In this episode of "What's The Story Podcast," host Sadaf Beynon sits down with John Boyle, who shares his incredible journey of overcoming a traumatic childhood, battling PTSD and alcoholism, and ultimately finding hope and redemption through faith in God. John’s candid and raw account provides deep insights into the resilience of the human spirit and the transformative power of faith and support.

Episode Highlights:

1. John’s Early Life: Growing up in a violent home in West Virginia and its profound impact on his mental health.
2. Struggles with PTSD and Alcoholism: How John coped with his PTSD through alcohol and the eventual realisation of his dependency.
3. Turning Point: The moment John decided to ask God for help and began his journey toward sobriety and healing.
4. The Role of Faith: How returning to church and developing a relationship with God provided John the strength to overcome his addiction and manage PTSD.
5. Life After Recovery: John’s continued efforts to help others by sharing his story, writing his memoir "Appalachian Kid," and volunteering to support those struggling with similar issues.

Join us as we get into John Boyle’s raw and inspiring story, illustrating that no matter the adversity, there is always a path to recovery and hope. Be sure to listen, subscribe, and leave a review.

Connect with Us:

• Website: What’s The Story Podcast
• John's Book: Appalachian Kid: How Hope Changed Everything
• Social Media: LinkedIn - John P Boyle
• Crowd Church: Crowd Church

Don’t miss this riveting episode filled with resilience, hope, and the power of faith. Listen now to "What's The Story Podcast" and be inspired by John Boyle’s journey of surviving a violent childhood and overcoming life's toughest challenges.

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And now, without further ado, let's get Let's meet your host and

our very special guest for today.

Hey, everyone.

Welcome to another episode of What's The Story Podcast.

I'm your host Sadaf Beynon, and today we have another great

guest with us, John Boyle.

John will be sharing his journey of overcoming a traumatic childhood, battling

PTSD and alcoholism, and finding hope and redemption through faith in God.

John, it's so great to have you here today.

How are you?

I'm doing great.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's an honor to be on your show.

Thank you, John.

The pleasure is ours.

John, tell us where you're dialing in from.

Sure.

I am dialing in from Charleston, South Carolina.

I live here with my wife and two sons.

Awesome.

And what's the weather doing today for you?

It is beautiful, blue sky, and South Carolina is very sunny

in the summer, so beautiful weather.

That's nice.

We're here in Liverpool, in the UK, and we don't always get nice

sunny weather, but we're having some sunny days, which is really nice.

I understand.

I've been to England, not to Liverpool, but I understand the weather.

Yes.

Yes.

All right.

John, let's jump into it.

Can you start by telling us a bit about yourself and your early life?

Absolutely.

So I grew up in a state called West Virginia.

It's the mountain state.

And for those of your listeners with the United States, it is a very poor state.

I grew up in a small town, a mining community, which there's a decent

amount of coal mining in England.

So I'm sure your listeners can relate to that.

But I grew up in a small mining community and I grew up in a violent home.

I grew up Catholic, Irish Catholic.

And I had a lot of difficulty as a child.

I didn't know that I was growing up in a violent home.

I was just growing up.

I was a kid and my circumstances really started to affect me by

middle grade school.

So third or fourth grade, I was probably eight or nine years old and

I just started struggling and I would I would go to school and basically

the war per se was still going on in my head and I couldn't focus.

And I was labeled in school to be lazy.

I was labeled as a daydreamer by sixth grade.

One of my teachers told my parents that I would never go to college.

I certainly would never graduate college.

And so I really did not have a hopeful outlook as a child.

I really struggled.

And at 15, I had the opportunity to go to a boarding school.

In a neighboring state, Pennsylvania, and there I really began to figure out the

components that I needed in my personal life to be able to succeed and thrive.

But really all along when you if you would have pulled back the curtain,

you would have seen a teenager with an awful lot of difficulty.

What I was exhibiting was symptoms of PTSD.

I started having insomnia in high school.

I started having flashbacks in high school.

I started to have a broken fight or flight response.

So these things, I didn't know what they were.

And mental health was less, far less commonly discussed in the 1990s.

And so I buried it and I found by college that alcohol helped me mask my symptoms.

It painted over rust.

And really, it helped me function in my daily affairs, but by the time I

got home and, got to my room, I was dealing with a bunch of things that I

just didn't know what it was, and in any way, it really wasn't diagnosed

until I was in my mid thirties.

How did your early experience of living with violence

shape your initial perception of God?

It wasn't favorable.

It wasn't.

I grew up Catholic.

My family, we went to church on Sunday.

And as I got older, my focus on religion Really was going through the

motions on Sunday and checking a box.

I wasn't praying during the week.

I wasn't asking God for help.

I really did not see, I did not equate God as being separate from the

circumstances that I was in as a child.

And so I looked somewhat negatively on religion and Catholicism in part

because what I was experiencing at home.

And by the time I was living on my own in college, I went to church less and less.

And by the time I graduated, I really didn't practice at all.

And was that your experience or was were

your siblings in the same boat?

It was my experience.

It was my experience.

I don't know I don't know what my siblings experienced to be quite honest with you.

It was far worse for me than it was for them.

And just was trying to.

Put a congruent life together any way I could.

And so I found that by stripping all of the variables out of my life and just

living a very basic, boring life and trying to get from A to B was my focus.

And I really didn't look at what was going on outside my little bubble.

If you don't mind, would you be happy to tell us a bit more of

what that violence was and what it was like and why it was happening to you?

I still don't know why.

I honestly don't know why and I have my theories but they're unfounded in that

I have no validation that was true.

And I really can't speak to that, but, what it was like as a

child, it was physical violence.

It was physical violence.

I incurred physical violence on a regular basis.

And it was from my mother.

I'm very often wrong in my account, in my book, which we'll get to.

And it just speaks to what it was like to experience this as a child.

You're not in control and a child does not have a choice of where

they grow up in many instances.

And really as a child, you're forced to make sense of things

that shouldn't make sense.

And so when you have a child, a young person who has a developing brain

violence, neglect, sexual abuse, they all really have the same effect.

And it warps your perception of reality because your brain has to

make sense of something it shouldn't.

And so it rewires your neuro pathways, your sensory pathways, and your brain

finds ways to adapt to your circumstances.

And that, that is my difficulty today is my brain really is wired

incorrectly from the home I grew up in.

And so it was very difficult.

I was defending myself, By nine or ten years old it was hard for me

because, I was battling an adult.

I tried to run away.

I tried to ask for help and any action that I took was to no avail

and it made the situation worse.

And so I had to find a way to live with it.

And it was especially difficult when my father was traveling for work

and I was at home with that parent, my, my mother, who just for whatever

reason treated me as she did, and it had a very lasting effect on me.

Sorry to hear that.

So you've touched on it a little bit, but how did that violence

affect you as you got older?

It affected me in every way you could think of.

When you talk to someone who has PTSD, it's a disorder of reactions.

And so all of my sensory all of my, my, my sensory my body sensory organs

my eyes my ears, my touch, my smell.

When I smell something that reminds me of childhood, it immediately

causes a flashback, not in all cases, but many cases, right?

And so it, it affects every day of my life.

If I see a vision of violence, If I hear a certain bang or a baby

screaming if I hear a song that takes me back to my childhood in the 1980s.

It causes me grief.

I'll tell you this.

I still flinch to this day.

I'm 47 years old.

I was removed from my home at 15 and at 47, if my wife or my sons come up

behind me and I can't hear them and they touch me, if my wife comes behind

me to give me a kiss on my head, I flinch like I'm going to get hit.

There's this component that happens with with people who have PTSD,

especially children who grew up with it.

And it causes a complex version of it.

And your primitive brain reacts to these.

Sensory receptors and it causes a reaction before your your cortex, which houses

your identity and your ability to think and reason the primitive brain acts

fight or flight response, like reactions before your cortex can reason that it's

a poor response or not a valid response.

So I've lived a life of difficulty and I'm not here to complain at all.

It's just been my path.

When did you realize you were dealing with PTSD?

I didn't, I was married in my late twenties, my wife began to

realize that there was something going on that had never been pinpointed with me,

and she started the effect of armoring, which is chronic muscle tightness.

She began to see the flashbacks I was having, the nightmares, the

insomnia she began to, speak up that I needed to figure out and go and

get help as to what was going on.

And so I spent about 10 years going to doctors, psychologists, Therapists

and really trying to get help.

And my experience was that I was misdiagnosed and really what

was going on there was more of a disguise presentation than anything.

It really, it fell back on me when I was going into to see the doctor, I

would say I'm having problems sleeping.

Or I'm feeling this way or that way.

And so I was diagnosed with insomnia or depression or anxiety, and I

was given medications for those, but really all it did was dampen.

What was happening?

It made me lethargic.

It didn't help.

And so ultimately when I found out that I had PTSD I had began the process of

going to a treatment center and getting help to stop drinking alcohol at 37.

And I was not diagnosed until I went to that facility.

You've mentioned alcohol.

So I'm guessing that was your coping mechanism.

It was a

bit about that.

How you got into it.

Absolutely.

I went to West Virginia University in undergrad and it's a it's a very big

party school in the United States.

And what I found was when I joined my fellow classmates and went out and.

Alcohol I really, I didn't have these symptoms.

I didn't have the dysphoric feelings.

I wasn't triggered with flashbacks and it really, it painted over

rust in a temporary manner.

And what it added was this element of euphoria, which I didn't feel

that I really have never naturally had where I it's uncommon for me

to smile and I'm getting better at it, but it's not natural for me.

And when I was in college, when I was a young person, I had all this

difficulty going on in my head.

And I was really, I was just trying to survive and get through college

and get decent grades and get a degree and go out and get a job.

Remember, I was the kid who.

I was told over and over, I would never make it to college.

So I was at a place where I was trying to succeed.

And I found very early on in college, like my first week that when I drank

alcohol, it masked my symptoms.

And so I used it on a regular basis.

And by the time I was in my late twenties really I was drinking alcohol every day.

And I was a highly functioning alcoholic and I didn't know that.

And I really didn't know that I became dependent upon it until I went to quit

in my mid thirties and I couldn't.

What would you say have been some of the

effects then of the alcoholism?

Wow there were many.

I spent I spent a decade Really

functioning at work and being an executive.

I was by the time I was 29, I was the president and CEO, CEO of a family

business, and it grew to be rather large.

And so I had a lot on my plate.

And in addition to that, I had invested in other businesses with friends.

And so I was constantly working.

I was ambitious.

I didn't want to be beholden to anyone.

I believe that my background really drove me to be I was really driven

to be someone in life, right?

Because I'd been told over and over, I wouldn't be.

And really I was so driven that I was exhausted by the time I got home.

And for me to be an executive and function at a high level.

I had to really ignore my body.

I had to ignore what my body was telling me at work.

Hey, you need a break.

Hey, there's these things going on back here.

Don't keep shoving them under the bed and pushing them until tomorrow.

My coping mechanism when I got home was to pour several vodka and sodas and

try to put myself in a place where I could pass out at the end of the night.

And I was never late for work, but it took a toll on my body.

I stopped exercising.

I gained weight.

Really I wasn't myself.

I was very irritable.

And it impacted my ability to parent my son.

I was divorced in my early thirties and.

From probably 31 until 37.

When I got clean, my oldest son was really the only person in my life and

I have good days and I had bad days but alcohol didn't help things at home.

I wasn't abusive per se.

I wasn't sleeping through the day and dysfunctional, but I really wasn't

the best version of myself either.

And I certainly won't lie.

I will tell you right now that I wasn't, I certainly wasn't the

father that my son needed me to be.

And I began to recognize that as he got older, I began to recognize it as

my body started to take a toll from the amount of alcohol I was drinking.

And really ultimately.

What drove me to want to quit was my liver started shutting down at 37.

Was there anything else that that was a turning point for you?

I know with your liver shutting down, pretty big.

Was there any other parts of life that made you realize

that you needed to find help?

There were indicators that I was ignoring.

I had people around me who were somewhat concerned, but I'll be honest, I was

very high functioning and it was very hard for my friends to see the real me.

Really my son was the only one who was seeing it.

And when I was married, my wife obviously was.

And so those indicators there, they weren't many.

And when you looked at my resume and the success that I

was having, worldly success, it masked my pain on the back end.

And so the biggest driver of my dysfunction was the fact that my

body kept the score and it started telling me in my mid thirties that

I, we can't bear this anymore.

We can't keep doing that.

And my skin turned very white.

I didn't know what was wrong.

I was malnourished.

My doctor told me that I was malnourished and my liver was not processing vitamins.

And if I continued to drink, my liver would continue to only process

the alcohol, not the vitamins, and I would end up in the grave.

And that was, it was very sobering.

But what I found at that juncture, was that I could not quit on my own.

I started to try to quit on my own.

And couldn't make it to seven o'clock at night.

That's the degree that it impacted my personal life.

So where did you go from there, then once you

realized you needed the help?

I went to a bar and here's the best part about it.

I went to a bar with a friend and he could see I wasn't doing well

and I didn't really tell him.

I wasn't openly transparent about what was going on.

I just was in a bad mood and introverted and trying to figure out a solution

and really trying to figure out whether I wanted to be here or not.

And, any, anybody that's gotten clean will tell you you have to want to get

clean for yourself, but I will tell you with my childhood and just during

my life, I didn't see the value in me.

I saw the value in being there for my son.

And really that was the only reason I had to fight.

And so I was in a bar and I was drinking a lot and I was talking to

my friend and he looked at me after I told him some stuff that was going on.

And he said, would you like to go to church with me?

And I was shocked, right?

Because I had been asked by many people to go to church leading up maybe in the

year leading up to him asking me, but I didn't see the value in that, right?

When I was a child growing up, church didn't change my

circumstances and it didn't help me.

And I just didn't see that as a solution.

I thought I was blemished.

I thought I wasn't meant to be one of those people truly.

And I convinced myself of that.

So when my friend asked me to church, it was from an area and in

a place that I wasn't expecting.

And I immediately just had this feeling come over me, like it was a

lifeline and I didn't question it.

I didn't say let's talk tomorrow.

I asked him what time and I went the next day and peace came over me.

And I loved what the pastor was saying.

It was a non denominational church and it was what I needed.

And so when I left there I just felt that I wanted to go back the next Sunday.

And so I started doing that and then I found my drinking life really to be in

conflict with what God wanted for my life.

And in that bar that night, I just kept thinking, wow, God loves me so much.

He's infiltrating my drinking buddies to get to me and that's the truth.

And I write that in my book.

It was.

It was what I needed, and if I'd have said no, I know I wouldn't be here, I

wouldn't be talking to you, I wouldn't.

Share with us the moment when you decided to ask God

to help you with your addiction.

Sure, I'd be glad to.

Weeks went by from when my friend asked me to go to church, and my health declined.

I was trying to quit drinking every night, and I had varied success,

and when I say varied success, I might've made it to 8 30 PM.

I'm being sincere in that I drank 10 days or 10 years every day successively.

And so when I went to quit, my body didn't want any part of that.

And I knew that I wasn't going to be able to do it on my own.

And so a couple of my siblings started to help me.

I confided in them and they started to help me find a facility

that I could go to get clean.

And there were a lot of worries around that because I ran a company

that had 600 employees and I was worried about the impact that it would

have and the impact it would have on my career and how I would look.

And so I had all these worries, right?

And I'd heard the expression, give it to God, give it to God.

That was not a practice that I'd done in my life.

And so when I made the decision to go away and get help and I picked a

date the night before I left, I prayed and I said, God I'm done with this.

I do not want to drink.

Please help me.

And I'm sure I said a couple of other things in that prayer,

but that was the essence of it.

And the next day wasn't easy.

I went to all my coworkers, why I was leaving.

I guess I didn't have to, but I did.

And when I went away I really had a hard first day, but when I

woke up the following day, I did.

I never had an urge to drink again.

Sincerely.

I stayed in, in rehab for 30 days.

I went through the process and worked the process and got help, but I never

wanted to drink again and I haven't.

And that was 10 years ago.

Yeah.

It was so bad that I chose to leave four days before my

oldest son's eighth birthday, I missed his birthday to get clean

and I get choked up when I say this, but I'm gonna go watch

him graduate college this week.

Or not college, I'm sorry, high school.

I'm gonna go watch him graduate high school.

It was worth every bit of the struggle to get there.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

How did your faith help you overcome those urges and to maintain

the sobriety over all these years?

God helped me overcome those urges.

I cannot take credit for that and I write that in my book as well.

He took that away.

Really faith in God kept me clean.

I began to have a faith life that I wanted to pursue God and learn all about it.

And so when I was in rehab, I tried to pick up the Bible and

I was on a tranquilizer to rid me of the effects of detox.

So I couldn't read, but I could listen.

And I started listening to sermons online.

And when I got to a point where I could start reading the Bible, I just

started reading it every day and I pursued God, how I knew to do it.

And it wasn't perfect, but I began to start to put the pieces

together of having a faith life.

And it's grown and it's grown and it's grown.

So it started with going to church on Sunday.

Then that led to wanting to read the Bible in the morning or the evening.

It led to me wanting to listen to sermons, whether I was in rehab or back

at home after I'd gotten clean and that led to wanting to be in small groups

and be involved in church and being involved in Christian business groups

and it just cascaded one off another.

And I just began to live a more faith filled life.

And replace the components that weren't great in my life of drinking and doing

things I shouldn't be doing to having a more balanced and congruent life.

And it worked, it helped me greatly.

Incredible.

What were some of those, or what are some of the challenges you've faced since?

The biggest challenge I've faced is PTSD and knowing what I have,

I said this earlier I didn't know I had this disorder until I was 37 right

and so the first challenge I had was I had to learn everything I could about

it and I had to differentiate between PTSD post traumatic stress disorder.

Is largely seen as a disorder, a mental disorder that soldiers

that inflicts soldiers in battle.

And so I didn't know that it could affect the child who grew up in abusive home.

And how that, that those circumstances made it complex

and that it's not going away.

You have to learn to live with it.

You have to learn to overcome it.

And my, my biggest fight in getting sober was taking on my symptoms head

on and not having that release or that numbness to just get a break.

And so really what I learned to do was to be open about my disorder.

I learned to confide in people and tell them what's going on and why my

life is difficult and why I drank and.

I had to go and get help.

Not only did I have to learn about what I had, but I had to go and get

the pieces I needed to really know how to cope and function in a functional

manner, know how to function with daily life, how to, have a hard day at

work and come home and deal with PTSD and not want to crawl in a bottle.

And that took some time.

And eventually what I found was.

That working in a family business was very triggering for me, especially

after I quit drinking alcohol.

So I had to leave.

And essentially what I'm telling you is I had to change my life in

a way that I could and live it in a way that God intended me to, in

a way that I could take care of the flock that God gave me, which was

my children and my second wife.

Listening to you, it's incredible how that violence in your

home when you were so young, , how it's just followed you through up until now is

just still there in some sense, isn't it?

The effects of it.

So thinking about your early life where, you know, where you've experienced the

abuse and the violence and to where you're at now with the Lord, walking

faithfully with the Lord and there's been so much healing in many ways.

Do you have a relationship with your mom?

Have you ever gone back to that, revisited what's happened with her?

So I do not have one.

And to be honest with you, I haven't had one since I was a young boy.

That, that's not something that that I've been able to do.

And I've struggled with forgiveness

I used to think that forgiveness was something you did one time and

through a lot of help and conversations with pastors, what I've learned is

forgiveness is a choice and it's actually a postscript to my book.

Really, I've struggled with it up until recently and I forgive my mom.

I don't hold any grudge against her.

I have no ill will.

What happened and everybody struggles.

There's, I'm sure a reason.

I don't know what that reason is.

I forgive her and this book and my journey, it's not necessarily about her.

It's about the goodness of God and what God's been able to do in my life

and what I've been able to overcome with the Lord's help and guidance.

Yeah, I love that.

It is about the Lord, isn't it?

It's not about us and the things we go through.

It's about how he helps us overcome that.

It is, and I can tell you right now that you wouldn't believe what's

happened in my life in the last ten years.

I shared with you that I was someone who my teachers told

me I would never go to college.

I graduated from Harvard Business School in 2017, right?

Just a couple of years after becoming sober.

I'm the president of a very large roadway and bridge company and based

in Charlotte, North Carolina, and they run on Christian values and

it's just, it's been a blessing.

I've spoken to the White House, I've been.

Invited to, to be a part of boards of directors all over the United States.

And it's just been a wonderful journey that I would not have

guessed I ever would have had.

And had I not have asked the Lord for help, I wouldn't be here.

And it's crazy.

It's crazy to think about that, that it just, that one moment and

all these things came to pass.

That is incredible.

How the Lord has this way of redeeming doesn't he?.

Yes.

Incredible.

And you're very accomplished despite all of those experiences that you've

had, which is again, glory to God.

Amen.

Just going back to your PTSD, you were talking about

how you're not, you haven't drunk since you made that decision that you

were not going to go back to that.

But, and, but you still are obviously experiencing the PTSD.

So how are you managing those symptoms?

You have to accept them as they come.

I have good days and I have bad days, right?

And when I have a bad day, I can't load my plate up and expect to be an A

player and just, work from dusk to dawn.

I've seen therapists for sure.

I've done a medical treatment called EMDR, which is essentially light therapy.

I've spent a lot of time learning about my disorder.

I've written a book about my disorder.

I've done everything I know how to do to put myself in a place

where I can be better, where I can be healthy, where I can succeed.

And really the biggest thing that I've done is take myself

out of the circumstances that remind me of where I used to be.

I've moved from where I used to live.

I don't work where I used to work.

And I spend my time in the evenings doing things much more

productively than drinking.

I read books, I watch documentaries, I write, I try to help others.

And that, that is a big thing that has helped me is plowing into other people

and helping other people has really helped me because it makes me feel.

That my life has value, that my story has value when I help other

people, especially those struggling and have the same disorder as myself,

especially children going into a high school and, volunteering my time and

talking to teenagers who are living violence every day in their own homes.

That is something that has helped me forget about me.

It's not about me anymore.

It's more about how I can help other people.

And that's why I go on shows like yours.

Many people that have the experience that I have, they don't

know what they're dealing with.

They don't know that they may have PTSD.

They may just be drinking every day and just trying to forget and bury it

and suppress it and say, Not today.

I don't want to talk about it.

I don't want to think about it.

But

when people hear my story it makes them think differently.

And I've heard so many people Sadaf, that, that have said to me,

Wow I think I have what you have.

Thank you for telling your story.

It's given me the mental fortitude to want to fight it myself.

And that's so encouraging because when I wrote the book, I really didn't

know that anybody would read it.

I had no clue.

Tell us you've referenced your book a couple

times now, so tell us about it.

Tell us what it's called.

Tell us what drove you to write it.

Sure.

My book is called Appalachian Kid.

It's a memoir and it speaks to the goodness of God.

It's an honest and raw account of my life.

My childhood, my adulthood, and I write about, what it's like to grow

up in a violent home, what it's like to live with PTSD as an adult I'm

real and honest about my struggles and my entire story, showcases life

in Appalachia, which I guess is a buzzword here in the United States.

It's it's something that people that live outside of the Appalachian mountain range.

want to learn about in.

And I've gotten a lot of feedback just about that part.

For some reason, I have a lot of fans in Texas.

They must like the, like my story or the fact that it's about Appalachia,

but, it's a wonderful story and I'll say this it's bookended.

by stories of me volunteering in my local hometown high school in a as a part of

a one day charity called building hope.

And it's a program that talks to kids about replacing bullying

with empathy for each other.

And it, it replaces hate with understanding.

And it's a, it's.

It was founded by my friend Mark Urso and I participated in that several

years ago and the story was so strong that I wrapped it into my book and

told my life story in the midst of me trying to help these kids deal with

life as they were experiencing it.

And it's a wonderful story.

It'll take you up and down.

It's funny.

It'll make you cry.

And I've gotten a lot of good feedback about it.

That sounds really good.

Yeah.

Was there healing in, in writing it?

There was.

It was difficult to write.

I would say that the difficulty was surpassed by me being scared being

honest and open about having a mental disorder and being an executive

in the construction industry.

I thought during the process of writing the book that it would

conflict with my career and it would negatively impact my ability to.

To do what I've done my whole life, and that is being executive

of a construction company.

And it didn't, it actually helped me, but I didn't know when I was writing it.

And so I was very scared that by telling my story, that there would be negative

ramifications that I didn't know.

You talk about hope how do you define hope for yourself and others?

It's interesting.

I write about it.

I write about it.

It's in chapter 11 and I would encourage you if you don't read the

whole book, just read chapter 11.

And in hope when you talk about hope, if you would look it up in

a dictionary, would see a lot of words, but essentially what you would.

You would see is that hope is wishful thinking.

And that really is how the world sees it.

It's wishful thinking, right?

But there's another definition of hope and it can be found in the Bible and hope to

a believer is the confident expectation that God's promises will come to pass.

And that you can trust him and that he delivers and hope to a believer is really

faith turned forward to the future.

And that's what it means to me.

My story it's a story of hope, right?

There was no chance I was going to be who I am today.

You also spoke briefly about forgiveness and the role

that it's played in re in, your relationship with your parents.

How do you communicate that, the essence of forgiveness when you're talking

to kids, in your local high school

. How do you convey that message?

I have to be honest with you.

It's not come up with the young people that I've talked to and I wonder why.

I'm not sure I could have heard a message of forgiveness at 15 and understood

what it meant for me, for my life.

I'm not sure that I could have heard it at 20 or 25.

I have had the forgiveness discussion with adults.

And those who have had traumatic childhood and are living

with trauma on a daily basis.

And what I found is many people see forgiveness as I did, and it was an

approach of no way I'm not doing that.

No, I'm not forgiving that person.

What they did was unforgivable.

And really what that does is it breeds hate in your heart.

It makes you callous.

You're closed off from receiving certain blessings if you take that approach.

And so what I found here, and this has only been recently now, I'm 47 and I

wouldn't say I've mastered the art of forgiveness until maybe 45, 44 years old.

So it's taken a long time and many of the adults that I've talked to that have

struggled with it, some of them are much older than me and really struggle with it.

And what I've shared with them is forgiveness is not for the other person.

Forgiveness is for you.

You don't have to bear that burden.

You don't have to carry that hate.

What that person did was not right, and God's the judge, and God will handle that.

You don't have to.

Go live your life.

Forgiveness means being able to live your life and do so freely,

without the burdens of yesterday.

And I've found that, to be honest, that when those feelings arise, when

I have hard days and I'm triggered, and it takes me right back to

where I was at 14 or 15 or 12 or 9 years old, when those days happen.

Forgiveness is a choice and I choose peace over hate, I, I choose to

live my life free of that burden and those thoughts and those memories.

And yes, it happened.

Yes, I acknowledge it.

Yes, I've written a book about it and no, it's not going to be what's going

to drive me and rule my world today.

Absolutely.

It doesn't define who you are.

That's right.

John, we ask all our guests this question., you might

have already touched on it, so reiterate it if you need to, but

what is your one message?

I think my one message is one that would speak to your

listeners that are struggling, right?

And whatever that struggle is, it is.

In boxing, you don't lose if you get knocked down you lose if you stay down.

And so my message is you have to get up and fight.

You you have to move forward, get help, and fight with everything you have.

You don't have to do the work.

You can give it to God and walk beside him.

And I promise you, if you call on his name, he will answer.

And that's important because someone who has the same background as me

in any way, shape, or form, or maybe they're having a tough time as an adult.

You don't think that.

You don't automatically think many of us don't just go to God.

They say I'm going to do this on my own and I'm going to deal with

my circumstances as they come.

And so seeking help ends fighting.

And if you're fighting, keep fighting.

That's your way out.

Absolutely.

You're right.

And your stories is a testament to what you've said as well.

It's, it's of hope, it's of faith and the power of God's love and his forgiveness.

Yeah, absolutely.

Is there anything else that you would like to share with our listeners that I haven't

already covered in our conversation?

Yes.

So my book, Appalachian Kid, can be purchased on amazon.

com.

I have a website that your listeners could read some about me in a synopsis of the

book and some endorsements that I have.

That is at appalachiankid.com and social media.

I'm on LinkedIn, John P Boyle.

That's where you can find you want to know more about me.

Awesome.

Thank you, John.

We will be sure to add all links to our show notes for you, John.

Thank you so much.

for having me.

No, you're welcome.

for sharing your incredible story with us today.

Your journey is really, truly inspiring, and I'm sure that our

listeners are going to take away a lot of hope and strength from it.

Thank you.

God bless.

Thank you.

And for everyone listening, be sure to check out John's book.

It's an Amazon bestseller, I'm not sure if you mentioned that.

And as always, thanks for tuning in to What's the Story.

If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review.

Remember, no matter the challenge, there's always a way forward.

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