[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome to disability empowerment Now. I'm your host, Kit Mavidi Ginsini. This is a bonus episode for season four. I'm talking today with my guests Jadmin Singh, a bed settling author of her courageous memoir Saved by Depends Mode judgment.
Welcome to the show.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Thank you, Keith. I'm honored to be on your podcast. Thank you.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: So I stumbled upon your memoir either through Audible or Amazon, same thing.
And I was intrigued by the title of it. It's very interesting title and I wanted to see what you or anyone who picks the title would do with the title. I'm also big fan of the band in question and I'm also a massive fan of authors who read their own rocks.
I listened to the audiobook over a few plane rides through one of my all day flight connections and I have to say, hearing it read through your voice, in your mannerisms, I got so much more out of it. Not that reading your words would be huge. Lads, song title. Okay. Yeah. The jokes write themselves, people.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: It actually took me a minute to get that. I was like, wait, that's a song, that's a depression.
I love that.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Yet I can keep going.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: Well done.
Well done.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: It showed with debenture mode jokes.
But hearing the pageant, the agony, the heartache, the joy, what so illuminating for me and I loved the fact that I felt like I was right there next to you in every chapter.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: I love hearing that. Thank you for saying that.
[00:03:37] Speaker A: Yeah. And I, I really don't think someone would be able to really get that. I have a very active and creative imagination so I can literally visualize everything.
But the audiobook is fantastic. Again, it's the perfect length. It doesn't overstay its welcome.
Like some I will name names, unknown novels, Les Miserables, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Phantom of the Opera, all of these authors are long dead and they will give a hoot.
But I love all of those books. By the way, I just threw great literature under the butts.
Yeah.
I'm sure Shakespeare is going to come back from the great beyond and kill me with his quill and be like.
[00:05:04] Speaker B: Hey man, who is this Keith guy? What are you saying?
[00:05:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: What do you mean?
[00:05:10] Speaker A: Yeah, so let's get into it.
[00:05:16] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:05:17] Speaker A: What was the lack of a better term, inspiration, motivation of writing the books and then writing the book and then deciding to narrate it yourself instead of hiring someone else.
[00:05:47] Speaker B: Thank you for that question because that's a really big question.
Honestly, Keith, I have been. And just to give your viewers and readers background, this is My book, it's called Saved by Depeche Mode. An epic journey of healing and remission through music.
I have rheumatoid arthritis. To give people a background, I was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 13.
I have been dealing with this for over.
[00:06:15] Speaker A: Being a teenager isn't hard enough.
Dudes pet ski hormones, and then bam, you get hit with this. I'm sorry, please continue.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: Yes, seriously. And that's what I talked about in the book, too. Going through all of these struggles with. Dealing with trying to be a regular teenager and then having to not be able to hang out with my friends and. And do things that everybody else was doing. But basically I was diagnosed in 1984, a very, very long time ago. And since then, I spent four years in a wheelchair from the age of 19 to 23. At the age of 23, I had both of my knees replaced, not at the same time, but four months apart. And that got me out of the wheelchair. I went and had a life and struggled with quite a few other surgeries. In total, to date, I've had 36 surgeries. And I've been told my entire life that you should write a book. You should write a book, you should write a book. And my biggest issue has always been that these are my hands. I have severe rheumatoid arthritis. I've had all my knuckles replaced. I have broken knuckles, I have dislocated knuckles.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: Why did you become a boxer then?
I'm sorry, that joke I just had, I had to go for it sometimes.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: I appreciate that I should actually use that. If anybody asks me, what's wrong with your hands, I'd be like, I was a professional boxer for like 41 years.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: Please do that.
Please feel free.
[00:08:03] Speaker B: That's a good one. I might have to steal that one from you. But basically, I have always been told that I should write a book. And I've tried a couple of times to write a book, but because of the condition of my hands, it's very hard for me to physically write. It's challenging for me. Like, I'm on disability and not just because of my hands, but like my wrist is fused. I have a 6 inch plate in my right wrist and I am right handed. So I'm actually bending my wrist right now. You just can't tell it's fused, you know, and so I've got jokes too, Keith.
So I have been told quite a few times to write a book. And one reason that I picked this publishing company, they're called Game Changer Publishing.
And they basically have you kind of like you and I are on this zoom call right now doing this podcast. I basically got on a zoom call with my editors and the folks that I was working with at the publishing company and recorded my entire book.
So my job was to sit down and come up with an outline of my entire story.
And then I just spoke it out loud. And once I spoke it out loud, they gave me the manuscript and then cleaned it up with the grammar and everything. And then went. I went back in and organized. I went back in and organized everything. It took a long time.
[00:09:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:25] Speaker B: Because had to like, type. I still had to do something. So it took long, but it took nowhere near as long as it would have been had I tried to do it on my own.
[00:09:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's a very interesting way of writing a book of any kind, but particularly a memoir. So how you started writing it by just using your voice and recording it, then doing the audible or doing the audiobook.
Much have been pardoned. The assumption of pizza cake.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: You know what, it's so funny that everybody is loving the audiobook as I knew they would, because at the end of the day, if you're writing a memoir, why would you want somebody else to read and do the audio for your memoir? And. And the publishing company actually said, hey, we typically get actors to do the audiobooks and stuff. And I was like, well, I don't want that. Like, I wouldn't want somebody else reading. How are they supposed to understand me and my story and how emotional I have gotten over, you know, this surgery or that surgery or divorce or whatever the situation is. They're not going to be able to get into my shoes and deliver my story the way that I would deliver my own story. So it was an absolute no brainer for me to do the audio recording on my own. So I recorded it at a local studio here in Houston. 713 recording studio. And it was just magnificent. It was amazing. It was a great experience.
And that was my goal all along, that if I ever do write my own book and choose to have an audio version, I will record it myself. And in fact, all of my friends and family members were like, we don't want to hear your story in anybody else's book. We want in anybody else's voice. We want you to say it.
[00:11:38] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it would be very weird, like not to bring up politics, but to hell hear Mitchell Obama becoming in one any other voids but hers.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: It's like when Meryl Streep writes a memoir.
I have no idea. But she better be right. The audiobook. Because who else will want to listen to the audiobook if it's not her reading it? There are reasons why Bono reads his autobiography. Bruce Springsteen reads his.
Patrick Stewart reads his.
Lindsey Sterling, like electronic musician reads her.
It's a form of literary addiction to actually go into someone's life through their own voids as the conduit.
So.
[00:13:19] Speaker B: I love that you put me in the same box as all of these great, beautiful people. I appreciate you. Thank you.
[00:13:25] Speaker A: Yeah, no problem.
Yeah.
And so let's talk about structuring the book, because one of the most interesting things I discovered in just listening to the introduction and the first few chapters was that every chapter was titled after a Depeche Mode song or lyric.
And how, with the vats and songography that they have, how did you nail it down to those songs specifically?
[00:14:31] Speaker B: I love that question. I absolutely love that question. Thank you so much for asking it. So, to go back to your previous question, the reason I titled it Saved by Depends Mode is they are my favorite band of all time. My absolute favorite band of all time. I have listened to them. I was exposed to them first at the age of 13 when I was first diagnosed. And people are. People came out, and I know they had previous albums and such. I didn't know about them because they're from England and whatever. So we didn't have exposure to that music back then. We just had the radio. Right. We didn't have streaming service and whatever. So. So.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: Or. Or whatever. Yeah.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: Right, Right. So I basically heard that song, and I was, like, completely in love. And then when Music for the Masses came out, and that was like, you know, you had these beautiful songs and beautiful music. And then Violator came out, and it was just one after one after one. I was, like, in love with the band. Okay.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:26] Speaker B: When I was writing this book, I automatically knew that I was going to title it this. I have a very good friend who told me at one point, like several years ago, she goes, if you ever write, you need to title it How Depeche Mode Saved My Life. Because my brain works through music. I love music. I love electronic dance music. I love music in general. I love lyrics. And their music really speaks to me. Their lyrics are so deep. The song songs are so meaningful and so beautifully written and composed that it.
It's. It's weird because as I was writing the chapters, I knew I wanted each chapter to start with the Depeche Mode song. And it Just literally came to me. Keith. It's not even like I had to do a whole lot of struggling looking at lyrics or anything. I was like, oh, I already know. I want to use this song for this section. I want to use this song for this section. Because I have their songs in their discography is in my head.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:30] Speaker B: All of their songs, all of their lyrics and stuff exist in my head.
So for me it was just like, oh, this is the perfect song for this chapter. And for folks that get like the actual book itself.
[00:16:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: When you go into the book, each chapter starts with the Depeche Mode song to the point where you can actually scan the QR code.
[00:16:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: And my editors came up with that. And I know that's the only thing that the folks who do the audible version don't have access to, but anybody that gets the actual hard copy of the book and the Kindle version, you scan that QR code, it takes you directly to the music video. So you literally have this immersive experience where you're reading the chapter, you're listening to the song, you're listening to the lyrics. And those lyrics actually correspond to the theme of. Of every single chapter. I was very careful in the way that I chose my songs and made sure that each Depeche Mode song, the way that it starts the chapter, is actually the theme of that particular chapter. And I just took. I was very grateful to have a book that was this type of a. In this type of a format because I was told by my editors and such that they'd never seen anything like that before.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, if you had tried to write that 15 years ago, that would not have been possible.
And I often get the Kindle version and the audiobook version bundled. Could Amazon and does that for the vats majority of their catalog. And that's how they hooked me as a listener. And I know I'm not the only one.
I wasn't shocked at all when I looked up Audible and. And l was a Amazon owned company. I was like, that makes too much sense.
Yeah.
But, yeah, that's a very interesting format. I mean, it's like doing direct YouTube links or direct film links, and hopefully over the next several years or so, you'd see that more and more in all different kinds of books. Because I think so too.
Yeah. Because it adds another flavor to consuming literature or memoir. And memoir in particular should be as creative as possible, particularly if you wanted to be.
You're not rewriting the Read Gatsby on something like that.
You're writing and telling your own story and builds various different ways to do that now.
So what has been the reaction watching from your friends, your family to proofreading the book, pre reading the book and then watching it be released become bestseller?
Because it's a very personal book. And yet you do have Rheumatologists are right it that my speech impediment.
Listen to her, not me.
See the correct diagnosis.
See I take potshots at myself. I mean as we should.
That are free.
Free state, if you will.
Another song title by depression.
[00:21:35] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: But it's like it's a very personal book and you don't just focus on your disability, the surgeries.
I mean that's a big chunk of the book.
But you go through your whole life, the lives of your parents, the ups and downs of motherhood.
I divorce my favorite antidote in the book because it was so out of the box and you said it and explained it with so much joy.
It's that you have a background in psychology and you met online another person who had a background in psychology and he's 30 or 20 years younger and you two geek out over ecology. And I'm like listening to that while I'm walking back and forth in an airport terminal and I that was the last thing I expected to hear with that much emotion.
And that it's judge something you two enjoyed doing. And I mean I don't know if you ever met in person. That's really irrelevant. It's just finding a kindred spirit who doesn't have to be anywhere close to your location, your age, your religion, blah blah, blah. If you just have some sort of connection where you two, you three, anyone can geek out and geek over a topic adds silly or adds serious topic.
And so that was my favorite sidebar of the whole book because it was completely unexplained. That did.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: And I love that you're bringing up. I love that you're bringing this up because think about what we're going through right now in this world. Right? Not just in our country, but in this world where people, we all have something in common with another human. We just do. We're all human. Right. And Alexander is my. My ex podcast partner. We don't do our podcast anymore.
And so he, he and I couldn't be more separate from each other in terms of like night and day. But we totally geek out over psychology and started a fun podcast just for the hell of it.
[00:25:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:35] Speaker B: And I had just an amazing time with it. And both of us are obviously Busy in our, our personal lives and such, so we don't do it anymore. But I'm so glad that you brought that up because it is very, very true. Just find some sort of common ground with somebody and see what you have. You, you never know what you have in common with each other. I feel like everybody's just so mean.
You know, we're all just at each other's throats like, no, I'm right, you're wrong, you're wrong, I'm right. Like, it's just ridiculous, you know?
[00:26:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And there are a lot of heartbreaking moments in this memoir. I remember the young woman who actually introduced you or reintroduced you to Depeche Mode.
A few months later, she died in a hit and run, a car accident.
And then one of your uncles bravely sacrificed himself in a car wreck to protect, oh, my grandfather.
[00:26:53] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:26:54] Speaker A: Yes, those harrowing moments. I mean, you don't shy away from anything.
At least not that I could take away. I mean, I almost wanted to see what did you leave out of the book and, but again, that's very irrelevant because there's so much soul in the book.
And again, seeing it through your own voids, then judge me reading it and trying to imagine what you'd sound like, what growing up in your culture.
X, Y and Z.
All that.
The audiobook took care of all that. All of that leg walked that. I, I, I'm a very creative person and I'm very proud of that. But I would have got 99.99999999% of everything I just said wrong.
It would be on my compreh, fatigue or no fatigue.
And that's the power and passion of reading your work and bringing people in to your own world, whether or not they're ready for it. Ready whether or not they are a audiobook kind of show. Like me. I have over 500 audiobooks on audible alone and that's just one audiobook service that I use, but I've been collecting them for like over a decade.
So you could just be a audiobook newbie.
It doesn't matter.
I forget what my original question was. Watch before I went on because I'm.
[00:30:16] Speaker B: Just following you and I'm just in awe. Thank you so much for, you know, all the shout outs and everything. I'm very, very impressed.
[00:30:26] Speaker A: No, I mean the, the hard breaking moments and that I mentioned earlier and there's so much so in this book.
Did you find it hard to write about any topic or did you leave anything out?
Because from listening to the audiobook.
Why once not five wants.
I'm like, what?
What more could she talk about? I mean, I. I feel like I've gotten a very clear and full scan of your entire life through your memoir, and so, yeah, I'll stop fawning over what you create.
Writer in public, speaker you are. I want you to read my memoir.
[00:31:56] Speaker B: It's funny, but.
[00:31:59] Speaker A: So how was it recording the book?
And did you find any areas more challenging to talk about or to narrate?
And did you leave anything out?
[00:32:25] Speaker B: Okay, lots of questions in that question, so I'm going to try and tackle all of them.
So, yes, to the question of whether I left things out.
There were. There were quite a few things that I chose not to talk about.
[00:32:41] Speaker A: Really?
Wow.
[00:32:43] Speaker B: And the reason.
[00:32:44] Speaker A: I would have never known that.
[00:32:49] Speaker B: The reason being, Keith, the whole point of me writing the book, in the timing of it, I'm a big proponent of divine timing.
I feel like when things are meant to fall into place and happen, they're going to happen when they're meant to happen.
And in 2023, I found out I was in remission from the rheumatoid arthritis. And that was the first time in my entire life I had been in remission. Like, true remission. I'm not counting the remission that I was in when I got pregnant, because that happens to most women, but I meant, like, real, legitimate remission. And I felt like, had I written my book prior to 2023, it would have been a lot of.
Because you. As you said, you read the book and you listened to the book to the point where you can sense all those emotions.
[00:33:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:40] Speaker B: I didn't want people getting overwhelmed. I didn't want people to feel sorry for me. I didn't want people to walk away thinking, gosh, I just.
How in the world.
You know, Like, I just didn't want people to come away with any type of negativity. I wanted to make people empowered because that's how I managed all of this. I laughed my way through this. I. My brother and sister tell me this all the time. If this would have happened to us, I think we would have been gone by now. But the fact that it happened to me, and I happen to have, like, I'm just funny, and I don't take life too seriously. When I used to fall out of my wheelchair, and I would just start laughing, and I thought it was the funniest thing in the world, and everybody around me would think that I'm crying, and it's like, no, this is Funny. Are you kidding me? This is hilarious.
But like, I didn't want to.
I wanted to share my story, but also like, hey, this happened.
But hey, I made it through and so can you.
You know, that's why I wanted to write it in the way that I wrote it and share my story in the way that I did. To give people hope. Because hope is there. Like, look at me, look at me. Like all of the things that I have gone through and look at me. I'm thriving. I'm not just surviving, you know?
[00:35:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:09] Speaker B: And that's, that's. I wanted the takeaway to be for it.
[00:35:14] Speaker A: For me.
I feel like I heard a lot of your inner child in the narration, but also the majority of going through are reacting to all the experiences you have had.
And so, but yeah, I remember the original question I asked 15 minutes ago.
I'm long winded.
What would you like for your friends and family to go through this experience of proofreading and proof listening and then watching it be relates and become bad seller?
[00:36:27] Speaker B: So believe it or not, I did not share my manuscript with anyone.
I didn't share.
[00:36:34] Speaker A: That makes sense.
[00:36:36] Speaker B: And I did it on purpose because I knew that the book was going to be super emotional and filled with stories. I did get clarification from my mom on certain things just to make sure that I had remembered it correctly. Because you know, when you're remembering things from when you were in your childhood and especially if the story was shared with you and you don't physically, mentally remember that happening to you, you have to make sure that some of your stories are correct.
So I did do those types of due diligence with my mom and my siblings and such. But overall, I only had three good friends.
One of them is a family member read my manuscript because they are the ones that are on the back of my book that wrote my, my little testimonials here. So all three of those people are the only three people that had access to my manuscript beforehand. And they gave me some beautiful feedback on things for me to like, hey, maybe say this a little bit different or maybe say this a little bit different. Because at the end of the day, my goal was not to throw anybody under the bus. It was not to be mean about anybody else. Because this isn't this. This story is not about anybody but me.
[00:37:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:53] Speaker B: So I wasn't here to talk about my divorce. I wasn't here to talk about my child in great detail. I wasn't here to talk about my family in great detail. I was here to Talk about me and my experiences and my, you know, so many autoimmune diseases that I've been tackling and struggling with all my entire life and finally have put them all to rest. You know, it was my story and my story to tell. So I didn't want too many cooks in the kitchen trying to, well, what about this or what about that and what about this? No, I wanted to go into this with a clear head. This is my story, and I want to share it in the most beautiful, most meaningful way possible.
And I'm already being so vulnerable in this book. Right. I share so many things in this book that I was just like kind of walking on eggshells around my family afterwards. Like, you guys okay? Are you good? And they're. They just. They were blown away. They were blown away because they were like. We didn't even realize. We didn't even realize how bad it was. And looking at it through your lens and through your, you know, your, your everything that you experience, like, we had. We didn't know.
[00:39:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:10] Speaker A: I mean, I. I listened to the audiobook months ago and ads I've demonstrated I can recall moments touching and heartache in moments verbatim of trauma.
And you set the various scenes and experiences of your life and hearing about all the surgeries, all the problems you had to go to with employment, staying employed, leaving employment.
And then your divorce hit.
And I mean, that took me by surprise because of course, I don't know you or your ex, and I didn't see.
But the way you wrote about your marriage and the relationship in general, it wasn't the type of relationship that you would expect to end like you did.
And I mean, with going through all of your health problems at the time, it's the large thing that you specifically needed whoever needs a divorce, except to get out of a abusive situation.
But that also struck me because in the middle of listening to, I think your 29th surgery or whatever, you having your dream job, losing your dream job, having a different dream job, and then having that be snatched away a very abrupt way.
But leads your husband and your daughter are in your life, and then your husband isn't in your life and you taken through the grieving process, the reconciliation, which I found fascinating.
And more ex couples should do that and they don't.
In fact, the vats majority of of arts do not do that because it's so damn uncomfortable.
And honestly, not a lot of people even know it's a option or a good idea.
But you take it through all of that journey and the.
When you have a child together, particularly a teenager, all preteen, you worry about that child the most.
Be good.
Going through the heartache and not being with the person you love, who you've known for years and years, it's one thing.
But to have it affect your child or children in a vastly different way than even you can comprehend or that they can comprehend right back at you.
It made your delivery of that delicate moment in delegate time period was very fascinating to hear about.
And I felt like I was in your living room or at the reconciliation, which I totally wasn't.
Although I would love to be a fly on the windshield, many people have.
[00:44:54] Speaker B: Said I would have loved to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.
[00:44:57] Speaker A: Yeah, but because that's just so fascinating as a concept.
And so, and that's where I, I come back to the book and particularly the audiobook narration.
Having so much, showed so much vulnerability, so much empathy, sympathy.
And your life wasn't easy and you don't shy away from that, you don't dwell on it, but you give people the complete picture and whether or not they like the book or like the story, it's really irrelevant.
You've done your job by just laying it out, the good, the bad and the ugly. And you didn't throw your ex, the father of your daughter, under the butts. And so many people would have.
Yes they would, in your situation and, and hearing about the reconciliation and then telling your mother, having that cathartic crying experience, telling your aunt or grandma as well.
And it made going through those heart wrenching and heartbreaking experiences that we would rather not write about and not talk about and not know about, so fascinating. Could you pulled a sin of leads in the audiobook narration and there was no escaping anything from the narration.
And that's what I found so fascinating. Again, fascinating may be the wrong word to use, but as listener, there was never really a moment where I was checked out. I was looking at my watch or checking the timestamp and being like, I wish she would.
[00:48:32] Speaker B: I love that feedback.
[00:48:33] Speaker A: Yeah, because you kept it engaging over the most holy topics. I mean, thank goodness you want physic, the abuser, anything of that nature.
But I mean hollowing topics where no one will blame you for badging your ex even though he's the father of your daughter, or criticizing some of your family members, that would have been, oddly enough, more relatable to the general public.
But no, you chose not to do that. And that's why most of this episode will me hopping and Fawning over the audiobook narration and maybe letting you get in an answer or two.
But creativity and auditory.
It was a fascinating legend because of everything I just mentioned in the last 45 minutes.
But.
So what did your daughter think of it?
What did your ex think of it, if I may be so bold? Because there are a huge part of not only your life, but of the book, the fabric of your identity, your reality. I mean the people we live with and commune with on a daily weekly base set.
And I mean, you talked about feeling like you were walking on eggshells around your family when I would have said did you feel like you were doing that around yourself?
That it was maybe too personal of a project.
But for those closets to you, your ex husband being the father of your daughter and your daughter herself when she was at a very formative time in her psyche, how was it feeling?
They'll be back.
[00:52:00] Speaker B: I. So for my ex, my ex is. Has been remarried for a while. I actually haven't had any contact with him in a little over a year. Our daughter is now 18.
Well, she's 19 and.
[00:52:14] Speaker A: Wonderful age.
[00:52:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:18] Speaker A: And get played when you're 19.
That's me being sarcastic for anyone who didn't catch that gripping sarcasm, but continue.
[00:52:33] Speaker B: Yeah. So she's 19. I don't. She has two copies of my book. I don't know whether she has gotten to the point where she has read it, but she's very proud of me. She's very supportive of me. She went with me the arthritis foundation, asked me to be their walk hero this year. So I did that with them. And she was there with me and incredibly supportive, incredibly proud of her mama.
She knows from firsthand, you know, from being with me everything I went through and. And I don't know whether my ex has read the book. Like I said, we don't have any contact anymore. There's no reason, you know, we don't.
[00:53:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:11] Speaker B: Our child is older now. You know how things just go, oh, and he's been married so, you know, he's in his own world and I'm doing really well in my own world. So we don't really have contact. So I don't know whether he's read the book.
[00:53:24] Speaker A: No, I would just probably too interested in those people.
[00:53:35] Speaker B: Right.
[00:53:36] Speaker A: Expediently. Because they go throughout the vast majority of your experience and the various ups and downs and I mean I love how you threw.
I love how you threw shout outs to your siblings and to your parents.
And I mean I got to know so Much about your culture and the.
The.
The way your parents raised you and your siblings and how they differentiated, varied their way through parenthood.
I mean, again, things that aren't normally talked about or written about that I'm just going back through the entire narration and I'm like cherry picking the beautiful and heartbreaking points that I don't think I would hear or read in many other memoirs or historical biographies or what not. I mean, that was very intoxicating part of your book.
It's that it wouldn't judge the QR codes of the song title, chapter names.
It was those details which really grounded the reader, grounded the listener in Vincent's very real family, Vincent's immigrant story, Vince's disability story.
Yes, there are some parts where it's really tough and it's akin to feeling sorry for yourself in the moment, but you always go through and make it through to the other side.
Particularly the last few chapters.
Those were the most emotional gut punching, not only in the writing, but in your vocal delivery.
What was it like making your way through the narration of the entire experience and sort of reliving your entire life from day one to up until the point you had finished the book?
[00:57:20] Speaker B: Let's just say I was a blubbering mess. Okay.
I cried so much last year. I cried. So all last summer, all I did was cry last summer. That's all I did.
[00:57:34] Speaker A: From you to Elizona. You will cry in a very different.
[00:57:44] Speaker B: I used to travel to Arizona all the time.
[00:57:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:57:49] Speaker B: But, yeah, I cried throughout the entire process. I knew that this process was going to be very, very emotional. And I knew it was also going to be very cathartic.
And I knew it was going to be the ultimate. This book is the ultimate journal entry for me. I let so much shit go just from writing this book. And then I had to relive it all over again earlier this year when I recorded the audio version. And so I just kept doing it over and over again. And the audio version. You really hear me crying?
[00:58:27] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, yeah.
[00:58:28] Speaker B: You can't. You can't not cry when you're recording it.
[00:58:32] Speaker A: And no, you know, no.
[00:58:34] Speaker B: They tell you in advance. The audio engineer was like, hey, you can't add any extra words to this. You can't add. You can't take any words out of this. You literally have to read the book verbatim. Because I thought maybe I can add in a couple of words or give them the audiobook folks a couple of extra little perks or anything. No, you're not allowed to do that.
[00:58:54] Speaker A: Yes, it will be.
[00:58:56] Speaker B: And they were like, you absolutely can show emotion because it's my book.
How would it happen?
[00:59:00] Speaker A: I mean, that's really the only added thing you can give the legender.
But yeah, you do have to read the book verbatim. And there are reasons why others don't read their books verbatim. They don't read it, period.
It's too hard for some of them and we're not badging them. It's the reality of certain experiences that are judged.
You don't. You have to relive everything.
And some people don't want to relive their lives or certain section.
And you don't really have that luxury with audiobook.
It's either all or nothing.
And people just choose.
Some people choose and again, that's their right. But we're getting to the crux of the whole experience is that the audio narration really tells the story a lot more than just reading the words and trying to get what you are feeling, what your culture would like, what having your disability at such a young age. I mean, at the end of the day, without audiobook narration, they are words on a page.
And it's so cathartic, as you just mentioned, to hear the emotion and the vulnerability through your voids and through the voices of others who read their own work.
And that is what I find so alluring again about audiobook narration.
In case anyone hasn't caught on, I love audiobooks and I love obeds reading their own works. Let me tell you, one of my favorite bugs of all time is the Call of the Wild.
[01:02:32] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:02:33] Speaker A: I would have loved, absolutely loved to hear Jack London, the author, read that book.
But unfortunately he died a few years before we actually got that capability. But that story just touched me so deeply.
Hearing Victor Hugo read Lament's Rob would have been mind blowing. So, yeah, I. I really love audiobooks and I love to geek out when authors read their own story.
Do you have any interest on continuing to write or to explore pop culture on psychology again, things you're really fascinated with?
[01:04:01] Speaker B: I am definitely considering writing another book, only because I have been asked already.
And the nice thing about it is is that you know how you mentioned before or asked me before about how my friends and family felt about the book?
Majority of them read the book prior to the audiobook ever getting released. Because the audiobook didn't get released until earlier this year.
[01:04:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:04:24] Speaker B: So the book actually was released on October 16th of last year. So they had already read the book. And the funny Thing is. Well, not the funny thing. The. The.
The encouraging thing for me is that every single person that knows me, that has read the book, said they literally felt like they were sitting in the room with me and they could hear my voice.
[01:04:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:04:46] Speaker B: And they could hear my voice, and they could sense all of my emotions. They could sense the crying, they could sense the sadness. They could sense the despair. They could sense the happiness and the elation. They could sense all of those feelings with the words. And that was such a powerful thing for me to. To hear. And then even more so once the audible version came out, and it was like, oh, my gosh, now I really being completely immersed into this entire experience.
So it's been an absolute whirlwind. I would absolutely do it all over again.
And with regards to the book itself, I'm about to reread it this weekend because I'm getting ready to do. To be a guest speaker at a women's empowerment seminar happening at the end of October, at the end of September. And in order to do that, I'm going to be talking about my book. So I'm going to actually reread it this weekend, pull out some anecdotes, pull out some quotes and some songs and such. So I'm getting ready for it. I mean, I've been through it so many times. I feel like my story, it's not like I don't know what's going to happen next, you know, like, I know everything that's going to happen.
[01:05:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:05:55] Speaker B: So I just have to get into the proper mindset, do some meditation before I go into it so that I can clear my head, take down my notes, get my speech ready for this conference. I'm going to be going to and just, you know, go into it. But, like, it's.
I have had, like I said earlier, it is really the most ultimate journal entry I've ever done for myself. And I don't mind reading it and going back into it again because I know what the outcome is. I know how it's going to end. I know how I feel now today. I know I'm in such a great place today, and I know that I'm thriving today. So I go into it with a completely different mindset than what I did when I was initially writing it, you know, so it's been. It's been an absolute whirlwind. I'm having so much fun with it. I'm having so much fun with sharing my story with others, because in this day and age, we all need hope, right?
[01:06:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[01:06:57] Speaker B: And if my story can give even one person hope, my job is done.
[01:07:02] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And that preach, what you just said seems so cliche, but it's absolutely true. If you give one person hope, if you change one person's life with your own story, then the lives that they impact and change, it will become a chain reaction. And that's why people really believe that. And they. Absolutely, they should.
Before we end, we've talked a lot in this episode, and I've certainly complimented you and complimented audiobook narration.
I'd swear that going on my tombstone, he loved audiobook a lot more than most people.
But we've talked about a lot in this episode, and I like to think that both people with disabilities and those who have yet to discover and embrace their own disabilities listen and watch this program.
Add my dads.
What do you hope that people with disabilities take away from this episode?
And what do you hope that those who have yet to discover or embrace their own disabilities take away from this episode?
[01:09:28] Speaker B: I love that question. And if I had to choose just one thing right now, it would be to absolutely live in the moment. Cherish every moment that you have.
Cherish every.
Every breath that you have, and embrace it.
Live in the moment. Because the past is already done. We know that cliche phrase, past is done, future isn't here. So live in the moment.
[01:09:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:09:57] Speaker B: But seriously, embrace the moment. And live every single day to its absolute full, the fullest.
Embrace it. Take advantage of it. Be happy. Find your happy place, whatever it makes you, whatever it is that makes you happy. And for me, it was music.
Music literally saved my life. This is why my entire book focuses around the theme of music. There's music splashed throughout my entire book. If I didn't have music to hold on to during that time, I wouldn't be here today.
[01:10:29] Speaker A: Yeah. And you make that crystal clear.
[01:10:35] Speaker B: Crystal clear.
[01:10:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:10:37] Speaker B: I found my Zen.
I found my Zen. I found my piece. Maybe it's not music for you. Maybe it's a different type of creative endeavor. Maybe you like to write. Maybe you like to draw. Maybe you like to play sports. Maybe you like to, you know, play video games all day long. Whatever it is that you are passionate about that makes you happy, do it. Because that happiness is what's going to get you out of this deep, dark abyss.
That's how you're going to get out of it. And sometimes we. We get ourselves to the point, grind ourselves to the. I literally hit rock bottom. I literally hit rock bottom and scraped myself off of the concrete and said, Nope, I'm not going out like this. But it took me three or four years to even come up with that because I wasn't living in the moment. I was living in the past. I was living in the future. Like, what's going to happen to me now? How am I going to do this? How am I going to manage? How am I going to do this by myself, without a husband, by myself, without my daughter living with me? How am I going to survive?
Yeah, guess what? You do.
Yeah, you absolutely do. We all have the ability to survive and to live and to thrive.
Just find your Zen. Find what makes you happy. Take care of your inner child. There are so many things we used to do when we were little that we don't do anymore. I actually attended. This is a total sidebar thing. I attended a workshop for working on your inner child and doing shadow work and things like that. And it was so beneficial to me. They. The very first question they asked us was, what's your favorite toy? What was your favorite toy or your favorite childhood game? And I was like, that's such a great question. Like, I've never even. And my. For me, it was a spirograph. Remember the spirographs growing up?
So I went online on Amazon that night. I found the 50th anniversary edition for the spirograph and I bought it.
I bought it and now I do my spirograph. I'm like, why can't I do that at the age of 54? Who said I can't do that at the age of 54?
[01:12:51] Speaker A: No one judged.
Talking to you. I hope you will come back again. And in our next discussion, I promise, I swear to you, that I will let you talk more and I will shock up.
I won't stop fawning so much over audiobook narration.
My editors are gonna grill me about this episode.
I would love and signed copy of your book or DM me my address.
And please keep in touch. And please keep writing and keep being yourself and living your truth and your passion.
It's been quite an honor to walk through your life with you to do this interview.
Enjoy your women's empowerment retreat and I hope to see you at the next boxing meeting. I really look forward to that.
You will be the heavyweight champion again someday. I guarantee it.
I'll talk to you later, my friend. Thank you.
You have been listening to disability empowerment. Now I would like to thank my dads, you, Olenzener, and the disability empowerment team that made this episode possible.
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