An Army of Normal Folks - How to Love a Child Without Erasing Their Past (Pt 1)

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

At 50 years old, Charlotte Dance had a 2 year old child placed in her lap. And instead of walking away, Charlotte not only legally adopted the child, she also informally adopted his broken family. She even says that they adopted her too! This episode will teach you about finding love in the most unexpected places like no other story. Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An award-winning photographer who had taken a picture of a vulture stalking a young child that was starving in Africa. And the picture spoke so much to people, and they said, what happened to the child? And he didn't know because he had taken the picture, and he had walked away. And my husband said, I don't want to be the one. that walks away from something that I could have done. Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. I'm a normal guy.

I'm a husband. I'm a father. I'm an entrepreneur. And I'm a football coach in inner city Memphis. And that last part, it somehow led to an Oscar for the film about one of my teams. That movie's called Undefeated. I believe our country's problems are never going to be solved,

by a bunch of fancy people and nice suits using big words that nobody ever uses on CNN and Fox, but rather by an army of normal folks. That's us. Just you and me deciding, hey, maybe I can help. That's what Charlotte Dance, the voice you just heard, is done. Charlotte is a longtime listener who we discovered also has an amazing story of our own. At 50, I'm 57, so I can't even imagine. At 50, she adopted a child from an Indian reservation showing that it's never too late to serve and serve in new ways.

Her decision to radically love his birth family will convict you about your own love. I cannot wait for you to meet Charlotte right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. You want to know what my evenings actually look like? Homework questions. Someone needs a permission slip sign. the dog's begging for a walk, someone's yelling for a snack. And somewhere in the middle of all that, I'm supposed to figure out dinner? That's why Hello Fresh has been a lifesaver.

Fresh ingredients show up at my door, locally sourced when possible, simple step-by-step recipes that actually make sense. And no matter how chaotic the rest of my night gets, dinner is the one thing I don't have to stress about. I'm just cooking a delicious meal my family will actually eat and it takes around 30 minutes. And honestly, the real value is knowing that even on the mess, happiest nights. Dinner's handled. That's one less thing pulling at me. And that matters. Take some stress out of your evenings right now. Get 50% off your first box plus free sides for life. That's right.

Free sides for life. Go to Hellofresh.c.c and use code rescue 50. That's hellofresh.c.cata's Number One Meal Kit Delivery Service. I'm John Polk. For years, I was the poster boy of the conversion therapy movement. The ex-gay who married an ex-lesbian and traveled the world telling my story of how I changed my sexuality from gay to straight. Once upon a time, I was on 60 Minutes, Oprah, the front cover of Newsweek. And you might have heard my story, but you've never heard the real story. so join me as I peel back the layers and expose what happened to me in the midst of conversion therapy

to shine a light on what the ex-game movement does to people and the pain it continues to cause. I had lost 150 pounds because if I couldn't control my sexuality I was going to control my weight. It sounded like, and this is the word I used, a cult. And as I look too at the harm I did from within it. Listen to Atonement, the John Polk story on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car?

When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness.

Mind games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all, NLP, might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for coming to Memphis and visiting with us.

Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Everybody Charlotte Dance is a normal Army member. She's a listener who's been emailing with us for years about episodes that have been impacted her and you emailed me personally a few times and I feel like I know you a little from those emails and we beg listeners to email us and you are living proof that if you do, we will engage with you and here you are in Memphis because of it. Over time, we've learned about Charlotte's amazing story and we're going to start with this. 50 years old and a two-year-old

child you'd never met, being placed in your lap. Why in the world did you let that kid sit in your lap? Well, my husband says, when God places one in your lap, you don't brush them off. Yeah, I guess so. Well, tell us about it. Well, my husband and I had taken our girls on a trip to Sissotan, South Dakota. There's a, the Sioux Nation is actually a bunch of small Indian tribes, smaller ones, and this is a Dakota tribe, and it's in South Dakota. And we were doing VBS at a church there. BBS, Vacation Bible School.

Yes. And one of the women that lived in Sissotan brought her children and her foster children, and she asked if the young. one could stay. And one of the other women said, yes, he can stay. He was one, mind you. And I looked at him and I thought, I'm doing the little kids. I'm just going to keep him with me because he's so little. And so he, I don't know how much you know about kids that have attachment disorder, but there's like two kinds. There's a kind I don't want anybody. And then there's a kind I I love everybody.

Well, he was the kind of, I love everybody. And his name was Dell, and we call him my Dell laptop. Your husband called him that right. Yes, he did. Husband's creative, because that's cool. He's very creative. He comes up with all kinds of things. So I carried him around, and I played with him, and I had him on my lap, and I taught with

him on my lap. And we'd been there for a few days. and I was talking to his foster mom, and she said, oh, he's available for adoption, but nobody wants them. And I thought, I'd take him, just like that. But I thought, I have to talk to my husband. And I didn't get a chance that night, but I looked it up. And because he's native, he's covered by ICWA, Indian Child Welfare Act. It's a good law.

It says, in regular foster care, it says, family, extended family, and then outside. Well, ICWA just adds two more levels to it. It says family first, extended family tribe, any tribe, and then outside. And so I thought- We've done a lot of adoption stories. That's even more arduous, really. Yeah.

They're protecting the tribe, I see. They're protecting the tribe. They're protecting the families because so many were taken. And I think it's a good thing. And I thought, oh, there's no way. And I didn't think my husband would be really for it. So I just felt very strongly that I ought to ask about it the next morning after I looked up that. And so I did.

And I asked the pastor, and he said, they never place outside the tribe. But he gave me the number for child protection. And I thought, well, I'll call them. And I thought my husband would say no, and then I wouldn't call them. And then if I called them, then they would say no. And then I just pray for this little boy. I was teaching. I was carrying him around, and I was working with the kids doing some kind of a craft.

And there was a phone call, and they said, it's for you. And I thought, nobody even knows I'm here. And it was a foster mom, and she said, do you really want him? She said the social worker would like to talk to you. And so then I had a chance to talk to my husband. He'd been doing a lot of other things. They were doing a kind of extreme home makeover. But he was there that morning.

And he said, well, we'll go and see her on the way out of town. And we talked. What did you take that to mean from him? Well, I think he was going to find out, you know, what was going on. And we still had no idea that it would have. happen. But that morning that I was carrying him around and that I got the phone call, that was his second birthday. That was the child's sight. That was still literally his second birthday. Yeah. So I said that only God could make a birthday as special to the adoptive family as it was to the

birth family. So we went and talked to her and she said, well, I have some things to do. I would call her every once in a while and leave a message on her voicemail because I never reached her and say, I'm still interested. Is there anything I need to do? There were two times I actually reached her, and she had something for me to do on those days. And then four months later, we went and picked him up with the tribal court order. And he was placed with us on a tribal court order until we actually went through the interstate transfer process. and then the adoption. We adopted them in tribal court. Charlotte, I'm 57. So I'm going to go back seven years to 50, where you were when the laptop got stuck on you. My children would have been in their late teens, early 20s. I don't think Lisa and I would have ever been thinking about adoption.

I know we're not now, and I know we wouldn't have been seven years ago. Before Dell was plopped in your lap, was adoption something that you guys were thinking about? Or was this just Dell? Well, what happened is that my husband and I were older when we got married. So I was 34 when we got married. And the only adoption talk we had was, if we don't have kids right away, We will adopt. We won't go through infertility, and we do it however.

And so that was the only adoption talk, although there's a lot of adoption in my family, so it's not out of the realm of possibility. So I had high, you know, I... But at 50? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but... Yeah, our daughters, though, because we started later, our daughters were 12 and 14.

Oh, gosh. Yeah. Those are fun ages for girls as a parent. Yeah. One of them especially was kind of fun. Yeah, we'll get to that. So I read in Alex's prep, I think, both pregnancies were not without challenges. They were full of drama.

And your husband thought... You want to hear what he said? Yeah. I thought that was funny. Tell us about your two daughters. Okay. So Caroline was born, and I ended up having a, well, after two days of being induced, they said. Two days? Two days.

Wow. Two days. I was ready. They said push. I pushed once. They said, we're doing a C-section. And the cord was wrapped around her neck three times and around her body once. And when they pulled her out, I tore and I lost half my blood.

And so that was a little, that was really scary for him. For him? For him? Well, I was just like there. I mean, I was awake. I knew when things happened. I knew what was going on. But it was scarier for him.

But our daughter was a very healthy, get this, full term, four pounds, 14-ounce girl, full-term. So he was a little cautious when it came to the second one. And the second one, when she was born, she came fast, no two days being induced. I mean, they were telling me, don't push, don't push with that one. but the cord was wrapped around her neck twice. And after she got out, she started seizing. And she had one seizure after another, and they finally, they got her medicated, but she had breakthrough seizures.

So they sent her up to the neonatal ICU in Portland, and we spent her first weeks in the ICU in Portland. So after that, he said, the first one, my wife almost dies. The second one, the baby almost dies. So next time it would be my turn, we're done. We're not having any more. That was it. Yeah.

And then here it is, 12, 14 years later, Dell shows up. Dell shows up. When you thought about the prospect of adopting Dell, was there a moment that it really sunk in that this wasn't a theory anymore, that you were actually at 50 with two teenage girls going to do? do this and this is something you're actually going to live now? Did you ever think someone else should do this? Did anything about saying yes, scary? Well, yeah, you think of some of those things. I guess I always felt that if it wasn't going to be the right one, that there would be somebody

else stand up for it, you know, that there would be somebody else. And, you know, my second daughter was not very pleased about the whole thing. And she said, I don't want him there. And at that point in time, we didn't know if it was going to work out. And I said, well, you can pray for him to get a different family, just a family that he loves. Because I was told by the pastor that so many times this is what happens, they stay in foster care until they're teenagers when they're not that easy.

anyway, and then they go to the boarding school. And I thought, I don't want that. I want him to have, I want him to have a place that loves him. And I will say his birth family loves him with what they have to give. They love him. And now a few messages from our generous sponsors. But first, I hope you'll follow us on your favorite social media channels where we share more powerful content, including reels, from our video studio and testimonials from Army members.

We're at Army of Normal folks on every channel. Give us a follow. We'll be right back. You want to know what my evenings actually look like? Homework questions. Someone needs a permission slip signed. The dog's begging for a walk. Someone's yelling for a snack. And somewhere in the middle of all that, I'm supposed to figure out dinner? That's why Hello Fresh has been a lifesaver. Fresh ingredients show up at my door, locally sourced when possible, simple step-by-step recipes that actually make sense.

And no matter how chaotic the rest of my night gets, dinner is the one thing I don't have to stress about. I'm just cooking a delicious meal my family will actually eat, and it takes around 30 minutes. And honestly, the real value is knowing that even on the messiest nights, dinner's handled. That's one less thing pulling at me, and that matters. Take some stress out of your evenings right now, get 50% off your first box. plus free sides for life. That's right, free sides for life. Go to Hellofresh.cate and use code rescue 50. That's Hellofresh.cate code rescue 50. HelloFresh, Canada's number one meal kit delivery service. I'm John Polk. For years, I was the poster boy of the conversion therapy movement.

The ex-gay who married an ex-lesbian and traveled the world telling my story of how I changed my sexuality from gay to straight. Once upon a time I was on 60 minutes, Oprah, the front cover of Newsweek. And you might have heard my story, but you've never heard the real story. So join me as I peel back the layers and expose what happened to me in the midst of conversion therapy, to shine a light on what the ex-game movement does to people, and the pain it continues to cause. I had lost 150 pounds, because if I couldn't control my sexuality, I was going to control my weight. It sounded like, and this is the word I used, a cult. And as I look too at the harm I did from within it.

Listen to Atonement, the John Polk story on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of wife would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to? to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?

I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold

it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all, NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found it interesting. Alex told me in the prep about. this that when you were considering the adoption of Dell, Sherman thought of an award-winning

picture, and I think it's interesting. So we had heard the story of an award-winning photographer who had taken a picture of a vulture stalking a young child that was starving in Africa. That in and of itself, just consider what you just said. I mean, It's horrifying. It's horrifying. And the picture spoke so much to people, and they said, what happened to the child? And he didn't know because he had taken the picture, and he had walked away. And my husband said, I don't want to be the one that walks away from something that I could have done.

And so we just took it one step at a time. We didn't know really totally what we were getting in for, but we just said yes to each little step is what we did. We didn't know. Clearly, Charlotte, you married a like-minded human being. I married the best. Believe me. I married way up. because I'd never heard that story.

And when I read it, I got chills. I mean, what happened, it almost reeks of today's social media stuff where you see somebody getting beat up and some jerks filming it, but never steps in to help the old person getting beat up or something. But it's the same thing that this awarding photographer took a picture of a vulture, starking a starving child but has no idea what happened to the child after because he was more sure than the picture than the human child. And your husband said, I don't want to be that guy. Yeah.

Phenomenal. The kindness and the selflessness in that oozes through your words. And I think there's a reason. Or maybe there's a foundation is a better way to say it. So we'll come back to Dell. Okay. Everybody knows Dell exists now, and everybody knows how Dell came into your life. And we'll come back to it.

But to understand why you said yes, I kind of feel like we have to go way back to strangers in your grandparents' house, then your parents' house. And it seems like almost everybody else relatives of your homes. Which I think is germane to, candidly, a family that never closed its doors. And it almost seems like that just transitioned to you to almost a divinity in Del being plopped at your lap at 50.

So tell us about kind of how your worldview toward an open doors. formed? Well, my grandparents were pastors at a little tiny church in Western Nebraska. Isn't every church in Western Nebraska little untimmy? Yes. Yes. I mean, it's little tiny. And it was a little country friend's church. And it was after World War II. And my mom was in college, I think. or she was college age. And her younger brother was at home. And my grandmother had a friend who worked with the refugees in Germany.

German refugee children from World War II? Refugee children from World War II. I assume that many of them came from other countries, and they were refugees into Germany. Like Poland and Czechoslovakia and all. And Latvia. All of the countries that Nazi Germany invaded at the height of the war. Yes, because the Germans came and pushed into them.

And then when the Russians were pushing them back, Germans wanted workers, and they didn't want to stay under Russian domination. Right. And so her friend worked there, and she said, well, maybe, because my uncle was significantly younger than the others in his family, She thought, well, maybe they could take an orphan boy. And, I mean, he would have been a teenager. And her friend said, well, I have these two brothers that I think would be perfect. And those two brothers are my uncles.

And they came from Latvia. They walked out of Latvia with their mother. Their father had already died. Their brother had to stay. He was too little. and they came there and they said, my uncle said, when I first saw it, he said it was desolate. He was used to green and lush Latvia, and it's not green and lush out there. And they came and they taught themselves English in the refugee camp by reading American Cowboy Magazines.

So, but the thing is, your grandparents said we'll take one, but ended up. saying we're not going to split the brothers up. We'll take two. We'll take two. Yeah. Yeah. And these are both your uncles today. These are my uncles today.

That's unbelievable. And they were how old when they got to the States? They were teens. I'm thinking maybe 12 and 14 or maybe a little bit older than that, but teenagers. So how did life progress for everybody? Well, my uncles are rather brilliant. Are they? They are.

Rather. They both have their PhDs from Johns Hopkins in physics. You're kidding me? I'm not kidding. That is fantastic. Yeah. My other uncle is biological uncle was rather bright, too. The three of them had wonderful times together.

My mother said you would walk into a room and you never knew where the light was going to be hanging from because they would move it all over, so it would be hanging in a corner by just wires, and it was just crazy. So then your parents? Yeah. They were always really open to people. I remember one time when I was a teenager, some people, let me see, it was a grandmother, mother, and daughter. They had car trouble, and they had gotten.

stuck in town. And my dad said, well, they're going to need a place to stay. And my mother says, well, you go check them out. And if you think they're, if you think they'd be okay around the family, then you can bring them here. And they stayed with us for several days while they were waiting for their car to be fixed. Just the way it was. Yeah, well, I mean, you have to understand.

We lived in a little tiny town. It was like, you know, 600 people. So there's not a huge number of places to stay. But, yeah, and then after that they had, I don't know, from my mom's funeral, my dad was telling me, I think it was over 50 people that stayed multiple weeks with them. 50? Over 50. While you were in the home?

No, that was mostly after. When we lived there, we had people stay with us like for a day or two. But, well, when I was in college, they had kids stay with them all summer, college kids that needed a place while they were working there. Well, then this isn't really a one-off. This is kind of an operating system of your family. Yeah, yeah, I would say so. Well, then no wonder when Del plopped down in your lap, you were glued. I mean, it was baked into you, it feels like.

Yeah. I mean, hospitality and an open door and love of just people just seems like kind of the way you guys roll. Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I don't think I do as much as my parents or my brother, but, yeah, pretty much. I mean, with that many people and just a revolving door of candidly revolving door, generosity. and kindness. I can only imagine as a teenager, maybe sometimes thinking,

gosh, I just wish I had a house without all these people. Well, now, most of those came after the four of us. Say they're four of us kids. Right. So the house was pretty full. And we're like your family. I mean, I'm the oldest.

The youngest is four years younger than I am. My mom said by the time she got us ready to go someplace she didn't want to go. That's how my, Lisa would get our kids beautiful for church and school, but by the time all four of them were dressed in pigtails and good everything else, she was exhausted, just wanted us to leave and go to sleep. Yeah.

Well, I mean, but then the add on top of all of that, all of this. Most of them were after the four of us were out of the house. Got it. But. You did say strangers were sleeping in your bed, right? You'd come home and there'd be somebody. Oh, yeah. I'm like, I never knew where I was going to sleep when I came home at a bed.

Is it? I'm like, I might be on the couch. I might be in one bedroom. I might be in another one. Who knew? It was never my, I mean, it wasn't necessarily my bedroom that I had grown up in. But that was okay with you? It was okay. It's how they are. I don't know how you didn't get jealous sometimes. Oh, well, I mean, so many of these, some of these kids that stayed with them. I mean, my parents were, they, they, A lot of them were foreign students, and my parents were their American family. And they just adopted me right along with their parents. They were great people. And some of them I still have contact with, you know, because they loved my parents. I guess it's really enriching, isn't it?

It is. It is. We'll be right back. You want to know what my evenings actually look like? Homework questions. Someone needs a permission slip signed. the dog's begging for a walk, someone's yelling for a snack. And somewhere in the middle of all that, I'm supposed to figure out dinner? That's why Hello Fresh has been a lifesaver. Fresh ingredients show up at my door, locally sourced when possible, simple step-by-step recipes that actually make sense.

And no matter how chaotic the rest of my night gets, dinner is the one thing I don't have to stress about. I'm just cooking a delicious meal my family will actually eat and it takes around 30 minutes. And honestly, the real value is knowing that even on the mess, seeest nights. Dinner's handled. That's one less thing pulling at me. And that matters. Take some stress out of your evenings right now. Get 50% off your first box plus free sides for life. That's right. Free sides for life. Go to Hellofresh.c.c and use code rescue 50. That's hellofresh.c.cata's Number One Meal Kit Delivery Service. I'm John Polk.

For years, I was the poster boy of the conversion therapy movement. The ex-gay who married an ex-lesbian and traveled the world telling my story of how I changed my sexuality from gay to straight. Once upon a time, I was on 60 Minutes, Oprah, the front cover of Newsweek. And you might have heard my story, but you've never heard the real story. so join me as I peel back the layers and expose what happened to me in the midst of conversion therapy to shine a light on what the ex-game movement does to people and the pain it continues to cause I had lost 150 pounds because if I couldn't control my sexuality I was going to control my weight it sounded like and this is the word I used a cult and as I look too at the harm I did from within

Listen to Atonement, the John Polk story on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult?

NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted.

The biggest mind game of all, NLP, might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're going to get to Dell again. But it's interesting with that background and understanding Dell at 2, which we'll get to Dell. later because Del's now, I think, 18, right? He's 18. Yeah.

What I think is fascinating is with this background and with Dell, you've also almost adopted Dale's natural family, and they've kind of adopted you, too. Oh, they have. They have. Tell us about that. Well, I didn't know anybody but his birth mom to start with. They said the social worker, when we pay. up Dell, she said, it's going to be an open adoption. I'm like, okay. And we went up to visit

Jenna, her name is Jenna. She called, and she wanted to see Del. And we went up to visit her. And while I told you, I'm from this little tiny town, and she lives in Minneapolis, St. Paul. So, I mean, it's outside of my comfort zone already to go into a big city. I mean, I, you know, to some extent, it's outside. I've, I've been there, but, you know, it was a new, new place, new things. I didn't know her, but we took him up there. And initially, I'd been, I can't imagine, you know, and I had these feelings toward her, but when I saw her and saw, he wouldn't have anything to do with her. He hadn't seen her for a year. How old was he at this time? He was two.

Okay. It's still young. Yeah, his two. And he hadn't seen her for a year, and he wouldn't have anything to do with her. And I saw the hurt, and I saw, she had a baby too. The hurt in who? And her. And I thought, I thought, you know, and the more I found out about the family, you know, I met relatives, and I met, when when we were in Cicitan and I met.

Even her father. Well, yeah, that's a different story. We'll get to it. Yeah. I found out a lot more. But it's like generations of hurt and harm and trauma. And trauma. And trauma.

And I love her. She loves. You love Delle's birth mother. I do. She loves Delle. She does. can't really set aside those things to be a good parent to him, but she loves him. And like when her grandmother was in the hospital, and she was going to have her furta amputated, she had a bad

infection. And we were asked to come up, you know, like family. It was family in the room and us. and when later on she died, I don't know, a year or two later, we were invited to the wake and the funeral out in, and we went, we took him to the wake, the funeral would have been too far into his school week, but we went out there. And, you know, it was a little uncomfortable because it wasn't Sissotan. It was Crow Creek Reservation, so I didn't know anybody there except for his birth mom. but I was willing to be a little uncomfortable

to give him that chance to be with family and to be part of who they are. And I've always appreciated that she has done that for us. I'm trying to put myself in your shoes, and candidly, I'm not as good a person as you. Because if I took in a two-year-old foster child who clearly had attachment issues and clinging to me because I was a steady, consistent love that he really needed, that every two-year-old needs. And then there's this birth

mother who had, I assume, substance issues or whatever, who gave him up. I just, I just don't know that I could, I would almost be defensive on behalf of Dell for him against her, and I would have held some animosity there. I just know me. That was me before I met her, okay, before I knew her. But she went and she voluntarily signed TPR termination of parental rights so that we could have. him in the few months after we met her that time. So she did it so that he could be with us, that she would know where he was.

She would know that he was okay. She didn't have to do that. She could have fought it. So it was selfless on her part? It was selfless. She told me that was the hardest thing I ever did. And I decided that, I mean, I didn't have a cell phone at the time. And she changed her number all the time.

I don't know for what reasons. But I decided, I answered. Because people who don't have their stuff together don't pay their bill and they just go get another phone. That's why. So I decided I would answer any phone call from that area code and that if it was her, I was going to say, I've been thinking about you. I'm so glad you called, guess what Della's doing? And I wasn't going to say, it's been so long since you called. Or, you know, I wasn't ever going to make it about.

You could have teed up a shame party pretty easy. Yeah, I could have. But I wasn't going to do that. And I'm so glad I didn't. I'm so glad I made it about mom bragging to her. I didn't, I mean, we have plenty of issues. and he is not, he is not and was not an easy child. Okay.

I did not do any blaming on that because I think he is, he is just, he's, he's one of a kind, is what he is. But I didn't do that. And so when, I don't know, when time came, that we did have time with her, it was good. And, you know, lately she's been in the hospital. And Del has gone up to spend time with her because he knows that she needs that. She's kind of like him. She likes to have people around her all the time, and he does too.

And it's been a blessing that they have that relationship so that she has somebody that she hasn't caused problems for. You know, she'll get angry at somebody and she'll do something. And then they're like, they step back. And then they're not going to be there. But because he has not really experienced that, he hasn't experienced the hurt that comes from that. He could be there for her when she's, when she's, I mean, it's been a, she's been in since Thanksgiving week. I mean, it's bad infection.

And so he's been able to spend time with her, and it's been a good thing. The brokenness seems to be generational. Oh, yeah. Her father? The way I met him was he wanted a picture of Del. He was in prison. She was in the other prison. We actually went and visited her in prison.

Both Dell's biological mother and grandfather were simultaneously locked up. Yes, yes. Lovely. Yes. And Del wanted to go visit her in prison. And this was, again, outside of my comfort zone. Oh, my. It was the best visits we ever had because she didn't have anything else to concentrate on but him.

And she did such a good job of making the visit about him. I was so glad we went. But it was out of my comfort zone. But I would, she would call and talk and I would, I would write her letters and I would send her pictures of Dell and her dad wanted a picture. And so... His grandfather. Biological. Biological.

And she said, you know, Dad, I can't send you any pictures from... You can't send pictures from one prison to another. She said, you're going to have to write, and you're going to have to write Charlotte. So he did, and he sent, he wrote Dell's birthday, and he had a friend of his draw this beautiful card. It's like a... native headdress that morphs into an eagle. It's just an incredible card. And he wanted a picture.

So I started writing him, and I gave him Grandpa Bragg's stories. Now, you have to keep in mind, he's younger than I am. Wow. Dale's grandfather is younger than you. Oh, yeah, 10 years. 10 years? Yes. Wow.

Unbelievable. Yeah. And that concludes part one of our conversation with Charlotte Dance, and please don't miss part two. It's now available to listen to. Together, guys, we can change this country, but it starts with you. I'll see you in part two.

What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize something? someone into sleeping with you. I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused.

Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Thank you.