121 Sex and Intimacy Through Chronic Illness with Reid Richardson

Welcome to the Lyme Voice Network. We are chronic illness warriors, caretakers, and advocates who are overcoming illness in all of its many forms. We created this show to inspire, educate, and encourage you on your path to wellness. We're here to help you put the puzzle pieces of healing into place. Join us and our network of Lyme warriors as we discuss how fighting is a mindset, healing consists of choices, and living is the outcome.

Hello friends, today's podcast is brought to you by these sponsors: Invita Medical Center, a center of excellence for personalized oncology and Lyme disease treatment located in Scottsdale, Arizona. What defines Invita is the undeniable truth that every patient who has the courage to come to Invita and walk through their discovers the incredible healing and compassionate care that can only exist in a clinic that is radically focused on patient outcomes. They provide a focused team of people with an exceptional heart for serving their patients. At Invita, they have discovered a revolutionary solution for patients to help improve their quality of life. Call to speak with one of their patient care coordinators today. Invita helped save my life back in 2013, long before this podcast existed and they became a sponsor. They also helped carditis after getting reinfected a couple of years ago. I highly recommend them, and you can hear more about Invita in episode 80. All right, now on to the show.

Welcome, welcome, welcome, friends, to today's episode of Lyme Voice. That is Lyme spelled L-Y-M-E, as in Lyme disease and other chronic illnesses impact 60% of Americans, and medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy within the US. Lyme disease is the fastest growing vector-borne illness in the United States. It can be a lonely and isolating journey to try and understand the complexities of chronic illness, advocate for yourself, and find true healing. Whether you are tuning into the Lyme Voice podcast or listening on WGLRO, the People's Station, I am so excited you are here because you are not alone. There is hope in healing from chronic illnesses, and that is what we are here to discuss. Guess. Sex, intimacy, and love are mysterious and fluid aspects of life, even within a healthy body in a healthy relationship. Whether you are parenting a sick kid, have a sick spouse, or you yourself are struggling with ever-changing symptoms within your own body, chronic illness, with all of its losses and lessons, becomes a third party within your intimate relationships. In this Raw and Intimate interview, I talk with Reed Richardson, a breakthrough and relationship coach and co-founder of superpowered humans about prioritizing intimacy, overcoming victim mentalities, and operating in your own authority. How does all of that relate to your sex life? It does. I promise. Reid, thank you for being here with us.

Oh, thank you so much for having me. We've built connection over some time and then you invited me to your podcast and it just felt like the right thing to do because we had so much in common and I'm really happy to be here. Thank you, Sarah.

Thanks, Reed. So Reed grew up in a cult and survived childhood sexual assault. Together, Reed and his wife Jess helped their 4-year-old son overcome Lyme disease after becoming paralyzed. They have made it through hurricanes, actual hurricanes, and major losses, and now have been married for 16 years and have 5 incredible kids together. Wow. What a journey.

It has been quite a journey. It's been quite a life. There's a lot involved. I don't know if we, we just go through a script. You ask me questions or do I start off? What, how do we want to work this today?

Yeah. Give us your overview and your story of coming in contact with Lyme disease, how Lyme disease, fibromyalgia, chronic illness has impacted your family. And then how out of that you have created a company specifically about sex and intimacy and how chronic illness plays a part in that. So start us off by giving us the sum of your story of introduction into life within a chronic illness?

This is going to be super fun because it will be starting out and then doing a flashback. So my family and I lost a nonprofit. My wife is a trafficking survivor. I'm also a labor trafficking survivor. And we found ourselves in the situation where it's— we have to do a major exit from our nonprofit. People were dying left and right. There was suicide. There was a lot of things that were difficult to deal with. And so we go, what better thing to do than to move to Texas, um, from Los Angeles and start over. At that time, I was leaning toward being kind of a liberal person, and so it was like, this is an entire life change, and it surely was. About 9 months into moving to Texas, our son became ill with Lyme disease. We didn't know what he had, and so in this moment of going, why can't our son move? Like his sister got well, he didn't. What's going on? And so we take him to an emergency care and they said, we don't have any answers. We're going to have to take him to the children's hospital. And in that moment, I'm just going, how could this be happening? Like, why are there no answers? And I always felt like I had the answers growing up because my mother was into herbs. I had a couple aunts that were honestly witches, and they were really great with health. And so no matter what hit us, we always had the answer, and there was always an expert around that could help us understand. But it was like no family, no experts, and I'm headed off to the hospital in this ambulance. Well, long story short, day after day, infectious disease comes back with no answers, and we're going, why? Like, why am I here in this hospital if they don't have answers? And as a parent, when you're in that situation, you're going, what's happening to my child? And why do you have to keep drugging him until you figure out what's wrong with him? It gets really scary and it can get really dark.

Yeah.

And there was a moment where I would walk through the halls and I would see other people suffering.. And I would, I had one moment where I stopped and I comforted someone and it was really weird because my son was sleeping because of the drugs he was on. And I knew that the only thing that would pull me out is to encourage someone else in that situation. And it was my way of saying, I have the ability to find the answers. Like the, they're saying this child's terminal. I'm going to encourage them. I'm going to lift them up. And so when I got back to him that day, I was like, I made a promise to him. And I realized it's not good to make promises in life because I've had to break a lot of them. But this promise actually came true. And I said, you are going to come out of here and you are going to heal and you're going to be better. And I said, I don't know how it's going to work, but you are going to be better. And you're going to have a story. And he said, I know. And so from that point on, even though it got really dark and we had to talk to a whole team of doctors, there were 12 doctors, and I got them into the room after begging a lot. And they're all in there, and I— my wife and I are toggling back and forth with information. And I get on that whiteboard and I just start hitting it hard. And I said, here's what we've connected, what are we missing? And they said, well, we can't do that because we we can't get a positive read from infectious disease. So we don't know. And I said, you gotta take him off the drugs. And they said, that's not protocol. And I said, well, we're gonna have to do something different. When it got to day 11, I was able to get ahold of the doctor. And I said, if it was your son in this situation, what would you do? And he goes, I would take him out of the hospital and I would do whatever it took to find an expert to be able to heal him. And I said, that's exactly what I'm asking permission for. Wow. And so from that point on, he— we got him out of the hospital. We were going from house to RV at that point. We were literally relying on a fundraiser. And we got him home. And we began to— we began to build a team around him with every bit of information that we could. We were able to understand that The key component is that he's fighting his body. Like, his body doesn't know— his body's flaring up because his immune system is so strong, but it doesn't know how to respond to this. And so the Lyme grows and it gets out of control. And so with that diagnosis, we were able to just become more comprehensive with how to deal with his health. And over about a 3-month period, he went from being paralyzed to running again. Wow. So he's running, and literally 3 weeks after that, he's paralyzed again. And we're going, how in the world is this possible? And this went on for literally 16, 16 months until we found the key. We learned that he was allergic to cedar trees in Central Texas, which there's a lot of. Who would have Yeah, who would have thought that that was the thing that was making his Lyme flare up? So we moved to the Texas coast. We're like, we're out of here. Last ditch effort again. And we started to just get back on our feet. Everything was going great. And then we got word that there was a giant hurricane coming toward our little town and we had to just vacate. Well, when we came back, the trees looked like toothpicks and it was like gray. It looked like a war zone. And we're looking at We're looking at what's left and there's not much left. Our, the RV we lived in was entirely damaged, was not healthy to live in. We literally started like gathering wood and creating furniture to try to sell something like, let's create a career or something. Let's help people, but let's make some money. And so we struggled for a while because it was like, where do you start when you've lost everything?. And in that process, my wife and I began to realize that we could fight or we could band together. And so we hop on Facebook and we started doing all these live, live videos. And the closer we got together, the more we fought. And I remember one night, speaking of intimacy, when we set up a tent so we could be close together, and it was so cold, even with the space heater. That we were just shaking like crazy. And something popped into our minds. It was, we can use the same thing we used before when our kids were small to be able to put ourselves into another world. And so we started to fantasize. We started putting ourselves— we were able to just come out of ourselves and be in this fantasy that we're on these warm rocks and we were naked and we were just like We were vulnerable, but we were taken care of, and the sun was on us, and our bodies began to warm up. And I held on to her that night. We didn't have sex. We planned on it. We wanted to have a great time, but we couldn't. But it kept us warm that night, and I— it kept us alive as well. So that, that led us on this journey to realize that this manifestation tool that we had really was so powerful that it went way beyond sex. And I know we'll get into that as well. And what is this manifestation? Like, how do you do this? But there's a connection that is made in some of the most traumatic times. And that was when things started to turn around for us.

Okay. So what's the catalyst for all of this then? Take us back to the catalyst before, because you had actually told me that Your son got contracted Lyme disease after getting bit by fire ants, correct?

Correct. So the thing is, when you get— in his case, we didn't know what happened. We were able to trace it back to maybe being fire ants. It would be the most likely thing because he got bit by a lot of fire ants. He stepped in a pile, and I had no idea how bad fire ants were until I went to Texas.

Well, and I had told you this, that I was at the Live Lyme Conference back 3 years ago and they had a whole speaker do a whole session on how severe Lyme disease, neurological Lyme disease was getting transmitted primarily in Texas, Australia, and some other places, but specifically through fire ants in Texas.

Yeah. I wouldn't doubt it. I've heard of other cases as well. There's Lyme disease can be contracted through ticks. It can be contracted through mosquitoes.

Yeah.

There's a certain— there, I mean, there's a few hundred varieties of mosquitoes that carry Lyme and it also can be through certain beetles. So Lyme disease is— what we learned in the process is that Lyme disease, and we talked about this earlier outside this interview, that Lyme disease is actually, it's part of our genetics that we're susceptible to Lyme disease flaring up. And that many of us are born with Lyme disease already in us. Some just respond to it differently. And we learned this when we worked with a practitioner who really understood genetics and then also biochemistry and the body. And she was a naturopathic doctor. And I hope to be able to share that link with you at some point. Yeah, of course. As well. And maybe we can connect to that because when you find someone who can truly help you with chronic illness, it's like The sky opens up and you— it makes all the difference in the world.

Yeah. Yeah, it does. Yeah. So, so you guys are in it neck deep with your son for over a year. And that's the thing, story after story is you can spend months and years and tens of thousands of dollars just getting to the point that you understand what is going on with this illness. It is most often not covered by health insurance. And so you're paying out of pocket. Testing is off the charts expensive and unreliable oftentimes. And so you really are— we're brought up in Western medicine to think that doctors have the answer. And what you find is that they have very few answers really in general outside of their standard of care training. And I realized after years of going to my doctors and saying, hey, draw my blood again, something is so wrong. That even if they could have figured out what was wrong, they did not know how to heal me. They could offer me more prescriptions. And so, yeah, understanding alternative medicine is a really big part of that. But you guys are in knee-deep with your son, in and out of hospitals, in and out of paralysis, hemorrhaging financially as this thing consumes more and more of your time, energy, and money. And in, in, in the process, this is what we talked about at the very beginning, is you do— if you have chronic illness in your household, there is a third party in your relationships, whether you want there to be or not. And so it's navigating that. So tell me how you and your wife navigated that aspect of things and how it's propelled you to completely change your reality.

Okay, so at that time in Texas, when we lived in Central Texas before we moved to the coast and were able to get him away from the cedar trees that were really causing the flare-ups, we— I was with him 24/7. And so there were literally 3 times in that period where he was completely paralyzed. And so I'd be carrying him to the bathroom in the daytime, nighttime, anytime. And my wife was working a job at a bar at the time. As a bartender, and then I was, I was selling items just on a regular online at the time and doing everything I could. So if I wasn't working selling, I was helping him. And there's another story behind that statute of limitations, and we'll be able to talk about that in about 6 to 7 months. I think the statute of limitations is up, so that's great. But we did whatever it took to, to pay for all the doctors. And I think that's something that we don't talk a lot about with chronic illness, is that parents will do whatever it takes to save their child and will do things because we love them. And I think it's like that with, with our spouse, with whoever we love. Like, we'll do whatever it takes. And that's really what kept us together, is that we knew Like, even when we were having rough times in our relationship, where, because we had lost so much prior, we're going, how do we navigate healing through what's just happened to us by losing our entire nonprofit and dealing with a lot of really great people who've committed suicide, that have been ostracized from Christian communities for being gay or for working with sex workers. As we did. And so we were looking at our life and going, how? And when you don't have a lot of solutions, you sometimes fight and you sometimes go at each other because that person reminds you of the pain. And so there were times where it was really beautiful for a few months, and then it'd be really hard for a few months. It'd be really dark because we would blame each other. We didn't want to blame each other, but we'd blame each other. And that can produce this, like, this pattern, this blame pattern in life, and it can start to play into a lot of the things that happen. So no matter what happens to you, like when we moved to the coast, and at this point a hurricane hits us 9 months later, and we're going, how do we deal with this? We had to get beyond how do we deal with this. We had to go What are we learning from this? What is this doing for us? How is this benefiting us? Because if there's no benefit from this, we might as well just go on to the next life. And that was a real, that was a real thought for me at times, where it was like, how, what am I going to do? And it got really dark. And I have to tell you that I was suicidal several times. And so was my wife. That doesn't mean it was all bad. Like, we'd lift our spirits and we'd intentionally pour into each other. But I got really stubborn and I got really stuck in my ways. And I believed that I could just work hard enough to get out of any situation. And it wasn't working. I had to let go. And I bring that up because anyone who's gone through chronic illness and has found solutions and has really been able to make it out, they've had to look at their ugly head-on. They've had to look at it and go, what am I actually responsible for? Because it is so easy to look at yourself and go, I wasn't able to do this and this. And especially if we're driven people, if we're high achievers and we have to get shit done in life and we have to be the ones that do it right, because we are responsible for our own words, thoughts, and actions. How do we love ourselves through all of this?

Yeah. Well, and suicide. I mean, you— neither you nor your wife have Lyme, but Lyme in and of itself, the number one cause of death is suicide. And it's not just the people actually suffering, it's everyone in there is trying. There's a massive psychological impact when you are with someone who is suffering and you are a caretaker and you cannot help them. It is Yeah, it's real. Yeah. So all of, all of life is unfolding in very hard circumstances for you guys. You move because your son is allergic to every tree in Texas. Your RV gets demolished by hurricane. You're hemorrhaging financially. You're trying to do what you need to do for your son. And in the meantime, we're all left to deal with whatever we've already been dealing with, right? Our past, our history, and you guys were really involved in helping people come out of the sex trafficking industry. And I know your wife wrote a book called Everything I Learned from My Pimp.

Yeah, Everything I Know I Learned from My Pimp.

Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And so you guys come from— I think what's interesting is you guys are coming from a traumatic sexual experience background, and yet you— and, and illness has its own implications of being difficult and hard. And yet through that, you've completely transformed what was a negative, what could be abused and taken from you into something that empowers people to now embrace their own sexuality after trauma.

Absolutely. It's the realness of it. Like trauma can keep you from yourself or can make you amnesiac to who you were. Like backstory, we both grew up in cults. My wife and I grew up in cults. While mine was a Mormon cult and it was more about family, hers was like a family cult, but it was these friends, these misfits that got together and traveled. And so we had these things in common, and one of the biggest things we had in common was, was childhood trauma. So at 5 years old, I already knew what sexuality was in a sense. Like, I already had an experience. And so when this this mentally challenged boy from church came around. While he seemed to be nice, he felt weird to me. And I'd say, Mom, he feels weird to me. And she'd go, no, he's nice, he's nice. Back before we had the internet, knew anything about anything. I mean, not to be like rude or anything, but like, I love my mom. We don't connect now for many reasons, but it was like She's still talking about what happened in the '80s and studies from the '80s and doesn't look at anything now. And so we're looking at a different era. And I, I went out in the field one day with him, and when I woke up, I didn't know where I was. I didn't know where he was, and I was just in a lot of severe pain. And later on in life, I had flashbacks as to what really happened because I was hovering above my body. But that was something I barely survived, and I— it was so much pain, it was like difficult to ever look at it. And I decided, it was actually in 2020, if I'm going to actually look at this deep, I'm going to have to look at it all the way, and I'm going to have to deal with it head-on because it's going to have some meaning in my life, or I don't even want to go into this darkness. And What I learned in that situation is that you can not just heal through anything, that you can look at the darkness, and the more you look at something, the better it actually gets. And it's because I was taught throughout my entire childhood that you are supposed to just like pretend that everything's okay. My mom would always say, everything's gonna be okay. And I would say, Mom, but it's not okay right now. And she'd say, but it's gonna be okay. And so it was like this whole, this persona of everything's fine. And so I just dove headlong into work. And I tried to prove myself through work. And in that process, I gained this awareness that I'm really separate from myself. And I built my first house at 17 years old. I was like, I'm going to design, I'm going to build my own, build a house. And what I didn't realize is that people take advantage of people who aren't aware. And so, in this process, I'm working hard for my uncles, I learned how to build a house all on my own, and I do it, and I get some help from my dad. But my dad is completely disconnected from it. Because in the end, when I married my wife, who also came from a lot of abuse, he judged her just because she was a prostitute, because she was someone that he didn't seek to understand, and he had moral judgments over her. And so in that situation, I was like, what's this all mean? And she was like healed. She was— she would talk about self-healing and that she was getting a relationship with her mother, and I fell in love with her because there was this transparency, there was this honesty that I'd never experienced in my life. She wasn't sugarcoating coding and said that everything will be okay, she was like, you can make it through anything. And so 7 months later, I marry this woman and the answers were found when I discovered porn. I had to struggle with porn until I hit my shame head on.

What do you mean?

I, well, I wasn't allowed growing up to look at things head on, especially sex. And people who cover up— it's, I swear it's coming back around— people who cover up things, they're not living in reality. And so much of my life I didn't know how to look at reality. I could look at it objectively and I could help people as a coach because I could look at them objectively, but I couldn't look at myself fully until I really looked at like, why am I looking at porn? What am I trying to discover from this? Well, first of all, I was told I can't actually talk about my sexuality. And so I need to study it and I need to figure out what I'm missing. And being in this Christian male dominant system, I realized it wasn't popular to remove the shame from sexual issues or from porn. But my wife sat down with me one day and she said, I want you to search the things that you normally search. And I'm not going to judge you. And I'm like, I don't even know how that's possible, but I'm going to do it anyway. So I began searching, and I was just sweating bullets, like, this woman's going to rip me up. And, um, like, that showed you how much trust I had with her, even though I felt I trusted her. And I realized that, well, her having a background in being a sex worker, she had absolutely no judgments, and she kind of understood But when she started asking me why, I wasn't sure. And that bothered me. And it bothered me so much that I kept asking myself why until I got to what I now call the root of a problem. We trace it all the way down to the roots because that's where we get our nutrients. That's where our genetics lie. And as I got all the way down to the bottom of it, I realized I actually had a benefit from looking at porn. Like I'd gone through so much trauma that actually the drugs that ran through my brain were super helpful because they'd actually helped me focus. With ADD, it helped me just actually cope with life. And while the ADD was born out of— some of it was born out of trauma. It just made sense to not completely let go of it cold turkey. And so I would go a little bit at a time instead of going all or nothing. I'm actually going to just look at porn for an hour. I'm going to give myself permission.. And I didn't know what to even call that at the time, but apparently in the drug world, that's called harm reduction. And at the time, I was like, I didn't know the term, but I was practicing harm reduction. And what harm reduction says is, don't just do all or nothing, focus on what you can do to change it a little bit at a time. And when we look at drugs and alcohol and sex, we've had a tendency, especially through AA programs, which I had plenty of experience in, plenty of experience sitting in front of counselors with the same exact principles as AA. And it leads us up to a point where we go, we have to decide whether this is going to— we're going to be dry, speaking of alcohol, or we're just going to be like all in. It's black and white. It's a problem. And so I just started to go, I'm going to look for an hour.. And I didn't think I could do it. But when I gave myself permission to just look at porn for an hour, it gave me permission to look for better porn too. So if I'm gonna get benefit from this, it better be better porn. And I started to see the exploitation and I started to see how we're all connected and that some people don't have options while others do. Some people are stuck. They're stuck in a world where they're being exploited. They're being hurt on a daily basis. And when you can remove the shame away from it, you can see that others have problems too. And I started to gain a connection with my wife. And so we started to gain this intimacy and our kids were young at the time. And it's gonna— we're gonna bring it right back from— you were asking about shame, we're talking about how we actually look at issues head on. And we were at a point in our relationship where it was like, okay, so what's next? Like, I'm horny because I'm not looking at porn. She's horny, really horny, and she's working. I'm an at-home dad now. We've got 3 kids and they're just intense, special needs, all this stuff. And they're just on the other side of the door because that's how it is. They're always there. They don't go away. They're just haunting you. Even when they're sleeping, they feel like they're breathing down your neck. And so number one, we kicked one of the kids out. They were— it was time. I know that sounds terrible. It was time for them to get out. They were finally detached from the boob and they needed to go somewhere and wrapped her up like a little glowworm because she loved to be like that. And we're like, we don't even know how to decompress. We don't even know how to get our minds out of work. And quick story. We were in the middle of sex and my wife is dissociating. I'm like, I'm not sure. And I'm like, right at the end, climax, boom, it's done. She comes to me later and she goes, so I was just faking the whole thing. And the videographer actually popped into my mind because I forgot to like actually call him. And she's like, totally interrupted the entire mood. And I got nothing out of it. I'm really not getting much out of sex. And this really sucks. And I'm like, I know, it really doesn't work for me either. It's been terrible. And that's— what are we going to do? She's talking to a friend, and her friend is a really good friend, right? Mentor. One day they're talking, and her friend goes, there's some exotic wood that I wanted to show you. It was just hanging on the wall. And she's like, my husband and I like to fantasize about being in Africa again. And she's like, we can just go there if we want to. And just something clicked in her brain where she's, huh, fantasy. I wonder if that could work. We laid in bed one night and we decided we're going to try this fantasy thing. And we didn't know what it was all about, but we decided that we could tell a story. That didn't work at all. What if we were to just be in the scene? What if we were to put ourselves in a scene and like basically transport ourselves to this other place. And over about 3 days, our sex life like completely switched where we were frazzled, we were able to transition. So we're able to set a scene and be able to pull our place and pull ourselves out of the place we're in and basically transport ourselves to another place where it wasn't chaotic. Like our needs were just— our needs were met. Everything was cool. We didn't have kids climbing on us. Sometimes it was a beach. Sometimes it was a public place. Sometimes it was in just a special bedroom, but it was this way of pulling ourselves out. And so flash forward, we're in a tent and we're trying to have intimacy. And this is a story I told earlier where we're— I told you I'd talk about it. We're in this tent and we're trying to basically stay alive because it's so cold outside. And yes, Texas gets cold. And we're like, how are we going to— how are we going to survive? And literally our sexual energy, because of the power of transporting ourselves, kept us alive. The warmth kept us alive that night. And that ability to really disassociate in a good way is what has kept us alive through some of the hardest stuff in life.

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All right, now on to the show. It's interesting because you said at first, you said it started with permission. So permission to acknowledge what is, whether that's, hey, this is working, or hey, this isn't working. Hey, let's look at our past history. How is that impacting us now? How are our circumstances impacting us now? And then from once you established a place of permission, then you focused on the fantasy of, which is like every self-help guru of all time saying envision the life, the emotions, the reality that you want, not the one you're currently in, because what you focus on expands. So if you are forever focused on trauma, that's going to be your reality.

Yeah, absolutely. So we're— we were pretty damn stuck after the hurricane, and we were cooking out of a hole in the ground. And it's really It's like third world country with the benefits that, that you don't have of living in America. And there were a few thousand people living like this. There are still people living in tents to this day from 2017 because of Hurricane Harvey and their— either their inability to just be able to see outside of it, or they don't have help and they don't know how to do it, or they like they're stuck. Maybe they have disabilities. There's a lot of people just stuck in that situation. We're so— so we're there, and I think it was December of 2019, my wife says, my brain has broken. We literally didn't have heat. It was so pathetic. We literally didn't have heat in our trailer. The, the, the furnace breaks Christmas Eve. We are eating beans and rice. And she's laying in bed and she goes, if it doesn't make me happy or bring me money, I'm not doing it. And I'm like, what could this mean? And so over this week period, I'm going, I'm still working hard. I'm still trying to make it, literally working in a wood yard without shelter. We're literally doing this stuff out of tents. And so I'm trying to work out of tents. It snows that year as well. Literally snows on our heads one night because the tent just gets torn apart by the wind. And we're just surviving basically. And she's just, I'm done. We're living in a moldy trailer. This is not okay. And so from that point forward, she began to challenge herself to be all of her, to be whatever she wants to be. And to say whatever has come her way is to benefit her. And she, February of 2019, she goes, or yeah, February of 2019, she goes, I'm giving you all the finances. I'd never been in charge of the finances. She goes, we have, I'm changing all the patterns. You have to fix this. And I said, okay. And I was honored while I had complained and I'd have all these, I'd have all these issues about everything. When she said, you have more responsibility, I got better quickly. I started to examine my life and go, there's a better way to do this. And I started to talk to the community that was also ravaged by this storm, that was also traumatized and also saying, I can't do this. I started to ask them questions. What made us happy before the storm? What really gave us hope? And it broke my pride. Because I thought I knew things about people without even asking them. And they started to tell me stories about how years and years ago things used to be bright and cheerful, and they used to be— there used to be an order to things. And so I listened to stories, and I began to tell stories, and I began to draw them in and remind them of how it used to be, but that it can't ever be like it was before because there was a lot of brokenness and there was a lot of things that we wanted to change. And if it wasn't for the hurricane, we couldn't have changed it all. And so, I started to create custom orders one after another. People wanted one thing or another. I would fix furniture and I would give it new life. And I started to realize that when I gave people their furniture back, it was like they had a new life. It's like they had a new hope and they could be on a new journey. And so, my wife literally, when she said, my brain broke and I'm not doing anything unless it makes me happy or brings me money. She literally manifested a trailer, a $30,000 trailer. And in about 4 months, we went from her manifesting the trailer, me saying that I'm going to take control of everything and release control and understand this community that we were able to— I was able to build the business up to the point where I could sell all of the furniture, absolutely every piece. And we were able to move to New Orleans. And when we moved to New Orleans, we said, we are, we're going to ask ourselves this question. We have time to figure this out, 6 months to figure this out. What do we want in life and who do we want to serve? Because we knew that we wanted to change lives and we knew that we were better than just staying in old patterns. And just only being part of us. And we knew that we love to heal. And we knew that we love to heal others. And so 2020 was our time of rebirthing. And there's other story around this. And I know we're not going to go into this as much. But in 2020, it was a defining moment because we moved, my wife barely survived the plane ride, because she has asthma and just almost lost consciousness. And thank you, Las Vegas paramedics. You saved her life. I'm forever indebted to you. And our son was flaring up with Lyme disease. We had to get away from the cedars again. And now we're in Las Vegas where there's no cedar trees. And we're like, this is perfect. And so COVID hit 2 months into it. And we're like, I knew I couldn't ask what's the meaning of this. And I started to ask, how can I turn this into something better? How can I take whatever this loss is that everyone's feeling? Because I'm like, I've already gone through this. Like, I've already experienced a hurricane, Lyme disease, like saving our son from Lyme disease, all this stuff. How are we going to get to a place where we can serve our clients like we intended on and live the life we want to live? And so we lived in Airbnbs, just one after another, and we were able to build up masterminds and do everything out of Airbnbs until midsummer. And I know you asked me not to give a timeline, but I can't because I'm transparent and I'm sorry. I know that every fucking thing that happens in life and its craziness is for a reason. And speaking of that denial, when you're pressed to your very limits and you start to heal again and you start to open up again because you're helping others, I was at this point where I was not being nice to my wife. I wasn't treating her with respect. I wasn't seeing her as my queen. And she left me. She left me for 28 days. And what we believed would take 3 to 4 years or the rest of our lives, and that we decided we'd become best friends no matter what, I decided I wanted more. And I woke up one morning, and with tears streaming down my eyes, I said, I am better than this. I don't know how I'm going to put this back together., but I know I'm confident that I can and I will, and I just have to do what's right because I love her and she needs me and my kids need me. And so whatever it takes to get back together, to do what's right for my family, I'm going to do it. And I texted her, and for the first time ever, I called her my queen, and I was like, you have put up with way too much from me, but I've decided that I'm coming back and I will be humble and I will become the person that I'm meant to be for me, for you, and for my family. And so from that point on, it just, it's been this journey over the past few months of recreating myself and a bit of her recreating herself to be whoever we want to be. Because when life has completely turned you upside down and it's happened so many times, the only thing that it can do is make you better. If it doesn't destroy you, it makes you better. If you look at the pain head-on and you look at the tragedy and you go, what? I can survive anything. But what's better than surviving is just being able to look at it and go, I don't need to hold on anymore. That rope I was holding on to— my wife likes to give you this analogy. You're holding on to a rope and you're on this— it's attached to a bridge and there's this river and that river is abundance and that river is connection. It's this endless connection to whatever you want to be in life and whoever you want to surround yourself with and however you want to connect with the people you love. And you're holding on to it and you're going, I can't. Because life has always looked like this. And then at some point, when you let go, when your hands are all bloody and you're just trying to survive, when you let go, everything starts to flow. Everything starts to fall into place. And it's beautiful to be at a point in life where it just doesn't really fucking matter what you've got to prove anymore. You've just got all of the pieces of you and they're all meant to be like that. I don't know why I'm— I can't think of the term, but it's the Japanese bowls that are put back together. They're glued together and then they're—

each crack is filled with gold. I don't know that term either, but I know the story you're talking about.

Or the— so we're meant— we're meant to be a master— a broken masterpiece. We're meant to experience brokenness or we don't know what healing is.

Well, it's interesting because you've said two things. You said one, you had to learn to let go, right? Like you're holding on to a riverbank. You had to learn to let go, but you also had to learn to be strong and supportive in new ways. So you were letting go and also taking responsibility differently at the same time.

Absolutely. Because here's the way I see it. When you have a lot stacked up against you financially, You can either look at it like this is a struggle, or you can look at it like this is a lesson. And I'm still learning. I, I mess up on a daily basis of holding on. I go back to that rope and I hold on, not quite as tight now, but I hold on to that rope and abundance is flowing underneath of me. So I'm a work in progress. But that awareness that, that we can control or we can let go has helped me reconnect with my wife, no matter how ugly it gets, no matter what challenge is thrown at us. And so at this point in my life, I'm like, whatever is, I don't have to have my shit together to help people. Like, we have this belief in life that there's a certain type of person that helps people and there's a certain type that doesn't because they're too fucked up. And it's like, the most beautiful thing is to admit that you're fucked up and that you've done the craziest things. Here's another great story. I wrecked my only family vehicle in 2020, like literally wrecked my only family vehicle. That doesn't feel good. That's not something you can brag about, but it's definitely something you could laugh about. Like, how can it get any crazier than that? Your wife leaves you and then when you're back together, you wreck the only family vehicle. Talk about loser with a big L. Like, I was like, this is fucking hilarious. There's no sugarcoating things to make yourself look better when it just is what it is. And it's okay to look at those things and go, so what's it— what's gonna change if I know where I'm going and I know what I want out of life and I've got someone by my side, my queen? Who just doesn't give a fuck anymore. She's 41 years old. She's— I don't— she's immature. I don't let people tell me what to do. She's— I know what I want to do in life. Like, I learn and I grow, and beyond that, I know what I want. I just make decisions. She has a bit of Asperger's, and it makes— and it's her superpower. And the joy is I get to— when I try to put on a mask, I get to look at her and let her be a beautiful reflection. Of who I've been. And I have the opportunity to look at it and go, that's so ugly. I can't handle this. Or I can look at it and go, that was fucked up.

And I love myself. It's that simple. So what level of worthiness, how does worthiness factor into your sex life? Because I hear you saying permission. I hear you saying accepting or honoring the reality of where things are. And then, but also deciding this is where I'm headed.

This is the direction I'm headed in. In reference to performance in sex, connection.

What are we talking about?

Okay. Connection. Yeah. Connection. In regards to connection, I'm going to go back to where we were with the fantasy. It's been about 3 months, but my wife and I learned through Think and Grow Rich. It's a book that I highly recommend by Napoleon Hill. He was born in the 1800s, died in the 1900s, absolutely changed the way we think about mindset, wealth, and sexuality if we dive deep into it. And I learned there's an entire chapter in that book that talks about sexual transmutation. And that's a big word, but basically all it is that you're able to align yourself with what— with the spiritual knowledge we have now, or scientific knowledge. Aligning your chakras means that you're literally— your body has these points of energy, and when you align those, you can actually focus on what you want and you can get what you want. And so we started doing this with sexuality over the past 3 months, and our life is, is like entirely changing. Like, things happen and we're going, that just happened. And we basically just desired it. And so at the very point of orgasm, when you're focusing on the thing that you, you desire, that's where the magic happens. And this sounds funny, but you've got to be careful in this situation because you're going to get— you're oftentimes going to get what you ask for. And so if you're not ready for it, it's going to knock you off your rocker. You're just going to be challenged by this cause and effect that we have in this universe, and you're going to go, well, I got to deal with this right now because it's not going to hide itself. It's going to be abundantly clear. Our sexuality is powerful, and without us realizing it, it drives a lot of what we do, our identity around it, and how we manifest within that energy. And so when two come together and they're focused on the same thing, It's incredible the reality that's created and how it shapes our minds and the decisions we start to make in life. Interesting. And so it's something we do on a regular basis and it's because I don't sugarcoat things. My sex life is not where I want it to be. I'm living in a— we're going from house to house. So we're in a smaller place right now. It's really cramped and it really does help to have space. When you're trying to connect, when you're trying to be intimate. And so as we expand and we become bigger, I feel like there's greater and greater opportunity. And that's the whole part of just releasing the shame and connecting to who we know we're meant to be and knowing that we have to be individuals, but we can also be very intimate and connected at the same time.

Gives you a lot to think about. Yeah, I've read that book as well. That whole chapter on sexual transmutation is fascinating.

It's a lot of fun. I would highly recommend it, and it's transforming the way I, I see sexuality. As an ex-porn addict from 10 years ago, just binging on porn, I was looking for this energetic connection without realizing it. And our sexuality is meant to be powerful. We're not meant to just always keep it in the background as if it's this thing that is separate from the rest of life. Our sexuality plays into everything we do. And I just would encourage anyone, if they're struggling with sexual trauma and they're having triggers, to lean into the energy, the sexual energy, and really focus on how that can benefit you instead of saying, oh, I'm ravaged by this guilt of what I look at or how I have sex or this kink that I don't want to have anymore. I would just want to be different. Focus on that energy. Focus on how it can benefit you. Go after the thing that makes you feel good about your sexuality. And it sounds funny, but it's real basic, but go after the thing that makes you feel good.

Don't punish yourself with it. Well, it's right. It's not basic though, because of sex shaming, because of upbringing, because of past trauma, whatever it is. It's not basic to just look at a situation and say, what is it that I actually want in this situation? That takes a certain level of trusting yourself, of maybe trusting your spouse. Maybe there's not a spouse or a partner involved. Maybe it's just you and your own journey and figuring out what works for you and what doesn't. But I think that's actually a really powerful statement because just giving yourself, especially when things have been taken from you, especially if you have been a victim, It is easy for that to become your identity and to think it doesn't actually matter what I want. Does it matter what I want?

And embracing that and acknowledging it, I actually think is that first step of awareness. Absolutely. I believe that if we don't look at things head on, the good and the bad, then we'll never see our potential. We just won't. And positivity doesn't fix things. I tried that so hard in 2020. I was so positive. And then I was so negative because one part of me just wanted to be true to myself, just wanted to be real, just wanted to talk about the things that I've struggled with. I've sucked at making money over like a 10-year period of our life. Tragedy after tragedy, I sucked at making money. And I'll be the first to say that I, I didn't— I wasn't good at admitting it either. I wasn't good at talking about it. And it's because there's so much shame around it. Sex and money. Yeah. That's where most people hide their shame. It's hard to, it's hard to feel shame if you don't hide it, like just allow yourself to feel and see, and then just admit it. Like my childhood said, don't admit anything. My dad wouldn't admit to anything. He wouldn't apologize for anything. And my mom said, everything's fine. So I had to decide one point. Yeah. Yes, absolutely.

And the opposite of denial is healing.

Hello friends.

Today's podcast is brought to you by these sponsors, Medical Bill Gurus. The experts at Medical Bill Gurus are dedicated to innovative solutions for any medical billing scenario. Scenario, which we all have in this community.

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With empathy at the forefront of their daily mission, Medical Bill Gurus is dedicated to being in the trenches with patients and raise awareness for the daily challenges facing them. From medical billing errors to raising awareness for their diagnosis, Medical Bill Gurus takes pride in speaking with patients every day and helping them find guidance patients on how to navigate our broken healthcare system. Their patient advocates are available to help reduce medical bills and assist patients with navigating a dynamic health landscape. I also interviewed Daniel Lynch, founder of Medical Bill Gurus, in episode 111. In addition to helping you get money back from your insurance company, if you need help deciphering what health insurance provider to choose, and I have done this several times a year for years now, or you are looking for a clinic that is covered by insurance, they are a great resource for all things related to medical bills, figuring out which insurance provider you could or should have. They're an awesome resource. Again, I use them multiple times a year. Give them a call. All right.

Now on to the show. Tell our audience how people can get in touch with you, where they can find you. I know you're on— you're very active on Clubhouse, which if you guys are not familiar with the Clubhouse app, I'm pretty new to it, but totally loving the whole— it's basically like a podcast format with interaction. It's beautiful. And you're on there quite a bit, but tell us about your online program as well.

Well, in Clubhouse, let's start with that. We have a club called Superpowered Humans, and we're all about being real, being authentic, and solving problems in our life. And then also laughing our asses off. We have a room called Trauma Jokers.. And that's where we just let out all of the ugly in a humorous way where it's, yeah, we've all fucked up or we've all had fucked up things happen to us. And it's okay to just be in a place. We don't call it a safe space. You got to have thick skin to be able to handle the humor because it gets kind of raunchy in there. But what other place do you have to really let loose? And so thank you, Clubhouse, and the gods for sending Clubhouse. It's been a great place to transition in 2021. And build community. And so we're building a beautiful community of authentic people who are open, they're honest, and they're growing in life. And so in, in 2020, Jess and I were coaching a lot. And so right now we're coaching, we're in transition, we're moving right now. But the great part is that we have this community that's ready for— ready to take some next steps in their life with their intimacy. And the few people I'm working with right now are seeing like massive change. And it's because of that authentic space that's given. So the people who are starting to open up and they're like, oh my God, I, I can't talk to my team. I can't talk to people within my business because it will wreck my brand. Like I have a face logo. It's going to destroy my brand. It's going to make things difficult. And from my learning, from my experience in helping with groups and helping people break through where they're in charge of a lot of people, I can now provide that space where they're able to open up and they don't have to do it publicly. They don't have to go, here's everything I'm going through. Well, I have that luxury of doing that. Most people don't. Well, I've had the luxury of everything being stripped away from me. Most people don't. Have that opportunity either. They don't have that extreme contrast. And so they're sitting in their situation going, I can't do this. And I'm saying, you can do this. You can break free from your addiction. You can break the cycles that you're in right now. It's not all over. Whether you've lost your agency, whether you've lost your clients, you've lost your wife, you've lost your kids. Like some of us have just literally died. There is hope, and it's not as difficult as you think it has to be. It's really not that hard. So I like to work with men through my program, Passionate Alpha. It's a 12-week-long program, and we dive deep into self and really our identity. And then it's about strategy, and it's about tools, and it's about going through your dark tunnels, and, and then going into your promised land where you decide who you can become, who you want to be now, and discover your own promised land and get to the root of any problem and learn how to self-heal. And it's a whole lot of fun. So we work with families and I like to work with men, and it's incredible to see how they transform their lives when they're able to have that.

Well, and that energy, sexual energy, is powerful. And like energy of all kinds, transforms other aspects of your life.

Absolutely. It's intricately connected. I don't know what time we are in this interview.

Okay. We're basically done. Yeah.

We've got 2 minutes left, but yeah. Okay. So you're welcome to go to my Linktree that Sarah puts in below. And that's where you can find my wife's book, Everything I Know I Learned from My Pimp. And that's how you can look at tragedy head on. You can see see it in all of its benefit, in all of its ruthlessness, all of its beauty. And maybe you can laugh after reading a story of traumatic events all wrapped into one little sweet package. And then you can also go to a link there. I think I'm going to have Activating the Fantasy, and that's the tool that we've used to transform our sex life and basically manifest the life of our dreams. Wow. Awesome. Yeah. And if you want, if you don't feel safe there, go to my email. It's readrich26@gmail.com. It's kind of generic. I keep it that way for a reason. readrich26@gmail.com. If you're needing to reach out to someone who will listen and just assess your situation and see what we can do to help you where you are, if you can't talk about it, just email me., and we'll definitely be able to do something.

Yeah. And I highly recommend you guys reaching out, especially men, to Reed. I've watched him on parts of his journey, and I just think anytime you take something that has been so traumatic and turn it around and can transform it into something that benefits you and your family and others is just so powerful. And that's what we're all here for, is to transform and to create, become our best selves. And so I really appreciate you giving a voice to sexuality, giving a voice to coming into your own and not repeating past patterns and owning, owning where you're at in life.

I mean, it all just factors into creating a self you love, which creates a life you love.

I love that. That's beautiful. Awesome. Yeah.

Reid, thank you for being here with us today.

Absolutely, thank you so much, Sarah.

So that will do a fake hang up right there. That's cool, I love how you just black it out, easy to edit. Awesome. Well, that was fun.

Good. I was all over the place.

You were a little, that's okay.

I was all over the place. Oh no, it's okay. You were all over it. And see, here's the thing. It's, it's hard to tell a story of this magnitude in 1 hour. That's just the reality. But I mean, I've spent what, 4 hours talking to you at least at this point. And there's so much that goes into coming to this place where, and maybe I didn't even use the word during the interview, but the, the non-judgment, the forgiving yourself, the Quit criticizing yourself, which it is kind of feels like a conundrum because you're saying, oh wait, I had to take responsibility for myself, but I also had to let myself go. I mean, it's—

if you're not an aware person, these are hard concepts. Life is mushy. Life, life is truly mushy. It's— we're not supposed to know all these things.

We can decide how we respond to it though. Which I think is really powerful part of your story, even with your wife leaving, is just saying, oh, okay, I'm going to respond different.

Yeah. I had to look at myself and go, what, what was I missing? Where were my priorities off? And I had made promises. I had said things and I hadn't followed through with money, with promising that I'd take my kids places. And I isolated and I didn't speak a lot to that. I think I'm still learning how to share, but there was a lot of isolation and it was it's self-isolation. Nobody was holding me down. I blamed it on COVID, but I had isolated in the past too. And so it's fun to be able to be like, go anywhere, do anything. Like, I isolated, but still I can just get in flow now. I can be wherever I want. I can take my family with me on this journey, and our relationships have been so close, like My 12-year-old who has ADHD as well, she's just the love— loviest little girl. She's just so lovey and then so freaking powerful at the same time. We call her the practical police. If she sees something that's weird or off, she's like, why didn't you just do it like this? That's funny. And so, yeah, she's adorable like that. And we also have my 15-year-old son who mimics everything I do. Even if I'm not saying it or even doing it, he's living out my energy on a daily basis. And he also has Asperger's. So the way it comes out of his mouth is entirely different than the way it comes out of my mouth. So that's the biggest— I'd say the biggest challenge right now is like this reflection. Clubhouse has been a reflection for me too. Like, I'm telling you, you get real in some of these rooms. And there were people I was casting judgments on people. Who I've now had to meet with, right? Because you got to meet with everybody. You got to meet with whoever is available to meet with. It's fun. 15 minutes, let's talk. And so I'm just one 15-minute appointment after another. Let's see what we— how we can work together. If I can help you, you can help me. And it's so much fun. Like, I used to do this in real life, but I get some people where they're like— they're saying certain words, they're like, that's— I'm just like, that's fucked up. And I would put them in this category because of all the trauma I experienced in the anti-trafficking movement. And now I'm like, you know what, it's, it's okay. You know what I just noticed?

I think I have an appointment like right now. Yeah, we went way long.

Okay, I'll let you go. We'll be in touch.

Okay, I love you. Thank you. Bye. Okay, thanks Reed. All right, bye. Disease is contrary to life.

Therefore, wherever disease exists, life must also fight to exist.

Good job fighting, Lyme fighters!

Keep it up. We'll see you next time. LymeVoice contains general information about medical conditions and treatments. The information is not advice and should not be treated as such. Okay, Lincoln? Okay. The medical information on LymeVoice is provided as is without any representations, warranties, expressed or implied. Okay? Okay. LymeVoice makes makes no representations or warranties in relation to the medical information on this podcast. You must not rely on the information on this podcast as an alternative to medical advice from your doctor or other professional healthcare provider. If you have any specific questions about your medical matter, you should consult your doctor or other professional healthcare provider. And for you, you consult your parents, okay? Okay. If you think you may be suffering from, from any medical condition, you should seek immediate medical attention. You should never delay seeking medical advice, disregard medical advice, or discontinue medical treatment because of information on this podcast.

Got it, Lincoln?

Got it.