The Fuzzy Mic
After retiring from a 30-year, major market morning radio career, I'm often asked what I miss the most about the job. I miss 3 C's...camaraderie, creativity but most of all, conversation.
The Fuzzy Mic is built around creativity and conversation to develop camaraderie. The 4 focus areas are: Mental Health, True Crime, Music and Sports.
So, while The Fuzzy Mic allows me to fill some professional voids, it's my sincere hope that maybe you'll find something personally fulfilling in it too.
The Fuzzy Mic
How to Rise Above Childhood Scars to Craft a Future of Forgiveness
When darkness overshadows our past, it takes an extraordinary strength to step into the light. That's exactly what Acamea Deadwiler, our guest and survivor-author, embodies. Her raw account of rising beyond the confines of childhood trauma serves as a reminder that although scars may mark our history, they don't chart our future.
Love, in its endless complexity, is a language we never stop learning to speak. Our episode weaves through tales of affection whispered through acts of protection, the silent strength of friendships, and the purest expressions found in the eyes of a child.
Finally, we confront the chains that bind us—resentment, grudges, the silent barriers we erect against love's flow. Through personal revelations, we confront the arduous but essential journey toward forgiveness, not as an act of submission, but as the ultimate form of self-liberation. And as we round off our exploration with the soul-stirring power of music and the life-altering impact of volunteering, we're reminded that the paths we walk, the people we help, and the harmonies we embrace have the force to not only mend but to transform us. Join us on this transformative odyssey, and perhaps, find a piece of your own story reflected in ours.
Welcome to the Fuzzy Mike, the interview series, the podcast, whatever Kevin wants to call it. It's Fuzzy Mike, hello, and thank you for joining me. Today's episode is how to Heal from Emotional Hurt, and my guest is Akemiah Deadwiler, an author and survivor of extreme childhood trauma. But before we welcome Akemiah, I want to share something with you. I received a lot of compliments on my episode with David Shamsad that talked about overcoming an attempt of suicide. Yeah, there was one comment, quote I don't need to hear this shit from someone who didn't use a name and, frankly, I'll never understand the motivation or purpose behind such a message. If you don't like something, turn it off and go about your day. Constructive criticism yes, share that. I'm all about getting better. Anything less, though, well, go fuck yourself. There was one comment that was direct messaged to me and it drove home one of the reasons that I do this podcast and why I have a concentration on mental health episodes. I host this podcast because I love the art of the conversation and when I'm talking with a guest, I get to practice that art and at the same time, I get to learn about fascinating people. I host this podcast because, as an early retiree, I have a lot of free time and this helps me fill that time so that I don't occupy my mind with self-loathing and harmful thoughts. When I post mental health episodes, I do it because I like creating open dialogue on a topic that some see as weakness. I appreciate learning new ways of coping with my own mental issues and I also do it in the hope that if someone is struggling, they can listen to the fuzzy mic and maybe get an answer they're looking for or motivation to seek help or make change on their own. This is a message I got from Brenda, and she granted me permission to use her story and her name. She wrote Hi, kevin Klein, I just wanted to let you know about your last podcast you posted on Fuzzy Mic. That show touched very close to home.
Speaker 1:I am a suicide survivor. When I was 18, I was beaten and raped by someone that I thought truly cared about me. When all this happened, I really and truly thought everything was over. It's hard for me to get back to the happy-go-lucky self. I still have good and bad days, and sometimes rough weeks when I think things aren't going right. I also have those days when I just want to give up on everything and now I can step back and see what I have to live for. I wasn't supposed to see 30, but I will be 44 this year. I mean, I think I'm doing good. So again, thank you for your podcast this week, brenda. Thank you for sharing your story and I am so happy that you're doing good. You'll find something in this episode that you can use to continue your personal growth. Here's how my guest Akameya Deadwiler's personal story begins.
Speaker 2:I don't want to be 60 years old still talking about what happened to me when I was 12. I said this to my cousin who, though more than a decade younger than me, held traumas just as mature by the time she graduated high school. Sold at her mother, sold at mine. Everything is relative. If you've had a fairly comfortable life, enduring anguish may be more challenging than it is for someone with more experience.
Speaker 2:I was listening to a podcast where a guest bemoaned the idea of removing children from abusive, unsafe, volatile home environments and placing them in the care of strangers indefinitely. Part of their reasoning centered on resilience and the resourcefulness we gain in learning to navigate difficult circumstances. Basically, the guest hung this argument on the idea that we are more likely to suffer an irrevocable break when we haven't learned to bend. This might be true. Still, it led me to believe that the guest must have been one who had a relatively stable, happy home life, because there was no mention of how you break a little more every night when agony consumes most of your days. They didn't speak on how your heart is too busy holding sorrow to save room for joy, or on how you are as affected as anyone else. You just keep it inside because you're numb, because you're so tired, because you don't believe anyone would care anyway.
Speaker 2:You normalize suffering, which begets more and, yes, you may bounce back quicker and appear to carry it well. Because you believe suffering to be inevitable, because you expect it, you are prepared. Pleasure becomes more shocking than pain. For a while I was addicted to my story. I didn't want to let it go because I believed it to be crucial to who I am. Now I know I am not my pain. I am not simply the product of sins committed against me. Neither are you Think. All that is righteous for this, because it means we can exist beyond hurtful circumstances. We can shape hours, then days, soon maybe months, next years and decades outside the belly of the beast that is past trauma.
Speaker 1:Akemiah Deadwiler. That is beautiful stuff. We are talking with author and motivational speaker and childhood trauma survivor, Akemiah Deadwiler. Thank you for joining me today.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 1:We're going to help a lot of people today. I was just talking about Brenda, who emailed me earlier, and she had some very serious childhood trauma that she overcame. You did too, I know, in watching a Fox television program in Las Vegas. You were on and you talked about being starved as a child. Can you tell us a little bit more about your background?
Speaker 2:Well, that particular segment refers to a time when I was about five years old. My mother, which I didn't know at the time, was suffering from mental illness and that's what led to the starvation. I'm originally from Indiana, so once that happened, my grandmother came and stepped in, brought us back to Indiana and we went on to live our lives from there. My mother fully recovered, she's fine, she's doing great. Today Hasn't had anything like that happen again. Thankfully, we all survived and we figured out how to make it through.
Speaker 1:Not only survived, but you're thriving. Now you have a master's from Valparaiso University. You have a brand new book coming out later this week, on the 15th. What's the title of the book?
Speaker 2:It's called Daddy's Little Stranger. I actually have it right here.
Speaker 1:There it is.
Speaker 2:Daddy's Little Stranger will be out on March 15th.
Speaker 1:Tell us a little bit about Daddy's Little Stranger.
Speaker 2:Well, daddy's Little Stranger is about growing up without a father as a girl. I wrote it because when I did a search for what the impact of this might be, everything that returned revolved around female sexuality and being promiscuous and things like that. I'm sure these are very researched topics and effects. I'm not saying that it's not a factor, but it's not the only factor and it's not the only outcome. I didn't fit into this neat little box of what a fatherless daughter is supposed to look like. I was like, hey, what about all these other ways that having a father can impact you? What about all these other things that a father could give to a little girl? Instead of just always defining women or analyzing women in terms of sexuality, I decided to write about that from my personal perspective and just things I've witnessed in girls who didn't have fathers.
Speaker 1:Okay, we've got a little bit of the backstory. Now let's dig into the bones. You are a survivor, and you're not only a survivor from personal standpoint, but from where you grew up. Gary, indiana, at the time you were growing up, was the murder capital of the nation.
Speaker 2:I'm about to show you guys where I grew up my hometown, gary, indiana. Population 74,000. Birthplace of Michael Jackson. I spent pretty much all of my adolescence and much of my adult years here until I moved to the West Coast. It's not much here now. That's the train we used to take during the summers to go to Chicago. Chicago is about a 30-minute train ride from Gary, 2300 Jackson Street. It's the childhood home of Michael Jackson. Look how tiny it is for all those kids. This was the high school I went to, lualas, the mighty Hornet. This is a bad state of affairs now.
Speaker 1:What did you see on a daily basis that you had to overcome?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Gary is absolutely central to my story. Thankfully because I had a disciplinary and grandmother and a mother who became really invested into religion and church and faith. They sheltered me in a sense. I wasn't allowed to go out and do things. I wasn't hanging out on the street where I could see all these terrible things that were happening. I just heard about them.
Speaker 2:A homecoming football game when I was in high school, a pregnant student was shot and killed in the head between rival gunfire. Of course they weren't shooting at her, but that's how it goes. That is, the innocent people that pay the price for these violent acts. I wasn't at the football game because I wasn't allowed to be out there At the time. Of course, as a kid I'm upset, like why can't I do anything and my friends are there and I can't stand this. But they actually protected me from some situations that I probably would have found myself in and not been able to navigate. I mostly heard about it. I saw some of it. There were fights and things like that, but for the most part I wasn't in the places where these murderous and more violent acts were happening. I just knew about them.
Speaker 1:So when you were being sheltered from this by your grandmother and your mother, what kind of a loving environment were you in then?
Speaker 2:I was in an environment where protection and well-being were the ways that love was demonstrated to me. I wasn't in a very affectionate or warm household where we told each other I loved you, hugged and kissed like none of that. It was more so like I'm going to take care of your well-being, I'm going to protect you and I'm going to discipline you, and that's how I show love.
Speaker 1:So then, where does your concept of love and acceptance come from?
Speaker 2:It's something I've had to develop over time. It's so interesting you asked that because I feel like I'm still working on that daily. I've come a very, very long way just through experience and acquiring new experiences and interacting with relationships in different ways. A lot of it has come from my friends, my close friends. I still have the same friends, the same four friends I had in high school. We're very close. We're all spread all over the country now, but we travel for each other's birthdays.
Speaker 2:They're coming here for my book launch next week, so we're still very close and I would say they were probably the first to really teach me about warm, affectionate love, where there was a different side of it. And then my niece my brother had a daughter when he was very young and so she lived with my mother and I for a time when she was a baby and it was just this unconditional love, the way she would rest her head on my shoulder, the way she would just hug me, just because she didn't know any better. She just naturally was like this and it softened me a lot and helped me get more comfortable with warmer, more affectionate displays of love.
Speaker 1:That's a beautiful story and it reminds me of something that a college psychologist teacher told me, and she said we're the only animal not born with instincts. I always have disagreed with her about that, because you're telling me that your niece automatically just laid her head on your shoulder. That's a sign of love and affection. You can't teach that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I teach that that is a natural instinct. And she was a baby a few months old. No one told her to do that, it was just her natural instinct. So, yeah, wholeheartedly disagree with that. Now, if you're born in solitude and no one ever touches you or anything like that, then I can see how they say you know that leads to developmental issues and you never learn that. But when you're in an environment where those opportunities present themselves, it's very much a natural instinct.
Speaker 1:Well, and nobody teaches us how to cry. We cry automatically as we're children. When we're infants, we cry and nobody teaches us that. So are you? Well, before I ask you that question, if you go to your Facebook page and I'm going to put the link up right here and I'm going to share some of these quotes, some of your quotes that you have developed are absolutely beautiful. They're quotes that I'm going to accept and use in my life on a daily basis.
Speaker 2:Oh, well thank you?
Speaker 1:Where does your mind come from to be able to come up with such beautiful prose?
Speaker 2:You know, I don't know when I was doing the quotes thing, it was just something that came. It started coming to me, like every day I would wake up with these ideas for quotes and these ideas that I wanted to communicate and these kind of uplifting messages. They were just coming to me. And I think that's how most things happen when you're open to receiving, you know what you should be doing or what's meaningful to you. And at that time in my life it was developing these quotes.
Speaker 2:You know, every morning I've I just had like a stash of them and that's how I feel, like that's how most of my prose come. I feel like that's when I'm at my best is when I kind of get into I don't know if you heard a flow state where, yeah, it's when I kind of get into a flow state when I feel like I'm really just tapped in, tuned in to, to my mindset and what I want to communicate, and then the ideas just start flowing to me and then, you know, I may cultivate them into something more more tangible or something more readable or digestible, but the idea for what it is just just kind of comes to me and I think that comes from just staying immersed in the field, like I read a lot, I write a lot, and it's like when you're doing those and you're constantly letting your brain move with that type of energy, then things start to come to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it happens for all different kinds of people in all different ways. But yeah, like as a runner, when I'm in a flow, it just everything feels natural, Everything feels good, easy. I'm not thinking about the process. Yeah, that's flow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. And then when you're done, you might be like, oh, my knee hurts, but at the time you're just going and you're not thinking about it, you're just going with the flow, you know, so to speak.
Speaker 1:Do you have a particular time of day when you're more creative than others?
Speaker 2:You know it's changed. For me it used to be the nighttime. I used to be a night out someone who stayed up to two, three in the morning writing and being creative, because that's when my idea started to flow. I used to be a big wine drinker, so I would come home, I would pour a glass of wine and then, yeah, I have all these ideas and I felt like, oh, I'm a better writer when I've drank wine. But now it's kind of flipped. Coffee really does it for me. I'll go to a coffee shop in the morning and that caffeine really helps me focus and, you know, it gets my brain working. So I'll say now it's maybe midday, like between the hours of 11 and four, where I feel the most creative, and how long did it take you to write daddy's little stranger?
Speaker 2:It took me. It took me a couple of years because it started out completely different. At first it was a collection of essays and Then, when I signed with the publisher, the publisher Reddit and was like I'm not gonna tell you what to do with your book, but I really think this would work better as a cohesive story If you just move some things around and develop, you know, connecting threads. I really think this is a powerful story and you don't have to break it up into essays. And he was right. You know, I went back to it and read and I was like, wow, yeah, this could go here and I could expand on this here and just really developed a cohesive story.
Speaker 1:How proud is your mom.
Speaker 2:She's very proud. You know she's very proud. Everyone you know heels and reconciles differently, so she doesn't really like to talk about things that we may have endured or things that she has been through, and I respect that. You know that's her story to tell. I'll only speak on the parts that affected me or how they affected me. But, yeah, she's doing very well, she's just and that's how she coats is, she's forgiven herself and she's moved on and and and that's her thing. She doesn't like to talk about it and I respect that.
Speaker 1:Kind of goes back to what you said at the very beginning, where you started the quote with I don't want to be talking about my story when I'm 60, but here we are still talking about your story. So how has the story changed so that you're able to talk about it in your 40s, 50s, 60s?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. The story has changed in the sense that I now speak about it from a place of love, like when I was first, when I was very, very young, I wrote a memoir. It's out of print now, so please, like no one, try to find it. It's out of print for good reason, like Kind of cringe worthy. And and also when I wrote it initially it was more like a revenge tour.
Speaker 2:It was like I'm gonna tell everything you did to me. I'm gonna tell everything that happened to me and I had no regard for for making like these people in my life, full body Characters of full body people. I had no grace for what they may have been going through as people. It was all about this is what you did and it's so terrible. And so now I'm at a place where, even with my father, with daddy's little stranger which is about growing up, not knowing him and not having him in my life I still find areas where I can show him some grace and say like hey, I don't know where you've been and what you've been through, but I'm sure it was something you know to keep a father from his child. And so I think that's where it's changed, where I'm not. There is no vindictiveness in my approach. There there's intentionally love and grace and understanding, as far as I can pull it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it sounds to me like the story has maybe changed from a vengeful story to one of sympathy and forgiveness exactly, exactly, and.
Speaker 2:And a story now of I've healed and here's how I healed and here's who I am now, instead of holding on to that idea of who I was and the things that happened to me is the healing process ongoing or is there a time where you're fully healed and you don't have to worry about it anymore?
Speaker 2:It's ongoing. It's ongoing because I may feel like I'm fully healed and I don't have to worry about it, and then something will happen and I'll slip back into old habits, whether that's, you know, kind of resisting vulnerability or like maybe ending a relationship Because I'm afraid that it's going to end anyway kind of a little bit of abandonment, fears and and things like that. So sometimes I have to catch myself and Consciously go against what my natural instinct gets to do.
Speaker 1:Do you think as because you mentioned very at the very beginning, it happened to your grandmother, it happened to your mother Do you think you're the end of the cycle? Is that a role that you are accepting?
Speaker 2:I hope I'm the end of the cycle. That is my intent to be the end of the cycle. I'm always those who are, you know, receptive to what I'm always talking about Not holding on to these hurtful, traumatic stories that weigh us down Like, yeah, if it happened, it happened. If it hurts you, it hurts you. If it affects you, it affects you. But I also want us to be cognizant of looking toward the people we want to become and Looking toward healing and how we cannot just continue to regurgitate that story and talk about how it's affected us, but learn to get over it. And I think a lot of times we resist that because we don't know who we are outside of that story. It's been so influential in our lives we don't know who we would be if we didn't tell people like, well, this happened to me and so it made me this way. And it's about learning who you are outside of that situation and who you can become later on.
Speaker 1:Okay, there's like three questions in there to unravel. All right, that's a beautiful answer. So how do you not harbor a grudge against somebody who has wronged you? I am terrible at it, I oh my god, I'm terrible at it, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:It's very difficult is not something that I think. Again, talking about natural instincts, I don't think our natural instinct is to let people off the hook once they've heard us, or or let go of that grudge. It's very hard. I I struggle with resentment for a very long time, you know, without even knowing it could, because I wasn't actively like, oh, I hate this person. But I know I held resentment in my heart because I couldn't think about them. I couldn't speak about them without saying something negative or harboring, kind of like a sour attitude whenever they Try to talk to me or being short, you know. So it kind of resonates in those ways, even if you don't know you're actively holding a grudge. It's.
Speaker 2:I was holding on to resentment that manifested in those ways where I was just kind of, you know, cold towards the person. But I learned to start letting go because I realized that forgiveness and letting go isn't for that person, it's for me, you know, it's for you. It doesn't feel good to hold a grudge against someone. It doesn't feel good to harbor that resentment. Nothing about it has you like, oh, I feel so great, hating this person, you know. So it's like you think about. I want to heal, I want to be a full person, I want to live a full life. And you just kind of learn how to forgive and let go and move on for your benefit. Not thinking that you're letting that person off the hook, you're just releasing yourself from the burden of caring what they did to you.
Speaker 1:Good, I have a good friend named Joe Martinez that did a recent conversation with him and he's a boxing cage announcer and ring announcer and all that kind of stuff and he said do you realize the amount of energy it takes to hate over? The amount of energy it takes to love it's night and day. He says you're killing yourself if you hold on to this hate.
Speaker 2:Exactly exactly, and there's a middle ground, like I'm not, I'm not a doormat or anything like that. If you've wronged me, you probably won't get that type of access to me again. So I'm not that type where I'm like oh, let me, let me, let you hurt me again. I'm not on that level. But there's a space in between where it's like I'm not holding any animosity towards you, towards this situation. I wish you well, but I'm going to live in this space where I am free, you know, and it doesn't affect my ability to love and care for, and I just other people but myself.
Speaker 1:That was one of my questions. How do you overcome, how do you let it go and not become a doormat, how do you not get taken advantage of? People see you as weak.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you stay in that space between. I mean you remind yourself that this isn't for them, is for me. And just because you forgive someone doesn't mean you maintain the Relationship. Those two things are not. You know. They don't have to go together. They're not married. I Can forgive you and decide I don't want you in my life. That doesn't mean I'm harboring resentment. It just means I don't believe this relationship is good for me. So I think that's how you do it. But I'm not angry with you. I hold no animosity. If you're, if you're on fire, I'll put the fire out, help fire out, but I'm not going to, you know, go out of my way to Maintain any sense of relationship and I may flat out tell you that I don't think we should maintain a relationship. So I think that's how you do it. You don't have. Don't think because you forgive someone or because you let things go that they did to you, don't think that means you they have to stay in your life because they don't.
Speaker 1:Okay, me a dead. Wiler is my guest. She's a childhood trauma survivor and she is the author of the upcoming book Daddy's Little Stranger. I want to go back to something you just said right there, and it's from a post that you made on December 4th 2023. It's on your blog. As we heal, and you say in the blog Sometimes taking a break from situations, from people, is a good thing, whether it's a family member or a co-worker. So when you take that break, how do you bring that person back in?
Speaker 2:I Think it happens organically. If it's supposed to happen, like I never forced relationships, I never forced reconciliations, I never forced connections I think it happens organically. But if I take a break from a situation or a person and I start to Miss them in healthy ways, not in like the ways that are like, oh, I feel like there's a hole in me without this person, because sometimes that hole can be toxicity or trauma. You know our trauma bond. It doesn't necessarily means that person is good for you. You're just used to having them in your life, you're comfortable with them. But if I take a break from a situation or a person and then I realize like hey, I'm, I'm happier with this person in my life or I feel better in this situation, then I'm open to reconciliation or going back to it. And I think it happens naturally and organically. You don't have to force it.
Speaker 1:Let me think about this quote I don't forgive, I don't forget, I just move on. Hmm that's what I told my mom.
Speaker 2:Hmm, wow, I like it. I like it because sometimes that's all you can do. Depending on how deeply someone has wounded you, you may not be able to forgive them, even if it's for your own benefit. But, moving on in and of itself and not continually revisiting them or that situation, it still benefits you because you open yourself up to greater possibilities and you can bring in more love when you're not constantly in the face of that situation that makes you feel that way.
Speaker 1:My thought behind that is that if time heals all wounds, it'll work itself out.
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly. You don't have to do anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you were talking about the toxicity of a person, leaving a hole In the opening monologue that you had you were talking about sometimes we think that's what we deserve. We don't think we deserve love. We don't think we deserve praise. How do you get?
Speaker 2:over that thought.
Speaker 1:Because I harbor that thought, I don't think I'm ever good enough.
Speaker 2:It's tough, especially if it was ingrained in you that you weren't good enough and you started to harbor that idea. It's tough but you have to. I read a lot of books. As an early reader I read a lot of self-help books and psychology books. Now, as a writer, I read more like literary books, like memoirs and fiction and creative works. But before I was heavy on self-help and philosophy and those books have helped me a lot.
Speaker 2:I always recommend the four agreements. It's been life-changing for me. The Emotionally Absent Mother was another book that helped me and could also help anyone who has issues with their mother or disconnect there or harboring any type of negative feelings. It talks all about how it affects you and what it did to you. And I think that understanding is helpful Because then you don't just think, oh, I'm not good enough for this, and that you start to see the patterns and what made you start to think that about yourself.
Speaker 2:And then, once you see that you can start to unravel it, you can peel back those layers and then consciously act as though you are good enough. And I think when you make those conscious decisions like how I said before, going against my natural instinct to pull away or something like that. You make the conscious decision to act against your natural instincts. I think soon the decision starts to become subconscious. You don't have to think about it In the beginning. It'll have to be a conscious decision like I'm willfully doing this against what I want to do or how I feel, and then, if you do that enough, those behaviors and reactions will start to become subconscious.
Speaker 1:Because the brain is a muscle and it takes just a certain amount of time to retrain a muscle or to train a muscle, and so that's basically what we would be doing with our thought process.
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly. It is very much a muscle and if you keep telling it I'm going to start this podcast and it's going to be good, and I know I'm good enough to do this you keep telling yourself that and keep doing it, eventually your brain will, it'll adjust, it'll adapt and it'll say, ok, I guess we're good enough for this, you know. So just take some learning wire that way so you can unravel it and then, consciously acting against that, Well, I'm reading a quote from you right now.
Speaker 1:There is no more powerful tool at our disposal than our minds, and I read that the other day and it got me thinking about. I'm going through physical therapy because, as a runner, I pulled a muscle, I strained a calf muscle, and so I'm going to physical therapy. And before we even started correcting problems, the physical therapist had to identify the problems and he said here's what's going on. Your body, your mind, has decided that this is your running style, and so this is how we have to compensate. He said your mind is what's causing the problem, because it's so used to running this way that it hasn't figured out how to adapt yet. That's what we have to teach it.
Speaker 2:Well, wow, that's really interesting, but it makes a lot of sense. You have to teach your brain. Ok, we run this way now because we don't want to get hurt.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then after a while of doing it you know running that way. Then eventually it'll know it is kind of a muscle memory, a brain memory. It'll know like, ok, we run this way now, but it's going to take some conscious effort to train it.
Speaker 1:And on an emotional level, what we're talking about is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you let your brain think that way, if you've been told this way and you let your brain think that way, of course your brain's going to think that way.
Speaker 2:Of course, because you've told it. That is definitely a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I wake up every day and say, oh, I'm going to trip over the corner of my bed every single morning, I probably will, because I'm telling myself I'm going to do that Like we really don't understand, I think, how powerful our mind is and what you tell yourself is what you will believe, and you will bring that to fruition. You'll make it happen somehow, even if you don't think you're doing it, you're going to make it happen.
Speaker 1:We were talking about quotes earlier. What is your favorite quote, whether it's come from you or whether it's one that you've read?
Speaker 2:That's a great question, because I love quotes.
Speaker 1:I know you do.
Speaker 2:Right, I won't pick, choose my own. Why not Because I'll let other people have those and choose their favorites. There I'll be less self-involved. My favorite quote is from Rumi, where it says it says something like your task is not to seek for love, but to merely Find all the barriers in yourself that you have built against it, or remove all the barriers. So your task is not to seek for love, but to merely find and remove all the barriers that you have built against it. That's my favorite quote.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it kind of reminds me of when you're looking for love. You're not going to find it in relationships, but when it happens.
Speaker 2:Exactly. It's a testament to how we were talking about natural instincts, how our natural instinct is to love and care and nurture. That only doesn't happen when we put something in the way.
Speaker 2:It only doesn't happen when we have a barrier there. So if we focus on removing those barriers, that love will naturally come in and flow out, because we don't have anything standing in its way. So it's not necessarily about finding love, or finding love that you can receive, or how to give it. It's just take the barriers out and love will do what it's supposed to do, which is to flow in and out of you.
Speaker 1:Is love universal or is there a different definition for everybody?
Speaker 2:I think there is a universal idea of love. The details may be different for everyone, like how you receive love may be different, like if you've heard of the five love languages.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I do believe that the way I receive love may not be the way you receive love. You may need to be told I love you every day, whereas I may need my partner to come set up a bookshelf for me and that tells me, oh, he loves me because he did this, yeah. So I think the way we receive love can be different, but universally, I think love is pure, love is patient, love is kind. I do believe in that universal definition. But the way you receive it can be different.
Speaker 1:You're smart. Thank you so much for that. That was awesome.
Speaker 2:So cool. I love to think about love.
Speaker 1:I know you do. And that leads me to your podcast. Why haven't you done a love lines recently?
Speaker 2:I have actually the last one. I saw was 2023.
Speaker 1:Oh for the newsletter. But what about where you took lyrics of a song like India arey and you dissect that into how it pertains to your life and how it pertains to other people's lives? That's the aspect that I was talking about. That's that was incredible. Well, because I know music is a big part of your life. You call yourself a music snob. I want that definition. What? Where does that come from? What's that definition?
Speaker 2:I am a music snob, just it just means I'm very particular about music. The same thing with, like a wine, kind of sore, like if you give me a cheap wine, I'll know just because I've been a wine drinker and it won't appeal to my taste buds because you know wine is an acquired taste, so it won't appeal to what I've grown accustomed to. And it's the same thing with music. Like I grew up in a musical household, like everyone in my family can sing their inquires and have recorded albums and things like that. I'm very snobbish about music from an early age and just appreciating real music, so to speak. You know. So that's, that's just what it means. I'm very particular about what I listen to.
Speaker 1:How much did music help you escape your traumatic upbringing?
Speaker 2:I helped a lot. I mark in Daddy's Little Stranger I talk about a time when I got a Sony Discman for Christmas. I got to walk my first, of course, because you know that was a progression.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That opened me up to like a whole other world because growing up in a religious family, although we were musical, I only listened to gospel. Like I listened to gospel music. And then once I got my Walkman and my Discman, I started listening to, you know, the secular music stations where these people were talking about pain and heartbreak and love and feeling alone and things like that and singing about that and I was just like, oh my gosh. So when I got older I started filling out those little cards for, like, Columbia Music House and where you got the 12 CDs for pinning or something like that.
Speaker 2:So I started ordering CDs and one of my first ones was Whitney Houston and her voice, of course. Her voice is just amazing and it just blew me away. And then I saw the bodyguard and I was like, oh my gosh, she's gorgeous. So I would literally like sit and listen to Whitney Houston on my headphones, just have her albums on repeat, and I used to. You know before I have a much better relationship with my mother now, but back then, when we were kind of disconnected, I used to like I feel funny even saying this now as an adult, but as a child I used to kind of like fantasize about her being my mother and just loving me and caring for me. So music was a great escape for me, the way it just it gave me something to identify with, where the air and sir wasn't just strictly pray about it or, you know, go to church.
Speaker 1:It was like these people really they feel how I feel and they're singing about this and it just really helped me feel seen, well one of the seminal music moments that I think you talk about at least I've read this anyway, and I think it's Seminole is a TLC concert in Gary, Indiana. That changed you.
Speaker 2:It did change me. It did change me. It was my first concert. It was an outdoor festival and TLC was one of the acts. This was early TLC, so they weren't the huge group that they went on to become and they, you could just tell they were just so happy to be there and they were defined and they were baggy clothes and they wore condoms on their eyeglasses and they were just. They were loud, they were everything. You know that I wasn't and and showed me. You know this exuberance, this joy that you could have as a young woman.
Speaker 1:Still a memorable experience.
Speaker 2:Still for sure, absolutely. I've heard an essay about that and it's also in Daddy's Little Stranger. The essay that you read is out of the book.
Speaker 1:Well, my wife and I often quote TLC because we'll ask each other, you know, hey, do you want to go here? And she'll be like I don't want and I'm like what? No scrub.
Speaker 2:No scrub. See, it's funny when it's all in fun. When you know that you know fun is all playful, then it's funny, it's not offensive at all?
Speaker 1:Not offensive at all. Why? Why? In the, in the for those who have had a rough year, you talk about getting rid of social media. Why do we let negativity bury anything positive? Because I'm guilty of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I don't know how much of it is letting it and how much of it is just that negativity is so powerful and resonant that if we consume too much of it it just naturally overshadows everything else.
Speaker 2:So that's been kind of my solution and approaches to limit the negativity that I intake. Like, I don't watch the news, I try to avoid the news on social media and Twitter unless there's something really going on that I really want to know about, because 95% of it is negative and if that's all I'm seeing, then that's how I'm going to see the world Like. So then when a couple of positive things come through, it's like it doesn't mean anything, because I've already seen 20 negative things, you know. So it's hard to measure up against it and it kind of it actually shapes your view of the world and how you see things and how you see people, and that's very difficult to overcome. So I address it by limiting the negativity and consuming more positivity than negativity. So then when I do see a couple of negative things, it can't overpower the positivity. It can't, you know, crush it, because I already have so much more of it than the negative that I'm, you know, ingesting.
Speaker 1:Well, the negativity and positivity that you just talked about kind of leads me to what you do voluntarily and you volunteer with Boys and Girls Club, with at-risk youth, and negative situations that are trying to be, or hopefully will be, turned into positives. How rewarding is it to connect with an at-risk youth.
Speaker 2:It's very rewarding. It's very rewarding. Every year I was doing Girls Day at the Boys and Girls Club. I think they stopped doing it when the pandemic happened, just because you know we weren't allowed to be in four years and they just started doing it again.
Speaker 2:So I'll be there again this year. But I was doing Girls Day every year, where you go and they match you up with an at-risk little girl. They also have a guys night out or boys night out or something where they do the same thing with men and boys. They match you with an at-risk youth and you just spend the day together. We play games, we eat, we do competitions where we have to work together, we talk and it is. It's very rewarding, especially at the end when, like, the little girls will run up and give me a hug and they're so happy and it just reminds you of how it doesn't take much to impact someone's life, especially a child. It doesn't take much at all to to give them, help them have a good day and make them happy and give them a little bit of fun. So it's very rewarding to think that I made an impact on someone, even if just for a day.
Speaker 1:So I will use those children that you work with as the backdrop. But in an overall sense, how important is it for the people to know that somebody cares?
Speaker 2:I think it's very important. Like we all need to know somebody cares. You know I've gone through stages where I felt like, well, I don't need anyone and I don't, I don't, I don't even need love. Like I don't care, I'm fine alone, and so you know we go through that. But that's not. That's not true. Like we all need to know someone cares. We all need to feel like someone cares. We feel better knowing that someone cares and it helps you keep a hold of yourself, like when you're especially for a child. Like if you feel like no one cares about you and no one cares what you do, it's difficult for you to care about yourself. You don't think that your actions are consequential and you kind of feel like, why do this? Who cares anyway? Or why not harm myself in this way? No one cares. You know no one's going to miss me. You know no one loves me. So it definitely has a huge impact on the way you see yourself and the choices that you make.
Speaker 1:And my experience in volunteering is what you give, you get back tenfold.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Exactly, you really do. You really do so how? When you look back on where you've come from, how surprised are you at the success you've had and where you are in life.
Speaker 2:If I actually like stop and look back, I would be. I am very surprised Because at first I feel like I'm just a completely different person from who I used to be and the way I used to see myself, and that's not always something that we see or something that we believe is possible. We kind of go through life saying you know, this is who I am, this is just how I am. So for me to kind of have transformed myself in a sense to where now I am confident in my ability and my skill, I've always been an achiever because my grandmother was a disciplinarian. She wasn't playing that. I had to make the honor roll, I had to do bring home good grades, I had to be the best at everything. So I've always been an achiever. So I did have that.
Speaker 2:But it's more so of defining my voice like and seeing myself outside of this idea of perfectionism and understanding that even if I wasn't perfect, even if I made the B honor instead of the A honor roll, I was still good enough and I was still deserving of love and attention. So I'm very proud of where I came, probably even more so than a professional sense in a personal sense, because I have been able to kind of overcome things that I've been through and forgive people, and I hold these grudges and this resentment. I'm most proud of that because of how it's transformed me as a person. I'm a much happier person, a much more consent person than I was when I had all this turmoil going around. But I am also proud of my achievements and my accomplishments and how I was able to, how I am able to excel as something I actually love, which is writing.
Speaker 1:You talked about grandma being somebody who expected you to overachieve. How did she take your basketball career? You know what?
Speaker 2:She was actually excited about that because we grew up watching, growing up in the Chicago area. We grew up watching the 90s Chicago Bulls. They were just the best team in the league and just dominant. Best team in the world Best team in the world. We've never seen anyone like them before or after. Maybe the Warriors have gotten closest when they had that run and they went 72 and 10 one year, but we've never seen anyone like Michael Jordan.
Speaker 2:We've never seen a team as dominant as that team. So that was one of our moments of joy, where we gather around her floor, model television and watch the Chicago Bulls, and she would just rave about how good Michael Jordan was, and she loved Scotty. And then we got Rodman and it was just like, wow, this is amazing. So she actually loved basketball because we grew up in the Chicago Bulls area and we will watch games as a family. So she was excited about my basketball career. She would ask about it. By that time she was older, slowing down so she didn't come to my games or anything like that, but she was very excited and would ask about it.
Speaker 1:When you tried out, you didn't initially make the team correct.
Speaker 2:You didn't make the team. I showed up thinking I can play, I'm going to make the team because I was playing and this was based on playing in the driveway with my brother every day or my cousin, and I would beat them. So I was like I'm good, I'm going to go play basketball at college, not really realizing that that's a whole other world, a whole other system. It's not at all like street ball or pickup ball. I was out of shape.
Speaker 2:If I couldn't, we had to run a mile and I couldn't. I couldn't lift weights, I couldn't do anything except shoot the basketball. And so, yeah, the coach cut me. But that actually motivated me to get in shape. Like I spent that entire summer just getting into basketball, shape and understanding where I needed to be. In the next tryout I went and I was actually like beating people when we ran the mile and all of that. And I made the team. And that's probably one of my proudest moments the fact that I didn't achieve my goal. I was cut, but then I worked hard and came back and got it the next time.
Speaker 1:Personally, I think that probably goes back to your upbringing and because we're always presented with paths, okay forks in the road. And if you would have stayed on the path of the traumatic experiences that you had, you probably would have never. Well, you wouldn't have overcome it. And number two, you wouldn't have made the basketball team. But because you chose the other path of yeah, that's what I've overcome. Now I know what I'm dealing with. I'm going to make that team. You became a fighter.
Speaker 2:I agree, I agree Absolutely. I would have never been able to make that path and kind of fallen into despair. I would have never believed I could achieve anything like that. I would have never believed I could do anything like that.
Speaker 2:Being cut would have crushed me and I would never pursued anything else again and just probably went into this dark space in my head about how I'm a loser and I can't do this. But I agree, since I did choose the other path, it helped fuel that motivation to say no, I can do this and I'm going to do this.
Speaker 1:Overcoming your childhood, your biggest motivation.
Speaker 2:Not at this point. Not at this point. It was then an early, early in my life. And then as I got older and started to even realize how it had affected me because for a while I didn't think it affected me I was like I'm fine, you know, I'm happy, I joke, I'm funny, you know I have a good life.
Speaker 2:But once I started to see the ways that it affected me and how it affected my ability to connect with people and receive love and give love and I started to really unravel that, that's when I realized how just even not having my father, how that affected the child version of me and how that child is still inside of me, making decisions, you know, and thinking, thoughts, and so addressing that helped me become who I am today. So for a while I didn't think it affected me at all. So but early, once I started to see the effects, it was a motivating factor. But at this point I feel like I've done a good job of creating this adult version of me who isn't stifled or burdened by the child and what happened to her. So it's not as much of a motivating factor now as it once was.
Speaker 1:So what motivates you going forward?
Speaker 2:What motivates me going forward is just being the best version of myself and being the best version that I want to be. So if I want to be this person who is kind and loving and offers grace and has empathy and is driven and is determined and confident in all these things, it's about nurturing this person that I see myself as now and being the best version of those things.
Speaker 1:And it's easy to do because of where you've come from. See what I mean by that is you've seen how not to do it. So now you can see now. You know how to do it, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I say that all the time, like I have a lot of data on what not to do.
Speaker 2:I say that all the time. I have a lot of data on what not to do and it's helped me learn what to do. It's helped me learn who I want to be. It's helped me learn what I want to see happen in my life and the decisions that I want to make, because I don't want to be here and I don't want to experience this and I don't want to inflict this type of pain on anyone. So definitely like learning what I don't want, has taught me what not to do, which gives me the other side of what to do.
Speaker 1:Exactly what you don't want to lead you to what you do want. Where can we get the book, these little stranger?
Speaker 2:Well, the book will be available wherever you order your books Amazon, bookshop, barnes, noble. If you want to order from your local bookstore, they'll be able to order it. It's nationally distributed through a traditional publisher so you can order it anywhere you order your books.
Speaker 1:Well, we're looking forward to reading the book. Congratulations on all of your success. As I mentioned the other day, I spent five hours with you, researching you and hopefully that hopefully you got that impression, but I love everything about you.
Speaker 2:I really did. Thank you so much. I really have appreciated this conversation.
Speaker 1:Man. I enjoyed that and I hope you did too. My thanks to Akamia Deadwiler for joining me. Akamia's book Daddy's Little Stranger is out on March 15th and it's available online and at bookstores nationwide. Should you know someone who could benefit from hearing Akamia's story and advice, please by all means tell them about the episode If you would be so kind. Sure could use more likes, reviews, ratings and subscribers, growing the audience, but what that does it allows me to continue attracting and booking quality and helpful guests like Akamia. Thank you in advance for doing that. The Fuzzy Mic is hosted by Kevin Klein, production elements by Zach Sheesh at the Radio Farm. Social media director is Trish Klein. For a dose of laughter and unpredictability, please listen to the Tuttle and Climb podcast, with new episodes every Wednesday. I'll be back next Tuesday with an all new episode of the Fuzzy Mic. Thank you for listening and for sharing your invaluable time with the Fuzzy Mic. I'm grateful. That's it for the Fuzzy Mic. Thank you, not Fuzzy Mic with Kevin Klein.