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Resilience, Reckoning & Renewal with Patrick

• Siobhan • Season 2 • Episode 42

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In this raw and deeply moving episode, Siobhan sits down with Patrick—a salty, soulful, and beautifully honest storyteller—to explore a life marked by trauma, survival, and healing. Patrick opens up about growing up in an abusive home, enduring sexual assault as a child, and carrying the weight of unspoken pain through a long military career.

Through the lens of therapy, writing, and self-reflection, Patrick shares how he’s finally confronting the darkness, reconnecting with his inner child, and learning—at 73 years old—that he is worthy of love, peace, and joy.

We talk about the power of inner child work, the ripple effects of PTSD, breaking generational cycles, and what it means to finally feel safe in your own skin. With the support of his fiercely loving wife, Christine, and a renewed connection to spirit, Patrick is rewriting his narrative—not just for himself, but for anyone still carrying old wounds.

This is more than a conversation—this is proof that it’s never too late to heal.

📚 Patrick’s debut memoir is in the works and already changing lives.
 🎧 Trigger warning: This episode contains discussions of abuse, PTSD, and suicide.

Siobhan:

Well, sit, get comfortable, make sure your mic is all

Patrick Sauro:

set. What is your benefit by doing this? I get

Siobhan:

to help other people. I get to tell my story in a way that doesn't make me feel super uncomfortable, because I let it come out when it comes out, yeah, forcing it out, right? I'm not great at talking about myself. No, I know that. Um, but I my story is a story of resilience, too. I think kind of the pod. Sometimes people ask me, like, what it's about, and I say long story, long form, conversations, people's stories, but I think really the theme I'm looking for is resilience. Like I'm looking to know that you can go through the hard things and you can come back from

Patrick Sauro:

it. Yeah, well, I think I'm

Siobhan:

trying to help other people understand that they, too can go through the hard stuff and come back from it like you're not the worst thing you ever did or the worst thing that ever happened to you. You know, I've, unfortunately, have had a lot of big life experiences, right? And, you know, my mom one time was like, I don't know how you've done it. She's like, you've just the amount of stuff you've had to go through, and you are still happy, and you're still, you know, trying to put good out in the world, and finding my joy. And, you know, I do have, still a sense of childhood wonder

Patrick Sauro:

that I carry, oh yeah.

Siobhan:

Like, I never lost. I have never let anything take that from me, right? And I think that that's kind of a special thing. I think a lot of people get super jaded and angry, and then they take it out

Patrick Sauro:

on man. It's amazing how that gets intense. That gets for me, taking it out on other people. And then I with this new therapist, I realized it's not about them. Doesn't have a fucking thing to do with my health, my well being, what it has to do with forgetting that, dealing with my pain, what you know now and when as a little boy, yep, and sometimes she'll say, maybe we ought to go in the woods and sit for a little bit. Oh,

Siobhan:

that's interesting. So she's teaching you how to take yourself out of the moment.

Patrick Sauro:

Actually, she's teaching me to go back to those memories and take that little boy's hand, say, come on. This isn't this isn't really you. We Come on, put your hand in mine, and we'll walk out of this shit. So

Siobhan:

there's a lot of child, inner child work that you're doing.

Patrick Sauro:

Yeah, yeah, I wrote in the story, whereas in sixth grade I didn't know who I was or what I was doing. My therapist said you were numb. You were just numb. You've been shut down, abused. So yeah, that was a good observation.

Siobhan:

Yeah, sometimes I think about going back into therapy for that, for that, for the childhood work. When I was younger, I used to not think that the childhood stuff meant anything. Like I thought it was kind of some bullshit. And, like, I had a friend who was in therapy since we were, like, young kids because of stuff that had happened in her family. And I always thought, yeah, but she's still like, it's not helping, or any, you know, like, she's still super depressed, she's still super anxious, she's, you know, really just unhappy. And I was like, I have been through, you know, some shit, and I'm okay. I wasn't, you know that now, but I was just like, yeah, you just kind of put it, you stuff it inside, and you don't think about it

Patrick Sauro:

anymore. Yeah, yeah, I did. I was real good at that. And then I have two therapy, two therapists. One is my guiding light. I contact once a month, and we talk about this and that, and the other one right now is trained professional with PTSD, yes, and I told her, I don't have anywhere else to go. I'm not running anymore. I don't want this shit to affect me, affect friendships, right, you know? So I sent uncle Jr a copy. Loves it. Sent to a copy of each one of my brothers thinking, You know what? I don't need their fucking. Approval. You don't right. This story has nothing to do with them, and yet, they both called me and said, Oh, leave my name out. All right. No problem, right? No problem. They still talk and act well like the family I left, family I was get leaving. So when I thought talked with Christine about going up to Seattle and meeting with them, no fucking way, oh, because nothing's changed in them. Out of all these people, you're the only one that's growing.

Siobhan:

You know, that's what she said, Yeah, and I

Patrick Sauro:

agree. And

Siobhan:

to kind of jump into the podcast part, like, let's catch let's introduce you to the future. Because, well, I'm gonna leave all of that in. I think that that's moving, and it's kind of how we formed. Our friendship is having conversations. Mean, I met you at one of the bars that I work with, and we liked each other right away. And you are a salty old man. Yeah,

Patrick Sauro:

don't leave out son of a bitch. This is

Siobhan:

true so, but so in the pond with me today is my friend Patrick, who just wrote his first book. Thank you, and it's amazing. It's very open and raw and honest, and I'm excited to see what happens with it. I mean, it's just being shopped now, as they say. So that's exciting for you. So tell us a little bit about like your origin story. We jumped kind of right into some of the heavy stuff. But okay, tell me where you're from. Patrick,

Patrick Sauro:

I was born and raised in a little town in Upper Michigan called Saul Saint Marie. Originally settled by the French fur traders, and they also called the The Bev one bivouac. On the other side of the town of the river is Saul Saint Marie Ontario. Ah, so that's so it's called, yeah, the end, grown up in an Italian family, an Italian neighborhood, to me, still to this day, the sun, sun shines the brightest. It still does. There. Was all the these little old ladies and their black laced dresses. If they were alone, they're standing in the screen door. So whoever came in the neighborhood, they didn't know, right? They were calling everybody else.

Siobhan:

They were like, the neighborhood watch, yeah,

Patrick Sauro:

the old and they would send out a son or something to confront this person, and he probably doesn't know where he's at. He's walking down that street, right? But to them,

Siobhan:

outsiders are not allowed, yeah, they're not welcome,

Patrick Sauro:

right? And it was very, comforting for me as a child, because everywhere I went in that neighborhood, they knew me, you know, through my father and those things, and it was just so great a place to grow up for me,

Siobhan:

good. That's nice to hear. And what, what years was this?

Patrick Sauro:

This was from I was born in 51 let's see, I think, to about sixth, seventh grade, and we moved one block away.

Siobhan:

Did the neighborhood change a lot, though, in that one block was it as kind of outsiders? Beware.

Patrick Sauro:

It was more like it was a different neighborhood completely. You know, there were Norwegian, Swedish and

Siobhan:

still very white.

Patrick Sauro:

Oh, yeah, right at the time I was growing up, the sheriff patrol was patrolling three, three mile city limits, and they wouldn't allow black people to come in. They turned around and sent backs out.

Siobhan:

That's terrible.

Patrick Sauro:

Yeah, no, so there was that, but I never noticed it with my family, you know, they watch basketball. Oh, yeah. Okay, hockey was the biggest thing, but baseball, basketball, football, it didn't matter to them if somebody was black. You know, there was never any tough, demeaning type like that. Well, that's good, yeah,

Siobhan:

they just weren't allowed in the neighborhood.

Patrick Sauro:

Well, again, it depended on, well, the police, the sheriff's department, get the back, kept the black people out of town, period, so that I never saw any while I was growing up. Wow. And I think the first time I was sailing on orcas and Great Lakes, and they picked up a black guy for working doing the same thing I was doing, and two guys from up north in Duluth or something, said, I'm not sailing with that fucker on this boat. Oh, wow. And to this day, I remember that black kid standing on a dock crying, I ain't no nigger, mate. I ain't no nigger, but we didn't sail with them. So that gave me a lot of that gave me a more of a kinder sense of people, you know, nothing was it did not a fucking thing wrong, right, and these assholes are accusing them, and we're not going to sail if he's on that ship. So, and this was, this was the riots going on in Detroit, all over that area, Chicago. So I had apprehensions about meeting black people, you know, and then to watch this take place like holy shit.

Siobhan:

And you understand why riots are happening?

Patrick Sauro:

I do, yeah. So, as a kid, we never locked our doors. I could be out all night, you know, yeah, nothing was ever said or anything, you know, because summertime and had a group of friends and we, we caused a lot of trouble, but just being boyhood shit, you know, without any wanting to cause some people A disaster, you know, we would knock on people's doors, right? And we'd light a bag full of dog shit on it on a porch, and we, you know, we'd go hide we're not. The closer you could get, the more braver people said you were, but you'd watch this person stomping on the bag.

Siobhan:

I always, I never knew that really happened. I've always seen it in movies, but I never

Patrick Sauro:

it's as real or true as can be. Oh, thank you. So that's what I I remember most fondly. Yeah, was those summers, you know?

Siobhan:

Yeah, imagine like growing up in the early 60s as a teenager, or, you know, a young kid, yeah,

Patrick Sauro:

absolutely, was a lot of fun. There were no boundaries. You know, for us, during the summer, the tourist boats people come to visit the locks. Will get on a tourist boat and it'll take them up through the locks and bring them back around and down through the locks. Well, right in line with that, after the boat makes a turn to go back down the dock, we'd be myself and my friends would be swimming on this off this little platform dock, or whatever. We never had, we, you know, we never, we didn't have swimsuits. Oh, you just be butt ass naked, butt ass naked, swimming and laughing and carrying on. And then when the tourist boat got about even with us, we'd shake our tally Wackers at him. So it

Siobhan:

was a simpler time.

Patrick Sauro:

Yeah. Well, all of us played baseball and hockey, or we, you know, hockey was a big thing, so baseball and basketball kind of was put on by the city. The what I want to say is that up until the My five year up until the time I was five years old, there was a lot of fucking abuse in my home, and I remember things happening to me that I never saw happen to my brothers, my younger brother.

Siobhan:

How many brothers you have? Five siblings altogether? Yeah, two

Patrick Sauro:

younger brothers and two sisters at the bottom. So I remember my old man slapping me on the back of my head and my falling on the ground, yeah, a couple of several times. And what I now believe is this I'm about, I think about three, yeah, I'm hearing this, hollering, fighting, bitter, you know, in the living room, I have to hold my hand out against the wall to keep me steady. I couldn't walk, right? So I enter the living room and my mother's just sobbing. I mean, you know, really hurt, and I heard the door slam my that meant, you know, the old man left. So when I tried to console her, she said, Go away. You don't know what's going on, okay, but the thing I remember as a child, Hey, what the fuck you're you're abandoning me. You're not paying attention to me, right? You know who's gonna feed me so even a three year old, you have this survival instinct. What happened after that? Eventually, my father moved back in, and I think he was walking on eggshells for a long time. How

Siobhan:

long had she kicked him out for?

Patrick Sauro:

About six to eight months. Oh, wow. But there's a lot of strange things going on during his absence. Right? One day, my mother dressed me up and told me don't get wet. She would always tell me to do that, and I'd find the nearest mud puddle. So this one time, went off with my friends, got wet, came home and in my kitchen at the time was my grandma, my father's mother, unbelievable to me, but both her and my mother have this look of seriousness. So something's been said, and maybe grandma was there to straighten things out, get my mother father to move back home, and she saw me. My pants were wet. She pulled them down, along with my underwear. So I'm bare ass with my grandma. And I'm thinking, I think today, and I was thinking, then, this is wrong, right? I'm not supposed to be negative in front of my grandma. And there were other times an uncle or two would come by after supper and try to talk to my mother, and that was the biggest mistake they're ever going to make, because she wasn't going to get in and so that was, it was hard. You know, there were times when my old man left the couch. I froze. I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe, and watch him racing after me. I mean, you know, it looked like a fucking grizzly bear. And during those times, no secrets ever went outside the house.

Siobhan:

Oh, yeah, everything stayed No. Talked about

Patrick Sauro:

anything. Yeah, so

Siobhan:

I think, was he an alcoholic? No, no. He's just mean, just me.

Patrick Sauro:

There were, there are quite a few mean people in that story. You know, there is. So after a while, I think he had a talk with my mother, and he decided that they decided no more slapping on the head, if anything, you can use a belt. Oh, big fucking difference, right? So I had grown as a young boy to hate these people.

Siobhan:

Do you think you were getting the brunt of it and like your siblings weren't getting it at all? Yeah, you kind of were the because you were the oldest. You were like a buffering for them. Yep, exactly. So their experience isn't going to reflect your experience at all, and they probably, because of the age difference, didn't really even see it or understand it.

Patrick Sauro:

I think myself today is they shut themselves down when this shit was going on, you know? They went, didn't want to get the ire from my old man on them, right? And so I got that, you know, I understand that. And for the longest time, I hated them. They they still have the same manual mannerisms, the same type of speech, the same type of belittling, hmm, that I, you know, was in our family, right? But they were mama's boys, yeah. So, around nine years old, we moved I told you about moved house, and there was a guy in that neighborhood who raped me, not once, not twice, maybe three or four times. But and you I hear people talk about how painful that is and how debilitating it is and your privacy is taken away from you. I never felt that shit. No, not a bit of it. I was numb,

Siobhan:

yeah, so you weren't feeling anything from it, right?

Patrick Sauro:

I mean, I could still taste the guy's penis in my mouth and him trying to insert it in my rectum and but I've, I've never felt that stuff about being raped, hmm, thinking about it now, that is probably what saved my life too.

Siobhan:

Is the numbness. Probably, yeah, yeah. I think I have some of that. I I think I didn't think I had anything from when I the first time I was raped. I didn't think it really affected me in a way. And then as an adult, like, now older, and realizing some of my relationships and like, oh, it had a total effect on it. Yeah, I still have hang ups about sex, I think, and trusting someone. And because of it,

Patrick Sauro:

my Yeah, and so I gave my next young my youngest brother a year younger, I gave him my story, thinking like, fuck. What did I do that for? He's going to come back with all these with a different knowledge, and he's going to say to me, oh, that didn't happen, you know, never happened, you know, but they didn't he sent me back email said it's the most courageous thing. It

Siobhan:

is a very courageous thing that you've just done. Yeah, you're talking about, and it's, it's nice. I was telling someone about kind of who I was talking to today, and that, you know, you're a friend, and you kind of started to write this book as part of your therapy, and how you'd kind of got, you've been in therapy for a long time, but this last kind of bout has been, right? Really, what's been transformative for you, exactly? And you really kind of cracked open,

Patrick Sauro:

yeah, I and I don't know why I cry. I mean, I can watch it. America's Got Talent. I hear this person saying or whatever, and they get the stars and the confetti in there, and I start fucking crying. I have music in my car that causes me to cry. You know, one of them is John Denver. I'm sorry for myself. Oh. Yeah, that's it. That's a catchy tune, yeah? But I actually feel I need to hear this music.

Siobhan:

Well, it's helping you get that those emotions out of your body. There's a great book called the body keeps a score. Yeah? You told me that, yeah, and it's, it's a really good book about how, even though you might not realize that you remember it your body does. That's what energy inside of

Patrick Sauro:

you does. That's exactly what we're doing now with the with the PTSD. How do you feel right now? Well, what do you I feel angry? You know, I'm 73 years old, and I'm still dealing with these fucking memories, and then there's a guilt of, what if I killed them, to destroy them, to so they wouldn't hurt me anymore. But on the other hand,

Siobhan:

you mean, kill the memories. Killed them. Oh, the people.

Patrick Sauro:

They had good things. You know, Jeff, my next brother down, he got guitar lessons and, you know, all equipment for playing hockey, and I don't remember a fucking thing about

Siobhan:

him, about you ever having those?

Patrick Sauro:

No, I never got those, right? He did, yeah. So, well, I've been I wrote that story, hoping that it would heal me, that I'd be facing these memories, these harsh memories, and reliving the abuse. I mean, just I could feel a slap on the back of my head as we're talking, but on the other hand, I realized you're sticking up for yourself. That's what you're doing. Yeah, has nothing to do with your parents or all your harm, none of that. And if I allow them an inkling of space while you and I are talking, they'll be right in my presence. So what I've learned this time with therapy, it's about me. How do you feel as a five year old? I can tell you everything, but and then, how do I feel now as a 73 year old man, and sometimes that little boy takes over, you know, he's really hurt and he doesn't trust even me. Sometimes

Siobhan:

I can understand that fully. Yeah.

Patrick Sauro:

Another thing I've been processing with this new therapist is spirituality.

Siobhan:

Oh, interesting very because

Patrick Sauro:

I told her how every Sunday, when we go to Grandma, I was for spaghetti dinner, the first thing I did was walk through the front door and climb up in my grandpa's lap. It was the only time I felt safe, you know, yeah, and my uncle Jr says nobody went near you. Nobody. They all moved away. That was his time with

Siobhan:

you. Were you the oldest of his grandchildren? There

Patrick Sauro:

was one other, but he died early, so that made me Yeah. So uncle Junior remembers me sitting in his grandpa's lap and Grandpa giving me a penny. So which you

Siobhan:

could actually buy stuff with back then, right?

Patrick Sauro:

So, may 3 is my birthday. It's 1956, my two other brothers were sitting in the back seat. My mother and her mother are up front. It goes may 4. That's when it happened. I was born on May 3. Okay, so we're driving down the street, and my mother says something, and I stand up to hear better, as What do you mean? He's gone? Who's gone? I. Your grandfather, really? Yeah. She said, No more Papa. And I thought, You fucking cunt, you know, and the shock picked me up and slung me into the back seat. Wow. And that created another fuck you in my life. So we were in the car. We were going to grandpa's funeral.

Siobhan:

Oh, wow. That's how you found out he had died, yeah.

Patrick Sauro:

So I don't remember much sympathy. One time my mother hugged me and it felt like her arms were on fire. It just seemed so ludicrous. Why are you hugging me now? Where in the fuck were you when your old man was beating me up? Right?

Siobhan:

Hello. Did she stay with your dad till the end?

Patrick Sauro:

Based on what I learned and how where they grew up from, they had no choice. They had to work their ass off. Otherwise there wouldn't be any food on a table. And that was it, you know, and they put up with a lot of abuse by people who didn't know better, who were just following the script handed down to them, right? And I don't know, I honestly believe today is they had no fucking idea there was something else out there.

Siobhan:

I think a lot of people don't, you know. Like, even now, whenever I go someplace, I can hear my dad in my head. I mean, he's still with us, thankfully. But like, whenever, when we were young, and we would travel someplace, he would go, not bad, from a for a kid from Boston, huh, yeah. Like, it was always his thing. And, like, now when I go and I'm traveling and I'm in Europe, but I think I always have this moment where I can hear him perfectly in my head saying, Not bad for a girl from for a girl from

Unknown:

Boston, huh? What a beautiful like

Siobhan:

he and I always say, My dad's a unicorn. I mean, we've talked about, well, I used to say that in San Francisco, you can't call him that, means something very different. But he didn't have anyone to teach him like no one. His dad was not a great guy. And you know what? Came from poor family, my grandma, his mother, came to the US when she was 15 by herself. Wow. So no one taught him, like how to be a good dad, or that there was more out in the world, but he just kind of, and he growing up, just wanted to have a like his house and his wife and kids and be happy and secure. That was what his dream was for his life, and he achieved it. And you know, everything else for him is gravy, like getting to travel or, you know what I mean, coming out to see me, seeing what I've done, is what he is so excited about. And he's, you know, I'm extremely lucky that I happen to win the dad lottery, you know, yeah. And absolutely I realized it from a young kid, because his brothers are, some of them are, were crazy. Like, I have stories, like, when I tell some of the stories about growing up as a kid, people look at me like, I'm crazy, yeah? Or like, I'll say something and I'll laugh about it, and they're like, that's horrible it, yeah, but that was just how it was. Like, you know,

Patrick Sauro:

there were a couple of my uncles that treated myself and my brothers as gold. You know, I never understood it, what? Because we were my old man's children, but they just took us under their care, like your uncle Junior, like Uncle Junior, just son of a bitch.

Siobhan:

So when you were and then, I mean, you were growing up in these, these rough conditions, and then out of high school, there was no high school. Oh, you didn't go to high school.

Patrick Sauro:

No, I think I went to 10th grade. Oh, wow, yeah. But I was so overwhelmed and felt so out of place. And even going there, I didn't want to mix with anybody. I didn't want to do any high school sports. I'd rather go not go to school and go to the pool hall.

Siobhan:

Well, I mean, don't you think that maybe the the beatings and the rape is probably what made you feel so apathetic towards going to school or doing anything. Absolutely,

Patrick Sauro:

my old man never said a fucking thing about me. Quit in high school. He didn't say anything. Thing when I wrecked the car either I didn't fender bender anyways. So when I turned 18, I went to work on the ore boats. They go from Duluth to the Great Lakes, delivering iron ore or coal or something. Okay, so then you go back up, you get loaded up again, you come down and go to steel mills, you know? And it was then I got this draft notice. Went to went to Detroit, got the physical, came back the next day, and I said to my mother, I hate this. I don't want to be part of this, right? Oh, yeah. Well, you know, if they need you, you're going see this knife if I hear about you scaping the canter, I'm going to take it and stick it in your chest. Oh, wow, right. So then the old man came home from work, and how was everything? I said, I don't like it says, Well, go talk to the Coast Guard recruiter. And I did, and I took me in which, which I learned right away was the military is awfully safe.

Unknown:

You know, that's a weird thought.

Patrick Sauro:

Who's gonna harm

Siobhan:

you. Who's gonna harm you? Well, if you're going to Vietnam,

Patrick Sauro:

well, I didn't go to Vietnam. I was lucky, but it was safe for me,

Siobhan:

for you, I'm sure it did feel very safe because it was very predictable. It was lot of rules, lot of like routine.

Patrick Sauro:

Yeah, right, and I did extremely well for not finishing high school. I went from e1 lowest enlisted, up to Chief Warrant Officer, and I had to take a college equivalency exam for that, right. But my grades were the highest you could get. Oh, wow. And as an officer, my fitness reports were always favorably, so I had that in me. And then the more I started delving into this book, I realized I wouldn't be here if out that without them. That's

Siobhan:

so well. It gave you purpose and meaning absolutely and then you've told me a story once about how, when you first enlisted, there was someone above you that really saw something in you and helped foster it, and he kind of watched out for you exactly. And that's a gift, kind of he gave to you, or, you know, he just recognized good talent. I'm sure,

Patrick Sauro:

I think that was, yeah, that was the case,

Siobhan:

because he really pushed you to become a chief petty Petty Officer,

Patrick Sauro:

right? Well, he put me in line for it, yeah, because I admired him so much.

Siobhan:

What was your job in the Coast Guard? I mean, I'm sure you had a lot, but yeah, it

Patrick Sauro:

was damage controlman, pipe fitting, welding, carpentry, any those skills, you know? So I learned right away with it, when I got to the new station we're going to remodel this room we put up, you know. And so working with him, I began to see all these things. And not one time I remember us walking somewhere and an officer walking by and say, Good afternoon, Chief.

Siobhan:

Never,

Patrick Sauro:

I don't ever remember him saying Good afternoon sir. It was always the other way. And that was really impressive to me. That was he kicked my ass a couple times when I couldn't go to work. I'm sure

Siobhan:

you deserved it. Yeah,

Patrick Sauro:

he was the best man at my wedding.

Siobhan:

Oh, that's beautiful. Which wedding the first

Patrick Sauro:

one, yeah, we got married at uh, army base from up from Washington, DC, so that that was okay, that all you know. And it was, it was good being married at first. But, you know, there were all these little creepy things. Going on in me. I wasn't a good father. I was never fucking home to be a good father.

Siobhan:

So you were thriving at work, but hiding there too. Yeah,

Patrick Sauro:

absolutely. So if I came home and my son did something wrong, I was going to punish him. I get in a fight with my with his mother, but that's all I knew to punish. I had the best fucker in the world teaching me that shit. And so got I went from Washington, DC to Upper Michigan on an icebreaker. From there I went to Alaska. Oh, yeah, and there I made Chief Petty Officer, which was, yes, was Alaska colder than Michigan? No, no, no, it's wild to me. Well, yeah, well, ketchup can is right on the Tongass narrows a big opening. It goes all the way up to Juneau, surrounded by on and there they get the trade winds from Japan or around that area. So all that warmth is still coming up, you know? Oh, okay, I think we only shoveled snow once or twice, like, four years. Oh, wow, that's it. But it did rain,

Siobhan:

yeah, it rained a lot,

Patrick Sauro:

and I did. I wrote a firefighting manual for the base, and I was put in charge of teaching the duty sections. Oh, wow. Yeah,

Siobhan:

you just, they were just like, hey, do you know anything about fires? And you were like, No. And they were like, Here, write a manual.

Patrick Sauro:

Yeah, that was it. That was exactly it. I

Siobhan:

walked the efficiency of the US military, yeah,

Patrick Sauro:

cabin Captain's Office with my division officer, and somehow we got on to talk about training the duty sections. Well, that left me with, what do I know? How to train people? Yes, in firefighting. No, I had just the basic learning in boot camp for fighting fire. So my ex wife and I usually every Yeah, every weekend we'd get together and we'd talk about this next lesson plan. And then throughout the week, I would meet with each duty section. We'd go over this did a lot of drills. I mean, taping over their masks and getting on the hands and knees and following a hose. Oh, that's smart. And then finding a somebody there. Oh, now they got to get back with that hose to get out and bring that person with

Siobhan:

and that's just training that. Did you like see that in a book? Or did you just kind of make it

Patrick Sauro:

up? Now that you think about it, I must have heard something about that? Oh, I got a lot of fire training, firefighting training, video, videos, movies to watch. And they showed one guy on his hands and knees following that this, you know, hose. And I thought, that's not good enough. It doesn't even do anything except, you know how to follow a hose on your hands and knees. So by putting a person down there, now they got, they have to think, right? Okay, so you got this person. What do I do? Well, think about it, you came in by that hose, and that's the only way you got in there, and that's the only way you're going to get out. So I used a lot of smoke, artificial smoke, like they use in a movie, and a couple times when any of those four duty sections were ready to fight fires, and I was a volunteer firefighting captain for The Little Village I lived in. Oh, okay, so we duty section one night, one afternoon, we went to fight a fire in that there's the housing division. And then there was this forest fire going on. And the other thing that made it dangerous was the fire was going through these tunnels. Oh, right. And they could pop up anywhere. So if I put a hose team out there, I put another hose team behind them, so to keep keep them safe, and so they're fighting this fire. And Alaska took their fire fighting people, a group of them and sent them to the base. They relieved me. Oh, wow, yeah. So I got a medal for that. I grew so much up there to become a chief, which was always my goal was it went to Air Station Miami,

Siobhan:

after Alaska. That's a culture shock, as much as a weather shock, you name it.

Patrick Sauro:

And so I was there for four years, and then I was transferred to base Alameda. At first, I was on the engineering end, and we did projects, and I was the emergency officer. Oh, okay, so if this guy up in Portland or something is having trouble with a machine or something's not going well or breaking down, they would call me first, and we would talk about the situation, and I might send them money,

Siobhan:

money. Oh, so you were controlling budgets and things like that.

Patrick Sauro:

Yeah. And I also had a $12 million back project backlog, oh shit, wow. I got another medal there for revamping the headquarters unit for the Pacific. Pacific headquarters unit, yeah, and that was, that was good, but the tension between my wife was strong as ever. Yeah, a couple times I had I couldn't stand to feel that flame. You know that that because it felt like my body was hurting so much, and like we talked about bodies keeping memories, yeah, so I went to live on the base. I'd stay for a week or two, and my head would get a little clearer. And, you know, but again, I'll say it. I was not a good father. I should have taken that boy fishing. I should have did this. I should have done that. I fucking didn't right. And I felt and by then, I felt alienated,

Siobhan:

oh, from the family unit.

Patrick Sauro:

Yeah. So my my wife went out, she's working at night, and one time she come home four o'clock in the morning. Where you been? I was out with a friend. Oh, okay, yeah. And then she said, then she said, this, he's a firefighter. And I went, oh, oh. I Oh, so I can't live like this, right?

Siobhan:

So did you end up leaving her? Oh? Or did she

Patrick Sauro:

she moved in with a friend, and she said, she said, we can always date fuck we can you think I want to trust you when you did this? No, and I'll never be able to. And so we got a divorce. She moved back east to Washington, DC. She took the two kids, and then the boy, he moved back out here to California, and I was retired. I was going to college. So one day, there he was, you know, but all the time I was going to college, and I'd see a kid in front of me who looked like he would behind, you know, looking at his back, and I would have to rush to walk up and look at that boy to make sure it wasn't him. Yeah, oh.

Siobhan:

Yeah, so did he move out here to be near you, or was it just happenstance that he moved No, he

Patrick Sauro:

had some friends out here, and he moved in with them, so we would go play golf together, and we'd have a great time, and then he would snap at me, yeah, I wonder why he got this. And, you know, yeah, I go home. I go home. I didn't know whether I was supposed to kiss the dog and slap Christine, because he was. He had all my triggers, yeah, you know. So I, I've, I don't want to be around I'm not going to go places where I get hurt, right? Fuck that.

Siobhan:

But you now know that it's, it's the trauma from just like you had from your dad, he has from you, the abandonment stuff, the not being worthy

Patrick Sauro:

of all the above, yeah, and according to my therapist, is signs of PTSD are inherited. Okay, so looking back at it now, everybody in a fucking family except grandma, right? Even the girls, they look at you and you better be careful you're not pissing one off your sisters. Yeah, well, here's my father's sisters. Ah, so I move out here and I have the job at debate at the base headquarters unit. I travel up and down the coast. Yeah, you know, I had a free will, sounds nice? Yeah, I had an executive officer. He was, yeah, okay, I gotta go to down here tomorrow. Yeah, okay, I'm gonna go out and look at this. Okay, so four years later, I'm transferred to the base, and I'm the Public Works officer for the whole unit, right? And now I had chiefs working for me because I was Warrant Officer of one, you know, above them. And it was right about during that time, my wife and I, when she came home late, fuck this. I ain't living like

Siobhan:

that. How long had you been married? 18 years? Wow.

Patrick Sauro:

So she still collects my half of my pension retirement, hmm. Why been over 18 years since we separated? So now she's getting two checks. And one of the things I've because of Christine.

Siobhan:

Christine's your current wife, yeah?

Patrick Sauro:

Because of her, she'll say, just let it go, right?

Siobhan:

Yeah, you can't do anything about it

Patrick Sauro:

now, but my nature was fucking stop me, right? And now it's no my daughter. We hardly ever talk, but it's enough to know for us to know each one's alive. She may call me every once in two years, Hey, Dad. But or I might call her something. I haven't sent her that story yet. Do you think you will? Oh, I know I will. Yeah,

Siobhan:

I know I will. Do you think it'll help her to maybe see your where your flaws came from?

Patrick Sauro:

Yeah, absolutely. Another thing. Last time we were on the phone, she would, you know, she's going on about this and that another thing, I said, You better get your ass to a therapist. And let me tell you this, if you fucking Don't go, don't call me. Oh, this is how important I feel. It is for you. You know,

Siobhan:

I like the intention, but maybe the delivery was problematic.

Patrick Sauro:

Probably was, but anyway, she called me back, told me she had a new therapist. So, yeah, great.

Siobhan:

What prompted you to start therapy?

Patrick Sauro:

I guess feeling out of place, not being centered, and my mind was always rolling, you know, it wouldn't give me any rest and so, but when I was at work, when I was on the station base, whatever it stopped, I didn't have the crazies. Then I started fantasizing about Christine, my first wife, cheating on me. And so I started therapy when I was maybe 25 oh, wow, yeah. And what I I didn't go consistently, but I did, you know, to where I was feeling better, right? You know? And most of the therapists I went with went to, we get to talking, and she and I say, I'm damaged goods. What? What do you mean? Damaged goods. Damaged goods. I've been abused, beat up, you know? And I also say to the therapist, I need to go deeper. Okay, I have to fucking go deeper. And inevitably, they would all say, what for? Right? You're here now. No. So Christine and I had been married for maybe, maybe a year, and she said something one night and took a fork full of spaghetti and fluid in their face. And the next day, I went to the VA clinic, and they gave me an MD and a physical. And when I talked with a doctor, I want you to go to behavioral health. So I did that at first, and they gave me. I had three therapists my I was so good at it, but one of one worked on my childhood and abuse and all that, and the other one, she more or less helped me adjust to a new life, a new way of being right. I still have the military thinking right. I can order people to do this and do that anymore. No, you can't. You try to. Yeah. So that we stopped that things went away for a while, and then shit would happen again from out of fucking nowhere, right? It wasn't something I consciously wanted to happen, but my PTSD went like this. It'd be right here, right now, and then it would go away. I'd go way out there, like no longer a memory, and then it would come back and hit me again, oftentimes worse. I tried committing suicide twice, and I didn't do it. Wow, yeah, so I'm

Siobhan:

glad you didn't do it. Thank you. I just heard an interview with oh, I'm not gonna remember his name. He was just on 60 minutes, and it was a gentleman. That is his son. He was in the Secret Service. He was in he's been in government for a long time, and his son was a Navy Seal, I saw that who just killed anyone. And he just said, and he said he had a beautiful line in it where he said he wasn't taking the easy way out, because a lot of people say that about suicide, and he was saying it was the only way he could, one, get anybody's attention, and two, it's the only way he could find his peace. That's right? And I thought that that's I love, that he took the moment to kind

Patrick Sauro:

of enforce that, yeah, you know, and like, this new therapist I've been with for six weeks. And, um, we go back. Sometimes we have to go back to this same situation again and again, you know, so that I find my spirit and I mentioned grandpa earlier, and so I was sitting in the bursaries, right? We were talking about being raped the first time she says, let's take a break. Maybe you want to go sit in your trees right now. Yeah, I do okay, you do that, and we'll get on with more you. Oh, my grandpa comes in the woods with me. This is hard for me to adjust to, right? You know? I mean, God, God abandoned me already, so fuck him, right? Didn't do shit for me. And now here's my grandpa. Doesn't say anything. Doesn't have to but I feel this sense of renewal. So

Siobhan:

while you're meditating, and what she taught you to do is to meditate and to find a safe space, to kind of bring your body to and meditate in there. And so while you're sitting there meditating and thinking about being in your birch trees, exactly, he just came, comes walking in through to your meditation. Yeah, right. And I think that that's the spirit of I do too, and it's trying to help you and heal you and let you know that you're okay and you're safe. And

Patrick Sauro:

exactly, yeah, I told Christine about this. I said I didn't see Jesus. I saw Grandpa, you know, all these years later, even when I was a child, he was there.

Siobhan:

Yeah, he was your safe space as a kid, whether or not you realized it then Exactly,

Patrick Sauro:

yeah, I have a picture of me sitting on his lap. Well, actually, I'm just a baby right then, and I'm on his lap, and I got my hands over his big belly, you know? So

Siobhan:

that's cute, and

Patrick Sauro:

that, that's another thing that I've that has given me power, strength. I uh, the snare therapist said, Wow, you did so well today. I said. She says, Do you want to do anything more? No, I just want to sit here and experience what's going on. You know that I'm not junk. I have fears. I don't like heights, so I don't go over the Bay Bridge unless somebody is driving me. Okay? I stay away from crowds, I think for the first time, I love myself.

Siobhan:

That's beautiful. I'm glad that you found that for yourself. Yeah, and it's amazing to see someone at your age still doing the work to improve yourself, to to to get a better life, to find the joy that life can offer you, right, right, and to enjoy, like the the twilight of your life in the best way

Patrick Sauro:

possible. Oh yeah, I'm like, I finally, I'm okay.

Siobhan:

We have a beautiful wife who loves you a lot. I mean, you

Patrick Sauro:

loves me a lot. You see the scars on my neck? Oh, I didn't

Siobhan:

know we were getting into your kink side.

Patrick Sauro:

No, no, but yeah, she's, she's,

Siobhan:

she's bro. I hope she'll come and sit with me, because I love hearing the little bit of her stories that she's shared with me, yeah, she was a wild lady. Oh, she was.

Patrick Sauro:

She really was. And she

Siobhan:

has this energy about her, like she can command a room just by walking in it. She does. She's in her 70s. She's got her walker, but she still is one of the most stunning people that walks into that room.

Patrick Sauro:

I take her down to the Benton, the whole fucking bar goes quiet, yeah, you know, and all those Irish mutts get off their stools and come over and say hello and honor, and she never comes here. How come I ain't getting that? Because

Siobhan:

we see you all the time, yeah, in your salty, old son of a bitch, yeah, she's

Patrick Sauro:

She saved my life after I've been going to therapy for a while, one of the doctors said might be a Good idea to bring your wife in for couples counseling, and why she saved my life, I believe, is while we're in counseling, I was telling a therapist exactly how I felt about women, oh, about not trusting women and some other things. And to this day, I'm looking at her, she has tears in her eyes, but she doesn't leave.

Siobhan:

She loves you, yeah, so I.

Patrick Sauro:

We put our little dog down the other day. He was too old, but she stayed with that little guy all the way up until the needle was put in. And I saw her in a different light,

Siobhan:

interesting.

Patrick Sauro:

I saw her in a place of place of no fear, no apprehensions about what she was doing. She made friends. Of course, she always makes friends, but she stood out in the rain too. Didn't call. I was parked around the corner. She didn't call me to come back and get her. She had it all under control. And that was just one of those events, you know, in my life that just put me in shock. The only thing I could say is, I see things better.

Siobhan:

You have a healthier perspective.

Patrick Sauro:

Well, yeah, and I go for a walk and, oh, hey, this house is here. Well, it's always been there. But why did it look so different? Is because I'm seeing

Siobhan:

it. You're more present in your

Patrick Sauro:

life. Yeah, yeah, right area tree, there's a lot of black guys walking down the street I'm on, and I used to, just didn't want to be part of it, you know. But now I say, Hello, how you doing? And it's usually people around my age like, yeah, okay, this happened then, you know. But now it's a new day. So yeah, and my best friend, she's, I, she took golf lessons from me, and she's just been super good, super good.

Siobhan:

So you keep having these women that come into your life that are good to you, yeah, that you can trust that.

Patrick Sauro:

Yeah. I think I wrote there that it's people who give me my strength.

Siobhan:

Yeah, I think you've probably already had your strength in you. You just didn't know how to tap into it exactly, exactly, and now you've learned that you can trust yourself, that you know the evidence has shown you that you whether or not you realize that you have loved yourself all the time, it's just that you weren't aware of that love for yourself

Patrick Sauro:

most of it then was survival. I said I thought about committed suicide, but then I thought, What a coward i am so that's not gonna happen. I get there's a but, and I put it in the end of that story where the writer says he went down to the cliff and he invited them to come with him. They said, No. Did it again. They said no. The next time he pushed them and they sprouted wings, and that is so poignant for me. I got pushed off a cliff

Siobhan:

and you grew wings.

Patrick Sauro:

Yeah, that's why I feel now. That's beautiful. Yeah, we're last have to talk about the rape with his therapist.

Siobhan:

Well, you'll get to that in your time, and when you're ready, it's

Patrick Sauro:

going to be next Tuesday, that's her time. But I'm not afraid anymore.

Siobhan:

I had a therapist once who told me when I was talking about whether or not I wanted to open up some of the things in my past. She said there are things that you will will want, that you kind of have to open, and there are some things that you don't and I said, and I said, Well, I'm afraid of it, you know? And she said, Why would you be afraid of it? It can't hurt you again, right? She said, it already hurt you once, and you've survived it.

Patrick Sauro:

I have to use your back Go for it was empty at work. Oh,

Siobhan:

you're. On the ozempic, huh, yeah. How's it affecting you? Other than,

Patrick Sauro:

um, I'm losing weight. Oh, good. Walking better, taller. Um, that's what's happening. I joined a gym. Good. Started going for walks.

Siobhan:

You know, I love a walk. Well, yeah,

Patrick Sauro:

where I live on central right across the street is crown beach, so walk along the shoreline,

Siobhan:

yep, that used to be my walk every day because I lived right off of shoreline. Yeah, and I missed that walk. I miss. Sometimes I now will drive over to shoreline and then walk the whole beach, but I have been walking a lot by the Hornet, yeah, here, yeah, which is, it's still beautiful, but it's not quite the bit the beach view. Yeah,

Patrick Sauro:

that how going for walks helps me a lot to centering myself

Siobhan:

when you walk. Do you listen to anything, or do you just walk?

Patrick Sauro:

Well, I used to listen to headphones, but I had all this rock and roll on it, and that would make me walk faster. Well, that's good. So so so I, when I go to the gym on a treadmill, I'll put music on, but not when I'm walking. What

Siobhan:

about like, audio books or podcasts?

Patrick Sauro:

No, I just walk. That's

Siobhan:

good. It means that you can be in your own head too. Yeah, there are some days that I need, I feel like I want to listen to like, four things to just get out of my head. And there are other times that I'll walk with nothing, I'll have sometimes a headphone in, but it won't actually be playing anything, yeah, where I can just think,

Patrick Sauro:

like I said earlier, is I'm seeing things in new lights, and one of the to maintain that is to go for a walk. Yeah, I think for myself, yeah,

Siobhan:

I have the two things I do walks and I do the banya. And those two things really help center me and keep me who I am. You know, I say I go into the banya as one person and come out as myself. I think the same is true for a walk. I started a walk, and I'm in like, one headspace, and I come back and I'm like, Okay, now I can tackle my day. Now I can do absolutely right this. I've moved my body, I've stretched it all out. I know where my pain points all are, and that for that day.

Patrick Sauro:

Well, yeah, and I so I joined Anytime Fitness. Oh, nice. And I like that, that I can go there anytime I want, day or night, whatever, and I may even go in there for 10 minutes, just put some time on a treadmill or something right? I don't I'm not in a race anymore. No, I don't want to be hyped up with rock and roll music and that stuff. I find myself taking better care of me.

Siobhan:

You mentioned earlier that Christine has seemed to start to look at you in a different light. That must feel nice. It does. Must feel like you all are kind of rekindling some old passion in your Yeah, you know,

Patrick Sauro:

I don't leave that house unless I'm dressed for her approval. You're not wearing that. What's wrong with it, man, you're not going outside like that. Go change.

Siobhan:

Well, you represent her too. That's true.

Patrick Sauro:

Um, this, she's probably the she is the best thing in my life. She comforts me. And sometimes when my PTSD is acting up, she'll say, go in the bedroom. I don't hear about it. Call your therapist.

Siobhan:

Yeah, she's very good at boundaries, from what I can tell, yeah, and she'll listen to you when she can and when she's not in that space. She has no problem telling you none at all. But I think that's probably also what lends you to be able to trust her, because you know that she'll tell you the truth all the time.

Patrick Sauro:

For a while there, John and I were good friends, and then one night, he started just blistering me with stuff. So I went home and I told Christine, and she said he was drunk. What you're telling me? Right? If you're drunk, you can do these things. That's what you're telling me, right? So I go out, I get drunk, I come home, I don't say shit or do anything wrong, and you're gonna give this fucking guy that excuse?

Siobhan:

I don't think so. Do you think she was giving him an excuse, or do you think she was explaining why he was being like

Patrick Sauro:

that? Probably both. But I don't care. I don't care because I don't want to be part of it anymore. I don't want to be fucking abused, right, or looked down and all this other stuff. My like I say in that last part of that story, my AAA sponsor said, God did not create junk. No, he does not. So that I'm much more aware of that. I mean, Grandpa doesn't look like Jesus, but he is to me one time. Oh, I was stationed on the base, and my son broke his leg, and he had to go over to Oak Knoll Naval Hospital be for surgery. Okay, so I found out about it after the fact that by the time I got there, he was in the recovery room. Oh, wow. And I was so scared and hurting for him, and I took his hand in mine, and this is honest God's truth, grandpa, my uncles and my father shot this bolt down my hand into his, and I explained that to An older guy one time. He says, So what? What's it's not a big deal. That's what's supposed to happen.

Siobhan:

Oh, it's like they were passing their strength down.

Patrick Sauro:

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Absolutely. But I write that I wish they were still alive. All of them were alive, and I would love to tell my papa I love you,

Siobhan:

but they know Yeah, and their spirit can hear you now. I firmly believe in that, yeah,

Patrick Sauro:

on my way from Alaska to Florida stopped. It was my family, and we went to my home, and somehow or another, I got involved with tearing their bathroom apart and remodeling it okay. And no man sticks his head above the trap door in the ceiling. He says something says, You come a long way, kid. That's first fucking and last time there was that

Siobhan:

encouragement.

Patrick Sauro:

Yeah, but I think it was more about hard to tell. I couldn't explain that. Do

Siobhan:

you think it gave you any peace at the time?

Patrick Sauro:

No, I don't, because I didn't get it. I was again every time I go in a house, I get numb, right? I couldn't wait to leave that house. So I remember that I um, I'm not afraid anymore.

Siobhan:

No, you're not. And I think your book will help a lot of other people. I think your story will help people. Yeah, it's like I said before, it's amazing to see someone at your age still looking for the vibrance in life and doing the work and healing the parts of you and going back to take care of the kid in you.

Patrick Sauro:

Yeah, yeah. Sometime during the middle 80s, there was a program on CBS, no another channel, PBS, and they had this man. His name's John Bradshaw, and he's written several books about childhood. Oh, okay, about inner child. Oh, okay. And there's. Meditations. And after I finished this story, I ordered all three volumes again, you know, because he was just, he was writing my fucking script, right, you know? And what I'm now getting it. I'm fucking getting it when I abandon myself and think of those who hurt me, I'm fucked I have fucked myself out of a place at the table just that easy, and as long as they want to, as long as they keep ruminating, ruminating in my head, they get back their power, right. So now I'm getting to, you know, now, again, to a point they shouldn't matter at all, not that I'm upset or angry at them, just I don't need them in my life. I can't afford to have them in my life.

Siobhan:

And therapy is giving you that the kind of the key to unlocking to get them out. Yeah, exactly. Do you think learning to meditate has been the biggest helpful,

Patrick Sauro:

um, there's many, yeah, there's some meditations in this book by Bradshaw. One is that's a baby, elementary school, age, high school, and my usually with my meditation. It's to stop this, to prevent this from happening again, and anything it changes shapes. You know what the PTSD that left me here is out there eating other people, so to speak, it's changed its character.

Siobhan:

Yeah, it's like hiding into new people to Hello, yeah, well, it's like they say, you know, life will test you. You know, have you really healed from this? It'll keep throwing the test at you until it is kind of satisfied, and know that you really did heal that part and you're over it,

Patrick Sauro:

right? Yeah, exactly the other day, Tuesday, when I see her, we didn't finish the whole session, she said, let's stop for a moment. I want you to feel your strength. I want you to be well aware of this from your head to the tip of your toes and Yeah, got it laid up for 20 minutes just looking just feeling renewed. No, we still have to go through the rape, and we still have to deal with old man beating me up and kicking me with his work boots on. I'm not afraid anymore. I'm not

Siobhan:

That's amazing.

Patrick Sauro:

It's a miracle.

Siobhan:

It is. It's a gift you're giving yourself, right? And then by writing this and sharing these stories you're helping to hopefully give it to someone else too.

Patrick Sauro:

Yeah, yeah. Rachel helped me with the first part of this story, and I thought, Well, okay, let I'll give it another shot and see what she's doing. And she wrote, wrote me, email me. So this is wonderful, courageous, you know, could be healing for others.

Siobhan:

Yep, I think it will be. And I think I'm excited to see what happens while it's being reviewed and chopped. And you know, when you have your final book release out, we'll do another one of these, where we sit down and talk about how much further you come. And, yeah, you know, we'll have a little book party, right?

Patrick Sauro:

So now I'm looking for a publisher, or I could Self Publish. The few inquiries I made with publishing houses is, oh, yeah, we'll help you. We'll read, write and edit your script. No, you're not, you're not changing the fucking work.

Siobhan:

So self publishing may be what we do with you, because, yeah, you don't want to let them change it at all, not a bit.

Patrick Sauro:

And it's not. Because I did this wonderful thing, it's because I gotten to the point in my life I don't need your assistance if you're going to do that. You know, you go fuck yourself.

Siobhan:

Well, do you think maybe you're being a little rigid on that

Patrick Sauro:

I am. Yeah, yeah. You know why? Because you can, yeah. And that's my

Siobhan:

story. It is your story, and it should be told your way and sharing it.

Patrick Sauro:

So I have the feeling if it got edited, a lot of things would get taken out. Oh,

Siobhan:

maybe, but maybe, but maybe not.

Patrick Sauro:

You know, I haven't gone that far yet either. Well,

Siobhan:

I think your writing is beautiful, Patrick, and I thank you so much for coming and sharing this with us and for being so open.

Patrick Sauro:

People make me who I am. Yeah,

Siobhan:

all right, y'all, we're gonna go, and we will see you next week, and we hope that you go find some of your own joy for yourself today. We love you. Well put thanks. Love. Thank you for listening to that casual conversation about some serious shit. That's exactly what we're brewing up here at Ducking reality. A huge thank you to Patrick for showing up, keeping it real and sharing his story. Be sure to like, follow and subscribe and share this with your favorite duck or someone who could use a little truth in their tea, because here we're not just talking, we're sharing stories and hopefully changing lives. Want to connect with today's guest. Hit the show notes. Want to sip some more tea. Head over to duckingreality.com and check out all of our past episodes produced with love and a lot of caffeine at the Ducking brilliant studios in Alameda, California, by your host me. Siobhan, thank you for joining me in the pond, and I can't wait to have you back next time. And until then, stay curious, stay joyful, and remember you are powerful and you're deeply loved, my ducks now go and find that joy today. You.

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