Grief, Giving, and Gratitude
We had some terribly tragic news hit very close to home last week for our #ImChangingtheNarrative family.
TRIGGER WARNING: a team member of ours lost her son last week. He took his life. We are all devastated for her AND more resolute in our work to try and save and change more lives. Our team member, his mother, has now dedicated her life to honoring her son and speaking on his death and his life. You will be hearing from her next month as we share our Mental Health Month Programming.
Listen to this week’s podcast episode:
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Switching gears to an also much-needed message:
You have also heard me talk incessantly about the book! Like a ton and I should, with it launching in a little over 50 days, I am officially in GO-MODE, but I am thinking about the greater impact this book can have, and how you might be able to help me.
Storytime: I have been going to the LoveLady Center in Birmingham, AL for the better part of 10 years. I have given my testimony there for each of those years. We are talking 400ish women coming out of drugs, abandonment, jail, prostution, getting a second chance at life, in a Christian atmosphere. They get job training AND can bring their kids to the center. It is truly special.
And I have an audacious goal for my visit there the Sunday after my book launches (on June 20th). I would like to give each woman a donated copy AND put away 500 books for the next women that walk into their doors in need. If every person on this mailing list bought one copy we would shatter the goal. One copy? And how good would that feel?
Do you or your company want to make a greater impact? Buy several books. help us get to our goal faster!
Here is the link to support the loveladies!
And if you say, "Rachel, that doesn’t get me in the heartstrings like donating to students," I want to be able to take my books to high schools (totally appropriate message and have you seen what they are being served these days?😥) and give them away to the kids that are hungry for more. You can help us make that happen! Here is the link to donate to high schools.
You are my people. Can I count on you to help make these goals a reality?
More coming on a book launch club coming soon! Spoiler alert, if you want to read the book early and help us spread the word on the book in a fun and engaging group, well this is gonna be for you!
You Need a Mental Health Battle Plan
If you ever find yourself feeling overwhelmed, hopeless, or like you can't go on, it's crucial to have a mental health battle plan that outlines the steps you can take to manage your distress and get the support you need.
May is Mental Health Month, a time to raise awareness about mental health issues and to promote mental health wellness. At I’m Changing the Narrative, we are starting things off with a Twitter Space all about Creating your Mental Health Battle Plan.
If you've heard me talk, you know about finding your three people, your three "ride or die" people who are with you in good times and bad. During this Twitter Space, the conversation goes deeper to address the question of what happens when things get really bad, and even your three people aren't enough?
Creating a mental health battle plan involves taking proactive steps to support your mental health and well-being. It may involve developing a daily self-care routine, identifying triggers that may exacerbate your symptoms, and creating a crisis plan for times when you're in distress.
Join the team at I'm Changing the Narrative for this important conversation: May 1st at 7 central/8 EST on TWITTER. You can get the link to the Space here. We will also recap all of our mental health conversations on our social media account throughout the month.
You can change the narrative on mental health
As a society, we have the power to change the narrative on mental health. We can focus on building resilience, creating personal battle plans for challenging times, and supporting each other through life's ups and downs.
It's important to address potential mental health challenges as a community, and create supportive networks to help individuals weather life's storms.
We each have the power to make a difference in changing the conversation around mental health. So let's take action and seek out resources for mental health support, support each other, and create a world that values and prioritizes mental health.
Together, we can make a difference and create a brighter, healthier future for ourselves and our loved ones.
Transcript from Episode 21 of the Joystarters Podcast
Joystarters, here's a TRIGGER WARNING: If you're listening in the car with your children or if you've been through hard times, dark nights of the soul, or times where you felt like maybe the world would be better off without you in it, or you have dealt with that in terms of your loved ones or somebody close to you. So just a heads up, I always try to give a trigger warning. I always try to be thoughtful after I had somebody teach me that years ago and tell me that without a trigger warning, my talks were very triggering to them. And so now I try to do that in everything that I do to include my book, my podcast, my socials, all of it because I do it for you.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:00:47]:
Thank you. Hello, Joystarters. Hope you are well. I want to start out by telling you I recognize we have been away for an extended amount of time. We missed a podcast this month and all of the onus all of everything goes on me. I want to tell you a little bit about what we've had going on and so you can walk behind the scenes with us and what's to come and what I'm thinking and feeling in my heart right now. First of all, as I mentioned, we missed a podcast because one, on a really amazing note, I was in studio last week recording relentless joy the audiobook, which was just unreal dream I've had for a really long time. Some authors don't even get an audiobook and then still some authors do get an audiobook, but they don't get to read their own audiobooks.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:01:46]:
So to get one and then secondly, to get to read my own audiobook was just yeah was really, really, really amazing. I will tell you was tedious and hard. I'm an ad liber. I've spent a great part of my career ad libbing and filling air, being in radio and being on the sidelines and throw it back to commercial and can you fill and those things? And so I would get going and get really excited and get going and then I'd have to start over because you have to read every word. And then just to make you guys laugh a little bit, there were some words that I wrote in my book that I wasn't the greatest at pronouncing like some books, some words that I can read all day long, but they didn't come out the greatest. One of them was very simply just to make you guys laugh, chest. And it was like more than one chest, like your chest. But I was talking about multiple people's chests.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:02:47]:
And I for whatever reason, we tried and tried and tried and tried. I could not say chest like it was chest. And they laughed. The two amazing people that were recording with me for three days, first day, 7 hours, seven days, 7 hours, third day, about 2 hours. And you're worried about your voice. I'm drinking tea, I'm drinking honey. I'm doing all the things. I'm trying to think about you in the room and talk to you in the way that I'm talking to you right now versus just sounding like I'm reading.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:03:20]:
But you know, I'm reading because I'm reading a script. And so it was an amazing time, I will tell you. During that time I drove up, it was in Atlanta, was the studio. So I drove up and so that took the day. On Monday evening, I had to be in, I had to be in recording Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, then drove home. When you're in that studio, you do not get you can't work. They have booked that studio time. So it's no like trying to do two things at once and hold on.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:03:52]:
So I was actually just telling my dog, Buddy, to get in his bed underneath my desk instead of walking around behind me and panting and being generally annoying. Love our animals. Love our animals. Love, love our animals. But sometimes we just got to help them along the way. Speaking of loving our animals, a friend of mine, Jesse, shared a picture today where her dogs ate through her couch. And when I say ate through her couch, I'm talking about down to the wooden parts of the couch. She said they're older dogs and have never done anything like this before, so they cannot figure out what got into them.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:04:27]:
And somebody said in the comments, “Hey, listen, my dog has done that before and they were trying to get at something like maybe there was something in the couch or something, don't know what it was, but perplexing.” And also you're laughing in pain for them because literally they have the wooden part of a couch. Now for a couch, they're going to have to get a brand new couch. Yeah, dogs and kitties and all the things and all the animals are so wonderful. So anyway, they booked the studio and you can't do two things at once. You can't be checking your phone, you can't be doing emails, and there was a lunch, but it was order DoorDash and we're going to eat for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and we're going to go back in. And so I totally understand it. They have a system down.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:05:06]:
They know what they want to do. They booked the studio time. By the way, thanks to the best studio in Atlanta, the people there were just amazing that I worked with, met the owner as well. So that is one thing that kept us from putting out another episode this month, as we should have. And so please forgive me on that. But the larger thing that happened beyond what I was going through the last month, which was a root canal and needing a root canal and then an infection in my tooth and not being able to get an appointment for a root canal for a month until I begged and begged and begged and begged and called and called and called.
Beyond that, very sadly, we had one of our team members, her son took his life. One of our team members at I'm Changing the Narrative, her son took his life.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:05:58]:
Yeah. So I want to say to Jennifer, our team member, she totally gave me the green light to speak about her. She says her son, he's going to speak on him for the rest of her life. She's going to speak about it, that he was a happy boy, that she felt like out of nowhere. But then there were some things that she felt like, in retrospect, she found out that could have contributed to this. So please keep Jennifer in your prayers. Please keep everybody that's dealing with the plague, with the scourge of suicide in your prayers. It's horrific.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:06:33]:
It hit close to home. We are heartbroken for her. We are lifting her up. One of the things we talk about, and I'm Changing the Narrative, is using your pain for purpose. Using your pain for purpose. Does your pain define you or does it make you better? And Jennifer has already said, we said, hey, we'll support you, text you, love on you, whatever you need. All the things offer to fly up there, all those things. We'll do all those things, and we'll leave you alone.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:07:01]:
But when you're ready, we'll be here to support you. And she's like, you don't have to leave me alone. I'm ready to talk about it. I want to talk about it. I want to talk about it. I want to talk about my son. I want to talk about the fact that I believe he's now with Jesus and the incident he did. It that he's now with Jesus.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:07:15]:
And we had another person on our staff, Natasha. We have people that volunteer with the movement. And I've often said this to you guys. If you want to get involved with the Movement, all you have to do is drop us an email. But she shared with her a situation that had happened close to her where they lost somebody. And she said, “You can't make sense of it, Rachel. You cannot make sense of it. The more you try to make sense of it, the more you're going to drive yourself insane.”
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:07:41]:
And so that brought Jennifer a lot of comfort. And then the craziest just God is in everything, in all the details, and even in the horrific sad, how in the world could this happen? God, the things that we can't make sense of on this Earth. This morning in our I'm Changing the Narrative meeting, we meet on Monday mornings… Jennifer was on, and we were all just loving on her as much as we could. And I mentioned Natasha, just the angel heart that she is, another member of somebody who volunteers with us, another member of I'm Changing the Narrative, sharing a story with her. But another one of our members, a former athlete, he was on and he's about to have a baby and he today got the keys he and his girlfriend got the keys to their new house, their first house. And we were all just so happy for him. We were so happy for him.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:08:37]:
We have people from athletes to former athletes to all sorts of people that serve in the movement. Former parents. Tanner Morgan's mom of Minnesota is in our group. A former player at LSU, his mom, her name is Linda. I'm Changing the Narrative group. So we have a lot of just a wide swath of people in the group. So anyway, DJ is telling us the story and we're all just so happy for him.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:09:04]:
I broke into tears. It's your first house. It's your first house. It's amazing, right? So Jennifer then shares that her son was about to close on his first house before he took his life. And she said instead of, of course it's going to make her sad, it's his mother. But she said instead of making her sad, it brought her so much joy. So much joy. And she was able to smile and she was able to celebrate DJ because she didn't get to celebrate her son.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:09:36]:
And she said that she felt like that was God looking out for her this morning in that meeting and just loving on her. And so wow, right? Like, wow, way to take something that's absolutely horrific and still see God in it and still see the joy in it. And so I admire, I honor Jennifer. I admire and honor every one of you who've been touched by suicide. I admire and honor every single one of you who have gone through a dark night of the soul yourself because of that. Mental Health Month is next month. We're going to be hosting more than several lives.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:10:17]:
We are going to do one on May 1 on Twitter. I will drop the link on all the socials and you can listen in. I do love it. My friend Eric from Same Here Global says a lot of us are kind of over the screen a little bit. Like we do all of our meetings on the screen. There's a little of a screen fatigue. He said, I love Twitter and I also do too for the fact that you can be doing whatever. I mean, you can be doing gardening, you can be doing whatever you're doing and listen.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:10:47]:
You can have your earphones in. You're not on screen. I know you don't have to be on Zoom either. But we are trying it as a medium and seeing we've done many things on it before. We're trying at the beginning of the month just to see if people can listen in and we can attract more just people kind of passing by as well. So we're going to be there at 08:00 p.m.. Eastern on May 1, and we're going to be talking about a Battle Plan, a further battle plan. We have a Battle Plan at I'm Changing the Narrative - that's to find your three people, your quote unquote, ride or dies, and to love on them and to love on them very hard.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:11:22]:
And we have that, but we want to take it one step further. Take it bigger than that. What's the bigger plan for when you have a house and you're going to buy a house and everything looks great, but then the crap hits the fan, right, and you have a bad moment or you have a bad thought or something happens in your life and these very negative thoughts come into your head? How do you battle those? And so we're going to have Dr. Josh Klapow on Lindsay Freezman, our mindfulness expert. Jennifer is going to be on to tell her story, and we're just going to be talking about how to further take care of ourselves and create this Mental Health Battle Plan. And so I hope that you will make time to join us for that. We will be putting out more that we're doing. I'm going to be visiting my friend Jerremy Newsome to talk about money and mental health.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:12:15]:
We are going to be doing a national television show with some athletes on May 18, the Perspective, a national show in Canada to talk about mental health. And then we're also going to have our parents and mental health, parents of athletes, mental health and parent space. So we're going to be doing that again. So a lot of programming for Mental Health Month. And so that's some of the things we have going on, that's some of the things that have kept me away this past month. I always want to try to be as vulnerable and transparent as I can with you of what's going on in my life and what's happening. And I looked up at the date the other day and recognized that we were sorely behind. And I just wanted to give you a real life perspective of why we were sorely behind.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:12:55]:
Tooth pain is nobody's joke, obviously, on the other end of the horrific spectrum. And tooth pain is, again, no joke, but the most painful thing that anybody could ever imagine is losing a child. And so between those two things and then also being away and recording, I've just missed you. I've missed you a lot. And I wanted to say thank you for being with us. If you hear a little bit of the tone in my voice, it's because this podcast was a hard one to record to talk about. Jennifer, to get that message, I think I was leaving for confirmation. I believe it was.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:13:38]:
Yes, it was. My in laws were here and I got a message and I said, hey, I'm about to walk out the door. I can't really talk, but I can text until then. And she broke the news to me over text, and I just broke down. And yes. So if you hear the tone of my voice on this podcast, a little bit more subdued, a little sad, it's because the thing that we fight so hard against came home, very close to home, came home for us, that I'm Changing the Narrative. So I don't know that there's any way to switch gears now that we've talked about why we've been away. But I do want to tell you that everything with the book, with Relentless Joy is full speed ahead.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:14:20]:
Everything is full speed ahead if you are on the mailing list. Thank you to everybody who is on the mailing list. We're going to be sending out some information to you on the mailing list. I'm going to put it in the Facebook group. There is a Facebook group, by the way, called the Joy Starters Club, and that is a larger group of people, right, that have taken courses for me in the past, that have friends of friends, just people that are interested in more joy now. The subscribers, we have our own separate chat. Those are the people that pay per month for the messages that come to their phone and the monthly challenges. And we have one monthly meeting.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:14:57]:
But we do have a larger Facebook group that's absolutely free. Absolutely free. And we're going to start posting about this podcast in there. So we'll put that information in the show notes, the Facebook group, we will put it in the newsletter, and we will also be telling you about a lot of the things that we're going to be doing with the book, which I'm really, really excited about. I've been working really hard on this book, and one of those is not just preordering a copy, but being willing to buy a copy or a couple of copies or five or ten or two or three or 20 copies for my ladies at the Lovelady. If you've ever heard me talk about the ladies at The Lovelady, if you've been around for a while, if you're new, for ten years, I've been giving my testimony and I've been speaking at the Lovelady Center, and it is a Christian whole way house. It's amazing. I've been there for the better part of ten years.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:15:57]:
I go two to three times a year. There's about 400 women that have come out of drugs, jail, prostitution, abandonment, you name it. They've been there. And they are in a Christian whole way house. They can bring their kids. They can get job training. They can go to school. It's a place of hope, a place of healing.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:16:13]:
And I've been going there for ten years, and these women hang off of four balconies and they hoop, they holler, they dance, they scream, they pray. Like, I want to give their passion to the world, and I'm going to be there the Sunday after I launch my book. June 20 is when the book comes out. And I have this crazy audacious goal to get each of them a book. And so there's about 400, 500 women there. But I want to do bigger than that. I want to make sure that the next 500 women that come into the Love Lady get a copy of Relentless Joy. And so you can help me make that happen.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:16:46]:
You can help me make that happen. I'm going to put information on my socials in the link in my bio. You'll see it on my Instagram. We will likely pin it. You'll see me talking about it. We're working with a company called Givington's. I'm so excited to partner with them. And you can say, hey, I provided five women at the Lovelady with books.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:17:08]:
And so we just want to say thank you for those that are going to do that. 1000 books is it'll go quickly? It'll go quickly. I believe it. And then the next thousand, I have a goal for. They have to count them to be able to get them there on time by June 11. So we have a little over a month. The next thousand, whenever that happens. But just crazy audacious goals.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:17:30]:
If you're not shooting for the moon, if you're not going big, what are you doing? Go big or go home. The next thousand I want to do is for I'm changing the narrative to be able to give out these books in schools. I want to be able to give them to kids that say, “Hey, Ms. Rachel, I promise I'm going to read this. I want that.” I want to be able to hand them the lessons. And it's part journal, part memoir, part self help, part faith. And even if you don't have faith, even if you don't believe, I did a podcast with a gal today at the end of it, a faith based podcast, who she and I got into a deep conversation about the fact that she doesn't believe, she doesn't have faith.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:18:08]:
And she says, some people say, Why do you do this podcast? And I said, I think it makes you more objective. And we talked about why she didn't believe, and there was no yay yay and pointing fingers and any of those things. It was the most beautiful conversation about some of the things that happened to her in her life and why she believed what she believed. And my belief that we shouldn't preach at somebody or hit them over the head or beat them over the head with Jesus or a Bible. We should just be so light and so lovely. And there's a quote in there from somebody famous, I'm butchering it. That people want what we have. People want to know this Jesus dude.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:18:43]:
And that's what I said in my book, because I have friends that of all walks of life, all walks of faith life and of course I want you to know my Jesus, but I'm not going to beat you over the head with it. In the book, I say this is for those that have faith, have no faith, believe a different faith. At the very least. I just want you to think by the end of this book, this Jesus was a really rad dude. And I get tickled every time I say that, that he was a rad dude because he was, he was a real dude. He walked this earth and at the very least, I want people to be curious about him. And so those are my goals. Those are my audacious goals.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:19:17]:
And yeah, I tear it up a little bit because I can just see it, I can visualize it and we're going to make it happen and I believe you can be part of that. So you can go to the link below. We're going to put it in the show notes as well. The Givington's link to donate books to the lovelady and or to I'm Changing the Narrative and you can dictate where you we're first going to try to do LoveLady. But if you tell me hey, Rachel, I definitely just want you to get given to you for the schools. We have a separate form for that. We can do that as well. So we'll put those links there.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:19:48]:
You can drop me an email as well on any of my socials or DM. If you go to link in my bio and hit contact, that goes directly to my email. I read my email, guys, I read my email and so it goes directly to me. You can hit me in any of those ways and say, rachel, my company wants to donate 50 books and they want them to go to I’m Changing the Narrative of the Schools or you want to go to LoveLady. And if you donate over $250, I think that's the old you can donate to whatever nonprofit you choose. So a lot of information here and I'm trying not to confuse you. I'm just telling you we got goals. This girl's got goals.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:20:26]:
I've got a shirt says Goal Digger. Goal digger not Gold digger goal. And I love to see people's faces when they see the word goal instead of gold and see the shirt. It's really fascinating to see the light bulb go off in people's heads. So I love you guys. I'm so thankful for you. We will be talking about by the time this comes back, more mental health.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:20:51]:
Money and mental health. And I told you we're to going be doing some stuff with Jerremy Newsome, my dear friend who is amazing when it comes to finance and investing. We're going to be doing some stuff with Secure the Bag. My friend Deeter travels the country and talks to athletes about money and financial security. And if you don't think money affects your mental health. Wow. Oh, wow. But on the next podcast, I'm going to go ahead and give you a little hint here.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:21:17]:
On the next podcast, we're going to talk about something that my people are doing for me, and I am so beyond grateful, and that is they are creating a launch team for my book. So if you want to be on that launch team, there's a couple of things you got to do to include preorder a book and you can give it to somebody else. You will get an advanced copy of the book. We got to see that you got some skin in the game, right? We'll need to see that you done a review in the last year at Goodreads or Amazon. Just see that and be willing to be in a private Facebook group with a lot of other like minded people and be willing to share graphics and quotes and different things with everybody else's and help spread the message far and wide on this book. And so I'm so thankful to my team, and I'm Changing the Narrative to Natasha, who's going to be leading that up, and to each and every one of you that are going to say yes to that. And I've been told I'm learning all about this book business, that a book launch team can absolutely be so amazing in terms of helping your book go far and wide. And I want this to touch so many people and save a life and change a life in honor of Jennifer's son.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:22:25]:
In honor of him. And I know she'll be speaking for she said, the rest of my days, the rest of my days, I'll be speaking about my son. And she's a sexual assault survivor that has so much joy. And that's what she came to me to start speaking on and has been speaking. And then she says, “Now I've got even more to talk about, Rachel.” And I said, “Oh, my girl, my girl. Yes, you do!” So anyway, I have given you all the updates, all the love, and I just wanted to say thank you.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:22:50]:
You guys are amazing. I say thank you and I say I love you each and every time. But I mean it. You make this podcast, you've made this podcast top 10% in the world. And for that, I can't thank you enough. You rock my world, and you do it. And you guys are why I do what I do. All right, my huge, amazing, bigger, Joy Starter community.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:23:14]:
Thank you. Have a good night. Have a good day. Have a good week. And please remember to, like, comment, share this podcast, because it could be what somebody needs to hear. There could be somebody that you share this with who hears the battle plan on Monday night, May 1, and says, “Oh, my gracious, I'm going to have somebody listen to this or I'm going to create my Battle Plan” so the next time they have an intrusive thought, a very negative thought, a suicidal thought come across, they have a battle plan for what to do, and you just sharing it may have that may play that part in somebody's life. So again, thank you.
Rachel Joy Baribeau [00:23:51]:
I love you guys.
