's taking them steps, nobody's gonna slap the fork on your hand, and that's what that comes down to. But it's an interesting concept when you think about trying to lead other people in a role like mine, for instance. I'm over 20 counties right now in our 41 counties, and so I've half the castle myself, and you're taking care of people that all have their own lives and their own problems, and not everybody takes care of themselves, so you become a pseudotherapist for people to some degree.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

Yep. And I think that people who come to helping professions care work and also leadership, but you said come come with their own things. I also think there's always a reason that people are called to do this work. Yeah, there just is. And so one thing that I often struggled with was being called to the work and then the work, and sometimes the calling being so intense that I'll do so much. I call it the override. You'll override your emotional, physical, you'll override time with family, your own personal life, and then you're like, I've overridden myself so much that I'm burning here. And that's why I call this burnt biscuits basically, and then humans should rise, and it's really hard to do that. So, how have you created those strict boundaries?

SPEAKER_02 16:36

Really, I've struggled with it for probably 15 of my 20 years at this point, and that routine, I think, because the routine brings, and in and often in systems and things, I think it brings you stability, and it also makes you feel that you have control over your life.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Yeah. If you're checking those boxes, you're like, I can control that. So we've talked through the sort of blood, I call it the sweat. Just talked about a lot of sweat. But then there's also I think the element of tears in our work. And so, what have been some of the hardest things that you've had to deal with both personally and professionally in life?

SPEAKER_02 17:16

Hmm, personally, it's probably been my struggles with weight and self-image. Yeah. I think that all the way back to my senior year, I hit a growth spurt, gained 80 pounds in about a four-month period.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

So you went from like, and then you were like so tall.

SPEAKER_02 17:31

Yeah, I went, I think I was a buck 78 running about 6'1, and then I came back and I was 258-6'3. Yeah. And it was a big thing. I was doing all that. I was working at McDonald's, pounding chicken nuggets, drinking creatine, protein, all the stuff. And so naturally it caught up with me, but then it didn't quit after that. I remember my was my junior high coach, but he was our high school principal, first day of my senior year. He said, Damn, Tabor, you got fat. And that just stuck in my head immediately, and it tore my self-esteem down, dealt with girlfriend issues in my senior year, and I've had longtime girlfriends, seven years. Long time. And that kind of unraveled me a little bit, and I've had some different things like that. I finally landed with Abby, and we've been together for a long time at this point, but those self-image things tied to the weight have just torn me up for a long time. And found myself in this leadership position, but I don't like being in front of people. I don't like talking in front of big groups, I don't like being the point person for anything. And I've somehow found myself here. I hide it well, fake it very well. And I went and had this surgery since been a year and a half ago, and have dropped 120 pounds, and I've kind of regained my health back a little bit, and yeah, I had to hack the system a little bit to get there. But that's really been so much of the struggle that I've dealt with is really I've dealt with depression, I've dealt with a lot of dark times. I'm just like, damn, I can't do this with my kid because of my weight, or I can't ride this ride with my family because of this, or whatever it may be. And so that from a personal standpoint has probably been the hardest thing, just overcoming the self-esteem issues professionally. It's like you were talking earlier, it's having to sit in these moments listening to people's worst times in their life and trying to help them step through that. And interesting enough, if you're my client and we're talking about a situation, you're dumping a lot of heavy stuff on me. And I'm I am doing my best to be empathetic for you, but I've got six more of those after that. And it's not like that now that I'm in administration, but I'm over everything, and so any bad thing that happens anywhere still funnels my direction. When you hear about a teenager taking their life or someone, you know, overdosing or whatever it may be, it's just hard to absorb all of that constantly.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

Yeah, I can really relate to that because even though when I got to the level of Dean of Students, Associate Vice President, and we would get crisis calls, and my team was taking care of those. I was over the threat assessment team. Even though I wasn't sometimes directly hands-on, I'm still taking that on because I'm concerned about the staff who are handling that. I'm concerned actually about the students who are have this has been impacted, or the family or the campus, and you're carrying all that, and you call you called it secondary traumatic. Secondary traumatic stress. And it's that's student affairs, I think social work, like you mentioned nursing, and our family has is literally been drawn to this work. It's like, how do we get drawn?

SPEAKER_02 20:46

And even in this last couple of years, we've had to shut some programs down, had to have some staff reductions because of budget cuts and different things that we've been struggling as a nonprofit agency. We sometimes you have to make cuts, and to have to sit down and tell an individual, I'm sorry, but your job has been taken out. And so we're gonna absorb these duties elsewhere, and good luck. And it's just a hard conversation because we've had to do this around holiday time before, and I'm in one of the positions that has to have these talks, and that's just something that can be very difficult. And that's this decision that we're facing right now. It's if we're not the community mental health center as of July 1, yeah, 50 years of our identity has evaporated, and a lot of us are struggling with that. When we changed our name in 2019, right before COVID hit, about six months in, they came in and they started ripping our tree logos off the building. Wow. And it was hard. And so they were getting ready to throw them in the dumpster and be like, what the hell you are? So now all of us have a tree on the walls. And and even when I wrote the book, you know, I called it Trinity Pines, and that was a shout out to Mid South for their three tree design. And it's just it's an interesting thing. Because people just don't know what historically these things mean to people. And again, it's just a huge thing that's sitting here pending, but it's not just our agency, it's the entire state's own. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 22:12

That's what's hard. Higher ed too is facing similar challenges. Yeah. And for us, sitting with our agency, our organization, or our institution, it feels so personal and so directly, but it is across the industry. Talk to me about your book. Tell me about your book. I want to give you that opportunity because I'm like, I've invited you to my to to, you know what I mean? And I was like, gosh, we should talk about your book.

SPEAKER_02 22:38

The book was one of those things It's named all that stuff. Yeah. So it's Origins of an Empty Chair. I think it was about at this point, it'd be about six years ago. There was an individual at my facility named Matthew Knight, and he wrote a book called Leaving Fingerprints. He was our marketing guy. Your mom would know him, and just brilliant speaker. Brilliant speaker. And he sent me down one day, and after he wrote the book and he autographed it and gave it off to him with this message, and he was just like, Everybody has a story in it that needs to be heard. And he's like, I think you need to write a book. So he told me that at that point, and so it really stuck in my head and just spun and spun. And then one day I was driving another road and I came up with this weird concept about a group therapy session with trauma. Except as you go around the circle hearing each story, it turns out that's the person doing the group's story all the way around, and that this empty chair that's referenced is actually his chair because he's taken his own life. And it was just an interesting thing. But I started it about five years ago. I have tried to base it solely on personal events and things that have happened inside of my family. And I got to the third chapter about six months deep into this, and this was five, six years ago, and it got too heavy, and I had to back off. Got really upset, really didn't. And I guess it was last year around Easter. Abby's family's all Catholic. I converted Catholic. And we go through Lent, and I just told myself, I'm gonna write this damn book by Easter, one way or the other. And I just sat down and hammered out, and we opened a new residential facility in North Florida. I spent three nights up there. I had to be awake, and so I was like, why don't I just write? Yeah. And so I kept pushing and pushing. Then I hired one of these online editors. They went through, did a lot of editing on it, and then I took a couple of writing classes locally, and they pushed me a KDP with Amazon, and so they were like, just self-publish. You don't have to do anything out of pocket. And it became what it is. I've not done any advertising on it, nothing special. I'm just like, hey, it's out there in the ether. I did what I said I was gonna do. But it's been interesting because as people at work have started going through it, it's eye-opening to people like, oh man, this dude's been through some stuff. And it's yeah, I've been through a lot of stuff, and I've always felt like in life all of us go through bad things, but you really at that point have two paths you can take. I tell this to the clients I work with, to the staff I work with, but you're gonna be a victim or you're gonna have resiliency. And so you can either live in spite of what happened to you or you can let it control the rest of your life. And I just I feel that that holds true in every story that I go through and talk to people. If you don't find your way to that path of resiliency, your whole life has been impacted from that point forward.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

Seems like some parts of your life, not to therapy you, because this is not that, but have you were able to get to resiliency maybe quicker than maybe some other paths. I'm thinking about that in my own life. Some areas where I was just like, I was in high school and I was my best friend who is also someone I've interviewed. And I had a lot, like it was so important to get time with him. And we would travel all the time in my ninth and tenth grade year. My grades were crap. So when I got to 11th grade, I'm like, how am I? And he went off to college. He came from a very different family than me. So he just didn't school wasn't hard for him, and he knew he was going to college. I didn't know that. We didn't know that. And I knew the only way I was gonna get to go is if I got all Ace. And I buckled down. And I so I hear about stories where people are like, high school, we did all these things with these parties, and I'm like, I was down in my basement studying physics, and the year 10th grade, if you'd seen me, you'd be like, that kid's, I don't know where he's going. And then I think I didn't do bad, but I just wasn't. I think I got a D in college prephology. Like I wasn't, because I had all these other identity things I was working through, and so by 10th and 11th, or I mean by 11th grade, I said I gotta I got to get scholarships. We can't afford to go there, and so resiliency came out there. But some other things in my life, I felt like I just let it took me a long time to get to resiliency. So, how do you get to resiliency or how do you help your clients get to resiliency?

SPEAKER_02 27:02

Man, it's such an interesting topic because I think about I talked about earlier how sometimes I just fake it. And I think that's been a reality for me for a long time. Is that growing up with all the stuff that was going on at home, seeing the stuff between mom and dad, I've dealt with some just awful abuse myself, some of my siblings. And you go to school and you put a smile on your face and you work through because you don't want anybody knowing what's going on at the house. Absolutely, and so some of it is just strength and being able to turn a blind eye to the fact that you are dealing with hard things. Because I was, I remember my 11th grade year, I started cutting for a while. I've dealt with suicidal thoughts, I've had all of these different things, and it's even to the point with my kid, it's like I don't want her to know that I've dealt with those things. But you don't go through some of the stuff that I've been through in life and not think that, hey, it would be easier to just not be here. But on the back side of that, I can sit here and look and say, Hey, my agency's a better place because I'm here. My daughter has a better chance at life because I'm here. My mom gets her yard mode because I'm her next door neighbor and she doesn't have to worry about paying for that. And it's just I know that I have a positive impact in so many areas, and I have to remind myself of that a lot. But resiliency itself, it's just one of those things to where it's like you have to consciously say I am surviving in spite of this. Like I I think about my dad. It's just what you did for me is show me how not to be a father. I've heard you say that before. Yeah, like I learned how not to be a dad. And that's the reality, and it's and I have some memories with my dad that were good playing Madden football. I remember the first two Broncos Super Bowls that were won, and you know, I'm still an avid Broncos fan here today, but it's overshadowed by the bad, unfortunately. And that sucks. It sucks to know that he's out there and there's not a relationship here, but it's because of the choices he made. And so that's where I've had to get to the point of understanding that I have extended the olive branch, I helped him get a place to live, I have let him live with us, I have bailed him out time and time again, emotionally, financially, only to be spit in the face. And so it just got to the point where it's like, bro, I'm gonna have to love you from afar, and that's where it is at this point.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

Because at some point, love has to be it has to be reciprocal. Oh yeah, I'm just gonna be. So it's never fifty-fifty, but a relationship that has doesn't have that reciprocity, I think about my older brother, that makes it so hard. And you eventually gotta say, hey, my own love for myself has to also come some somewhere it's gonna exist, right?

SPEAKER_02 29:59

Well, and you said it best it is you're making anytime that you make an investment on somebody like me and my marriage, you and your relationships, even you with the relationship with our parents and stuff, it's like every time that you make this investment of affection, or you expect a return on that investment, and when you don't get that, you're not gonna put your money into a bank and not get any of it back. That's the reality, but that's what a relationship is. And so you can't continue to pour yourself emotionally into somebody for them to just take it and run it. And so that's I think personal and professional. Oh yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah, and I've I've been blessed. I've had some great leaders in front of me that have listened to me, they've made me feel like I'm part of why we're still here, and that helps tremendously. Keeps gas in my tank because I've been offered some outstanding jobs in the past. I've stayed with this place for 20 years. Wow. I'll retire here if they don't get us closed down.

SPEAKER_00 30:59

If I push them forward. That just says your resiliency, too, because there's a lot of change that happens in any organization over that time, and you've chosen, you kept showing it. Next part is just what's held you up through that? What do you think has been you've mentioned some of the leadership trainings that you've done, of course, relationships, family. But what's kept kept you upright when things got hard? When thank you for sharing the things that you have when it got really dark. Yeah, what held you?

SPEAKER_02 31:26

Obviously, I have a a very intelligent woman beside me. She is smart, she is strong, she comes from a great family. It was a huge contrast seeing what family should look like versus what we came from. And it's not that I don't love my family, like I understand we were dysfunctional as hell. They were not, they were the ones watching shows every Sunday. Yeah, just a great group of people, and seeing that on that side has just been a big thing. But then I've got mom, and mom is my biggest cheerleader, she always has been. Me and my brother through high school and stuff, we were kind of on opposite sides of the playing field a little bit. We've really grown to be best friends on the backside.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

It's been beautiful, even as far to see y'all make pictures together and stuff. You know what I mean? And stuff like I remember when y'all were like honoring to each other, yeah. And y'all are you have your you've got some similarities, but certainly y'all are different, you know. Yeah. What values have never left you? As you think about your values. You said resiliency, probably one.

unknown 32:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:36

Any other ones?

SPEAKER_02 32:38

I'm a very ethical person. I want to be trustworthy for people. I want them to know I'm a safe place to land. Honesty and trust is a big, big thing for me. And I work in a field that's bound and ethical, and that's something that I push for. I think that people knowing that they can risk really lean on you and understand that you're gonna not let them down is a huge thing. Carrying family, like family is a big thing for me. And we stay tight knit. We're all here in this little nest, but I don't I'm not a social person by any stretch. My my social battery is used solely at work, and then it's family from that point forward. I don't have time to spend elsewhere, and that's I think probably one of the values that will really hurt me at the end of this road, probably, because I do isolate so much and I don't have a problem with that. That's a huge red flag, probably. But I just find myself, and this is gonna sound terribly selfish, but it's I don't have room for new friends in my life. Because just like I said earlier when I was talking about this system that I'm trying to build, when you look at this will, and I'll show you that thing later. Yeah, when you look at this will and understand how much time you spend between work and sleep, you don't have a lot of time for everything else.

SPEAKER_00 34:03

You don't. So when you said I don't have room for more friends, it's like you have all this work. Yeah, and I used to say, I have so many interactions at work that by the time I get off, I've been interacted out. Yeah. And so I get home and I'm like, it needs to be quiet, peaceful, and calm because my day hasn't been. So you I don't know if you feel like you've created a peaceful, calm environment when you get home or that your family does that, but I think you have. So I get that.

SPEAKER_02 34:30

I think that's a difficult thing for me, too, is that Abby is hell on wheels. She doesn't stop ever, and it's just part of who she is. Her motor's just running constantly. And I'm a very present person to live in the moment, and so frequently, like where she may be running 900, I like to find myself up here because it is peaceful, it is quiet. I wanted to lose this weight, I lost the weight. Now it's like I want to build some muscle, and so it's really got me to that understanding in life to where it's stop worrying about the destination, just keep going that direction. That's the best advice I've heard is just understanding that everything should be rooted in gratitude at a very granular level. Okay, thank you for having this soft couch to sit on. Yes, thank you for having family, thank you for this this sweet. Thank you for this wonderful dinner ads and I seriously. All these things, yeah. But you don't you just don't understand like how many things that we have to be grateful for, but then just understanding that it's a journey, it could end, it could end before I w I might not wake up tomorrow.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

It's a real none of us know that. Presence is so important and just being present in life. And sometimes I think we get that wheel that you talked about. Yeah, we're so busy in this hamster wheel that it's really hard to sit and pre and being present. Yeah, and I see I was seeing some of the kids today and video gaming or being on their phones, or so seeing them today playing volleyball together, out in the pool together, yeah, throwing the football around together, being outside. Seeing the three of them just do that brought so much joy to me because, and that's why I went out there and I was like, I can't even throw a football that well, but let me just come out here to be with you because they're doing the things that we hope doesn't get lost in the translation of the urgency and the hamster wheel of life and AI now here.

SPEAKER_02 36:32

Yeah, it's just ruining people at this point, and that's the that thing too, because where they may at night want to go down and watch all these shows and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 36:41

I know because I want that to be misheard in some way, that you don't have room for more friends. I think so often people think they have to have a quantity amount instead of quality, and I think you have good quality in terms of family, in terms of those pieces that are so solid, like but it it becomes that thing for me to where if I'm going to hang out with people, I want there to be meaning behind it.

SPEAKER_02 37:04

I'm not a I'm not a drinker per se. I'll have drink social or whatever. And so when I say that, that's really what I'm meaning is that anything that we do, whether that's work, whether that's work out, whether that's hang out with people, we're giving our time away.

SPEAKER_00 37:20

Literally, and it don't come back. It doesn't.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:23

The time is ticking. As so I'm grateful that you you're doing this right now because this is time and in our work and the time that we spend with family and friends, and it's critical to do that. Yeah. Gary, I think we've covered most of the topics. Is there anything that you were like, I really wanted to mention, I want to talk about, or that's on your mind? No.

SPEAKER_02 37:45

It's I can always I talk.

SPEAKER_00 37:48

That's what I do. That's what you do. You also you listen a lot. I think our family this is so I started the book that I'm working on because I could see in my life how I had to be resilient. I was the first male cheerleader in junior high, and I didn't think about who I was, but in my head, I'm just there doing like something exciting and fun. But I was overriding myself because I'm like, that kid, as I look back, I'm like, dang Danny, I'm proud of you as a kid because you were overriding yourself, have to put on a smile, even though people were like laughing at you or whatever. But I was gonna do it, and then I think I've done that throughout my life that it became so just that's how life is. You always are overcoming, you always have to you have to be resilient. And now I'm at a place where you mentioned piss peacemaker in your family. I want peace in my life, yeah. I want it for other people, especially those that I am close with and love. And we've had some recent deaths in our family, and that just reminds you of the very real thing that all of us face. And I want people to be able to, at their last breath in mine, breathe out peace.

SPEAKER_02 39:03

Oh, yeah. And I think that's probably the thing that I understand more so than most people, is that there is a finality to this thing. Time ends for everybody at this point, and we don't know when that is. Absolutely. I'm at that tipping point, and you are too. And I've not treated my body particularly the best to this point. You've always been fit and healthy and all these things, right? But I went for a long period of time to where I was dealing with diabetes and kidney stones and high blood pressure and all the things, fatty liver disorder. Yeah, and that's what prompted me to go get the surgery. Abby was a huge advocate for it. She dealt with it herself. She's been successful and also finally talked me into it and I took the leap, and it's been a huge thing for me. But I will tell you, so much of that has been a mental thing. Like just telling myself that hey, I'm not going to fail. And interestingly enough, I fell into tears in the pre-op room. They came in, they got to shave your chest and your stomach and stuff. I start to break down because Mita had made me this little bracelet with a cross on it, and I started falling out, and I'm like, this is a bad deal. What if I can die on this table back here? And then my kid's got no dad or whatever, and like I'm starting to freak out. And so he comes in and he's just like, it's gonna be fine, bro. I do this, this is my specialty. I'm like, all right, screw it, whatever. And so they wheel me back. I see the whole light above my head, and then I hear the nurse say, give him some fentanyl, and then I woke up and Abby was eating in the corner, and I was like, You ass. I knew I was about to stick a month of liquid now. I just I feel blessed, and I know right now, just us getting to come back together, even like today, like it's been great because I know we were four hours apart at this point, but that ain't nothing anymore.

SPEAKER_00 40:56

I know it's not I've never lived this close, really, to y'all since I graduated college and have moved away. And in some ways, I look at my career and go, gosh, it robbed me of a lot of the family connections because I've lived so far it and it's gave me so many opportunities and things that I saw, and so I'm grateful on that one hand. But I have to say, getting to reconnect with family and to see to get to see the nephew and the see your kid, see Cincinnati, but also to see your brother's kids and of course your sister's daughter has just been a blessing. I didn't get to really know them throughout that time and to see them becoming them them who they are.

SPEAKER_02 41:38

Anytime I wish you all the best with this. Obviously, podcasting is taking the world by storm, and uh I have uh several that I listen to regularly, and just so much great information is everything. Yeah, so I don't want to stick too much time more of your time, but AI, is that showing up in your work? We unfortunately switched medical record systems this last year, and it has been terrible. But they baited us with this Bells AI, which basically is a little box you set on your desk, and it literally can identify who's the therapist, who's the client, but it develops a script of the session, it gives you the topics of your session, and then it actually writes your note for you, and you can use any of the three or none of the three. But after you click submit on your note, it all evaporates, it doesn't save anything. And just seeing those kind of things like that, but then also me using it independently, like to help build business proposals to help look at our budget. Hey, tell me what the hell's wrong with this thing, it does all of these things, and so I I frequently tell people that if you're not leveraging AI in your work at this point, you're cheating yourself. There's no reason not to use this tool. Do you need to check it? Yeah, we need to use it as a supplement. We do not need to lean on it to be the thing, and that's where I think us understanding that hey, it's a resource, that's where I gotta find that balance.

SPEAKER_00 43:04

So I my tagline is that it's human-led, AI-assisted, soul-lived. Yep. And I mean that because humans need to lead this, and we still need to remember this needs to help humankind. I've kind of added that to at the end of human kind, the kindness and if it's not being kind to humans, if it's not helping us do and live better, why do we have it? And why are we using it? So my fear is that it's gonna cut so many positions, and it's a lot of people's fear, yeah. But I think cut positions that are administrative heavy, let AI do the things, and hopefully it frees us to do more of the human side of the work because as we've just discussed for over this podcast, has been that the human elements, everybody's facing all this different stuff in life, and so we can't help each other if we're so bombarded with all the administrative aspects, especially in the work that you do and the work that I did. Yeah. So thanks, Gary. Thanks for spending time with us today, listening back to this conversation with Gary. I keep thinking about how responsibility can become part of a person long before they ever choose it. Sometimes it starts in childhood, sometimes it starts in a family where people are surviving more than they are thriving, more than they are explaining, and more than they ever were meant to carry. Sometimes it starts when you realize someone has to keep the peace, someone has to notice what is wrong, someone has to hone things together, and somehow that someone becomes you. But Gary's story is not just about what he's carried or he carried, it's about what he did with it. He took experiences that could have hardened him and turned them into care. He took family pain and found his way into social work, mental health leadership, fatherhood, and writing. He reminds us that resilience is not pretending something did not hurt. Resilience is deciding that the hurt does not get to have the final word. And maybe that is one of the deeper truths of this entire season. Blood may shape us, systems may burn us, but somewhere along the way, we still get to ask what kind of table we want to build from what remains. If this episode resonated with you, you can learn more about the Heartwired program and the broader ecosystem at drjanig.com. And wherever you are today, I hope that you remember this. What you carry, it matters. So until next time, take care of your biscuit.