Navigating Family Dynamics: Diane's Lessons in Resilience

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Hey, Diane, how are you? Great. How are you? Can you hear me?

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I can hear you just fine. Fantastic.

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Got a new computer, so I'm just checking it all out.

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Hi, it's nice to meet you. Good to meet you, too. I got to hear your pre-recording

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not too long ago, like earlier this morning.

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I'm like, oh, I can't wait to talk to you and listen to your story.

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Oh, my gosh. Gosh, well, you know, it's been a while since I said all that,

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so I'll have to refresh my memory.

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Oh, Diane, we needed that laugh today. Like, I am, I'm freaking exhausted.

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So we went and saw Wanda Sykes last night, and it's about a two-hour drive from our house.

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Then got up at 630 this morning and drove back here so we could record all day.

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So in our earlier recordings, I had had like four coffees and a Coke.

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I am now not drinking any caffeine because I have the shakes.

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I think I have a little bit of Parkinson's just from the amount of caffeine I had.

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But it was so worth it. She was so great in concert.

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And she's just hysterical, as irreverent can be. Oh, that's fantastic.

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Yeah. Well, welcome.

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Music.

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Ready three two two one

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well i always feel bad flipping off whoever i guess is because i'm like they

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don't know they have no idea that we the the number one in our countdown is

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always us flipping each other off so because we're five we're five yeah welcome

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back to another episode of shit that goes on in our heads.

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I'm Dirty Skittles, and I'm joined by my co-host. And I'm T-Rex.

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And our guest today, Diane. How are you, Diane?

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Great. I'm happy to be here. This is going to be a wild ride.

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I know. Buckle up. We never script anything, so it's just, you know,

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we just kind of go for it and see what happens.

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What did you have for breakfast, Diane? Oh, oatmeal.

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Nice. Okay. All right. Do you do anything like fun with it, like fruits or or coconut or...

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Oatmeal protein powder raisins the frozen cherries oh yeah walnuts that's really

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good wow that sounds delicious i had a reese's peanut butter cup it was awesome,

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it was it was 6 30 in

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the morning i was hungry we had to get on the road you

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eat like my six year old if i could let him eat and pick his own breakfast it

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would be reese's peanut butter cups for sure there's some protein in there somewhere

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okay yeah and chocolate's supposed to be really good for our brains yeah see

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i got i just got vindicated thank you diane thank you.

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Well thank you for being with us diane i'm dying to hear your story i heard

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a little bit in the pre-interview where you tell us a little bit about your

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childhood where'd you grow up i grew up all all over the place.

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My father was an Air Force pilot.

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So we moved every year or two.

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I went to 10 different schools before I graduated from high school.

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Wow. Wow. Oh, my word. Yeah. So that was a little unsettling.

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And also I grew up in, you know, my father was up in the air a lot because he was a pilot.

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And so my mother was the main influence.

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And for years, I thought there was something wrong with me because I could never

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seem to satisfy her expectations.

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From, you know, physical appearance to my ideas to my behaviors,

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everything was just, in her opinion, wrong.

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So I'd go to my room with library books and, you know, read like crazy after

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dinner and books would open up doors to other worlds.

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I met all kinds of wonderful people like Eleanor Roosevelt in books, The Diary of Anne Frank.

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I read history, I read novels, but especially loved biographies because I could

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relate to the people and see how they'd managed to overcome obstacles in their

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lives. So that was very inspirational.

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Wow. So as far back as you can remember, the farthest your memories go,

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your mom was always sort of that type of an influence for you?

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Yeah, I later learned when I got a master's in counseling that she had narcissism.

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And it wasn't, you know, this was a really consistent pattern for her.

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She was very focused in on her own needs.

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And so I was trained.

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Like a dog actually, trained to tune in to what she wanted.

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And so I became very conscious of other people's feelings and other people's

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needs and not too conscious of my own because those were always being put down.

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So yeah, it was a strange kind of childhood.

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What I also though loved was nature, nature and books.

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So I remember climbing a huge redwood tree next to our house when we lived on

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Hamilton Air Force Base in Northern California and coming higher and higher

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until I could look down at the roof of my parents' house and the balcony outside their bedroom.

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And I was above it all and one with the tree and felt this incredible sense

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of oneness with nature and empowerment.

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And then obviously I climbed down, but have felt a sense of connection to nature ever since.

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Nature was a consolation, really. And later in life, I studied Eastern philosophy.

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I studied Taoism, which taught, which teaches, actually, it's still there.

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I've written three books on Taoism by now.

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But that we're all one, you know, yin and yang combine in a larger unity of oneness.

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And that each part of nature is equally valuable because because we're all part of the larger whole.

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So I found inspiration in nature, in Eastern philosophy, and in books.

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But meanwhile, since I was still a child, I physically lived at home in my parents' various houses.

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And I remember thinking, what I really want to do is go away to college,

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you know, to go to because that would get me away from this influence that was really restricting.

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So when we lived in Germany at Ramstein Air Force Base, I sent away for college

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catalogs. catalogs. In those days, there was no internet, really long time ago.

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We did have telephones. I mean, we weren't totally uncivilized,

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but I got all these catalogs and I had this dream of going to UCLA.

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So I filled out all the applications, sent them in and was absolutely delighted

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when I got my acceptance to UCLA, told all my friends, I'm going to UCLA.

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This is fantastic. And meanwhile, you know, my father's next assignment was

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in Southern California at Norton Air Force Base near Riverside.

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So I was packing up in August.

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We moved back in June and July from Germany through the United States,

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unpacked, and moved into this suburban house outside of Riverside.

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And into my bedroom, which was actually had all my mother's childhood furniture

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in it, including a life-size doll, which was sitting in a rocking chair next to the bed.

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And everything was pink and white, colors that I really didn't like.

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I was, you know, much more into nature, books.

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There was no room for a bookcase. There was nothing. So I was really ready to

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get away from the suffocating world of pink that was like like Pepto-Bismol,

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you know, yeah, but I was packing up, going, had my clothes set out.

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My mother came into the room and said, what are you doing? And I said.

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It's August. I'm packing up to go to UCLA. I'm going to move into it in a few weeks.

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And she said, well, my dear, your father and I have talked and we've decided

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to transfer your acceptance to UC Riverside so you don't need to go away to college.

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So you had to stay home? That was the plan? Yeah. I felt trapped.

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And I said, well, why? And she said, we can't afford it.

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Walked out of the room. I thought, oh my gosh, I'm stuck in this ecto-bismol pink world.

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I have no recourse and my parents have financial problems.

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But that really wasn't true because she got a new Mercedes for Christmas that year. Wow.

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So that there was just no logic in that family of origins world.

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So I figured, okay, I've got to get money and I've got to move out because if

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they can't And they choose not to afford it.

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So when I did, I had a friend who lived across the street who was also trapped

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in suburbia with his parents. His father was in the Air Force.

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And he, Brad, had just come from New York where he had gone to high school and was stuck.

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So we became really good friends, studied Eastern philosophy, started meditating.

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And he said, you know, it's really important what you have inside. side.

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You need to listen to your inner voice, not to the voices around you.

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I thought, hey, that sounds good.

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I started getting little part-time jobs over the summer with a temp agency and

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was one day driving down 14th Street in Riverside on a Friday coming back from

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my most recent part-time job and passed the Riverside Press Enterprise,

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which was our local newspaper.

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And a voice inside my head said, this is not the shit that goes on in my head.

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It's a good voice. I'm an intuition. Said, you're a writer. You should work there.

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And I thought, I didn't think. I just turned the car around,

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made a U-turn, went into the parking lot, walked in there at age 19,

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a shy teenager, and said, hi, I'm Diane Dreher. I'm a writer.

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I'd like to apply for a job to a reporter in the newsroom. and he said,

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well, you need to go upstairs to the personnel office.

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So I did that, filled out some papers and they said, our college intern just

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gave notice this morning. Can you start work on Monday?

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Wow. And the job was flexible hours, 20 hours a week.

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You know, I was an editorial intern and I could work it around my class schedule

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and I made enough money to pay from the dorms and my books and my tuition intuition

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and moved out of my parents' house gladly.

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And working at the Press Enterprise was wonderful because I met all these reporters

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who showed me what it means to be a writer.

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And, you know, it was fantastic. Again, it was another world that combined my

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inner sense of calling with financial, you know, power to be on my own.

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So I worked my way through college from then on.

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And I learned something really important that there are voices outside of us

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who tell us who we should be.

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And if we don't watch out, those voices take up residence inside our heads.

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So I did move away from my physical parents' house.

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But for years, I still had my mother's voice inside my head and without paying

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rent, occupying that space.

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And ever so often when I wanted something or wanted to work for something,

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this voice would just tell me, I'm not good enough. You know,

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who do you think you are? You're not good enough.

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You can't afford it. You can't do it, et cetera. Just this really negative voice.

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And from what I learned from Eastern philosophy, we can change the channels in our heads.

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We don't need to listen to that radio station.

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We can tune into a different one, which is deeper, more spiritual, more true.

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And I can tune into that, for example, in meditation or being out in nature

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and really find really a sense of inspiration and confirmation,

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which is a big contrast to the external stuff. you know, stuff.

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But this went on. So I managed to graduate from UC Riverside and met a professor

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there who was the first adult who really saw me.

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And what really helps us as human beings, I think, is that we need someone to

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see us as who we truly are,

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to acknowledge us as a worthwhile wild human being to see our talents and our potential.

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So my professor, Stanley Stewart, had actually gotten his PhD at UCLA.

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I became his research assistant. In addition to working for the newspaper,

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I got paid money for reading books about Renaissance literature.

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Okay, I do that for free anyway, but I, you know, take notes.

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And with his recommendation, nation, I got a full graduate fellowship to UCLA.

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So I ended up going to UCLA after

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all and graduated summa cum laude as valedictorian of my graduating class.

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Wow. Wow. And that was okay.

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However, at the same time, my mother went and told all the relatives,

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well, now Diane couldn't find anybody to marry her. So now she has to go to grad school.

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What the hell? Oh, my God.

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Wow. I have so many questions. Okay. So there's a real contrast here.

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Yeah. Okay. So many questions.

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First, did your parents celebrate your successes at all? Not really.

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My dad did, but he was, again, he was often gone on long flights,

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so he wasn't around that much.

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But what he did when I got my teaching job up in Northern California was that

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he gave me his World War II gold pilot's watch with his name and serial number engraved on the back.

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And, you know, from time to time, he would see me, you know,

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when he was on the ground and not up in the air.

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Do you still have the watch? Yeah, yes, absolutely. It's one of my treasured possessions.

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Oh, I love that. Do you think like your relationship with your mom at all,

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do you think it drove you to work as hard as you did?

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Oh, sure. Excellent point, Dirty Skittles.

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Yeah, I learned to be a really hard worker because initially I figured that,

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okay, I wasn't very smart because I was told that, you know,

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by her that I wasn't very smart.

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Although some of my teachers thought otherwise.

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So I had to be a hard worker. So when I really, you know, it's like when you

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push off from the side of a pool and you get momentum, you know, that's what happened.

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I learned to work really hard. I learned to really focus.

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And that can be a good thing, you know, because it's a skill developed strength.

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It can also make a person who grows up codependent being a workaholic,

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working really hard to get other people's approval.

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So I need to be mindful of why I am working hard, whether it's for something

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that I care about personally, or if it's just to get somebody's acknowledgement or approval.

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Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And I have a random question.

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You said that occasionally you would hear that voice in your head,

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the shit that goes on in your head.

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Does it sound like you? Like, is it you talking to yourself?

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Does it have a sound? That's a really good question.

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It has a sound, but it doesn't really sound like my voice. It sounds like my mother's voice.

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It sounds very authoritative.

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Yeah. Okay. All right. Interesting. Interesting.

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Well, I mean, Hey, I love, okay.

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So this is the like bitter part of like my soul loves that you not only did

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this shit on your own, but you did it so well.

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Like you couldn't have gotten any better. Do you know what I mean?

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Like you're like, Oh, I'm going to do this and I'm going to be the best at it

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and I don't need you and I can do it on my own.

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And I think that That is like amazing.

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Yeah, amazing. Like, well, what an accomplishment. Like, and all on your own.

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Yeah, although on my own as a person, but not necessarily on my own.

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Because when I get inspiration to, for example, to go into the newspaper office

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the day that the college intern had quit, they hadn't even advertised the job yet. How did I know that?

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And I really believe that we're all connected to a source that is much wiser

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and greater than any individual.

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And to connect to that source is really empowering.

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And it's like connecting to a source of love and inspiration.

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So when i am connected to

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to the source right i

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i mean you know i flourish when the

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shit goes on in my head it becomes static that keeps

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me from tuning in to that higher power yeah it's kind of like when you climb

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the tree yeah yeah you can look down and see interesting yeah that's very interesting

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it's very interesting and you know i think about that too like a little bit

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like you you, Diane, for years and years, right?

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I never could see myself the way everybody else saw me.

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So it took a lot of work for me to get past that. I mean, I'm almost to that point now, but.

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Takes work of being like out in nature or being

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doing things that i really connect with

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and when i'm connecting then it

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all comes it floods back to me but in a good way like

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i don't hear the voices in my head that

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tell me that i'm not good enough or that you

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know people are looking at me like i was 20 years ago

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they don't you know i look at myself now and

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how i accomplished what what i accomplished but

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i didn't have i didn't have to do it with their help i was able to

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do it on my own so all the naysayers welcome

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because you know what i like ride

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my own boat i'm all good that's beautiful

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i love that g-rex because i

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feel like what you said when you feel connected to nature

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you don't need those other naysayers

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you know they're they're irrelevant elephant so

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irrelevant but you know it took until my

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sick until i turned 60 to really figure that out

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like i i literally from i turned 59 next day i turned 60 and i was like you

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know what i don't really fucking care what you say because i made my own person

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right i righted my wrongs i worked really hard to get where i'm at and i live

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in this beautiful place like we live on eight acres in upstate New York.

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And they have so much nature around us. Like we have foxes, we have deer and

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rabbits, squirrels, lots of squirrels.

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But that's where I find my connection. And I actually find my connection with

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my dad. So my dad and I were really close.

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He taught me all about nature and about fishing and, you know, just everything.

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And that's how I find my connection with him. He's been gone since 2005.

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But when I'm out there, I can feel his presence.

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And I can hear him saying, you know, you're doing the right thing.

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So I that is it holds

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so much truth with me that is so

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beautiful I still feel connected to my dad too you

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know whenever I see a plane flying overhead I

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think of him I took flying lessons when I first moved up to northern California

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because I wanted to be part of his world I wanted to feel like you know how

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did how could he do this because he discovered himself too My dad grew up really poor in Kentucky.

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His mother was a very devout Catholic, and she wanted him to be a priest.

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He was an only child, and she was very strict.

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And it was suffocating. So he worked his way through Catholic high school.

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He had paper routes and things.

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But what really excited him was aviation.

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He'd see these, in his day, little biplanes fly overhead. had.

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And one day he ran to the Louisville airport because he found out that you could

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get a quarter if you helped tie down a plane.

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And back then during the depression, a quarter was a lot of money.

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So he ran and he just got there in time and he saw the pilot get out of the

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plane. He thought, I must fly.

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So he moved away from home at age 16, moved into the attic of the Louisville

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Flying Service and wouldn't have much to eat except for a bowl of bean soup

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at night with a lot of crackers in it at the coffee shop there.

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Went to school during the day. And then when he came home, he talked to the pilots.

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And sometimes if he washed their plane and helped them, they'd take him up for a lesson.

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When he was 16 years old, that year, he became the youngest licensed pilot in

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Kentucky and went on to be an Air Force colonel, flying jets,

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air rescue helicopters, big planes.

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And that was, you know, that was his way of getting above it.

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Yeah. Yeah. Very similar. Yeah. You and your dad. That's really cool.

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Was he at all like aware of the relationship you had with your mom?

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I think to some extent, but again, he wasn't around when she said mean things.

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And he also, he grew up really poor and she grew up as the daughter of a person

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who retired at age 30 as a very wealthy contractor in Southern California.

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So he felt socially, I suppose, inferior to my mother.

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So he didn't want to question her. but but

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psychologically and spiritually you know

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again he was way up there in the atmosphere way

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above a lot of people i admire people like what g-rex has done is that we need

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to discover who we are and it's no one can tell us that people can you know

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recognize who we are but we need to discover that.

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And when I did research on Renaissance literature, I realized that something

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really interesting happened between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

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And one of the things that happened was that their theology changed.

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In the Middle Ages, only priests, monks, and nuns were supposedly called by

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God to have some sort of meaningful spiritual life.

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By the Renaissance, theologians and philosophers said that everyone had a vocation.

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Everyone had specific talents that they were given, and it was their duty and

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their destiny to discover them and to use them to fulfill their own destinies,

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but also to serve the greater good.

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So you have Shakespeare, whose father was illiterate, who could only sign his name with an X.

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Michelangelo, whose father would beat him whenever he caught him drawing pictures

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when he was a little boy, because he said, that's a worthless occupation.

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You need to become a cloth merchant and bring money into the family.

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And Queen Elizabeth I, who, well, grew up in a dysfunctional family,

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to say the least. Her father executed a couple of his wives.

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And, you know, you can see why Elizabeth never married. Marriage was a scary undertaking.

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But again, she discovered her world in books, spoke six languages,

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and became the monarch of the new Renaissance England.

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So we have all these people, males, females, artists, scientists,

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saints, you know, discovering who they were inside, finding their talents,

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their gifts, and bringing them forward.

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So we're all part of this larger mosaic.

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And it's up to each of us to fulfill our destiny to make the whole complete.

00:25:23
Wow. I just love this so much. And, you know, as you were talking,

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you know, I also thought about, you know like all the influences I got from

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my mom so my mom was a nurse for years and years,

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and I get a lot of my caring and compassion from her

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right so you put those two together you put the caring and compassion together

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along with my love for nature and it I can say like over the last year I've

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really come to figure out you know who I am what I love and putting up walls

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so the outside noise doesn't get in.

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And it also happens to be like how I deal with my boundaries too, right?

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Like if it sounds like drama, I just don't want it anymore. I don't have time for it.

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Yeah, there's a big difference between drama and dharma, you know.

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That needs to be a t-shirt. Somebody make that.

00:26:18
Yeah, I need that. What's really interesting is that I do research in positive

00:26:25
psychology now, among other things.

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And in 2004 martin

00:26:32
seligman and chris peterson came up with this book called

00:26:35
character strengths and virtues and they'd

00:26:38
done this huge international research project which discovered

00:26:42
going back in time to the earliest written

00:26:45
history of all the cultures that

00:26:49
they could find around the world they found that despite

00:26:52
all the differences we human beings have and if you

00:26:55
watch the news you you can tell there are a lot of differences that everyone

00:26:59
agrees on 24 character strengths

00:27:02
that are common to all humanity you know courage

00:27:06
curiosity compassion you know spirituality many love of beauty and excellence

00:27:12
nature many of these okay and that each of us according to the positive psychologists

00:27:19
have five top strengths we all have all 24 but our five top strengths are our signature strengths,

00:27:25
those that form our personality.

00:27:28
And when we discover and use them, we become healthier, happier, and more successful.

00:27:33
And they have empirical evidence to this, which, you know, over 400 years ago

00:27:38
in the Renaissance, this is what people believed.

00:27:40
And it caused, I believe, the Renaissance.

00:27:44
Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. I have some kind of fun questions.

00:27:49
I'm curious, curious knowing or having all

00:27:52
the stories that you've read about history if you could

00:27:55
go go back to a certain point in time in history

00:27:58
where would you go or like if you could talk

00:28:01
to anybody from history who would you talk to oh gosh queen elizabeth the first

00:28:06
a really courageous woman i mean she had to be shakespeare because he didn't

00:28:15
really travel you know he stayed he didn't go anywhere. He lived in England.

00:28:20
He traveled from Stratford-upon-Avon to London and back, and that was pretty much where he went.

00:28:26
And yet his imagination took him all over the world and touched the hearts and

00:28:30
still touches the hearts of so many people because he tapped into something

00:28:35
that's universally human.

00:28:36
And I'd also like to go back to 1776 because.

00:28:45
That's when our country was founded. And I used to be, what do they call that,

00:28:50
a consultant for the National Endowment for the Humanities.

00:28:53
And we would fly back from California or wherever we lived to Washington, D.C.

00:28:59
To evaluate proposals.

00:29:02
And one day I went to the National Archives and saw the Declaration of Independence. pendants.

00:29:08
And I looked and I thought, only 56 people signed that document.

00:29:16
56. I mean, I chaired my English department at Santa Clara University.

00:29:21
We had more than 56 faculty there, okay? We could have started our own country.

00:29:27
But they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to something

00:29:32
that they had never seen before, that had never existed before. for.

00:29:36
And had they been, had they lost the revolution, they all would have been executed as traitors.

00:29:43
And yet they believed in the possibility of a democracy here and they made it happen.

00:29:50
So I'd like to go back and talk to them.

00:29:53
That's so cool. It is so cool. So, so cool.

00:29:57
If you could go back to a younger version of yourself and give yourself advice,

00:30:02
how old would would you be? And what would you say to yourself?

00:30:06
Oh, dear. That's an interesting question. Probably when I was about 12 years old.

00:30:13
I would tell myself, you need to believe in your future.

00:30:16
You need to believe in the journeys, the paths that some of these people have

00:30:21
taken in the books that you look and find your own way.

00:30:24
And don't listen to the garbage that you hear around you.

00:30:30
I love that. I love that so much. I think, so you've asked me that question before.

00:30:37
And for me, I would go back to like 21.

00:30:41
One and i would take the road less traveled i wouldn't

00:30:45
do what everybody else told me to do i would like follow

00:30:48
my own drum that own my own

00:30:51
beat yeah yeah two roads

00:30:55
diverged in the wood and i took the one less traveled by and that has made all

00:31:00
the difference right yeah to take our own road and it usually is less trapped

00:31:06
because you know it's unique we don't need to be carbon copies Xerox copies

00:31:11
of anybody else. They've already done that.

00:31:14
What the world needs now is new inspiration, new possibilities.

00:31:19
And we can only bring that forward by following that road less traveled.

00:31:25
That is like the perfect outro. Like I'm like, I don't want to ruin it. It's so good.

00:31:30
It's so good. I have, I just got my son a book upstairs and it's called Wonder.

00:31:35
And that is the heart of that story for him as a kid is don't be like anybody else.

00:31:40
Be like yourself because you're uniquely you.

00:31:43
And there are things that you'll do that nobody else has done.

00:31:46
And it's like this very inspiring book.

00:31:48
And I absolutely love it. And we read it every night. It's not one of his favorite stories.

00:31:52
And I think it's easy for us to lose ourselves or maybe never even find out who we are.

00:31:59
Right and it's something that I think I'm still learning at my age of who I

00:32:06
really am because I you know.

00:32:09
I can get lost in work. I can get lost in my spouse. I can get lost with my parents.

00:32:14
But there are those things that make me who I am that I am still learning what they are.

00:32:21
And I'm trying so hard to never forget them.

00:32:24
And I take the pictures of things that make me happy because it reminds me,

00:32:27
I love stuff that's outside of all of those other things that is just me.

00:32:33
So I think that's such an important lesson. And

00:32:37
the fact that you were able to do this and to follow

00:32:40
your own path despite you know the challenges that

00:32:43
would have taken some of us out and kind of

00:32:46
our paths would have went a different way you know yeah we were

00:32:49
able to find you and the thing is our culture does not reinforce us for being

00:32:55
individuals for being for discovering our own uniqueness i mean there are really

00:33:02
sad cases of young people today who get lost on social media and,

00:33:08
you know, become incredibly depressed and anxious.

00:33:11
The statistics are highly depressing because, you know.

00:33:16
They live in California's Silicon Valley, which invents all these things. It's okay.

00:33:23
And a lot of the people who are Silicon Valley CEOs don't let their children

00:33:29
spend too much time on social media because they know how addictive it can become

00:33:34
and how it can hijack our sense of self.

00:33:37
Yeah. And so then, okay, campus counseling centers on college campuses are absolutely

00:33:45
swamped with disturbed.

00:33:49
Anxious, depressed college students because the messages they get from our culture

00:33:56
to sell them products, you know, you're not good enough unless you buy this thing.

00:34:00
Okay. to find meaning, purpose, serenity, peace of mind, and nature,

00:34:08
that doesn't make them any money.

00:34:11
So they want to make people feel inadequate in order to sell products.

00:34:15
And social media makes people feel constantly on edge, you know,

00:34:20
so that these days, I think throughout our lifetimes, really,

00:34:25
we need to be very mindful of what G-Rex was saying about boundaries.

00:34:30
We need boundaries to fence

00:34:33
off some of that garbage some of

00:34:36
that static noise so that it doesn't take up

00:34:39
lodging in our heads and that's so true like because you know when i was growing

00:34:44
up like when i have cell phones you know well i think we had computers but they

00:34:48
were like ginormous right nobody could afford them but you know i would be out

00:34:54
from like the time the sun Sun came up until the sun went down.

00:34:58
You know, we used our imagination to find ourselves, you know,

00:35:03
to define who we were, right?

00:35:05
And as kids, and I didn't really start using a computer until I went to college.

00:35:10
But I think the kids today are missing out on that and they're not...

00:35:15
They're so focused on their electronics and not really doing that self-discovery phase of their life.

00:35:24
And it makes me sad, you know, they're the next generation. So please,

00:35:28
you know, I don't know, maybe get off your phone for a little bit.

00:35:33
Yeah. One of my favorite students at Santa Clara University was feeling uncomfortable

00:35:38
because he didn't fit in, you know, to what what campus life was all about because,

00:35:43
okay, he was a vegetarian and he didn't drink because of his religious background.

00:35:50
So beer parties and barbecues did not work for him.

00:35:55
So I said, well, what does work? You know, we get together and have coffee after class or whatever.

00:36:02
I would talk to my students one-on-one and he said, I love being in nature.

00:36:07
So he founded this club called Into the Wild, which in which students would

00:36:13
go up and hike in the nearby mountains and they'd have to leave their electronic devices at home.

00:36:21
And then they, you know, they feel free.

00:36:24
They rejoice in the beauty of nature and they come back feeling relaxed, refreshed and renewed.

00:36:31
And it became the most popular club on campus.

00:36:36
More popular than beer parties and barbecues how about that that's pretty awesome

00:36:41
i love that this has been wonderful yeah so diane like where can people find

00:36:48
you you know if they you know want to learn more about you and things like that,

00:36:54
Okay. I have a website, which is, imagine that, dianedreer.com,

00:36:59
D-I-A-N-E, D-R-E-H-E-R.com, which lists my books about nature and Eastern philosophy.

00:37:07
Also, there's a link to my coaching practice.

00:37:09
And there are meditations and blogs and all kinds of little bits of inspiration

00:37:15
that they can find on my website.

00:37:17
I love how in tune you are with nature. That warms my heart because Because

00:37:23
nature, it just grounds you. It does.

00:37:28
There's so much wonderment about it. I'm a big kid. If the deer come and eat

00:37:33
on the side of the yard, I have to go watch.

00:37:35
My wife's always like, be quiet, you're going to scare them away.

00:37:38
I'm like, I'm a super spy.

00:37:40
I'm like, I'm just going to open the door a little bit. But what's really cool

00:37:43
for me, and it just really warms my heart, is we have mama deer.

00:37:48
And for the last three years, she's given birth to triplets.

00:37:51
So we get to see the babies every year

00:37:55
and they just we have like 14 different

00:37:58
deer trails in the back here they can't

00:38:01
just use one because they're gonna trample all over

00:38:04
my grass all those kids yeah we got

00:38:08
all our kids and i to me that like if

00:38:11
i'm having a bad day i will go outside side it

00:38:14
even if I see one of my eight billion

00:38:18
dumb squirrels but I mean that

00:38:21
is my connection so we got to see the

00:38:23
solar eclipse on Monday and it

00:38:27
was cloudy it was kind of gross and super cold but

00:38:30
the thing that will always stick

00:38:33
with my stick within me is that we got totality and

00:38:36
so I got to see a sunrise and a sunset at the

00:38:39
exact same time and I thought man I'm

00:38:42
never gonna get to to see this again because the next one's in 2045 and

00:38:46
I'll be 82 so God willing if I'm still

00:38:49
alive I am going to go to Colorado so I can see that but it

00:38:52
was as cold as it was it was it just it sent chills down my spine and that and

00:39:00
the other cool thing was they a lot of parents took their kids out of school

00:39:04
to see this and they were so engaged and so much wonderment in their eyes and And it warmed my heart.

00:39:12
It made me feel like maybe these kids will remember this one time in their life

00:39:19
that they got to see this.

00:39:20
I mean, these were young kids. They were like four or five years old.

00:39:24
But just to see like the look on their face when they saw it, it warmed my heart.

00:39:29
I don't have any kids. I have eight cats. If you want to call them kids, we can.

00:39:34
But I just I thought it was really awesome. Awesome.

00:39:37
I do phone banking for Native American reservations in Arizona and learned that

00:39:43
from my Native American colleagues that an eclipse is a sacred event and they,

00:39:51
you know, they recognize our connection with nature and they say prayers and,

00:39:56
you know, it's like the end of one shadow and the beginning of new light and

00:40:02
you can release all kinds of old stuff and, you know, there are rituals involved.

00:40:06
And I thought, maybe, you know, what has really caused so much disturbance in

00:40:13
our country, in our world, is when people feel disconnected from each other,

00:40:18
from nature, and from a deeper sense of themselves.

00:40:22
And the fact that we had so many people sharing the eclipse,

00:40:28
we didn't get much of it out here in Northern California, just got a little bite out of the sun.

00:40:33
But still, you know, the fact that this happened, you know, at this time,

00:40:38
and so many people will remember it forever,

00:40:42
really, is something that unites us in wonder at the grandeur and beauty of nature. Yeah.

00:40:50
I love this. Oh, my God. Thank you so much. Oh, my God. Thank you. Thank you.

00:40:55
You've been amazing. Thank you for the inspiration, both of you oh yeah hey

00:41:01
awesome thank you so much diane i appreciate you coming on sharing your story,

00:41:07
hi y'all thank you so much for listening to this episode i'm g-rex and i'm dirty

00:41:13
skittles don't forget to subscribe rate and review this podcast we'd love to

00:41:17
listen to your feedback we can't do this without you guys it's okay to be.

00:41:25
Music.