Imagine being able to live a variety of different types of careers, both personally and professionally, and being successful in each one. Our guest in this episode, Charlie Liebert, shares specifically his 14th career that he started at the age of 70 and how it has transformed the way that he engages and helps others, even through grief when tragedy struck his family. Through the experiences, this interview shares messages of assembling puzzle pieces in order to reclaim what we have laying inside of us to become fulfilled, whether that is through writing, or through other means of expression.

WARNING: This episode discusses suicide, drug addiction, and depression as it relates to a tragedy that occurred in our guest's family. If you, or someone you know, is ever experiencing a mental health crisis and is going through a myriad of situations, do not wait; seek help! Read below for the National Suicide Hotline, or call 988 in the United States to receive assistance. If a true emergency, do not hesitate to call 911 when seconds count.

Guest Bio

Charlie retired from a 33-year career in the Chemical industry in 1994 to take up speaking, teaching, and writing. Since 1994 he’s conducted over 100 workshops and seminars for children and adults about Science and Christian Apologetics. From 1997 -1999 Charlie spoke and taught for "Answers in Genesis.” Starting in 1998, for ten years, he produced a one-hour, weekly TV show in Greensboro NC from his seminars called "Creation Foundation Explanation”. From 2004 until 2018 he taught business subjects at Davidson County Community College. He is a charter member of Carolina Christian Toastmasters founded in Greensboro, NC, in 2013. At age 70, in 2012 he began a writing career. By 2023 he’d authored and published 16 paperback books and has 19 eBooks on Amazon and Kindle. In. addition he has published 15 different books for other authors. Charlie and his wife Terry live in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and have a son, Keith (deceased), a daughter, Melanie, and five grandchildren.

Charlie's Website

Contact E-mail: Charlie@sixdaycreation.com

• Toastmasters International -Home - Learn more about Toastmasters and how it can provide a competitive edge for you! Whether you are looking to be an author that can effective sell the concept of books, or if you are looking for more personal/professional engagement in order to generate more content, this nearly century organization can provide all the tools at your disposal! Look for a club closest to you (whether in-person, hybrid, or all virtual) at the "Find A Club" link located on the page.
• National Suicide Lifeline (988) - This dedicated webpage talks about the various amount of resources that are available when dealing with a mental health crisis of any kind. DO NOT DO IT ALONE! Find resources in your area (even outside of the United States) if you need assistance with a crisis.

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Intro/Outro By: Michael Dugan, Podcast Host: Voice4Chefs

Welcome to the podcast where relationships, confidence, and

determination, all converge into an amazing, heartfelt experience.

This is Speaking From The Heart.

Welcome back to episode 22 of Speaking From the Heart.

Today we have a interesting guest, Charlie Liebert.

Now I'm going to give you a disclosure and a warning that this episode does

talk about suicide, depression, drug overdose, all these different vices

that often create havoc for us.

If you are going through a crisis, I cannot stress enough that you

should go and seek help wherever that might be so that they can get you in

touch with professional resources.

There is a number that you can call, 988, and that is the National Suicide Hotline,

especially if you have those thoughts.

I will put a link in the episode notes in case you need to check out more

information, but this is a warning that if that is a trigger for you,

please stop listening to this episode.

Nevertheless, Charlie has had a unique career spanning several decades.

He retired from a 33 year career in the chemical industry in 1994 in

which he took up speaking, teaching and writing, and since 1994, he's

conducted over 100 workshops and seminars for children and adults about

science and Christian apologetics.

He's been able to speak about Answers For Genesis, which is a collection

of works that he had talked about in this episode, and in 1998, for over

a decade, he produced a one hour weekly TV show in Greensboro, North

Carolina with seminars that are called the Creation Foundation Explanation.

He's taught with Davidson County Community College for over 14 years.

He had stopped doing that in 2018.

He was a charter member of Carolina Christian Toastmasters, that was founded

in 2013 in Greensboro, and at the age of 70, he started his writing career in 2012.

As of this recording, he has published 16 paperback books and has 19 eBooks

on Amazon and Kindle, which we talk a little bit about during the

episode, and he has published 15 different books for other authors.

Charlie and his wife Terry, live locally near me in Carlisle,

Pennsylvania, and he has a deceased son, Keith, which we do talk about

in this episode, and a daughter, Melanie, along with five grandchildren.

I will say that this was one of those episodes that will forever give me more

context and more clarity as it relates to not only suicide, but how we can

take steps to prevent all of this from ever happening in the first place.

With that, let's go to the episode.

I'm here with Charlie Lebert.

Charlie, thanks for speaking from the heart with us today.

Thanks.

Great to be here.

Absolutely.

Full disclosure, again, for my audience, Charlie is a Toastmaster that I've

known for many years and I've been fortunate enough to know him through that

organization, which for many of you that have been listening to this for a while,

you know that I'm going to put again in the show notes about Toastmasters,

which is a great organization and we'll probably get into some of that

in a little bit, but Charlie, my first question to you, because of all the

things that you do, I really love that you're really involved with being an

author, and I'm just curious, because the audience heard a little bit about your

background, knowing that you worked in the chemical industry for over 33 years.

What turned you into being an author?

I've always loved teaching.

In fact, I taught for 15 years as an adjunct at a school in North

Carolina, and teaching springs into creativity and wanting to write.

I wrote a short story back in the eighties, but it never went anywhere; it

was a little Christmas story, and then when I turned 70, I decided I wanted to

start my 14th career, it was 13th before this; 14th career, and I said, I want to

be an author, and then about six months later, I want to be a publisher, because

I found out that you can publish your own book for free using Amazon's KDP

program, and I do that now for myself.

I've got 23 items on Amazon and I publish 15 for other authors, so I've

done a lot of publication in that sense.

I love the part of the authoring that's most exciting is the creativity.

About one third of my books about my family, all kinds of events

that happened to my family.

This one novel, and then there's about the other one third is the novel and some

of the other fiction stuff, and then the other third is a Christian perspective.

For those that are interested in being an author, can you walk us

through the process that you did with Amazon to get published officially?

Is it very difficult process?

No, it's very simple process.

you need to file that you could create a PDF from for

the cover, front and back cover; I use PowerPoint to do that, and then

you need a document, a .Doc document or a PDF, most people want to edit

in DOC, and then that's all you need.

You create an account on KDP and you start to work, fill out the form, you

got to fill out keywords and the title and author, all those other things you

got to do related to the book, and then you put it up and preview it, and when

you satisfy the preview, you publish.

It goes to paperback, ebook, or hardback, any of the three.

It's incredible that even when I was a kid, you would still have to go

to the bookstore to just be able to have a paperback or a hard cover, and even to

find some of the readings that I would find, which were mostly from Franklin W.

Dixon, because I really loved his writing, although that was a surname

in itself, thinking specifically of the Hardy Boys and things of the nature, I

grew up with that as a kid, so I have to thank my parents for that, but Charlie,

I'm kind of curious with being an author, especially, I know that you have

a specific genre that you write about.

I was wondering if you could share that with the audience and tell

us a little bit about how you got yourself into that genre specifically.

Actually, I work in three genres, okay?

Oh, oh, oh.

I didn't know that.

That's great.

So yeah, tell us about-

I work in fiction, I work in basically Christian genre, and

I work in the basically it's called creative historical nonfictions.

You basically take historical events that are known, in this case,

events in my family, and elaborate on them with creating fictional

backgrounds to tell the story.

The story's true, but the actual details are fabricated.

For example, one of the things I wrote is I wrote my aunt's

Survival of the Holocaust.

She's a double Jew.

She's her father's Jewish, and she married a Jew, and she's living in

Europe in the time of the Nazis, and her survival is a story that I

had to create a lot of stuff for it.

I had some notes from her, but not much, so I had to create the story

and it's pretty compelling actually.

Yeah, it sounds like it too, especially with the wide variety, and

thanks for educating me, I had no idea that you wrote in three different genres.

That's incredible.

Do you prefer particular genre over another, and if

so, why that particular genre?

I work in the Christian and the creative, genres, but

I really love the fiction genre.

You create characters, you create people, and I have one character

I'll tell you about, okay, which I think is really interesting.

The couple involved, this is Yellowstone's Child is the name of the book, couple

involved lose their 10 year olds of brain cancer, but Yellowstone National Park to

recover kidnap a girl who has amnesia and take her home as their daughter.

During the course of those events, later on, they become rich through an

inheritance and they go to Cayman Islands to pick up the inheritance, which is

a bag of diamonds and a couple million dollars, and when they're there, they

meet the bank Vice President, which is a tall, beautiful, blonde woman.

Looks like a classical Scandinavian, but, she was brought up by her parents,

who were Swedish missionaries in the ghetto in Grand Cayman, so she speaks

like a Jamaican, but she looks like, looks like a, a northern European,

so I'd love to create that character because I could just imagine if it ever

goes on film, it'll be great, okay?

I'm thinking of this and visualizing it in my head, I'm thinking,

"That would be really cool to see a film adaptation of something like that."

Yeah.

That's what I love about fiction too, is that it allows you to go into

worlds that normally aren't possible in the realistic realm, and makes you

think about maybe the possible, maybe the impossible becoming the possible

too at some point, but, not to draw on authors and what you've done.

I know that you've had some television experience and I'm wondering if

you could elaborate a little bit about what you did for 10 years.

I love that you did this and I'm not going to spill the beans.

I kind of did already with letting the audience know, but I want you to kind of

go in depth a little bit about it for us.

I retired at age 53; I'm 80 today; I've been retired all 30

years anyway, but when I retired, I went to work for Ansys and Genesis,

which is a ministry, for about a year, and then I went off on my own

doing my own workshops and seminars.

I did workshops and seminars on Bible and science all over the southeastern US

for homeschool groups and churches and Christian schools, and when I did that, I

took video cameras with me, two cameras, and filmed everything I was doing.

Then what I would do is I came back to Greensboro and then each week I would

produce, take some of the video that I produced, from the last couple times I was

out, and put together a one hour TV show.

I produced and directed it myself, and I was the, so not the sole

actor, there's all kinds of people in the, in the workshops, but there

was showing that, and I learned a lot about television production.

It's not as simple as you think it is.

Trust me, it's not.

I don't think it's changed in the last 30 years, especially

since you were doing it too.

I think it's still just as complicated.

Yeah.

It's the old, when you're done, fade the black.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It is.

That's still the try and true method.

When you were in Greensboro, North Carolina, the audience knows that you

are in Carlisle now, you're literally right down the road from me where we're

recording this, but I'm wondering, do you see a significant difference from

when you grew up in Greensboro to where you are now as part of the cultural

differences, like have you seen a big shift, maybe just from a locality

perspective or a national perspective?

I'm just kind of curious, has that had any influence for you

in any of your writings too?

I grew up in Long Island actually.

Oh, okay.

I went to North Carolina after I was married and had two children; we

moved to North Carolina, we're there for more than 30 years, but, yeah, the south

and the north are different cultures.

There's no question about that.

I guess the most amazing thing to me was the fact that even though the cultures

are different, because I'm a Christian, the transition wasn't nearly as big as it

would be for someone who was not, because the church is kind of the same worldwide.

It doesn't vary that much, so it's pretty much the same, but the culture was

different; oh yeah definitely different.

You'd go to the supermarket and everybody talks to you.

In New York, you talk to someone, they think you're

trying to do something to 'em.

Has that had any influence on your writings whatsoever?

I don't think so, because most of my writing has been outside

of my own personal experience.

Other than the book about my son, it's all other people's lives, not mine.

Yeah, yeah.

I know that for many people they get the influences from basically any

personal experience, might have been some sort of adaptation or things of

that nature, but nevertheless, Charlie, I know that you have really laid out

a lot with your Christianity and being able to stay firm with that, especially

with the things that you have worked on, and I'm wondering, could you tell

us a little bit of how you became one?

Yeah, sure.

I went to a Methodist church with my parents all through my youth, .At about

16, I was sitting in the Methodist church listening to a sermon on the

evils of alcohol, and I sat there, looked around me, everyone around me

had been to the yacht club the night before and consumed huge quantities,

and I said, "This is nonsense.

Makes no sense to me at all."

I walked out.

By the time I was in my early twenties, I was a hardcore atheist.

I would sit in a bar and argue what, and what not, could be a God,

and one of the reasons for that is because I had a best friend.

His girlfriend died of cerebral hemorrhage, and he took his own life.

Wow.

That kind of blew me out.

That was, that was it.

When Dorothy died, I just kind of gave up entirely on any religious aspect at all.

Okay.

Get married, two children, moved to North Carolina.

Everybody goes to church.

My wife, who is ex-Catholic, now a Protestant, but she says, "I'm

going to church.", so she goes to the Episcopal church in town.

I decided, "Well, why not?

I'll go with her.", and it was fun.

There were honest to good social events, and I didn't pay much

attention what was happening.

Then, one of my friends, whose life was quite different, and I know now

why I didn't know then, but, Frank said, "I'm taking on treatment weekend.

We're going to go away with a bunch of men for a weekend."

It started on Thursday, Friday morning, we went out Thursday night, Friday morning,

the guy came out and gave a little talk.

what's your purpose in life?

What does life mean, and where you're going?

I couldn't answer those questions, and I knew I couldn't answer those questions.

I wrestled with that all weekend, troubled to the point almost of

becoming, in a sense, depressed.

It was just like, "I can't answer those questions", and with my aggressive

personality, you want to answer them.

I went in the chapel on Saturday night, March 20th, 1977, got down on my knees and

said, "God, if you're real, I surrender.", and God, true to His word, took my life.

I came back to Greensboro.

My wife looked at me as I walked into the room with her and she

said, "What happened to you?"

It was a visible difference.

I have no idea what it was, and she can't describe it, but she said,

"I knew something had happened."

Three months later, she would be converted also.

Wow.

And that would begin to change everything.

When you see people even today that are struggling with their faith,

or struggling with purpose, especially when it comes to who is in control

of all of this, what do you say to somebody that is going through that?

In other words, what's your advice to somebody that might be having

those questions similar to what you did before you found Christianity?

Okay.

The question is universal in that sense.

Everyone wants to know what's the purpose and the the big deal is

we're all going to die someday.

We know that inside.

We don't really know that for real, because we never think about it.

I found that's one of the most effective ways to promote a person,

to look for the answers, to say, recognize your own moral mortality.

I know for me, trying to figure that out is sometimes even a struggle

for myself and I've let my audience know in previous episodes about that struggle

and knowing that finding that purpose sometimes means being able to understand

first who you are, but you know that there's also other opportunities out there

if you're willing to accept that too.

For many people, Christianity is that, and I totally respect that, Charlie,

and I really resonate with that because I want to go into something

that's really personal, and I know we talked about before this episode that

I know has probably had a profound impact and test you with that.

For my audience, Charlie's son had passed away a few years ago, Keith,

and Charlie, could you tell us a little bit about the circumstances

surrounding Keith's passing away?

Let me just talk a little about my son.

Sure.

He was 51 when he died, and his life was a series of bad

decisions and missteps, if you will.

He was married three times, none of which, were successful.

He was in adulterous relationships in all those cases.

In high school, he was bullied and we had to deal with that to some extent.

There was all kinds of issues there, so his personality was such

that he was somewhat depressive.

He went in the military.

He was in the military for 19 and a half years.

Wow.

He was in the Coast Guard first, and then later on in the Utah

National Guard and, a year ago March, which is almost 18 months, the two

policemen showed up in my office, in my home at 6:30 in the morning, and

asked to come in and then told us that my son had taken his own life.

Oh, I'm sorry.

The third marriage was coming to an end and he was having an affair

with, if you will, a 19 year old.

Wow.

And he was 51 years old.

In my Christian faith, what do you do with that?

I mean that's a big deal.

Mm-hmm.

And I recognized immediately, and this is the spirit's prompting

now, I recognized immediately, I had the Job decision to make.

run to God and seek his his help, or curse

God and die, which was Job's wife's advice was, and I decided to run to

God, so I did, and as a result of that, my wife and I wrote the book.

The book is called Suicide's Aftermath: Three Griefs More, and the subtitle

is Christian Couple's Compounded Grief: Her Loved One's Suicide, and

the reason it's called Loved One and not my son is because my son's wife

hates our religion so much that she refused to let me use his name in print.

Wow.

And since she is the inheritor of the rights to the name, just like

him, she could refuse to do that, so the book is entirely about suicide

and it has two great examples in it, but my son's never mentioned.

Wow.

Now I have two other examples in there of death that I use because the

three griefs more is suddenness of death.

Someone dies suddenly; you don't expect it.

That adds more grief.

Then suicide adds a grief because for the first time,

you're asking the why question.

You don't ask why when somebody dies of a disease or an accident, they

died, but suicide, you want to know why because it's self-motivated, and

then the third one, of course, is from my pre-Christian perspective,

is what's his eternal destiny.

"Is it Heaven or is it Hell?", and I can't answer that.

I refuse to answer that question because that puts me in a position

where I have to make that decision, and that's God's decision, not mine.

You're right, and I have let my audience know early on when I started

this podcast about my own suicide attempt, and thank God I didn't finish it because

I wouldn't have been able to meet people like you, Charlie, that have grieved

and have been able to redeem that grief through works like that, and I just want

the audience to know in the show notes, I'm going to put a link specifically

to Suicide's Aftermath, so that if you like to purchase it, feel free to do so,

because I think that it's really important to understand this and pay some attention

to it, especially if you don't know, especially the signs that relate to it,

for those that are curious and need to know more information, there is a national

hotline, 988, which I have publicized before with a previous guest that has

talked about this, and I will also put that information in the show notes too.

Charlie, I really am touch by the fact that you've taken this and

you have made work out of this that other people can read and understand.

What made you motivated to do that?

Okay.

Well, when it first happened, we were broken by the grief.

That's the first reaction, okay?

You're broken.

I would wake up at two o'clock in the morning, sit on the

sit side of my bed and cry.

I'd weep.

I decided I had to deal with that, and the book has it inside.

I developed what I call my music therapy and I basically picked six,

seven songs that progressively move toward the redemption that's in Christ.

It starts off with something he'll really be shocked at, okay.?

Starts off with the layman's song, Minister of the House.

You know that song?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've heard.

It's been a long time.

The reason I chose that one first is because I

wanted to recognize my position.

I have no position with God in that sense.

It's hit by His grace alone.

Hmm.

It starts there and it is finished by the Gaither and it ends

with Because He Lives, because he lives like to face tomorrow,

because He lives all fear is gone.

That's where the faith came back powerfully, and then the book that's out

today has one chapter added a year later.

I wrote a chapter a year later, which I had one more piece of music I added to

it, because I found that was very helpful.

I'd sit on the bed and weep for a couple minutes, and then I'd put on

my headphones, pick up my iPhone, and just play through that series of

songs, and by the time I was done, I'd have the strength to go back to sleep

and know that God's still in control.

First off, I know I said it earlier, but I grieve with you knowing

that even if Keith was, well, I shouldn't say if, what I should say is that I know

that for some people struggling with addiction and different things that are

vices in our lives can often be precursors to some of the things that we often act

on that might be even more egregious in nature, so to pivot on this, I know you

have been in Toastmasters since 2013.

You had started in North Carolina with that and have taken that

journey up here in Pennsylvania.

Knowing now what you have been through and the

audience hearing a lot more about what your journey has been like through

the latter part after retirement-

Right.

What have you learned and what have you used from Toastmasters to

help you with this process that you have just talked about, what you have

helped yourself with getting to this point in your authorship, your career

of speaking, things of that nature?

Being an author is much like being a speaker.

You're creating in your mind what you're going to say.

You're going to say it orderly, if you're going to be in Toastmasters, or

you're going to say it on the typewriter.

Typewriter-

No, I know what you meant, and I think there's some people out there that

know what you just meant by a typewriter.

I know it, I'm validating you, Charlie.

In the process, but the process is quite similar, because you're

formulating stuff in your brain and then bringing it out in some form.

It's quite similar.

Toastmasters has helped me a lot, particularly with the flow.

If you read, particularly, my fictional writing, most of the people that read it

get caught up in it emotionally because I've learned how to play that in a sense.

For example, in Yellowstone's Child, the last scene is the family reunion

15 years after when she reveals she's not dead, she's alive, and of course

that breaks up the whole audience.

The approach to that is a series of events approach to that, and I'm not going to

go into the detail, but the, that build up the tension where most of my readers

that I've had write reviews have said basically, well, my original beta reader,

Kelly said, " You made me cry four times: twice for joy and twice for sorrow."

If an author can do that, evoke emotions to the point of

reaction, that's powerful stuff.

I tell my clients that when they're going through public speaking,

especially through my business, I say that it's important to have the

emotion with it showing not only the authenticity of yourself, but also

creating that value for the audience to take away as to the connections that we

were trying to make through our points-

Right.

-What the purpose is, and storytelling is not all that much

different when it comes to that.

It just has different, not just different terminology, but the same premise like

you just described, is truly important.

With that said, when we're looking at the authors that are doing something similar

as you are, what would you say makes you distinctive from those other authors?

In other words, why should I go and pick up a book from

you as opposed to other books?

I've written a bunch of stuff myself, but the last one I did was

an autobiography of another person, and I contributed a large part of

the approach that the book takes.

The book takes the, the approach of assembling a puzzle.

This particular person has a disastrous life.

Three failed marriages, burned out once, flooded out three times, mental

breakdown, collapse, hospitalization, or everything you'd ever want to imagine

going wrong, went wrong in Liz's life.

God is preparing her for a work that only

she could do because she suffered from addiction from 16 years old.

She was addicted to alcohol from the very beginning, so she went through all those

processes, and then in her fifties, her late teen's son committed suicide because

of video game, and because of Liz's life experience and her work experience

in technology, she was able to found a ministry called Online Gamers Anonymous,

which helps people that are addicted to video games recover, and her story

is now in the book we just finished.

It's an amazing story, and it's assembled like a puzzle.

In fact, the front covers of a stack of puzzle pieces.

That sounds like something I would want to assemble myself.

She is Roman Catholic to almost all the experience.

At the very end, after the ministry is founded, she starts to see success.

She actually comes to Christ, she becomes a Christian.

It's kind of an amazing story, and her point and mine in working with her is

God's hand was there from the beginning.

Although you couldn't see where he was going, He knew where he was going,

and your life is shaped that way.

Now, my presbyterianism is coming out now.

Don't worry, I'm not judging you.

Oh, I'm just saying that, you know that God is in control.

When the news of my son's death came to me, I went through that Job

run to God or flee from God, and everyone has to make that

decision ultimately, because that's going to determine your eternal destiny.

I think that's so important because we do have two choices.

Yes.

We could either accept it for what it is, meaning that, "Yeah, I'm going

to live with this the rest of my life.

I'm not going to take any action with it, but I'm going to have to take a

big step back and let this consume me", or, "I can do something about it.

I can take it like a bull by the horns and know that I can create some value

from it", and you've done that, Charlie, you've even proven that even with this

conversation that we've been having, which leads me to this question, which

is going to be my final question as we're getting closer to the end of time here.

You have lived a very rich career, not only in the professional realm for 33

years within the chemical industry, but also being able to teach, being able

to be an author, to be a speaker, to go through all these life's obstacles

with your wife Terry, your daughter Melanie, the five grandchildren

that you have, even losing Keith.

What would you say has been the most defining moment in your life and why?

The most defining moment in my life is in Asheville, North Carolina on

Saturday, March 20th, when I got down on my knees and I said in my heart, "God,

if you're real, I surrender", because that defines everything that comes after.

My wife would do it three months later and God would take a marriage

that was absolutely going to fail and put it back together.

That's the one of the most amazing things.

We still have conflict.

That's not surprising.

Anyone that's married knows that, knows that story, but

that's the most defining moment.

Now, one of the things that I share when I went to, at my

age now, is the bucket list.

I have only one thing left on my bucket list.

It's one thing I haven't done that I still want to do and I probably won't ever get

to do it, and that's hot air balloon.

I've jumped out of an airplane.

I've done the scuba diving.

I've done all the stuff in those areas, but I've not done that, and that's the

one thing that's still on my bucket list.

All right, listeners, listen up.

Charlie has one last item on his bucket list.

Let's get him on a hot air balloon ride so that he can cross that off finally.

I know there has to be somebody that's listening to this that's

going to help you, Charlie.

That's my promise.

I'd love to do that.

I'd love to do that.

Charlie, I want to give you-

I know my wife will go though.

No, no.

We won't say anything.

It just stays between you and I and, okay, my listeners.

We're good.

Charlie, I want to give you a few moments.

How can we reach out to you and also find all these incredible books that you

have written, and even to maybe schedule some time with you if they want to

learn a little bit more about you too?

Okay.

Sure.

The easiest way to do it is to go to my website.

It's called sixdaycreation.com.

It's all one word, sixdaycreation.com.

All my books are listed there and all the books I published for other authors.

Everything is there.

You just go through it and look for whatever you want.

Search the site.

The site is very rich.

It has all my YouTube, but, I've got about 40 items on YouTube,

visual things from my seminars.

It has a bunch of responses to questions, so my books that answer questions too.

I blog for three years.

That's in the book.

I mean, there's all kinds of stuff out there to look at, but if someone has

a question, okay, the best thing to do is to contact me directly by email

and that's Charlie@sixdaycreation.com.

It's CHARLIE Charlie.

Awesome, and I'll make sure, I'll put all that in the show notes so

that anybody wants to access the website or even wants to email you directly,

I'll make sure that they can do that.

I deal with everyone, okay?

I mean, I have atheists coming to me all the time on, in the old days I don't do

it anymore because I don't do a lot of promotion anymore, but, I had 'em coming

all the time and always frustrated him.

Open invitation for everybody.

Charlie, thank you for speaking from the heart with us today, and my heart goes

out to you even after all these years knowing about Keith's passing, and I

just want you to know that this episode's dedicated to him and all the things

that he has gone through, knowing that there's people out there that might be

struggling, but there is hope and you have given that hope, and especially with our

conversation today, so thank you so much.

Thank you, Josh.

It's been a pleasure.

This was a very insightful interview with Charlie, and I've gotten

to know him over the last several years, and especially the realm of Toastmasters

and even being able to learn a lot about what he's been able to do in the realm

of being an author was something that I followed very lightly, but after having

some of the questions answered that I did, it was really a great surprise to

me about not only the things that he's been doing throughout his retirement,

which has spanned amongst a longer career than even other things that he's done,

but it's also been a reminder for me that we're never done with the work that we

can potentially do, no matter what kinds of things stand in our way, or things

that we think that we are done with and we need to continue to do in another

way, or we reinvent ourselves completely, and Charlie was one of those individuals

that I didn't even get a chance to talk to him about even his 33 years in which

he had a professional career, because the second career, the 14th career,

in other words, that he has been able to have, has been something that has

been really interesting to just digest.

There are a lot of things that when I listened to Charlie's story, I had to

take a step back from the microphone and even pause to think about what I wanted

to truly say, because Charlie's life has been one of those lives in which, I feel

even at my young age, I continue to work through, and I continue to try to develop

value, not only for myself, but even for the people that are around me: my friends,

my family, even my coworkers that I have at my full-time job, along with the people

that I get to interact with, with Your Speaking Voice, and the biggest thing

that I could think of when I was pondering about this was just about Keith's passing.

We often don't know what somebody is going through, especially

when we are living our own lives.

We're thinking that especially somebody that's older and going through some of

the things that that they're processing in their lives are something of value

for themselves that we don't need to necessarily step in, and usually that

is the thought process that we have, especially when it comes to family, that

they are doing something for themselves.

They are taking care of the business.

They are going through things that we often don't want to lean on

them for, because we know that they are going through a lot of things,

especially with raising a family.

Keeps passing reminds me a little bit of the choices that I could have

made three years ago in my own life.

There was a lot of things even up in the air back then as to how the content of

my character was going to be evaluated amongst a lot of different people.

I freely have admitted in previous episodes about my own

struggles, my own setbacks, my own things that have been barriers.

Keith's story, when Charlie was talking about it, reminded me so much

of the things that stood in my way.

No, it wasn't drugs.

No, it wasn't things that were happening in my own life that were

creating those disconnections.

I did have problems with messing around with other people.

I did have problems with feeling like I was worthy.

I did have problems with living with the ghosts of my past, standing

around me, ridiculing me, thinking that I would never be good enough.

Something clicked with me when Charlie said that he was saved back in the 1970s,

in which he was talking about what that experience was, especially as Terry, his

wife, was commenting on the ways in which Charlie could make his own mark in this

world, and I have to say that we all write our sheets of music, and if you caught on

to what Charlie was saying about even some of the things that he was writing about

and incorporating some of that music as it relates to those various passages of time,

I feel that we all have our own sheet of music that we are composing for ourselves.

Are some of the tunes out of tune?

Yes.

Are some of the lyrics that we write up not make any sense whatsoever?

Yes.

Do we always have to go back and make sure that we have a seamless

composition in which we can create value for each other and for ourselves?

Yes.

The biggest commonality in all of that is the ability to say, "This is mine.

This is my opportunity.", and I know that for many of us,

maybe you're not religious.

Maybe you're going through the same process Charlie did before he found

Christianity, or maybe whatever religion of choice that you have, but we all

find something that we can provide that support, and being that I'm an agnostic

myself, going through some of those processes and thinking about what people

can help me to become if I just believe and put trust in that higher power, I know

that sometimes it can be very tough, but when I work with my clients, I don't ever

assume, and I don't want to assume either.

The reason for all of that is because we all come from different walks of life.

We all have different pieces of music that we're putting together.

In other words, we are assembling that puzzle of life in front of us with the

millions of pieces that often have to be combined into other pieces so that

we're able to create that wonderful picture that is on the front of the box,

but sometimes that box that we often think that we can look at is not there.

It's gone.

I think Charlie had that experience when Keith passed away, but he found something

that gave me hope in my own life when it came to dealing with even the things

that I have lost, and that is to bring awareness to be able to start something

that you can truly believe in and that there is redemption through sin, through

whatever vice that you've had, or even the things that you're doing right now,

you can find a way in which to overcome.

When I hit stop on the recording, Charlie and I talked a bit more about what some

of the things are in his book, Suicide's Aftermath, and without getting into

more detail, because I encourage all of you to go pick up that book, and I

said to him, "I would myself," because I was really interested in learning

more about the various stories that he has and the various things that he

wrote about, he mentioned a story about someone in the book that sometimes

even when you have help, sometimes when that help is on the way, sometimes

even then, that can be too late.

It's never too late though.

You have to find it in your heart.

You have to find it in the strength of the things that

you do to keep pushing forward.

It's sometimes not the easiest path to walk on, and I know that for

many of us, we want to give up.

There isn't a time, time again in which I wanted to give up in my own life, maybe

even give up on some of the things that I have been working on, even on a personal

and professional level, but there's always been something deep inside of me that

has told me, "Joshua, you can do this.

Don't quit."

I don't know what that voice sounds like for you, and I don't know what that is

that's in the back of your mind that's always pushing you and persevering you.

I don't know what your motivation might be, but I know this much: whenever we

have the ability to make apples into apple pie, whenever we're able to make

grapes into wine, whenever we are able to make hops and barley into beer, and

all the different things that we have on this Earth, it all takes time to

make that final product of ourselves.

It doesn't happen overnight.

It doesn't happen the next day after that.

It takes a process in which you can be whatever you want to be in your first

iteration of your life, but it's never too late to go back to another part of

your life, even if there's 14 tries to do it and counting, and I think Charlie

has reminded all of us that no matter what it is, alcohol, sex, drugs, whatever

the things are that are throwing you down into that depressive state, you

know that you have it inside of you, and I know that there will be people

waiting for you, just like me, on the other side, extending their hand, ready

to help you no matter where you go, because in this world, there is hope.

Thanks for listening to episode 22 of Speaking From the Heart,

and I look forward to hearing from your heart very soon.

Thanks for listening.

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