Let's see if I remember how to do this. It is time to get solar powered. We welcome you back to the solar powered podcast. My name is Ryan Hall from loyal hearts media. It's been a while since we've connected. It has been way way too long since we've connected. Man, oh man, I have If y'all knew even a 10th of what my life has been about in recent times, it would probably blow your mind.
So I'm truly honored to be speaking to y'all here today, and I've got something really cool that I wanted to share with you all. I've written another book. Yes, my friends, I have written another book. I have been teasing this for a few years now, but I have written and published my memoir. And this book is called Mining for My Voice, How a Meek and Scared Boy Uncovered a World Rattling Voice. And let me tell you a little bit about what this book is about.
See so often as I was growing up, so often I had it that well, I guess I had it that my voice wasn't important. That the things I had to say weren't important. That I wasn't important. And a lot of what I have, what I have written about in this book has been about it's been about the stories. It's been about the the people, the places, the ideas. It's been around some things that have, I think, caused me to, I think, just forget how powerful my voice was.
But at the same time, it has shown me a lot of these a lot of these stories, a lot of these people, a lot of these events have shown me that my life, my story, my message is more important that I could possibly comprehend. This book scares me. This book intimidates me, and this book is really about as vulnerable as high as I have ever and honestly probably will ever get as of now. But what I wanted to do in this podcast is to is to read to you a little bit.
I wanted to read to you a little bit from chapter 1 of mining for my voice. Now this audio was taken from a Facebook live video that I did, But in it you will hear just a small taste, just a small tidbit of, I think, just what this book is about. So without further ado, here's a little taste from chapter 1 of mining for my voice. My story begins on a dark and stormy mid March Saturday in 1977. Tuscaloosa, Alabama was under tornado warning right as the cord was cut.
I guess you could say that I was that nonmetaphorical storm cloud. I was a big baby, a chunky £10.4. Not only was I late entering the world, my original due date was at the end of February, I came out of the oven with breathing problems. My parents have told me that it took doctors a good 8 minutes before they could get me to cry. One of my favorite pictures I've ever seen is right as the doctor hands baby Ryan to mom for the first time after the cord was cut.
Mom is exhausted after she had to have an emergency c section. Dad is beaming, and I am crimson red. They call Alabama the Crimson Tide. Am I right? This memory may have even been from the very first day I was born. I was laying in my mom's arms as my eyes slowly opened to the world. I remember the walls in the room being the sort of mustard yellow, And my entire family was there. They were just looking at me. It's as if everyone was saying to me, hi, Ryan. Welcome to the world.
Now start talking. For the 1st couple of years after I was born, my family lived in the small rental house in midtown Tuscaloosa. I don't remember the house nor do I remember where it was located, but I have heard stories. And as mom was pregnant with my sister, Ivy, they knew they needed an upgrade, so they bought and moved into a 3 bedroom ranch style house on Tuscaloosa's east side, right off Hargrove Road. This is where I was actually born where I actually grew up.
And in this house was this sofa set, a sofa with a matching chair and ottoman. With the understanding that this sofa set was probably purchased in 1979, furniture fashion was quite different. So I'm willing to give mom and dad a pass on this. This sofa set was on a different planet of ugly. It had this ornate pattern accented with various shades of brown and orange.
On the arms of both the sofa and the chair were these wooden accents, and there was this one accent on the chair that kept coming loose. And when I was a tiny mammal, I kept pulling it out. Eventually, dad glued the accent back on the chair with his hot glue gun. Dad wasn't a crafter, so why he had a hot glue gun, I'll never know. To be fair, dad worked at the funeral store, but they got the sofa set in my very early days. So I'm sure he used a juicy employee discount to buy it.
It was still hideous, though. But I do understand that times in fashion were different. Also in our living room, my sister Ivy and I had a kids' table. As we grew up, Ivy and I would eat breakfast every day at that table. We even had lunch at that table many days during the summer when we weren't in school. In fact, it was at that table where my dad first showed me how to keep score of a baseball game.
It was an NBC Saturday game of the week featuring the Chicago Cubs and the New York Mets, and I'm pretty sure that Bob Costas and Tony Kubek were at the mic that afternoon at Wrigley Field. The day my mom and dad got rid of that thing was a sad day from my childhood, but it needed to go. Over the years, this thing got beat up pretty bad. It turns out that kids can be abusive to cheap furniture. Who knew?
The carpet in the living room had this unique shade of red, sort of a wine color, like a Bordeaux. And that carpet in front of the fireplace as well as in front of my dad's chair, and make no mistake that was his chair, contained loads of burn marks from either misplaced cigarette ashes or hot embers and ashes that popped out of the fireplace. It's a miracle the house never caught fire.
That den in my little white house at the end of the cul de sac was perhaps the most influential womb of my life. And that is just a little snippet, a little taste, a little a little teaser, if you will, of mining for my voice. My brand new memoir that is, that is going live on on Amazon on Monday, October 31st. So not only will we be celebrating Nick Saban's birthday with this new book, but I guess y'all can get some candy as well.
A couple of things that I think really come to mind that I wanted to share is that this book I wanna this book, I think, is really serving as a rebirth for me. Is a rebirth in I think really putting the past behind me because these have been a lot these have been some pretty scary and heady things that have that have gone down, and they've affected me. They have changed me, and they have they have hurt me, but these are also things, all things that have happened in the past.
And I think last but not least, I wanna give a special shout out to to a dear friend and coaching mentor of mine named Lisa Pichetz. Now Lisa, long time listeners to this podcast may remember was a former podcast guest. But she has written, I think, a truly beautifully nuanced and thought provoking forward for this book that I think more than anything that, you know, more than anything that I could have thought of has really gotten to the essence of just what this book is all about.
It's about 1 man putting the past behind him and uncovering a world rattling voice. Now one thing I want y'all to notice, not once in that little snippet nor in this book do I talk about finding your voice. Because your voice was never lost. It may get covered up with a bunch of with a bunch of trauma and all that kind of negativity, but your voice is never truly lost. And I think that is what I wanna leave you all with here today. A couple of things that you're gonna notice.
First of all, in the show notes in this podcast, there's gonna be there's gonna be a couple new links. The first link is going to be how to order mining for my voice. Now there are 2 ways that you can go about doing that. First of all, you can pull it up on a little up and coming web store called amazon.com, which I will include the Amazon link.
Or if you want an autographed copy of either the paperback or hardcover version of mining for my voice, just fill out the Google form that's going to be included in the link in the show notes below. And I think that's just about it. I do plan on having this podcast become a little bit more active as we move forward. This is episode 99, and episode 100, I have been making some plans for. I wanna get a really special guest for that episode, so be on the lookout for that.
But that will do it for this episode of the solar powered podcast, a presentation of Royal Hearts Media. For more information about me or to get in contact with me, you can just follow me on my social media machine. Follow me at Ryan Hall Writes on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram or you can shoot me a good old fashioned email. Just send me an email at [email protected]. But that will do it for this episode, this special episode of the solar powered podcast.
Until we meet again, this is Ryan Hall saying thanks for listening. So long for now. I love you all and please go get solar powered.