Welcome to the Sword of Sure podcast. Where doubt looms, fear whispers, and the only way forward is through. I'm Samar Carbo, and if you've ever felt like you're just sort of sure about what you're doing, you're not alone. This is where we face the uncertainty. Push past the hesitation and keep going anyway way. So take a breath, step in, and let's move forward together. Hello and welcome to the Sort of Shore podcast. In case you missed it in the beginning, my name is Samar Carbo and I am so excited to bring you this conversation. Today I had a Lovely conversation with Dr. Darlene Williams Pratts and she was a hoot. We talk about a load of things, we do some poetry at her insistence. We talk about her story, we get a little advice. This is another. I know I'm bringing you a lot of two parters these days, but when you have a long conversation with somebody, you've gotta honor it with more than one part. So we're gonna do the same format. It's gonna come out today and then the second part is coming out on Sunday, so you don't have to wait too long. But before we get all the way there, if you have a story of imposter syndrome or self doubt, shoot me an [email protected] I'd love to hear from you. Just a quick heads up. You're gonna catch us in the middle of a conversation. It's kind of the nature of this whole thing. It's so dynamic. She is not gonna introduce herself and so you'll just have to pick up what she does in the show notes. And from what I say at the end, without further ado, let's have a listen. I am terrified of writing fiction. I will write so much non fiction at, you know, almost at a whim because I feel so strongly about helping people that, that, that just flows. But when I have an idea which, you know, where my start in writing came from about fiction, I think, I don't know, I look up to these giants in fiction who are writing these epic stories and I just, I, I can't get past the outline stage. So that's the thing.

I never look at what anyone else has done. I look at what God wants me to do.

There you go.

See, here's the thing you gotta do. Think about it this way. When, when a volcano is created in different places because you know, there's a chain of volcanoes. The volcano in Peru is not like the volcano in Washington state. So you're not going to be a carbon copy of anybody. He makes you unique on purpose. So when I write, I write from a point of, okay, what have I observed for the past year that kind of makes this all come together? And then I become a child again and I go into that wild imagination and I put it together and it's absolutely so much fun. It's so much fun.

And I mean, you've been writing for quite some time too, right?

Yeah. You know what? I've been writing literally Since I was 6 and I started writing music because I was a violinist, a viola, a cellist, I played piano, I sang. And so it's different when you come from that place. When you come from that place, it's. Everything's all creative and you're getting things out of your system. Writing music is getting things out of your system. It's like spoken word without. Without music. And then I began to add music to what I was writing and I was like, oh, this is so much more fun. And it's kind of like, okay, so if you write a piece of poetry and you decide at some juncture, what is this really about? How can I reach more people in a smaller amount of time? And generally it's because people listen to music, they don't have to focus on reading it, they just have to focus on listening to it.

Yes. And, you know, that's a lot of why I do this podcast. I knew there were people that I wasn't going to reach because I'll never see them in person. But the podcast is just out there on a bunch of different distribution platforms. So what I do is I offer this out to the world. And maybe at one episode, 100 people might see it ever. But for those 100 people, maybe 10, maybe one, it'll change my life. And that's what I want. If it offers life change of any kind, I am sold even for one person.

So I'm gonna test your mind.

Good.

I'm gonna give you a three word title and I want you to just give me a quick poem. Reaching in Love.

Reaching in love. And you want a quick poem?

I want a quick poem. Don't write it down, just say it.

Reaching in love. The style of a human being goes beyond the ephemeral. We go beyond the space we occupy. And even beyond that. Reaching in love means being far more than doing. It's when we reach in love that we find we didn't have to reach at all. How's that?

See how easy that was?

Oh, I love that.

You see how easy that was. And it's just. All you're doing is really saying, this is what's in now. I'm going to let it out. So. Reaching in love. Reaching out. Oh, okay. I reach across the silent space not sure you'd meet me in that place the trembling hand, hopeful heart Love is uncertain but it plays a part there's no map there's no rules there's no perfect line Just your eyes meeting mine no grasp too tight Just enough to let go to feel what's real so we can let it grow I'm reaching, reaching, reaching I found not just you but a version of me I never knew Love is a risk It's a leap of faith It's a flame that flickers when the wind blows and reaching in love is how it's earned its name. Because when we reach for love, we always touch something special.

It's beautiful.

I usually have to have a rhyme in my head to kind of make it okay. How can I make this flow? Can I really make it? Not less of a haiku and more of a childlike flow?

Yeah, that was fantastic.

So I do that when. When. When I marry couples. I say, give me five words to describe. You had to describe your partner. And I do that with each one. And then I sit and I listen to some kind of music, and there's a vows. Boom, there it is. We're done.

Yeah.

I just did a wedding this past weekend, and when I sent the vows to her, she kind of blinked. But when he had to hear the vows, he started to cry because he realized, wait a minute, she wrote these. And then he said his own, and they all kind of melded together, and he was weeping like, oh, my God. You know, it's like, okay, you touched my heart to a point where what I'm saying to her is all kind of feeling, you know, warm and fuzzy.

Yeah.

And that's what I want to do to people. I want to. I want to change their minds and their energy and their hearts at the same time.

Now, you weren't always here, though, right? I mean, you. You had a journey to get to this point. And, of course, we all have a journey in life, but was it just one day? You started, you know, officiating weddings, and you started writing books and speaking in front of large crowds.

Absolutely not.

So what was the kind of organic journey?

Yeah, my journey was definitely organic. Let's just give it a voice. So let's talk about something that, you know, therapists sweat about. I'll put it that way.

Yeah, I Like that.

Let's talk about something therapists sweat about. They never want to be asked about themselves. You know, they're like, I'm a good person with a PhD. They give you that kind of vibrato. But here's the facts. I am an adopted child. And the two wonderful people who adopted me taught me the value of love and kindness and compassion and passion for life and understanding that everything's not going to be perfect. And so I took the challenge of, hey, let's, let's be better. And I, six years old, I began to play violin and viola and cello and piano and sing. And I thought, this is amazing. And that one time did I get the. We don't have the money for that. We can't do that. Now, here's the key. They didn't have the money for that, but they had the will to make sure that this child that they had adopted would have everything that would take her beyond where they were. And the goal was, be better than us. It was never, be better than somebody on tv. Be better than us. Grow better than us. And then take that pause. When I lost my parents at a young, very young age, I lost them six months apart. Losing them and then being an only child and not being in a, in a. I guess what you would call a regular family and what I mean by regular air, air quotes, is you've got a mom, you got a dad, you got sisters, you got brothers, you got grandma, you got grandpa, aunties, uncles, cousins. I didn't have that. What I had by the time I reached 16 was mom and dad. What I had by the time I was 16 and a half was just me. I just had me. And it's not something for people to go, oh, my God, no, don't go, oh my God. Because they, they well equipped me to, to be this independent at that age, which is not normal. You understand? It's not normal for a 16 year old to just be able to go, okay, so there's a mortgage and there's a car payment and, and there's this. No, it's. That's not normal. Usually they're looking for their parents to take care of something, and I wasn't, I wasn't looking for that. I was in a space where I knew what to do. I knew how to do it and I knew how to handle it. And I wasn't afraid. What I was, was tense because now I had to be an adult. I made plans, hey, when I grow up and I go off to college and I'm going To make lots of money, and I'm going to take you on cruises, and you're going to see the seven wonders of the world. But I had never made the plan they were going to leave. I'd never made that plan because I thought, they're going to be around until we're like 100 years old and we're going to do stuff.

And that did not materialize in the eventuality, yeah, we're going to do stuff.

But that's. It didn't materialize. My journey was not easy because after losing my parents, I still wanted things. I didn't want the same things. I didn't want the same things. I started out, I wanted to be a traveling journalist who, much like the journalists you see, they're going to the wars, and they're going to all these countries, taking all these pictures, and they're bringing the story back. That's what I wanted to do. And after losing them, it became, I still want to do communication. I still want to do journalism, radio, television, film. And it became writing poetry and writing poems and writing scripts and creating things in my mind. And then by 17, I joined the United States Air Force. Before I left for the Air Force, I leaned a lot on my church. I had a mentor. I was actually in my first year of college because I graduated high school at 16, and I was already in college by that summer. And one of my professors, One of my professors, he said, look, I will pay for a semester school, but you. You got to keep going. You can't stop, you know? And in my mind, I heard what he said. I really did. I joined the army, rotc. I got to do a lot of things that a lot of women, I'm sure, either didn't want to do or they just felt like they didn't want to break a nail. You know, I was a daddy's girl, so I. I went hunting and I went fishing, and I. I shot basketball, and I played rugby with the fellas, and I played football. I was a sports person, and so I didn't have a fear of, oh, we're going to fire weapons. My dad taught me how to fire weapons. Oh, we're going to zip line. Oh, no problem. I can zip line. Oh, we're going to repel. I don't know. No problem. We're gonna. We're gonna do all of this stuff. I didn't have a problem with any of that stuff. But when they tell me, well, you can't do infantry, oh, okay, well, that's okay, because that's What I wanted. I wanted to do infantry. But you also have to understand that as you're. When you're younger and you're going through these things psychologically, you don't realize you've had a break. What you think is just keep going because you're. In your mind, you're leaving whatever the discomfort, the pain, the anguish, whatever you want to name it, behind you. So if you imagine you're running down the street and there's this glowing light in front of you, behind you is there's darkness, and you want to leave that, so you're just putting yourself into everything. And I was putting myself into everything. I mean, I was jumping off high boards in the really deep water in the pool. I was studying all these different things, and my mind kept going so that it wouldn't go back. So that it wouldn't go back. But I learned that I could manifest a different life if I focused on not with so much behind me, but what's in front of me or what I'd like to have in front of me.

It's lovely. So I'm wondering, and it sounds like you've been sort of just plodding forward regardless of what stands in your way or tries to slow you down. Certainly for a lot of people, it would be almost like running with a parachute to have lost both your parents, but it seems almost to have accelerated you forward. And is that part of your ethos that you take the difficulty and you use it to push you forward?

Yes. I mean, let's be real here. Life without parents, without siblings, is really living on an island, and it's. I'm. It's sure hard for people to get. Wow, you're still going. And it's like when you start a business, it's like raising a pet tiger. It's really well put. Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, the theory is the tiger's so cute when it's a cub, and it's this majestic vision, but it will try to eat you at some point. Okay. It will get better at least once a week. Okay. And that's how my life was. It was like raising a pet tiger. Everything was good. And then all of a sudden, it's like, you know, like, oh, my God. You know? And I didn't just buy the tiger. I just caught the tiger. Didn't buy it. It didn't try to keep it. But I taught it how to dance when it decided it wanted to pounce. And I did that through focusing on meditation. I do did that through focusing on when I would Go to the ocean and close my eyes and just listen to the words of the ocean. Don't say anything. Don't ask for anything. Just take it all in. Feel the sun on your body. Feel the air blowing past you. Listen to the voices all around you. They're not talking to you, so you don't need to intrude. And then that pet tiger becomes the tame, purring tiger. He doesn't want to eat you. He just wants to lay on your lap and purr. That's all he wants us to do.

All right, we're gonna pause right there for just a few days until we get to episode 33. When we get to the thrilling conclusion, we go a little bit deeper, talk a little bit more specifically about Dr. Darlene Williams, Pratt's author, speaker, and all around boss before we finish up this episode. I just. I don't want the fact that this episode is ending to overshadow what was said in the episode. There is a world where you can use your lowest points to push you forward. There is a world where you can have a very sad day or a very great day, and either thing can move you forward. That's the nature of this entire show, is to tell you that, that there are ways to cope with the worst days. There are ways to cope with a chemical imbalance. There are ways to get past it, and there are ways to live with it. And there doesn't have to be a comma, semicolon, a period in your story just because something bad happened. And I know I say just because, but I want you to understand that this, this doesn't have to be the end. There is always help. You don't have to just rely on yourself. There are plenty of people. There's communities, there are churches, there are professionals, people you pay to talk to about these things. Whether it's losing someone very important to you or having a very bad grouping of days, you can get through it. There is tomorrow. Everything will get better. You just have to let it. Now, before I get way too preachy, I'm gonna get out of here. And I am so excited for this next installment. Episode 33, Dr. Darlene Williams Pratt coming back. And if you have a story of imposter syndrome or self doubt, I want to hear from you. Go ahead and shoot me an email. It's at sort of surepodmail.com thank you so much for tuning in this week. Later days.