Pushkin.
I just remember probably maybe up to about thirty minutes before the accident happened.
This is Rebecca Kudurru.
As you'll hear.
It's probably a blessing that Rebecca had no recollection of the tragic events that unfolded when she and her young family took their familiar drive home on December sixth, twenty eighteen. Rebecca's memories of that awful day resume a few hours after she'd been removed from the wreckage of her car. But in that gap, something terrible had happened to Rebecca and something very important had been taken away.
I had broken my nose, I had broken my jaw, and I had shattered both my eye socket, the external part and the internal part, and was very fortunate not to have any actual brain injury.
All of those severe facial injuries, combined with problems accessing appropriate treatment, left Rebecca struggling to rebuild her pre accident life and left her steering at a face in the mirror she neither recognized nor liked. Why am I telling you Rebecca's story?
Well.
During her long and difficult road to recovery, Rebecca discovered the happiness lab she devoured the show on her daily walks through the neighborhood, and one day she reached an episode that we put out in late twenty nineteen.
It's funny because growing up I always heard, God, he's so cute, he's so this, he's so that, and so I grew up just thinking like, that's what I am. No one ever said he has an amazing personality.
It was cute.
This is JR.
Martinez. As a handsome teenager, Jr. Joined the army and went off to war, where a roadside bomb turned the vehicle he was driving into a fireball.
Jr.
Was horrifically burned, and.
So suddenly I look at myself and I'm like, that's not cute what I see in the mirror.
The old JR.
Had died, And as you can imagine, I was depressed. I was angry, I was resentful. I was a victim and every sense of the word.
In the episode, JR. Explained that he'd lost not just his face, but also his career. The army had no place for such a badly injured soldier. When Rebecca listened to Jr's story on that fateful walk, she was floored.
It was like instantaneously tears just burst out of my eyes and I like collapsed on fine knees on the sidewalk.
Many of you have told me that you've benefited from listening to the show, that you've learned helpful strategies that have brought you greater happiness, or that you felt a deep connection to a particular story we talked about, or that you've even found a kindred spirit in one of our many interviewees, someone who made you feel less alone
and whatever struggles you were facing. But Rebecca's story about the impact the show has had on her life is one of the most poignant I've heard, and so of course I couldn't help but share Rebecca's journey with.
All of you. I lived in Uganda for about ten years and I started a social enterprise there call cat Africa with my now husband.
We weren't married at the time.
It's amazing that we still ended up getting married after working together.
And we were located.
About four hours outside of the capital city, Kampala, so we would often drive back and forth four meetings or even basic grocery shopping, and this particular morning, we were trying to get back to the town we lived in called Fort portal.
It was a drive that we had done probably.
Hundreds of times, and as we were driving, a drunk man walked onto the highway that we were driving on, and as my husband tried to swerve to avoid him, our car ended up rolling. We rolled probably seven or eight times and landed in a tree. Everyone was fine. My husband was in the car, my fourteen month old was in the car, her nanny, and our nanny's son was in the car, and everyone was fine except for me. I was on the side of the car that hit a tree and I just completely shattered the left side
of my face. What I remember is coming to so it probably was about two hours later in the back of an ambulance, and just I had this vivid memory of people staring in at me with like pretty amazed facial expressions. Horrified maybe is a better word. I looked down and I was wearing someone else's shirt. I didn't really understand why, and was just completely covered in blood.
And the thing that confused me the most is I asked my husband where am I and he said, You're in the back of an ambulance, And I said, why is there no siren on? We're stuck in traffic, and he turned to the driver and said, can you turn the siren on? And the driver said the siren's broken. So we were stuck just in this traffic jam, probably for about an hour and a half, from the time that I remember people staring at me to getting to
a hospital. I was informed later that all of our belongings were actually stolen by people who just kind of witnessed the crash, and a good Samaritan picked us up on the roadside drove me to what is considered a regional reerral hospital. So you've gone to has different tiers of hospitals, and this was like the highest tier of care, so where a woman would go if she needed an
emergency see section. And my husband brought me in and I don't remember anything, and said, you know, we need help, and there was no doctor there.
They didn't end up having.
Sutures that they could use for stitches or gauze, so my husband left me on the floor of the lobby of this hospital and went to a nearby pharmacy and bought the materials and they basically just kind of stitched me up. I still have scars from it. I would say each stitch is probably an inch wide, like a nurse just did the best that she could on the
floor of this hospital lobby. And then you know, my husband found this ambulance and it didn't have gas and had to fill it and it was the same ambulance like an hour and a half later that I was.
Like, hey, what where's the siren.
So all in all, it was probably like a four hour journey from the time of the accident to getting to a hospital.
Wow.
And so you finally make it to this hospital and then what happens next?
Brought in and I remember they said, okay, we're gonna restitch your face and I said, please don't. Can someone please call a plastic surgeon. And I don't know why that was my reaction, but apparently there was one plastic surgeon in Uganda and they called him and he agreed to come the next morning at six am. He said he did more than a thousand stitches.
Then they kind of alluded like, oh, there's a few things that might be broken, but we think everything's okay.
And you know, a maxilar facial surgeon came in the next day and was like, there's something very small, we need to fix her jaw. It has a crack in it, so I'm just going to put a plate in her jaw. And my husband had said at the time, don't do anything, just do whatever you have to stabilize her to get to the US, like she's American, she has US health insurance.
Just do the basics. And they said, well, we're just doing the basics.
And I went in for the second procedure and I came out and looked and I had plates put in my face in multiple locations. And so it was this very weird experience that's different from the American healthcare system, where the baseline was she'll never understand what's actually happening to her, so we don't really need to share it. Just like, this is so bizarre that no one is walking us through this process before it happens. The doctors
in Uganda kept saying, you're really swollen. It's going to take two to three years for it to go down. And I was looking and there was something very weird happening with my left eye where it really looked like it was kind of sunken back in my head. And they said, oh, it's the swelling. It's not it actually hasn't moved, you know, my mom flew out and she said, there's this I Institute at Stanford, and.
I'm going to get you an appointment.
And I got back to California, which was where my parents were living, and the first thing the doctor said is I'm going to need to do another CT scan. I said, oh no, no, don't worry, I have this one from Ganda.
They said everything was fixed.
So I got the result before a doctor's point, which is never a good idea to look at and start googling them. It was basically like everything in my face was broken. My nose was broken, my jaw was broken, my eye socket was broken. Like my orbital floor, which is like the part of your bone that holds up your eye, was totally shattered.
And the way that these plates had put in was kind of like protruding.
So the doctors told me they had never seen so much damage to someone's face or eye socket without damage to the brain or eyeball, and so they weren't able to tell me if it was the accident itself or the subsequent surgeries that were kind of done non consensually in Uganda that led to all the damage.
But it was kind of.
Shocking because I just flew back thinking I was having an eye exam and I was in for like a solid year of reconstruction at that point. And you know, me and my husband and daughter were living in a single bedroom in my parents' house at this point, So it.
Was a crazy time.
What was that like?
Because I feel like sometimes when tragedies like this happen, you know, well intentioned people are telling you things like, you know, it should be so lucky to be alive. I mean, was that the kind yeah you were hearing? How are you feeling?
Yeah?
Totally.
So I felt the need, particularly as a mom to a young child, to put on like a face of I'll get through this, this is okay, but it sucked. And people used to all the time say I'm so sorry this happened to you, but God only gives you what you can handle, or I'm so thankful that you're alive. And there was points where I was like, well really, because I wish I wasn't, Like, this is me having to go through a year of really really hard work,
never knowing how the results are going to look. And my vision was very messed up from this as well, because my eyes even to this day, they're not on the same.
Plane with each other.
And so there was times where I said, it's easier for you that I survived, that you don't have to go through this grieving process, but it's a lot of work for me. And I didn't make that choice to survive this and have to put in the work. And there was times where I wish, like maybe I didn't want to survive this. It's definitely for the betterment of other people than it is for me. That was really how I felt in the moment. And then the other thing people used to say to me all the time
is don't worry. You're beautiful just the way you are, and I was like, that is just not what I need to hear right now, Like I don't feel beautiful. I am pretty set on doing what it takes to recover, and what I want to hear from you as my support system is you go out and do whatever it takes to feel whole. And I had some friends and family who were really receptive to that feedback. And I remember, you know, one friend in particular was like, Wow, have
you considered therapy? And it was like, I think we're so conditioned to tell people that the outside doesn't matter, and sometimes that's not helpful for people, especially when you're mourning. You know, there's different processes you go through, like aging, where you're appearing changes slowly, but you have time to process that. It's really shocking when like a single event that was out of your control, like completely or literally in my sense, shatters your appearance.
And I think this is particularly tricky because you know, all the folks who are telling you these things were really well intentioned, but I think they are falling prey
to something. You know that I see this work all the time, which is, you know, we assume that, you know, any negative emotion is bad, you know, whether it's grief or frustration or just like being angry at the circumstances the universe brought you, you know, and that's you know what a lot of researchers like think of as sort of toxic positivity, right, we think we're supposed to be positive all the time totally, you know, but talk about how important it was to you to kind of have
room to hold space for these negative emotions totally.
I think the thing I appreciated the most was when people said how are you doing, and I could just be like, this sucks. This is really shitty, and that's something I've taken you forward with me. I have a friend who I reached out to after she had like a pretty late miscare and I just sent her a message and I said, I just want you to know, like this sucks. If you want to have someone to talk to, I just a how shitty, for lack of
a better word, your situation is, I'm here. And she reached out and she was like, that was actually the most powerful thing that someone said, because sometimes it's just nice to let people know, or you know, affirm for them that yes, what happened to you sucks and know it's not about being stronger.
On the other side, you can appreciate it.
For what it is, and it's it's not nice and not everyone will have to go through that, and you do have a long road ahead of you, and giving people space to process that versus making them feel. Like I said earlier, there was a big pressure to feel happy for other people. And I still did that for my daughter because she was too young to really be able to understand both sides of that.
I think she's she's almost six now and.
We have a lot of conversations about it, and I do think she could understand it now, but it was a relief and now it's a big thing that I offer to other people of just being able to say.
What happened to you sucks and that's that's that.
And I think part of the awfulness of the situation is that like, very few people can understand it right, very few people can understand, you know, being in such a scary accident, having such terrible medical care, navigating the grief that comes with your looks changing. You know, this was a spot where it sounds like you felt pretty isolated totally.
And I think one of the big challenges as well is, you know, my husband was driving and it was a complete accident, and also really hard not wanting someone to blame for that, and I know it was hard for him as well on the other side, And so there's so much more than just how it impacts you, and it's hard to have to bear, you know, the burden of recovery and work through the elements of experiencing trauma, especially in a situation where multiple people experienced it.
And so this kind of gets to know the point in the story where we wound up connecting, because my understanding is that you know, when you get back to the States, you were looking for some solace, you know, to find some hints of things that could help you feel better. And so tell a little bit about the story about how you happened across the podcast.
Yeah.
So I started listening to the podcast, probably more towards the end of my recovery journey. So I would have a procedure and then i'd have to wait three months for so on to go down, and then I'd have the next one, and then I'd wait three months. So I at that point started walking a lot and really learned that what I enjoyed doing when I walked was listening to podcasts, and yours showed up. I don't even
know how the algorithm found me. So I would wake up in the morning and I would put your podcast on, and I would walk with the dog, sometimes like five or six miles, and I listened to the episode where you had JR. On and he mentioned what it was like to have always been told you were really good looking, and how it felt to be like, well that's now gone. And it was like instantaneously, tears just burst out of my eyes and I like collapsed on my knees.
On the sidewalk, and I don't think anyone saw me, no one checked on me.
I was just like, this is the first time I've actually heard someone repeat back to me going through this experience, because it was very isolating, and no one knows how to react to you, and no one knows how to make it feel better. And it was like the first time I just heard someone really say this was so awful and so transformative and share.
A lot of the same experience.
And you know, though I think our injuries were very different, it was like he was speaking my language for the first time someone really said out loud what I was feeling.
So the Mighty Algorithm had given Rebecca a gift and connected her to a voice she could relate to. Jr's story didn't completely map on to what Rebecca was going through, but she saw a lot of herself in his journey. Just as Jr's injuries had ended his beloved military career, Rebecca's work life had been collapsing under the strain of her painful path to recovery. Like JR, Rebecca was also
in danger of being robbed of purpose and direction. After the break, we'll hear how she rebuilt her sense of self and will introduce her to the man whose story she found so helpful. The Happiness Lab will be right back. In the aftermath of his severe burns, JR. Martinez lost not only the face he'd known up until that point, but also another important piece of his identity. He could no longer be a soldier and serve among his friends and comrades. But after a dark and lonely chapter in
his life, JR. Found new purpose, first as an actor portraying a wounded veteran on TV, then as an advocate for his fellow wounded vets.
Because of these scars, I have this incredible ability to get people's attention seconds of curiosity right like who is that?
What happened to him?
Those fifteen seconds of curiosity that people have. It's my job mine to take that fifteen seconds and turn it into thirty seconds, into forty five, into sixty seconds, into five minutes, ten minutes of actual educated dialogue. I've been able to make a difference, and I think that to me is more important than anything else.
When she listened to JR. On The Happiness Lab, Rebecca Kaduru was in awe of Jr's bravery, but she knew she couldn't engage publicly with her injured face in the way JR.
Had.
I really commend how, you know, public he has been able to be. I really could appreciate how he has been able to leverage his personal experience and use that as a way to kind of teach and connect with others. And for me, I realized very early on that I
didn't have the emotional bandwidth to do that. So I have a lot of respect for him and felt okay listening to him, that's like, okay, you know this was what he learned from it, and I learned something very different, which was that I needed to curtmentalize what happened to me. And people kept saying, you know, why don't you buy a journal or why don't you start on Instagram and you can document this?
And I went as far as buying a journal and like a nice pen and never was able to open it.
It was like, the moment I write this down, it solidifies that this is what happened, and it creates a situation where I can go back and relive it any time. I opened that book, and it was like in my soul, I knew I didn't have the ability to do that, and so I have pictures of how my recovery journey went, and I've never really shared them with anyone because it was just something that I was like, this is an
experience I'm going to keep for me. And the other thing I'll share that happened is I was ironically working for a hell equity organization at the time of this, and it seems silly in twenty twenty three, but at the time in twenty nineteen, when I really realized the extent of what my recovery was going to be, I went to them and I said, you know, I'm going to need remote working accommodations, and.
They were basically like, that's a no go for us.
I was presented with the severance package that included like basically taking it to keep a runway on my health insurance, and so I really got like a crash course in how tied Americans are between their workplace and their health and kind of set goals for myself that I was
going to use this as an opportunity. I've always been, you know, very career driven and very goal oriented, and where this kind of went to me was like, this is going to be a challenge for me, and I'm going to get into leadership opportunities and I'm going to make sure that everyone that works with me never.
Feels this way again. And so that was kind of where I focused.
This is like, I'm going to focus on rebuilding and reshaping my ability to have impact on other people through the workplace, because that was hard. It was really hard to look in the mirror and not recognize yourself and then so much of your identity within the United States is tied to your work and then have that pulled away too.
It was tough.
It was like a lot to take in at one time. And that was kind of the goal I set for myself. So where we've had really different stories and you know how we grew from our trauma, that for me was where I was like, this is what I know I can take on. This is who I am as a person. I've always been goal oriented. I've always been career oriented. It you know, I was an entrepreneur, I started an organization. So that was how it really came to fruition for me.
So hearing how influential JR. Was, you know, to your story and how meaningful it was for you to hear kind of what he went through and kind of how he recovered and how he dealt with this trauma. Yeah, we wanted to give you a little bit of a gift for sharing your story on the Happiness Lab, and so we've actually brought j R.
Here today. What's up, Rebecca, I'm so excited.
To meet you.
What is up?
So g you were listening in the background to Rebecca's story, I'm just wondering, you know what, what's the first advice that you have for her?
You know, I just the first thing I just want to, you know, just immediately jump in and just say, just give yourself grace. You know, it took me a very long time to get to this point where I was very vocal about what happened to me. I was constantly talking about my experiences and understanding that I would find more of a community the more that I spoke about it.
But honestly, one of the things that I've really identified in the last few years is that when you know about I want, say, like eight or nine years after I was injured, even though I was already in the public eye and talking on.
A smaller scale, but then the still doing it.
I look back at that period in my life and I realized I wasn't ready, I wasn't really being vulnerable, and I realized that I was sort of hiding behind this shield of being someone who was in a military and considered a hero, and that was my way in my avenue into spaces. And it took me a long time for me to finally get to that point where I was like, oh no, there's some things that are still here. There's still some emotional and mental stuff that
I just completely oppressed or didn't realize. And when I finally again, and I'm not trying to push anything on to you, but I'm just my experience was at that point is when I realized, Okay, I think I'm now really starting to embrace this. I think I'm really I think there was a defense mechanism as far as the way I was handling things for a very long time. Now I think I'm really embracing and accepting and your
five years. Man, it's five years. So much of our identities are tied to what we do as a career and our appearance, but so much of what we're conditioned to believe is that we got to have everything figured out right away.
I mean, It starts from our childhood, right, it's like what do you want to be when you grow up?
In like you're like, I'm three, and it just continues, and then of course when you become an adult, it's like have it figured out? And it's like people expect for you and for me and for anybody else that's listening that has had a traumatic experience. You know, when you're aging, you have time to process when you go through something traumatic like we have.
There's no time. It's now. But because of other people's and abilities in.
Some way in the way that they've been conditioned as well, we are just led to believe that we got to have it all figured out and you have to, you know, bounce back and be this person. But it's not really for yourself. It's for everyone one else's comfort. And it took me a long time to realize that, and so I'm always telling people. I was like, listen, if it makes people uncomfortable, you know why you go through your grieving process, which is very different for everybody, that's not
your problem. That's, if anything, an opportunity for them to identify why this triggers me so much. Every time Rebecca talks about this or JR. Talks about this like that's that's for your journey. My journey is to just kind of be present every day and feel like what I can potentially take away from this experience, but just give yourself grace. Man, Like I think first and foremost, I'm
listening to your story. I'm sure like a lot of people are going to be listening to this episode, and I'm just like, dude, she's bad ass, she's kicking ass, She's doing a lot of amazing things. And just because you're not in this space of where you're sharing your story on that Instagram account that you don't have or in that journal, you're doing it in a way that is very important, and that's with your team, that's what people you work with, and that is something that you
can't overlook. Just because you're not doing it on this scale like anybody else doesn't necessarily mean that you're not taking something away from this experience and then utilizing that lesson to then help other people as they go through these life situations or whatever. But not that you and I ever thought that we wanted to be part of a community where we ever use the word traumatic or
trauma or you know, life alterin. Those are key words that we never assumed would be part of our Google searches or titles that people want to put over our heads. At the end of the day, man, like I tell you this, like I'm proud. I'm like, I'm at that point now where I'm twenty years in and I'm like, you know what, Yeah, I've been through some shit and I'm proud that I've been through some shit and it was hard, and my people we got through it.
And luckily for you, you have a you know, a beautiful family that is with you. And I listen to you and I.
Hear somebody and I see somebody that I believe is a one hundred percent and someone that is a force to be reckoned with. And I think that you're still in the early stages of this whole thing, and I think you're going to do so many more incredible things because I just feel it.
I feel it in you, and you just you will always be that entrepreneur.
But your entrepreneurship is now going to have so much more weight to it than it did before because you've lived it.
You you and your family have been through it.
So like one of the things I wanted to interject the Rebecca is that I think, you know, it sounds like, you know, in your past, people kind of put a lot of pressure on you to share the story, like, oh, you have to journal it or you have to instagram it so publicly, and you're saying, nah, I don't want to do that. I want to get my meaning through
something else, you know. But the irony is that you're now talking to hundreds of millions of people happy to slab podcast, and so, you know what is I'm curious what that feels like. Is a first step, you know, to share your story, like, you know, is that kind of a step towards thinking about it? Did it just kind of feel natural since this was such a part of your journey, Like it does kind of feel like you're sharing now, and so I'm curious what that feels like.
Yeah, you know, I was actually driving with my husband.
We went He still works in Africa often and so he travels back to East Africa a lot. I went back for my first time in May since the accident. So it's now July, so about six weeks ago. And it was weird, right because it was like I'm back in this place that I also realized I was avoiding and had lived in for ten years. And so him and I were having a conversation and we're just talking about how people process trauma, and he made a comment, Yeah,
you haven't talked about it publicly. I think there's just a lot of pressure in our generation to get out there and like turn it into some sort of Instagram personality or become an advocate.
And I said, well, actually, guess what.
Lorie Santos asked me to share my story on the Happiness Lab and he was like, no way, that's your favorite podcast, and so I was like yeah, and I said, you know, I finally feel ready to share what happened because I actually know, and you know, this is a little bit different than your experience, JR. I have come out of it five years later, and no one looking at me can tell that this happened.
I can.
I can look in the mirror and I know that, like I had.
Extensive nerve damage to my face, right so, like from my eyes upward, nothing moves anymore.
It's all just kind of stuck in place.
And I know that a lot about my face is different, but particularly meeting new people, no one knows what happened, and so it's it's an interesting it's a different place to be because people don't ask unless they get close enough and they say, wow, that's a really big scar that goes through your eye, like what happened? And oftentimes people don't, you know, I can tell they're looking at it,
but they don't necessarily mention it. But I do, like I do know now that like one of the things that mattered at the time was like, is this going to affect my career? Is this going to affect you know, the goal I had for myself before this happened. And I know the answer is no, it did. Not only did it not affected, it accelerated it. I was able to take some really tough times and channel that into understanding how to support people in a really productive way.
And then the other big thing, which you know, was so transformational to hear you kind of grapple with the same thing, is am I ever going to look the same And the answer is not one hundred percent? But yeah, I look pretty normal. And then the third thing I've had to deal with is am I ever going to be.
Able to see in the same way again?
Because I did have pretty extensive damage to my left eye, and I recently had a surgery and was able to get a correct prescription for prism glasses that kind of evens everything out, and so now when I wear glasses, I do see pretty normal. The larger challenge I have is that there's just so many kind of residual, tiny little broken bones in my faith that sometimes I can't
wear the glasses all the time. But those were kind of the three things, and I feel ready to talk about it because I do know the answers to all those questions. And I think what I learned in this process is that not knowing answers or having control over answers is really challenging for me. But at least now I don't have that mystery of googling like how do people look after and I suck it implant.
But I don't know if you did the same thing at all.
But it was like a little bit of internal torture, which Laura you have talked about on your podcast not doing so yeah.
Yeah, you know, for for me, I look at, you know, my my facial scarring and a lot of the procedures that I've had, you know, I had a lot of you know, if I've had a lot of facelifts and the burns.
When it does, it contracts the skin and so it kind of tightens it.
So I'm like, man, I got like permanent facelifts botox for the rest of my life.
Like that to me is a comfort thing with my nerve damage. It's like, great, you'll never have to get botox.
And at the time, I was like, but I want my forehead to move, And now five years later, like as I'm approaching my late thirties, I'm like.
It's like kind of nice that my forehead does.
Yeah.
Yeah, you're listening to what the blessings findings exactly, this classic happiness research here finding the blessings.
And the you know, the bad situation.
Yeah, knowing what JR And Rebecca have been through, it's amazing they can still laugh and joke about their life altering injuries. But it totally fits with what the science shows that we humans do have a remarkable ability to deal with even the most awful of events, finding meaning, value, and yes, even humor in them. When we returned from the break, we'll hear more about the science of the
post traumatic growth that both JR. And Rebecca experienced and find out how they both dealt with being stared at in public.
I know you're curious, I know you want to know. I know you're looking, and so I'll just feel like, Hi, how are you doing?
The Happiness Lab will be right back. Rebecca Kuduru says she probably wouldn't have been comfortable sharing her story with us if the scar is caused by her car crash hadn't been smoothed away by so many pioneering medical treatments. When I first met her in person, I had no idea what she'd been through, But JR. Martinez faced a very different set of circumstances.
With the three of us right now, walked into a room, Immediately, all the eyeballs are going to go to me, just because of the curiosity of like, who is that? What happened to him? He's clearly been through something. What happened and what was it? And let's look at that scarring? Wow that Like it's just the natural curiosity. Early in my recovery, you developed this ability to understand when people
are looking at you. Oh, like like you just all of a sudden, now you just kind of look over You're like, yeah, I caught you, Like I know you're looking at me, and so what then I started to do because people don't have the skills and the ability to come up and actually say I'm sorry, I'm just.
Curious, or that's garn above your eye, Rebecca, what is that?
Or what happened? Or people aren't going to do that because they don't know one is that going to trigger you? They don't know if they should ask that question. There's just so many different things, and so what I took it as I'm going to now use that as an opportunity to just sort of educate you. You know, I know you're curious, I know you want to know. I know you're looking, and so I'll just feel like.
Hi, how are you doing? Hey, what's up? What's your name.
I've actually been working with my daughter on this.
She got very into watching like Shark Week on Discovery Channel and saw what it looks like to have, you know, an amputation, and she calls it robot legs when some one has its like a prosthetic for their leg. And she's seen people in the supermarket and I can tell she turns and she starts whispering, and I'm always like, you know, why don't you ask it's okay to ask, and she'll go up and she'll say, you know, did
you get bit by a shark? It tends to be her kind of thing, and people are really open about talking about it for the most part. You know, I've gone through that experience. Like for me, it was like my eye was kind of just gone. It had fallen into my sinus cavity, and now it's back. It took two surgeries to get it back to where it was and two different implants, but it was weirder to have people look at you, and especially kids. I think it's a really good place to kind of coach them through.
It's okay to be curious, and there's a way to be polite about it, and so that's a big thing. I've also worked with her on having gone through that experience because I know exactly what you're talking about. I still, you know, my eyes are now in different locations. I've always I was born with two different color eyes, so
I have one brown eye and one green eye. So I always had experiences where I could catch someone looking back and forth and they would stop and they would say, do you know, And I would say that I have two different color eyes. We're going to say that, and so people say it now too. But I have two different shaped eyes now, and my eyes are at two
different levels. You know, It's weird that someone would feel totally okay, like stopping midcent and pointing out something that is still different about the way you look, but really kind of beat around the bush when it comes to what is likely a transformational event.
So I've been working with her on that as well.
That's awesome.
I find it more as an exercise for me to take the power away or take the attention away from this thing that's obvious to both of us. And I'm going to more reroute the conversation to connect as a human being. And so if I see Laurie coming up to me and she's, you know, kind of just looking at me, I know, I'm like, oh, so, where are you from, Laurie? What do you do get you comfortable with me? And then from there it'll come up at
some natural, organic way. But until then, let's just connect as people and I'm going to guide you through this process. I'm going to remind you that I'm still a person first and foremost, and just sort of remove all the trauma and tragic stuff, yep.
And I think that this is you know, this is one of the reasons I love both of your stories is that this highlights a really important feature of post traumatic growth, is that people experience more empathy, more kind of self compassion and grace for themselves, but also more empathy for other people, right, even when other people are doing stupid stuff like you know, like pointing at your
scars and things like that. And so, Rebecca, I'm curious, you know, is this something you've experienced in your own life where in a very odd way this wound up connecting you with other people totally?
I mean, JR.
When you first came on, you said give yourself grace. I would say, I am so much nicer around myself. So I used to have this thing about reading fiction that it was like, if I was reading fiction, I wasn't using my time productively. I could be using that time to read nonfiction and maybe I could learn something from it. You know, I actually realized that I don't like reading nonfiction. Now I listen to audiobooks when I walk and like, that's fine. You have an episode about
getting your email and box down to zero. I am so good about walking away and I work for a Jewish organization right now, and so we get done at three on Fridays because of Shabbat, and I'm like, you know, I'm not going to sit on my computer and respond to those emails at three o'clock on a Friday.
Yeah, And this I think that's with Another thing that you know we've learned from post traumatic growth is that it kind of allows you to set your priorities a little bit better, right, Yeah, And for me, some of that is also pausing.
It's not like I'm going to get moving on the things that really matter. It's I'm going to take time to stop and appreciate what I have.
And it's also like what I have found, and I think you're in that same position, Rebecca, there's this pressure of expecting me to on some level, like to share and talk a lot.
I mean even now when I get brought in to either be on a podcast or to speak at an event, or people like can you talk about that day? Can you talk about what happened? And so what I have discovered is I also when you talk about the pause, for me, it's incredibly important to protect my own energy and what that means is to stop and if I feel like, hey, I give so much of myself to other people, I need to stop for a second and
actually take care of myself. I just need to disconnect for a second and not have to express so much. I'm going to allow myself to sort of be selfish in that way.
Which is good.
And I think this gets to yet another maybe a final benefit that we know comes from trauma and something that we see in post traumatic growth, which is that people self report like knowing themselves better, like knowing their limitations better, knowing their potential better, but also kind of knowing a little bit more what they need and prioritizing it. Rebecca, is that something you kind of experienced after this recovery process.
Too, Yeah, it's twofold. It's knowing what I need.
I really like that idea of kind of protecting my energy. I also learned how much I can actually take on, which I think is interesting. It was like, as much as I hate that trope that people say, like you're never given more than you can handle, there was a lot of trauma that I overcame. I lost my younger brother when I was five and a half. I think you know, when you're exposed to trauma pretty regularly, you build up a resilience to it.
And I'm not saying that that's good.
That trauma shouldn't affect you, but kind of building up in small pieces and then having this huge thing happen. Maybe I would even say it instill the self confidence in me. Wow, if you can come through that, you can really handle a lot. So there's a really fine balance that needs to be reached between really understanding that you've pushed physically and emotionally yourself to your limit and that you know you can overcome a lot, and still learning to protect that and enjoy.
What you have.
You know, one of the things that is important for me when people want me to talk about my experience, I like to sort of take people back to my childhood because the reason I like to bring people along that timeline is not to just fill the time forty five minutes to an hour of me just talking about my life and me, me, me. It's more of to give people contact and give people an understanding that resiliency in me. Overcoming this wasn't something just all of a
sudden I just developed. If you look at my life, I have been exercising this muscle. I have been preparing
myself for this very thing. And you know, I'm sorry for lost of your brother, but I'm glad you shared that because I think it's important for the listeners to understand, Oh, Rebecca has been through some stuff prior to this, right, Because they may look at you and say, look at it, a beautiful you know, woman who's probably had great life and great success and has everything handed to her, and blah blah blah blah blah. Our minds create these narratives
that are most of the time untrue. But when you talk about what your family experienced when you were a child, and I know there's a great deal of healing that still is ongoing despite how long that has been, it allows people, the listeners and the viewers to understand that, oh, this is a muscle that was already activated from a young age, whether you wanted it to be or not,
and of course you didn't want it to be. But all of us are having these things that are happening over the course of our lives that are just activating the different muscle and preparing us. So when we come into that crossroads where there is another thing, that's where we have to pause.
Oh, we've been through some things.
I'm a pretty badass person that has overcome a lot of shit, Like I think I got this.
And I think the other thing is that you don't just gain self confidence right when people hear your stories, it can help them gain confidence depending on what they're going through. You know, Rebeca, this is why you're on the show Todays. You heard Jr's story and that kind of gave you confidence, and so JR. I'm curious, like, what does it feel like to be thanked for sharing your badassery and kind of helping other people get bad ass?
Like is this the first time you've been thanked you for sharing your story?
Do you hear it a lot or you know it happens. I wouldn't say frequently, but it has happened. But I've also had these experiences where, you know where I live in Austin, and you know, I was at a Whole Foods I don't know, three months ago, and I'm just playing with my son and you know, and just goofing off and as we paid, and I could tell that there was this older man that was like watching me and he was a customer. So I was, you know, I was like, I don't know, you know, maybe you recognize.
I don't know, right, you never know where it's coming from. And so as we started the walk out of the store, I'm walking up ahead of my family holding my son and the man standing at the door, and I looked at him and I said, how you doing, and he, you know, looked at me. He says, I want to tell you something. I recently had this accident. And he pointed down on his leg and I looked down and
his legs all bandaged up. He said, this is the first time I'm out of the house, he said, And I was here and I was like, I can't be here.
I'm going home.
He said, I saw you, and I saw you smile, and I saw you carrying on. He's like, and then I was like, well, if that dude could do it, like I think I could do it. Honestly, we turn into like a fifteen minute conversation similar to what we're having here, and I just said, hey, man, listen, it takes it, you know, bait steps and give yourself grace, that whole sort of same sentiment. And I walked away and I just, you know, and it sort of goes
back to your question, Laurie. But it's like, I'm just living my life as you are, Rebecca, doing and putting out into the world what we believe and what is important to us. And I always just feel and believe that it's going to hit the right people at the right time. Like for whatever reason, as you mentioned that algorithm found ye, this podcast came into you know, your presence, and you were like, I should tune in for whatever reason.
For me, it turns out this is one of those reminders that what I am, what I personally, and I want to speak for myself what I am doing and what I have done, and my willingness to sit down with Laurie three years, four years ago, you know, and have this conversation, it's all worth it, totally. It's I know someone's going to come in contact with you one day, Rebecca and say, hey, I just want you to know I heard your story.
And for me, it makes me feel like I'm I'm honored.
I truly am selfishly, I'm honored that I'm able to be a very small part of your journey. And but I know that you're well on your way to do the same thing for other people. And I know you've already done it, and I think the biggest person you're doing it with is not only yourself, but I think also your your daughter, Like I think that is incredible for her to have someone like yourself who has been through a lot and is navigating it the way you are and you're still in the early stages and you're
you know, like, I think that's a beautiful thing. And so whatever you do, get an Instagram account, like whenever, if you ever.
Decide to do this point, I don't know at this point about.
I'm just saying unless saying it has to be you know, when we log off or you know, the end of this year. But whenever you do, I hope that you look me up and you know, you say, hey, I want to friend this guy, because I would love to keep up with where you are and to find out if you ever pick up that really cool pen and start to kind of write some stuff.
Down and I'm telling you it's it's and you know and and that and that's how it happens, right, you know.
I appreciate you kind of encourage me to not throw away the pen and the journal, but to still kind of pull onto it. One of the big things for me that I experienced was what it was like to go through as a woman in a developing countries healthcare system.
And I'm a white woman and it was a majority black country, and I have access to insurance and I have access to financial resources that people couldn't even dream of, and it didn't it didn't really make a difference in terms of the outcome, and that for me having you know, the organization that I started in Uganda was a woman's empowerment organization, and I really felt like I've already spent the last you know, seven years trying to give a
voice to traditionally marginalized group of women and really working and making a priority to work with them, not come up with ideas and implement for them.
But that was where I felt.
Pressure, is like should I stand up and actually share The only reason I survived is because my husband had the education and the money to walk across the street to a pharmacy and buy those materials. And that's where I felt pressure and also knew I am not emotionally ready to stand up and be the face, particularly when I didn't even have a face that I could recognize for women globally yet and I appreciate the encouragement that maybe one day I'll get there.
You said yet yet Yep.
Well, as I said, I think another thing to remember about trauma and post traumatic growth is that you know it sounds when you say the term postgragumatic growth that it happens in an instant and then it's done. But like all psychological phenomena, it's a journey, and what you feel comfortable with today is going to look totally different than what you feel comfortable with months from now, years from now, and so on. But I'm happy that I caught you at a time where you were comfortable sharing
your story on the Happiness Lads. I'm sure yeah, so positively affects so many people.
So thank you so much. Yeah, I'm very excited. Thank you so much.
As one keep kicking ass, Rebecca.
It was humbling to hear the impact that listening to the Happiness Lab had had on Rebecca. The show we made with j R. Martinez back in twenty nineteen in our very first season remains one of my favorite episodes ever. It's such a fun ride that I decided to re release that episode in this feed for you to revisit. And after that we'll have one other listener story to share.
I'll travel to a New England town where thirteen women have set up a club dedicated to staging fun interventions or fun inventions, and we'll learn that even the host of this podcast can still use a little more fun in her life. Hannah Montana, Oh, Biley Syrres, Yes, Oh Hot, Ryan Gosling, Brad pitt Let me in Magic, Mike