An Army of Normal Folks - How to Love a Child Without Erasing Their Past (Pt 2)

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.

Hey everybody, it's Bill Courtney with an Army and OMA folks, and we continue now with part two of our conversation with Charlotte Dance, right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. Okay, new year, fresh start. And honestly, I'm starting with dinner. This year, I'm being smarter about where my energy goes, and dinner was taking way too much of it. I just signed up for HelloFresh,

and they take Fresh Start to a whole new level. Fresh, high-quality ingredients delivered right to my door, locally sourced whenever possible. Everything pre-portioned, nothing wasted. Now, I'm not dragging myself through weekend grocery runs or panic staring at the fridge at 530 trying to make something out of random leftovers. And I'm definitely not tossing out food I never used or falling back on expensive takeout apps because I ran out of ideas. Yeah, that happened a lot.

Just simple, stress-free recipes and meals that help me save more. Waste less. And for the first time in a long time, I actually look forward to dinner. Get your fresh start right now and get 50% off your first box plus free sides for life with HelloFresh. That's right, free sides for life. Go to Hellofresh.ca and use Code Dinner 50. That's Hellofresh.ca, code Dinner 50. 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. So you are fostering. as healthy as you can and as possible, a relationship with Del's biological family. Yes. All the while being Del's mom. Mm-hmm.

Did you ever, again, you're a better person than I am, I would have worried and, dare I say, maybe even been cautious, that Del might decide that he wanted to develop relationship with his biological family over his adoptive family as he got older, even to his own detriment. And I might have even been a little bit jealous of the whole thing. Did that ever cross your mind? Well, to some degree.

But I know that Dell in particular, you know how some people just crave love and he gives it too but he he has to have he's like the instigator with all the the the friends he has he has people around him all the time he's like an extreme extrovert and i just figured that the more people that loved him the better off it was going to be I mean, sometimes, you know, he'd say, he'd tell me, he'd say, I'd say, well, if something happens to us, and I'd say, and he'd go, I could just go live with Jenna. And I'm thinking, probably not a wise idea. Of course, another time he told me, I'd just live with grandpa and grandma. And I thought, they might find you a bit much sometimes.

Well, I can't help but think through you and your family, your daughters and your husband. got to give them props for this too, are actively breaking the proverbial generational chain of dysfunction and chama by giving Dell a different family. Yeah, he has, and that's a thing. I love watching him because...

I'm trying to choose my words carefully. I don't want to be disrespectful to anybody, but... They would tell you they've been through a lot. I mean, they're pretty open. about what's happened to them, and it's hard. It's very hard. But, I mean, I take him to visit his great-grandmother when we're in Cicitan, and she's the sweetest, tiniest little woman, and just so sweet. And I was taking her back to her house. She had come to the church. I cook there of meals while we're there, because we go back every year to Cicent. And she said,

I was dropping her off, and I think it was maybe the last time. And she said, she said, I am so glad Dells and your family. And, you know, I mean, there's a lot of hurt in the Native American community. And they can feel pretty upset, but I don't get that from us. It's from them. It's more like we haven't stolen him. They've adopted us. That's phenomenal.

We haven't stolen him. They've adopted. us. So really the convergence of two families from very different walks of life around Dell. Yeah. Dell's the common denominator. And just with Dell, there's always been hard things, but there's always been a lot of sweetness. He's very loving. I mean, he was my Dell laptop. I, you know, I, we had to lay down with them to go to sleep because sleep was real. hard. We did all these things. So I spent a lot of time with Del. And, um, but the last few years as a teenager, you know, they kind of want to make that break apart. All teenagers are buttholes.

I raised four of them. I know. I say, and then they get good again. Yeah. They're precious. Then they're buttles. Then they become not really precious, but decent. If they came out as teenagers, the human race would have died out a long time ago. That's well. said. But I was talking to him. He had called me for some reason. He wasn't at home. And he's been really hard lately, you know, not so much sweetness, just hard. And he said, Mom, you've given me a good life. And I said, we've tried, Del. He says, no, you have. And that comes from an 18-year-old. And that was the day after Christmas, and I said that was the best Christmas gift ever. Could you break down sobbing?

No, but I would have. My eyes are tearing up now, just thinking about it. What else could you have, what more could you have asked for Christmas than recognition that you did, is a job well done? Well, and, I mean, he's brought a lot of richness into our life. Sure. A lot of richness. You know, I know. I know and do things that I never would have done and known without him.

So we're an army of normal folks. And the whole idea, obviously you would know because the whole reason you're here is because you've paid attention is we believe in bottom up stuff. We believe in normal people, not the government, not some big organization, normal people doing little things to make their community better and being present where you are and using your, abilities and your passion and areas of need to affect change big and small. And our thesis is, if we had billions of people of doing that, our culture would look far different than it does today. Given that, and we're still getting back to Dell later, given that, you know, I think you did something really big adopting this child.

But you've also done small stuff, little messages to several people, which is a, you great example of something all of us can do without a whole lot of effort. Alex calls it when faithfulness looks small. That's a good way of putting it. Well, you would not want me to organize things because that is not my gift. Okay. I like doing. I don't like being in charge of things.

I like doing things. You're a grunt in the Army. I am. And I see a lot of my dad. My dad was a set. My mom was an organizer. She ran the college library, and she was very good at it. And she kept us going, my dad, no.

But. A doer, though. He was a doer. I mean. And a big heart at doer, it sounds like with other people. Oh, my goodness. Lots of people. I mean, it's amazing.

I still get people saying things about him and how much they appreciated him. but I read a thing one time and it said it's hard to know what the right thing is to do long term but you usually know you can usually say yes to the things that you know are right in 10 seconds you know that the little things and so our daughter was struggling and my dad said well let's have everybody pick a day and they can contact her and some way on that day of the month. So somebody had the first of the month and somebody had the, you know. And I asked her about it and she said, she says, oh mom, it makes me feel like there's so many nice things coming in. It makes me feel like I died and everybody's buddies saying nice things

at my funeral, except I didn't have to die to do this. And it was so helpful because she was, she was really struggling with depression, and it made such a healthy difference for her to have those people contacting her. And it took part of the burden off my husband and I, and it was wonderful. And so I have this friend that struggled for years with depression, and I thought, well, I can do that for her. And so I started just sending her a text every once in a while. I said, if you don't want me to do it, just tell me I won't feel bad. I said, and you don't have to answer me. So I took away that feeling like I'm not doing what I have to do. And eventually I did get one back from, I love getting these texts from you. It makes my day. And sometimes it's just a picture of flowers that I'm growing in my yard.

I'm thinking of you or remember this memory. And it's nothing big. And it's, I mean, I might do it once or twice, maybe three times a month if I'm really good that month. You know, it's not very hard to do. And yet, and yet it's uplifting to her. We'll be right back. Okay, new year, fresh start. And honestly, I'm starting with dinner.

This year, I'm being smarter about where my energy goes, and dinner was taking way too much of it. I just signed up for Hello Fresh, and they take Fresh start to a whole new level. Fresh, high-quality ingredients delivered right to my door, locally sourced whenever possible. Everything pre-portioned, nothing wasted. Now, I'm not dragging myself through weekend grocery runs, or panic staring at the fridge at 5.30, trying to make something out of random leftovers. And I'm definitely not tossing out food I never used or falling back on expensive takeout apps, because I ran out of ideas.

Yeah, that happened a lot. Just simple, stress-free recipes and meals that help me save more. Waste less. And for the first time in a long time, I actually look forward to dinner. Get your fresh start right now and get 50% off your first box plus free sides for life with HelloFresh. That's right, free sides for life. Go to Hellofresh.ca and use code Dinner 50. That's Hellofresh.ca.C. Code Dinner 50.

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 and expose what happened to me in the midst of conversion therapy, to shine a light on what the X-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. I think that's interesting that your father said, let's all just send a text or an email or a phone or a card or a note. And everybody takes a day and shift it up. It won't take much time at all. but we can raise the spirits of someone whose spirits need to be raised.

Absolutely easy, little quick, but so very meaningful for another human being. Yeah. Do you still do that? With my friend, I do. I don't know if anybody is still doing it to my daughter, but she's not at the place where it was as hard. You know, she's just doing, she's doing better. So as easy as just sending a picture of flowers and saying, hey, I'm thinking about you.

If your day's blue, I hope it's brighter. Mm-hmm. How hard is that? It's easy. But ask yourself, what if everybody did that for someone that they knew was hurting and did it consistently? Just consider the brightness it would bring. Oh, it just makes such a difference. So you talked about your daughter.

Let's talk about something else you've did, which I find really interesting, and I'm going to tell you why I've got some backstory in it, and then I'll let you go. Your daughter, who you just indicated, had some depression, some mental health challenges, had another challenge first, which, of course, given who you are led your first significant form of service, I think. And that challenge, I think, was she was dyslexic, yeah. Both of my daughters are dyslexic, to a great degree. So I went to an interesting high school, my fourth high school. You got kicked out of the rest.

Which was still my freshman year, if that'll get, now we're not going to get into my story, but let's just say it's my fourth school. Actually, from eighth grade till first of ninth grade, it's so really. two years, my four school. And it was kind of the last stop before mom shipped me off somewhere, I think. I had some trauma and I was angry and was acting out on it because I was 13 years old and, you know, 13 year olds tend to act out when they're pissed off. So I did. At any rate, I got to the school and it was the right place for me. But it was interestingly, socially and athletically. But there was an interesting place academically.

It had two tracks, one very high-end academic track, which was really challenging. And the other track, it was the first school in the state of Tennessee that had an entire bilateral track where all the kids were mainstreamed in all social and athletic and the arts and everything. but all of the teachers on that track were chained to teach kids who are dyslexic. Oh, that's awesome. So my graduating class of 60 had 30 really high functioning kids whose average ACT scores were in the 30s, where I was, and then the other half of their class were 100% dyslexic, some really verbal, some arithmetic, and some both. but other than their academic track, everything else socially and everything else,

athletically, everything was the same. We were challenged in football because our quarterback and our tellback were dyslexic, and many of us would be running left while they would all go right. True story. Oh, I understand that one. I can tell you how many times our running back got hammered because he ran the wrong way and didn't go where the line was blocking. But I'm just saying

by very best high school friends that I grew up with, dear friends, who I loved were dyslexic. And I know all too well that despite their outward bravado and everything, the subconsciousness and the fear of the future. and so much of what was going on inside of them because they were smart kids.

Oh, yeah. But whose eyes were screwed up and they just couldn't read because of dyslexia. Or when they looked at a math equation, it looked like Swahili to them because the function between their eyes and their brains didn't work. And if it wasn't for that school,

I don't know where a lot of those kids would have ended up. So that's my dissertation. I've spoken too long, but I understood you refused to accept that dyslexia was going to slow down your girls. So my sister said I stopped being fun when I learned how to read. That's funny. I love to read. much. And one of my daughters, the oldest one, she loved to be read to. And I thought, oh, and she looks like me. I mean, you know, she does. She looks like me. She doesn't think she does,

but everybody else does. And so she said, I thought she was going to be just like me, but she wasn't. Both girls have their birthdays in the summer. And so I decided we had a free year. So I was going to homeschool for that free year instead of sending her to school. And, you know, she kind of struggled with that part, but the rest of it knew where I was reading to her and those things. She loved that. And the next year, the neighbor girl came over and I did first grade with the neighbor girl and Caroline in the morning. And then I did, I did, then the neighbor girl went to kindergarten in the afternoon.

And I taught her to read. But Caroline was struggling, and she was so upset. And it was a phonetic. And we were working. And I thought, why is it so hard? But we have this wonderful reading center in Rochester. And I took her there. And the funny thing is my sister was an LD teacher.

And she said, oh, she had read with her at Christmas. I don't think you need to take her because she's not as bad as some of the kids I see. And I thought, but she shouldn't be. I'm working one-on-one with her. So I made the arrangements to get her tested. And I called my parents and I said, I know my youngest brother has an LD. what is it? And my dad goes, oh, he's dyslexic, so am I.

There it is. There it is. Oh, yeah. And my brother goes, I always knew I was, but nobody ever used those words with me. He just struggled. He just struggled, yeah. And my dad, he got his master's in physical science and taught at a college level, but my mom typed all of his papers, and she's, she,

took care of his spelling for him. Really? Mm-hmm. Isn't that interesting? Because he graduated from college after I was born and he got his master's when we were in elementary school. Wow. So your daughters?

Yeah. So there they are. And I took her in to be tested and, and they said, you know, her scores are so low. We don't think she'll ever read fluently. And I'm sitting there like I've been kicked in the stomach and I thought, that is not going to happen. We signed her up, got her tutoring, and I was working with her at home, and my husband goes, you know, you could save us a lot of money if you got trained. And I thought, okay. So I got trained. And as I'm going through the training, I'm like, oh, it's not just the one,

it's the other one, too. And she has, she had auditory processing issues, too, which meant that visually she didn't struggle as much as her sister, but so much of what we process is coming in through our ears. And if you're not comprehending what you do there, one of the times we had her tested, they said, you know, she would just sit there, look pretty in a classroom, and not learn a thing, because she would be quiet and polite, and she wouldn't cause trouble because that's how she was. She was just the sweetest little thing. You know what's sad is how many of those kids in the 40s and 50s and 60s and 70s even before dyslexia was understood were just considered, quote, slow. Yeah, I tell my... And they're not. I tell my kids, there are

fast thinkers and thorough thinkers. I say, we need both kinds of people. I say, we need fast thinkers that are airline pilots. We need fast thinkers that are, you know, these different things. And I said, but we need thorough thinkers that design the airplanes. I said, thorough thinkers changed the world. And so my kids, the ones that I work with, they say, I'm a thorough thinker. Do you still work with kids with dyslexia? Yeah, I counted up the other day. I volunteer in classrooms, and I'm not counting those, and I'm not counting the ones that I teach in the Reading Club classes that I teach. I've worked one-on-one with around 40 kids. That's phenomenal. That is not easy work. No, it takes a lot of, some of those kids I've had for like 250 lessons or so.

I mean, a long time. What is a misconception about dyslexia you wish everybody really understood? Well, it's a visual memory problem. It's not a vision problem. It's not like they see the things wrong. You can't have a visual issue, but that's more of an eye-teaming kind of issue that you'll have problems with. It's a visual memory issue. So it's not that they can't see the letters that are there. It's not that they move around. It's that they can't remember. from one time to the next, which side that, you know, like you said. Is that right? I've never understood that. It's a visual memory. I always thought like if we called 36 power right in the huddle, they just heard power left. No, right and left is really hard.

So this is the cool thing that they can do. So some people can, well, this is what my daughter says. She said, you mean? everybody can't take an object and rotate it three-dimensionally in their brain? And I said, no, everybody can't do that. There are occupations that have a high number of dyslexics in them because they have to have those skills. They have to have those three-dimensional skills in their brain. So it's a really good thing, but you have to teach them how to read so that they can get there. So like, She was trained as an ultrasound sonographer.

You have to have those three-dimensional skills. Now, you don't, some people, they have those three-dimensional skills, and they're not very dyslexic. You'll just see it in spelling a little bit. Hers, she really struggled. I mean, but now, I mean, she reads really well. She reads, she loves to read, she loves to write. How did that happen? Dyslexics read in several different areas in their brain.

They've done MRIs that figured this out. and it's not very efficient. But if you're a natural reader, you read in like one area of your brain, and it makes it really efficient to read. And you see a word two or three times, and then you, like, I know that word, you know. But they don't. She got so that she could blend nonsense words as fast as people could read real words. Because I worked with her all the time.

And my kids, some of them make gains. I had one guy. He just floored me. Now, he's brilliant, of course. But he went up five grade levels in reading comprehension in one year. Wow. That's phenomenal. Yeah.

So I guess Jabberwocky by Carol may look different to them than me and you. Yeah, but they would just go through. there and they would just, they would just be able to read it because it's just all, it's all Jabberwocky, but I mean, Caroline, I would have her read something and she would stumble through that thing. And then the next time through it would be memorized. I'm like, really? I can't, you know.

That's funny. Yeah, it was. Her husband is, is rather brilliant, and he's dyslexic. He also loves to read. and does all those things now, too. But they, you know, it was long-term work to get them to that place. And you're still doing? Yeah, but not with them.

I know, but still incredible. Yeah, I love those kids. They're so fun. We'll be right back. Okay, new year, fresh start. And honestly, I'm starting with dinner. This year, I'm being smarter about where my energy goes, and dinner was taking way too much of it.

I just signed up for Hello Fresh, and they take fresh start to a whole new level. Fresh high-quality ingredients delivered right to my door, locally sourced whenever possible. Everything pre-portioned, nothing wasted. Now, I'm not dragging myself through weekend grocery runs or panic staring at the fridge at 5.30 trying to make something out of random leftovers. And I'm definitely not tossing out food I never used or falling back on expensive takeout apps because I ran out of ideas. Yeah, that happened a lot.

Just simple, stress-free recipes and meals that. that helped me save more. Waste less. And for the first time in a long time, I actually look forward to dinner. Get your fresh start right now and get 50% off your first box plus free sides for life with HelloFresh. That's right, free sides for life. Go to Hellofresh.c and use code dinner 50. That's hellofresh.c.c. Code Dinner 50. 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 X-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. So notes, caring for your own dyslexic children and then using those talents to care for other dyslexic children. Bringing Dell's birth family in and becoming family with them, you know, it's interesting. that you found our podcast. And you've been really faithful about emailing us when an episode moves you. I'm curious.

Has the role of an Army of Normal folks played a role in your life? And can you share any examples of that? Well, one day you did an episode on a woman who took, bouquets and remade them to go to go all these places. One of the coolest, well, I hate saying that. They're all cool. What are you talking about?

But I just thought it was so creative to take old flowers and reuse them rather than throwing them in the garbage. Oh, yeah. What was 9-1 Pop, 911 Pedals of Purpose? Yeah. Yeah. That was great. And so, like seven years ago, I think, yeah, seven years ago, we moved out.

to this house where we live now because we needed a little different space. And we bought it from this woman who was a master gardener. Now, I'm okay at gardening. I'm not a master gardener. The place had like 19 gardens full of flowers. Wow. Yeah. And so I take bouquets into work.

I take them to people. I've even taken them to the lady that cuts my hair. And it turned out that, I mean, they're just flowers on my garden. You know, I just make a little bouquet and take it places. So I heard that and I thought, why that's a good idea. And she said, and the kids just love helping doing that. And I thought, well, I would like to take it places, but I know about how much bandwidth I have. Yeah, it seems like you're pretty tapped already.

Yeah, and right now I've got like 10 students, and that's like, my husband calls it my paid volunteer job. Because part of it's volunteer and part of it's paid, but he knows how much time goes into it. Don't do the hourly equation. I know. I don't. I don't because it wouldn't pay. Right. Yeah, it wouldn't pay.

I know about how much I can do, and I don't do more than I. I try to say no. sometimes, even though my husband isn't sure I know the word. But I do help with this trailer at this trailer park ministry. And the woman that's in charge of it, she's actually, I taught kindergarten Sunday school for years. She was one of my students. Now she's, now she's an adult and she's doing that. So she had asked me if I would do the crafts while she was on maternity leave. And I said, okay, I think I can do that and I can figure out things to do. And my first time, after hearing that, I filled buckets full of flowers and my husband gets me this juice and they come in these really

cute bottles that look like vases. So I save them all because you can't throw away anything useful, you know. And my parents were children of the Depression. Right. I get it. So I have those, so I can give them away and nobody has to return anything to me. So I took the bottles, I took the flowers. Usually there's like four or five kids that want to do crafts and all the rest of them are playing games and doing things outside. Every single kid wanted to make bouquets to take home. Every single one. How cool is that?

It was so cool. It was so cool. And they got to pick their own, you know, they picked out of the buckets, whatever. one they wanted. And then I contacted a friend of mine who runs a, has a girls group. And I said, would you be interested in doing that? You can come out and pick flowers. And I've got vases for you.

You could do it as a service project. So I kind of offloaded it onto somebody else. But that's cool. And that came from an idea from an or nother-in-old folks. Yeah, I wouldn't have thought of it otherwise. You said something about the Tanya Ray Piper thing, the Farfair. frieder cake lady. Oh, yeah.

Well, she does it to raise people. Who dropped a cake on this table and I ate it with my hands. Oh, yeah. I heard it was very delicious. It was tasty. Yeah, yeah. This woman showed up in Memphis and brought her cake making utensils in her luggage to make cakes while she was here for Five Friders and me.

That's so cool. Why don't you bring us a flower, Charlotte? Yeah, it's Minnesota. Yeah, that's here. Minnesota. I'm not from there, but I can scoop like this. just snow right now probably. Yeah. Yeah. So tell us about the Tonnery Piper thing. So I heard that and I thought, you know, she's doing something that brings joy to them and it's food. And I like to bake,

but somebody told me at work, she said, well, my kitchen is under construction. I haven't had a kitchen for months because there was a flooding. And she says, it's just so hard because I've had to, her husband, she's a widow, her husband had died a few years ago, and she says, I have to make all these decisions, and, you know, it's just so hard, and it's, I can't make things to eat, and I thought, I can make soup and bring it in. So I have these little containers. I make soup, all different kinds, just, you know, whatever leftovers I have in the fridge, I make soup. And she says it's been such a blessing. I just drop them off in the freezer at work and she can eat them there or she can take them home and she says it tastes so good and they're healthy and, you know, and so the other day

there was somebody else. She had surgery and she was a friend and I said, I'll bring you soup because they don't have to eat it right then. They don't have to give anything back to me. It's all done. It's ready to go. And it gives them, you know, it gives them a little hope in a hard time. And so simple, so easy. I love this one because it ties to Dell a little bit. Bishop Martin. Oh, I love that story. I love it.

So do I, by the way. It's a great story. Oh, it's such a great story. And so I had heard that, and I thought, I have to take Dell to the movie. And, you know, as I said, the last few years have been more high. hard than sweet. In the other years, I think there was more sweet than hard. There was both, but it was definitely more hard than sweet.

And we took him, and he went with us, which, you know, that's, that's always a good thing. Yeah, that's a teenager to go with their parents to a movie is a big deal. But the two of those movies that you did, both of them were kind of, you know, they were good fits for Del to see both of them. But that one, he walked out and he said to me, he said, they're like me. They're like me. And my niece has, she was doing foster care, and we stopped by the first week that she had her foster daughter, or the first month, I guess, first month.

None of the other family had met her. And we stopped by, Del and I, because they live, they lived in the middle. Missouri and we were driving back to Minnesota, she and Dell, they're the same age, had a great time together. And she was telling everybody the next day, what a wonderful time she had. And I thought, oh, she's seeing that her life, which she had, I mean, she's 12, she's in foster care, you know, Dell was really only in foster care for, for like 18 months. a year or so. Well, longer because it was longer until we adopted him, but until he came into our house, it was about a year. And I said, she sees it's normal in our family. And it's made such a huge difference.

And they, you know, they eventually got her siblings and adopted them. And then they had a baby, and then they adopted another sibling's at it. So now, There's seven. Wow. Yeah. And she's just one of them now. She's just one of them. But the point is, I think it's awesome.

It's almost a full circle moment that Dell got something out of the movie that was on the podcast. Yeah. And it made, you know, I think that's really really cool. Oh, it was. He said that. He said, they're like me. And if anybody wants to watch it, it's Sound of Hope and Brave the Dark, both of which you watch it in the studio. Yeah.

Brave the Dark. Brave the Dark. And that one, I mean, when my husband's going, they have the right license plates for that, because he was in Pennsylvania at that point in time. So he goes, they had the right license place. That's the right one. That's funny. And the car, of course, was very attractive to, you know, he was, you know, so they were good. You know, he liked it.

And so they were good things to take to take him to that he could enjoy with his parents. when he doesn't always want to be with us, of course. We always challenge people to think of the Army as, certainly if someone starts something big and magnanimous, that's wonderful. But the vast, vast, vast majority of us are not going to do that. And the real gift of the Army, in our opinion, is for people to realize they don't need to start anything. They just need to take a faithful step.

Just try. Just do something. even in little things. Yeah, well. And it feels like that's what you've gotten, that's exactly what you've gotten from it. Oh, it is. It is.

And like one day, well, a woman in our church went to Cambodia, and she thought, she thought, oh, they told her that a lot of these kids, if they don't get an education, they ended up being trafficked. And she thought, what can I do? I'm just a widow. but she started selling things in order to pay for scholarships for these kids in Cambodia. And so now, this year, they raised like $20,000 for scholarships. One day sale.

And so I'm like, well, I can make things, but I wonder what I could do. That really adds that much to it. So, as I say, we've got this yard. We've got all these things. I was sick with COVID. And not very sick, but I had to stay in my room. And I was reading, and I saw something about Bee-Bomb. And now I had this huge bed of B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B.

And I'm like, you can make tea out of it. So I make B-B-B-B-T, and I sell it at the sale. And I have done scholarships for multiple kids. Out of tea? Out of tea. Are you kidding? I'm not kidding. Tea, B-B-B-B-B-B-B-T.

You're, that's hilarious. That's awesome, but also really funny. And you thought of that sitting in your bed with COVID? Yeah, yeah. We'll be right back. Okay, new year, fresh start. And honestly, I'm starting with dinner. This year, I'm being smarter about where my energy goes.

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And for the first time in a long time, I actually look forward to dinner. Get your fresh start right now and get 50% off your first box plus free sides for life with HelloFresh. That's right, free sides for life. Go to Hellofresh.ca and use code Dinner 50. That's Hellofresh.ca. Code Dinner 50. 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

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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 birth. 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 kind of end the interview where we started the interview. you. Okay. With Del. 16 years after his adoption, Dell is now 18. He's becoming a young man now. He is. What makes you most proud? Well, this is the sweetest thing. It's how he is with people. And he loves people. And he works at an independent living center during their dining services. And 18-year-old does?

Yeah, and he loves the people. Wow. And... That really speaks to just how good natured at the root and foundation of his soul he is. Oh, he is. He is. And it's so sweet because they really enjoy him, too. But he had this friend all through elementary school,

and then they graduated from eighth grade, and the friend, this girl moved. And her mother happened to be his band teacher. And she loved Del because he was so good with her daughter. And I got a message that the mom was very ill. And I said, Del, you know, you might want to contact your friend because her mom is sick. She had cancer. And that's all I said.

I didn't say anything more. I didn't say, I just gave him that. So a while later, he goes, well, you know, she says her mom is doing this. She says, you know, so I knew he was keeping up with her. The night her mom died, Del was the first person she called. And he came into my room at midnight and said, Mom, I'm going up to see her tomorrow. She needs somebody. and when we went, Sherman and I took Del up to the funeral, but he had been up to see her several times.

We took him up to the funeral, and we were stopped by her dad saying, thank you so much for Del. He made such a difference. and one of the teachers from the school said that I volunteer in her classroom, she said, the former teacher's brother came up to her and said, make sure that Dell's parents know what a wonderful young man he is. And that he notices when people are going through things. And he is such a caring. person. You know, that's what I'm proud of. I mean, there are times when he drives me bananas.

But people are important to him, and he sees them, and he just walks into it. Oh, one teacher told us, he walked into the room, and he did this. You know, he just sat down and did that. And she says, of Of course, he's known these kids all his life. And he said, no, this is his first year in the school district because we had moved. She goes, he didn't know anybody. You know, so he just is like a magnet. He's got people. You know, that's his thing.

What is it that you want Delta know that's hard as a mom to say to him because he doesn't listen? Because now he'll listen. Maybe he'll listen. He'll listen to this. I want the best for him, and I want him to learn to make wise decisions, not just for the moment, but for the future. But I really am proud of how he is with people. That is a gift, and he didn't get it from Sherman or I.

I don't want to, I feel like I don't want to say thank you because it seems weird to say thank you. But I want to celebrate you a little bit. No, I really do. We constantly ask people to let their passions and abilities meet at opportunity and to stay consistent and to do the little things and to be bottom up. And you said yes when you're 50 with a Dell laptop, but you keep saying yes over and over again, and you keep finding ways to say yes. And what's really inspirational to Alex and me

is you've said yes about 10 times is based on episodes you've heard, and you've taken your spin on it to do something good for people. And then you stay in touch with folks with pictures of flowers just to say hello, and you just keep saying yes, what do you want our listeners to hear about saying yes? Well, when you say yes, it doesn't have to be forever.

I donated blood when I was young and single, and then I didn't do it for a while because I had kids there. And then I had a friend just, oh, she just, she died a few years ago. but the platelets made a huge difference for it. And so now I donate platelets. You know, it's one of those things that it might not be yes forever, but it's yes for right now. And that's...

Yeah, you're allowed to change your interest. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I went to school to be an engineer, not a teacher. My parents were teachers. I wasn't. But I was a troubleshooter as an engineer, and I'm a troubleshooter. and what I'm doing now.

Alex stumbled upon how you and Del part. Yes. Yeah, tell us about that. So, Del will go, I love you, mom. I say, I love you more. Then he says, I love you the most. And I say no, Bo Weibo. And he says, yes, Bo Weibo.

What is that? It's just our thing. And we've done it for a long time. I noticed that he wasn't saying it, Because he's always been very, he's a big hugger. He's always been very affectionate. And, you know, he was upset with me. So he wasn't saying it.

And I knew when things were getting better, because I started hearing, I love you, mom. I love you more. I think teenage boys are just supposed to be angry half the time anyway, aren't they? Yeah, we were, we were clipping his wings. Well, sometimes that's needed. I told him, if you want to. If you want to parents that weren't going to do that, you should have picked different ones. You should have sat in my lap.

Yeah. Listen, some people sitting out there are going to be inspired by you. If folks want to reach out to you about adoption, which I think you would be a fantastic resource on adoption. Or if someone's out there listening to us as a child or a loved one or themselves are dyslexia, and would like to talk to you about the fact that you went from a mom to a trained counselor, I guess counselor. What's the word changed? They call them academic language therapists.

Okay. Which is a tutor. But that's pretty impressive. So someone wants to talk to you about adoption, dyslexia, or any of the other things you've been inspired to do, which are awesome. How do they get in touch with you? It's just my name with an M in the middle. Charlotte M.Dance at gmail.com. And then I've made all these reading games that I use for my students.

So that you can. And I thought, you know, might be nice for people if they were working with young kids and reading. And so on Facebook, it's reading games. If you look for reading games, there's a whole bunch of things. them on there. In your spare time, you developed reading games? Well, yeah, see, I teach a reading club class for parents and children. I teach the parents how to work with the kids that are struggling. Some of them are dyslexic, some of them aren't, but it helps them get more work at home, and it's really fun to work with them. How do you function on the obvious two and a half hours

of sleep you get every night? It's all you can possibly sleep between making reading games, and putting flowers and vases and raising Dell and everything else you do. There's no, oh, and the cooking soup. Oh, yeah, cooking soup. I like to cook. It's Minnesota. We have long winters. I think that's, okay.

We'll just go with that, Charlotte, whatever. Del, be proud of your mom. She's fantastic. She's phenomenal. And my goodness, you've meant a lot to a lot of people. And, you know, I think it goes without saying you've served well. My dad said that you wouldn't be ministered to until you were ministering to others. And I think that's so true.

It's pretty phenomenal. Pretty phenomenal, Charlotte. Thank you for your time. Thanks for coming to Memphis. And thanks for all that you do. And thanks for being such a loyal member of the Army of normal folks. And even though we've met, Alex and I still want to see your occasional emails coming over and just keep us up to date with the things you do. Okay.

Probably be the same old. Well, we like the same old. Yeah, Dell is planning on going into the military, so I won't have as many Dell stories, that's for sure. Well, tell Dell to send us some emails. We'll read those too. Thanks for being here. Thank you. And thank you for joining us this week.

If Charlotte Dance has inspired you in general, or better yet to take action by exploring adoption, seeing how you can use your abilities to serve others like Charlotte did with dyslexia, thinking about how to bring Army models and wisdom to your community, or something else entirely. Let me know. I'd love to hear about it. You can write me anytime at bill at normalfokes.us, and I promise you, I will respond.

And that's how we got to know Charlotte Dance in the first place. If you enjoyed this episode, share it, friends, and on social. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it. Join the army at normalfolks.us, any and all of these things that will help us grow. An army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. Until next time, do what you can. What if mind control is real?

If you can 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. 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.