Surviving Trauma and Thriving Forward

[00:00:00]Welcome to onward. Live a live stream, focused on encouraging you to create a life you love living. Now let’s go beyond success to significance, being clear on our why is crucial. It requires doing the inner work, finding ourselves, getting to know ourselves, embracing our inner child, shedding social conditioning, and letting go of perfect.

We know obstacles make us stronger. We can dream big and take action. Believe you can. And you’re halfway there. I invite you to tune in every week and engage with me and my inspiring guests. Invite your friends. Let’s make time for what matters most in our lives. Let’s move on together.

Hello, everybody. . My name is Emily Harmon. I’m the host of the onward live [00:01:00] show. And then I republish it later as the onward podcast. So I’m excited to have you all here. I know I have a very special guest tonight, so I just wanna introduce myself a little bit.

I retired about three years ago, three years ago in may of 2019 after working for the Navy for 34 years, my whole life. And when I retired, I decided, oh, I wanna be a podcast host and I wanna be a coach. And that’s what I’m doing now. I’m a certified life coach and I love help coaching people on how they can create a life.

They love living and that’s different for everybody. And I have the now at the end, create a life you love living now. Because not once this changes or that changes or when the kids grow up or when this happens or when that happens, what can you do today? What, what little things can you do today that would help you love your life?

Now, for example, yesterday, I posted. That I, instead of going to [00:02:00] the gym to do yoga, I went outside and did it in, in the front lawn. And it was just a, a beautiful day. And that’s a little out of my routine. Normally we just go through our routine. We operate, you know, unconsciously, you know, you know, oh, I’m supposed to go to the gym, the classes tonight.

Let me go there. No. Well, how, how often do we stop and think, well, what, what’s another way I could get my exercise in and still enjoy the day. And I just did yoga out in the front yard, hanging out with my dogs. So when I say create a life you love living now. I mean, how do you raise your energy level?

How do you raise your vibration level so that you feel joy more often than you feel stressed and anxious? And those are some things I’m gonna cover in future onward live episodes. But tonight I wanna welcome everybody here and it’d be great if you put in the comments, let us know where you’re tuning in from share that in the comments, and I’m gonna bring Joshua in right now.

and once I do that, we’ll we’ll take a [00:03:00] look at the comments and see what’s going on there. So let me bring Joshua in. So Josh, welcome to onward live. Thank you for having me. Yeah. I’m excited to have you here. We’ve been trying to schedule something like this for, I think a year or so. And I think the timing right now is, is really good.

Because for having you on the show, because you’ve some time has passed, you have a little bit more perspective than the time that we were talking about interviewing you before I’ve interviewed your mom on this show. And that was an awesome episode. And I’ll put a link to that episode in, in the show notes.

She’s very brave to share everything that she’s been through and, and you are too, because you guys have been through a lot and. Talking about it. I don’t know if that helps you or is hard for you, but by doing it, you’re, you’re definitely helping other people. So many people this, this year have been the past two years with COVID have been through a lot of trauma and you titled this [00:04:00] episode, surviving trauma and thriving forward.

And in what you wrote to me, you said that you wanna share your story and your belief that even through loss, after loss, after loss, there’s still a chance for you to live your life in a healthy, constructive, and hopeful way. And I think you’d say there’s still a, a chance for you to love your life.

Absolutely. So welcome. I’d love to hear what you have to say. Yeah. It’s it’s definitely something that, you know, a lot of people have asked about. A lot of people have expressed about, I mean, everybody, at some point in their life experience is some sort of trauma. You know, and it’s, it’s really, it’s not something that you can really avoid as an individual.

It just kind of happens sometimes we don’t know why it happens, but it does. But it’s bound to happen to all of us. And so, you know, for me, in my story, it’s, you know, my goal here today is to hope that, you know, whoever’s listening and if somebody else is [00:05:00] struggling with certain things in their life that I can sort of give them some sort of inspiration based off of what I’ve gone through.

Yeah. So let’s you know, I wrote that, you know, in the past few years you’ve survived the unthinkable really. I mean, it’s like, you’ve lost both of your brothers and then your father and Brendan, I think passed away in 2011 and then Alex in 2020. Yes. And I know your mom is talked about it a little bit on the show, but it that’s from a mom’s perspective, I’d like to hear it from your perspective.

And then you’ve also recently graduated from Atlanta’s John Marshall law school, and you’re gonna be sitting for the bar exam soon. So you were able to keep on with your studies and stuff. So like tell us the background, tell us what happened and then talk to us about how you dealt with it. Sure. So I think really, you know, if we’re gonna start, if we’re gonna start from the trauma, I think that it basically [00:06:00] all of this started, you know, when I was young when I was, my parents were divorced, you know, like so many other parents out there, I think the number is close to like 70% in the United States.

So it’s not something that’s uncommon. But I think that with Brendan, my older brother, I think that the trauma really started when parents got divorced and he sort of just kind of. Compartmentalized a lot of stuff that he didn’t want to deal with. And I think that led to him, you know, eventually abusing drugs.

Mm-hmm and, you know, I think the first, I think the first step in my journey that involved trauma really had to do with the divorce of my parents. And then, you know there was an incident that happened with Brendan and Brendan was somebody that liked to do like extreme sports, like dirt bikes, water skiing, and, you know, all that kind of stuff.

Like he was never into like team sports. It was always like individual stuff. Whereas I was always into, you know, team sports. I love to play on a team. I like to be, you know, football, basketball, tennis, all that kind of stuff. But with Brendan, I think the first [00:07:00] incident that I had with trauma was, you know, he had come home from the, the lake with his friend.

I think this was like when I was 11 or 12 years old. Mm-hmm and he. Had taken pills from one of his friend’s dad’s medicine cabinets, just being over there. And so he came home and, you know, I was like I said, 11, 12 years old. And he just kind of said, you know, I think I’m gonna go to sleep. I’m really tired.

I had a long day at the lake because they were at lake Lineer and he came home and he went to sleep. And outta nowhere, I just kind of popped into the hallway and heard some strange noises coming from his bedroom. And it turns out that he had overdosed on back pain pills that he had taken from his friend’s father’s medicine cabinet that we had no idea about.

But the incident that happened with that, you know, I was an 11 year old kid, but there was something in me that pulled me towards that incident because how old was he friend? Yeah, he’s three years older than me. So he must have been 14, 14, 14 at the time, but I remember, I remember telling my mom. [00:08:00] You know, something’s not right here.

Like we need to, you need to call the ambulance. It’s 11 year old kid. I mean, I don’t, I don’t know how I’ve always been kind of just intuitive about certain things, but mm-hmm, you know, my mom just kind of brushed it off, like, ah, let him sleep. He’s tired, you know, that kind of thing. And you know, I was like, no, like this is serious.

I, I grabbed the phone and I dialed nine one, one as a old kid. And then that’s when my mom had heard me talking to the operator. That’s when she’s like, oh crap, like something’s really going on here. And then, you know, that, that was my first experience was something very, very traumatic happening to me.

You know, he survived, he, he ended up getting some treatment and, you know, went a couple years without abusing drugs, but it happened again when I was in 11th grade, came home from school and found him underneath the kitchen table overdosed again having to call 9 1, 1, the whole shebang again. You know, had having to deal with that and having to deal with, you know, he was on he was [00:09:00] on probation for, for something that he had done, you know, with marijuana.

And I remember he was so upset with me because he said, you I’m gonna violate my probation. I’m gonna violate my, and he didn’t understand that there was HIPAA and there’s certain, you know, things that, you know, there there’s circumstances that protect you from that legally. But you know, he, he struggled with addiction his whole life pretty much, you know, from the time that we were early adolescents going into teenagers.

And I just kinda watched that as a kid. And you know, it really shaped me because I was always telling myself, this is not who I want to be. I don’t want to touch this stuff. I don’t wanna smoke a joint. I don’t want to grab marijuana. I don’t wanna lean in for alcohol. I don’t wanna do any of that kind of stuff, because this is what happens when you do those kinds of things.

And that, that was my perspective. And, you know, the other, the other part of that is also with my younger brother, Alex, because I’m the middle Alex. I was kind of upset with [00:10:00] Brendan for not really setting a good example for him. Yeah. And I had to take that responsibility on as well. That’s a lot of responsibility.

It is, it, it was. And it’s, you know, it’s not something that I asked for. It’s not something that, you know, I wanted to necessarily do, but I wanted to, to protect my family and I wanted everybody to be happy. I wanted my older brother to get clean. I wanted him to, you know, do the things that he wanted to do.

But it just kind of overtook my older brother. And you know, how old were you all when your parents divorced? 2002. I was 11 years old. Mm-hmm yeah. yeah, that’s, that’s difficult. And it’s interesting. I’ve I mean, not that you can stereotype, but I’ve, I’ve interviewed a lot of parents on their children who’ve, you know, had issues with drugs and alcohol and then my son and, and I’ve been around a lot of parents who’ve, you know, gone through this and there’s a lot of similarities in the [00:11:00] children that are don’t wanna play team sports.

They’d rather skateboard and play like do individual things. I see that. And they’re all like super smart. I don’t know if you can say that about your brother too, but smart. In some ways, you know, I used to say, well, if you would take all your smartness and apply it towards, you know, school instead of learning you know, all the other stuff that he did that, you know, I didn’t know anything about.

And I can see too, it’s hard on, on a mom. I, I can be in your mom’s shoes and think, oh, you know, he’s just tired.

sometimes you don’t wanna see it or you just don’t see it, right? No. And you don’t and it’s, I think for her, she was so overwhelmed at the time with, you know, being recently divorced and having to be a single mom. Now getting used to that, I mean, it’s always, there was the she’s, she’s a very strong woman.

My mom, you know, obviously I’m biased, I’m her son, but very strong woman to, to go through what she went through. But no, with Brendan, once again, I’m biased. Cause these are my brothers, but they were brilliant. Mm-hmm as far as intellectually, like [00:12:00] they were absolutely brilliant. Now, did they make the right decisions?

No, they didn’t make the right decisions, but I, if you gave them a math test, were they going to pass it with a 97? Yeah, they were mm-hmm I mean my younger brother, for example, Alex, he spoke three languages. Wow. So I mean, my, my dad, my dad spoke French. My dad spoke Arabic. He spoke Hebrew, he spoke English, he spoke a little Spanish.

And my brother, Alex would just learn the, you know, the French language from from my dad. And he knew Spanish cause all of our, our friends were Hispanic. So we, you know, we learned Spanish at an early age. I don’t speak fluent Spanish, but Alex did. Yeah. I took it on. That’s amazing. Yeah. Yeah. So Brendan passed away.

I wrote in 2011, Brendan passed away in 2011 from a heroin overdose. He had been clean for about a year. He had an incident that happened with, I think it was his, his girlfriend at the time. I think they might have gotten into a fight. They broke up and he basically tried to use the same amount of [00:13:00] heroin that he used prior to getting clean.

And he overdosed. Yeah, that’ll do it. Yeah. So we had to deal with that as a family in 2011. And you know, that was really, really hard for me personally, because like I was at that age where I was starting college. And it kind of just dragged me down because I was like, you know, what am I, what am I doing?

You know what I mean? What am I doing with my life? My older brother’s dead. My parents are divorced. I could start to see that my younger brother was, you know, he was on the right path. He was doing the right things. So I mean, that burden wasn’t on me. But it, it definitely took a toll. Definitely took a toll on us as a family when he passed away, you know, and it feels it honestly today as I sit here and think about it, it feels so long ago.

Did that happen? Because I mean 11 years, but I mean, it feels longer than that to me. Mm-hmm why do you think that is? I’m not sure to be honest with you, maybe you feel like you lost him before he passed away. I think that that’s a fair statement. Mm-hmm I think [00:14:00] that’s a fair statement, but you know, it was, it was very, it was very difficult for my younger brother.

To process that grief than it was for me, because I was old enough to see what was going on at such a young age, myself, that his behaviors and things that he was doing, getting locked up, messing up in school, you know, using drugs, bringing people over to have house parties, you know, things like that.

Those were things that I was able to see. And so when, when to be honest with you, when all of this happened with Brendan, it wasn’t, it was a shock to me because he was clean for a year. Yeah. But I think it wasn’t, it’s, it’s almost like in the back of my head, I knew like this is a possibility one day, because I had already lo almost lost him twice.

You gotta remember stumbled upon him overdose twice already. So this wasn’t something that was completely out of the norm for me. But for Alex, it was different. I think Alex took it a lot harder because he, I don’t think Alex understood [00:15:00] what really was going on with Brendan. I don’t Alex is how many years younger than Brenda.

Five five years. So you’re in the middle. Yeah. And did you ever talk about it with Alex? I did. We did. We talked about it a lot. There were times where we, you know, sat down till three o’clock in the morning, just having conversations about, you know, how did this happen? You know, if he was still alive, what would we be doing?

You know, things like that and brother stuff. But no, it, it definitely took a toll on Alex. And yeah. So what did you, did you, and then Alex was still at home and you were off in college. Did you go away to college? No. So the way that it worked was for me you know, when my parents got divorced, we all lived with my mom.

Mm-hmm that wasn’t necessarily my choice. Mm-hmm because, you know, at that time I was 11, they, you know, they deferred to the, you know, If you’re 13 or older, you can choose who you wanna go live with. Right. And the courts will consider that. But for me, you [00:16:00] know, I didn’t, I didn’t wanna live with my mom mm-hmm and I can’t, I can’t stay, I can’t sit here and like say why that was.

I just felt like I was really, really close with my father. And I feel like every boy, young boy needs to have a relationship with his father in order to learn how to be a man mm-hmm . And I think, I don’t know that I necessarily understood that at the age of 11, but I wanted to be with my dad. Mm-hmm you know what I mean?

And so fast forward, you know, after Brendan passes away in 2011 my dad gets a divorce from his second wife at the woman that he married after my mom. And he wanted me to come live with them and he said, you know, let’s make an arrangement. I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing at that time.

I was messing up. I wasn’t. In school, full time. I was going from job to job. I had no direction mm-hmm . And as soon as I moved in with my father, that was completely different. Mm-hmm it was like, bam, like you’re here, you got a choice. You’re either gonna go to school or you’re gonna work [00:17:00] full time.

Mm-hmm if you work full time, you’re gonna have to pay rent. If you go to school, you don’t have to pay rent. You, you make the decision. And so it was easy for me. It’s like 18, 19 year old kid. I’m like, oh, I don’t have to pay rent. Like, let me, let me just go to school and figure the school thing out. And so I went to GC and I stayed home.

I lived with my dad the whole time that I was at GC, you know, save money. My goal was is that I always knew I wanted to go to law school as soon as I started GC. And so I wanted to save money and, you know I wanted to, I wanted to rebuild, lost time that I had with my dad. And at that time, my younger brother ended up coming about two years after I moved in with my dad.

He came to live with my dad as well. You know, it was a big house sub and you know, in the suburbs here in Atlanta mm-hmm so, I mean, it was plenty of room, you know, we both, me and my brother, Alex, we both lived with my dad and he kind of took us under his wing and kind of made up for lost time from when we were little mm-hmm that makes sense.

Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So, so then [00:18:00] in, it was Alex passed away in 2020, how did that happen? Certain, certain things certain details about that. I, I don’t wanna, yeah, it’s fine. Because of, you know, there’s still a pending case. Mm-hmm in the court system right now. Mm-hmm . But he, I can give you some facts essentially.

You know, he, I, I had no idea that Alex was struggling with with addiction. We lived under the same roof. We talked every day. We. Saw each other every day there wasn’t, there wasn’t one night, you know, I wasn’t the type of person to like go and like have spend sleepovers or stay at other people’s houses.

I mean, and Alex wasn’t that way either. We would both kind of just like, if we had to go out with friends, whatever we’d come home. And then that was that mm-hmm . But with Alex, you know, he, towards the last year of his life I started noticing some changes as far as his behavior just kind of locking himself in his room.

Seemingly becoming more kind of like depressed in a way. But he, he he took [00:19:00] what he thought to be a Percocet pill that he had gotten from somebody and the individual that sold it to him knew that it wasn’t a Percocet and it actually contained fentanyl and it killed him instantly. Yeah.

And that that’s a, that’s a completely different that, that, to be honest with you, that trauma of that, that, that circumstance still somewhat haunts me a little bit. I bet because I mean, it’s like, it was just so unexpected, like you had said with, with Brendan, you had it in the back of your mind, you had found him twice.

Yeah. Now this, this was completely different than Brendan. I mean, this kid had his whole life in front of him. Alex had his whole life in front of him. I mean, he was, he had so many friends, so many, I mean like people, people to this day still like [00:20:00] message me that I didn’t even know where his friends like, man, I loved your brother, your brother.

Like I miss him, you know, blah, blah, blah. Just, just people loved Alex. Like he was just one of those kids that like, he had the charm, like he, you know, that was, that was Alex. And, you know, he had so many friends, I had no idea what he was struggling with. And I, like I said, I saw him every single day, every single day.

How did you handle that? How did you handle that? Like, I’m sure you second guessed yourself. Maybe. I mean, I, I don’t know. I’m assuming maybe because that’s what I would’ve done. in terms of what you mean of like, like why didn’t I see it or how could I have, like, what did I miss? Or, but there were, there, there were, there were certain things that I look back on, little conversations that we had.

Yeah. That when I look back now, I’m like, this makes sense. You know what I mean? Like in a way, because it’s like, [00:21:00] you, you kind of see, you don’t see it in the moment because we’re all also preoccupied right. For lives. You know, like I remember my first year of law school, this was right before Alex passed.

Alex passed in February of 2020. I started August of 19 at, in, in law school. So it was my first year going into my second semester. And, you know, I look back at, at some of the stuff that, you know, like he would come and we would talk and I would be so busy with stuff that I had going on in my life. And I’m like, man, I wish I would’ve made an extra five minutes to just stand there and talk to him for an extra five minutes.

You know, you constantly have that battle with yourself. I think that’s part of the trauma is what, what, what did I miss did? What could I have done differently? What could I have you know, it, I beat myself up about that for a long time. How you, how did you learn to stop beating yourself up?

There’s a, there’s an individual that I’ve worked for for the past couple years. His, he’s an attorney he’s criminal [00:22:00] defense attorney here in Gwinnett. His name’s Lawrence Lewis. he really, I was working with him at the time that this, that I lost my younger brother and he really stepped in the shoes of a mentor.

And then after my dad passed into like a secondary father figure to me. Yeah. And he really explained some things that I couldn’t even comprehend at the time. As far as like things that I could be doing to try and better my life at this moment, it, you know, how, how can I process this grief without just kind of shrub it under the, under the rug?

How can I process this grief in a constructive way versus, you know, doing abusive things like going out and drinking, or mm-hmm, breaking the law or, you know, driving drunk, you know, things like that. Cuz you know, those are all things that happen to people that I think that’s why people end up arrested and in the system is because.

Of unresolved grief, unresolved emotional [00:23:00] damage. Yeah, I think I, I think you’re right. You’re very fortunate to run into him to be working with him and have him have that knowledge because, you know, I know for me you know, I used to think, well, my son, you know, I I’ve told you is, you know, he’s almost five years sober, but I used to think, oh, poor will.

He’s drowning his, his sorrows, his, his, his feelings in alcohol. And I wasn’t aware that I was drowning my feelings by being busy. And so I think we all, you know, maybe you don’t end up going to jail for avoiding your feelings and not letting him pass through, let that negative energy pass through you.

You take it. And you like, one of my guests said, you shove your feelings down to the basement. They go down and lift weight. So. That’s great advice that he gave you to like, feel it and then to not take it out in a destructive manner. And we may not even take it out in a destructive manner. We may take it out and just like every night come home from work and binge watch Netflix.

Right, right. Just not being present. Right. Not [00:24:00] feeling the feelings I’ve I did that a lot and it’s painful to process it, but it’s more painful to hold it in. It is. And I, I, I agree with you a hundred percent on that, because I think that, I think that there’s a, there, I think that there’s, obviously, I’m not gonna say there’s just this and then there’s this, there’s not just a left and right when it comes to this kind of stuff.

But I do think that there’s a spectrum. And I think on the left side of the spectrum, there’s people that have personality traits that are very avoidant mm-hmm . And then I think on the other end of the spectrum, there’s people that have personality traits that say, I’m just gonna run towards this. I don’t care that it’s a problem or that it’s scary or that.

you know, I’m confronting this head on. I’m not gonna run the other direction. And I think that obviously there’s people in between that spectrum that you can have a little bit of both mm-hmm , but for me personally, I’ve never been the type of person to be avoidant about anything. Mm-hmm, about my emotions, about how I’m feeling about things that I’m going [00:25:00] through about you know, it just doesn’t matter.

I’m not whether something’s hard or easy, I’m still going full force. You know what I mean? And that’s really been my personality. And I think, you know, that kind of that’s kind of weighted my favor. Yeah. A lot. Sounds like it has, you know, I I’m, I have enough insight about myself to know. Okay. Like you’re, you’re starting to feel a little bit sad.

You’re starting to feel a little bit depressed. Let’s try to analyze this what’s going on. How are you feeling? Maybe we need to go get some therapy. Maybe we need to talk to somebody about this instead of just keeping it in. I’m the kind of person that I’m able to process. and I’m not gonna shove it under the rug.

Good for you. Never gonna do that. Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s why, that’s one of the reasons why you’re still here. I mean, after everything that you’ve been through, because this was February, 2020, your brother passed away. Now your mom’s got three sons and you’ve got two brothers and, and you’re the last one left.

And you’re living with your dad during the [00:26:00] pandemic. Then what happened? And let me, before we get into that, let me just say post something here. Donette says Joshua comes from a Hebrew name, meaning God is deliverance. Joshua was, was the Israel, a light leader who succeeded Moses and led the Hebrews to the promised land.

Joshua and Caleb. Joshua was a faithful aid to Moses. She’s talking about your name based on that. It’s, it’s funny that she said that, cause that’s this, that’s the exact reason that my dad named me, that my dad had the, had the idea to name me Joshua because of the Bible. Yeah. Yeah. So we’re our family’s Jewish.

So that was a strong predictor for what they were gonna name us. and then we’ve got we’ve got Laia here. She’s tuning in from Costa Rica. And I don’t know if you know Daniel or not, but he said you’re an amazing man. And thank you. I don’t know. Do you know this woman? yeah, I have, I have to talk to her every day.

Oh, your mom and then [00:27:00] Sue says so proud of my nephew for sharing his trauma and how he goes on day after day and not just going on, but succeeding in life. For sure. So so anyway, so we’ve got the pandemic going on, your brother just passed away during the pandemic, which was a complete shock to everybody.

And then what happened with your father? So, you know, we. This, this is probably the hardest segment is getting into this part. Because to me, my father was everything best friend confidant. You know, we, we had such a close relationship. I mean, it was, it was, it’s the type of relationship that any someone wanna have, you know, with their dad.

But I, Alex passes in February of 2020 the next month, obviously, you know, president Trump comes on and says, oh, we’re locking everything down. And so that’s kind of scary. We don’t, me and my dad don’t know how to deal with that. And you know, it turns into this whole situation where [00:28:00] essentially, you know, my grandmother had come for the funeral for Alex, from Florida.

My dad’s mom and she was staying with us and, you know, she was planning on going right back to Florida, but then when the pandemic hit, you know, she was kind of like, I don’t think traveling right now is probably the best idea. So she stayed with us. It was just me, her and my dad. And in June fast forward to June from March she fell in the garage, had an accident.

She had to go to the hospital. She ended up breaking part of her pelvic bone from the fall. She slipped in the garage and she ended up going to the hospital and then they sent her to one of these, like, you know, rehabilitation places to kind of do physical therapy. And she, she came home from that.

And I remember, I remember talking to my dad and I was very fearful because I said, well, you were hearing on the news at that time that like, you know, these, these nursing homes and like rehabilitation places were like breeding grounds for COVID. Yeah. And so I was really nervous about her coming back to the house and, you know, I [00:29:00] kind of told my dad, I said, maybe we should just have my uncle from Florida, just come and pick her up directly.

because I don’t think it’s a good idea cuz me and my dad have been isolated for months. Yeah. You know, at the house, we’re not leaving the house, we’re not doing anything except to go to the grocery store, you know, and that just essentials. And when she came home sure enough. Within a couple days she got a fever, she started coughing.

And then I was next up, I got sick and then my dad got sick and me and my dad were kind of right there in line with the, you know, the timeline. We kind of got sick at the same time. And my dad ended up becoming very sick. I ended up becoming very sick. And it got to the point where, you know, I had urged my dad cause I had did one of these like telehealth appointments.

Mm-hmm to get like a prescription called in just to see, you know, antibiotics, whatever, you know, at that time we didn’t know what COVID was. We had no idea. Doctors didn’t know. Right. You know, so they gave me some steroids and some some antibiotics. And I urged my dad because my dad was a diabetic. So I was super [00:30:00] nervous because they were saying people that have diabetes and preexisting conditions, you know, they can get very sick.

And so I was very nervous. I said, dad, you need to, you need to get on this telehealth. We had the same doctor at the time. And so, because he’s diabetic though, they couldn’t give him steroids. Oh wow. They could only give him the antibiotic, which he took. And July 25th, I’ll never forget. I woke up and went downstairs.

I was, I was so sick. I remember feeling so tired and weak that I couldn’t even walk fever of 103 for like six or seven days at that point. And I remember going downstairs and I saw my grandmother. She had recovered because she got sick first. I don’t know how she did because she had did diabetes and all the other stuff too.

You know, she’s old, she’s 88 years old. But, you know, I went down and said, have you seen dad? Like, I, I, I knocked on his door and I went in his room and I, I didn’t see him at first. So I had started looking around the house to see where he was. And she’s like, no, he hasn’t come down yet. And so I went back [00:31:00] upstairs to look in the bedroom and I looked down and I saw him on the floor.

He was collapsed. And at that it’s like, in that moment, I was so sick myself. Yeah. That I couldn’t even process what was going on. I couldn’t even, I couldn’t even really have like an understanding about what I was seeing at that point. I was like, am I dead? Like my me personally, I’m like, this has gotta be a dream.

This isn’t real. And you know, I had to go next door to the next door. I called 9 1 1. And they, they kept telling, you know, the 9 1, 1 operators don’t know everything, but they kept telling me like, you need to flip him over. You need to do this. And I was trying to explain, like, I don’t have any energy. Like, I feel like I’m about to pass out.

And so they were like, can you go next door and get somebody to like, you know, help? And so the next door neighbor was an RN at Emory. And she, she was friends with my dad and I knew her very well. And she came over and she talked to the paramedics. They came [00:32:00] and my dad was dead. He had been dead for a couple hours, you know, I did.

And I didn’t know about it because, you know, I was asleep. They said that he died from COVID 19 and cardiac arrest, you know, that’s, that’s, you know, the cause of death. And so that’s why he had collapsed on the ground. And then at that point, you know, the paramedics come, they take me and then they put me in the ambulance and they say, yeah, you’re you’re, you’re really sick.

And you know, now that we see your dad has passed away, like we’re gonna go ahead and take you because, you know, we, you might be next. And so I get to the hospital at Emory. Just seeing, you know, finding out that my dad is dead. My brother died three months ago and now I’m now I’m in the hospital. I don’t have any preexisting conditions.

I’m in good health. I get a physical every year I get my blood check. Like I’m, I’m staying on top of myself. Like, I’m not, I don’t have any issues, health issues. And I’m extremely sick in COVID 19. [00:33:00] And they do an x-ray and blood work on me and they’re like, oh yeah, you have double pneumonia. You’re gonna need to be admitted.

And so they put, they admitted me into the ICU and at that point, and in that exact moment, I didn’t care whether I lived or died. And I, I know that that’s something crazy to hear. I’m sure some people in the audience are like, oh, how could you feel like that? But you gotta understand the circumstances around that event.

I just lost my brother. I just saw my dad die. And now I’m in the hospital and they’re telling me, you know, I asked the doctor, I said, am I gonna be okay? And he’s like, we don’t know. Wow. That was long. And you’re just feeling so, so exhausted. I mean, you had a temperature of a hundred, three for six or seven days, six or seven days and it, it, it didn’t go down at all.

Yeah. So your mind’s not thinking straight when this, when at all. So, I mean, I think it’s understandable that you’re, I mean, so what, what made you hang on? [00:34:00] You know, it’s interesting because I’ve only told a few people this, but when I was sitting in that hospital bed at Emory, which by the way, I, I’m not, I’m not sure if you were familiar with Emory here in Atlanta.

It’s one of the best hospitals in Atlanta. It’s one of the best hospitals in the United States, but they saved my life. Not just physically, but emotionally as well. Mm. When I was in that bed, in the ICU, I was in, I was hospitalized for 11 days. There was this, I, I think they call it a chaplain, like a, a person, like a, kind of like a priest that’s at the hospital.

Yeah. Even though I’m not, I’m not Catholic, you know, I’m Jewish and I, and you know, I have a different religion. This guy called me on the phone, like in my room. And I was like, who, you know, Hey, hello, you know, blah, blah, blah. He’s like, hi, you know, Joshua, how are you doing? And I’m thinking like, okay, is this one of my doctors?

Like, what’s, what is this? And it turns out to be the chaplain. And the chaplain said, you know, I understand what’s going on. I, I was made [00:35:00] aware of, you know, your dad just passed away and you’re here. And, you know, I just want, I wanted to pray with you. And, you know, in that moment, I’m kind of like, okay. Yeah, sure.

And, you know, he prays with me. And I kind of remember, I remember specifically telling him, I said, I really don’t. I don’t think I’m gonna make this. I don’t think I’m gonna make this. Yeah. I, I felt so like defeated. Like I was so ready to just go like tired, exhausted, emotionally, just numb. And I was just like, just take me.

Yeah, take me like, honestly, like not suicidal or anything like that, but just kind of like, I was ready if it happened, I’m ready to go. And I’ll never forget that chaplain told me on the phone. He said, it’s not your time yet. It’s not your time yet. And I said, well, how do you know? He’s like, you have a lot of [00:36:00] stuff.

You have, you gotta do a lot of stuff you have left to do. And it was like, almost like a surreal moment for me, because I was like, it, you could, it was one of these moments where it was like this isn’t just. You know, the priest trying to like, you know, have a little, you know, heart to heart moment. Like this was something that like, it’s almost like when he said it, he knew.

Yeah. Like he could just talk to God and God told him like, nah, he’s gonna be right. You know? And for, for me, that’s where my life turned around. In that moment. I, I said to myself, I said, if I can make it out of here, you know, I’m gonna start changing a lot of stuff because this is crazy. Like I came this close to dying and I was given another chance.

Did you ever get to talk to him again? I wrote him a letter. Yeah. Yeah’s awesome. I wanted, I wanted to write, you know, just some for me, like something written is a lot more formal. Yeah. Something that you hold onto. Yeah. And you know, he wrote me back and [00:37:00] he, you know, we had a little conversation, a little dialogue, but yeah, I was very thankful for that.

Oh, I bet. How so. You, you were in the hospital 11 days, 11 days. And then how has your dad’s mom taken all of this rough? I bet rough because that’s a whole nother dynamic. She’s lost, two children as well. It’s kind of interesting because my uncle, my dad’s brother is a middle child and my grandmother lost my aunt, which was her youngest.

And also now just lost my dad, which was the oldest. And she’s left with her middle, just like my mom is left with her middle. Wow. And so it’s kind of weird, like me and my uncle are kind of in the same situation. Like we only have our mom left. We don’t have our dad and we don’t have either of our siblings.

It’s the same exact scenario. So my grandma, she didn’t take it well, she’s still not taking it. Well, I think she’s starting to come, you [00:38:00] know, become on the verge of. Not, not Alzheimer’s, but little bit of dementia. Mm-hmm and so she’s, she’s, she’s doing okay for her age, but she’s she’s taken it very rough.

Yeah. I can only imagine. Well, how has this, this past experience where you actually almost passed away? How has that changed the way you live your life now changes it a lot. You know, when, when all this happened, you know, I just thought I’m just a law student. I just want to be a lawyer. You know, I, I just want to, I just want to go out there and I wanna work.

I want to, I wanna have a good living. I wanna have a good life before this is before all this. And when this happened, it was just kind of like, it really made me sit down and reassess a lot. About what it is that I’m doing with my life and why I’m doing it. [00:39:00] I think that’s one of the, the most powerful things about your program here is why what’s your, why?

Why are you doing all this? Mm-hmm and you know, for me, I came to the conclusion that I don’t, I don’t think that I was ever doing it for the wrong reasons, but now I have, I have a more clear purpose as to what I’m doing with my life. And I think that these circumstances that I dealt with shaped the person that I am right now, for sure.

It it’s, it is not even a question, you know, I I’ve done a lot of reading. I’m a big movie guy. I love movies. I like to, to, you know, see stories of other people. And so, you know, combination of reading and watching films and, you know, just kind of taking care of myself, you know, and, and continuing to focus on school because I still had two years of law school.

After all this happened. Yeah. And a lot of people come up to me, friends of mine that I’m colleagues with in, in law school. And they said, Josh, why are you still enrolled? Like, why are you still here? You know, I have a really, really good friend of mine that I’m, I’m gonna begin bar prep [00:40:00] with here shortly.

Albert Thompson, who’s been a close friend of mine become a really more like a brother. Through law school, he told me, he said, if, if I were in your shoes and this happened to me, I would’ve dropped out. Why didn’t you drop out? I don’t know.

You said you said that, you know, you kind of you’re you’re, you’ve realize you’re still on the right path. It sounds like you really wanna be an attorney. Right? What, what do you wanna do as an attorney? What kind I’m gonna do do criminal? I’m not, I’m not really sure what. You know, I’ve, I’ve been debating on whether or not to, to go and be a prosecutor first and then transition into criminal defense mm-hmm

But I know that eventually I wanna be in criminal defense mm-hmm but that much is clear. But you know, as far as why didn’t I drop out there was just this perpetual motor that kept moving me. And I’m not really sure what it was, but it was, I think it might have been a combination of just me not wanting to throw everything down the drain.[00:41:00] 

Yeah. You know, really seeing, you know, okay, you lost your brothers, you lost your dad, you lost pretty much everything. You only got your mom left. You don’t really have a family anymore. And you know, people say all the time, you’ve got family, you’ve got uncles and aunts, but that that’s an extension.

It’s not, you don’t see or talk to them every day. Yeah. You know? So when you, when you just take all that away from you all at one time, it’s very, it’s very traumatic. So, so how do you said that. There’s still a chance for you to live your life in a healthy, constructive, hopeful way. There’s still a chance for you to create a life that you really love living.

Right? How do you do that by being very patient and easy with yourself? For me specifically surviving this trauma that I did it took a lot of meditation. Self-reflection perseverance, passion. Just a lot of looking at [00:42:00] yourself in the mirror and saying, you know, this, this is something that I’m gonna continue to do.

I’m gonna finish this. I started it. Yeah. There’s been a lot of roadblocks. There’s been a lot of bumps in the road. There’s been a lot of obstacles placed in my path, but once again, we go back to the same thing. Am I the type of person that’s gonna avoid? or am I the type of person that’s gonna run head on?

You can place a 50,000 foot wall in front of me. And I don’t care if I have to drill a hole through it, I’m getting through it. It’s not, it’s not something that’s gonna stop me. And so I think for some people that might be on the other end of the spectrum, that kind of, you know, get discouraged from having obstacles put in their path.

I would tell those folks that there is still a life that is work living. Like you said, like there is a life on the other side of that obstacle. You just have to figure out how to get around it or get under it or get past it or get to the side of it. You have to, you, it, it’s not just a, you know, one size fits all.

You have to figure that out for yourself. [00:43:00] And I think every individual has to figure that out because this, this kind of stuff is happening all over. You know, you see record numbers in the world right now, CDC just released, you know, information about highest amount of drug overdoses ever, ever recorded.

Gun violence is at all time high. I mean, people are out there that are watching, even this show might have just lost a family member. Mm-hmm , you know, to something and, you know, it’s not even just losing people, it’s losing pieces of yourself. And I think that, I think that mental health, and like I said, self reflection and really having a good insight about your own behavior and your own personality has a big effect on whether or not you’re gonna be able to make it onto the other side.

I, I, I completely agree with you. I mean, I, and I I’ve, I think that, and I did this, you know, we, we tend to point like if, once this changes or if that was different or if this was different. And one of my coaches said, when you, when you point your finger at somebody, you have three pointing back at you. So [00:44:00] it’s that self-reflection, it’s understanding yourself and it’s letting those feelings pass through you because thoughts are energy.

and when you shove those thoughts down and those feelings down, it gets stuck. So how do you let it flow through how do you be so centered that the, the circumstances, everything happening around you doesn’t really impact you. And that’s harder for, could be harder for quote, unquote big things than it is for little things, but you start with the little things and you, you, you gave me a list of some books.

You’ve read the power of now by Eckert Toley. Yeah. The confidence gap from fear to freedom by Russ Harris. What happened to you by Bruce Henry? Bruce Perry, and how to go on living when someone you love dies and then movies, what dreams may come cinema per perso. Perso. Yeah, perso and blow. But the power of now I I’ve You know, followed Ecker Toley for a [00:45:00] while.

And his videos on YouTube and stuff are really good. It’s like the only moment is now I know that stuff happened in the past and it did happen. And this is the moment right here. Yeah. And you know, that book specifically I read the whole thing, I think three times because it’s such a powerful book that there’s so much, I wanted to go back and highlight and make notes of certain, you know, excerpts from the book.

But the biggest takeaway from that book, which I think is the most important thing, and it fits the narrative of your show perfectly is the past has nothing for us, except for memories in grief. The future holds nothing for us other than anxiety and needlessly worrying about what’s coming up next.

And I think that in order to really. this word is like, it’s almost, nobody believes that it’s actually like possible happiness. The [00:46:00] only place that happiness actually lives is in the now right now in this moment that we have. And when we’re too focused on, oh, what are we gonna do tomorrow? What are we gonna do next week?

How am I gonna do this deadline? How am I gonna, you know, all that anxiety that takes your focus away from enjoying the moment. Yeah. And then you’re always worried about, oh, well, my dad died and my brother died and I, you know, I feel sad and I feel depressed and you know, all that, that doesn’t bring that doesn’t bring anything to your now you have to learn.

And I think for P most people, for me specifically, I had to learn how to let go of, of my past. And I had to learn how to stop worrying about the future. You, everyone is gonna have to worry a little bit, right. Because we have to make goals and we gotta motivate ourselves to look, look forward to something.

But then now is really the only place that we can feel happiness. And I feel like. if we’re able to kind of have that happy medium of living right now in this moment, you can have a good [00:47:00] life learn from what happened in the past. Then don’t repeat it, right. Look to the future and have goals, but don’t worry about it, right.

Work towards it right now. Be happy with it. That’s that’s the biggest takeaway from that bug. And, and I would say too, I think a lot of people say this, the happiness comes from inside us. It doesn’t come from, you know, buying a new ring or buying a new car or that’s fleeting, happiness, joy, whatever. The, the joy really comes from being at peace with yourself.

And it’s a matter of like understanding that our thoughts lead to our feelings. And so, and we can change our thoughts, our mind isn’t us. We’re the observer of our mind. That’s what ER, totally talks about. We’re observing our mind. We can see, oh, there you go. Again. You’re thinking of that. And one of my last guests said, what we tend to do is rubber stamp.

That what our mind is thinking is, oh, that’s the truth. We just [00:48:00] rubber stamp it when really it’s not the truth. Right. But we don’t stop enough to really understand ourselves. And that’s what that mental coach in an area called mental fitness. That’s what that program is. It’s like, how do you stop? And you switch your mind to the Sage perspective, which is you can turn everything that’s happened into a gift or an opportunity.

Absolutely. You may not see it right away. So can you say that you’ve found a gift or an opportunity in everything you’ve been through? Yes I have. And you know, honestly, this is gonna sound silly, but you mentioned one of the movies that I had raised in, in the list that I gave you, there was a movie called blow with Johnny DS from 2001.

It’s about a, a guy that ends up becoming like a cocaine distributor. Right. And the, his whole purpose is, Hey, I need money. I, I, I’ve never had money when I was a kid and I wanna make a lot of money because I think it’s gonna make me happy to me, honestly, like when I look, when I, like I said, I’m a [00:49:00] big movie guy for me, that’s story worry.

It, it, it echos. So so real in my own life, because one of the things that I had to deal with when my dad died and you know, is how am I gonna handle all this estate stuff now mm-hmm, , I’m at law school now I gotta handle his estate and I gotta do all this other stuff. And you know, I’m not gonna get into, you know, numbers or anything like that.

But one thing that I can say is, is that I learned at the age of 30, what most people don’t learn until the age of 65. And that’s where that, that’s where this movie comes in. Is that. we, we, we tend to look towards something like, oh, I, I want to get a high paying job. I wanna make a lot of money. It’s gonna make me happy.

Anybody that’s told you that money makes you happy. Never had money. Mm-hmm never had money. Yeah, because it doesn’t make you happy. No, you can have 60 million and you’re not gonna be happy. Mm-hmm [00:50:00] because it becomes more of like a, now what? I got the mansion now, what? I got the Corvette now, what? I got the beautiful wife.

Now, what I got this now, what? We can’t live our lives like that chasing the next big thing. The next thing you gotta have the experience. That’s how I was able to learn how to enjoy this moment. Surviving the trauma and thriving forward. Enjoy the moment right now with your friends, with your family, with the people that you do have around you.

I might not have my dad or my brothers and I, I, I might. You know, I might not have everything that everyone else has, but I’m fortunate enough to be alive right now. I graduate law school on Saturday and I’m, I’m looking forward to the next process of my life. And, you know, for people out there that are watching that are struggling with something that they’ve got going on, I hope that I can kind of be a, a channel of some sort to try to say that, you know, no matter what it is, it doesn’t matter what it is big or small.

You can get past this and you can have a good life. [00:51:00] You just gotta reflect, you have to be at peace with yourself. So yeah, a hundred percent Elizabeth, I will put when we get off here, I’ll put a list of the books in in the LinkedIn comments. That’s where I’ll put them the books and the movies. And then I’ll also have ’em in the show notes when this is published as a regular podcast.

So I think, I can’t remember. It was about a year ago. maybe right after your dad had passed away that we were gonna have an interview possibly. And then schedules got messed up and whatever, and we got it scheduled for now. What’s different about you? What, what are you saying now? That’s different that you might not have really realized about a year ago?

A lot. I wouldn’t have been able to give the type of insight a year ago that I would be able to give you today. Yeah. And I won’t be able to give you the type of insight today that I could have given you next year. Right. And I think that’s, I think that’s what this whole show is about is every, every [00:52:00] year that passes by, we learn new things about ourselves.

And it’s not just about us. It’s about how we come off to other people around us. And so other people have been able to give me insight about myself that I never knew I had, because like you said, sometimes we’re kind of looking on the outside of ourselves. Mm-hmm at our own, at our own self. But other people might not see what we see.

Other people might see something that you don’t see. And so I’ve been fortunate enough to have a lot of people in my life over the past year that have been able to kind of provide me with some insight about myself that I didn’t know about. Yeah. And that provides me with opportunities to work on myself.

And it also provides me opportunities to reflect on what I already what’s good. Already, not necessarily negative. So yeah. I love that cuz you know, last year. So when I first started the show three years ago, next week is the three year celebration for this show and the hundred 99th episode that I’ll record next, next week.

But it was the onward podcast facing adversity and moving forward because that’s what I’d done all my [00:53:00] life, right. With things that I’ve, you know, talked about before on the show with raising my kids with going through a divorce with, you know, just pushing, going, you know, making the best of it, moving forward, facing adversity, moving forward.

I’m like I’ve done that. That’s what my podcast will be about. Then after interviewing people, I, I, I changed it to facing adversity moving forward and discovering yourself along the way. And then I changed it to create a life you love living now because I saw my children’s father pass away at 64 and he didn’t say much, but I could see I’ve known him for a long time.

I could see what he was thinking. He was reviewing how he had lived his life and he wasn’t happy with himself. And he had, was waiting to retire for something to happen, you know, this to happen or that to happen. It’s like when I retire, when the kids grow up, when this happens, when that happens, no. Now what can you do now to create a life that you really love?

Right. And [00:54:00] so all of my guests have helped me. Too to get to this point and that’s what I’m working on. And, and for me a life I love living doesn’t mean traveling and making a ton of money. And, you know, it’s like helping other people. I love doing this podcast. Clearly I do, because I, I, I fund it out of my own pocket and so I love it.

It doesn’t even matter to me because I just love it. So what can you do that you, what can you find in your life that you really love? What are you waiting for? How, and you say to yourself, well, no, that couldn’t happen. Well, how do you know? What’s another way of looking at it? You know, you might be looking at it just from this perspective when there’s all these other perspectives, but our minds just keep us to this and say that that couldn’t happen.

I would like that, but it can’t happen. So yeah, it, I guess if you think it can’t, it won’t right. And it all, that’s where it all begins right there, which just said you gotta have the mindset. And in order to have the mindset, you have to have enough insight about yourself to know what it is. What is it that I’m gonna do to be able to turn this [00:55:00] into a reality?

Yeah. Instead of just thinking upon it. So, yeah. And it sounds like you’ve had, I don’t know if you’ve worked with coaches, but it sounds like you’ve had mentors, a lot of people in your life and movies, you went out and sought, you know, input to help you. You didn’t do this just on your own. No, always. I’m always, I’m always seeking because there’s always other people that are gonna know a lot more than me.

And that’s what I’ve done my whole life. And, you know, like I said, I already, I already gave him a shout out, but Lawrence Lewis has, has really been one of the only people that has kind of pushed me through this whole experience. Mm-hmm and I’ve come out a better man because of it. So I just want to thank him, you know, I don’t know if he’s watching, but I just wanted to say thank you so well, if he didn’t watch, make sure he sees it.

Okay. Joshua . Absolutely. So thank you so much for being on this show tonight. And I think that with divine intervention, the timing of this show is just perfect. It’s I think this is mental health awareness month. Right. And it’s you’ve, you’ve come a long way. You had a [00:56:00] lot more to share with us than you would of a year ago.

You’ve got some perspective on everything that you’ve been through and congratulations on graduating from law school Saturday, you said, right? Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much. Awesome. Thank you to everybody who watched tonight. I really appreciate you. I can see, you know, 24 people, we might even have more than that.

And I really appreciate you all watching. When you, when you, you know, we log off when we’re done, you can still put a comment in and Josh will see it. I’ll see it. Share what you thought about this episode, take a, you know, a screenshot and share it and say what you learned. Share a link, share the video.

So Donette says, as we wrap this up, congratulations on your graduation. The best is yet to come. . Yeah, thank you. I just went to my, my son’s graduation last weekend and it was, it’s just so awesome. I know your mom will be so proud and you are too so thank you very much, Josh. .

Thank you, everybody for watching tonight. I really [00:57:00] appreciate you. Really appreciate you being here. It just is so nice to be when you’re talking live, see people engaging in the comments and see that support. And I greatly appreciate it. I hope you can join me next week. Seven 30, where we’re gonna be having a, a celebration for the onward podcast, three years of publishing this show and excited to bring the guy who wrote the song.

Quantum leap that I play in the music. We’re gonna talk about what that song means and the words to that song because, and how I met him because three years ago, when I picked that song and met him, I didn’t really understand the words in it. And now I do and. It’s just gonna be awesome to talk with him.

My son’s gonna be on the show. I think my daughter will be on the show. So we’re just gonna have Jenny Clark, a good friend of mine. We’re just gonna have some people coming in and out. And and I’ll probably depending on how many people we have that wanna come on, I’ll share the link so you can join me for a quick second or something and [00:58:00] just, you know, help me celebrate, you know, my whole life.

I didn’t really celebrate my accomplishments. I, I just, I just didn’t take that time. And so this is a big deal for me to even have a celebration like this, because I just kind blew past it onto the next thing. Not really enjoy. The moment now. And that’s what I wanna do next week. Enjoy the moment now of three years, this is a big deal.

Most people quit podcasting after seven episodes because it’s not easy. It’s a, it takes a lot of perseverance and a lot of work. So thank you for joining me tonight and for Josh and joining him as well. And I hope to see you next week, right here again, live. All right, I’ll talk to you later. Onward live is sponsored by Emily Harmon, coaching and consulting.

Visit my website, Emily harmon.com to learn more about me and my coaching programs. I’d love [00:59:00] to help you create a life you love living. Remember every adversity is our own personal university. Sometimes the lessons are difficult and we must learn from our experiences. Vulnerability is your superpower.

You are lovable and worthy, and we discuss these topics and more because professional is personal. Thank you for joining us and engaging with me and my guest.