From Teen Runaway to Hollywood Actress: The True Story of Walker Brandt

They always want to know how I've done it and how I've kept smiling all along the way.

Well, I've just chosen to focus my attention on seeing the positive side of life.

And here on the podcast, that's what I want to do for you.

Because no matter what you may be going through tonight, I hope to inspire you to focus on the positive.

And you know what?

I hope that I can also be a source of inspiration for you to just boss my say beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

But what about if you take sight out of the ecclesia?

If you can't see something, can it still be beautiful?

Well, that's something that I think a lot of people wonder for somebody who's blind, like myself.

And I must tell you that as much as I relate things of today back to my sighted life, and I've been blind now for nearly 18 years, and I still, you know, want to know what color my shirt is, and and I still remember what colors look like.

But as time has gone on, I've come to realize how much more of this world I actually get to see than people with perfect sight.

And it's like the thought of beauty.

Because what somebody may consider beautiful based on what their eyes see, I see it through the sound of their voice.

If we're talking about a person like today's guest, Walker Brandt.

When I sat down to record this podcast episode with Walker, I absolutely fell in love with her.

In my eyes, Walker is absolutely gorgeous.

Now, I have no doubt that for those of you who can see Walker Brandt, I have no doubt that she's not gorgeous to the sighted as well.

But for myself, she's absolutely beautiful.

And that is based on the amazing just words that she says, the thoughts that come out, the way that she she speaks and talks about life, her life is absolutely gorgeous to me.

And I can't wait for you to meet her.

My name is Kevin Lowe, and I am the host here on The Lowdown with Kevin Lowe.

And today's conversation with Walker Brandt is episode 57 here on the podcast.

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All you gotta do is drop in your first name, email address, and you'll be on the list.

Okay, so back to today's interview with Walker Brandt.

Walker, she is an actress, she's recently become an author, and in my opinion, she's just an absolute lover of life.

Somebody who to me is the epitome of beauty, like I was saying earlier.

And as much as I could go ahead and tell you little bits about our conversation today, instead, I'm just gonna go ahead and introduce you to Walker Brand.

SPEAKER_02: My agent, actually, my modeling agent, was asked to pick one or two girls to audition for a film because they were looking for a model type that could act.

And at that time, I was sort of known as in my modeling career, I was nicknamed the chameleon.

Because for me, I was always bored with the process of, you know, because again, it wasn't something I thought I could do.

I never grew up in an environment where there was much focus put on what you look like on the outside.

So modeling was like, oh, so this is well, this is a great way to make money and this is a fun way to travel, and this is really cool.

But really, you don't have to stand here in front of a camera and just like move around.

SPEAKER_01: I'm super hyper, you know, I've always been really active.

And so it was like a challenge for me.

SPEAKER_02: So I would create these characters that I would be playing because that was something I did as a child, uh, is I was always playing outside creating characters.

And so I did it as a model.

And then my agent, so when she got this call for this movie called City Slickers, said, Oh, I have the perfect girl.

Her name is Walker.

SPEAKER_01: She's gonna, you gotta, you gotta meet her.

She's like closet actor.

I know it.

She doesn't know it, but I just know she's a closet actor.

SPEAKER_02: And so they sent me in, and it was my first audition, which was an amazing experience because it was also the first hundred million dollar film in the industry.

It was uh record breaker.

And so that was my first experience as an actor.

I went in and I met the casting director, and uh she was amazing.

She was just a lovely lady named Pam Dixon, super friendly, super engaging.

And she had me come back and meet with Billy Crystal and Bruno Kirby and Ron Underwood, the director, and just improvise and have a great time pretending in the room, which was something that I had been doing my whole life.

So it was part of my own tools on how to manage what I lived through as a kid.

And so I was I had a great time.

So that was my first audition and my first film.

And it's it's a pretty notable film.

So if you've seen City Slickers, you've seen me.

SPEAKER_00: Wow, that is so that's pretty awesome though.

And and I mean, I guess, you know, I mean, the fact that it was your first audition for something like that.

I mean, we're not talking about, you know, something, you know, small time here.

And the fact that you got the role right off the bat, and and obviously your agent knew what she was uh talking about.

SPEAKER_02: So yeah, she did.

She always saw me as kind of the reluctant model.

And I think I was.

I just think I was.

I mean, then I was on my own at a very young age, and so I was emancipated when I was 16, and I'd been on my own since I was 15 and just a little over 15.

And so I I'd been providing for myself.

And when I became a model, it was a great way to provide for myself.

But it wasn't like I said, something that I ever thought, oh, this is gonna be great.

You know, it was it took me a while to just even understand what the heck it was.

I moved to Italy when I was 18, you know.

I just, you know, it was like, okay, here I go.

SPEAKER_01: Let's do this, let's try this.

I'm an adventurer.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and so acting was the same way.

Yeah.

My second audition was for Star Trek, and that was my second role, The Next Generation.

And that yeah, and that was an amazing experience as well.

I wish I would have done more on that show.

It was just one role, one show.

But I ended up traveling so much after that.

I was a working girl and never in town during pilot season for like 10 years.

It was like I was never in town for any shows during those seasons.

I was always on a film or doing, you know, a campaign or something.

And I come from a family of actors, so I didn't have any of those sort of skills of the business side of understanding, oh, you should be here now during this period of time.

I just took jobs as they came and traveled and you know, and experienced what it was.

Wow.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.

So, so it's kind of a I I'm assuming that that first movie got you hooked and you kind of fell in love with that.

SPEAKER_02: Well, yes, I fell in love with the experience I had.

And yes, of course, I was already in love with pretending and creating amazing environments.

I did it so much as a kid inside my head, and then to be able to have that draw me to something, to a skill, to an art that needed that ability.

So I was I was hooked in that, but not in the way that, say, an actor who took theater in college or in in high school or really wanted to be an actor, because it just wasn't on my radar.

It was the environment of the people I worked with that made me love it.

To have been invited into that industry with that group of people, with Billy Crystal and Bruno Kirby and Ron Underwood and Pam Dixon, in the way that they did with the production company Castle Rock.

They were very gracious and very supportive.

And that was what drew me to the work more than anything.

Yeah, that that was what hooked me.

Was wow, these people are they're like me.

They're fun.

They want to play and they want to imagine, and and yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that's so cool.

That's so cool.

Well, well, I guess just one more question on on like specifically that kind of topic is I was kind of curious between because I mean you did both like shows, like TV shows, movies, and even like commercials, correct?

SPEAKER_02: I've done like almost a hundred commercials.

Yes, I've done a lot of commercials, thousands of campaigns and yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Was there any particular like did you enjoy one more than the other as far as like between movies or commercials or shows?

SPEAKER_02: You know, it's funny, people ask that, and it it really is about the the environment.

I've had such great experiences.

I've had some some rough ones in all of the mediums.

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

SPEAKER_02: I think the reason I love doing film, I think, probably and commercials more than TV is well, one, I haven't had a ton of experience.

I've done several TV shows, but or a number of them, but I wasn't a series regular.

And I think if I was, that would probably be my favorite because I love to dive into the character, and that's why I love film so much, is I get to play this character for a period of time and really inhabit that space.

And I bring that same kind of commitment to commercials that I do, but it's much shorter.

The reason why I enjoy doing commercials is because of the freedom it gives me to be with my family, which is my number one priority, always has been.

And so I segued into commercials because I wasn't always traveling.

I was gone for months and months out of the year for 10 years straight.

I was never home.

And it was really, it was really, it was challenging in my personal life.

In reference to that, there's different reasons why I love the different mediums.

The thing about acting that's that's so much fun, and probably every actor will confirm is that you become a family working to create a story and to share with the world in a short period of time.

And your goal is to impact those that see it in a positive way and create a response, a reaction, an action.

That's really special to be on a film for weeks and weeks and create that connection and that bond.

And it's very condensed in a commercial.

And then when you're on a TV show and you're a series regular or you're even a reoccurring, there's something that's gotta be, you know, I've only reoccurred and guest starred.

So I haven't had that, you know, season in, season out, which I had thought right before I stopped doing film and even auditioning for much TV and focused on commercials.

I kind of beat on myself a little bit about that.

I was like, gosh, that would have been a fun thing to experience.

But my family, like I said, came first.

And then I was raising a little girl with my husband, and it just was not, she needed me and to be there, and she needed us to be together.

And I I saw in my earlier years and through a lot of friends that had kids and were working all the time, what it had done to their relationships, the challenge.

We hear about it, and you know, we see it in, you know, in in news and whatnot.

If you follow those those uh celebrities, you see that it's it's a hard thing.

It's a it's a hard thing to do and to balance.

And for me, I chose to just not try to balance that and put myself into something else that was very valuable to me too, which was to raise a child and to and to commit to my relationship and put my priority there.

SPEAKER_00: So yeah, yeah, definitely.

No, that that makes total sense.

And and so I want to ask you because because I get this this overall kind of theme as we're talking about family and about the family of your own with your own children, the family that's on the set of a movie, the set of a show that you work on, and and do you feel as though that's so important because growing up, your family life wasn't so great.

SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, Kevin.

Thank you for saying that.

Thank you for hearing that and being so sensitive to that.

That's exactly, I'm sure, why I became so uh committed to it when it wasn't something that I thought I had, you know, the ability to do was that sense of family and support that I got from people that didn't even know me.

It was more than I had experienced in my personal life as a child.

I grew up in a family that was struggling with all kinds of trauma and abuse and substance and physical and just about every kind that exists.

And so absolutely, I think a lot of actors have been through some of this.

There's an emotional availability that is a boundaryless availability that you have that is both positive and a negative.

It's a double-edged sword when you're young.

You know, if you're if you have a supportive family and you're going through those shifts that we naturally go through as we're developing into the human beings that we are, you can lean into that support and you develop natural understanding and boundaries and recognition of the changes when you're in an environment that you thrive in and you're supported in.

When you're in an environment that you're surviving in and you're not thriving in or being supported in, you long for that in natural, it's a natural longing.

And the set of a film and the industry itself creates very much that family vibe.

But it is it is a temporary thing, you know, it is a set on a film and you it does end.

And, you know, we've all seen and heard the stories of relationships that begin there and last for a while and then end, because there are these gray areas.

We're all in transition.

This is life as a human being.

We are forever changing and uh developing with the seasons.

We are the nature that surrounds us.

And it's very, as a youth, as a young person, you're not really conscious of that.

You're so busy intellectualizing everything around your in around you, trying to, you know, put labels on it and let your perception dictate what it is from what you've been through, from what's behind you, rather than, you know, just kind of being present with where you are and, you know, understanding it's okay if you don't have those tools, but then knowing where to look for them, you will find yourself oftentimes choosing something that feels as though as though it's giving you

something that you were missing.

And I think that perhaps that's why you hear about brilliant, some brilliant actors who've suffered substance abuse, who have who have ended their lives and tragically left the world as these, you know, and beautiful, uh gifted artists, because there was something in there that was missing.

And no industry, nothing can feed that from the outside in.

It's chasing a high in the drug world, it's it's it's likened to that same thing.

It will not feed you from the outside in.

This is something that must be fed from the inside out.

And I recognized that too at a young age as an ingenue in the business.

And I I became fearful for myself that if I didn't choose an environment that I could learn about love, real, you know, love and support through family, through the the beautiful nature of children and nature itself, where I learned so much as a kid within the painful circumstances I grew up in.

If I didn't choose that above my ambition, if I didn't choose that above my need to be accepted and loved, that I might not make it because I had already lived through feeling so low in my life that I tried to end it several times as a teen.

And I sensed that I didn't have the tools to walk that walk at that time and not be affected by it and not be impacted and perhaps not be able to pull myself out.

I just didn't know if I had the tools.

And so I chose a different path.

I prioritized my family, my kids, and where I felt that this is something that I know historically works.

Historically, we learn a lot from our families.

Our families, even when they're difficult, there's a reason we came through those those people.

And a com committing to a family, to a child is a grace that's reciprocal.

And it's one of the most important things that I've ever done.

And I'm grateful that I had I asked and I listened.

I had the eyes to see and I had the ears to hear it, and I I give that grace to God because I could have gone the other way, because it feels really good to soak up that attention and to be in the limelight and to have that experience of being a part of something that grand and big, and that people, you know, aspiring to you and wanting to meet you and wanting to, it's a real impact on your on the human experience of our of our natural ego and our natural desire to want to be accepted.

It's it's big and it's it's like whatever it is that you love, if you love pizza or you love a great latte, it's the best one you're ever gonna eat or drink.

And that's what and it's like that emotionally, and and I felt that and I and it it was worrisome to me because I knew enough to observe myself.

I was always in self-observance, and I still am.

I will always be in that state because I don't feel like I'm ever done learning or ever in a space where I feel like I know completely what the heck I'm talking about.

But I know that I can only experience what I'm experiencing and the choices I'm making and why I'm making them.

SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.

Now, now, Walker, would would you mind sharing with me?

And if you don't, you don't have to, but I'm just curious.

Like, I know saying your childhood's a big thing, but just like a snapshot of your childhood to give me, my listeners, a better idea of the childhood that you came from.

That I mean, you've already mentioned that as a teenager, you you tried committing suicide and And so I'm just curious to know what was what was Walker as a as a little girl going through.

SPEAKER_02: So when I was, well, I was born when my mom was still in high school.

She became pregnant as a as a teen, as an 18-year-old, first with my older sister and then me at 19.

So that in and of itself, the the era she grew up in, what she emotionally had went had gone through as a pregnant teen.

Her father was an alcoholic and extremely violent, my grandfather.

As a child, I witnessed a lot of physical abuse.

And my grandfather was a spousal abuser and abused his children.

And my grandmother was taken out after one of his beatings.

She was beat to death by him.

And we lived in a society at that time where women suffered physical abuse often without any consequence to the abuser.

It was a sad time in our society for a lot of women.

And this wasn't an uncommon thing in the 50s wives.

It was, you know, it was a very chauvinistic period.

Women weren't even allowed to have open a bank account without their husbands co-signing.

And this went on until the 60s.

I mean, think about that.

It was crazy.

So because my mom was so young, my grandmother was my mother to me.

I bonded with her.

She left me with my grandmother and my sister.

She left us for there often because she had to work.

She had to take care of us.

And my father was also a high school kid.

So having been, you know, raised in that kind of violent environment and alcoholic environment, my mother suffered from those issues as well.

And then after my grandmother left, was taken away so so violently and unexpectedly when I was three, it was devastating to me.

It was the bond I had, like I said, she was a mother to me.

And within the same short period of time, my biological father abandoned my sister and I.

So I lost two parents in that in that short time.

And my mother was suffering a great deal because she lived, her and her sisters and brothers lived through this, this band who had, you know, taken their mother from them and had no consequences for it.

Just got away with beating her and beating her for years.

And she she didn't know she had a choice.

She wasn't from that generation.

She didn't know she had a voice.

She didn't have that support.

And she died of an aneurysm after hitting her head on the mantle when they were fighting.

And this was something I had seen as a kid.

I had seen her be abused, and then I had seen my second grandma that he married beaten by him.

So it was something I lived and watched as a kid.

And it was very difficult.

My stepdad left, and she married a man who became my stepdad within that year.

And he was a Vietnam vet.

And he was terribly traumatized from what he lived through.

He came back to a country that vilified him.

And he was he was just a boy who went to war to serve his country and did things that no doubt disturbed and tormented him.

He was a tormented man.

And he was also a violent person.

And at the same time, a loving person.

And so he tried, but he was violent and he was damaged.

And he wasn't ready to be a father to two little girls who were as wounded as my sister and I were.

We had just lost a family member that we adored, who was violently taken away, and our father left.

So we were two very wounded, sad children.

And I was always a big spirit of not saying anything.

SPEAKER_01: I've always been outspoken.

There are, I mean, stories in my family about me at three, and I remember a lot of my childhood.

SPEAKER_02: So that that's what I lived with.

And there was no treatment for this.

There was no counseling, therapy, support.

This was a family that the women carried the abuse.

They quietly carried it, and they tried to manage it.

And every generation, you just had to deal.

You just had to cope.

You just had to, you were, you know, you walked into this story and this legacy.

And you just dealt with it.

And I was one of the first, if not the first, that said, no, I'm not doing this.

And I said no a lot.

And it did not make my life easier because there wasn't a lot of self-control.

And that reflection of why are you doing this to me?

This is wrong, was is not easy for abusers to hear, intensifies their anger.

And for me, I just didn't care about that.

I took it and I took it as long as I could.

But by the time I hit my teen years, with everything that we go through in our preteen years, actually, it's a hard time for us as a human being.

So much is shifting, so much emotion, so many changes with our bodies.

And I just couldn't take, I couldn't manage that anymore.

It overwhelmed me.

And I just wanted to leave the planet.

And I started using drugs and alcohol and uh in excess, trying to end my life.

And then at one of the attempts, at a very close moment, I heard a voice in my head that said, Stop, leave.

And it was after a particularly vicious encounter with my stepdad.

And mind you, I do not not love my stepdad.

I don't have any anger toward my stepdad.

And God rest his soul, he recently passed away in May, unexpectedly.

I haven't had anger toward him for many, many, many years because I truly believe that his innocence was taken from him and he didn't have the tools to find it again.

And he died of a broken heart because of what he lived through.

And I always saw that in him.

Even as a little kid, even after some of the most brutal experiences with him, I always was challenged to just hate him.

I was always challenged to not find a way to love this person.

And I think that's just my connection with God and what I found in nature is that nature is this cyclical forgiving, growing, letting-go, renewal environment.

And I I joined with it as a kid and learned there.

So it's it's in me, and I it's part of who I am.

So yeah, that was that's the reality of what my childhood was and why I ended up doing what I did, is I just had to leave and I listened to that voice and I left that day.

And then I I had been on my own from that point forward.

SPEAKER_00: I read somewhere something that that you said that you said, I chose myself when you left.

Is is that what you meant?

SPEAKER_02: Is is that's exactly what I did.

I was choosing myself as a child.

I didn't know it consciously.

So much we do as children that we're such courageous beings, and we're like, you know, this is my play field.

SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna tell you what it's all about.

And we're choosing ourselves all the time.

And we fall down and we get right back up, and we're just we're just having a great time.

SPEAKER_02: And yes, that's what I did.

I chose myself and I knew that I could do something different.

And I didn't know what it was, but I did.

I made the choice in the face of not knowing what it was.

I had to.

It was because whatever was out there that I didn't know, something in me gave me the strength.

My faith in me let me know that it was definitely gonna be better than this.

And so I went for it.

SPEAKER_00: So at that time in your life, you were where were you living at?

SPEAKER_02: The year before, I was I went to a school that was for children that were in productive custody and they were removed because they couldn't be at home.

And the system is a very interesting system for kids that go through this kind of stuff.

So I had been, I was in a halfway house when I ran away one of the times after one of the experiences I had, and I would not go home.

I said, if I try and bring me home, I'm gonna leave again.

And so I was just very vocal about it.

And they allowed me to go to a school that at 14, and it was all the kids there were from high-risk circumstances, every single one.

Most of them were from Southern California, San Francisco, LA, gang environments, all different kinds of abuse.

And so I had met friends there, and a friend of mine from Los Angeles, I called her after I heard that voice.

I grabbed the phone and I called her and said, come and get me.

Told her what I had just been through.

My parents left, and I grabbed a phone and called, and she came and drove up in the middle of the night and took me to Los Angeles.

That was uh quite the experience.

I was in this giant city, and I had been in small towns.

I was from I'm from Santa Barbara originally, and uh we lived in a tiny community up there called Painted Cave.

And this wasn't something I experienced before, a big city.

It was quite intimidating.

So she invited me to stay with her for a short period of time, and she had a violent background.

She had a gang, and she was had been in a gang prior, and there was a drive-by experience and which scared the you know what out of me.

And I just left.

It was very scary, and I ran from that.

And then I I met a friend of hers.

She introduced me to a friend of hers, and his family took me in.

They were so generous.

They took me into their home and they let me live with them.

And his mother helped me go through the emancipation process.

And uh, yeah, I went through a few difficult situations while there because my parents reported me as a runaway and they took me out of the house and put me in a halfway house.

And I write about it in my book.

It was terrifying.

But I ran from there and I was on the street, and it was a scary place to be on the street.

But uh they found me and they came and got me and I and took me in again.

And they kept me until I was able to be emancipated.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

Wow, wow, wow.

Talking about basically living on the streets of of Los Angeles, there's something that you say that you you discovered in nature as a child that then you said helped you on the streets of Los Angeles.

What was that?

SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately, my time, unlike so many, was short-lived because of this family.

I am beyond grateful for their they just their generosity in taking me in.

I got very lucky.

What helped me on the streets was what I learned, my capacity was as a child.

I had a fearlessness and I had a determination that gave me the ability as a kid to, I was unafraid of snakes.

I was unafraid.

I mean, I used to catch rattlesnakes.

I'm not kidding you, as a kid, as a little girl, baby rattlesnakes.

I had no fear of nature.

I didn't feel that nature was going to wound me.

I didn't feel that nature had it out for me.

There was something I felt that I could be in harmony with in nature.

And I also felt that I could be, I could use the energy, that power.

I could front with that power if I needed to.

And believe me, I did.

I had to a couple of times.

I had a couple of run-ins with men and boys that were very scary.

And I fronted like a rattlesnake, like a wild animal, and scared them, made him think that I was crazy and that I could hurt them.

And it saved me.

It saved me from being attacked.

Literally, hands went up and they backed up from me and said, I'm not going near that crazy shit, just like that.

And I was terrified, but I was playing it and I was fronting with it.

And I'm sure if there's anyone out there that's been in a situation on the street, they'll know exactly what I mean by fronting with something that you may not feel is you, but you gotta lean into it because you learn when you're in a high-risk environment and you're surviving, you learn very quickly how to survive.

And nature teaches you that.

Nature teaches you how to survive because you have to respect it.

You have to respect it.

You gotta know if you get bit by the rattlesnake, if you don't come up to the rattlesnake and know how to catch any snake the way a snake will let you catch it, you're gonna get bit.

You're gonna scare it.

And if you come up to an animal being afraid, it's going to sense that.

I never wanted to hurt any animal.

I've always loved animals.

I always had this symbiotic relationship with them.

That's why I think I was able to catch snakes as a kid.

My mom used to be just freak out.

She's like, Why are you, what are you doing?

This is not good.

I mean, she she had, you know, she had no problem taking picking up tarantulas and things like that, which I thought was like scarier.

But she, you know, that thing has eight legs.

I can see them all.

SPEAKER_01: It was a snake.

I can't see the legs.

It's like that thing's freaking me out.

She she had no problem with that.

SPEAKER_02: That that was an issue with me, but snakes, you know, and you know, and and cats and and squirrels, and knowing there were lions, mountain lions out there, and and birds of prey.

All these animals to me were magic.

They all just amazed me.

I used to sit by the river and I used to just watch the salamanders.

I had this little salamander that I named Red, that I would go down by the stream when I was little, and I'd sit there for hours and just hang out with this little guy.

And how slow he moved or she moved, I don't know what the sex it was, but it was a it was a he for me.

And it was like he just moved so slow and he just calmed me, gave me that calm.

And we lived in a place, like I said, called Painted Cave, and there was a cave there.

It's named after a painted cave with Native American petroglyphs written inside from the Chumash Nation.

It now has bars in front of it.

But when I was a child, there were no bars.

I could go in there and nap and dream, which is what I did.

I spent a lot of time in that cave.

It was cool in the hot summer, and I would just I'd be in there.

Well, snakes like to come into caves because it's nice and cool too, and it's a rock.

So I learned that I could be in a cave and snakes would be around, and I wouldn't have an issue with the snakes if I didn't have an issue.

If I wasn't afraid.

So I didn't know that there were, you know, until I knew, until, you know, I the snakes were in there with me.

I didn't had no idea for the longest time until I realized, oh, there's snakes in here too.

But it's a fairly big cave.

And so, and so it just wasn't something that I was afraid of.

But at the same time, I knew the power of this animal I sensed and I knew it.

And I also knew because of what my family told me, you know.

And we also would wake up occasionally and there'd be a big rattler right outside in the wintertime, the front door, because it was laying at the crack of the front door getting the heat from the fireplace.

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

SPEAKER_02: And so we'd open the door and it would be a moment because my parents would take this, take it out.

They'd destroy it because it was always a big one.

It was always like, you know, four to six feet.

And you just don't mess with those big ones.

If they're going to come to your front porch, and of course, we could have walked out there and it would have struck.

And we had dogs too, and chickens, and you know, we we had a couple chickens, you know.

So it was one of those experiences.

And as a kid, I just didn't fear nature.

So it helped me, and nature is the unknown.

It is the unknown.

You are not in control of nature.

Nature can shift on you in a second.

And that's what I learned is when I was on my own, I just leaned into what I learned there.

I leaned into the strength of what I learned there, the ability to shift, the ability to protect myself, the ability to lean into my own strength that I learned there.

And that's what helped me.

I experienced being a runway.

SPEAKER_00: Well, is two thoughts on that whole first off, your your answer to my question was so much more crazy yet insanely beautiful than I ever expected an answer to be to that question.

But so I just have to say that, but but I have to say, you know, one thing that that I couldn't help but think when you were talking about using this that you learned from nature as a child and with the snakes, to then then when you when you talked about being on the streets of Los Angeles and you talked about these boys coming up and and and and you scaring them away.

And I thought to myself, well, that was Walker acting without even realizing it at the time.

At that moment, here you were.

You're just a a teenage girl, yet you took on the role of a fierce woman living on the streets of Los Angeles, you know, who could scare away boys just by, you know, acting big and mean and fierce.

SPEAKER_02: That's exactly right.

Yes, it's so much fun talking to you because you see everything in between.

You like hear all the subtlety.

SPEAKER_01: You just you have this beautiful inner vision that's like you just tap into everything.

I love this.

SPEAKER_02: That's exactly right.

In fact, I used that character once I became an actor, that person, I realized she was someone in me.

She was my defender, protector, and she was an essence of me, a part of me.

And I would let her out and I play this role when I needed to.

And it's interesting because, you know, we have so many facets to who we are.

You know, we are like an actor in a story in many ways in our lives.

You know, different things happen and we end up making having a reaction to it.

And we look back and go, where did that come from?

You know, what was that?

And that's, you know, a character, an element of us that's in there.

It is also the same system that I use to create my own story and not just step into the legacy that I was born into that so many members of my family have struggled with, you know, shedding and to go back to the snakes is I always found snakeskins all over the place growing up.

I thought it was remarkable that these animals got to shed their skin and just like crawl out renewed.

I thought, wow, that's such a trip.

They just like crawl out of their skin.

And it fascinated me as a kid.

I think it impacted me subconsciously.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: And I think we do that too as we go through our seasons and we grow into the new versions of ourselves.

So they say the skin turns over every seven years for a human being.

Our cellular makeup turns over, and our biggest organ, our skin, takes seven years to change that basically.

It's interesting to me that we all do this.

I just happen to have done it as a young child to rewrite my my life.

I I would go out in nature and I would imagine myself in a different family, or I would imagine myself as bionic.

I mean, I was the bionic woman.

SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you.

You know what?

No, I I don't think you were far from the truth.

SPEAKER_01: I could hear, I could hear the hawks above me.

I would run in slow motion and imagine I was running super, super fast.

I would do such daredevil things and climb trees way, way high up there and scramble down and imagine it was, you know, I was like a monkey.

SPEAKER_02: And I had all these superpowers, you know.

I always felt like I had superpowers.

And I did.

It was my imagination.

It was my ability to see myself beyond what my circumstances were.

That's a superpower I think we all have.

Some of us have it more refined than others because we had to lean into it for whatever reason, or we were just drawn to it.

I had to.

Lean into it because I it served me, it kept me from becoming beaten and my spirit being broken by the experience I was living in.

I just was refreshed in nature.

Gosh, so funny that when you mentioned that, because I remember I played a role.

I brought her out for a role in a film, that character.

And man, I was so excited to play this role.

She was a serial killer.

And she was, and but you know, the time I was an actor, I was in the 90s, it was a different industry.

It was the, you know, it was just a different industry.

And so it was great.

And I killed it.

I'm just gonna say it.

I did because the directors, producers, all of them are like, geez.

And that was amazing.

And you know what?

You know what I what I got for it?

She's too pretty.

I just have a hard time believing that somebody that looks like her can be that.

And you know, and then yeah, tell me about it.

SPEAKER_01: And then 10 years, 10 years later, Charlie Saron's playing the role.

And I'm like, yeah, take it, girl, take it.

And just, you know, I'm so excited for her because the industry finally freaking grew up.

And one of them, but when I was in it, it was like, you know, it was the different time.

SPEAKER_02: It was just, I heard that all the time.

She's too pretty.

I always chose those gritty roles.

I love those gritty roles.

I didn't understand why the pretty girls always got these soft roles or they, you know, had all this nudity.

You know, it's like, okay, first of all, this is not interesting to me.

And second of all, no, I'm not into that either.

So nah, that's not me.

So I was just walking away from stuff constantly.

And it was just the industry and me were just not in the same time frame.

I was just a different zone at that time.

And now I'm seeing all these, you know, actresses that came after, and it's a different world now.

And it's uh women are in a space now, and you know, their mothers who are great actors are empowering their daughters to be, you know, outspoken and have that feminine strength and understand that there is should not be a limit based on what you look like to play a role that you should be able to ugly cry on TV for God's sake or a film.

SPEAKER_01: Ugly crying is is what it is.

I remember hearing that too.

I was just telling my husband, you can't even tell me many times I would cry.

And they were like, Don't cry so intensely.

Don't cry so intensely.

It's like, what?

Yeah.

What are you talking about?

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a different world.

SPEAKER_00: So I'm curious.

So, so how does this girl who who's gone through what you had?

I mean, let's face it, at 16 years old, you you're you're still a child.

How does that child, that girl, then go, how how do you get out of that?

Because because I feel like that's what's so bad is that it's so hard when you get sucked down to ever climb out.

How did you do it?

SPEAKER_02: The way that I did it was I I have always had a desire to learn and to be responsible to myself.

Like you said earlier, I chose myself.

I chose to be responsible to myself.

That's the first step.

Now, I'm not gonna say that I did not have a victim mindset.

I'm not gonna say that for a long time I wasn't pissed and blaming because I was.

That is just natural for us.

Because it is, like you said, really hard to pull yourself out.

As one of my dearest friends used to tell me, get yourself out of the muck and the mire.

Gird up your loins, my dear, and pull yourself out of the muck and the mire.

She would say this to me whenever I would go into that mindset where I would just get pissed.

And she say, You're in the muck and the mire.

And I always imagined her, I always imagined the way she was, she was older than me, is like, you know, I'm standing in this muddy water and it's up to my knees, and I've got a dress on, and I'm holding it up, and I'm just drudging myself through it, and I'm seeing the other side.

And if this is where I'm at right now, I am moving toward that other side.

And that is what I did is there were times where, I mean, we we all go through this.

There were times when I just was so in that muck and mire, and it was so exhausting.

I mean, have you ever been in a place like that where you just are, damn, I just don't know if I can do this.

I just don't know if I can pull myself.

And I just knew that nobody else was gonna do this for me.

I just knew it.

I knew that I had to take the steps myself.

I had to have, even if my belief in me only lasted enough to get me to the next step, that was more than what I had a minute ago.

And when I got there, I could muster, I could get my grit going again, and I could try and take another one.

And as I say this, this was years at times.

But because I took that mindset at that time, I drew to me others that had that mindset.

And that would be the first thing that I would tell anyone, and that my book and one of the problems it solves and what it offers is to show you that it's okay to have your mess and still move forward.

It's okay to be messy.

It's life.

It will be messy at times, and it was for me for a long time, really messy.

But I was able to achieve success in the midst of my mess because I made the choice to believe in whatever little step I took.

It had to be enough to believe in myself that I could make that step, that I could take it.

That's the choice.

It was a personal responsibility that I didn't expect somebody else to do it for me.

And I had a lot of people that came to me and helped me.

Like I said, my the family that helped me.

I was willing to be as responsible as I could with as much as I knew how to be responsible.

I was willing to commit to myself enough.

Some days it was just not doing anything.

It was just sitting and crying, rinsing myself and wringing myself out, and then letting myself dry up a little bit and move forward, lighten the load a little bit.

Because when you ring yourself out, you let go, you let yourself cry it out, ring it out, let yourself dry a little bit, you're a little bit lighter, you can move forward a little bit more.

SPEAKER_00: I I love that.

I absolutely love that because sometimes, you know, that there's there's a time to be strong, there's a time to keep moving forward, but there's also a time to let your emotions just come through.

And and I agree with you so much.

Of sometimes you need to let yourself just cry it out, just like you just said.

And I love the way that you put that into words of of just it lightens you.

That's out.

SPEAKER_02: I think that's and you know, when it does that, to don't expect perfection, don't expect that suddenly, you know, trust that you're lighter.

It's gonna be a process, you know, it's just gonna be what it is, and you're good enough.

I mean, exactly the way you are.

Took me a long time to understand that, to feel, because I you can't come through what I came through and feel like you're a worthy person.

You feel when you get abandoned by your father, you lose family member to something as shameful as spousal abuse, as physical abuse, and you live through physical abuse, it makes you feel shame, which is unworthiness.

All of us have things that happen to us in different levels that challenge our worthiness, that challenge our, you know, ability to wake up every day and feel like we are made exactly how we are meant to be in this moment in this day.

Every, every one of us experiences that.

That's part of this experience of life, I think.

It's remembering that you are exactly as you are meant to be, and that you have everything you need to move forward and to live a life that is remarkable and the way you're meant to live it is here for you.

And the reason I bring up nature a lot is because when we can't see those elements in ourselves, it's there for us to see.

It teaches us.

Nature, the trees teach us.

I'm a major tree hugger.

I love trees.

I lean into trees all the time because I just love the way they express themselves.

They're deep-rooted, they're tall and beautiful, they shed their leaves, they have new growth, and they have these circles within themselves.

And some of them are burnt circles.

Some of them have forest fires have come through.

And when you when people have taken trees down, you see these circles of life.

Each circle is a season, is this experience.

And the tree held its ground and kept moving forward and its expression up.

It was okay with all that it went through.

It just kept growing.

And that's where I, you know, eventually it just became easier not to judge myself and to accept myself.

It became easier to understand that if I wanted to be that for me, I had to be that to others.

I had to be that to me first.

And then that gave me the freedom of not feeling judgment and blame toward others.

Once I just accepted myself and with all my mishigas, it's gonna be there forever, you know, as me.

That's part of why I wrote this book too, is I I hid who I was, Kevin, for most of my young adult life.

I was so afraid to share with people I thought they would judge me, especially in the industry, because I was, you know, depicted and because I'm strong and I do have a lot of grounded, you know, I'm a committed person, I'm a capable person, I'm a trustworthy person.

And, you know, I work hard, I have a strong work ethic.

I'm somebody that you just don't think has been through some of the things I've been through.

And I just was afraid that if people knew, they would look at me differently.

They would judge me.

They were already judging me based on the way I looked.

I was already trying to, you know, fight against that because it was such a strange thing to be to have this focus on the way I looked when I didn't feel that way on the inside.

You don't feel pretty when you've been through what I've been through.

When people tell you you're pretty, it's like, okay.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was weird.

SPEAKER_00: But I can tell you when when I listened to your story, and before you even said that last part, all I wanted to say was you are by far one of the most beautiful people I have met.

In the way in which you look at life, the way in which you carry yourself is I mean, I've definitely I I don't know what you look like to begin with.

I'm gonna take I'm gonna take other people's word for it that you're very beautiful.

But but the inside of you is absolutely gorgeous.

SPEAKER_01: Kevin, you just thank you so much for saying that.

SPEAKER_02: That is that is just I'm just gonna sit in that because you are hearing me.

And it's the most important thing to me to be heard, I think for all of us to hear from the inside out, not the outside in, and to really be heard.

And I can you just complimented me in such a such a beautiful special way.

SPEAKER_00: It's well priceless.

And that's the thing too, that your story is so remarkable.

And I'm so thankful that you came to a point in your life where you got comfortable enough to let people see who you are, where you've come from, and and where you're headed.

Because, you know, it's so easy for all of us to see the people on the stage, to see the people on the TV, and say to ourselves, gosh, you know, I wish I was them, only if I had their life.

But on that TV screen, that's that's a character.

And you are just this prime example, though, of you know, everything behind on the other side of that TV screen is a real person, just like you or me watching it.

And they're going through stuff in life, and their life, you know, they may live in Hollywood, but that doesn't mean their life is all all amazing.

And and so when I when I listen to your story and I think how inspiring your story is to every little girl out there who dreams of one day being an actress, but her home life sucks.

And she got got the you know the short stick on life.

But then when you listen to your story, you meet you, it turns that all around.

Because if she could do it, that's right, so can I.

SPEAKER_02: That's exactly right.

You know, we give each other with our stories permission to see us as we are, and that rather than the label, and that's something, that's another dream of mine, is that because I do believe we're this incredible human family, and each one of us has the very unique spirit and gift that we are.

And if we go through something in life that is challenging to us and it puts us in a place of feeling like we aren't worth anything or we can't dream, that one is not true.

Nobody gets to take that from you because that is a power that's beyond a human to take away.

It's a power that we have that we choose to hold and to cultivate, even if the people around us don't do it for a period of time when we're not in control.

We can choose that.

It's always in there.

It's the light of our innocence.

And that's why it's the subtitle of Awaken, because it's the discovery of who we really are comes from there.

That's the light that is the energy of us that we came into this form, this body.

It goes beyond when we leave this form.

It does not go away.

It's our energy.

It's we this is this whole experience, right?

That's what I believe.

So there's this beautiful gift that we can give each other, which is to see each other for who we are inside without the outside.

And this is why it's such a beautiful thing in this moment talking to you, because you can't be distracted by seeing each other in the distracting way that so many of us are burdened by.

You see each other through their energy, their voice, the sound of who they are.

The sound of who we are is our energy.

It's it's uncomplicated, it's undistracted.

It's just a beautiful thing to be gifted in this way that you are.

You just said it.

It's your gift.

It is a gift.

I I'm sure there was a period of time, or maybe I'm well, I always say I'm sure, but I imagine there was a period of time where it was difficult because you you went through this having had seen before.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 100%.

And and I and I went through that for a long time, a long time.

And uh the greatest thing was when I was able to come to a point in my journey to realize that blessing.

And in that is, I feel the greatest gift that I was given when God chose me to have this happen to me, is my chance, my blessing to do exactly as you you said, to see people without the distractions.

And I've I've I've said that's what drew me into the the realm of podcasting, is the fact that everybody listening to my podcast or any other podcast sees me and sees my guest exactly the same way I do.

And that's because we don't see them, we only hear them and hear who they are, and and that's what matters.

SPEAKER_02: It really does.

And so when you say that about the little girl that may be hearing this and maybe inspired, or the little boy, or the person who may be in another country, and they may have a great family, but they just feel like because they're from another country that has a label that makes them feel like they can't do something, they hear beyond what they have been influenced by.

They start to see in a new way.

We give each other that gift when we allow ourselves to really receive somebody as they are and accept them as they are as part of this human family.

I think it's a huge conversation because there's a time when we will not have these labels like third world country, because we really do impact one another by the distractions that we and of our perceptions that we allow ourselves to become constructs of our lives and of other people and places.

When we just see each other as we are without the burdens of distractions, of perception and vision, sight is a perception.

How many times do we say in our sight world, do you see that?

And a person standing next to us goes, I don't know what you're looking at.

SPEAKER_03: I don't see that.

SPEAKER_02: What are you talking about?

It's like, you can't see that?

Well, I see that.

Like, I don't see that.

So it happens, right?

So it's like, let's get past this outer to the inside thing that we're caught up in, and let's connect on the inner and let that express and change this outside thing that we're in.

And that's like really a powerful place.

And I think I think we're headed that way.

I just think we're going through some real growth pains right now.

unknown: Yes.

SPEAKER_00: To speak lightly, you know.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're like, yeah, you know, those terrible cramps you get when you're a kid.

You wake up in the middle of the night screaming, going, what the heck is happening?

SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness, that is so funny.

Wow, that is hysterical.

So so tell everyone, tell everyone about your book.

Tell them exactly the title, what who it, who it's written for, what it's about.

We we we've been kind of alluding to your book throughout our conversation today.

So so give everyone the details.

SPEAKER_02: Okay.

The title of my book is Awaken, Discovering Yourself Through the Light of Your Innocence.

It it's a a memoir?

SPEAKER_01: A memoir.

Thank you for like saving me from my own mind right there.

Oh my God.

It's like those moments where it's like, the wait a minute, how do you smell that?

How do you smell that?

Like one of those moments where it's like, oh my God, what just happened to me?

Anyway, yeah, this is so it is a memoir.

SPEAKER_02: And I had sections of this.

I also have a couple of scripts I've written.

I've written poetry and I've been writing since I was a little kid.

It was another way of me expressing is writing my own story too, and writing stories and seeing, you know, writing out what I was seeing.

So I always wanted to write a book, but I never thought it was going to be a memoir because I was always just like, this is for my journals.

This is not to talk about.

And, you know, and then I came to a point in my career and life where the most dear closest to me was diagnosed with a life-threatening disease.

And it shook me to my core and woke me up to some residual suffering that I had been walking without realizing that I was still carrying it in the way I was.

This just fear overwhelmed me.

And it was the rising of what needed to be observed and accepted and shed in its own time.

I wasn't ready at that point to really truly understand that I hadn't let go of all the suffering I'd been through as a result of losing my grandmother and then my best friend when I was in my 20s, who was the second person that loved me under.

Unconditionally, like she did, who also died unexpectedly.

And it was, it was, it was very challenging to lose her as well.

And so I had been carrying that.

And then this next person who is closest to me in my life could potentially not make it.

It was just wow.

It cracked.

It was like, and I write this in the book, it was like, imagine if there's a bottle filled with an empty bottle, tightly closed, filled with air, being held, you know, 30 feet underwater, and you just released it.

It just came flying up like a missile.

And I asked very clearly, I need clarity.

I need people to show up in my life right now that have this clarity that can help me understand and give me the support I need right now.

Because I'm battling this with my partner.

And I want to be, I have to be there for my partner.

But I also have something happening now and I need support because I don't have it.

I didn't have it because my partner was battling cancer and it was intense.

And I needed, I needed to be there for my partner, but I also need to be there for myself because it was doing something big.

And I knew enough at this point to be present with it as much as I could.

But I had never been through anything quite like this before.

I'm a partner.

I'm on the field with you, back to back, with my shield out, and I see the enemy, and I'm gonna, I'm there for you.

I've got your back.

It's who I am, it's who I've always been.

And so I was there.

And at the same time, I had my own coming up, and it wasn't an enemy, but I had this coming up that was it needed its time, it needed its attention, or it would, it would weaken me.

SPEAKER_00: So that's so powerful.

SPEAKER_02: As the universe is and the beauty, and when you ask, it happens.

If you're ready, that's why that's the message to that little girl.

Ask, know what it is you want and ask and trust, because it will, it will come to you.

And ask not only to know, to ask to see it, ask to hear it, because you need to have those senses.

If you cannot, you don't know which one's going to be your strength, but ask for both, be able to hear, be able to see if if you have those.

Know that you need both.

You need all your senses about you to pull yourself up and out.

And so, and when you're in the midst of a battle, even more so.

So my baths started crossing with these powerful women and men.

One of the ladies I met was Marcy Scheimoff.

And through her, I met Lisa Nichols.

And Lisa Nichols said something that impacted me.

And then I met her at one of her events, and one of the things that she said that was so powerful that really made me finish my book was your story doesn't belong to you, it belongs to the person that's going to help.

It needs to be told.

I know she's just like full of that kind of amazing beauty and ability to.

She's done real work and she's done a lot of purpose.

She she said one of the things that she says that she's famous for is I am my own rescue.

And she's been doing that.

And I that's where she and I connect and have a symbiotic relationship because I believed that too.

I am my own rescue, and we are our own rescues, no matter what happens to us.

And so when she said that, I sat down and then I connected with another friend who I hadn't seen in over 20 years through Facebook.

And our connection was very synchronistic.

And Marcy's all about the miracles of synchronicity, and they just started happening all over around me constantly.

And I've been there before, and I knew I am in that zone.

I am to receive right now, and I'm I'm to take action.

And so that's what I did is I started, I sat down, I started writing and writing and writing and writing.

And it was just pouring through me.

And my friend that I connected to reconnected me with this incredible man named Anthony DeMello, one of a video that he that impacted him.

And it wasn't until I finished my book and had released it and moved that I went through a box of books and found a book called The Way to Love, that was one of the first books on love that I picked up in my early 20s when I first started studying everything I could on love because I wanted to know this power.

I knew I was given it from my grandmother.

I knew I experienced it, and I felt it from my a couple of my aunties too.

And I knew that I didn't have it cultivated in me on the outside from my family, but I knew it was on the inside of me as a gift, and I wanted to understand it.

So I started studying it.

So then I found this book.

And when he told me about Anthony DeMello and I watched his video, I didn't even remember his name or anything.

And then when I read this, well, I found this little tiny book, it's highlighted like every word almost in this book.

It was so impacting to me.

And I was amazed.

I was like, wow.

So I got partway through this book and I put it down because it was so big for me at that time.

And now I'm reading the rest of it and wow, is it powerful?

This man is amazing.

So, so that I wrote my book so it would help others.

So it would help that little girl, that little boy, that adult, that parent, that person who feels like they're out of their comfort zone and they're scared and they don't know if they can, if they can do it.

They don't know if they can handle it, manage it.

I'm there sharing with them that I live most of my life outside my comfort zone.

And I just kept embracing it.

I just kept saying, it's okay.

It's okay.

This is where I discover new things.

This is where I discover the new story.

Every day can be an adventure in learning something new.

This is this is the way it's supposed to be.

It's not, everything's not supposed to be known.

It's okay to be uncomfortable.

It's okay to be, you know, not together and to feel like you don't have it all understood or figured out.

And you can be a successful person in the midst of all of that.

And you're lovable and you've got all that in you.

No matter what, it's there.

You just have to, just have to say, I'm gonna do the, I'm gonna take responsibility.

I'm gonna see myself as I am right now and be okay with it and allow for some something else to come in that I don't know and be okay with the discomfort of not knowing.

Just be okay with it.

Could anything have made us all have to deal with that at once more than COVID did?

I don't think so.

That was just wow, talk about the unknown.

And I I finished writing my book, and my publisher wanted to release it in September later in the year after COVID, because originally that it was going to be released the first quarter of 2020.

And then we all know what happened.

And everybody's like, don't uh wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

And I said, no, no, this is the unknown.

None of us know what's going on right now.

None of us can separate ourselves from each other.

Right now, we are one giant human family.

And if there was ever a time where the world expressed what I truly believe is our truth, it's right now.

We got to get this book edited, we got to get this book done and get it out right away.

And so we released it in March, and it became a number one international on um Amazon.

So that was really cool to experience that.

But it that's the synopsis of the of the book.

And it it's just it's a journey of of my life.

It's raw and it's real, and it's my heart, and it's it's written for for you and anyone that any you, the listener out there, you, Kevin, it's written for me.

It's written, it's written for my human family.

I'm you, and you are me.

And there really isn't anything different between us.

It's just what we think is different.

But we are each other.

I am you, you are me.

I am that ant over there, and I am, you know, the turd that's over there, and I'm the grass, and I'm the Ferrari, and I'm the cloud, and I'm the magic, and I'm the eagle, and I'm all those things, and I'm okay with it.

I'm just okay with it, and I hope that you're okay with it too.

SPEAKER_00: Well, I can tell you if your book is half as beautiful as the conversation that I've just had with you today, then it's definitely worth the read.

Because, as I said earlier, all I can think of when I listen to you speak is just beauty.

In every word that you speak, the truth of it, the the insight that you share about life, the the the nuggets of pure gold contained within every sentence that you speak are truly life-changing.

And without a doubt, you are profoundly one of the most amazing people that I have ever had the pleasure of meeting.

And I feel so gifted to have been given an opportunity of your time and of your presence to be part of my podcast.

And I'm just truly, truly grateful for it.

SPEAKER_02: Well, I reflect that right back to you because this experience is a result of us being reflections of each other.

So I feel exactly the same.

And thank you so much for just reaching out to me and just who you are.

Like I said, when I first heard your voice and we spoke, your voice just emits happy.

Your voice is just a happy, fun, beautiful voice, which is what's inside you.

And that is so wonderful to receive because we are together in our experience here.

And I just feel that I just I receive you and I'm grateful.

So thank you.

I just enjoy right now.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: You are certainly welcome.

And for you who are listening today, I want to thank you for being a part of this podcast.

It means the world to me to have your support of my podcast.

And even more so, I just I truly hope that this episode or any episode that I produce, that you're able to take something away that can benefit your life.

That's that's the reason I decided to start a whole podcast in the first place, is is through my own stories and then stories of others, there's too much out there to share of goodness that I feel like can help too many people.

And when we're only focused on social media and and what we see on the local news, we don't get any of that.

And, you know, and that's what's awesome to me about podcasts in general is getting to bring you real conversations with real people.

And and here on my podcast, as always, you know, is is just bringing you stories of people just living out these amazing lives.

And today's guest, of course, Walker, is certainly no exception.

So as always, hope you have enjoyed today's episode and hope that what you've heard today can make your life tomorrow a little bit better.

SPEAKER_02: That's so beautiful.

May I thank your audience as well?

SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02: I just want to thank you all for being here and listening and want you to know who you are.

It's a huge difference in this world.

We need each and every one of you and what you bring to this world and the impact that you have.

You may not see it, but it is seen and it's felt, and you're a special, beautiful, human, part of my family.

Thank you for listening, and thank you for listening to Kevin.

He's just the best idea.

SPEAKER_00: And that's the lowdown with Kevin Lowe.

I hope today's episode inspired you, motivated you, and excited you to get out and enjoy life, no matter what obstacles may be standing in the way.