← Religion on the Mind
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome back to Religion on the Mind. I am your host, Dr. Dan Koch. I'm a licensed therapist. I was raised in California on punk rock and evangelicalism. Now I live in Washington. I see clients I specialize in. In religious issues. And I host this podcast. This podcast attempts to cover psychology, religion and spirituality with minimal tribalism and maximal, I don't know, intellectual humility, careful thinking, compassion, empathy. I don't know, stuff like that. Brian hall, you're back. What's up, buddy?
- [00:48]
B
It's so good to see your face, even if across the screen.
- [00:52]
A
Yeah, it's been about 18 months since you've been on the show. This is Brian hall, everyone. We will put a link to that episode. It's number 244, one of our still Christian episodes. And although I don't think of this as this is gonna be like a particularly silly episode, I think it's gonna be like you and I make each other laugh a lot. We are real life friends. We've been friends for, as I'm gonna say, for about 13 years now. But we're gonna get into some serious stuff. I think it's gonna be really, really good and interesting. But because Jaffrey and I had the same thought of how to start this conversation, which is silly, I'm gonna start it that way. Cause two heads are better than one. Great minds think alike. So here's where we're starting. Yeah, you can.
- [01:52]
B
Moving to the country. I'm gonna eat a lot of peaches. I'm moving to the country. I'm gonna eat me a lot of peaches. I'm moving to the country. I'm gonna eat a lot of peaches.
- [02:07]
A
That is, of course, the presidents of the United States of America. With peaches. You are. You have moved to the country. Although it is not in any way related to the literal sense of that song, which is eating peaches or the. What I understand to be the widely accepted sexual innuendo, double entendre meaning of that song, which is to be like getting a lot of P word or whatever, or maybe eating a lot of pe. I don't know. I don't really know exactly what they were thinking. That dude then went on to have a very successful children's music career, which is kind of funny to think about in this context. Casper baby pants. Anyway, we are. We are talking about your and Amy's move for your family to rural Oregon from Portland, a city that's been really important to you. We're gonna. We're gonna be talking about that, like, and and you and I have spoken a little bit off mic, and I'm. I'm interested in the fact that that move was in part motivated by exhaustion with culture war issues and political polarization, in part motivated by care for your children who have some special additional needs, motivated by your and your wife's faith. And your own faith is in this kind of, I would say, like a strong phase of reconstruction, which I'm interested to talk about. You know, so multiple reasons for moving. I'm sure we're going to talk about all of those. But just additionally, to motivate why I'm excited to talk with you, like, you are just at the middle of all my every part of my Venn diagram. So you're a recording artist. Last time you were on, we talked about this incredible song you wrote with tents, your band Tense called Hutah, that to this day is like a top 100 song for me. You also were my first producer when I switched to a career in commercial music about 13 years ago. Beginning of our friendship. And we might even talk about death, because on this record that you are currently working on that I'm sure is going to come up, this reconstruction in C major, I think. Is that what it's called? Yeah, yeah. You have a track on there called Grandpa on His Deathbed, and you guessed it, listener. It's like a synth bed and then an audio recording of your dying grandpa about what matters in life. As if we needed that. As if this. As if the chocolate fudge sundae of this episode needed a death cherry on top. We have that as well. So we got all those things to probably get to. I'm really excited. Where should we start?
- [04:53]
B
Oh, my gosh. How are you doing?
- [05:00]
A
I have not moved to the country, but I did move to a much smaller city. You know, we moved from North Seattle, which is a three and a half million person Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, corridor, whatever is three and a half million people. We moved to Bellingham, which is 100,000 people. People ask me about that, and my answer is like, there's literally nothing about being in Bellingham that I like less than I liked being in Seattle. But that's not quite the country. Like, I think it would be harder for me to have moved to a rural area. I'm in like a little liberal college town surrounded by farms and stuff like that and near the water and, you know, it's idyllic in many ways. Why don't we. Let's like you. Let's start here. You didn't just move to the country. You actually moved back to the part of Oregon where you spent how much of your childhood?
- [05:56]
B
Yeah, like from fourth grade through, basically when I got married at 21.
- [06:01]
A
Okay. So really kind of you're more cognizant awareness. Childhood years were spent in this particular part. And so how many people from your childhood still live there? Like. Like, that's an interesting angle.
- [06:15]
B
Yeah, there's a remnant. A lot of the. You know, we went to kind of an alternative church, like many people on this podcast probably did when they were in college. And so there was a lot of music kids. And a lot of us migrated up to Portland. Some of us went back home, some people moved far away. But there is a crew. There's a crew. It's not very big, but Amy's sister lives down there. We were. Oh, man. There's like so much to unpack. So I got to be careful to be somewhat succinct. There's different reasons for each member of the family to move. For the kids. Our older kids, we have three. One's a toddler, the older kids both having special needs. There was this real strong feeling. Amy, like, grew up. She. She comes from a line of, like, gatherers. Both of her parents, really aggressively. They lived in the woods and they really. They would take around business cards and hand them out to people and be like, come stay at my place for free. You can just be there. It's like a safe space. And it was like a really positive part of Amy's upbringing, and she definitely adopted that disposition. And we would try to pull it off in Portland. It was just really hard. You know, everyone's busy. The big thing, I think is just practical, which, you know, like, this is just a practical result of being conservative versus liberal, is like, there's more stay at home moms in the country. You know, there's. It's cheaper in the country, so it's more practical as well. But we just were like, really struck. We would go to, like, adoption foster care groups, and there would be all these neurodiverse kids everywhere. It was like a goldmine of friendship for our kids. And we would, like, trade numbers with people and be like, let's be friends. And then we wouldn't get any hardly, like, meaningful contact back. Just I think people are busy. The kids are in public school. There's so many reasons. So, yeah, it just felt really hard. And at some point we were like, that alone was up against my music career. Like, if you just distill it down, it was like getting the kids. These are weird. Kids who were, they were really struggling in the, in the public school system for totally different reasons. But both of them, we pulled them out and they immediately started blossoming in terms of their studies. And so it became really clear to us that was the right path, but it just wasn't working in the city, so we had to leave.
- [08:33]
A
Let's talk about the kids stuff in general. I'm not gonna ask you for a bunch of details about your two children in particular that have the special needs, but I think there's an interesting tension here that reveals how individual these kinds of choices often need to be. Right? Which is something that, like, as liberals, we're really good on healthcare decisions. Being individual between an individual and their doctor, for instance, maybe that's about abortion or transition or like we're really comfortable with saying, hey, this is a tough call between a physician and their patient. But with something like caring for special needs kids, as liberals, we have a real strong, I mean, I feel this in myself, a sort of default reflex to support public education, to support making sure there is sufficient funding for like every kid who has needs, you know, whether they are poor or like you and I, upper middle class or whatever you want to call it. Right. Have means, don't have means. And so it can be a little harder, I think, for a liberal to, I don't know, full throatedly embrace something like school choice, which has all these political connotations or whatever. Right. And you're not saying we moved to the country because we wanted to vote for charter schools. I understand that's not what you're saying. But you made an individual schooling decision for your family, given specific needs. And I could understand someone thinking, well, aren't there going to be more resources in a city or something like that? You know, maybe one idea would be that out in the country you're like, you're on your own. There's like, you're not going to have the kind of individualized education plans you might have. You're not going to have these sort of urban resources. So I kind of want to hear you, I kind of want to start there. Like, is that your experience on the ground or anything there?
- [10:34]
B
Well, I mean, there is a lot of like, privileged subtext to this. Some of that is a result of my career and some of that is a result of like the social programs that support my son, you know, in particular, who has autism. And he, he, he has a, what we would call a DSP or a psw, a direct support worker. We supplement that role for her. It Wouldn't quite be full time, but she moved with us. Her and her husband moved with us.
- [10:59]
A
Whoa.
- [11:00]
B
Yeah. And so she is continuous. So there's a, there's a, there's circumstances around our being able to move. Yeah, her husband's really into farming, so we're doing like a rent trade. He's helping us like grow vegetables. We're going to try and replace our, our food. It's a whole thing. We started a compound. That's a side sidebar, I guess.
- [11:18]
A
But, but, but to be clear, you're still in the state of Oregon, so if we're still in the state of Oregon, if she had not moved with you, you, I would imagine state funds would still have provided.
- [11:27]
B
That's right. We would have replaced her. A lot of the support we get for schooling comes from Andy. She's incredible.
- [11:33]
A
She's incredible.
- [11:34]
B
She's kind of like a mix between a daughter and a cousin or something, I don't know. Or an aunt. She's family. So. So that's a big thing. But. So it feels like we have a lot of services. But, you know, as I was processing a lot of this, I started thinking about all those services. And yeah, there's, there's so much connectivity in the cities, but all that stuff in the country is replaced by like volunteers and churches and neighbors and you know, like, we have all the neighbors in our new spot. Like they, you kind of are betrothed to one another. You know, you have to get to know each other. And there's so many things about just the, the social systems of, of healthy rural communities that account for a lot of the professional services to some extent. Maybe not like, for, like, in some ways they work better, in other ways they don't work as well. I think another elephant in the room is like, I, I have gone through a type of reconstruction or whatever you want to call it, that's made me not only willing to be around conservatives, but determined to be like completely open hearted around them, to withhold judgment toward them, to not endorse their impulse to gatekeep me in religious circles, to not allow myself to feel alien around them, to be like really present.
- [13:02]
A
Hey, I'm accepting clients for my coaching and consultation practice right now from anywhere in the world. Of course I do therapy, but that is only for clients in Washington State. And coaching and consultation differs from therapy in that there's no direct treatment of mental health symptoms. But that still leaves a lot of stuff that can be done that is still influenced by and informed by my psychological education. And my therapeutic work. Most coaching clients meet with me every other week and I generally assign homework in between sessions to keep progress going. And most of the coaching work ties in some way to religious issues. For instance, navigating personal faith change or faith change in a loved one can have impacts on things as wide ranging as self understanding, values, clarification, career consequences, marriage and family relationships, boundary setting, personal agency and self esteem, determining whether or where to pursue spiritual community again. And you know, a lot of big questions that humans ask have kind of whole cloth answers in our religious systems. This is something Darrell Van Tongren talks about a lot. And when change happens in our faith, some of those questions go from settled to all of a sudden being live like meaning and purpose, like sex, friendship and community, parenting. That's something that comes up with a lot of my clients. Other work that I do is less specifically tied to religion, like discernment around big life decisions or even what type of therapist to look for in your area. Sometimes that's just a single session where we're kind of clarifying what's at stake and, and what you're trying to do. If you're interested in potentially working together as a coaching and consultation client, there is a coaching page@religiononthemind.com that link is always in the show notes. You can also email me directly danclientsmail.com Koch is spelled K O C H. Now let me ask you about that. Cause I share an interest in getting to know and being more comfortable around conservatives. I feel that really strongly, let's say last two, three years, something like that. I felt that growing my political podcast listening is like, I would still say that like the person I agree with the most is Ezra Klein. And I don't listen to him. I don't need to listen to maybe on a particular like, oh, I want to hear his take on this particular like new complex issue. But I know what he's gonna say. I agree with him. I'm an abundance Democrat. Call it that if you want.
- [15:51]
B
Fine.
- [15:52]
A
I'm a moderate abundance Democrat in the modern parlance. I'm more interested in hearing what Jonah Goldberg, David French, Sarah Isger are gonna say from the Dispatch and their podcasts. These sort of center right never trumpers because I don't know what they're going to say. In part I'm like, I'm like an anthropologist a little bit learning the worldview of people who are, you know, 20% of the way to the right of me or you know, if I'm a, If I'm a 40 and 0 is far left. They're a 60, you know, or a 65. It's not a huge difference, but it is, it's different enough that most of the arguments are different. Most of the sort of main values that are kind of being espoused. Like there's difference there. I'm thinking Jonathan Haidt, moral foundations, moral taste buds. Conservatives and liberals have sort of different moral, moral foundations that are more central to them. And I'm finding it like, I'm finding it more interesting to listen to them. I'm finding myself wanting to hang out with people more like that there's a kind of a. And I, you know, I. Some of this might be fantasy in my own mind, but the way that I feel it is like there's a, there's more freedom, there's a less of a, less of a hall monitor kind of vibe going on. Like we gotta check everything before we start having fun. All right, now I'm just kind of blabbering and I'm probably sounding like the most stereotypical white American dude right now, but I'm just expressing that is what I'm noticing in my own life recently.
- [17:32]
B
I feel like, you know, it's sort of the. Being liberal means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And I don't take it lightly that there's people in your audience, for example, and everywhere who. It would be a lot more complicated for them to go to an unaffirming.
- [17:49]
A
For example, church or whatever, trans person or something. For sure. Like there's a whole, there are whole categories that it would just could be hard.
- [17:56]
B
You know, the thing that has motivated a lot of this for me has been staring into my kids eyes. They have really complicated origin stories, a lot to deal with and sort of realizing that the only useful thing I can give them is this sort of like wild, hopeful, kind of like I need to be a challenger to them, but I need to be rooted in like an immense sense of hope for them. And this whole journey for me started. My son's birth dad hung himself like eight years ago. And I slipped into like deep grief. And I'm 42.
- [18:34]
A
So it was. Had you known him personally much?
- [18:37]
B
Yes, yes. Yeah, we had done a number of visits.
- [18:40]
A
Was it like an open adoption? Uh huh. Okay. Yeah. So for people who don't know, standard adoption throughout the years, at least in the States, is like the file and the relationships are quote, closed. And when the child turns 18, they have legal rights to sort of pursue these kinds of things depending on the agency may have different policies, open adoption, which is not the norm, but does happen. My brother was adopted through open adoption. So I have lived experience of that. There is a relationship ongoing between the adoptive family and the biological family, and that can both provide value and benefit and also provide certain risks. And, you know, these are hotly debated within the adoption community. So you guys opted for open adoption with your son, also with your middle child, your daughter?
- [19:31]
B
Yep.
- [19:31]
A
Okay.
- [19:32]
B
So when that happened, you know, it like sent me spiraling into this deep kind of grief that I had never known. And I didn't understand it because it felt kind of displaced. It was like, well, this isn't, you know, this isn't like, I wasn't that close to Levi, and I understand that he's my. My son's birth father. But at some point it became really clear to me that I just had a lot of pain. This wall of pain, you know, that was in part connected to my father and that was like a meaningful starting point. So I joined like a group, a group like therapy thing through a local church and kind of went on a healing journey in that context. And that kind of. I think that kind of like, loosens some enough up that this slow shift started to happen in me that was really rooted in. I have to, like, figure out how to be positive for my kids and the way I've existed in the world for the last 15 years. I've been positive professionally, I've been positive toward my life, but there. Or my wife. But there are these big overreaching issues that are very important to me, very. A big part of my identity that I've sort of put on the back burner and ignored. And when I go there, those things are very negative, you know, and I revert to this, like, whiny 23 year old.
- [20:43]
A
Can you give us an example that you feel comfortable sharing just to. Yeah, I'm feeling a little lost in the abstraction of this.
- [20:49]
B
Oh, impossible, impossible. I mean, so that context around Jaden was really about reconciling with my father, who is a complicated but really wonderful guy. And on a very basic level, I wasn't able to get to any of the good things about him. I was too caught up in the ways he'd hurt me, you know, and it's sort of like, I feel like when you have a lot of active trauma or pain or whatever you want to call it, you. You can't see a thing the way you want to, like the trauma you have it, like, it like, makes it so you can't engage with the thing like you're engaging with some version of it or whatever. It's just not.
- [21:32]
A
I talk about it with clients like, you know, it's like an open wound, or it's like when you have a. If you have, like, a really bad pimple, and it's like, not only does it hurt if you touch Right. On the pimple, it also hurts like, a centimeter around the pimple. And so you just sort of. You kind of don't touch that area because it hurts. Right. So you sort of. You warp your path to go around it. You know, it's basically. It's a form of avoidance because of pain. Yeah.
- [21:59]
B
So the big. The big thing that happened after that was an increasing acknowledgment that I'm hopelessly, irrevocably religious, in spite of my better attempts to shake some of that stuff. It. You know, I spent the first 20 years of my life really fixed on the. The meaning and the work of understanding and interacting with Christianity. And during that time, I just had enough really, really positive experiences that. And I became shaped in a way to where it's almost like, why am I even trying to disengage with this? It's obviously very important to me. And that leaves a double bind, because you hate religious practice, but you love the religion itself. And I don't know. It got hotter and hotter and hotter, and it culminated at some point with my decision to say, I'm going to step into all the. Did that all make sense?
- [22:48]
A
I think so, yeah.
- [22:49]
B
Okay. So at some point, it got hotter and hotter, and it culminated with me saying, I'm going to go into all the most conservative spaces, particularly religious spaces, but any space that's conservative that I would have previously told myself I was too liberal to go to, I will go. And I sort of stepped into this active. I'm going to try to metabolize as much of my pain as I can through exposure share therapy, basically.
- [23:18]
A
Okay, so exposure therapy that you went about yourself without a licensed clinician, or did you involve a therapist?
- [23:24]
B
I did not involve a therapist.
- [23:25]
A
All right. Well, to each their own.
- [23:28]
B
Yeah. Yeah. And it was crazy. I mean, we could get into. I mean, I feel like I need. I owe it to myself to kind of divulge the details of this. I joined a men's morning workout thing. I wouldn't have done that before because it was too exclusive. It's really had an incredibly positive impact on me. You wake up, you. There's something really kind of like you can either look at the middle years as a father as like really a swamp, or you can look at it as like this incredibly difficult, challenging work. And it kind of gives you back what you give to it, I think. You know, and something about waking up at five in the morning and going out into the dark and working out with a bunch of dads was so energizing to me. You know, there's like laughter and dad jokes and it's just, it's not cool. And it was so freeing for me to be a part of that. So that was one thing. I grew up charismatic. And I encountered this one group, this one like men's group, full of these. The average age was probably over 60. Most of the men in the group are African American. They speak to each other very harshly. They will yell at each other and mock each other and legitimately like scorn each other and then laugh. And there's this like childlikeness to how they interact with each other. And it's really very Christian, it's Pentecostal, it's rooted in conservative Christianity. It feels like to me, I don't want to speak for them too much, but it was like there was this moment when I started to think about all the patriarchs in my life that were like a pain in the ass, that were really complicated, that there's more than just my dad, you know, like there's a bunch of them who. People who were willing to say things to me very directly and then they didn't care what I thought. You know, a lot of those people in my life were men. And for a long time I had said those people are oppressors, you know, hall pass, hall monitor, like oppression radar, you know, like ding, ding, ding. And at some point I just thought to myself, I had this moment where I was like, When I was 20, I was vulnerable to these guys. When I was 16, I was vulnerable to these guys. Like they had a lot of power over me and I didn't know how to handle them. But I'm in my 40s now. Maybe my relationship with these people could be different. So I went to a couple groups and in one particular talk about exposure therapy, there was like a 70 year old man in front of me and a 70 year old man next to me. And the 7 year old man in front of me was just screaming at the guy next to me, not quite screaming, yelling at him, telling him he was like full of shit. And like, and they're like really close friends, like super close friends. And I'm like I'm just like in knots, you know.
- [26:15]
A
Okay, these are the over 60 black Pentecostal guys.
- [26:19]
B
Yeah, it's mixed race, but yeah, predominantly. Yeah, culturally, which by the way, I.
- [26:24]
A
Mean, already there's something interesting there. Like when I think of like white Pentecostals and I didn't grow up in that world so that, you know, But I think of like khakis, I think of like buttoned down and maybe that's wrong. Maybe I'm thinking of Calvinists when my brain says Pentecostals. But like, I think of them as like very conservative in every way. And what you're describing is like, well, it sounds like they're conservative in some ways, but it sounds like sort of culturally, linguistically, the way that they, you know, like, it, it doesn't. It's not fitting my kind of like white boy categories of conservative Christianity in a way that I'm finding myself interested in.
- [27:08]
B
Yeah, it's. It's definitely. This is not, I'm sure, how these people move through life.
- [27:15]
A
Normally.
- [27:16]
B
It feels like they. Yeah, intentionally, obviously when they get together.
- [27:21]
A
I think they really, you know, whatever.
- [27:23]
B
I think there's this sort of like unspoken desire feeling that like that you, by being really direct with each other and saying all the things you wouldn't normally say, that there's this opportunity to become to each other. Like if you're willing to suffer the violence of me being very direct with you, you can have something much more, something really profound, you know, like, I.
- [27:47]
A
Mean, that, that as a, you know, let's get a little bit depth psychology, Jungian here, a little bit of Joseph Campbell vibes, like initiation rituals and all that. I mean, there's a version of that sort of psychologically that is very deep in human history, that for most of our history, human societies, most of them especially for men, but also for women there different rites of passage and sort of coming of age rituals, but especially for men, you know, if they're more involved in sort of, you know, physical violence, like hunting and things like this. You know, you have these really serious, like, harrowing baptism by fire, basically. You know, you go survive in the woods for 48 hours and at the end of that you're a fucking man. And we don't do that anymore. Like literally the closest thing we have in church is confirmation class, which is like the safest possible, most watered down version of that ever. And Campbell used to sort of decry this in his public work, that we are missing something by having that. And whatever. Richard Rohr kind of would agree with him in his early career. And I think there's an interesting conversation there. But that's the thing that I thought of that. Obviously, you're talking about different contexts. We're not in the African savannah or in the Australian bush, but if you can handle the heat on the other side is something of great value. And you sort of prove your willingness. I do, yeah. I mean, honestly, I do think that just to make one little connection here to kind of online discourse and the culture wars and polarization and all that stuff. Most of the people who are raising the biggest ruckus online in, like, in sort of the speech wars, those people. Most of those people have not put any of their money where their mouth is at all. Like, they are like. I mean, maybe they are humanities professors at best, but they're just people. And it's not like they're. It's not like they have, like, built something with their hands. It's not like they have written and directed a film from scratch. It's like, it's easy. It's easy to take potshots.
- [30:09]
B
Yeah.
- [30:10]
A
There is a kind of, like, safety on the other side of having proven yourself in some way that open. I'm seeking such generalities here, but that opens up a kind of honesty and, like, a deeper possibility for relationship. Is this. Am I making sense to you?
- [30:26]
B
Exactly right. And it really does. Honestly, I'm a little scared of what all this is doing to me. Because categorically. You know. And that's the whole point. Right.
- [30:34]
A
Like, well, just wait. If any of your kids are gay, you're gonna be snapped right back out of this shit. Brian. Or if your daughter. Or if your daughter wants to be a pastor, you're gonna get snapped out of this, too. Cause you and Amy will be like, she's got. We have to. You know what I mean? Like, there are certain things that might shift this.
- [30:52]
B
I think that's right. Yeah.
- [30:54]
A
And that many listeners would recognize. Oh, yeah. If something like what happened to me happens to Brian and Amy, then they will also. But right now, it hasn't happened.
- [31:02]
B
Then we will go to the Anglican church in downtown Corvallis.
- [31:05]
A
Well, so we, you know, we move a much smaller city, but we go to the Episcopal Church. Like, that is a thing that, for me. And we have a particularly good one here that is multi generational and a lot of families, and sort of shockingly so to me sometimes. But before we get too far away from the kids stuff, and I think that this might tie in, you and I were talking about one of Your kids, and you mentioned something like, look, given this kid's particular needs and their brain and whatever, it's not really helpful for them to go to public school and be taught at like a very early age that because they're white, that they are, you know, and you don't even know. I don't know if you know exactly what was taught to them. Like, do you. If you have receipts or if that's more a general sense. But that's an idea that I had never encountered before. I'd never thought about that before. I never thought about, let's just call it anti racism training or something like that. An anti racism approach. In terms of what? The cognitive load and sort of emotional load that various kids can handle for various reasons, including things like neurodevelopmental issues and other forms of special needs. I want to get that into the conversation because I was so taken by that idea and so interested in that. So feel free to walk past that or plug it in as you can.
- [32:41]
B
Yeah, I mean, it kind of relates to what we were just talking about. I think, like you, that there's a bell curve in terms of gender and there's a lot to talk about there and we could talk about it. You have talked about ad infinitum in general. With all the stuff that is centered in a liberal context. It feels to me, it adds a degree of complexity. Like, I spent a lot of time over the last 15 years listening and holding space and considering the idea that there are things about me that might just innately and naturally be oppressive or whatever. Right. And the more time that's gone by and the more I've reckoned, like, with the whole thing of gazing into Jaden's eyes and reckoning with my role in his life and what I have to be to him, I mean, honestly, like, that stuff just starts to feel so absurd to me. Like, I know that's a scandalous thing to say. Like, I. It's like what I need to do is be so vulnerable. And so the version of me that comes out when I'm really vulnerable and really open hearted is patient and determined and like, believes in my kids deeply. And that version of me isn't sitting there wondering about all the shit that I'm going to do or say or think and what it means to the whole rest of the world. Like, that's. I'm not saying that I don't know for me right now, I don't know where that fits in the grand scope, but it certainly doesn't exist. Between me and my kids. Like, I don't know how to fit it in right now because I feel like I have to be so committed to the way I exist in the moment and who I am in the moment as a father and who they get to be in the moment. And I just. Like the saddest part about leaving Portland. Is the diversity.
- [34:36]
A
Yes. A concern of ours too. Yeah.
- [34:39]
B
Yeah. For me, if I'm honest, it's not really, like, diversity of thought that exists among white people. Like, I'm not that sad about. I feel like you don't know how to. You have. Wonder how to code switch depending on who you're hanging out with, and wonder if you're going to say, and there's this, like. And some of that is just the natural diversity of thought that exists in any metropolis. But, like, it's just. It's just like it felt so complicated. Felt so fucking complicated all the time. Like, you'd meet a really cool kid and there would be all this tension and wondering if you could. If you'd be accepted by the parent because of certain things, tensions, political tensions. And like, then you have to go on this. And it's just like, this is so complicated. So anyway, get. Don't get me started. You can listen to the rest of this episode by joining the patreon@patreon.com Dankoke.
- [35:44]
A
Sam.