It took me right back to that sweet boy that I talked about earlier, that junior, it was playing, having fun. The room just lit up. Everybody was laughing. And at that point I was like, who am I? Right? Who is this guy? Is this junior? I need to find out more about who Junior is. Welcome everybody. My name is Drew Horning, and this podcast is called Love's Everyday Radius.
It's brought to you by the Hoffman Institute and its stories and anecdotes, it people we interview about their life post process and how it lives in the world. Radiating love. This episode contains graphic descriptions of trauma. Please use your discretion. Hey everybody. Albert Smith, AKA Junior is our guest today. Welcome, junior. Oh, thank you, drew. I'm so, so happy to be here. Uh, we're happy to have you. Would you introduce yourself?
Well, thank you, drew. You know, as you said, you know, my name is Albert Smith Jr. But I prefer to be called Junior. I was, uh, born and raised in, uh, Compton, California. I, I kind of see myself as this kind gentle soul that's kind of navigating my way through, you know, life's transitions, trying to just let life unfold and see what comes next. Um, and see, I work for a technology company in Redlands, California, the senior advisor I have. I live with three cats. I'm single, hint hint,
right? I feel very calm and, and at ease right now. I have a daughter. She's not my biological daughter, but I claim her, you know, and she's like, uh, she's very important and very important part of my life and my life story. And, and probably if I think about it, my greatest teacher, I've learned so much from her. She's a professor and, uh, I've kind of lived a little bit vicariously through her and we had our ups and downs, but that's what life is all about.
Junior. It is, it's great to have you. Thanks for that. I love how you started warm, kind, gentle, maybe deep as well. Did you find during your process that there was a lot of depth to who you are? You know, that was something that unfolded. I gotta look there a little early. When I met Liza waiting, and I, and I got a chance to see the class before me that was leaving and that glow and that love that I was kind of like basting in their love. But I didn't realize that that was only at the end.
I thought that was the, like, that threw off the process. Right? So it was, it was very cool. And I, all that kind of unfolded for me. 'cause I was, I'm a little reserved. I kind of used my smile as a mass to hide, to hide for myself. And towards maybe day two, my authentic smile started to show up and I was able to reattach to that joy that's inside of me. Beautiful. I love the, the distinction between a right road smile and a left road smile. But Junior, where do we start this conversation?
Where would you like to start it? You know, my story would be incomplete if I didn't start with my parents. You know, my parents have been together for almost their whole adult lives, right? They met in the early fifties and Jackson, Mississippi, they married, had two daughters. And this was the fifties. I don't know if you know a whole lot about Mississippi and the South and Jim Crow, you know, the racism, the Klu Klux Klan and all of that,
and all the things they had to do to survive. You know, my dad wanted a better life for his children. So my father and his twin brother and their two best friends jumped in a car, didn't know a soul in California, and they left their families in Mississippi. You know, that's how strong that desire was for a better life. And they, they came to California, you know, they settled in Los Angeles.
They stayed in a room. My dad tells a story, you know, about, uh, he didn't know his way around, so he would get on a bus early in the morning to find construction jobs. And he didn't realize that Southern California at that time was a lot different than Mississippi was. So it's a lot, it's more difficult to navigate. And eventually he brought, you know, my mother and my two sisters, my two older sisters out here, and, and they eventually bought a house in 1962 in Compton, California,
where they still live, by the way. They're still married after all these years, still in the same house. You can still see things that I broke when I was a kid growing up there. And, and I get there as much as I can. You know, so, so Compton is a part of me, right? I really love Compton. It's, they call it the hub city 'cause it's right in the center of Los Angeles County. Compton's about like, you know, 12, 15 miles just south, like of Los Angeles,
right. Which has changed over time. But that's where my story really, you know, begins. And that's where my dad named me after him. In fact, he referred to me, you know, as his namesake. So I was kind of always like in his shadows and in a sense felt like there was a little competition, which I learned later on through the process. You know, my dad's just human, but growing up, he was this life figure that I really try hard to please. Right.
The other part of my story that I really want to share is that even though I'm from a predominantly black family, I grew up in a predominantly black city. Colorism was played a huge part in my life. You know, my mom is light-skinned. My dad is dark-skinned. There's five of us, right? I have a, I'm in a middle child. I don't think my mother's gonna listen to the podcast, but I'll warn her what I'm about to say, right? I felt growing up, right.
It was just my sense that she treated the lighter skin children differently than the darker skin children. So part of that was part of me. And in and. Where did you fit in on that spectrum? Yeah, I, I'm sort of toward like a, if you think about like, right, like a milk chocolate, you know, my brother's more like a white chocolate. You know, my brother, he, he's funny when we growing up, I, and he is a brother that I prayed for because I had three sisters. So I said,
mom, can you guys go make me a brother? I didn't know how babies were made. I just knew that it would come from them somehow. And, and she delivered me a baby brother, which I love like so much. But I used to call him Chico, you know, he's like Latino when he was a baby, right? So that's kind of i's how light he is. So he's the lightest, I have a sister that's a little darker than me, but even that little, and if you think about the paper bag test to do,
I'm a little darker than the paper bag. You were treated differently. It's just how, if you think about how like white supremacy and racism, colonialism and how, because white supremacy is so strong that even black people perpetrated it. If you were lighted in the paper bag, you were treated a lot differently, right? Yeah. So you, you raised, uh, the middle of five in la and how did you get to the process? How'd you move however many miles into Northern California to attend the Hoffman process?
Yeah, so that's, that's very interesting. So I can just go back to Compton for a second and how life was, and say from 1963 when I was born to like, I don't know, like 1975 or so, it was the sweetest place. My friends were sweet, everybody was kind. We had block parties, we decorated all the trees at Christmas time, you know, we traded Hot Wheels, which was big and played marbles and touched football in the street and basketball. Everybody was sweet and kind. Right?
Then around 1975 or so, I don't know what happened at gangs, drugs, a lot of those sweet boys that I played with, they all became hardened somehow. I don't know if it was because of, uh, lack of awareness that there was a different life out there and there were emulating, you know, some of the teenagers that were around. But I felt at that point I didn't belong there. Right? So that was the sense that I had throughout my life, which led me up to Hoffman.
I just never felt like I belonged, you know? Then throughout high school, I was exposed to so much of violence and trauma that I've just pushed it deep down. There's this expression about having a near life experience. That's kind of how my life was. But then mentors started showing up. I took accounting in, in high school because I was looking for, you know, like what jobs paid Well, and there's one of accounts say, well, there's always everybody's gonna need an accountant, right?
So I took accounting in high school and then I joined a junior ROTC, you know, and that's where I learned like discipline, aerospace, engineering, I learned about the air force. So my dream, you know, from about the 10th grade on was to join the Air Force as life is, you know, I had pretty poor eyesight, so I flunked the physical. Right? There is, my dream was, was crushed. So now what? So I went to college and now I'm an adult, right?
Then all life starts to happen, you know, heartbreak, you know, I met a woman who I love so much. We married, things were going great, we had a miscarriage. And the reason I say we is, because when I look back on it, it was traumatic for me that loss. Because again, I was trying to measure up to my dad. I was like, wow, if I can just have a family, maybe, right, maybe he'll accept me, right? But I don't think he did it intentionally, right? But there was no like mental health
services available. I didn't seek therapy, neither did my wife. So that pretty much destroyed our marriage. I mean, it was, so we divorced and that was like my first time really experiencing, you know, like heartbreak. And then, because it felt like a lot of their friends that I had when I was younger that were murdered or went to jail, I was like, I became even more detached from life. So I threw myself into work.
Not only did I throw myself into work, I started dating a lot of women that had children trying to create these families. And that still wasn't enough. So I went to law school. So I worked full-time, went to law school at night, and I never listened to my body after not sleeping for a couple of days because I thought, yeah, I can go two days without sleep. My body started to shut down. You know, I ballooned up to like 310 pounds.
And then one night I felt this pain. My appendix ruptured, but I didn't know it at the time, but I had gotten so used to disconnecting from pain and trauma that somehow I was able to withstand all that pain on my way to class. I went, I stopped by the emergency room and they took a CT scanner, ran all kind of tests, and he said, oh, your appendix ruptured is sealed itself. We're gonna have to go in and clean this up. I said, well,
can you do it in time or schedule it around class? 'cause I have to get, this is like my third year of law school. So I said, I gotta get to class tonight, right? And he said, are you crazy? You know, your appendix rupture, you could have died. I said, is there anything else you can do? And he saw how passionate, how driven I was, the physician. He said, well, if I give you antibiotics and you go to class and then don't go to work and
we'll monitor you and see what happens. So that's kind of how, you know, I was not really in my body. It wasn't until, and I'm leading up to how I ended up in Hoffman. So when I turned 50, all sorts of strange things were happening. I felt like, wow, I let life pass me by. What am I gonna do now? It's too late. All those dark side messages, you're too old. You are black. I turned 50. It's about 2013. I'm realizing that, um, maybe my best years are behind me.
I was having, what I thought at the time was a midlife crisis. I was reading a lot of books, listening to a lot of podcasts, trying all kind of things. I did the, uh, Tony Robbins, UPW did the fire walk. I tried everything, but nothing really stuck, right? And then Covid hit, right now it's like 20, I'm fast forwarding 2020. And now I have nowhere to hide. I can't hide through work. I was living with just my cats. And at first I was loving it, right? 'cause I'm isolated, it's fine.
And I didn't really realize how much I really enjoyed connecting with people in person. Couldn't see my parents because they were older. I mean, I was just, and I, and I live like in Rancho Cucamonga, away from all my family, like, and friends. So then one day I love Funnel Cake. So there's these trucks here. Did you just say, I love Funnel Cake? I love Funnel Cake. You know what a funnel cake is? That's a great start to a story. So I'm in the middle of C and I love Funnel Cake.
Right? And, and there's these, um, this is right before Covid. We haven't shut down. So Covid is here, but it hasn't shut down yet. We don't know what it is, right? But it said, Hey, be careful. There's something out. There's hurting the elderly, right? So there's this little like, uh, food trucks. And I'm out there and I walk by this table and there's this cute couple there, and there's this lady named Vonya. She's a relationship coach. And she says,
Hey, would you like a free session? And I kind of smiled. I said, you know, I'm thinking I've been married twice by this time. I'm done with relationships. And she says, well, this is the best time to work on yourself. And her husband is a therapist, right? And they live close by, right? So Vonya and Jeremiah, I had no interest. And I'm thinking, was that spirit leading me there? Because there's no other way I would've saw them.
They had never done that before either. She had convinced me, Hey, just put a table out and see what happens to drum up some business or whatever. And she was kind of new at coaching. And so I took her up on her offer. We had some sessions. Now we're deep in Covid isolated. I'm seeing all of these things happening, being the murder of George Floyd, which I've never experienced.
I had no, I had friends that had been killed. There was years ago, there was a guy named Ron Settled, who was found hung in his jail in Long Beach. None of that impacted me, like watching George Floyd yell for his mama, right? That was like, oof. And then I was in a session with Vonya not too long after that. And she was talking about love and respect. And when she said respect, I lost it to the point where she paused, right? And she said,
do you mind if I talk to my husband about this? 'cause that was, I was a angry, visceral. So you lost it on. Her. And we, we were, we were you like on, um, FaceTimed? I don't even remember what I said, but it was enough for her to pause and say, let me talk to my husband, who's a therapist. And when he talked to her by this, by now, she knew a lot about my story. And she says, it sounds like post-traumatic stress,
there's some something inside. And I, um, I'm sorry, I'm I guess emotional thinking about this. He introduced me to a colleague of his that totally cracked me open. It was EMDR therapy, desensitization reprocessing, all those traumatic events from growing up in Compton. She brought them right back to me. True. And we walked through those. It took a while. It took a, you know, it took a couple of years. Right now it's like, you know, maybe 20, 20, 21.
Still haven't made it to Hoffman yet. But now I'm open that man, there's so much trauma. And then when we talked about it, it's Interregional trauma. So Jim Crow slavery, experiencing in law school about slavery, like disassociated from my body, withstanding pain. I thought about the whips, I thought about George Floyd, all that stuff started coming back. I mean, we, we went through it all. And she's, her name is Janelle Martin, by the way. And she is,
she does, she's a therapist, but she has a spiritual side to her. I mean, she's a Reiki practitioner. And she used to tell me I would break down in front of her and I'm not used to, because my dad was like, man, don't cry. Be a man. Figure this out. And this is, I'm like 50 in my fifties and I've never had any help like this. This is my first time in therapy. And oh my goodness, I was like, man, the divorces, the miscarriage happened in the car. I repressed it all right?
Through all that trauma, I had to show up at work as a, you know, all those years with a smile on my face. 'cause I learned early on if I smiled and I was always working around white people, right? So it's like, make be calm, be keep them calm, be nice, make them love you. So people pleasing further and further repressing who junior really was down. 'cause now I'm Albert going through life as Elbert Junior's, like long gone.
That sweet child in Compton, Dick Junior, I don't even know who he is anymore, but he was still there, you know, acting out, trying to protect me, you know, all those things. I, in fact, that's what made me go through law school so easily and pass the bar because all those fact patterns, you know, on the bar exam, I, I could bring them to life, you know, because I was living it. So I was constantly, you know,
replaying those things. So, so anyway, so now, you know, my daughter, she was talking, she mentioned very briefly, Hoffman, and I can drew, I don't know how to explain this, but I, I got this ringing in my ear and I'm like, what is this? Right? You know, she didn't even tell me what it was. She just said that, uh, you know, a person that she was doing some Clarity retreat with had did Hoffman. That's all she said. And just hearing that word Hoffman,
it was ringing in my ear. So I went to my computer and Google it. I didn't know what it was. You know, there was no ads. I'd never seen any Hoffman ads in the middle of a football game or anything, right? So I didn't know what it was, but I just knew it meant something. I said, I'm gonna try this. I don't know if anybody ever like did this, but you go, you look up Hoffman and there's like a wait list. I mean, it's like,
but I need it now. And it just so happens they, you know, there was the Hoffman Essentials and I, this is like February of 2022. So I signed up for the Hoffman Essentials. Which is our two day online course. And there was no wait list for that, right? No, no. I got right in. I had these, these great teachers, Danny and Barbara and, and, uh, Dorothy, even though it was virtual, I've never experienced that, what we went through in those two days.
And on top of, I think Janelle kind of prepared me for this, right? Because I, I wouldn't have been as open. Janelle is your daughter? No. Well, Janelle was my, my Sherpa, she used tell me, gimme your backpack, my therapist, right? I'm still working with her. At one point we were like meeting almost every week. And then we started to taper it down. But. You call her your Sherpa. I love that. Yeah. She says, gimme your backpack. That's what she would tell me,
gimme your backpack. So she was there taking me on this journey with me, right? So she's kind of really an integral part, almost like she was the Divine center to me, but my daughter had mentioned Hoffman. So now when I'm there in these essentials, we are doing some expressive work, but I'm alone.
And I didn't realize the difference when you, you know, after doing Hoffman later, and I'll get to that when you're in a community with other people doing it, I can't even tell you how transformative that is that I can't explain it. But it just being there with all those folks, even though the context is different, but we're all going through the same thing from all walks of life. From as young as like 23, I think, to, I think I was the oldest in my class at that time, 59.
So then after doing the essentials, I said, I want more, right? I want more. And so then my birthday was December the 10th, and it just happened that there was a Hoffman class on that day. So I decided this is gonna be my birthday present to myself. So now I'm met, I'm met Hoffman at, and there is like a welcome dinner. And this was the, I think this is the best part of Hoffman for me, was the welcome dinner with this very sweet lady who happened to be named Candy, right? Can you believe that? ?
But what made it so beautiful is this is like, you know, base camp and we're preparing for our hero's journey. So people are coming in from all over the world. We have folks from New Zealand, Australia, New York, all walks of life. And because they're come from different places, they're getting there at different times. I was like the first or second one there. And we're at this tiny table for maybe 30, 20, 30 people at that time gather around this table just talking about like, who we are.
But we had no idea what we're getting ourselves in for. Candy helped a little bit, but, you know, but she calmed us, right? So I think whatever you all do, don't ever lose that welcome there, because that's, it's beautiful. Then the next morning, now it's Saturday, it's my birthday. But if I think about the process, there was one day that I think was like the moment for me where I really kind of felt the magic of the process and what it's all about. Take. Us to that moment.
'cause I'd love to hear about it even though the day is not clear. Okay, so in, in the morning, Ian Salvage, right? It's interesting because in one of the project checks, I, one of the takeaways was that I'm here to salvage my life and I have a teacher name Ian Salvage, right? Isn't that amazing? But that morning, I forget which day it is, he told me that something's gonna happen to you today. We all went through it, mentioned Dominique was one of the teachers,
Regina was there. She says, we all went through this Pat Junior, I just want you to know that we are here for you. I'm like, what the hell is getting ready to happen today? Because I already had went through some bashing earlier. I was like, it's gonna be harder than that, right? And he says, yeah, I just want you, we got you though. We got you. I was like, okay, I'm ready. When we did that exercise, I can't tell you what happened. I just know it was like primal. And then I remember saying,
who can't breathe now? So the, the Philando Castillo, George Floyd, my childhood friends, all of this was coming up. And all the teachers, not just Dominique and Regina and Ian, but Kevin, Nita, they all held me at some point. They were all there. And I'm like, how do they train these Hoffman teachers to be there with someone that's going through what I'm going through? And at that point, it seemed like I was the only one in the room,
and I was just soaked in tears. The floors went around me, but at the same time, I felt like that was something that had been lifted from me. It was like, this is where you're supposed to be. This is your life. This is the hardest thing you've ever done. But it's the greatest gift to yourself. And it's like, almost like a calling that said, I have to figure out a way to help get this message out to the world. I'm gonna tell everybody I know I'm part of something great
here. Something greater. Right? I can't explain that how Spirit was able to enter into me at that exact moment. In the middle of all that tears and pain. I changed it that moment. And I think that was day four. They, I don't know what day it was, but it was beautiful. So junior, you describe it as primal and tears are flowing and you're deep into a cathartic experience being held by all the teachers. And then you talk about light entering you.
Can you take us to that moment and see if you can bring us along a little bit about how that happens? I can take you through it. So I'm there and right in the middle of all that pain and all that suffering, I felt warmth. I felt, I guess it was my first time experiencing true love, love for myself, love for the other people, truly as a junior, not this fake people pleasing. I felt I was connecting to who I authentically am just this is who I'm a, I'm love, I'm love,
I'm not all those patterns. This is who I am. And all that pain, all, all that thing that I had pushed down. All that was in a way that was this almost like a physical border that a jail cell that I had put myself in from fear or whatever it was to connect to the joyness inside of me, to whatever it is, whatever love is his energy, this presence. I've never experienced anything like that, including all those times I've been to church. 'cause my,
my father was a deacon, never experienced anything like this, right? So it was, like I said, it was the hardest thing I've ever done and the greatest gift to myself and, and was just so pleased at that point. And at that point I wanted to leave. I'm like, well, how can it get better than this? Right? And that's when I realized it took me right back to that sweet boy that I talked about earlier. That junior, it was playing, having fun. The room just lit up. Everybody was laughing.
And at that point I was like, who am I? Right? Who is this guy? Is this junior? I need to find out more about who Junior is. That was pretty much the highlight of the whole process. In the morning, I was primal in the afternoon, I'm like this fun loving. I can't explain that shift, right? How do you go from there? But when I think about it, it had to be because going through all that hard work, I was able to connect more to myself, my spirit, other people,
and to love, right? And that's what this energy, that's what this presence is. It's about fun. It's not all this achievement. It's not all about literally trying to kill myself, going to law school and working full time, trying to measure up to other folks. It's just about being and just being happy in that love. It was so, so, so beautiful. And then I got to reclaim like, what are you gonna reclaim? So I said, well know I'm gonna reclaim junior freedom.
And that's kind of who I am. That's who I'm still learning about. And it is gonna take a long time to learn who Junior is and where he's going. But I have a choice now. And I think that's the thing. I don't have to, to react to the things the way I used to. I can pause. And that's how I ended Hoffman knowing that I have a choice. And I didn't go right bike right back to the world right away. I went to San Francisco and state and hotel for two days.
And the interesting thing is, I never slept for 12 hours before I slept for 12 straight hours after the process. I didn't know I was so tired, but it seemed like I had never slept before my whole life. So this is the first time I actually had 12 hours worth of sleep. And I just felt so good. Drew. So junior, what an intense, visceral, cellular intensity, immersive experience you had. And then you talk about sleeping and take us to your life post-process.
How does that junior radiate his love, his spirit in the world after you are a grad from Hoffman? So post-process, I wasn't having a midlife crisis. It was just another transition through life. I've been through many. And so Hoffman is so great that you all connect with a bigger community, almost like an extended family with the modern Elder academy. So you discovered Modern Elder through Hoffman? Through. Hoffman. Through Hoffman, yeah. There was like a,
it was a community meeting or something. I never heard of Modern Elder Academy. So Hoffman grad, modern elder academy grad. You got a got together. And as we sit in the hood, we chopped it up, talked, we broke out into groups, you know, and I'm like, oh, that's it. So this is a, a transition that I was going through. I've been through transitions before, you know, from middle school to high school, to marriage, divorce. This is just another transition.
But what I thought was so great that they had something they called tq, you know, like transition, you know, intelligence that you kind of have to learn, like where are you in the transition? Acknowledge you're going through a transition, how are you gonna behave the, the impact it's having on people around you? All those sorts of things. But you know, the interesting thing about, uh, modern Elder Academy, there's a guy named Chip Connolly.
In fact, we just interviewed him a couple episodes prior to this one. Oh, well, okay, great, great. But what's interesting about Chip is everywhere I go, there's Chip, right? I never did these sorts of things before Hoffman. So I went to Big Sur to the Essel N Institute, beautiful place. And I'm in the bookstore there, right? I'm on like a self-guided kind of retreat, you know, getting some massages,
taking some baths and things like that. So I'm in the bookstore and I said, spirit, give me a sign, give me something, right? And so I looked over and there was this book. So, so I picked up this book and it was a book, like How We Live is How We Die by Pima Trojan, right? I said, you know, I'm gonna look at this book right now, but not like before. I said, is this it? Is this it? And I looked up and there was a picture of Chip Conley right there.
And then one of the guys that worked at the bookstore, I said, Hey, I know that's Chip Conley. She goes, yes, you're in the Conley Bookstore. And I was like, what a, what a like connection. Okay. The other thing about the Hoffman Extended family during the Hoffman, one of the pieces, the big pieces, you know, of the cycle of transformation is comp, having compassion and forgiveness. I didn't know how to do self-compassion. I didn't really have the tools.
And that's when I, I didn't know there was something called a center of mindful self-compassion. So I took a 10 week course with them. So I kind of, so I'm learning some self-compassion practices. In fact, labor Day, I'm going on a five day silent retreat. We did some silence at Hoffman that was so beautiful. I said, I want more. So I just want more. There's like two or three grad groups I'm in, in Hoffman. This is such a fabulous community. I never had a community.
But the most important thing, I have a family now. We call ourselves the eight, it's my small group. We meet every couple of weeks. Oh my goodness, they're just so beautiful. My small group, we're still together. Oh, I can't tell you how we are, you know, Ian meets with us every couple of weeks. The stuff that we talk about, how close we are our lives. So we were there pre-process, process, post-process. And now as we try to integrate Hoffman into our lives,
I've never shared that kind of intimacy before. Not even with my own family. The stuff that we talk about. It's unbelievable. It's incredible. And in addition to the eight, there's these two special buddies that I have from Hoffman. They were in the, in the big class and we weren't really talking a lot through Hoffman. We just became really close after Hoffman. And we check in like every week. Junior. So you hear about Modern Elder Academy.
And so you sign up for a week long retreat. You go to that. You also hear about Kristin Neff's work, mindful self-compassion. And you go to a silent retreat for that. You're also headed to another one in a couple of days. And then you still keep in touch with your two buddies that you chose. Accountability buddies that we ask people to choose at the end of the week. And then your group of eight from your small group still meets every other week with Ian as an occasional facilitator. Wow.
Yeah. That's my life, drew. I am learning to love my life. I never thought I would say that I would love life, but I love life and all this imperfections and all the impermanence, every moment of life now that I appreciate not looking to what's next. Not trying to prove anything. So what's that like to 'cause people say that a bunch, but I'm feeling it now as we talk. What's it like to love your life. Unconditionally? I left that part out. I'm not expecting an outcome,
it's just letting things unfold. For example, you know, we were scheduled to record this one day Be all me with to control, to clarify with the center, all those things. Say, you know what, drew been doing this a while. Let's just see how this unfolds. Just relax. I've always been the worst case scenario, man, with a plan. You know, I started my career as an auditor, right? You know, auditor, you have a plan, you're auditing, you defense contracts. I'm a lawyer,
you know, and I'm an advisor. I'm always trying to control things, mitigate risk. In fact, Janelle used to always say, you know, no more risk assessments, right? I'm a savior, I wanna save people. Used to be my whole life, you know, always trying to save help people. So she helped me retire my jersey. So my captain saved him Jersey, now he's in retirement. So being me, I don't have to fix anybody. I don't have to fix the moment you can hear my cat. But I stopped, you know,
after a while I said he he'll work it out, right? You know, we'll figure it out. I just let stuff happens, you know, stuff that used to upset me, drew, I just say, wait a minute, this is happening for me. There's a path here, right? Just follow this path. Not trying to control, not going into a pattern, not reacting. And there's something beautiful about the pause, right? That's the other thing that I do more. I allow folks to make their own mistakes so they can get their learning.
I just let things go. I just let it, let it rip. Say what I want to. That's the other thing that's different to be, is that before I would always, like, if I say this, will it piss drew off? Right? How do I don't want Drew to be upset with me? I don't want to deal with this confrontation. And it's kind of weird thinking about my legal training and everything as an auditor, where it's almost adversarial all the time, right? But in my personal life, right? And that's the difference.
So it's like personal life, work life. I don't really like confrontation, you know? Because when I was growing up in Compton, somebody could die if, if things got heated. So it's like, okay, let's keep everybody calm because I don't want to have to, if someone from my neighborhood got in a fight with another neighborhood, I didn't want somebody from that other neighborhood coming in my neighborhood. So now it's not that I don't care, it's just that I have no control over that.
It's not up to me to fix. People understand that kind of surrender, that kind of not reactive behavior. Taking a pause, having choice. Many people understand that conceptually. But when I hear you talk, part of what I hear underneath the words is that you had an embodied experience of those epiphanies and they feel like they're wired in deeper as a result of that. Am I hearing that right?
Absolutely correct. It's the ringing in my ear when I heard Hoffman, the butterflies, all of those body sensations, these difficult emotions that I used to run away from letting things unfold me. And now that I'm learning self-compassion, it means that at the same time I'm going through those emotions. I can be there for me to comfort myself through those like emotions, the disappointments, heartbreak, all of those things that I just kind of,
you know, well, I just go to work. Like if I'm driving, driving down the street the other day and thought I was late, the car in front of me previously, I would've like went around or tried to try a different route. I said, you know what, this gives me a chance. I love jazz and listen to some jazz. So I turned the jazz up some Coltrane, and I said, let me just listen to train and just sit here and however long it takes, it takes. So when I got there, the secretary had said, oh,
this person I was coming to see, they're delayed. And that's, that's kind of how it is. So before I would've had all that anxiety, but now when I arrived, I was so calm. So that's what, living in the moment and let it unfold this life, you have no control. I have no control over anything. Only thing I can control is my response. And sometimes a response isn't even necessary. Sometimes the response is doing nothing. And I can feel I get the butterflies, heart rate, heart tightens.
I can feel when I'm getting to that point where the old me is trying to say, go do something, and then I just hand over heart, breathe, pause, and just check in with myself, right? So now my life is more based on what's happening inside of me. Not ignore my body. My appendix is never going to get to the point where it's going to erupt and me not pay attention to it, which is really my body saying, would you get some sleep? Will you just go to sleep? Right? ,
no more coffee. Just take a nap. Right? Go do something. Right, sir. I know we're gonna wind down here, but, but down when I hear these realizations, these epiphanies, these takeaways, I can't help but think of the tears flowing down your face as an example. The cathartic experience that, uh, mourning that you had, that the teachers holding you. Do you connect to the work, the cathartic work in particular? Absolutely. You know, as a black man, you can't really express what you're really feeling.
I can't really express what I'm truly feeling, whether it's true or not. I felt that I had to keep everybody calm and show up a certain way for people to get to. Like me. Going through that experience though, all that repressed anger, that word respect, which really I think what led me to Hoffman that and that reaction I had with Vanya really led me there. Now I'm at the point where I'm comfortable. I've always been comfortable around white people,
but I'm not there to please them anymore. I'm there there to be me. And that's, I think is that cathartic work that I did, really helped me with as my experience. But I felt like I was doing it not just for me, but for my dad and all those generations of folks. My dad doesn't make eye contact because you get killed from making eye contact in the south, you know, the white man, right? He thought the greatest job in the world was being a janitor in a Jackson public
school system. That was his dream, because in the south, that's all you had. He says, I didn't want that for my children. It's that cathartic work. Or how would I have done that without the Hoffman teachers, not just Ian, but I mean the whole staff. I mean, there were moments where Kevin or Daddy would say, can I have a hug? And then my, I call 'em my cellmates, you know? 'cause we were in these, these dormitories, these cabins, and you get really close when you share a bathroom with someone.
And there was this guy, he was just trying to give me a hug and there was something special about the Hoffman community. And just being part of that, being part of this podcast, big part of the IG check-ins every day, you know, whether I can catch 'em live or at night whenever I need 'em, someone is always there giving me the exact message that I need to take me through. Some of them are like, you know, Emmanuel's, like short ones to the longer ones, you know?
So all of them are just so great, but they're always just right, right on time. And it feels like I'm connected to the whole world. Every single hopping grad, everybody who wants to do the hopping process. I just feel like so connected with those folks. And I wish there was a way that I could do this somehow for the rest of my life. Hoffman's now is in my,
it's in my bones. And when I think about it, like Bob Hoffman and how, and how intuitive he was, I kind of feel like that's, I connect and I can't explain this why I feel so connected to Bob Hoffman. Why I had the ringing was that Bob whispering in my ear when I heard the word Hoffman. There's things I, I don't even need to explain. I, I just, and that's the difference now too. I just accept things as they are.
It's almost like your intellect has given you permission and let go and trust spirit and emotional self implicitly. Yes, it is though. Spirit will say, when you're ready, the people you need, I'm gonna bring into your life. Whether it's the accounting, Johnny Ward, my high school accounting teacher, whether it is the sergeant from the, we learned to do close sort of drill.
I was in rifle drill team, whether it's Colonel Newsom who taught me aerospace education, not getting into the Air force, going to college. There's been so many mentors along the way who showed up. In fact, one day I went to law school because I heard her ad on the radio said, it's not too late to go to law school. I'm like, the radio is talking to me. Because I was like, what am I gonna do now? Right? Because I wanna, it took me 14 years to figure out that no one likes to be audited. Drew,
I thought I would write these beautiful audit reports. And then one day, this guy, he said, you could take this audit report and go, you know what? To yourself with it. And at the time, I think, whoa, that's a interesting reaction, right? But no one likes that. Right? And I was like, what do I do now? And I said, maybe I wanna work in government contracts. Let me go to law school, right? Work in government contracts. And I thought that would do it.
But it wasn't that. It was, I have nothing to do, but connect with who I really am. Discover who I am. And that's this journey. That's what this human experience is all about, is learning who I am, where I want to go, and the lessons that I came here to learn. Learn. So what's next professionally. Drew? I would love to do what you do. You know, I would, I would, I would I actually apply, you know, to the Hoffman Teacher Program? And it's like, um. Fingers crossed, huh? Fingers. Crossed.
But it's just me saying yes to applying is signaling my spirit that this is direction that I want to go and is to not saving people, but help people. 'cause before I wanted to save people in Regina, Louise helped me figure this out. One of the sessions there very teachable moment I was trying to save myself. So all those women that I dated with, all those children, all those times I've been trying to save myself.
I think that's a huge difference now that I'm really doing things for me to figure things out for me and to help the world. I'm so grateful for your open heart, your just transparent, honest, real. I mean, authentic is sometimes a overused word, but junior in this conversation, I have felt you so present. I just wanna ask, what's it like to have reflected on your childhood, your parents, your life, your process, also intimately and honestly in this conversation. What's that like?
True. It's, it's an amazing journey. I can actually see that there's some sort of divine path that been laid out. All those things I thought was happening to me and how unfair it was. Looking back on all of that, I don't know if I would show up the way I showed up today, had I not gone through all of that, right? It, it was a chance for me to, and during Hoffman,
I cried myself to sleep every night. I didn't think that would happen. And, and it's, I didn't, it's not necessarily I wanted to leave, but it's like, stay in your body. I kept telling myself that, stay in your body, stay with this. And, and every morning I would check in with Ian. He goes on, how much sleep did you get? What's going on? And, and that helped me just stay in my body because I didn't realize how difficult it was staying in my body when I was younger. I would've said, oh, that's,
that's impossible. That's nonsense. You are always in your body. But I literally felt unsafe in my body and my black skin. And now reflecting back, it's like I'm more than just this black skin. I'm more than just this body and the people around me are the same. So now I'm able to connect with people at like a higher level to their essence. Not just these things that are out there where, you know, we think we are this or that. That's not who we are. And, and I'm able to connect with that.
Junior, do you ever go back to that food truck and eat that funnel cake as a way of, uh, paying deference to the beginning of your story? Well, you know, what's interesting is that those, those, the funnel cakes, the sweets, all that, all those were patterns, right? So I don't crave funnel cakes anymore, but I do crave connection. And if I, if me being vulnerable helps someone connect to their
own vulnerabilities and spirit, I figure that's that's who I am. Mean, that's, that's, that's my journey. Thank you for listening to our podcast. My name is Liza Insi. I'm the CEO and President of Hoffman Institute Foundation. And. I'm Rasin Rossi Hoffman, teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute 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 hoffman institute.org.