The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Never Give Up: Break the Connection Between Stress and Illness by Mrs Alexis A Acker-Halbur

Never Give Up: Break the Connection Between Stress and Illness by Mrs Alexis A Acker-Halbur https://www.amazon.com/Never-Give-Up-Connection-Between/dp/1494984245 If stress and anger are making you sick, Never Give Up: Break the Connection Between Stress and Illness can help you find peace and joy in your everyday life or give you the courage to open a new door to a healthy and fulfilling future. Alexis Acker-Halbur offers anyone who has suffered trauma or loss not just one way forward, but many. A survivor herself—of an astonishing number of traumas, including abuse, cancer, and a severe car accident—she describes the connection between mind, body, and spirit and shows how the stress and anger she has experienced connect to her life-threatening illnesses. Alex tells just enough of her own story to quickly become an inspiring companion for people who are struggling to heal. But her focus is always on sharing the perspectives and practices that have helped her survive and thrive, and the insights that made them possible. Every chapter contains accessible activities and practical tools geared toward managing the dark moments in your life and changing the way you think and act. After completing each activity, you will find yourself a few more steps down a new road toward healing.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now here's your host, Chris Voss.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  Hello, Chris Voss here from the Chris Voss Show dot com. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to 18 years of the Chris Voss Show, where we bring you the most amazing minds, the wonderful journeys that people have been on that uplift you and drive you and give you motivation to let you know there's still hope in life and there's places to go and things you can do with your life. Support the show. We're the oldest living podcast, still broadcasting one to two new shows a day. There's only a handful of us left and we aim to be the last standing survivor of the original podcast still living, hopefully the next year or two. Anyway, go to goodreads.com, for Chris Voss, linkedin.com, youtube.com, facebook.com, all forward slash Chris Voss,

• 1:17Speaker 01

  one word. Today, amazing lady on the show with us today. Her book is entitled Never Give Up, Break the Connection Between Stress and Illness by Mrs. Alexis A. Acker-Halbur. Welcome to the show Alexis. How are you?

• 1:31Speaker 02

  Thank you, Chris. It's, it's great to be on your show.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  It's great to have you on the show. Give us your dot coms, websites, any places on social media, maybe that people can find you.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  Okay, I'm at Alexis Acker-Halbur at gmail dot com and my name is all in one lowercase at gmail dot com.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  So give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside your new book?

• 1:59Speaker 02

  My book, The Bear, is a deeply traumatic book. It's, its aim is to help abuse and trauma survivors and how the, the, the main character Claudia Matthews gets through her years of abuse. And she does that by deciding she can't live in a world with abuse anymore. And decides to just go to Banning State Park, which is a beautiful state park in Minnesota. And she travels through the woods during a blizzard, comes up to a cliff that overlooks

• 2:44Speaker 02

  the Kettle River. Now, the Kettle River, it runs all year long, but on the shoreline, it's frozen and has lots and lots of sharp rocks. So she decides that she's gonna stand there and takes out a gun. Before she pulls the, the, the trigger, she sees this blur coming at her and she doesn't know what it is. And suddenly this blur hits her and they go over the cliff.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  And the gun goes off. So that's the beginning of the story.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Wow, that's quite the setup.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Now, that's The Bear. Were we gonna lead off with The Bear? Or were we gonna lead off with Never Give Up?

• 3:28Speaker 02

  We were gonna lead off with Never Give Up.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Okay, okay. Do, should we talk about The Bear now? Or does The Bear play into the Never Give Up?

• 3:37Speaker 02

  Actually, let's talk about The Bear since I've already explained the, the beginning of it. But I wrote this book because I too am an abuse survivor and I was abused by a family member for many years.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 3:56Speaker 02

  And the one thing I, I started doing at the age of 15, I started writing morbid poetry.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 4:04Speaker 02

  And it was to help me get out some of the emotions, the sadness, the fear and the rage that I had inside. And so that started off my writing career. Since then, I have gone on to write novels and white papers and magazine articles. And I'm all over the world.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  And that's an interesting way to deal with trauma, trying to write through it, probably trying to, did you, at the time, were you aware of what was going on? Did, sometimes people bury trauma and won't, because they're not quite ready to try and figure out a process what's happening because we're children, we're not developed enough. Did, how did that play out for you? And, and, and it sounds like maybe that was your first writing that you were taking and doing, maybe?

• 4:54Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah, I, I don't think I was very aware at the age, even at the age of 15, regarding what was happening to me. And, but I do know that my perpetrator told me not to tell anyone. And children grow up and they're told to tell the truth, always tell the truth. And, and then they start getting abused by a pedophile predator and they're told to, to, to lie and to not say anything about what's happening to them. So it's, it puts them, I should say, puts us in a dire position because do we tell the truth and

• 5:38Speaker 02

  get some help? Or do we, we lie about that everything's fine?

• 5:43Speaker 01

  And we're taught that parents or adults are supposed to be the good ones we can trust, or we're supposed to follow their rules or whatever. And so there's that too. I remember there was a friend I had, he was, he was sexually assaulted by a police officer. And so he'd been told that police officer is somebody you should trust. And, and so as a child, you're like, how do, how do I navigate this? And it, it can be overwhelming. And some people, it buries trauma for decades. And then one day it pops up when they feel like you, that your body kind of goes, I think, I think this person might be in a position where they can handle this now and reconcile it, maybe.

• 6:20Speaker 02

  Great. But you bring up a really good point, Chris. That is that once the trauma happens, unfortunately, it stays in our minds, bodies, and spirits for as long as we live. Unfortunately, in my other book, Never Give Up, I explain how stress and illness are connected. And what I found out in my own dealings with the abuse was that it took me a couple of, it took me a couple of trips into a therapist to explain to me what was going on. And the therapist asked me, do you believe that you are being abused? And

• 7:03Speaker 02

  I went, what? I, no, I don't think so. Well, she started explaining to me the, the side effects of what trauma can do. And I was fascinated by that. I really was. But then the rage came out. And I, all those years, I pretended that nothing happened.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and, and there's probably some anger of realizing you were victimized because sometimes people don't realize they were victimized. And, and I imagine there's some anger and pain and reconcile that because no one wants to feel they, they've been a victim of something. Some people experience trauma and they go, I just saw a different part of life. And, and that's not really me, but that was some sort of experience. But, you know, it's harder to accept that someone was a victim and someone took advantage of them. And then, then you have to reconcile the feelings and trauma and, and grief and the different things of processing that. So, you know, it's, it's a very sad fact

• 8:10Speaker 01

  that these things take place and, and horrible, people do horrible things to people that are innocent. And, but sadly, it seems a little too popular in our world. Is The Bear, The Bear was a story that is in, is a novel? Or is it more like a memoir and you're using maybe the story of the bear as some sort of, you tell me.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  The Bear is a novel and it's a fiction account of a main character who tries to survive what was done to her. She's, she talks about her emotions and her experiences. And, but she also has this stranger that pushed her off the cliff. And I, I won't tell you who the, the stranger is. But anyways, through this stranger, Claudia learns that yes, she was abused. She was not to blame. She was not responsible for it. And she had every right to be respected. And so it's, it's an interchange between.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Claudia and the mystic character to see how she can resolve some of the the anger and the sadness and the isolation that she has felt for years.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  Sounds like a great story that is a lesson you can learn from, but by doing it through a third party, sometimes it helps people understand more about the place they're at. Sometimes if you're talking at people with an instruction manual, you gotta do this, or this is what. And sometimes people can have a hard time processing that, but you know, that's why comedy works. We can see our fallacies as human beings through comedy because it puts up a thing that goes, we're, we're, we're sometimes silly characters, but by seeing that play out, we learn better ourselves. And that's kind of why we love novels, entertainment and stuff along those lines is because we can still get lessons of life from them.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  And I know that this is a deeply serious topic. And it was even for me as, as the author, but I gave the, the stranger a sense of humor. And that helped, I think lighten the load of the seriousness of the topic. And so I think Claudia is able to get through her stuff because she sees that the stranger is right. She was not responsible, but there can be humor in life again, too.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Okay. Yeah, it's, there are lots of people that experience this. It's, it's unfortunate, but sometimes in life, most times in life, the obstacle is the way through. You've got to address it. You've got to take it head on and you've got to, um, you've got to deal with it. And not dealing with it can just make it worse. And so, yeah, having a thing like that. So The Bear is a, is a, is a, is a vehicle for that. Anything more we want to cover in The Bear before we move to the other two books?

• 11:12Speaker 02

  Just that I was really proud that I got through writing that book because it meant a lot to me. I'm sorry, my, my dog's barking. And so I'm hoping everybody can get it because I wanted to respond to a, a comment you made regarding the prevalence of abuse and trauma. And it's huge and it's everywhere. It's all over the world. And it actually started at the, at the beginning of, of time. And now with the Epstein files being in the news so much, it's survivors have the right

• 11:53Speaker 02

  to get acknowledged that they faced traumatic experiences and they were not responsible. They are innocent. And so that's what I, I'd like the, the readers to come away with after reading The Bear.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Hmm. Yeah, it's, you see that in, in the Epstein file, folks, they're, they're out there trying to advocate for the, what happened to them, but also build awareness. And, and this is good because if so many people have been through this, like you say, um, and when I was graduate, when I was growing up in high school, here in the cult enclave of, of Utah, 50% of the girls that me and my friends dated in high school had some sort of sexual trauma that the cult's bishops knew that they had, that that had happened. And yet the cult's bishop had told them just to shush and go home and listen to their parents, which who were just trying to more cover it up than anything. And eventually they did get sued for this behavior of, of not

• 12:57Speaker 01

  reporting claims of people that went to them in trust. And I think that still goes on from what I understand. But it's a big deal. We were shocked that 50% of the girls that I dated in high school and after, for quite a few years, had some sort of childhood sexual assault taken place. And just the amount of it was, was, the amount of it was, was quite out of control. But when you, when you tell people that natural sex sexuality and having feelings of sexuality and, and stuff is evil and bad and you shame it, you're gonna have people doing a lot of weird stuff. The, the, to try to repress it and it turns into weirdness.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Well, the next book we want to talk about, do we want to cover that first one I introduced or the other one in the series?

• 13:45Speaker 02

  Let's go with Never Give Up, break the, the, break the connection between stress and illness. And this book is a memoir. This is what has happened in my life since I was abused at the age of three or four. I can't exactly remember. But anyways, what I realized was that because I was so stressed out all the time, I have a crap load of health conditions that I am constantly having to take care of. And I thought, why, why, why am I getting all these illnesses and diseases?

• 14:29Speaker 02

  What did I do? And the basic question, why me? Which many survivors ask. So anyways, I did some research and I found that stress really freaks the body out and the mind. And in order to, to recover from the damage, it's, you have to handle both the body and the, the, the mind to find a resolution on how to live with such a, a bad memory.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so in the book, you talk about how you process this. Is it more like a memoir? Would you say this is than a novel than like there?

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Yes, it is. It's a memoir. And I wrote it because I ended up in the hospital at the age of 50 with stage four colon cancer.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  And I had it twice. And both times I was given, the statistic of survival was at 6%. That's 6%.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  And I, I, I, I thought, oh, I, I guess I gotta work on this. So I went back to writing because writing for me is very cathartic. But I had, uh, uh, I remembered a night in the hospital where I felt like I was falling into the bed. And actually what was happening when I was dying. And yes, I saw the proverbial tunnel and then I saw my mother who kept gesturing me to come with her. And I, I said, I can't go, mom. I still have things to do. So when I came back and I was cognizant of what just happened,

• 16:19Speaker 02

  I started praying and I asked the divine spirit, what can I do in order to survive this? Because my, my racial survival is really bad. And so the, the words that came to me were, write your story. But that's what Never Give Up is.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  My story. Yeah. And it's, it talks about a lot about the, the abuse that I encountered when I was little. I tried very hard not to put in a lot of details because I didn't want to trigger other survivors. And that can easily happen. And so I wanted to get away from that. So what I did instead is I wrote about my life, but I also started putting in tools that people can use in order to deal with anger, sadness, depression. And, and so there are over a hundred tools that most of them don't cost a thing.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  It's just reframing our minds and knowing what to do when something happens.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And, and helping people through that process. And sometimes what, I think all times, what people who experience trauma and, and abuse need is to speak their truth. I remember watching Leaving Neverland where two accusers accused Michael Jackson of, of sexually assaulting them as children. And their story is quite, is quite powerful. And I remember afterwards, they were doing a wrap up of, after the show with kind of an open thing with Oprah. And you could tell by the conversations with them that something had happened. There's, there's signals and signs. And, and there was one guy in the audience who stood up and he, I think he'd been

• 18:13Speaker 01

  an NFL player, but he'd been molested by the police officer that I mentioned earlier.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  And it went on for a long time. And for him, being a man, being masculine, trying to just suck up his feelings all the time, he, he talked about how it was like a poison inside of him. And that he couldn't get rid of it and it was eating him alive, killing him. And it wasn't until he wrote his book and he spoke his truth, that he was able to be free of it. And he made the, he made the comment that something along the lines of, it's like a poison inside you. And until you speak your truth and you get it out and you say, this happened to me and you tell people this happened to me, you can't be free of it. And, and so that's, I think what you're probably doing in these books. And this book maybe more so than the others, maybe. I don't know. I've read all three of them.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  But you're speaking your truth and you're freeing yourself and you're, you're taking ownership and saying, this happened to me. It's not my fault. I didn't have a choice in this. I trusted adults and, and they failed me. But being able to speak that is healing. And I think that's an important step in the whole process of healing from trauma.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  I absolutely agree with you. Telling your story is the first step of recovering from such a traumatic event. And I know it's very scary to write that story. I know when I was writing Never Give Up, I kept thinking, boy, do I really want to be this exposed?

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:45Speaker 02

  And unfortunately, my family was very angry with me for having it published.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Wow, victim blaming.

• 19:54Speaker 02

  They want, they wanted to keep it a secret. And I didn't blame them. I really didn't. But I also knew that. I was being harmed by a story that should never have happened.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  So I came out and I started talking about what happened to me and I, I must say that I, I feel healthier right now than I ever have in my life.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  That is great. And, and one example you've done in sharing your cathartic journey in your books. And how many books do you have, by the way? Are we, do we just have three or were there more?

• 20:32Speaker 02

  We have three of them right now, but I'm still writing. So who knows what's going to come up in the future.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  And this is the beauty of authors like yourself who share their stories, who share their journeys, who get honest with their experience. That's, there's somebody out there that you're going to be helping that's going to read these books. And maybe someone already has been helped by your books. You may never meet them. But sharing our stories, you give people a blueprint to, to realize their things. Years ago, I, when my dog died over just within 30 minutes with a C, a final seizure. It was shocking to me because I thought I was used to having time to say goodbye with my dogs and it was just over. And so I wrote a big post about it with half a bottle of vodka in me about how I felt about it.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  And I sat there for probably 45 minutes on the, to press the button to send it. And I just thought, this is so selfish. This is so me, me, me, me, me. And oh, your dog died, big deal, whatever. But everyone's dog dies. But I don't know, it was cathartic for me to put it to paper. And so finally I just was about ready to pass out from all the vodka and tiredness of being up all night at the emergency hospital. And so I published it and then I went to bed and hoped I didn't wake up in the morning. And I got, in the next morning, people were calling me and people were pouring their heart out on the post. People still remember to this day, it's been 10 plus years, 2013.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  And people still remind me of that post and how much it affected them and changed them. And I had people that were like, oh, I'm so glad you shared this. I cried. I didn't realize that I never got closure with my father's death or loved one's death or my dog's death. And it literally helped other people process their loss and that they maybe blocked or not been going through. So the beauty of sharing your story and the power of helping other people will go so far. And so I just, I just commend you on taking the step and it, it's kind of scary to be like, does anybody really care about what I'm about to say? And, and this seems a little all about me and my thing, but there's so many people that will read that

• 22:42Speaker 01

  and that will give them a blueprint out of their journey and their, their processes they needed to. So good for you. Good for you.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  And then the third book, do we want to step into that now or is there anything more we want to cover on that, on that?

• 22:56Speaker 02

  I do want to say that victims are, were blamed for the abuse. And it's, it's not something that we seek out to do to be abused. It's not that at all. And when I hear things about she was wearing something sexy or blah, blah, blah, blah. I get really angry because it has nothing to do with appearance.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're a child.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. It has everything to do with the fact that for years, pedophiles and perpetrators and predators and sometimes presidents too, hurt children to the point where they can't recover.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  And I am determined to get my message out, to make sure that every survivor is hugged. If they want, that will listen to their stories, but most of all that we believe them.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Yep. Yep. But it's, it's, I think it's important too, and what we're talking about here, if people hear this, that may, might be in a situation like your family and is where they're upset about. It, it's embarrassing to the family and it's probably embarrassing to the parents whose job it was to protect you, make sure that you were, you were cared for and everything else. And while that may be their failure, that was then and this is now. And this is the time to step up and be like, okay, we, there was a failure and, and people made mistakes and, and stuff, but now's the time where we have to try and rally and reconcile behind everybody and,

• 24:38Speaker 01

  and say it's okay. And, and I think it's so sad. I've seen people do that where they, they get upset because they realized that as a parent, they failed to protect their child. And that's not really the, I'm sure it's okay to feel that initially that you failed as a parent or that you could have done better, but there's, it's life. There's, there's all sorts of crap that can happen that falls between the cracks and, and the different things. And, but yeah, blaming the, blaming the victim is, it just makes it 10 times worse. And I think adds to the trauma, would you say?

• 25:12Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. Totally.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:14Speaker 02

  Because again, we're not at fault.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  We didn't ask for this.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  You're just a child.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you, you're supposed to respect adults. You're supposed to listen to what adults tell you. You're supposed to trust adults. Some peoples, my parents had that if someone tries to touch you in your no, no spot. Conversation with me, I was a kid and stranger danger and don't get in the, the van with candy. I grew up in the seventies, so there's a lot of weird stuff going on back then.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  And you need to be careful. Are people grab you? And remember the Moonies were running around. I think the Moonies were stealing babies sometimes out of the hospital wards and some weird.

• 25:53Speaker 02

  Oh, I know.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  There was weird stuff going on in the seventies. They had Charles Manson. But I think it's really, this is a good lesson for families too, that they need to rally behind someone who says they have trauma and support them and try and make them feel loved and supported. And that's, and that's really all you can do. You can't change the past. I've learned that with Eckhart Tolle and being present. You can't change the past, but you can change the now. And so I think it's important for people who have been, I don't know how you say a party or involved with someone who has had this sort of trauma happen to them. Love and support is like one of the most important things you can give them, not rejection.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So let's get into that third book. And what's the title of the third book?

• 26:38Speaker 02

  Third book is called The Truth Program and it stands for The Road to Unresolved Trauma Healing. And what it is, is it's an eight week program that takes trauma survivors through telling their story and how to reframe what people say so that they're not always feeling like they're being hit on or hit at. So it goes through a lot of different chapters in order to finally come to a point where I'm not asking survivors to forgive.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  That's, I think that's a really unfair thing to ask survivors to do. But survivors are responsible for their healing. And that's where I want to leave them with this workbook so that they can go through the pages on their own time and write down what they, what they're feeling or what they're hoping will, will come out of going through this program. And I think it's a very, very important, an important way to cope with this travesty.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Yep, definitely. And so the workbook, you've got the, your moment of truth, the road to unresolved trauma healing, the essential truth program and workbook. And so it's an eight week program, I guess?

• 28:08Speaker 02

  Yes. Yes, it is. But it doesn't have to be done in eight weeks. I just say it's eight weeks because that's, that's how I programmed it.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Okay. And then there's probably steps people have to go through for a lot of this where they've got a, where they've got a, it takes time to process this stuff. You can't just be like, I spoke my truth and I told everybody it happened and I think everything's fine now. Right? There's like an emotional process you have to go through, probably much like grief, understanding.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  All that stuff. The one, the book you were highlighting one before, I can fall back a little bit, but you talk about illness and stuff. There's a thing about the body holding the, holding the score and how sometimes it, it creates trauma in the body and holds it in the body. And it's like a physicality of abuse that we do to ourselves. And did you, did you find that maybe some of that was going on? It was maybe it's creating illnesses or sicknesses for you?

• 29:07Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh, Chris. I have, I call myself a medical miracle. Because at the age of four, I was diagnosed with a kidney infection.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  Not a lot was known that children can get kidney infections if they have been hurt in their private areas. So then that went on and I got healed from that and then I developed diabetes type one. So I have to take insulin injections all of the time. But actually, I have an insulin pump now that is keeping me alive. And then I also have depression that I deal with.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  And lots of sadness, lots of sadness. So I like to listen to people who are humorous.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  Because they lighten the load and I can feel human again.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  Also, there was the, the stage for colon cancer that came up and knocked me off my ass. I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't believe it. And as I said, with a 6% survival rate, I thought, how in the heck am I ever gonna survive this?

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  And I thought, in a, in a, in a very mellow moment, I thought, you survived abuse time and time again. You can survive cancer.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  That's a good point. That's a good point. And yeah, it's, it's unfortunate things that happen to us, but it, it gives us the tools of survival. And then we can move forward and be like, this hasn't destroyed me. I won't let it. And, and I've got tools to survive. What's the old thing? That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger. And it's interesting to me, the lives we lead, we, we often talk on this show about how stories are the fabrics of our life. Our whole lives, each of us, are a compilation of our stories. And those are the stories, the failures, the, the, the challenges that we face in life that make

• 31:25Speaker 01

  who we are. And like, I'm pretty happy with where I'm at, at 58. Was there, was there things I maybe could have done better? Or pitfalls that I could have avoided? Maybe not. Maybe, but here I am now, and all I can do is the best in the here and now and work towards the future. And it gives us that power that we survive this, or we survive a certain thing, that we can keep surviving in life. That's why people love these stories. It's because, it's that phoenix from the ashes. It's the, it gives us hope, gives us a journey. Because without hope, we're pretty much lost as a human species.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  Oh, man. Yeah. Especially during the present condition that our country is in.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, hope is the greatest, I think the most beautiful thing that the human beings have. Because in their nature, they've got a lot of ugly things. But hope seems to be the one thing that is an enduring feature of humanity and usually brings us to some of our best moments. So anything more we want to cover about the books before we round out the show? Is there anything we missed that I should have asked you about?

• 32:31Speaker 02

  I think we've covered most of it, but I do just want to mention to your viewers that there is help for people who have been traumatized. And there are resources all over the place. And if my workbook helps one person, then I will be very, very satisfied because I don't want to live the life that I was going to live. I am now living the life I am truly meant to have.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  Hmm. And, and the thing I was talking about with our lives and our stories and the fabric of our life, I can look through my life, I'm sure you can look through your life, but my opinion is that, is that I'm not sure how I would be if some of those things hadn't happened to me. And would I be the person that I'm very happy with now? Would I have learned the hard lessons of survival and endurance and stamina in, in surviving, you know, ugly things that happen to us in life? And I'm not sure that I would be the same person. So it's a double edged sword when you look back on it and you go, it's, some of the things that happened to me were awful, but would I be the person

• 33:48Speaker 01

  that I am today? Would I be as strong and resilient as I am today without those experiences? And maybe we don't always have the answer for that, because that would be a whole different vein of life. But we, if you take away our stories, we have nothing without the stories of our life or the fabric of our life. You take away that, you got nothing. You're just, and that's how we help each other learn too, which is really important. What do you hope people come away with? It might seem obvious from what we talked about, but what, what do you hope deeply people come away with when they read your books?

• 34:17Speaker 02

  I first want to comment on what you just said about, would you be the man you are today? And I would say, forgive the man who, who you would have been in the past. He's gone. You've replaced him with someone who tells the truth. In fact, you, you have authors and speakers come onto your show who are all speaking their truth. At least I hope they are. But I do want you to know that the bad things that have happened in your life made you the person you are today. And that is quite fabulous.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  And so what I'd like to let viewers know is that there is hope. And I know we talked about that. There is hope that you may not ever be able to cure what happened to you and all the evil that has happened. But you can recover from it and you can live a life that has meaning and purpose.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Hmm. Thank you very much for coming to the show and sharing your message, Alexis. It's been beautiful. And what a beautiful thing you put there. And yeah, this is the wonderful thing about us sharing. We don't get an orange menu in life. So we all share our stories and help each other through this journey of life that from one end to the other. And, and I don't think there's anybody who goes through life without some sort of trauma or some sort of challenge.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  That forces them to grow and change and improve themselves. And it's a survival of the fittest game. And hope is a wonderful endurance. So thank you very much, Alexis. Give us your dot coms too, as we go up.

• 36:02Speaker 02

  You can reach me at alexis acker hellber, all one word, lowercase, at gmail dot com. And I would love to hear from viewers, because it's the stories that I hear that keep me wanting to fight for survivors and make this a better world.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Thank you. And thanks for being brave and sharing your story, Alexis. We really appreciate it.

• 36:29Speaker 02

  Thank you, Chris.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Thank you. And thanks to my audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, fortress Chris Voss, linkedin.com, fortress Chris Voss, youtube.com, fortress Chris Voss, and all this crazy place on the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next.