You're about to hear a conversation between myself and my guess ken drug. What a beautiful man. He's made an impact on so many levels on so many people. He's journey through his own tragic loss, and at age 73. He says that he is peaking. And he has an almost poetic way with words So I'll leave you with 2 things he said that stood out to me. First, we need to take our feet off of our throats and put our hands on our hearts. In other words, self compassion is everything.
And this 1 I like to, paradox is the highest form of understanding. There's a lot more where that came from in this episode. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed hosting it, enjoy. Welcome to Loves everyday radius. A podcast brought to you by the Hoffman Institute. My name is Sharon Moore, and I'm 1 of your hosts.
And on this podcast, we talked to hoffman graduates about how their courageous journey inward impacted their personal lives, but also how it impacted their community and the world at large. So tune in and listen in and hear how our graduates authentic selves how their love how their spirits are making a positive impact on our world today. In other words, get to know Their loves everyday radius. Alright. Ken. Welcome to the show. Good to be with you, Sharon? So I wanna start with this.
You are such a person who has been here for the evolution of others and yourself your entire adult life. But I'm curious At what point in your life did you know, you were driven by being of service to others? You know? As we all look back across the landscape of of our lives and including the the part where we're were little kids, for me, I I look back to the... Being 2 years old, and I look back to being a 2 year old in the room.
And noticing and sensing and feeling what was happening in my family and with my family members between my family members. And it wasn't that I was driven. There's almost not a word for what we go through when we're that old when we're 2 years old. And we sense for the first time that people are in some degree of distress that they're not connecting that they're not connected to themselves or they're only connected there to anger or frustration or
fear. And I think, back there then, I became, what I I guess, the antidote to what was happening in the room, that lighten it up, that connected people better to each other, that connected people to their hearts a little bit more and I began to learn how to do that. Wow. And was this a thread that happened? For the rest of your life, starting with pre cognitive 2 years old all the way to the rest of your life? I think so. And I think there were times where I went deep,
and I did the deep dives. Those are usually times of, you know, pain in my own life or celebration and success. In my own life. And then there were times where I kinda skate. Do you know those times in our life, where we kinda go into a little bit of a coma and we skate a little bit. We numb a little bit just to go through what we're going through just to get through it. So I think It's all those things. Are you hearing a dog in the background? Because, my dog jack wants to join the
conversation, Jack? Oh, now I hear Jack. Hey, Jack. Yeah. Jack is inspired by what I'm telling him and he's trying to tell me that, you know, dogs go through something like that too, Can. But what is... It's not a bark I'm hearing. What am I hearing? No. No. No. It's it's it's his way of talking. You know, and he could either be saying, I'm thirsty, or I really like what you're saying and I'm resonating with it or he could be saying, I really got a pee. You know, and you're... Here you are in
a podcast and I've got a pee. Yeah. What's up with that, Dad? Yeah. Yeah. So it could be any 1 of those things. And so this whole, by the way, this antidote this this ability to lighten things up, does this extend to animals as well for you? Speaking of Jack? Yeah. I think from an early age, there were critters. I'm... I was very blessed to have critters in my life at a very young age. And to connect with them, you know, they were
my buddies. They'd run out and play, they'd cry like this, and I'd wanna say, Jack, either come over here and tell me what you need or be quiet now because I'm on a podcast. Yes. Yes. So I look at him and he cries even more. It's like, you know, I wish you could talk dog. I wish you were the dog whisperer, but I think yeah. I think from an early age, I connected with my critters, but they didn't whine as much as Jack as wanting right now. I'm gonna guess Jack is saying, I wish
I could talk right now. Yeah. Yeah. He's saying, please tell people. Look, he says, look, you're talking to the Hoffman. Process people. You know, these are people who are open. Their hearts are open. Their minds are open, their spirits are open, Please tell them this if they have a pet, and their pet is whining. Try to listen for what they're saying. They're not just complaining they're not just trying to take up space. You know, they're really trying to tell you
something and listen for what it is. Ps. When will we have a hoffman process for dogs says Jack. I... Yeah. There you go. Or we get to or we get to process, what it was like, you know, it it's interesting because 1 of the most profound moments I ever had in a process of any kind. Was after 09:11 with about 65 people in the room who had just watched somebody they love being inc in the World Trade center. And we sat down, and we, you know, this is about the the fourth week.
And we had already talked extensively about you know, my husband was on the 90 ninth floor. My wife was on the 50 sixth floor, and and I walked into the room. My lit candle the middle room, and I said, Tonight, we're gonna talk about our favorite cookie as a child. What was your favorite cookie as a child. And for an hour and a half that
night, that's all we talked about. And sometimes, if if we walked into a room and said, let's talk about our most profound moments of connection with the pet or loss with the pet that we loved. Our little 4 legged children or or sibling or whatever. Talk about that experience. People can go very, very deep into what that was like and what that has to do with them. So, Jack has now settled down. He he found his way to the water So that's what he wanted. You predicted that. And so did your
professional career start? In a traditional psychotherapy, you know, talk therapy kind of setting? Completely not. My career started with times that I volunteered, things I did in high school, things that I participated in that connected me to other people when I started college, I joined the program, helping students from, underserved neighborhoods and Harlem Beverage s and lower bronx who were failing high school and wanting to go on to college.
And I ended up, this was at a time in history, the core of the civil rights movement So I ended up becoming part of that movement. Marching on Washington, working with groups of young black people, who had... Were full of rage and objection and awareness and not quite knowing where to constructively channel it. So that's that's where my mental health career started, and it evolved in a very in in a way that it was more social psychology. I was very concerned about again, what was
happening in the room. But now the room was this country and it was what this country was representing around the world and it was about social justice and equality, and how we show up as individuals as people to meet the challenges of our time. So I evolved into my career in psychology and getting my finishing my degrees and getting my doctorate and then you know, at the time, I had started, there was something awakening in the culture, women's.
Support groups, women's studies programs were going up like fast food restaurants all the country. And I was asking the question, What lurk in the hearts and souls of us guys. God, what's... You know, I know what basic training has been is, but as a guy. You know, to feel is to fail, and we try to pose and posture as somebody who has it together, you know, the emotional awakening in men is a whole
another issue in conversation. But I had started men's groups, and I had started to join with other men who wanted to really talk about and it's kind of a pure education peer support network to talk about our experiences guys. What have we gone through growing up with our dads? What about our relationship with our dads? What do we how do we wanna to really connect? With the women in our lives, or with the men in our lives.
And how we're we were gonna fashion this time in our lives to groom ourselves into a career, what was that about? What does work since many of... For many of us, our fathers the central organizing principle their life was work.
So there were all these questions that ran deep in us, and we started men's groups, and I started giving men's work shops and traveling around the country after I wrote my doctor thesis on the psychology of men and from there Rot what ended up being the best selling book called the secrets men keep and ended up on Oprah with big hair and the Phil Don show and God knows a thousand other shows, and my first my first kind of coming out with the work, my my life's work, in this case,
the psychology of men. But that's where it started. And so as someone who's now spent decades, it sounds like starting with social justice and civil rights and then having progressed into issues of men having had both of those and now looking back decades later. How do you think we've done as as humanity as people? You know, Sharon. I I gave a workshop a couple of weeks ago, about for a group of people who have been doing this for 30, 40, 50 years.
And the first thing I said was, have we all learned that some things take a lot longer to change the personal transformation, which we thought was a weekend or a 1 week or a month experience or was gonna take the rest of the year is something that we are works in progress and that some of the deep work that we have to do is is lifetime work. It's something are there are things that are gonna be bubbling up and things that are gonna be challenging us for decades of our lives. And that's okay.
And that's okay. There, you know, each season of life presents us with challenges and opportunities to become the better version of ourselves or to fa or to smooth out rough edges In each season, we are challenged to summon. Found awareness and strength, and courage and humility. And 1 of those points of humility is realizing, boy, there are some things that I thought I had handled and and I'm gonna need to continue to cultivate
all those things in me. You know, 1 of my slogan the last couple of years has been take your foot off your throat and put your hand on your heart, lean away from harsh stuff criticism into kindness and self compassion. So realizing that, if I cultivate that practice of self compassion, you know, which is something that that the process teaches so elegantly and so beautifully. But if I continue to cultivate that, That's all I need to continue to do. There's no goal line.
There's no... I've... I'm all done. I'm all finished. I'm home free. That can be an illusion that can actually be an inhibiting factor if we if we shame ourselves and grade ourselves and judge ourselves as failing because we still have more work to do. Given your kind of love of or beginnings in the social cycle, the kind of collective?
How would you define the parallel of, you know, this idea of personal transformation is a work in progress or it takes a lifetime or sometimes more than a lifetime. How does that translate? That seems to me as an individual journey, How is that on a collective or social level? Well, I think it's really similar. You know, how many of us in the last?
Year or 2 or 3 or 4 have been heart sick because we we saw what was sanctioned whether it was the anti antisemitism or the racism or the misogyny or things that that emerged that came back to the surface through me too, we got to see or through George Floyd or through the the attacks and schools and in Synagogue and mosques, that we got to see out, things that we had hoped. We were further along with
it was heartbreaking. It's like, my god, some of this stuff for some people or for a lot of people. Has been sitting hidden dormant under the surface under the skin and it's been now been licensed.
It's been out. There's been a cultural permission for people to say how they're feeling what they believe what the narratives are what their, conscious biases are and to blur that stuff out and I think there's been a tremendous amount of despair and discourage for a lot of people who thought we were further down the road. We were further along than we really are. And with it comes the awareness that we have a lot more work to do.
Not only individually in terms of personal transformation, but in terms of our social transformation, in terms of the way we carry judgment and bias and resentment and hatred and fear. Yeah. I'm I'm struck by... I... I'm not finding the right word. Maybe it's perseverance or openness, but I'm struck by imagining. I'm I'm almost 50. You've got couple decades on me. I'm struck by imagining you still seeing and witnessing these things
couple and going in wholeheartedly. I know that you get called into the synagogue post traumatic events and 09:11 as you brought up and it doesn't seem like you're just disappointed with humanity. It feels like you are still per. Here's how I show up. Here's how we're gonna help every little bit is going to elevate the vibration of our species. At least this is my read on you. Hope loves company. After another incident after 09:11, a gentleman walked into a room of about
250 people. We have been doing a day long workshop after 09:11, and he came in to get his wife and he, and when somebody invited him into the room. He was just there to pick her up after and he said, nah, this... I know how this crap works, misery loves company. And a voice came from the back of the room and somebody said no, sir. Hope loves company. And there's there is a magic and a miracle And anybody who's experienced the Hoffman process knows what this is.
Anybody who has done deep work in an honest and self compassionate way and in a courageous way knows that it is possible. The change is possible that taking the high road and choosing the high road is possible. That summon newfound strength an awareness and waking up and awakening out of the coma or the dull that sometimes we live in. Is possible, and it creates a really a world of possibility. And we begin to see that our best possible future is ahead of us
and that it's gonna take work. So for me, it's the work ethic It's being inspired to believe and give it a chance, give peace a chance, give ourselves a second chance, even when we've suffered horrible setbacks and losses. And it's that resilient spirit And I'm not talking about resilience as some superficial, oh, the glass is half full or, you know, resilience is, you know, bouncing back, well, we don't bounce. But organically within us, we have a yes. We have courage. We have faith.
We have the capacity to endure. The setbacks, the ad universities, the losses in our lives to allow what's organically growing and wants to aspire and ascend and rise up out of the ashes of our broken dreams or a broken heart to allow that to happen. Hope loves company, and even greater than hope is beginning to take steps forward even 1 breath at a time, taking those steps forward that allow us to see out out of the darkest, most daunting dark places are dark night of the souls.
To arise out of that and to see the possibility if we're just willing to work at it, keep the faith. I know you help others do this, but you yourself have had to do this. Can you tell us about your own strength and courage and resilience and the time in your life? You know, Sharon, the the reason why I think they stuck me in front of some of the first town hall meetings after 09:11, and I was asked to meet with the
Sandy Hook families, and the... I've had an opportunity in the privilege of working with so many people who went through the most horrific tragedies in their lives. Is because I'm real about it. And for me that real starts with my own experience. It starts with me, you know, there's a there's a great thing that happened to be, you know, 1 of the the most profound awareness is is 1 I had. At the Hoffman process.
You know, I got a call from a friend who saw me in utter choice inc uncontrollable despair after the death of my oldest daughter, who died while she was studying abroad. So I'm 1 of those parents who's got... Whose phone rang in the middle of the night to give me the worst possible news about what most people consider to be the worst possible loss. The death of 1 of our children. And I was totally inc uncontrollable
and broken. I was decimated. My life in my future had been obliterated as my daughter's life had been lost to her. And to me and to her sister and to her mother and to all the people that loved her. And I think my journey and my being real about being a work in progress. My being real and telling people, that I walk with a limp in my heart. My being real and telling people that there were days the best I could do was to stay in bed that I was absolutely shattered and broken.
But to also share As I did with 1 be father. I started a nonprofit foundation after my daughter died in her name, the gender drug foundation. And when a grieving father came and telling me about the death of his daughter. She had been raped and murdered. He said, I don't want any of your psychological Bs, and don't give me any religious Bs. He said just give me Just give me the truth. Somebody told me that I should speak with you and then you'd be straight, you talk straight to me.
He said, just tell me. I'm screwed aren't I, and he didn't use the word screwed by the way. I just don't want to insult anybody listening. And I looked him square in the eyes, and I said, your screwed. And for the first time since his daughter had been murdered, he cried. And we sat together, and we sat together for an hour, and mostly it was just sitting together. Talking about our daughters. And at the end of the conversation, I said, I have only given you half of the truth.
If I told you the rest, you choke me and throw me to the ground, and I'm not gonna tell you 6 months from now we'll have another conversation. He said, is I don't even see you again, you know, I'm not coming back here in 6 months? I want the other half right now, and I said, okay. You're not screwed. Your screwed and, you're not screwed. Paradox is the highest form of understanding what we go through in a loss. And when we love somebody as much as we love our own life.
You're gonna have the opportunity to create meaning in your life to honor your daughter in the way you live on not only your daughter who passed your angel daughter, but your Earth daughter. You're gonna get to go forward. And to fight your way back into life and to use the rest of your days to create meaning and purpose, and value in a way that your daughter is both of them would be proud of you.
And I share that that is what I had done, and I even shared with him, but I consider the 6 honoring. The 6 honoring after we've suffered a devastating tragic loss. And when I shared that with him he said, well at least you've given me a road roadmap. And I don't I don't have to get into the 6 honoring here, but it's it's, you know, it's on my website, and it's I've actually recorded all that and anybody who
might find... Wanna find their way over there can go over to my website or we can share it later. I like what you just said, paradox. Would you say paradox is the highest form of understanding? Is the highest form. You know, people, I wear if if you could see me now, I wear a necklace. It's a necklace with this with the this moons stone of India. And around the stone is in carved of the word Hi. It's a pal drum. It's spelled the same way in both directions. And it's the hebrew word for I am
here. Here I am. And people ask me how I'm doing, and I tell them my daughter is gone. And my daughter is right here, she's never left my side. When her body returned from India, I held her body, and she was no longer there. She was absolutely gone. But my daughter has truly never left my side. 1 of the 6 honoring is to cultivate a spiritual relationship. With those who we've lost who we love. And for me, that spiritual relationship is made up of the love that never dies.
And I expressed that love, and I feel my daughter's love every day. Am I delusional? Should I be def distraught by the thought police? Am I gonna be accused of learning that at Hoffman? You know? I don't I don't care. It's what I... We all bet our faith
in something. Right? Or nothing? I choose to believe that if there's a remote possibility, I don't begin to understand the true nature of life or death, But if there's a remote possibility that my daughter hears and I love you that I speak in the night, or an a a bursting, I love you that I speak, waking up in the morning or that I feel her love close, feel her touch saying daddy, I love you. Or daddy, you can't wear that shirt. Dad throw that shirt out. I hate it.
Whatever it is. I give myself that gift to allow myself to feel that love that never dies. But in hoffman, I went through in this may be interesting to people who are listening who gone through the process. But I had a truly transformational moment at Hoffman. After Jenna died, I was so broken, and the broken ness turned started turning into anger and rage I would rail. I'd get into the car, and I'd make sounds that scared me.
And that's when a friend turned to me and said, why don't you take a week There's this wonderful process and you go up to Northern California, and you take a week, and I think it would really, really be helpful to you. If you found a place where it was safe to express everything you're feeling. So what did I do? I called up? And I ended up speaking to ras? This is many years ago, by the way.
And I said, ras, I may a lot different... I imagine you have a lot of different people that come to this program for different reasons, but I'm absolutely broken. And I told him what happened I said, would you stay with me I can afford to come to a process where somebody gonna say, oh, well, you know, the glass is half full or here's here's somebody go talk to somebody or whatever. I need you to walk every step of the way with me, and he promised he would and he did.
And in the middle of my process, I was railing. I decided I was gonna spit in the face of god. How dare God take my daughter. My daughter died on his watch. Or her watch, and I expressed several hours till I had no voice left. And the last thing that I raged at God was, let's kill 1 of your children and see how you like it. And as soon as I said that. I could visualize, I could imagine a tear in the eye of god.
I had vent every ounce of my rage of my helpless, of my anger, And for the first time in my life, I could see that God was not the puppet here that I had constructed him to be. I had made all these attribution of a higher power and forces that were stronger and bigger than me. Operating in the universe that there were some that God was a puppet here watching over me and my daughter and in every moment in every person. In some way. And I realized that God
was crying with me. God was the force of love. God was the force of connection God was the force of all things good. And for the first moment, that was the first moment, I began to feel less alone. I had released my anger and rage, and I felt like, not only did I have forces that were bigger than me with me on my side supporting me, helping me breathe life back into my life, But I was not alone and there were other people that wanted to support me and I could accept their love and assurances.
So it was a really pivotal moment in my life. And when you said, you know, if you asked me, Ken, what was 1 of the highlights of going to the process and being in the process, and I've told Ras this many times. It was that moment it was that moment. It was that moment of revelation, and it it helped me turn a corner and begin a long healing process. Wow. Just as a teacher, you witness people having very internal, but life changing experiences, but I don't always get to know what's happening.
And so hearing stories like this, being the person who has held the space. I know exactly the moment you speak of and knowing what happened for you. Wow. Well, it was the my gratitude. And, you know, and Ras was kind enough and smart enough and loving enough to say, you are work in progress. This is beginning of something you're gonna need to cultivate.
And I know it is so important for all of us, hoffman nights for everybody in our tribe to keep their hand on their heart and keep cultivating best possible future in that healing way that often awakens in the process. And just to make sure we keep our hands in our heart and never our foot on our throat telling us we failed. What's wrong? Didn't you learn anything there or didn't you get it or No. Excuse me.
We go to the process to awaken to find a safe place to begin to do a lot of the work that continues for maybe if the rest of our lives, and that's the gift that's the gift of the process as much as anything. Did your healing work for others change after this loss tragic loss that you experienced? And once you got on the journey of healing. How did that impact your your practice, your your work, your purpose. Well, my work was pretty you know, atypical and
unconventional to begin with. I mean, don't get me wrong. I I gave keynote at the American Psychological Association blah blah blah. But my work was pretty unconventional to begin with. I had a lot of critical thoughts and feelings about about traditional psychology.
I felt for 1 thing that positive thinking could be as destructive and harmful and wasteful as negative thinking, what people call negative thinking is often, permission to look at are the young parts of ourselves that we're judging to understand that we have these brilliant systems emotional systems that show us the full range of things we're feeling, to try to get us to make good critical decisions that try to get us to honor what we're going through our fears and our dreams and so on,
and that we can pay attention to them without in a judgment free rather than saying, oh, I'm being so negative or you're being so negative. Why don't you be more positive. So I was 1 of the people critical of superficial positive thinking. I love positive thinking, but there's some kinds of positive thinking that that arrests our development when it's used in the judgmental way and
so on. And when it came to grief and loss, I had to un learn most of what I had learned in graduate school and in my training. We don't live in a grief literate world, and we don't prepare therapists and coaches and trainers to be grief literate. I have the honor now of teaching and training young residents in Ucsf Medical school that have formed a psychiatry. And they've got nothing.
They've never sat down and had a a real conversation about the people they're gonna see in emergency rooms, and people who, you know, are surviving a suicide of a loved 1 or people that are considering the end of their own lives we have to learn how we have to become literate is in grief. So I really organically grew and learned as I went, the process was part of it, learning from all the families that I worked with when I started the gender drug center.
From all the parents because we would sit and hud, the program is called families helping families. And it was truly a pure education peer support. Families people who created a safe space to share what they were going through. There was no judgment. There were no should. There was no oh, try this. Do that. No 1 solicit unsolicited advice. Just a free safe space to go through what we were going to through and be honest about it.
And to learn from 1 another, what other people were doing that was helping them. Oh my god. That sounds so great. I'm gonna try it or what we were doing that was really making it making increasing our suffering. What you're drinking a bottle of wine every night? You know, is that really helping? It was a a beautiful environment, and it's been those kinds of support groups which now take place in many places.
They didn't for many years are are allowing people that kind of safety, pure education and peer support, which is a compliment to the therapists who have taken the time to become grief literate, grief sensitive. And are the people that I would refer the somebody who'd had suffered a loss to. Wow, what a what a treat to look back your career and see Really have you moved the needle? What an impact what a legacy? What an honor for
me? It's, you know, it's the gift I've been so blessed in this life, and, you know, people say, you know, haven't you also been cursed. Yes, I have. Thank you. I get to live out the rest of my life even in the happiest most beautiful moments, You know, I'm with my grandsons this week and and trying to visualize what it would be like for them to have their aunt and looking at the tears in my daughter's eyes. As her sister's birthday passes again.
And so bitter sweet, we learned about Bitter sweet that we're blessed we're so fortunate. I'm so fortunate to have had the life that I have had and to be at my peak. I'm peaking. You know, I I turned 73 in a month. And I have never felt more at peace, more integrated of all the experiences I've had in my life, let more emotionally free, less en inc by having to prove or please less fearful, even of death. And so, you know, some of our greatest blessings are ahead, this the subtitle of my of 1 of
my latest books. It's called courageous aging. Your best years ever reimagine. You know, reimagine and talking to our spiritual self and talking to a higher parts of us that are not en en using our imagination to think about being a peace smiling being happier, being more deeply and lovingly connected to the people that matter in our lives. Contributing to the solution side of what's happening in our world in our neighborhoods and our communities.
You know, finding ways to do that even building bridges of understanding with people creating unlikely friendships with people have a different perspective on on, you know, what's going on on a mask or on a vaccine or on whether kids should go to school or any political garbage that we're all having to wade through in a world that is so polarized. It threatens the future of our kids and our grandkids So we have the blessing and the privilege
that we can. I I talk in that book, I talk about leaving a legacy of love. Not of chaos. We have an opportunity for those who are listening who are more in the season of life that I'm in or on their way there. You know, it's the opportunity to pay it forward to think about the blessings and miracles of our life And all the things we've been fortunate enough to do. The games we've been fortunate enough to play in the contributions we've been fortunate
enough to make. The lives and hearts we've been fortunate enough to touch. But to say, I wanna do something in the world that allows my kids and grandkids chick and future generations to have those same opportunities. To breathe air and that's clean and we'll drink water that's clean, but also to be in a world that's not so splinter and fragmented and dangerous. And unfriendly. So we have that opportunity, and that's that's my mission. That's what that's what inspires me every morning waking up.
Well, I will I will just wrap up with my my closing thought, which is I feel very... I don't know what the right word is lucky. I don't know. To to be alive in a time where you were given these gifts this ability to sense, this ability to bring people to connection. This ability to light up a room and help people reach their heart. In... In partnership with the skill of organizing your thoughts, writing them down in an organized fashion like a book or facilitated or
experience or starting it on profits. So you have this these passions and talents that created such an impact on our world. So I guess hats off for you to have paid attention to what you were given to use these gifts, these pat talents, these passions and to do something good with them. Sharon, I thank you as you have as well. I thank you for giving the opportunity.
And I hope that in some small way, I've touched the hearts of the people who listen to this podcast, and I wanna thank you for drawing me out with such inviting questions and such a loving heart. Thank you so much. I I wish I could go on, but thank you, Ken for. Not just being here with us, but for everything that you do in your lifetime. Thank you. Thank you for listening to our podcast My name is Liza and Grass. I'm the Ceo
and President of Hoffman Institute Foundation. And I'm Ras Grass, Hoffman teacher and founder of the Hop to foundation. Our mission is to provide people greater access to the wisdom and power of love. In themselves, in each other and in the world. To find out more, please go to hop institute dot org.