Coming Back to Love: the podcast

Introduction and Podcast Purpose

If this is your first time to coming back to love the podcast. Welcome. We're so glad you found us. If you're a regular listener, welcome back. Either way, you're not here by accident. I'm your host, Karen Walker Kohn, a wife, a mom, entrepreneur, friend, and dreamer who is ready to step into more of who I am created to be.

I am committed to personal transformation. For global impact. Now, this podcast may be very different from others. Our guests don't come with a topic or agenda. They come open and ready to receive and deliver the message that's meant for you. You will also notice our podcast is not overly produced. This is on purpose.

Our hope is we will inspire you to step into who you're created to be, regardless of how it may look. Take inspired action on that book, business, relationship, and yes, podcast, or whatever it is on your heart. In my experience, my mess usually ends up being my message. I encourage you to approach our time today with a beginner's mindset and with openness to receive.

What is meant for you?

Guest Introduction: John Roedel

I am speaking with the wonderful John Roedel today. I met John about three years ago and I was going through my own conversation with God when a beautiful piece of his writing came across my screen via my friend across my Facebook page. And I shared the piece and how it moved me and he reached out and thanked me.

So from there, I started up a conversation and asked if I could interview him on a Facebook live about the piece and he agreed. Now this is significant because it was You know, it's been about five years, but three years ago is when I was like, okay maybe I can just do Facebook lives and you know, there was God was birthing something in my heart and He was one of the first people that Helped me bring that to fruition and I am forever Grateful to him for that since I last spoke with John he has authored multiple books including the one I have Hey God.

Hey John any given someday Untied, The Poetry of What Comes Next, Remedy, and his latest work, Upon Departure. John offers a sincere and very relatable look at different areas like his faith crisis, mental health, personal struggles, perception of our world, and even his fashion sense. John's writing has been shared millions of times across social media, and he is applauded by fans and readers worldwide.

He teaches at universities and retreat centers across the U. S., blending his trademark comedy with creative exercises, journaling dialogue, and introspection to help people fearlessly embrace and share their personal stories. Here is my conversation with John Roedel.

The Unplanned Journey of Podcasting
Karen Walker Cohn:
So the whole idea about for this podcast is it's built intuitively starting with the guest, starting with and then, you know, going on even with my team that helps me edit and stuff like that.

They're the ones who actually ends up giving me the title of the podcast. So I don't even know what the title is going to be. I don't even have a clue what we're going to talk about, but I did want to share with you before we begin my heart on, you said it's so nice to see you back doing this for those of you listening.

John was one of my first interviews, probably going on five years now, it's going to, it's between four and five years, something like that. And when actually it might actually know your interview might be three years because it's been four to five years since this thing was on my heart. Of course, at the time I didn't know it was a podcast.

I just knew that I wanted to interview people who inspired me and you are definitely one of those. People and inspired me big time, like so much so where I was like, I read your poem online and I was like, Oh my gosh, I need to talk to this guy. So now, you know, we're anywhere from three to five years past that what's really cool.

I was thinking about this is that I stopped, you know, for one reason or the other. It's interesting because I have a friend whose podcast I was on today and it just aired today and I'm talking about how. I stopped. I gave up on it because of this, that, or the other thing.

John's Inspiring Journey and Impact

And Once just to talk about your inspiration again, you did it and to see where you are right now and the books you've authored and I mean, love it.

That's one of them. And to see the courses you're teaching and just everything that you've done in that span of time. I am just so inspired. I'm so proud of you. And I'm so glad that you're able to be here today.

John Roedel:
Oh my gosh. And I will say to complete this full circle of admiration. Is You were I think the second podcast interview I'd ever done when you asked me and I remember being so nervous how many years ever ago it was three to five, you know, it was right around covet and we stopped marking time back then And so who knows how long it was, but it doesn't feel that long It feels like I just spoke to you a couple days ago.

So many things have happened in my life, but The reason when you reached out and said, Hey, would you mind coming back again? I immediately jumped because you were the first person to ever let my voice have any kind of platform. Oh, wow. And to be able to come back again with you just to share my heart and to listen to yours is an absolute dream.

And I don't actually do, I don't actually do many of these anymore. But yours, And to speak with you in this is, I jumped, like, I think I gasped and I might have jumped in the air real quick. And my wife was like, what's, what has happened? And I said, I have, I can't believe I get to do this again. So I'm so, when I, it is not lip service.

It's not hyperbole. I am so freaking excited to be here.

Karen Walker Cohn:
Thank you. Thank you, John. Wow. That means so much coming from you. I, there was just an, like I said, you're. Your poem and we'll kind of get it a little bit into your story But really moved me and your all your poetry moves me. It's just And and apparently, you know over a hundred thousand other people more probably that It's just amazing how you've grown and I'm just so excited, but thank you so much.

So As you know, you know, you don't, you don't know why you're, why you're here. I started everything off with the same question that everyone's getting. And and I want to start that question off with you and wherever the conversation, conversation takes us. If you're listening, you're here on purpose.

And this message is for you just as much as, as it is for. Me and you're hearing it at the exact right time. You're in the exact right place you need to be. All right. So I'm just going to center just a little bit. And

The Power of Saying 'Yes' to Life

so John, when you hear the title of this podcast, coming back to love, inspiring stories on shifting perspectives. What story or experience from your life comes to mind?

John Roedel:
Wow,
the first one because I think and I'm sure all your other guests say the same thing I there's so many things but I'll think of the first the first crossroads the first place in which I felt Being pulled out of the narrative. I was given and Being able to choose my own Story and being my own author of my life 2000.

The year 2001. Well, let's start in 2000. Our son, our youngest son our oldest son, he was our firstborn, Noah, was born, and I didn't have, I, I didn't grow up with any younger brothers or sisters. I didn't have a lot of younger cousins. I hadn't been around babies very often. So when my wife and I had our son, Noah, he was the first baby I ever held.

And I remember going into the, and at this point in my life, you know, before that, I wanted to be in second city comedy. I wanted to be on Saturday night live. I wanted to be doing, you know, hilarious. Cause I love, I was, I love making people laugh. And so I thought. But I was, I wasn't able to do that with my life, life situations and responsibilities creep in, you know, adulthood, that terrible word, creep, crept in.

And I wasn't I wasn't doing those things that I wanted to do. It just got sideswiped a couple times from life. And so I was still in my same hometown in Cheyenne, Wyoming that I swore I was going to leave. But I was here and my wife and I found out we're having a baby and I thought, okay, well, this is kind of a restart.

I'm going to be able to be the dad and the parent I want to be. And I started again, taking the script of what being a dad was going to look like and what my life was going to look like as a dad. And I grew up watching a lot of 80s television. And I was my third parent growing up was the television and I remember, you know, seeing all these nuclear families and the dad would act some one way and the child would learn some important life lesson.

And I thought, okay, I'm not going to be on second C, but I'm going to be Ward Cleaver, or I'm going to be Mr. Seaver from, it was a full house. That's a full house. Where is he? Growing pains. Yeah. Growing pains. Good call. I was going to be one of these dads that I grew up with and that's how was a dad I was going to be.

And so I rewrote my script from being in Second City and Saturday Night Live to being this great dad. And then within a month or three or four months into this, you know, our son. He was very, he cried all the time, he didn't like bass, he didn't really like people touching him, and so we were told, oh, he's just a busy boy, and that's just the way boys are.

Flash forward another year, and we started seeing him around other kids his age, a lot of our friends in college started having children at the same time, and we started modeling him next to other boys his age, and he still, Like he, he would run through snow without shoes on without feeling it. Or he'd run through like a thorn bush, get cut up and it didn't make him cry.

And he just seemed so different than the other, the other kids that eventually we took him to a doctor because everyone else in town, all the doctors we were seeing were saying, Oh, he'll grow out of this. It's just a phase. Well, by the time he was two and a half, he wasn't growing out of it. So we took him down to Denver, Colorado, and.

Much to my surprise, because I was living in this little bubble I created, but not to my wife's he was diagnosed with autism. And immediately, right then and there, it was my first lesson in improv. As someone who liked, who wanted to be in Second City, who wanted to make people laugh and be on stage, I had never done improv before.

It was something I always wanted to do. I'd seen Whose Line Is It Anyway, or been to comedy clubs where I saw people perform improv, and always wanted to go learn how to do it. Well, this is my first experience. And improvisation because what is the one rule of improv and I know you know this it's yes and and you get the suggestion from the audience you might have this great picture in your mind of what you want to do on stage or I'm going to be a really really funny Margaret Thatcher in space milking a cow when all of a sudden the audience says no you are Lionel Richie You And you are a shrimp boat captain or whatever it would be like, you have to immediately let go of this preconceived notion and then you just have to say yes, and here we go and jump into it.

And I remember driving home from the doctor's office. It's about a two and a half hour drive. It was an eight hour exhaustive test all day. And they had come and told us, you know, your son is very impacted with autism. And this is 2002. There wasn't a lot of resources available. It's come a long way in the last 20 years.

But there wasn't a lot of resources, and there, even in our, in our town specifically, there wasn't a lot of places that we could look out to, so go contact these people, they'll help you do this, and they'll help you. There was none of that. It was more or less like good luck. And so on the drive home, I'm sitting there, and I'm looking behind me at our little baby, who's in a, who's in his car seat, and I'm grieving.

I'm grieving this preconceived relationship that we were going to have. The doctors just told us he's likely never going to live alone. He's likely never going to speak. You've got to give up on these things like proms and first kisses and all these things of throwing a football in the backyard. All these things, as a dad, I thought, oh, I'll be imparting.

This wisdom that I've learned in life, like, as if I was some sort of, like, a shaman. But really, what it was, was I was taught to embrace what was happening instead of this narrative that I thought I had already, I had already memorized of what being a dad was going to be like. And I remember looking at him in the backseat and grieving and crying and my wife was already mama bearing being like, okay, no, we're going to call this person.

If that doesn't work, we're going to call this person. If that doesn't work, we're going to try this diet, right? And if that diet doesn't work, we're going to try these supplements. She was already like, and within like three or four months, we were trying things like. Hippotherapy, riding on horseback. We were trying Reiki.

We were trying art therapy, music therapy, play theory, therapy, cognitive, all anything. We were throwing everything at the wall to see if it stuck and stuck. And I was still, I was still mourning and I wasn't catching up. I wasn't yes. And Dean, I was saying no, but why us? And I was mourning and grieving. And it took me about a year and a half, two years to catch up, to realize that this little baby I was given.

Didn't come with an instruction booklet or a set or a set playlist that the music was going to play the way it was going to play and the, there was no instruction booklet. And the only thing we were called to do, instead of having this perfect iconic relationship as a dad and a son, it was going to be, can you just keep saying yes to this experience?

Can you just keep saying yes to, I will support you. Can you just keep saying yes? I'm going to be desperate to find a way to connect with you. And my son and my wife taught me how to improvise long before I ever got on a stage, which was about five years later, and started performing improv. I had already gone to boot camp of Yes And.

And that was the first moment I remember having all this built up preconceived notion of what my experience of being a human on this planet was going to be. And it was thrown out the door in one doctor's appointment. But it taught me to embrace the beauty of this adventure we're on that is heartbreaking, it's heart wrenching.

It's amazing because now my son has taught me so much about generosity and compassion and making your heart an open gate instead of a closed vault. He has never met anyone. He is not, he does not like, he has never, he has never belittled anyone. He doesn't understand sarcasm. It goes right past him.

But he's taught me how to be less cynical and skeptical. And now he's 20, all about 24 years old. He's going to graduate from the University of Wyoming next year. And as a theater major, he doesn't, he likes doing stuff behind scenes, like building sets and lights. Yeah. But he's had this amazing adventure that had I been stuck in that moment of just saying no to what was happening, I would have been a reluctant participant.

Right. But now this. I get to say that I got to ride shotgun with him and my wife on this amazing journey into our hearts, which all began for all of us, you included everyone in their life. We all just have to say yes. And here we go. And that, when you asked me that question, that's the first. That's the first story that came to mind because that was the first time I dropped the playbook.

I dropped the script. I dropped every, all the notes that was handed to me before being an adult or a human or whatever. And I threw them over my head and just said, okay, here we go.

Karen Walker Cohn:
 Wow, I love that so much.

Embracing Imperfections and Authenticity

That is so great. I, I resonate on so many different levels, you know, like just starting this project for myself is choosing to I, I call it step into messy, you know, this, this little you know, this former Perfectionist recovering perfectionist is you know, it doesn't have to, and, and I, the same, you know, the same thing.

I thought I was going to be I don't know if you remember solid gold, but now I'm dating myself, but I thought I was going to be a solid gold dancer and I was going to act and I was going to be on Saturday night live as well. All those things. And and I chose. You know, to, to get into, it's got to look like this, you know, and, and years of modeling and acting, it's, it gets to look like this, which, you know, when I started and when I interviewed you, it was like, that was the reason why I, I, it didn't look the way I thought It's supposed to look and I didn't get the, the viewership I thought I was going to get and, you know, and so it's like, Oh, well, you know, that, that old not good enough and, you know, stuff started bubbling up to the surface, got the better of me.

And and it's taken, you know. Almost five years for me to go. Nope. This is still in my heart. I can't let it go I get to say yes and to this and Step into messy. I don't know john. I don't know the first thing about podcasting Did you know the first thing about writing when you decided you know, like

John Roedel:
No, I I you know, and we will maybe we get into this.

Maybe we don't I didn't read poetry at all until I started writing it because it started pushing its way out like a wildflower in a busy New York sidewalk. I had no infrastructure. I had no knowledge. I think I had gotten C minuses to probably D plus in any poetry unit in high school or in college growing up.

I had no, but all I knew. Is I just needed to say yes to something that was happening inside without knowing what was going to happen when you keep pulling that string. Right. And I, I resonate exactly with what you're saying with like, oh, but this is not supposed to look like this. I mean, Button Poets, I mean, when I go and do poetry events and there's other poets there my age.

Or, even younger, who are men, they're usually chiseled, wearing tight t shirts, and, you know, they're reading this really emotional, like, relationship poetry, and I always have this imposter syndrome, this I'm a fraud because I don't look like this, or it's not looking like this thing I put in my head, or I'm not, I, like, twenty some years ago, I'm not going to be the father that I thought I was, so I want to give up on it all.

Right. Right. But, isn't it amazing for both of us? That it didn't turn out the way that we planned for it too, because how boring would that be? If it worked out exactly as our plans or our machinations worked out, or we had this amazing blueprint, it's like, Oh, I'm going to follow this to the exact T. I think there's so much beauty in the chaos.

There's so many amazing things that can happen in disappointment. And you know, I for me it's it's this constant slow death of ego Wow, and and it's constantly reminding myself that in In this work that I'm doing, that it's not about me feeling like, Oh, how impressive am I? It's about, it's about getting myself out of the way so I can connect with other people.

And if I get that, if I'm not, if I'm not reading from behind a script or some preconceived notion of anything that I'm doing, then I can connect with people with where they are. Yeah. And that's that is what it is all about is connecting with people where they are. That's what it is for me Anyways, yeah, yeah.

Karen Walker Cohn:
 Oh gosh, John. That was so good if you can leave. I mean you've left so many messages already Like what like if you could just give the listener one thing to take away from this What would that message be

John Roedel:
 Be so kind to yourself? We and I'll say

Conclusion: The Beauty of Messiness and Kindness

the royal we because I'm the, I think I'm, I'm the, I, I catch myself doing this all the time. And it's a little bit of martyrdom syndrome. And it's also a little bit of just the own work I'm, I'm doing. But I found when I talked about this with people or I write about this theme, it resonates with so many other people because I think a lot of people have the same experience.

that were oftentimes easy to dole out mercy to other people or to give empathy to other people's situations. Or to or to certainly forgive people. But sometimes we don't ever offer that to ourselves. Like if I'm at a restaurant and the per, the server is having a terrible day and they're just throwing the food down, I'm the first to say, we don't know what's going on behind the scenes with that person's day, we need to show some grace and compassion to them.

But later on in the day, when I'm furious at myself for making a typo, or doing something, you know, ridiculously stupid which I have like a quota of five or six really embarrassing things a day that I do, that I don't offer myself even a hint of that. Because I expect myself to be perfect. And it's this ego death.

It's that whole thing. It's a slow trying to get rid of this voice in my head that says it has to be exact and you have to be perfect and everything has to be polished and wonderful. Right. And, and certainly the more people that follow me and the more times my work gets shared, the more the ego inside of me creeps up and says, yeah, now you really have to do good because now there's more people watching.

Yeah. And for me. I want to get messier, and I loved how you used the word mess. I, I, I want to get messier the older I get. I want to show my kids that it's okay to be a little bit of a little bit of a wildfire inside of our hearts. That it's okay. Because the messier it is, the easier it is to leave a, if I have a messy interior life in a lot of ways, the easier it's going to be for me to share because it's so messy I can pull it apart like cotton candy and hand it out to people.

If it was, if I was perfect and exact and everything was wonderful, I wouldn't want to share it because I'd be afraid of ruining something that is like the same. piece of art, that museum piece of art behind a velvet rope. You know, the messier I am, and the more I, then that's one of the reasons I write on Facebook, because every day I write a poem, and I don't, I edit it for 30 seconds to a minute.

And then I throw it out there immediately. It's improvisation. It's the yes and. And that's kind of how I teach my writing. It's like, let it be messy. Let it be, let it be a little bit not perfect. Let it be like a rustic piece of granite that is not polished. You might get your finger cut on it if you touch it.

But I I prefer that and that's how I live my life and anything else Otherwise if i'm acting like I have all my poop together, I don't i'm a hot mess So let it be authentic because that's who I am. I'm a bit of a mess how else and and for the thing that I realized recently in the this experiential workshop that I was in is that That messiness which is which is I got the lesson there was in

Karen Walker Cohn:
 Doesn't matter Like what you're calling messy is because you can you see and you feel the internal stuff going on inside of you and a lot of the times we can too.

So, but I'm looking at you going, that's perfection. And, and, and so this, this is kind of the point that I want to make is that we get. To choose what perfection looks like to us. And so I guess we get to redefine the word perfect and it's messiness. And so I just think, God, I'd like, I'm inspired by it.

I'm attracted to it. I, I, I'm looking for that. And I know there's a lot of people out there just looking for that authenticity.

 John Roedel:
Yeah. And the kinder we, the more kindness we show ourselves. And we grant ourselves the grace that we give other people, the more we pardon ourselves every day for not being this perfect person, the more we can lean into embrace the intricacies and the uniqueness of each of our lives.

And to lean into our imperfections, because it's in these human imperfected moments where our humanity shines out. I love having typos. I love when people write me to say, hey, you know what you didn't use the semicolon right, which I still, at this point, nobody really can explain to me a semicolon. I, I, no, I don't care.

I can sit down with any academic scholar, I still don't get it. But like, people write me, and I'll be like, great, thank you. I love it, because I'm not done, and in fact, even the poems that are in books, I'm going back and changing a year later. That's why I don't name any of my poetry, because I find it all still a work of art.

I'm a work in progress. I find it like it's still, the paint is still drying on things. And I don't name anything because I don't want it to be finished. And I don't, and I, and anything I write and put out into the world is just like, here is a dripping piece of art. The clay has not, it's still dripping clay.

It's still, you can, if you touch it, you're going to get your fingerprints in it. That's okay. Because that's where I was in that exact moment when I wrote it. I wasn't perfect in that exact moment. I wasn't wearing this ascot and a monocle and sitting there in a big poetry garb or whatever the outfits poets are supposed to wear and sitting at candlelight and writing something that is perfect and academically amazing.

And everyone's going to, no, I wrote it usually in a moment where I felt something so strongly and so deeply that I had to get it out, squeeze it out as quickly as I can. And it might come out a little bit oblong and uneven, but that's what makes it. Real, I think. Yeah. And special. Yeah. And that's what I, and it starts with kindness.

I have to forgive myself for not being, and it's every day, it's not like I'm speaking from on top of the mountaintop as some hierarchy here. This is the conversation I'm having with you right now. I have inside of myself every day. It's okay. It's okay to screw up. It's okay to not be perfect. It's okay to, it's okay to cry.

It's okay to have some fractured parts in you. It's okay. Because this is an adventure and we're supposed to have these moments of doubt and, and terror and failure because otherwise, again, how boring would it be?

Karen Walker Cohn:Yeah. Yeah, such a beautiful message. Thank you, John. Thank you for being here. Thank you for the work that you're doing.

 And gosh, I'm just so super excited to put this out into the world to have your voice heard again and again and again. Thanks, John. Thank you so much.

 And again, you keep doing the work that you're doing. You are one of those lighthouses on the shore, the where people, you have no idea the reach or the person that, because you said it perfectly right at the beginning, wherever, if you're listening to this, if you somehow bumped into this, there's a reason why.

There's a reason why you're listening to this. And it's because you are sitting there on the, on the shore as a lighthouse saying, I've been through the storm. I know what it's like. Here's a light that will help bring you to safety. So I want to thank you for all the work that you're doing and the, the way that you shine and the way that you help other people.

Karen Walker Cohn
 Thanks, John.