Emile DeWeaver — Life After Murder: On Fear, Freedom, and Identity

I am under no illusions, right? I cannot make amends to the man I killed. I cannot make amends to his family. And that still needs to be a North Star, right? In my world, in my life, what I feel like. And so I can spend my time hating myself, or I could spend my time helping to create a world where little kids don't kill other little kids.

Welcome to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want. With enjoyment and ease. I'm Brett Kistler, here today with my co-host Joe Hudson. We spend a lot of time on this podcast talking about fear. It's one of my favorite topics, and we've covered it from many perspectives, from parachuting off of cliffs to having difficult conversations in the boardroom and showing up authentically in relationships. But what if the fear you're facing is the fear of life imprisonment for murder? That's not something we've really touched on in this podcast, But you're in luck because today Joe and I have the pleasure of speaking with Émile Dewever, who has been there and is here to tell us all about it.

That is the most interesting introduction I have ever had, and I've had some good introductions.

I was trying not to laugh too hard or have it heard, and then once you laughed, I was like, all right, good. Now we get to laugh at that.

That's great. That's the beautiful thing about human laughter. Like, when you come out of the other end, you can laugh, and it does feel good to laugh because you know what you survived, right? And you know that it's not a laughing matter, but you know that, like, your world's a better place for it, and you can make the world a better place for it. So there still is joy in it. So yeah, let's laugh at that.

Yeah, yeah. Well, all right, let's dive into it. I dropped a little bit of a bomb there to get our listeners hooked into the episode, so I hope we have their attention now. And let's give you the floor, Emil. Tell us how you came to be here today and what you'd like to tell us about your journey with fear.

Yeah, um, those are all big questions. I kind of just start by just kind of introducing the context behind your introduction, and that is, you know, since I was 18 years old, I was serving a life sentence, 67 years to life in prison for murder and attempted murder. At the time, I was basically a homeless kid on the street. I was selling drugs, so I was involved in drug wars in Oakland when Oakland was definitively like the Oakland that you read about in the news and feel maybe uncomfortable to walk the streets at night.

Sorry to interrupt. What years was that? What years were—?

1997, 1998. In fact, like— What part of Oakland? 106 and MacArthur. So back then, it was called the Rollin' 60s. Rolling 100.

So it was like, I lived on 47th and San Leandro in those years.

Okay, so you are from— I know, I know, many years before '97 that like Oakland was like one of the murder capitals of the world.

Um, oh yeah, I mean, Fourth of July, New Year's Eve, there'd be bullets landing on our, on our rooftops. I mean, I have a lot of visceral memories from that time. I mean, and your, your part of the neighborhood was worse than my part of— I mean, my part of the neighborhood was not good, But it was worse where you were. At least everybody in my neighborhood would say that, that where you lived was worse.

So, yeah. Wow. That's where I come from. I come from a lot of different places, but that's another podcast. And yeah, so like, I was tried for murder. I was convicted because like, I did it. I was sentenced to 67 years to life. And my relationship to fear were like, I kind of like think about my relationship to fear in like 3 different stages. And that's like before before I got arrested and also sometime near after. And that was like, you know, I grew up in a hyper-masculine culture, in a very abusive household where fear wasn't actually allowed. I put that in quotes because there's no way to disallow fear. Like, it was definitionally a part of being a man, a strong man, to not be afraid. And the problem for that for me was like, you know, you know, I have some muscles now, but I was a pretty small kid. I was always afraid. I was the youngest of two of like three of us boys or brothers and an older sister. My brothers were kind of big and I was always afraid, but I was messaged that this wasn't okay. So that means I was also always ashamed. And so I was always hiding this and there was no way that I could authentically show up as myself in any situation because, like, it felt like I was hiding this thing that was very true about me that was saying that there was something that was wrong about me. And I discovered at a young age, like, the power of, like, anger and rage to, like, cover fear. I remember there was this time my oldest brother, he's like 4 years older than me, and I have no chance in hell in, like, standing up to him physically. But he was kind of just, you know, bullying me as, like, big brothers do. And Like, I reached a limit. Not that, like, not that I had, like, courage in any sense of the term. I had just really reached a limit. And I went into this rage and I threw this deodorant at him. We were in a hotel room and it shattered against the— he jumped behind the bed and shattered against the window. And my dad, who was a pretty scary guy, like, he was like 5'5", but he was like a really scary guy. And he did not play, right? Like, I would expect for him to skin my ass alive or something like that, right? But instead, he had this look of pride on his face and he was like, "Yeah, I bet you'll leave Emile alone now." And like, from that moment, I was like, oh, there's this way that I can, one, cover up fear and cover up this sense of inadequacy I have through anger. Right? And like outbursts. And that was a genuine outburst, right? It's like, I don't feel like I've had many genuine outbursts in my life. I felt like after that moment, understanding that that was a source of like power and safety in a way that I could like not feel afraid and so not feel the shame, I would manufacture anger and feed it and stoke it and stoke it and stoke it until I could like drive myself to like move through this fear. And so my earliest relationships to fear was that of complete denial and rushing through it, right, through it with anger. That, of course, ended in perhaps the most traumatic moment of my life when I killed a man, which, like, let's be clear, it was much more traumatic for him and his family. But I'm like, you know, I'm speaking for myself and like, that's something that, you know, 20-plus years later, I don't know that I've still recovered from fully. So I went to prison holding this, this like tragic act that I committed out of fear and uncontrolled anger manufactured up.

I have a memory in my— so when I was first out of college, I taught Head Start in the Hayes Valley Projects in San Francisco. And I remember the culture of no fear. Right. And I would say it wasn't just with the masculine. I saw it very in the feminine. And of that culture too, there was very little room for fear. And I remember even at that age with very little understanding, asking somebody about it, saying like, "Nobody shows any fear here." And they said, "Look, if you show fear, you're prey. So, you're either predator or prey. If you show fear, you're prey. You don't show fear." And I remember how much that viscerally hit me. So, I just want to say for the viewers, to try to grok that. That helped me grok it. So I'm hoping that story helps grok it for other people of how important it was not to show fear. So sorry to interrupt. You were saying— No.

And yeah, if I could like, you know, take a quick divergent path real quick to like respond to that story, I'm going to tell you something interesting that I discovered, right? So I spent most of my life, most of my, even my juvenile life in like juvenile facilities, juvenile hall, youth authority, like boot camps, things like that. And of course, I was always afraid there. I couldn't show it. And so I had this, like, pretend person that I was. I was, like, play-acting hardcore, like the hardest method acting you have ever seen. Like, I have never liked to fight. Fighting scares the shit out of me. But, like, no one could ever know that. And I had to be able to fight on a dime, right? And so I grew up in that environment pretending that I had no fear, pretending that I liked to fight, pretending that I welcomed violence, right? Yeah. And, like, as the system is kind of constructed, the same people I knew in juvenile hall, I would run into them in the county jail, and I ran into them in prison, and we became adults in our 30s and our 40s, and we kind of grew up and we grew out of that, and we changed our relationship to fear. And then we started to have conversations with each other about our childhood, and it kind of— come to find out, everyone was pretending. Everyone was pretending in the name of survival, saying that, like, if I don't do this pretend, I won't be able to survive because other people are somehow different than me. I'm somehow different because, like, I'm like this impostor in this thing. I'm like afraid all the time. I don't want to fight. I don't want— everybody was thinking that and acting on this pretend character that they think— thought they had to be to be safe, not knowing we were all pretending.

Yeah, I have to say, this sounds a lot like a lot of boardrooms that I have been in. There's a whole bunch of people who are anxious and scared who are doing everything they can not to show it and not to react from it and trying to have the bravado and, and they're scared the whole thing's going to go away. Yeah. Yeah. It's not, not too dissimilar. That's amazing. So you were at the part of the story where you, you had this trauma, you killed somebody and then you went to jail, which seems to me like the number one place where you can't show fear. Like you were recreating this reality. So what happened when you got to jail? Like what occurred for you there?

I feel like my relationship to fear changed and I think it changed in stages. The first one was, I mean, where it lands is that traditional conception of fear and courage. Like courage isn't the absence of fear. It's like, you know, doing the right thing in the face of fear or functioning in the face of fear. That's why I ended up landing. But where it actually started was, you know, the reality of, like, waking up in the morning, right? Like, because in the act, you know, you can numb yourself, right? You can force yourself through it. That's its own traumatic event, like, force yourself through, like, uh, something that you know you absolutely should not be doing. In the aftermath of that lives a lot of self-loathing, right? So for me, like, I couldn't have the same relationship to fear of like, you know, I'm just going to work myself up into a rage and recklessly, like, move through it and I'm going to deny it existed because I could clearly see that that had resulted in, like, the most horrible thing I've ever done. So that didn't quite work for me anymore.

Right. What was that? What was it? So there's obviously some people who did that in jail and then they kept with that technique. Right? Like they, they're like, I learned that to overcome fear with anger worked. And then I created this heinous act and now I'm in jail and I'm gonna keep on with that strategy. Whereas you were like, no, I'm not. I can't do that strategy anymore. What do you think is the difference between the people in jail who keep with the strategy and the people in jail who are like, yeah, that's not how I wanna be?

I feel like an important part of that answer to that question is luck. Yeah. There are a number of factors that coalesced that created that, like, impression for me, right? One was the feeling of utter disillusionment with my— with my value system. That, like, with this value system I have, this is where it has brought me. And it brought me there while the mother of my child was pregnant. And so my kid was born while I was on trial for murder. I saw my kid through, like, a glass partition when they were born. And I was struck by the reality that this child is going to grow up and one day someone's going to ask them what their father does for a living. And I was like, you know, junior high school dropout, drug dealer. By society's standards, like a murderer. And when I say by society's standards, 'cause I don't believe in identifying a person based on the worst act they've ever committed. I did murder somebody. I am not a murderer, right? And I think that that is a very important distinction. So I knew, like, you know, I was picturing this moment of when someone would ask my kid this one day. And I knew that, you know, either they were gonna lie about it and be ashamed, Or they were going to tell the truth about it and be ashamed. But I knew that they were going to be ashamed. And I knew that with that shame might come some measure of hating me. And I knew from my relationship with my father, like I had already sensed on a level, that she can't hate me without hating herself. And I said she, but what I mean is they, because they're a trans person. But at the time, I thought of them in those gender terms. And so I felt like I had, like, mortally crippled my kid in their first week of life. I felt like I had— like they had just been born and I had failed them in every conceivable way. And that was a lot. You know, my dad did a lot of things wrong, but from what he tried to do, like, he had already instilled in me the value that there was nothing more important in this world than being a father. So that hit me really hard. And I was, like, in a state of sheer panic. And when that receded, I began to realize that, one, they're not quite old enough to even know what a dad is or even what I did or what prison is. And so I felt like I grabbed hold of that, and I was like, "You have, until the time they are old enough to understand that, to completely transform who you are." Right? And if you— I had determined, I was like, you know, I'm gonna get out of prison, I'm gonna write my way out of prison, which is his own story that, like, actually happened 21 years later. But I was like, even if I don't succeed at that, if I can at least show them that it's never too late to build something, it's never too late to turn around and go in a different direction and create something for yourself, then that at least can be my gift to them. So I think that was the big difference. Yeah, that's huge.

I want to double-click on something that you said, which is about the being defined as the worst thing that you've done. And I'm sure that there's somebody in who's listening who's like, wait, you're not allowed to let go of that shame of being a murderer. You're not allowed to like choose the definition of who you are. You know, something wrangles in people when that happens. And at the same time, when I hear it, I know so much the truth of what you're saying, which is how we define ourselves is how we end up acting, right? If we think that we are— that our value is that we are smart, then we will go around acting like we're smart, maybe less likely to listen to people, more likely to be arrogant. Or if we go around thinking, oh, we are, um, more important than other people, then that's how we're going to act. Or if we go around thinking we're less than other people, that's how we're going to act. And so to, to take away the, the self-definition of murderer, to me, is an incredibly important thing because it, it prevents it from happening again. It allows you the freedom away from an identity that's been put upon you, or that you put upon yourself. Either way, you get some freedom from it. But that's my interpretation of it, and I'm wondering, what is your— like, what makes it important for you to, to not be defined that way? Like, what's the practical implication of that?

Yeah, I mean, I resonate with a lot of what you're saying, and I feel like my commitment to not being defined as a murderer functions on 3 levels. And I'll start with— I'll start with something close to the one you offered. I think that one of the more valuable things that happened to me while I was in prison is I became a writer and I became a father. And those 2 things became my identity to the point where, like, I would literally have conversations with myself and others, especially when it came to prison rules and prison politics. Like, you know, you got to I got to do this thing, 'cause those are the rules of prison. And that identity as a father and that identity as a writer gave me the actual strength to say, like, nah, fuck that shit. No. I know those are prison rules, and I'm not gonna live like I'm in prison. I refuse to live like I'm in prison. That was not moral courage. That was, like, I needed that to be sane. I needed that to feel like I had a chance of one day going home and being a father to my kid. And I had resolved within myself that, I'm not really super clear about how I'm gonna get out of prison. 'Cause you got to understand, when I was— when I got sentenced to 67 years to life in California, what tough on crime meant in California was that, like, there were people who'd been in prison with 5 years to life when I went to prison who had been in prison for 20 years, and they hadn't killed anybody. Right. Right? Like, the grant rate of life or parole in California when I was convicted was, like, maybe less than 1%, right? It was definitely less than 4%. And of the people who were granted parole, the governors would revoke 80% of them. So less than 1% of people were found suitable who had life sentences. And of that less than 1%, 80 to 90% of them had it revoked by the governor. That's what tough on crime meant in California. And so it was very reasonable for me to feel like I'm not quite sure how this is gonna happen, right? But I do know that if it is gonna happen, I gotta be ready for it. If it is gonna happen, I've gotta behave in a way that makes that possible. And so those two identities helped me to resist prison politics because I became something more than a prisoner or a criminal or this identity that you say that, well, if you're this, then like, that's what you act like. The thing that I want to like share with the people was like, how dare you, right? Is that, look, that's not a place I came to overnight, right? Like, I wasn't 20 years old talking about like, I'm not a murderer, right? I wasn't even 30 years old talking about I'm not a murderer, right? I'm 42 and 40— I'm like 43 years old. And it took me a long time to come to a place where I could, one, forgive myself, and two, recognize that hating myself was not the answer to doing a heinous act. And in fact, was a bit of a diversion and a scapegoat. Because, you know, I know a lot of people spend a lot of time feeling guilty about things. And there's a way in which we can become comfortable in that this is like my punishment. This is my penance. You know what I'm saying? Feeling like shit and saying that I'm not shit. Right? But what does it look like to actually try to make amends? I am under no illusions, right? I cannot make amends to the man I killed. I cannot make amends to his family. And— that still needs to be a North Star, right, in my world, in my life, what I feel like. And so I can spend my time hating myself, or I can spend my time helping to create a world where little kids don't kill other little kids. And that requires a different orientation. That's why it's very important to me. And, you know, I get it. I get why you would say, "Bro, who the fuck are you to say I'm not a murderer, or don't call me a murderer," right? I get it, man. I get it. But I respectfully disagree with you. And I say that, you know, if you— like, there's the tendency to feel like you're trying to get over, right? Or like— You know, you're kind of— that's quite convenient, Emil. You don't consider yourself a murderer, right? And I got to say, like, that's for the proverbial you to hold. That's not for me to hold. I feel really solid about my own integrity. What I love about it is just the simple—

that vision you just drew, like, to me was amazing because what it says is if you want to be the person who helps little kids not kill other little kids, defining yourself as a murderer makes that a lot less likely than if you have actually learned to love yourself, learn to forgive yourself, and overcome that limiting identity. That— and that's just, it's just true, you know. People who, who feel that about themselves and you're still hating themselves in that way, it's, it's very unlikely that they're going to make a difference in the way that you want to.

Yeah, so beautifully said. I'm jumping in here now, having been off of most of this conversation due to Wi-Fi issues, but there's something really there that I like, is that there's— it's not that you're like bypassing the identity of a murderer, that what— that's something that you've done. It's like, in, in some sense, teaching kids not to murder involves being, hey, look, I am somebody who has murdered. I am in that regard a murderer, and that's not the only thing I am. That doesn't entirely define me. There's still freedom to be had in who I am and how I show up in the world, regardless of what I've done in my past. You know, it's not this, oh, I'm not a murderer, that was just— that wasn't even me, that was just some other, some other thing that I'm dissociated from, and don't hold me accountable for those actions. It's just, yeah, I am all of me, I'm all of my actions, and I am everything beyond that as well.

Yeah, absolutely. This isn't a conversation about like, I'm not accountable for killing a man. I am accountable for killing a man. I will always be accountable for killing a man, whatever the consequences of that are, whether that's someone killing me one day because they feel like you killed this person who was important to me. Like, for me, that's like, that can happen. Those are kind of the consequences of killing somebody. So like, that's like, you know, you got to live with that. But like, take a different parallel. Take someone who's not me, right? There's this practice in, uh, in prison in the name of accountability of like always leading with like, this is the crime I committed and I'm sorry. Right? And I can see why in a world where people are struggling to even come to terms with, like, "Hey, I did a horrible thing," right? I can see why someone could be like, "We need this extreme practice in order to assure ourselves that this person is actually feeling remorseful for this thing they did." But I think that, like, goes off the track, 'cause who do you know— who in this world do you know who introduces themselves with the worst thing they've ever done? You don't. There's only a certain, I'll say, class of people that we expect to do that, right?

But like, that's how I introduced you.

Yeah, shame on you, Brad. Shame on you. Right?

Yeah. And, and, and if you define yourself by, like, if you're— with the things that we're ashamed of are the things that we recreate in our lives. And so I think it's great. It's like, where, where do you allow the empowerment of accountability to be there without the, the recursive nature of shame? How do you allow someone to, like, be fully accountable, feel sorry, forgive themselves, love themselves, get over it? And when does somebody's need, society's need, prison's need for you to feel shame actually get in the way of that? I think is, is the thing that I imagine you've been wrestling with for a long time. There's one other thing I've got to say. You said something about prison politics in there that I just have to say because we have a lot of professionals listening to this. You were talking about how I am not going to be— I'm not going to do prison politics because if I do, if I follow the rules of this prison, I will be defined that way. And I can't do that because then I won't be able to be a dad. Then I won't be able to be a writer and the things that I want to be in this world. I just want to know if you are at right now at home and you are in an office and you're playing office politics, the same is true for you. If you are in that office and you are obeying rules that don't work for you, it is stopping you from being the father, the mother, the person that you want to be. And if it's possible for a man to not play by the politics of prison, It's definitely possible for you not to play by the politics of some office in Silicon Valley. So I just wanted— I needed to point that out there because that is a truth that I see so many people wrestle with and never really get the kind of clarity on that you did.

That is such a powerful parallel. And I just want to know if we have time for one more digression related to that. Yes, we do. We do. I talk to people about solitary confinement in prison sometimes, right? And like most people can see, like, I mean, the science backs up this, like one of the worst forms of torture that are available to humans. And so most people can see the problem with solitary confinement. But what I'd like them to understand, I was like, you know, it's a different scale, but solitary confinement is not different from prison. It's just like more severe than the general conditions of prison. And the thing that I would say that would link to what you said is Much of what's happening in prison, which is why I'm an abolitionist, right? Because I think it's actually what the world needs. It's what society needs, right? Much of what happens in prison is paralleled also in society, in workplaces like that. Think about prison as a mechanism of disposability. And then think about how many people feel in an office. Something really funny, like, you know, when you go to prison, like, you know, that's a lot of trauma and shit. And anyone who leaves prison after 21 years needs some therapy. They need some help, right? And like, I have all kinds of therapists, different kinds of therapists from like couples therapists to therapists to somatic generative somatic therapists to like sex therapists. Like, I need them all, right? But something funny that I have found now, I know a lot of people in a lot of different circles, whether in tech, whether in philanthropy, whether in the nonprofit, everyone is trying hard to heal from trauma in their life. And I'm like, wait, in that— like, it's different details, but there's something very similar about my healing journey and the healing journeys of many people around me who have seen nothing of like what I have seen. And that tells me something. It's like, why is that? Why do I like— how is that so? Right? And that's because these things are parallel. These are like the— these systemic issues that we're talking about, like they infect all of our institutions, whether it's a corporate office, whether it's college, whether it's law school, whether it's prison. And what you can learn from what's wrong with prison is something you can actually learn about what's wrong with the society we live in.

When I was in my 20s and early 30s, I was in this men's group and we would get together every Wednesday for about 3 hours and we would talk about our journeys, our healing journeys, our spiritual journeys. And I remember there was this woman who wrote something called The Vagina Monologues. I can't remember her name, but she had this PBS special that was called What I Want My Words to Say to You. And in it, she basically took women in maximum security prison, and one of them was famous even. I think the woman who like cut off the Johnson of one of her, of her boyfriends or something, Babbitt, or I can't remember, but something like that, right? And she was doing the work with them in this prison, and they were sharing these stories. And I remember going, these women who have, most of them murderers, and now I'm thinking about the way that I just said that. Most of them had committed murder and they were going through the same stuff we were going through. Like, their stories were a little bit different, but their journeys, their healing journey, it was all the same. It would— they were— and I remember just being blown away by it. It shook me that there was really no difference between what they were doing and what we were doing. Yeah. And I, I remember like that, that moment for me was one of the more profound moments of that year, was just like, oh, Yeah, this is— this— we are all in this together. Yeah. Okay, so we're on your first relationship with fear is now changing into your second, because at the beginning you were like, there's three— your fear had kind of three different steps to it. The first one was overcome it and make it violent, and so that you don't have to feel it. And then you're in prison and it's changing. Yeah, and it was like endure it.

It came to like the first stage was endure it, but part of that was It wasn't yet at a place of courage, the act of you feel fear, but you're gonna do the thing you know to be right. You might be wrong about that, but you're gonna do the thing you know to be right or believe to be right, or at least try to do it. For me, it was just like, you know, it was rooted in a deep sense of self-loathing. So I didn't really care about my life. So it was like, I'm not gonna do this other thing and I'm gonna be afraid, but like, you know, I'm not go— I'm going to like still do the right thing and If that doesn't work out and someone kills me, okay. I mean, that's okay. Like, I deserve it, right? You know, I killed a man. So like, you know, someone should kill me.

And so— I've never heard that. That one's blowing my mind. Like, what's interesting is that there's a freedom in what you've— you found a freedom that was basically like, I deserve it, which allowed you to be fearless. That just blows my mind a bit. What an interesting, like, way to to turn guilt into freedom, like to turn shame and guilt into freedom. Fascinating. Yeah.

And it was like a doorway to accountability. I wouldn't advocate that, like, that's the healthy way to deal with your guilt, right? That's what I mean by I got lucky. There's a way in which, like, the things that were happening for me coalesced in a way that allowed me to— that gave me the space and the time to help myself and to expand my imagination because I wasn't doing the right thing exactly for the right reasons., but I was doing the right thing. And that showed me that more was possible. Yeah. Then I came to get the full kind of engagement of fear as like, oh, everyone feels fear. That's like really normal. That's really human. There's no way you will ever escape that. Right. But what you can choose is how— what you choose in the face of fear. And that is what virtue is. And like, at the time, I was reading a lot of like Greek philosophy and stuff like that. And so I was like, oh, In fact, I think that, yeah, this came like I was reading the dialogues of Plato and they were talking about like the virtues and courage and like all these things. And I was like, oh, okay. And like, I'm a kid. Like, I haven't heard these things before. I'm like 19. I'm like, this sounds good. I like this. Right? And I was like, okay, so like it's about having the moral courage to do what you believe is right even when you're afraid. And then that became my relationship to fear for a very long time. That was my relationship to fear, I think, until the time I got out of prison. And it, like, changed, and it had, like, its different manifestations. Like, there was a time where, like, I was afraid, I'm running straight towards it, right? Which I don't advise, right? I just, like, you know, because this is— and this is less in the realms of, like, surviving prisons and more in terms of, like, personal relationships, interpersonal fears, right? Like, I'd be afraid, so I would just, like, dive into it, right? And then, like, this is only recently, like, my relationship to fear and, like, emotions in general have changed. And that, like, at the time, fear was still, like, a bad thing, right? It was something that I felt like was something that was apart from me. It was something that I had to, like, conquer in some way. And, like, the first stage of my relationship with it was, like, conquering it in the most, like, irresponsible way possible. And, like, the idea of, like, courage was a way of conquering it with something that felt like integrity. But what I actually came to find that, like, no, no, no, fear isn't something like separate from me. It's not my enemy, right? It's like something I learned in somatic therapy is like the things that's like the things that you do, even the things that kind of make you feel shame, whether it's like, you know, maybe you have attachment issues and you fall in love really easy and you feel ashamed about that, or maybe you don't let people in and like, so you're like, you're very guarded, like any number of like habits that like we are working through as we heal and try to come and become our best human beings. Something that I learned in somatic therapy is like, look, the body is smart. Think about where you learned that, right? And for me, the conversation is often like in the context of prison, like, let's be real about what that environment is. And in that environment, all these things that you're ashamed of, can't you see how smart actually your body was? Like, do you think you could have survived that if your body didn't develop these mechanisms, if your body didn't develop these habits? So it's not about, like, demonizing these parts of you that you want to get rid of or feeling like they're holding you back. They've actually saved your life, right? They've actually made it possible that you are a sane human being, that most people meet you and they can't even tell you've been in prison. Your friends tell you all the time that, like, man, sometimes I'm sorry I have to actually remind myself of the trauma you carry because you can easily fool yourself into just thinking Emil has it all together, he's fine. Because you present that well, right? And that is part of the mechanisms that your body has created for you to survive. Now let's honor that. Let's say thank you. Now here's the thing about bodies. They tend to find something that works and they use it for everything, right? And so it's like, you know, maybe you can just use this when you need it and not use it when you don't. So that's the thing that you want to learn in somatic therapy, is like, I want a choice about the mechanisms my body employs to protect me, not a default, right? And so that began my relationship with understanding fear as a part of me that I get to love and have compassion for and also collaborate with. Now, fear isn't something I overcome. Fear is actually a roadmap for me. Fear is a signal that I need to pay attention right now. Fear is a signal that I'm avoiding something right now, and I may need to be careful about how I approach it, right? That doesn't mean like dive into it, but it is signaling something very important to my growth and my spiritual journey that I need to pay attention to. Um, and so now I use it like a road map. It's like, oh, I feel nervous about that. Okay, what's going on with that? What's beneath that? What's happening for you? What is it that's crying out to be healed in this moment? What is it that's crying out to be taken care of in this moment?

Yeah, I find in my own journey and in the journey of people that I get to witness and experience is that if you're on a quest for a deeper understanding or awakening or anything, whatever words you want to use for that, that even in meditation, if you're in like deep meditation, Following the roadmap of fear is one of the most direct lines to finding the truth of who you are, finding the truth of your identity. Like, I remember at the beginning of my meditations, I would like not want to feel the fear, and so I was meditating to manage that emotion. And by the time I was finished— not, well, not that I'm ever finished, but the time that like where that journey ended for me of like of looking for something that was me— when that ended, I was just following fear. It was like the direct, like going right into the abyss every time and finding out that that thing that I was most scared of is actually where I find my deepest truth. So for me, when I get fear, when I feel fear, when fear moves, I'm just like you, very excited to like, oh great, there's some good information here, there's something to pay attention to.

Exactly, exactly.

There's something really interesting that you said about, about not diving all the way into it And I think there's times where diving into it is great. And there's also a way that we can build an identity, me speaking as a BASE jumper here, of diving into the thing that's most scary. And then that can be something that becomes less free where, you know, I see a bunch of things in my life and one of the things is the most scary. And then I'm like, well, that's the one that I gotta dive into. And there can be a way that I become attached to being the identity that dives into certain kinds of fears. And then I'm actually ignoring a whole bunch of the rest of the fears. And then I'm like, why do I keep recreating all these worst case scenarios when I do all I've done all this work on myself to accept the worst possible outcome. And it's like, oh wait, I've actually done all the work to accept that worst outcome. And I haven't accepted the subtle small fears of actually taking any different path than going into that one. Yeah.

Like, first of all, like the human brain and the body, like, like, like we are, we are like some brilliant creatures and there are ways in which we can fool ourselves even by doing the right thing. Because it's like, I'm doing the right thing, right? But there's ways that we can focus so deep on that that we can ignore all the things that we're hiding from. That's awesome.

Oh, all right. Well, I don't even know where we are anymore. I know I want the— I know I want the conversation to keep going, but I don't know where, where it's going.

Well, I mean, we've talked about like my 3 different relationships to fear, right? And like we've reached that third one of like it's a roadmap, like it's a, it's a partner partner in this life, as are, you know, all of our feelings and our emotions, right? Like they're partners in this life, right? That we walk with instead of running from or running through or pushing over or hiding from. It's just like, you know, give all of your parts that space, that room to be and love them, right? Just like, you know, like, you know, your parts are acting because they love you, right? So love them, right? And also, like, you know, I have conversations with my body, my heart, my mind, my fears all the time. And it's like, look, I want to name that, like, you know, I'm unhappy with what's going on here, but I love you. And like, can you trust me? Can you trust me to take care of this? This is what I'm gonna do. Will you trust me to take care of it? If you can't trust me, that's good. We'll, we'll work it out. I still love you, right? But can you give me a chance? You'd be surprised though, like, you know, people might think like, man, that sounds pretty crazy, but you'll be surprised, right, of just like giving yourself the time of day Giving your feelings, giving your body the time of day to acknowledge and say that you matter, how much space that creates for you to move through them.

I have a question for you. So I have a saying, it says, "Joy is the matriarch of a family of emotions, and she won't come into a house where her children aren't welcome." And it basically is saying—

Yeah, that is so good. That's a great reaction.

And that's what I'm wondering if you can relate to that. Like, as you learn to love all these parts of yourself, do you find your life becoming more joyful? Absolutely. Absolutely. I have—

I mean, I've never— I never thought about it. I've never had it phrased that way, but it like perfectly encapsulates what I feel like I'm trying to do and what I'm discovering. And like, as I discovered more and more heights of like peace and happiness, even in conflict, right? Like in the last couple of weeks, like, you know, I've had like a lot of conflict in my life and I have felt very much at peace and very much like in feeling like, you know, conflict usually is the thing that makes me feel insecure. Like, you know, I come from a place where conflict often means death, right? So like even small amounts of conflict have been known to make me super anxious, right? To make me unable to settle into my body because it's just like I can't miss anything and I got to know everything because if I don't, I could be in danger. But I've been finding this place where it's like I'm really at— I'm at much more peace in conflict and I'm happy and I have a a shit ton of faith that this conflict is only going to work towards my growth and the growth of the people I'm in conflict with. And that is a powerful source of joy, right? To just be like, wow, like I'm adulting, I'm doing this shit.

Again, I want to just say how similar that is to a lot of the people that I coach, right? These are high-powered people in charge of billions of dollars. Thousands of people. And that whole idea of like constantly having to track the environment for the potential conflict that's coming, the anxiety that runs their life, looking for all the ways that it could go wrong, and their journey from that to, oh, I can, I can trust myself, and I can trust that every adversity that comes my way makes me stronger and it's an opportunity to be more connected with myself and more connected with the people around me, more connected with my mission and what I want to do in the world. And I mean, that's the same story for the ones that are lucky enough to make that journey instead of just constantly be in the fear and anxiety of the perpetual attacks of a capitalistic system and a business system. I'm not saying it's bad or good for that. I'm just saying it's just the nature of it. It's competitive. Yeah. Yeah. What a pleasure. What a pleasure. Oh my goodness. This is like what an absolute delight of my, of my week. Thank you. I'm so glad that you spent time talking to us. Thank you very much. Yeah.

Thank you so much, Emil.

Thank you, man. I was a little nervous coming on because I was like, you know, I looked at your podcast like this is kind of a big deal, right? Like, and I feel like I, you know, I talk to people all the time, right? Like I'm a public speaker. I'm on panels. Like I give talks, I do workshops. And I'm never not nervous before, and I'm okay with that. I feel like that's also part of— that's a different kind of fear that I've actually developed like a kind of pleasurable relationship to that's just about like being really high functioning, right? But and not like hamstrung by fear, but like motivated by it.

Letting it be your aliveness. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

In the Jewish tradition there, I just learned this somewhat recently, that they don't have a word for fear. They have two words for fear. And one word is kind of means the fear of existential life of like you're threatened, right? And the other fear is the fear of stepping into a room that's bigger than you're used to. It's like being on stage. It is growing into something that you're being asked to grow into or to be the person you're being asked to be that you haven't been yet. And they have different words for it, which I just think is I love that.

I think that's super useful because, like, I mean, I haven't thought about fear in a long time, but I started thinking about it for the show and I was thinking, I was like, you know, that fear that I'm talking about, like the one that I had different relationships to, I feel like there's another brand of fear that's like kind of different than that, right? And it's like, yeah, I'll end with a quick story. And this is the kind of fear it is. And it's not a fear I want to ever avoid. This is like clearly my friend and like is the thing that keeps us, like, living, keeps us alive. Last year, I drove across the country and back. And, like, I was coming back. And I was coming through the Rockies. And I was, like, driving through, like, my 6th snowstorm in the Rockies, which is pretty— it's kind of an intense experience. Oh, yeah. And so, like, I'm, like, got my high beams on. I get out of the Rockies. I'm in Utah. Speed limit in Utah is, like, 80 miles an hour. So I'm, like, 100 miles an hour. I think the speed limit is actually 90 miles an hour, right? But I'm, like, just, like, I'm gone. I'm like down the freeway. It's 2 o'clock in the morning. There's really no one on the freeway, which is why I forgot my high beams were on. So I'm driving down this kind of like back road in Utah, like 100 miles an hour in like a fucking Honda Civic. And ahead in the road, there's a boulder. Like there's no hills, right? So it's not like it fell down a hill, right? Maybe it fell off a truck, or there's some crazy-ass serial killer just putting boulders on the road, right? But the boulder's about— about as high as my waist, maybe a little lower, maybe my thighs, right? And I barely see it, right? And I say that to mean that, like, if I hadn't forgotten those high beams, I would have certainly been dead. Because when I swerved, I barely missed it. But I'm going so fast that when I swerved, like, the car is going out of control. And, like, there's no brakes at 90 miles an hour. Like, you might— you kiss it goodbye. You decide you're gonna try to hit brakes at 90 miles an hour, right? So I'm, like, turning into it, And I'm like fishtailing and I'm in this complete tailspin. And as all of this is happening, like, I am feeling no fear in the traditional sense that, like, I'm not feeling that fear that felt like paralyzing that I described my relationship to, right? It's a very different kind of fear because I'm certainly like the more alert than I have ever been in my life. And I have never spun out before, right? But I'm remembering everything I have ever heard about spinning out. And then number one was don't hit the brakes. Number two was turn into it, right? And I'm doing it, like, and it's like a fucking movie almost, right? And I am like working this car, this Honda, and I'm like on this two-lane highway and I'm seeing the front in flashes, like voof, voof, voof, voof. And every flash, right, I'm like taking a snapshot and I'm like, okay, Ahead of me, no lights. Okay, I can survive this. And then I see that you're moving to the left and you're moving off towards the dirt and like this fence that's like a cow pasture fence. And I'm like, okay, if I can stop on the road, great. If I can stop in that dirt, I'ma probably lose a tire. If I hit that fence, this is done, right? And so I bring the car to a stop, still on the asphalt, facing the other way, smoke everywhere. And then I stop, then I take a breath, then it hits me like, "Holy shit! That just happened." Right? But I recognize the feeling of before it happened. It's the same feeling I've had being shot at, the same feeling I've had with a gun in my face. And having a gun in my face certainly didn't mean that I turn into Captain Commando. I'm like, "Oh, take the gun." It's like, "No, you're robbing me. I'm gonna give you this shit." Right? But, like— there's this feeling, there's this state of intense awareness and activity. And if you decide to move, you move. And it's like, it's like the most high-performing that I have ever been, like, in those situations. And that's actually not a fear that I've ever had a problem with. That's actually a fear that's like— it can only be defined as fear, but it's not that fear that I feel like we've been talking about on this show, right?

Right. Yeah, that's, that's the same kind of fear in, in a BASE jump where something goes a little bit wrong and all of a sudden you're just present. You're just there. You're not thinking, oh no, I don't want this fear to be happening. It's just— you're just there and you're, you're acting and it's moving through you and it's energizing. And then, you know, after you get out of the situation, that's when, that's when like the next wave hits and you're just like, oh my God, that just happened.

Oh, holy shit. Exactly. Uh, awesome. Well, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for your time. Really appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you so Thank you so much, Emil.

All right, man, you guys take care.

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