0:07

After a traumatic experience or loss, like the death of someone we love, it's easy to avoid the hard work of grieving. Instead of processing that pain, people may try to numb it through drugs, alcohol, or acting out. Others pour their energy into distractions, anything to keep from confronting what's underneath. For today's guest on Grieving Out Loud, Hakeem Bourne-McFarland, that outlet was sports. After his younger brother died from cancer at just six years old, he threw himself into athletics as a way to cope with the grief he hadn't yet faced. My team picked me up from the hospital like they always do.'cause I was either home practice hospital, that was it. My team would pick me up and I, I didn't know what to say, but they're like, Hey, what's up man? Because they didn't know he was, he's always in the hospital. They didn't know he died. So I finally just said it. I was like, my brother died. Everybody's like, it was like 12 of us in the van and like, what coach pulled over and was like, I'm like, nah, keep driving. Just keep driving. We about to win this game. While sports may seem like a healthier outlet than some, Hakeem says it became a way to avoid his emotions. He also placed an intense and ultimately unhealthy amount of pressure on himself to succeed in his brother's name. I have to go to the NFLI must. Take care of mama d. Take care in my brother's name. I have to make sure there's no other sick kids out here that have to go through that. I'm gonna start this. Make-A-Wish. My mom wanted to do this whole annual thing. We had this huge dream, like, oh, I gotta be rich, I gotta get sport, I gotta play sports and get rich so we can help families. But what happens when the thing you've been using to push your feelings aside suddenly isn't there anymore? When that outlet disappears, the grief doesn't. In this episode of Grieving Out Loud, Hakeem opens up about how everything started to fall apart after an injury, how substance use pushed him even further away from sports, and how he was finally forced to face the grief he'd been avoiding. Now, he's helping hundreds of others transform their lives through small, consistent steps and accountability. If you want to heal, you have to start by embracing your intention when nobody else is watching. You can't go play sports, you can't go get a bunch of women, you can't go spend money, you can't go be a good parent. You have to be able to heal when you're by yourself to really have that impact on the people you love. Today's guest is someone whose story is going to stay with you. Hakeem Bourne McFarland was 16 years old when he lost his 6-year-old brother, and as he'll tell you, that loss split his life into a before and an after. What followed was more than a decade of grief that had nowhere to go. Turning into anger, addiction, and survival mode, the kind of spiral that's so easy to mistake. just living. What makes Hakeem's perspective so powerful on a show like this one is that he's here to talk about something that we don't discuss nearly often enough. What grief does to the sibling left behind the children and the family who carry guilt, confusion, and quiet rage often without. Anyone noticing Hakeem is a public speaker and the founder of the Choose Yourself Movement, where he uses his own story to help others understand that what they're numbing isn't weakness. It's unprocessed grief. His message is that adversity doesn't define you. Your choices. Do I think you're gonna feel the truth in everything that he shares today? Hakeem, welcome to Grieving Out Loud. Thank you so much. What an amazing intro. Thank you for that. I'm honored to be here. Well, well, you're welcome and I am so sorry for the loss that you experienced at such a tender age of such a young sibling. It must have been heartbreaking. Yeah, it was, I didn't really deal with that until I was forced into solitude, and I think a lot of us try to figure out a way to process grief, but a lot of the importance of processing grief is the flip in the mindset. If we don't do the work leading up to that experience, to that loss, a lot of times we do what we think we're supposed to be doing and it comes in forms of numbing and masking people please and staying busy, blaming, complaining, and, and we do that until we start to choose ourself. Take me back to 16-year-old Hakeem. I mean, what was going on in your family? What was happening with your brother? Can you tell me that story? Yeah, yeah, of course. I was the only child until I was 10. Me and my mom shut out. Mama d doing what she could do with what she had. She was a server working doubles all the time, but she made it to a lot of my sports games. That's where I really found my siblings, my my friends. Couldn't really fit in.'cause the light-skinned dude, it wasn't as hip as it is today. It's gonna be a lot of light-skinned people in about 20, 30 years. But in Minneapolis, Minnesota, it was, it was kind of a new thing. So I found my people in sports. So sports was really my passion. That's where I found myself. That's where I gained respect. That's where I gained leadership. That's where I gained a voice. And so that's where I thought. Would prove that I was healed, Something you said in there. I just wanna touch on for a minute because I don't know if I've had anyone describe that to me quite the way that you just did about being light skinned. So you didn't really feel like you fit in, you weren't dark enough or light enough, uh, white enough or dark enough. That's what I'm hearing from you, and it's such an interesting concept to me. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my black friends would. Talk about me getting sunburned and if I slap you, you turn red and my white friends be like, Hey, I bet you jump over that fence. You're fast. You're lucky you got long Achilles. And I'm like, I don't know what y'all talking about. I don't really know. I think my skin is perfect brown. That's what my mom said. But when I got on. embedded, that embedded racism really was there and it, and it, and you felt different. You felt different right from the beginning. Yeah, and I embraced it though. I really did. I used to wear whatever I wanted. I was a class clown prankster. I was really good with my words my whole life, and that's something that was suppressed. I think a lot of our, a lot of us who have a gift naturally embrace the gift. Subconsciously, unintentionally. And then our parents, the culture society tends to suppress it.'cause they want you to sit down in a box and pass or fail or heaven or hail or sit or follow the law or go to jail and they try to do all that. So shooting yourself is figuring out how to uncover that suppression. That was typically Yeah, every kid, every kid encounters that. yeah. Some sort of suppression of who they really are. So your brother, at that time, you were an only child for quite a while, then you had this little brother, and what happened? Yeah, he was born with short gut syndrome and leukemia. First person ever with both, so short gut syndrome is he didn't have as much intestines as he should, so he couldn't eat Whole Foods for 18 months. Then he could eat like rice and noodles, then he could start having Pedialyte. So we're always sneaking food around him and trying not to, you know, let him see that he was different or that he was restricted. That became normal, but I never felt like he was going to pass. I thought he was always gonna make it through because that's what me and my mom believed in. We believed in us always making it. We didn't have a lot of materialistic things, but we had love support. We argued a lot, but we always got over it. And that's was, I think a big part of my mindset was, okay, it might be kind of, there might be tension right now, there might be miscommunication, but it's always gonna get better because that's the upbringing that I was around. And when he started to develop, he would be in and out the hospital, probably about 65, 70% of his life he was in the hospital and having. Leukemia and radiation and chemo and then bone marrow transplant and then having to have all these different surgeries and all these different doctors and I just kind of saw them treat my brother like a project.'cause there were so many different doctors 'cause nobody knew what to do. They like, I don't know, we give them this for chemo and messes up the steroids for short gut syndrome. We try to feed 'em this, it messes up the radiation for chemo. So all these things were contradicting. Nobody knew and. I started to see like a different type of intent behind what the doc, what the hospital was doing, and that built a little bit of resentment towards authority.'cause in my head, if you got a white coat, you supposed to have it. You supposed to have the solution. Hmm. And then I assume this consumed your mother's life. Oh yeah. Yeah. She ended up moving the last two years of her life, put on 40 pounds eating hospital food, which y'all watch out for that hospital food. It's not the healthiest. Right. Right. And so then ultimately your brother died in the hospital. Yeah. Yeah. So as my mom turned into his caregiver protector 24 7 provider was, she was his mom. She always called me. She kept calling, but I put up like this wall.'cause I didn't want her to see that I was hurting and I didn't want her to worry about me. you appear to be an adult at 16, but you're not, you know, I mean, you kind of, uh, you appear to be able to take care of yourself, but you still need your parent. Yeah. And at 14, 15, 16, I think we all kind of go through that rebellious phase, but for me, the rebellious wasn't out of disrespect. It was out of, I'm cool, ma, just go take care of him. I'm fine. You ain't even gotta call me. I'm good. But that wasn't, they didn't come off as loving upon reflection, but I, she could feel it, and I feel her love too. And so when he died, what was your brother's Matthew, Matthew. So when Matthew died, did you even know you were grieving or did you feel a sense of relief because this had consumed your family, which would be a normal feeling for a human being to feel, um, after something had consumed so much of your life? What, what was going through you, your head as a 16-year-old? It was Saturday morning. My phone had about 30, 40 missed calls.

It was about 9:00 AM 10: 10:33

00 AM I had a basketball game at, I

think it was 1: 10:37

00 PM that day. And you know when you look at your phone and you're like, uhoh, why is this person calling me texting so much? This just gotta be bad. And we, we had heard him say, three months and six months and 18 months and he's not gonna live past this. And I'm like, okay, I'm done listening to y'all.'cause y'all keep. Miscalculating his death time and we're stressing out. And then he lives longer. So now I'm like, I don't even believe y'all. But then all of a sudden I get this phone call. She's just quiet on the phone. She's like, Matthew's gonna die today. And I was just silent. She's like, your uncle's coming to get you to bring you to the hospital. Hung the phone up. And then I just tore up everything. I punched holes in walls. I flipped furniture. I yanked all my clothes off, broke down into tears. And that was the last time I cried. Got into the van. I mean, got into my uncle's truck, went to the hospital there, my, my immediate family, whoever was there, and I actually had a very vivid imagination that my great-grandmother was there this whole time until two years ago. I found out she was never there, but this whole time I thought she was there. I was like, hallucinating it. Our memories play tricks on us Yeah, I, I swear she was there this whole time, but I guess she wasn't, so I got there. My mom, let me be the last one in the room with him. So I said what I had to say to him. Pulled the plug, went out to the parking lot. the plug. Yeah, I was the last one. Wow. Yeah. So she, she asked me if I wanted to be the last one. I'm like, yep, I'll be the last one to talk to him. He had been, he had been non-coherent for, you know, a few weeks, you know, but he's, he had done that and he come back before, so I'm like, I don't believe it, you know, and then I got into the van. I went down to the parking lot and my team picked me up from the hospital like they always do.'cause I was either home practice hospital, that was it. My team would pick me up and I, I didn't know what to say, but they're like, Hey, what's up man? Because they didn't know he was, he's always in the hospital. They didn't know he died. So I finally just said it. I was like, my brother died. Everybody's like, it was like 12 of us in the van and like, what coach pulled over and was like, I'm like, nah, keep driving. Just keep driving. We about to win this game. Went and play the basketball game. I didn't play the best, but from that point on, sports became my mask. The good thing is I got really good. I was in the gym, running track, lifting weights, catching steady sport. I was always occupied by sports. Sounds like a healthy diversion from grief like it, but Uhhuh. the thing about putting your emotions into a safe and locking it with something external, once that thing that's external is gone, you gotta deal with that 16-year-old boy that you suppressed. Because he is still there and the grief It's still there. You just locked it under that first game. And so now I'm fully emerged and if I, I have to go to the NFLI must. Take care of mama d. Take care in my brother's name. I have to make sure there's no other sick kids out here that have to go through that. I'm gonna start this. Make-A-Wish. My mom wanted to do this whole annual thing. We had this huge dream, like, oh, I gotta be rich, I gotta get sport, I gotta play sports and get rich so we can help families. I can help mama d, we can travel and we can be free. Finally, from being broke our whole life and broken emotionally. That, that's a lot of pressure to take Yeah. I put it on myself though. We all do that, right? We all, we don't, it's not necessarily external pressure, it's oftentimes internal pressure that we put on ourselves. I mean, I feel like that's really all of the pressure. We, we think we, other people put pressure on us, but it's just us blaming them for the pressure most times. Um, but some people do, obviously, depending on situation. But, so then I went D one full ride, got a full ride outta high school. And when I went D one, I hadn't been drinking or smoking this whole time until fourth term, so this was, this was the summer between my freshman and sophomore year, June 28th, and then my sophomore, junior, senior year, I didn't drink or smoke or nothing. Fourth quarter of my senior year I started drinking. My dad is 14 years sober. He was a rock star Jamaica Mine. Big partier. My mama d, same thing. She was drinking every night, pills every night since before Matthew and after Matthew before me, my 10 years. And then when Matthew was born, she quit. And then when he died, she went back. So whenever she had me or Matthew to focus on, she was quit cold Turkey. But if it was, if when there was nothing to take care of, she's bottle of wine cigarettes. Anxiety pills, depression. She went into the psychedelic meds heavy after Matthew and when that, when that I got that full ride when I started drinking, each sip was a crack on the safe. Each sip. Yeah. Tell me what you mean by that. Every time I took a sip. Because alcohol forces you to zoom out. That's why they used to have a three martini lunch. People get more creative. People have higher test scores in speed puzzles because they don't, they're not in their heads so much. They just get creative. Loosens you Loosens you up. People, it's, it's, it's a scientific fact, right? When you can not be so distracted by sports, by the mission, by suppression, by, I'm a man, I can't cry. I need to prove myself to my mom, and you're like. You start to loosen up that focus and you start to crack the ego. There's everything. That's why people say you become more of who you are when you drink or when you get money. Both, both of them are kind of a, a type of high, those emotions would come out. So the anger that I suppressed when I tore up my room, that's what was in there. And the thing about life, you reflect what you project. So when you're playing sports, you're focused on sports. Oh, I'm scoring touchdowns. I'm fine. Oh, home runs baseball. I'm fine. Everything's fine. Nobody asked me if I'm okay. Everybody in high school knew my brother died. Everybody's asking me. I was fine. All the girls, all the, all the coaches, all the recruits they knew, everybody asked me. I'm fine. I'm fine. Look, I'm scoring. I'm scoring touchdowns. I'm fine. Started drinking. I start to feel that anger. Now, the resentment I had for the doctors, the resentment I had for my dad, the resentment I had for the coaches, the resentment I had for God, letting my brother die. The resentment I had for not my mom, my mom not being able to be around me because Matthew was sick. Not that she chose to, but she couldn't be all that was like, I ain't gotta listen to nobody. Y'all don't see me hurting. Don't tell me what to do. My brother died. Y'all want to complain about what I'm doing now? So I started talking back to the coaches. I was still going. I still could put the mask on, but I was partying and playing, but then my emotions turned into the character I become, and I started to become uncoachable in life. So I quit, just like I ran from the grief by masking it. Left my D one for ride, went D two on another scholarship. This was in 2008. Spring I graduated. I went down D one full ride for the whole summer. By the time the first game came, I had already quit, went D two, another full ride. First game, first play, tore my ACL. You can't play. God said, you better stop running. I'm gonna make sure you can't walk. Sit with it. I was like, that's fine. I'll go party. I'm either numbing or I'm asking, not dealing with it. Right. Running just external things is what I see. That you're looking for something outside yourself, um, to hide from what you didn't wanna face and what you really couldn't face at the time. Are you ready to protect the next generation from the dangers of substance use? Emily's Hope has created a comprehensive K through 12 substance use prevention curriculum designed to educate, empower, and equip students with the tools they need to make healthy choices. Our age appropriate lessons start in kindergarten and build through high school using science, real stories, and interactive learning to help kids understand their bodies, brains, and risk of drug use. We're already reaching thousands of students across multiple states, and we're just getting started. Visit emilyshopeedu.org to learn more, and share our curriculum with your school administrators and counselors. At Emily's Hope, we believe prevention begins with education. Let's work together to keep our kids safe., Either mask with sports, look at me. I'm good. I'm fine. Or numb Partying, people pleasing. Nobody's caring about their problems. We're all just talking and having fun. But the but the party in part was surfacing unhealed emotions, which was anger. So four weeks later, I'm on crutches at my party. Some dude tries to walk into my birthday party. I punched him in the mouth, knocked his tooth out, got 20 years probation, first degree assault 86 months over my head. 20 years probation. even press charges. The state did. I was in Winona County. Now you can look up that county. Wow. made. And if you, if you are not white, you better shut up and run the ball. And they warned me about that when I got there. They said, careful with them women, careful with that partying. This is not the, this is not the county to be a black man out here speaking up, living free. I was like, I'm not listening to you either. Wow. That's a huge thing to hang over your head, so years old, felony assault, first crime ever. Besides curfew ticket. Now I'm a felon. Now I'm a felon, so now I get kicked outta that school right now. I tore my ACL L and I lost my full ride. Lost that. Now I go back to Mama D's house, live with her. Shout out Mama D for giving me the big room. Got four more knee surgeries because I didn't listen to the physical therapist 'cause I kept trying to play basketball too early in recovery. Now I'm doing security downtown in the hood of Minneapolis. Supposed to be on crutches and. Partying every night, fighting and blacking out in the black market at 19 turned 20. During that year, that was a whole year surgeries meniscus, 60 days meniscus, 30 days meniscus.'cause I wasn't doing, I wasn't doing the, I was partying. I'd rather party than go to physical therapy and I had to bar, I had to work until 3:00 AM fighting people in the club, getting paid to let my anger out. But I never lost a dream of playing football. I knew I would go back. So I, Really. had the mask in me. Yeah. I was just taking a year off to recover my knee. That's what I told myself. I literally got was Redshirted too. So I was able to go back to school as a freshman again because I redshirted,'cause I got hurt in the first half of the season. So to save my credits, I said I dropped out or agreed to leave with the school. It was a whole thing. So then. I'm at home doing this, and then I get so deep in the black market. My best friend was security, who I thought was my best friend, and we get into a huge altercation and I woke up in pain. I said, I can't be out there doing that. I need to go back to school. I need to get back on the field, but you can't go to a university if you got a felony in the last five years. So my options were limited. So I had to go to a private school. I went to Augsburg University, shout out to Augsburg for seeing a little bit of hope in me. I had to talk to the president. with that school. We actually toured it with, uh, one of my kids Nice. Yeah. It's a private school right next in, in the smut, uh, on, it's on the U of M West Bank. 94th and Riverside. Uh, highway 94 and Riverside. Shout out to Coach Haggy. Shout out to the president and the chair of the communication department. I had to talk to all them and prove to them that I was in the FRI liability on the campus.'cause I had a felony assault against a human. Okay, fine. Thank you all for seeing it in me played freshman year. This is where I perfected the balance.'cause when I had the mask before I started partying, the mask was sports. When I didn't have sports, I would numb it with partying. Then when I had the mask, I would dabble with the balance when the mask was gone. When I got injured, I went into the numbing. Now I'm at college now. I done perfected the balance. I'm two years after high school, 20-year-old freshman during the season, lock in only party on Mondays. During the off season, I started a promotional company and started throwing parties, started bartending, so the off season I would numb slack off in school. During the season, I would lock in for my team for the mask with the hope of going to the NFL freshman year mask, numb summertime party, cut it off at July 4th, lock in for the season. On September, I did this like clockwork. I ended up being an All American. I played wide receiver, uh, safety kick return and point return. I was a big part of this team. I was leader of the chant. I was leader of all the freaking workouts. I locked in for this team when I needed to, but I was D three. I was made for D one in the NFL. This was a easy program to be in, so I didn't get challenged enough to have to lock in all year, sophomore year, mask it with sports, numb in the spring. Junior year, mass numb, senior year, mass numb. Now the Dallas Cowboys came to my school, but I had been partying too much. I couldn't run fast or nothing. I wasn't even prepared. Tried to go play arena football. But my PO said I had to be in, she gave me a travel permit to go out there to play. I made the team, but then I had to come back to Minneapolis for 40 days to get approved to transfer. And then if I don't, and if I don't make the team out there, I gotta wait out there for 40 days to come back and transfer. I'm like, what? What kind of stuff is that? What if I wanna go to, uh, uh, play for the heat in Cali? What if I wanna go play for, I gotta do this every time? So I came back, my spot was taken, then I broke my ankle. Not a mask is going for good. Now, this is my darkest time right here, the darkest time, and I was not sober for two years straight. Ended up getting with the same best friend I did security with. We would go out, fight all the time in and outta jail. In and outta jail. Probation violation, in and outta jail pill. You never got sent to prison. No, I went to jail twice for eight months. I got the judge. Oh. I'm glad they. County jail, Yeah, they gave me 360 4 days. Uhhuh. I had 2, 360 4. If they give you 365, you go to prison, but they were kind enough not to. They must have seen the potential, and they gave me less than a year, and so ended up getting into another fight while I was already on felony probation. Did eight months. Got out for 30 days, got a DWI went back for eight months. You do two thirds of your time. I got sentenced to a year, did eight months, and then this is where everything changed. The second eight months that I got, that I got sentenced to the first eight days was solitude. This is my first time being sober since I broke my ankle. Did you go through withdrawal? The worst ever. And everybody, the whole jailhouse locked down. did you get any help with the withdrawal symptoms? Did they, hell no. help you What? Somebody just overdosed in the jailhouse. So they stopped all meds. They said, y'all ain't leaving your cell. No shower, no phone call. I didn't have a pen or a pad or a book. I didn't have no commissary. All I had was my blanket and my dang roll up on this five foot 10 metal slab, and I'm six three. That's all I had. And then this process that I went through is what we all go through in a transition. The first is withdrawals. The very first thing we go through is withdrawals. Then we go through the victimhood, the anger, the blame, the complain. Then we go through trying to fit in to something. Some people usually go back to toxic relationships. Some people usually relapse. Some people go and sell their soul for whatever they got to, to get money to be able to do what they gotta do. The fourth phase is peace and acceptance and accountability. Day four, when that hit me, I did 25 pushups and 25 situps every 15 minutes between the first meal and the third meal. That showed me three things. One, you can only control what you can control. Two. Ain't nobody coming to save you, not even your savior, until you align your behavior with the things you pray for. No one is coming to save you. That is one thing I think people need to hear. Not even your savior, the one you pray to at church all day. He ain't coming until you become the virgin he intended for you to be. The self. We talk about when we talk about choosing yourself. You gotta be that one first to be able to see the blessings. Don't pray and beg showing a lack of faith. Everything is on the way. You realize this. After that detox while you're in jail, you realized all this. I realized I was the only one gonna be able to save me.'cause I done got bailed out so much. My girl left me in there, took all, all the money. My mom was the only one that I could talk to. My dad called my girl and said, don't, don't bail him out. My uncle was bailing me out. He couldn't bail me out. The PO was talking about one more time. You doing seven months in prison? I was at the bottom. I was at the last straw. So I'm grateful that thing was shut down.'cause on day four is when I started doing these pushups. And then the third thing it taught me was, if you can find a way to struggle, it will force you to be present.'cause I couldn't think about nothing but them Dang pushups and sit-ups.'cause I was tired. I smelled like booty. My lips was chapped, my throat was dry. The jailhouse water had my whole face all messed up. But I knew I had to do these pushups and so for four days I did. 1200 pushups, a hundred pushups an hour 25 every 15 minutes for 12 hours for four days. And that was a huge release of blaming victimhood, complaining, because I was beating myself with physical exertion, which

is why now I wake up 3: 29:41

00 AM and go to the gym every day.'cause I start with the struggle.

3: 29:45

00 AM That's pretty Yeah. I woke up. Oh, what time do you go to bed At night. Yesterday at seven 30 I get about, Okay. I do about five to seven hours of sleep, and then about 30 minutes to two hours of exercise. And that's what we talk about. And the Choose Yourself movement is flexibility in your foundation. As. Somebody who always turned to athleticism, always turned to physical movement to cope with things. It would make sense to me that you would turn to that a time where you were searching for something. I mean, you were in a low lowest point in your life, but then it's much more than just doing pushups and sit-ups, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's committed to your word and showing gratitude for who you are. Do you think that was always in you, Committed to my word. in your low points? Committed to my word. Yeah. I mean, how did you come to that realization, or what do you think it is in you that made it possible for you not to relapse, for you to go on to start this movement, to do what you're doing today? Because not everybody is able to do that. Yeah. Well, you just ain't lost enough yet. You, maybe you gotta lose some more.'cause if you wanna sit in it, the, the purest form of love comes from acceptance and action. And when I say get over it and get after it, it doesn't mean suppress it, numb it, and mask it. That's what I did. It means embrace it for however long you want to, and figure out a way to find the gratitude and the grief, the transformation, and the trauma, the power, and the pain. Now I didn't listen to nothing for 11 years. All those dang things happened. I didn't. I didn't lose enough until I lost my health time and freedom at the same time and money. C. Brooks said, don't waste your suffering. I think about that a lot. really trying to use my suffering to help other people, which helps me. and I think I hear you saying the same thing. Yeah, no, I mean, you gotta choose yourself to be chosen and if God chose you to be here. What version did he choose for you to be, for you to be Well, that's who we choosing. You can choose your habits, your emotions, what you think other people want you to be, or you can choose your intention, which is the deep seated guide. And that's all. We all have a lot more control over our own lives than we think we do. At least we have control and however we respond to things. Yeah, I mean, and you can start by skipping the snooze. See if you can't control your mornings and your consumption. Don't talk about not having control. You gotta start with small things in a Choose yourself community. We do 30 days without sugar, liquor, weed screens, nicotine or caffeine, or gambling, video games, porn, doom, scrolling, gluten or dairy 30 days, three times a year. You know, we got hundreds of people in this challenge, and some people can't stop drinking coffee before water in the morning. Some people can't put their phone down before they get into bed. Some people can't stop gambling and stop freaking watching these sexually explicit sites. there are a lot of vices, there are a lot of addictions out there. I mean, our, our society is filled with them. Our culture is filled with them. Certainly, I like my coffee and certainly I scroll on my phone. Um, and you want people to give all of that up at once for 30 days, everything. like I said, it's a balance in the universe Now, if you wanna reset your gut, reset your relationship with your vices. Really embrace solitude and awareness and use the innate gifts inside all of us to embrace and experience life. Instead of seeking caffeine just to deal with your kids, instead of seeking wine just to go to sleep instead of smoking weed just so you can eat instead of taking ibuprofen so you can walk. What you not exercising, you not stretching and you not repairing your gut. See, that's the quick fixes in consumption, and then we wonder why people ain't getting lucky. Then we wonder why people got anxiety and depression like Mama Dee. Now we wonder why people out here hooked on sugar and, and nicotine talking about they're sober, but you're still feeding that addictive gene. Okay? This is the whole thing to break free completely of vice is how you really find your power. You can go from one addiction to another. Fine. We all addicted to something. We all got our advice, but how long does it last? And it's not about being stuck up, okay? I still like to enjoy myself, but not within those challenges. 80% healthy, 20% fun. Hundred percent happy life can't be redone. That's a nice saying, and you have to have a healthy body to have a healthy mind, right? I mean, you have to really take care of your body to take care of your mind. And also take care of your mind to have a healthy body. I think it's just also interrelated. Yeah, well, you know, the gut and the mind were combined when we developed in the womb till it was separated by your spine. brain Gut connection is huge. nerve Mm-hmm. and the body is a physical manifestation of the mind. So we could tell if you're not being kind to your mind. Now there's a fine line between being nice and being kind.'cause a nice person will tell an unfit person that they look just fine, but they be lying.'cause I could see a choice of showing in your physique and I could see a sin showing. And your skin, he can see you. You see a lot of people will go to church. Judge other people for sinning, but then don't have that same approach. When they do it themselves, then it becomes an excuse, comfort, and convenience. And that's the type of mindset that comes from religion. Now, if you go to the root of all religions, it comes to creativity over consumption. It comes to contribution and community over convenience and comfort. It comes to solitude, silence. Over noise and distractions and it comes to saying thank you when you pray over saying, please, That's a pretty simplified way to look at it, and true and true that if you look at most religions, those are some basic tenets of anything that's out there. How many people have joined you on this Choose Yourself movement that you started? well, I got over 500,000 followers across. We got, you know. Usually around, we keep our retreats around 15 to 20. We keep the workshops around 30 to 40, and I'm continuing to create courses. I'm continuing to create workshops and opportunities to grow in person. This is a whole ecosystem. The content is just the tip of the iceberg. We have a community that meets every Tuesday at

10: 36:38

00 AM which fluctuates. We also have a, my book. And the podcast. So these are all components for you to tap in for. Very cheap to see if this is, if this is something that you ready to do, you ready to be accountable. Then we do worksheets, workshops, worksheets, work. We do worksheets too. They call it inner sizes. So you can GYM and that's grow your mind inside. Workshops, retreats, and then we do vendor networking events where you can build your brand from your story and then present it to other creators. Have you lost a loved one to overdose or fentanyl poisoning? I'd like to invite you to share their story on our new Emily's Hope Memorial website called More Than Just a Number. They were our children, siblings, cousins, husbands, wives, aunts, uncles, and friends. So much more than just a number. You can submit a memorial today on morethanjustanumber.org. You can learn more about the Choose Yourself community in the show notes for this episode. We've included a direct link there. You'll also find links to other Grieving Out Loud episodes focused on overcoming grief and adversity. And if you're enjoying the podcast, we'd really appreciate it if you'd take just a moment to rate and review it, and please share it with someone who you know will find it helpful. And have you seen some success with people who participated in these? I just had a, A tree. Shout out to Tree on a podcast. Shout out to Energy Ashley starting her own branch. Shout out to Serena. Starting her own branch of CYC Tree came was, man, we just had her whole conversation on the Choose Yourself channel, but she's been really inspiring everybody In the CYC we have people who have been. Three. Three pots of coffee a day quit from the challenge'cause of community. People who have quit vapes, people who have quit Percocets, people who have launched brands, people who have launched businesses, people who have saved their families, people who have made money. These are all things that happen all the time. We have a girl who just launched her first album, who was scared to even speak. Now she's singing because we believe in ourselves, which gives space for you to believe in you. But if you get around a bunch of victims and blamers and complainers, and you're the one that believes in yourself, they're gonna look at you a type of way. Oh, look at him. He changed. Oh, he's got a big ego. Oh, why is he always so happy? What? Don't nobody what? Bye. We don't need that. And people going to tell you you've changed, but that's the purpose of life. So. Tree's story was she got banished from the reservation and now she's went through a lot of legal, uh, legal issues, actually got her kids back on her own, and now she's launching, uh, podcast Food Truck and her kids are even launching businesses and they're also embracing the Choose Yourself process. We got Ashley. Who just launched her own branch of the CYC We're on month 10 called CYC Kids for parents, kids and teachers, caregivers and leaders. And she's creating her own contribution for kids. She's a teacher in the Bronx for 13 years. Energy coach, nutrition coach, and a parent of two. You also have Amanda, who's now created her own run club. Didn't even like exercise now she got a run club. These are things that happen when you get around. A community of self chooses now. Uh, self snooze is the first. Comfort and convenience of the day. If you can't conquer the snooze, that's your first commitment to yourself And before we sign off here, what would you like to leave our audience with? We have a lot of people listening who may be in the early stages of grief and nobody really knows exactly how to cope with that, right? I mean, people take different paths. It can be different for different people, but what advice would you have to people? My one thing that we do well, one thing that changed my life was writing my story out. Write your story out. Take five pipe parts in your life that literally experiences that change to before and after. When you heard about the news or experienced them, and then give them a title. As if you were wanting to give this book to somebody to inspire them. So if I lost my little brother and I was playing the victim, I couldn't make the title lost my brother. That's not inspirational. It could be gratitude through grief. Now the title, you finding out what that title is, it takes you out of it and it puts someone else's perception as a priority. It forces you to flip to a positivity of these five situations. So that's one interise you can do, I think you don't have to necessarily even be a writer. You might not think of yourself as a writer. You know, I, I, I've written a blog since I lost my daughter, and I wrote it so other people would know they were not alone. I wrote it from that perspective, like, this is how it feels, this is what I'm going through. But I wanted other people to know they weren't alone. And so I think you could do it even as your own journal. It is, you don't ha it doesn't have to be something that is in any way. no. And use a pen and paper too for the action. Action to neuro connection. Writing down. If it takes more attention than just doing this, you gotta actually make the letters, but also start with your morning routine. There's a thing called the foundation. Okay? Comes in seven pillars. It's your nighttime routine, sleep morning routine without people, screens or toxins. And you can start real small. You can pray. Write down one thing you're grateful for. Meditate for one minute. Get into bed. Read a book. Read a real book. Just start. That's a five minute nighttime routine. Then when you get up, your alarm goes off. Go brush your teeth, scrape your tongue, wash your face, cold, shower if you can, cold water on your face, do the same thing. Meditate for one minute, pray, write down one thing you're grateful for, and then add some movement. This is F 10 minutes around your sleep, where it's you versus you. Once you hear those emotions, oh, it's just one minute, oh, I don't have to do this. Oh, that's the same person. Like, oh, why me? Why this happened to me? I can't believe I can't process this now and by myself. How could they leave me? It's the same voice, the ego. It's the one trying to conserve energy to take the easy way out. But you put these small systems around your sleep and then you have to do what you said. You'll start to notice that voice is different from your intention. It's your emotion. The one that says Stay in bed is comfortable. The one that says, oh, I can't meditate. I can't control my thoughts. The one that says, oh, one more show, one more sip, one more hit. That one is the same one that's stuck in the past and your foundation is what you said you would do. If you want to heal, you have to start by embracing your intention when nobody else is watching. You can't go play sports, you can't go get a bunch of women, you can't go spend money, you can't go be a good parent. You have to be able to heal when you're by yourself to really have that impact on the people you love. And that's the foundation baby. Well, I think that's great advice and I love the idea of people starting small, that they don't have to start by working out for an hour and a half in the morning. They just have to do some small things, be consistent, keep those promises to themselves and their life will improve. the way. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. You're so wise and am glad that we can learn from all of your life experiences as well. So thank you for being a guest on the podcast. so much. I appreciate you and everything you do. Y'all keep choosing yourself. Thank you again for listening to this episode of Grieving Out Loud. You can find hundreds of other episodes anytime on our website, emilyshope.charity. We've put a link in our show notes. We also release a new episode every single week. Until next time, wishing you faith, hope, and courage. This podcast is produced by Kasey Wundberg King and Kayli Fitz.