Conversations That Matter

Episode 109 - Triumphs of the Human Spirit with Lisa Jo Barr

Amber Howard Season 5 Episode 6

When life throws curveballs, some strike out, while others, like Lisa Jo Barr, knock it out of the park. Her incredible saga unfolds in our latest episode, riveting listeners with tales of surviving domestic violence and addiction, and transforming those battles into a legacy of hope and healing. Lisa Jo's openness about her escape into foster care, her struggles with mental health, and the power of writing and speaking her truth, serves as a beacon for anyone seeking to turn their darkest times into a source of light for themselves and others.

Embark on a moving journey of self-discovery alongside Lisa Jo as she recounts her pivotal experiences—from a transformative encounter at a Buddhist temple to her profound work with the Keras Community. The candid discussion of her battles with complex PTSD and bipolar disorder underscores the importance of laughter, connection, and service in the healing process. Listeners are sure to find solace and inspiration in her approach to coaching and entrepreneurship, which radiates with the joy of helping others while navigating personal recovery.

Wrapping up the episode, we take heart in the small victories that pave the way for monumental change. Lisa Jo's candid advice on cultivating self-love and gratitude reminds us all of the courage it takes to be vulnerable and the tremendous impact of embracing one's own narrative. This session is a heartfelt ode to the strength found in our shared humanity and the collective journey towards a deeper connection with the divine and each other. Tune in for a story that doesn't just inspire—it transforms.

Connect with Lisa Jo at the following links:

Company: Lisa Jo Barr, INK. LLC
Website: https://lisajobarr.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/helltohappiness
Twitter: @bylisajobarr
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-jo-barr-41b63914/
Email: jetsetlisa@msn.com
Services: lisajobarr.com/helltohappiness

If you enjoy the show, please share with your connections, and leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform. If you want to connect with Amber to be a guest on the show or for any other reason reach out at info@amberhowardinc.com!

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Conversations that Matter with your host, amber Howard. Each week, amber dances, in conversation with inspirational leaders, out to make a difference for what matters most to people. She brings you incredible guests who share their real-life experience of being a leader and what it looks like to live a truly created life of service to others. And now here's your host.

Speaker 2:

Welcome back everyone. Welcome back to Conversations that Matter. It is my absolute pleasure today to have on the show Lisa Jo Barr. Lisa is a published author, a mentor coach, an AOP peer specialist and professional speaker. Lisa Jo has a PhD in the School of Hardenaxa. She likes to say not only has she survived childhood violence and life-threatening addictions to sex and cocaine, but she's also learned how to manage the severe mental conditions of bipolar 1 and complex PTSD. I should slow down my speaking. Ptsd.

Speaker 1:

PTSD yes, that's a tough one.

Speaker 2:

As a result of her personal experiences with addiction and mental illness, she is on a mission to help others living with the same challenges and to offer support and guidance so that they can live a life they love. It's such a privilege to have you here with me today, Lisa Jo.

Speaker 3:

Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, really good, we jump right in on the show and we jump right in with giving you an opportunity. It sounds like you've had quite an extraordinary life and really have taken all of the pain and trauma that you've experienced and turned it into something beautiful and positive. So I would love to hear what's the journey been like for you to get to where you are today?

Speaker 3:

I grew up in a household that was. I dealt with a lot of violence. My father was a rageaholic. My mother was a battered housewife. Basically, I was the black sheep of the family. It was me, my brother and my mother and father. So the four of us lived under the same roof for um, off and on, until I was 18. When I was 14 years old, I ran away from home. I was into the new wave and then I went punk, rock and gothic, and a boyfriend that I met at an all-aged nightclub called After the Fox helped me run away. He was 19. I was 14. And my father found me in downtown Denver smoking a clove cigarette, waiting for the 16th Street Mall shuttle bus. He dragged me to his car. We started driving to his house their house, my house. He pulled over. He was so angry and just started beating on me on my arm. I was in the passenger side. He went to his house, um, and he was so livid he said I'm going to kill you. And that's when I called the cops.

Speaker 3:

The cops came, they saw the black and blue bruises up and down my arm. They took me out of that household. I spent time in foster care. My father fought for me. He, my father, loved me. He was a very sick man. He just wanted to control everything and in his eyes I was out of control. So he won me back without and he got out of all forms of therapy. He didn't believe in therapy, he himself. I have bipolar one. I believe he had bipolar two, which any kind of bipolar, if it's untreated, can cause a person to rage out. And he raised out and he had periods where he would be hypomanic, which means he would um, he would have this high energy and this kindness behind it. And once he bought me we went. We'd go shopping together for for my wardrobe, and one time he bought me this shirt. You know we'd go and he would talk to.

Speaker 3:

He was a talker, he would talk to the salespeople and try and get a deal, and that was. He loved to do that, and once he bought me this shirt that I loved. So a couple of days later, at like 10 o'clock at night, he showed up at my house with five of those shirts and different colors, and that was his manic episode. That's what. And his rage, I, uh, I then well, I'm going to jump around a little bit.

Speaker 3:

Years later, I became involved with the 12 step program. The first group that I went into, a sex addicts, anonymous, and I was out of control. I've worked the 12 steps and many different programs. The ninth step is where you give your amends and I've worked very hard to see. One of the aspects is finding your part in it. Well, before I was 18, none of it was my part because I was underage, I was a kid, but as an adult I blame my father for everything wrong in my life, everything. He. I gave him an amend at a park bench in Littleton, colorado, and that was the day we became friends. It was a miracle and absolute. It was. It was higher power, god, who I call God all the way. So his last seven years, the last seven years of his life, uh, we were friends. I still had to draw strong boundaries, but um there was no resentment and no regret when he died. It was beautiful.

Speaker 3:

He died of both cancer, which sucks. But so I've struggled with mental illness, um, the bipolar one. I've had severe, complex PTSD from my upbringing and then I was sexually assaulted, um, as a kid and as an adult. Um, I've always been a writer and I've always been real gifted, but I never knew it because I was always put down in my parents' house. But I've been writing since I learned how to write in first grade or whatever, with the big chief pads and the pencils. And you remember that, yeah, yeah. So I wrote my first little poetry book when I was 12 years old. I've journaled ever since.

Speaker 3:

I've been a freelance writer for magazines and newspapers around the world. I had a couple of columns. One was called Student of Life, the other one which was basically personal and professional growth, and the other one was called the World is my Oyster. I worked for 14 years for United Airlines. Another dream of mine came true. I always wanted to go to the other side of the world and it was the best benefit in all my entire life being able to hitchhike airplanes, get on, stand by and over the water. I've been a passenger in the economy class once. All the other trips which I had, plenty of them business and first class all the way, baby.

Speaker 2:

No, that's awesome. I also used to work in aviation, so we have a couple of things in common. So, given all of the things and I don't wanna brush over them or make them, diminish them in any way but clearly you've been through significant trauma and pain in your life, and Lisa Joe, and yet here you are. You're coaching people, you're writing, you've authored a new book recently that we're gonna talk about, you mentor people and you do all of these things to try and support people who are dealing with. What was the turning point for you? How did you go from what can be perhaps seen as self-destructive behaviors or acting out that trauma or whatever however you wanna language it? Never any judgment in any of it for me, but was there a moment or what were some of the steps that you took to turn your life around and start creating something new?

Speaker 3:

I have been on a mission since I was 13 years old to find out who I am. I studied metaphysics. I found God. God spoke to me the first time at a temple Buddhist temple in Bangkok, when I was waiting for a train up to Chiang Mai. God spoke to me and told me I've been here all along for you and I started crying so hard and God told me I want you to go home and get out of those metaphysical groups which some people call cults. I was involved with that, so I went home and I did that. So I've had divine guidance.

Speaker 3:

And there's a place called Keras Community here in Denver. It's a residential community for people who experience severe mental health and that place changed my life. That place produces miracles. Five years after I came out of that experience, I got on the board of directors there as the secretary. I got a job at the Colorado Quitline as doing intakes for people quitting smoking, which led me to working at a mental health center as an adult outpatient peer specialist, which I'm still working there. And I'm also an entrepreneur. I do coaching at my coaching practice called Health to Happiness, and basically what I do is I help those in recovery create and implement value-driven success stories.

Speaker 3:

So one of the gifts that I've been given is the gift of inspiration and understanding, mixed in with a sense of humor and a very conversational, friendly demeanor. People I really connect strongly with people in and outside of my work. Where, wherever I go, I make the effort to connect with people, whether it's at Starbucks, saying, oh, today is free for me, ha ha ha. It gives them a little bit of laughter.

Speaker 3:

Whatever it is Pain for the person behind me, pain picking up the tab for whatever they ordered, just bringing joy and light into this world. It's so important I stay away from the news I have. Well, I take that back. I have a little blurb that gets sent to me called inside brief or some of the I don't know, I forget what it is inside daily brief. It's bipartisan, I get the headlines and that's all I need. I know that people are really messed up mentally because of the footage of the news media and they're traumatized. People were traumatized because of COVID. They isolated themselves and I know this based on my own experience.

Speaker 3:

When I was 30 years old, married to an alcoholic, I discovered that I had complex PTSD and my journey with that is. I was working at United Airlines. I took a walk on a break around a park that had a bunch of kiddos playing football and right ahead of me was a man beating the shit out of his son or another kid, I don't know. I went back to work and I acted like it seemed like nothing was wrong with me. The next day I was frozen. I was scared. I didn't work for three and a half months. I felt like I didn't want to show my face to the world and all of the memories and all of that imprinting of emotional imprinting came back to me and I was in some crisis groups and how to deal with crisis. I remember that was even triggering too much for me and I was running down the hall crying and it's been all been part of my journey though all of this, the bipolar.

Speaker 3:

I've had psychotic manic episodes in my life where I have lost everything except for my journals. Twice, when I lived in Arizona when I was 20, I went on vacation to San Francisco to visit a friend, a couple friends. There I had my first psychotic manic episode and I was hanging out in a drug-infested neighborhood called Haydashbury. I was doing LSD, I wasn't. I didn't sleep for like 12 days or something. I wasn't on math, I was just on my own psychotic, chemically imbalanced brain and I left everything I brought with me. I put it in a was in a grocery cart. I pushed out into the middle of the road, I had sex with a stranger 10 feet from traffic in the Golden Gate Park the park that's right next to traffic and I lost it. I lost my mind. I don't remember parts of it, the reason I got hospitalized.

Speaker 3:

That first time is I took a cab to my friend's house in Berkeley and I didn't have any money to pay the cab fare. The cabbie called the cops. The cops came, they were on their way to the police station. They arrested me and as soon as I opened my mouth and started talking about the thought police and the stat and the other, they turned around and took me to the mental health, the mental hospital. Instead. They thought I was schizophrenic. They didn't diagnose me. They were giving me medication for a condition I didn't have until I went to. But my parents flew out from Denver, took me back to Colorado and a doctor named Mark Trubowitz. He was my first doctor, psychiatrist. He diagnosed me properly and I got treated correctly and I hated the meds. I wanted to prove to myself in the world that I wasn't crazy. In my early twenties I kept getting off the meds because I internalized the stigma the stigma that society puts on everybody that mental health is a weakness, that it's shaming, that we're broken, that we're crazy, we're violent, all of that. I didn't want to be any of that. So I'd get off my medication and within four or five months I have another psychosis and end up in the hospital.

Speaker 3:

I've always been a food addict, a compulsive overeater, since I was a little girl. I also had this thing called love addiction, where I would become obsessed with men and contact them frequently, couldn't get them out of my mind. The first time that happened was in first grade and it really came into play when that 19-year-old helped my 14-year-old move away or run away. Rather, I'm in treatment for both of those. I believe in the 12-step program.

Speaker 3:

My sex addiction came into play, really flourished when United Airlines shut down my office in Denver and moved me to Chicago. I didn't know a single soul in Chicago when I moved there, but right before I moved I discovered the internet. I discovered I could go on Craigslist and post an ad to hook up with a man and it worked and it was good sex. So I was hooked. So I did that. When I got to Chicago they put me up in a nice Marriott and I was sleeping around with strangers. I immediately went to India to do a work project. I started doing it there. I came back, I was out of control and one morning before I went to work, something came to me. I believe it was God.

Speaker 3:

It flashed in my mind a sign that said Sex Attics Anonymous and I can swear that I saw a sign like that in Denver and my friend said look at that. And I said Sex Attics Anonymous, who'd want to be that? But whatever sign that I saw or maybe I imagined it I got on the website. I looked up a meeting, I wrote it down. I wrote down the address. I was in a state in my pocket for three and a half weeks. I was scared.

Speaker 3:

I didn't want to go. I didn't know what to expect. I had heard the 12 step program was like a cult, a secret society. So I finally went one winter night. It was at a church. I walked up the stairs, I was shaking, I thought it was going to fall and so I sat down. And I sat down very briefly and I walked in this room and there were 30 men and me. It was in a gay neighborhood, a bunch of gay men and straight men also. I sat down as soon as the first person shared that these are my people are not alone I found my tribe.

Speaker 2:

That is so important, right Like that experience of because and you know this is not my creation, this comes from the work of Brunei Brown but this idea about shame and shame being such that you know, we have such a need to connect and belong as human beings and shame would tell us that there's something about us, if known by other people would mean that we don't get to connect and belong, so it's so isolating, right Like that. Anything that we have shame around and society has shame around and we have these networks of conversations like just serves to have us feel and have that experience of being so isolated and alone. I remember feeling that as a young mother, and so like, finding other people who've had that shared experience that you can connect with is just so vital to being able to, you know, move forward in creating something different in your life.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. You're very wise, amber. You just summed it right up, you hit the nail on the head.

Speaker 3:

So important, just around yourself with other people who have the same lived experience, because and that's what 12 step programs are all about- and you start loving and caring for people, then that reflects back to you and you start loving and caring for your son, and that's what that Keras community gave me, too, was. I was living with 17 other people who had severe mental health, and I started loving these people, the ones I didn't like. I love them, and it wrapped off on me to myself Just a miracle, just a miracle.

Speaker 2:

It's so great that you say that. I think oftentimes what we have struggled with in other people is sometimes a mirror reflection of what it is that we're struggling with within ourselves. So I think that's always a great access. When I'm getting triggered by someone or I'm finding myself overwhelmed or frustrated by someone else's behavior, it's like where is that? Where is that over here, where I am? Why can't I be with that? And I think that is very powerful.

Speaker 2:

You talk about a lot the importance of taking baby steps and I think this is huge. And you use the imagery and some of your social content where it's like there's these two ladders and one ladder has a lot of little steps and another ladder has less steps and less rungs on the ladder, thus kind of harder to get from one step to the next. How important has it been for you, with all of the things that you've dealt with and overcome, in having that frame that it's just about keeping taking action and small steps? How has that contributed to your ability to be able to overcome all of the things that you've been through?

Speaker 3:

Amber, it's been vital. I teach it in my coaching practice Baby steps, baby steps, baby steps. That's where it's at. You can't go from zero to 60 and half a second, or at least I can't, I've tried. But if you take one small step toward your goal or your destination, or even if that destination means taking better care of yourself, you've got something to build on the momentum. If you want to get the momentum going. Sometimes if I say, okay, I want to take better care of myself or I want to write a book, and you think of the whole oh my gosh, how do I even wrap my head around this? And then you say, fuck it, pardon, my French. You can edit that out if you need to.

Speaker 2:

I'll just put the explicit warning on this one. It's all good, no worries.

Speaker 3:

Okay, I'm not going to wrap this. I'm not going to do it because it's too hard. But when you start making baby step goals and you take those baby steps, you're building momentum and you're building confidence that you can keep going. And that's how I got to know myself. It was baby steps, I didn't know it at the time and that has been the key to my growth, of getting to know who I am, of getting to the point where I love myself and getting to the point where I'm doing what I love Absolutely love what I do with my coaching practice held to happiness, with my work at the mental health center, with my writing. And I just wrote a book here called the Pit of Despair how God, prayer and the Twelve Steps Saved my Life from Addiction. That was baby steps.

Speaker 3:

I tried so hard to wrap my head around this writing a book because it's been a dream since I was a little girl and my father told me he gave me a bunch of shitty messages to cling onto and one of them was you're going to starve in a gutter even if you try to become a writer. Lisa Jo, your listeners, don't tell your kids that, please, because that prevented me from even approaching editors. I didn't start freelance writing until I was 31, 32. And I flourished at that. I'm a good writer, gosh, darn it. If you are, it's your work.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that messaging just. I finally said okay, I'm going to feel the pain of this and I'm going to do it anyway.

Speaker 3:

Feel the fear and do it anyway. And I'm going to show up and I'm going to suit up and show up for my journaling. I'm going to write one page, or I'm going to write one sentence or one word. If I write that one sentence, I've met my goal. If I make a paragraph or a page or a chapter, that's a cherry on top of the cake, that's bonus material and that makes me, that gives me confidence, that gives me good feelings about myself and my abilities and it just grows. It just exponentially grows and the more momentum you have. Just think of a snowball at the top of a mountain and it's tiny but it's going down the mountain, getting bigger and it gets faster once it gets bigger and you grow even faster by starting off with small steps.

Speaker 2:

I think you've used the word a couple of times. You know you've talked about knowing and confidence, and I think that is so crucial because the more action you take and the more successes that you see, even if they're small, it doesn't matter whether they're, you know, big or small. This doesn't exist in real. You know. This is, this is a kind of big and small is created in the language. It doesn't exist in reality, right In terms of being able to create and manifest the things that you want in life.

Speaker 2:

But that faith in oneself that you get by failing, getting up, going through rough circumstances, overcoming them, being creative, being innovative, finding solutions, you know being in despair and not knowing how to, whatever it is, you know, put that next food on plate, on the food on the table or pay your rent. You know I had, after I left my husband when I was 20 years old. You know literally $60 in my pocket with two kids to feed and no job, and it's like, but the more you go things through like that in life and come out the other side, it's like you develop this deep sense of knowing that, no matter what life throws at you and no matter what challenges it, you know that you go through that you're going to be okay and I think, as we, you know, one of the biggest milestones that I kind of passed over the last few years is really falling in love with myself, because that was missing for a long time. And inside of that, you know being worthy of receiving and asking for help, and like not having to try and manage everything on my own, and then the journey just becomes easier and easier as you allow more of that energy. You know you put out all of this energy into the world.

Speaker 2:

A lot of us do, right, people who've gone through difficult times or have low self-esteem or were beaten, you know, like beaten down either, whether it's physically or verbally, emotionally. You know we become people who aren't good enough and you know, don't love ourselves, and so then we develop ways of coping in the world like that, and I think, the more you know, my guidance to anyone that I work with or come across in life is like start the work of learning to love yourself, because that transforms everything. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

I agree. 100 billion, trillion, gazillion percent. It has to start with you. You can't truly love another person until you love yourself.

Speaker 3:

In a lot of ways, and what I did in order for my process of growing, getting to know myself and discovering love for myself was I used my life as an experiment. I looked at my life as a great experiment. I would study things. Self-love what the fuck is that? I'm going to study it. I'm going to write, read books, I'm going to write about it. I'm going to underline, I'm going to transfer a sentence from the book that inspired me onto my journal. When you write it down, it imprints onto your brain and I remember those things and it's baby steps also. So, to your audience, if you struggle with self-love or confidence or setting boundaries or whatever, start looking at your life as an experiment. Study, talk to people who are where you want to be. That's a great way to get a mentor too. Have fun with it, even in your suffering. Have fun with gaining knowledge. That's going to help you Be a student of life. That was another one of my columns. Student of life, that's a great concept.

Speaker 1:

I didn't make it up.

Speaker 3:

I didn't make it up, but that's what I can describe my life, how the process has been, and I'm really verbalizing that right now for the first time. So thank you, Amber, for this outlet for me to share my story. You're so welcome.

Speaker 2:

It is, it absolutely is.

Speaker 2:

And you said something you said I didn't create it, but anyone who does this work with any kind of authenticity has to acknowledge that it's giant standing on the shoulders of giants.

Speaker 2:

We didn't create any of this stuff, but we are bringing our unique expression to it and our authentic sharing.

Speaker 2:

Really, like I was just thinking earlier, you share so raw, like your sharing is so raw and authentic and vulnerable about the things that you've done and the experiences that you had, and that takes a crap ton of courage to be able to just put yourself out there and not really care about what people might say or how they may judge you. Yeah, I'm just really moved, you know again, by your courage, lisa Joe, to share yourself in the way that you have and not worry, as I was saying, not worrying about how people might judge you or what they might think about you, but just I think you know the difference that your story makes for people who might not feel like they have their own voice yet or might not feel like they have anyone to speak for them. So I really just want to take a moment and acknowledge you for being the kind of person that puts yourself out there in that way, to be a voice and to be someone who stands for others.

Speaker 3:

Thank you so much for that. It didn't come overnight. I used to care so much what people thought and I felt so much shame, that same shame that Breine Brown talks about. I saw her vulnerability Ted Talk years and years ago and was blown away, because I've moved from the shame into wholeheartedness and connection and if you help and you never know if you help one person by sharing your story you've done your job right.

Speaker 3:

We're here on earth to help each other. I believe that, and you can rest on the fact that your story potentially can help the next person. Take that risk. Share it Never know.

Speaker 2:

And you talk about that right, and this is like you know, I was raised with the concept of servant leadership and my mom and you know she had a really hard journey. But I think there's something about this idea of getting up to something bigger than yourself and sometimes, when we are in not the best of place, by contributing to other people or being of service or helping others, it can provide us a motivation in our life. You know, ideally everyone would love themselves so much that they would be able to create anything that they wanted in their life, just because they're worthy and they want it and they love themselves and they're going to go do it. But I think for a lot of people, you're in varying, varying, different places when it comes to how worthy you are, and I think it's an ongoing evolution as we grow in life, and so helping, helping others helps you is something I know you say. I think that can be a really powerful access to being able to get outside of your own way.

Speaker 3:

Yes, and if you can't share your story yet, volunteer somewhere. Help the next person, contribute to your community. You can do that without my rawness, which did not come overnight. It took work for me to get to where I'm at. This is not a you know zero to 60 second race, car race or whatever journey it's been over time. I'm 53 now. I know I look like I'm 35.

Speaker 2:

I know I was going to say Good genes.

Speaker 3:

One of my, one of my uh, just a sidebar one of my clients who's 20 years old. I said how old do you think I am? And she said 37. And I said I, I joked around. I said no 36. She goes oh, I was close, that was just last week, so I love that was such a great compliment.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome. So talk to me a little bit. I was going to say tell me a little bit more about your book. You know, I know that it's it Barnes and Noble, but you know, tell us more about what the book's about in. I know you said you've been wanting to write it since you were young.

Speaker 3:

Here it is again. The cover is amazing. It was done by the art department at the publisher Morgan James publishing house, which I can't say enough good things about them. They are so good to their authors. Wow, it's led by David Hancock, who's written who's has this hand, and he's an author too.

Speaker 3:

Anyway, my book comes out of a night where I woke up at like two o'clock in the morning. I slept, walked to my file cabinet. I took out a file that said prayers. I hand wrote a bunch of prayers that I would share with my sponsor for two or three years no, probably more than that. And God said count the prayers. So I counted and there were 85 of them that I had put in this file. And God told me I can hear God's voice, which you know. Some people say, oh, that's crazy. I'm gifted like that. I'm grateful. I don't know he's listening to him, but anyway, I counted out the prayers that were 85 of them and God told me my got my instinct. God deep inside of me said see your, your first book's already written. And so it was a journey from that to actually telling my story and I developed these prayers that I I wrote and I elaborate it on and originally it was going to be a prayer book.

Speaker 3:

It was about 18,000 words and Morgan James was interested. I wrote out a nonfiction book proposal, handed it over to an acquisition editor and he told me he says congratulations, we're interested. And then we got to talking and he gave me the best advice. He said normally. He said normally we don't publish something that's 18,000 words, we publish something that's 200 pages, which is 60,000 words. And the reason being is because this, when the book is like this and a bookshelf, people need to be able to read that and if it's too small they can't read it. So you want to have a thick book.

Speaker 3:

And it's for presentation and a bookstore. So I took that and I revamped and revised and spent the next four months turning it into my memoir, my addiction story with my prayers there's probably about at least 20 of them weaved throughout the the chapters and it's very much about me and God and my faith and my prayer life. I'm a devout Christian. I didn't always used to be. I was in a metaphysics Then when I discovered God at a Buddhist temple. I believed in God at that point and I was into some New Age stuff and it is what it is. There's no judgment on my part, because that's how your power to some people. To me it's all the same. God, jesus, buddha, allah, the source, universe, energy, mother Earth they're fancy words for the same thing. You know our creator, what's created us in this beautiful, wonderful world we live in and universe.

Speaker 2:

Well, it sounds like that New Age journey you went on got you to that Buddhist temple. You probably wouldn't have been at a Buddhist temple in Thailand if you didn't have the New Age journey right, so it got you to whatever that next expression of your faith and your. You know your relationship with the divine, which I think is beautiful. Lisa Jo, it has been an absolute pleasure talking to you and listening to you share about your incredible and and really you said the word earlier inspirational journey. Thank you so much for the work that you do and the contribution you are to so many, and just for coming on the show and sharing yourself so openly with with me and with my audience. I really do appreciate it.

Speaker 3:

Thank you and your listeners can get in touch with me at Lisa Jo Barr at gmailcom, l I S A J O B A R R at gmail, or go to my website. Lisa Jo barcom has all my information on it, some fun writing, some blogs, real time diaries and all the information for my coaching, and there's a complimentary 20 minute coaching session. I offer to see if we could work, to see if it's a good fit for you. So I encourage your, your readers, to to get in touch.

Speaker 2:

Wow, really great. All of that information will be available in the show notes for everyone listening to this conversation. Again, Lisa Jo, thank you, and for everyone listening. Thank you so much for joining us for this week's episode of the show. I love you and I'll talk to you next week.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much for joining us for this week's episode. For more information on the show and our extraordinary guests, check out conversations that matter podcastcom.

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