The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – (dis)Empowered: How I Turned an Academic Death Sentence Into My Life’s Greatest Adventure by Ellen Busch

Episode Date: December 29, 2023

(dis)Empowered: How I Turned an Academic Death Sentence Into My Life’s Greatest Adventure by Ellen Busch https://amzn.to/47jCS54 Ellenbusch.com Despite being raised in a loving family, life had left Ellen Busch traumatized and at her wit's end. Busch had no home, no job, no relationship, and no hope of having a family. Even though Ellen escaped from an abusive husband, she was controlled by the unshakable stigma of dyslexia that erased any shred of self-worth. Busch couldn’t see that she was a victim of trauma until one fateful day, on a crowded highway, when she had a moment of realization that would change the trajectory of her life. (dis)Empowered traces Busch’s journey from a troubled child trapped in an educational system that believed she was broken, to an insecure adult who grasped at each success like a rung on a ladder. But as she climbed, the view never changed because she could not see her own successes. All she saw was a woman who was unworthy, incapable, feeling powerless. After being deceived into a marriage with a narcissist, left with nothing, she surrendered to a higher power. And in one epiphanic moment, she realized that everything that had happened to her had happened for her. About the author Ellen is passionate about helping people who are dyslexic in understanding they are not broken or handicapped. She is committed to supporting women who are in abusive relationships to get the resources they need to get out safely, heal, and create a new life for themselves. Ellen works in the medical technology industry as an account representative and trainer. She has clinical health care experience as a former certified hyperbaric technician (CHT) and is a former nationally certified emergency medical technician (EMT). In addition, Ellen holds a bachelor’s degree in health science from Northern Vermont University, and a master’s degree (MBA) from Southern New Hampshire University. Ellen also holds an Advanced Open Water scuba certification with 130 logged dives, was a ski instructor (part-time) from 2001-2006, and was named “Ski Instructor of the Year for the Children’s Program” in 2001. Ellen is an avid Alpine and Telemark skier and a hiker who resides in Colorado.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm Oaks Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Thechrisvossshow.com.

Oh, we'll let the other guy do it. She does such a better job than I do. So thank you very much, Iron Lady. We certainly appreciate you making your contributions today. Thanks to you, my audience. You know, we're putting forth three to four shows a day. I think it's actually slowing down now over the holidays. Not a lot of people want to be interviewed,

and they just want to go hang out with their families and hang out with Uncle Bill, who usually smells, brings up political things, and hugs way too long. Everyone's got that uncle, don't they? Something like that. But then they could be on this show. So what's going on there? But we'll have a lot of great shows coming up after the next year.

People on YouTube 10 years from now are like, what is he talking about? It's May. And we have a CES show, 2024. In fact, we'll have our annual titan on the show, who's the head of CES CTA Tech, who puts the CES show on every year. My good friend, Gary Shapiro. I think he's on next week around the 1st and maybe just next week on Wednesday. Prior to the 1st, I think. So we're going to have him on.

We're going to be talking about CES show and all those. You know, you've seen me do all the CES interviews with CEOs and all that great stuff. So stay tuned for that. We have an amazing author on the show. She's written her latest book that came out May 13th, 2023 called Disempowered, How I Turned an Academic Death Sentence Into My Life's Greatest Adventure. Ellen Bush joins us on the show today. She's going to be talking about her latest work and how she pulled off the story that she's written about and how she's going to inspire you to do better with all of her stories that she can share with you and improve the quality of your life at

an early stage ellen bush was diagnosed with dyslexia and as a result was given an academic death sentence. In a split second, her self-esteem was destroyed and her potential evaporated. Despite her challenges, or in spite of them, Ellen's parents fostered her education outside the classroom by teaching her how to pilot her father's boat, how to navigate, understand, and respect the ocean. You have to respect the ocean because I've seen that North Sea. They enabled Ellen to participate in team sports and to go on a two-week outward bound program and made it possible to get certified in scuba diving at the age of 17. As a young adult becoming an expert skier and ski instructor, she fell in love with adventure and the challenges

that it brought. Mastering these skills enabled Ellen to persevere and empowered her to earn both a bachelor's and master's degree, all with dyslexia. Welcome to the show, Ellen. How are you? I'm great, and I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you. And we're thrilled to have you. This sounds like an amazing story, overcoming adversity, which we love these stories. Give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? Sure. So my website is ellenbush.com, and that's B-U-S-C-H. I always say, like the beer, not the president. There you go.

In fact, I think we had one of the Anheuser-Busch family members on the show, on a book about the story of Anheuser-Busch. I think it was Billy Bush. Okay. Or am I thinking Billy Bush? am I thinking of Billy Bush? Am I thinking of something else? Isn't that a president's brother or something? Carter's brother or something? I don't know.

Billy Carter, maybe. But no, we had those ones. So I don't know. You may want to hit them up. There might be some money there from the family tree. There you go. There you go. That works for me.

In Germany, as common as Smith. Oh, is it really? It's very, very common. My understanding is Voss is pretty common on there too. We're both a bunch of Germans sitting around. But there you go. Tell us what motivated you on to write this book. In your words, we kind of alluded to it a bit, but people like to hear it from you.

So I talk about this in depth in the book. There was a very difficult year that I had where I escaped from an abusive ex-husband, started to put my life back together, began the divorce process, reconnected with an old boyfriend who was very important in my healing process. And also, and then lost my mother in a tragic accident all in the span of 10 months. Wow. That's a lot of hits to take all at once. of 10 months. Wow. That's a lot of hits to take all at once. It is. It is. And I continued to move forward and heal and recover and rebuild my life

and eventually began to learn to thrive. And when I started to look back on that, I realized I had a really important story to tell. There you go. And so you sat down, wrote the book. Did you write it over COVID? No, I actually started writing it about four years, five years ago. Oh.

And what I didn't understand at the time was that I had a lot more chapters to live before the book could be finished. So the fact that it took so long was really what it was supposed to be. I'm using that for my next book because I'm like taking forever to write it. So I'm just going to be like, I have to live with some more chapters. That's what I'm going to tell my contract. Well, I wasn't doing it with a contract, so I didn't have that pressure. I don't have a contract. Tell us your

tell us give us a little bit more details what's inside you tell your story of growing up finding out you have dyslexia i noticed the people when you're googling this book disempowered there's a parentheses around the word dis yes give us a rundown as to why you did that titled at that and insight well i actually didn't come up with the title. My friend did. And I moved from a very disempowered place to a very empowered place. So the DIS on the cover is actually scribbled out. So the parentheses means it's not, you know, it's taken out. There you go. So. Sans the dis. Tell us about your growing up.

You go through this thing where you find out you're dyslexic and, you know, what were your aspirations before that? Did you plan on going to college? Did you want to be, I don't know, maybe a writer or something literary? Well, I was diagnosed at a very early age. I was about six years old. Okay. So college wasn't in my mind at that point. And I was immediately put into another category of students who were going to be unsuccessful.

Oh, wow. So they slapped you right into the, yeah, this is going nowhere. Yeah, don't bother. Exactly. In fact, there was a parent-teacher conference, and my parents told me about this almost word for word or from their memory the day I earned my master's degree. And in that parent-teacher conference, I was six years old, and the administrator sat my parents down and told them I would not go to college.

I might finish high school. College was out of the question. They should focus on finding me a husband to take care of me because I would not be contributing to society. Wow. Yeah, that was pretty awful. And I lived in Westchester County, New York, and went to one of the most affluent schools in that part of the country. And that was just the belief system that was in place at the time. And unfortunately, some of that belief system is still in place. Dyslexia is often perceived as an intellectual disability

and it's not we just learn differently the system doesn't fit us yeah system doesn't feel fit a lot of people exactly i mean i i'm a tactile learner if you give me something to do i'll do it if you if you put on a drawing board and bark at me, my brain just turns to jello and I just glaze over. And so, yeah, everyone has different, you know, there's some people have, what is it? There's auditory, there's kinetic, visual. And dyslexic, I imagine, too. And there's a lot of famous people who have dyslexia.

Richard Branson, Albert Einstein, Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, Whoopi Wolfberg, Jennifer Aniston, Muhammad Ali. Of course, he just punched people all the time, so he didn't do anything. Except, I don't know, are my gloves, what's on my gloves? Anyway, I'm just kidding. Pablo Picasso, Anderson Cooper's dyslexic. That must

make it challenging to read a teleprompter, but he does an incredible job. Walt Disney was. That explains Minnie Mouse. I don't know what that means. Henry Winkler. Why am I picking on Minnie Mouse? What the hell? John Lennon?

I have to look at some of the lines and imagine. No, I'm just kidding. I love that song. It's my favorite song. So lots of famous people. We could go on and on about all that. Whoopi Goldberg. Wasn't Whoopi Goldberg dyslexic?

Yes, that's correct. I've read that as well. Yeah. Maybe I just wanted her to be dyslexic. I don't know what read that as well yeah maybe i just wanted to be i don't know what that means either so there you go i'm picking on oprah today in a mean mood jesus chris i don't know no i love oprah you go on this journey and how do you how do you start overcoming it sounds like you did some things with your father and yeah ocean and boating and things like that and well thatteacher conference ended with my mother's fist pounding on the table saying,

I refuse to allow you to condemn my daughter. Wow. So both my parents just flat out refused to accept that. Good for them. And they knew I was an intelligent, capable child. It was obvious. So really, my dad was really the leader in this piece of it. He understood, as a military veteran, learning outside the classroom and learning through challenge was really the important learning in life. And he constantly was teaching us everything he knew, referencing the being on the ocean and the boat.

I used to have to stand on an upside-down bucket so I could reach the steering wheel and see the compass and navigate. So he was teaching us these things at a very early age. Nice. And he purposely gave us really hard chores to do. And he wanted us doing hard things. We were out there stacking wood, you know, turning over the garden, working in the garden, doing tough stuff. And when I would complain as a little girl, I'd look up at him and say, Daddy, that's hard.

And he said, it's good for you. Put hair on your chest. And I'd put my hand on my little girl's hips and say, but Daddy, I'm a girl. And he'd say, it's good for you. Go do it. And that was really the whole context behind him constantly encouraging us and supporting us to do challenging things.

There you go. Stretch yourself. Develop yourself. Yeah. See what you can overcome. You know, the life lessons of life, you know. Exactly. And that's the great thing about dads.

They teach you those life lessons. They teach you life isn't fair. Mom will hug you and be like, yeah, it's okay. She'll give you that nurturing, but dad will kick you in the butt and go, you can do it. Go get it. Exactly. He was always my cheerleader. And when I would struggle with tests and classroom work,

he'd say, Ellen, you can do it. You can do it. Prove them wrong. Prove them wrong. I know you can do it. I believe in you. When you're a little kid, that's huge. That's a game changer. It is, but that, when you're a little kid, that's huge. Yeah. That's a game changer. It is a game changer.

When, you know, you, you see most, most of the people are filled with prisons. I think it's like 98% or 97% of the people in prisons grew up without a father. The stats go on and on. If you pull them off the thing and the data is there,

this is like us government data. So having a father who teaches who instructs who creates that masculine frame you know provides that balance that brings a healthy family up so then you go on your life is there a point where you see you know you said you got your i think your bachelor's and your master's is there a point where you go to college and you and you try and overcome your dyslexia well as i grew up in the system i needed less and less support you know early in our learning a lot of it is based on rote memory you know a lot of our you know elementary school is memorize your spelling words

memorize your times tables and that doesn't play to my strengths. It plays to my weaknesses. Yeah. You and me. Cause I can't remember anything. I don't know if, especially if I don't care about it. Exactly. But that's all rote memory.

Yeah. People who have dyslexic minds are often known for having poor to very little rote memory. Now our trade off is that our longterm memory is extraordinary. So we actually build a database in our brains all the time. And we can pull from it. It's like an encyclopedia. One of my college roommates used to call me Ellen the Encyclopedia.

But to specifically answer your question, as I moved through the school system and it became more about problem solving, logical thinking, and really using all different parts of our brain, that's when I started to excel. And when I got to college, I was fully mainstreamed at that point and didn't need any support services. There you go. there you go and women have larger memory brain centers than men do it's a feature not a bug it's it's it's designed that way on purpose and you know between you know what the cavemen what hunter gather nurture all that sort of good stuff so it's been shown as studies you guys remember things faster more accurately in greater detail than men and any husband who's ever had something recalled of what he did wrong in 2009 knows that that's true so there you go cites a few studies here online

but i know from what i understand your guys's the area of your guys's brain that the store's memories is larger than ours. So you guys are just, there's a whole lot of stuff to go on there because there's a lot of things husbands do wrong. The marriage jokes. You go through this process and you start finding ways to overcome it. Let me ask you this. Have you ever tried those dyslexic glasses, dyslexia glasses that they have nowadays that are supposed to help people?

I'm not familiar with those. Are those the ones that are colored? I think so. Okay. That's a very interesting thing. So I actually read a study. My father found a study about that when I was in high school. It was from University of Sydney.

And I didn't have access to colored glasses. But what I did was I went and got those report covers. Do you remember those things we had in school? The trapper keepers? Yeah, but some of them were clear and some of them were different colors. Oh, really? And I used to take those, the blues and the greens, and I would lay them inside my textbooks. Wow.

And that would help, huh? That would help. Because I couldn't create the colored glasses, but I could put those, you know, it was kind of like a green cellophane, but tougher. And that worked. That helped. The other thing I did, too, that my mom bought me was full spectrum light bulbs for my bedroom and where I studied. So having that full spectrum really helped. And there is some studies, and you probably know more about this than I do, about the fluorescent lights and the high-frequency flashing

and how that's very bad. And guess what they put in most schools. Exactly. And what's interesting was that I used to naturally gravitate to sit by the window because it's a natural light coming in from the window. Whether it's cloudy or sunny, you're still going to have more natural light.

I wonder if there's some, I don't know, there's probably somebody who's got a scientific basis on it. You know, we're not designed for a lot of this crap that we put up with. We've had different scientists on the show that have talked about it. We're not designed to look at 2D screens and each other in 2D. We're designed to see each other in 3D and gather information. Do I fight or flight with this person? Do, is this person a friend or foe?

Is, you know, what is their body language telling me? And you can read when you're with a person, you know, their full body language. You can see their eyes. You can, when you shake hands, there's different dopamine and different chemicals that go off in your brain. And we're, we're just being so isolated like we are and the weird ass lighting that we have and everything else, you know, it all affects us. And then we don't go out in the sun either and get natural vitamin D and do the things

that we used to. Lots of interesting things there. So you said even after COVID, when you started writing this, there were more stories you need to tell. Have we missed anything that we should tease out that's in the book? Sure. So, you know, I escaped from my ex-husband and he was a narcissist and I literally had to plan and execute an escape. Wow. And I was married for

six years and it was six years of narcissistic abuse. Wow. And I came out of that and I was completely traumatized. I was so traumatized. I was driving through red lights and stop signs. Wow. I could barely function. And I knew I was in trouble. And I immediately sought help.

My parents actually took me in because I had no place else to go. And I got to work. I got to work with therapists and coaches. And I instinctively knew that I had to face whatever caused me to get into that marriage. Because if I didn't face it and solve it and heal whatever needed to be healed, I was going to end up back in that situation. Yeah. Well, you were smart because a lot of people just go from, they just keep doing the same thing, same relationship over and over again.

I was desperate. Yeah. You know, I looked at, I was lucky to survive the first time and I wasn't going to take a chance again. So I was willing to go wherever I needed to go to heal. And what I learned in that process, and I got to a total surrender point where I just looked up at the sky and said, I'm all yours. I don't know what else to do. I need help. And that's when things started to get better. I'm not a religious person. I mean, I'm Episcopalian, so that's about as mainstream vanilla as you can get. But that's when things started to get better, right from that surrender point. Interesting.

Did you find what the source was of why you were choosing bad men? It was low self-esteem, low self-worth, and it all came from that dyslexic labor. Ah, so you felt like you were wounded or impaired by it, and your value was maybe lowered because you had dyslexia and what the teachers had told you when you were young? I was consistently given the message on a daily basis that I was not worthy. I was not capable. I was not going to contribute to society. And I was going to be a failure as far as they were concerned. Wow. And this is in spite of your father, huh? Well, that was the battle that was going on. So my dad taught me how to fight back.

And he did everything he could to, and my mom, they did everything they could to support me, but they were up against an entire education system. And that's pretty tough to fight against. But what they did give me was the foundation to not just fight back, but when I was finally able to shed that identity, because that was imposed on me, and that's not an authentic identity. They gave me the foundation to really push that off and begin to heal from that. And that's when I left my ex

and started to work on that healing process. There you go. That's interesting to me, because normally I see that with single moms and daughters who don't grow up without a father in the home. And so what they'll do is they try and replace the father and they make bad choices largely because the father's not in the home to guide the daughter who makes emotional decisions to pick the best men. And of course he vets them. And so usually you don't find that which is kind of interesting but i can see how you were wounded with that and you felt you know your value was lowered and that way they accept it but yeah that's interesting and normally in the other case people will make bad decisions

of men because they don't have guidance and then because that's what men do and you know we know other men and and but normally they're looking for a father replacement if they don't have one in the home and so they'll choose bad men they'll choose any man they can get a hold of they'll it's basically father replacement grabbing but they're very interesting so you you go through psychology you go through the you do the work as we like to call it in dating you you do your pair and you you've come out the other the other side and you decide to write a book and tell the story of your journey. Yes. There you go.

There you go. What are some of the other lessons we haven't talked in the book about healing after trauma, et cetera, et cetera? Healing and dealing with trauma is absolutely mission critical to moving forward. You will not be able to move forward and you'll end up falling back and those wounds will just fester and get worse. And when I did years of healing work, I also did some training with retired Navy SEALs. Commander Mark Devine, who's written about five New York Times bestsellers, has actually a program for civilians. Oh, wow. And I started training with him in 2016 and his coaches and his staff. And what I got from that

was not only to continue the healing process, but there was an opportunity for me to learn to thrive. Really? Wow. Yes. What do you think was the proponents of that? What do you think are the keys that kind of unlocked that for you? Well, Mark's program is pretty specific.

He has what's called the Five Mountain Program, where you're always working on the different parts of yourself and those are the physical mountain the mental mountain the emotional the intuitional and then the term is kokoro that he uses i don't know if you're familiar with the term but kokoro is the japanese word for merging of the heart and the mind. So that's the spiritual piece of it, and that can be whatever that means to an individual. I'm still trying to overcome the Taco Bell buffet mountain. The which mountain? The Taco Bell buffet mountain.

Okay. You're doing the jokes on the show. I've been using that joke a lot lately, the Taco Bell buffet, because it just sounds so awful. But I don't think there's a Taco Bell buffet. I think it's outlawed in most countries. So you find this journey. You find an applicable thing.

I think it's great that instead of hopping and monkey branching from relationship to relationship, doing the same thing over and over again, you came out and you said, Hey, I need some help. I need to fix myself. I don't want to keep doing this again. And you know, what's the old, what's the old thing about madness that if you do the same thing over and over again, expected a different result, it could be you. So there you go. So you've written the book, you've, you've tried to share your story to encourage other people to do things. Do you have children, I guess? Oh, no, I did not have children in my marriage. There you go. And so you talk to other people

who have dyslexia that deal with it and trying to inspire them, motivate them with a book? Yes. And that's one of the things that I'm passionate about. There are two categories. Obviously, one of them is people who are dyslexic and or parents of children who are dyslexic. You know, there's still this stigma that goes along with it, that it's an intellectual disability in a lot of our society. And that could be so, that's so far from the truth. And, you know, think the my my message to parents and children and even adults who have grown up with that label like i did to understand they're not broken they're not broken they are in fact are far from it in fact they have skills that what we call normies don't necessarily have damn norm normies. Damn normies. And then the other group that I'm

really passionate about is helping women who have been abused, obviously. And then, you know, when really kind of unmasking the narcissistic personalities and what happens to somebody in a marriage and how subtle, but yet how detrimental that can be. And one of the things that's really surprised me is as I've told my story publicly, the people who pull me aside and talk to me privately. And it is astonishing. It's probably 65 to 70% of the women who I know at one point, not necessarily now, but at one point in their life suffered either physical or emotional abuse from an intimate partner. Oh, wow. And then the other thing that's really surprised me is I've been talking with a lot of men and the narcissistic abuse that happens to men is much more common than anybody

realizes. And I'm shocked by it and the conversations that I'm having, it feels like it's identical to what I experienced, but it's, you know, it's obviously a man in the merit in the, in the relationship. Yeah. Social media has really done that.

I think they've shown that women's narcissism has really risen with social media. Social media has just been the most evil thing for all of humanity at this point because when you really think about it, it is narcissistic. I mean, you're posting pictures of yourself and you think people care about, I don't know, the food you're eating and, you know, your thoughts and opinions. I mean, and most of the people that I know, I have a lot of friends on Facebook. I've curated my friendship pretty well, but you know,

if you go on like Twitter or something, you're just like, there's a lot of, you guys are smoking a lot of something around here. I don't know what the fuck's going on. In fact, I think that's what the brand now on X or whatever it is this week. I think it's bankruptcy next week is X or whatever it is this week. I think it's bankruptcy next week is what they're changing the name to. It was down for like 24 hours the other day. Globally.

Yeah. So I don't know. I'll buy it for $5 and clean it up, but that's about it. I think that's top of the line. Even the people who financed Elon Musk buying X won't buy any more bonds or anything on it. It's that bad.

It's that bad. And they've had to write down like half their investment, I think. Yeah. Social media has just been really bad and you're seeing a lot of that, you know, a lot of manipulation, a lot of narcissistic behavior.

You know, I think there's a, I think there's an important distinction we need to make is the difference between narcissistic sort of behavior as opposed to full-blown diagnosed narcissist because i think technically what is it five percent of the u.s is diagnosable narcissistic tendencies or not tendencies but narcissistic in fact but i think there's tendencies people have and certainly social media has brought a lot of out of it and manipulated of it and it's it's an interesting world we live in you know welcome if you go on tiktok and you ask any see

anything narcissistic for a video you're gonna have 50 trillion billion videos about it. It's pretty funny over there. It is. It gets a little wacky. Yeah. That whole platform is wacky. I'm pretty sure it's a Trojan horse from China at this point to bring the downfall of America, which we were already on. That and I think, who can I throw a joke in as a band or someone funny?

I don't have anything. I was going to say Cheap Trick and pick on Cheap Trick. I don't know why I love Cheap Trick. Maybe Devo. Devo is the band because they started the De-Evolution because that's what Devo stands for, De-Evolution. I didn't know that. Yeah.

So that's what started right there. It was the Red Hats. I don't know what that means. People in the Gen Z are going, what is he talking about? The fuck? They're not old enough. Check your elevators. You'll find it. So there you go. It's in the music. What are you doing? On your website, you have your website. Tell us about the services you offer there, any coaching you do, any courses you do, speaking engagements, events, all that sort of good stuff. So I'm always looking for opportunities to speak, whether they be, you know, women's groups or education groups or teachers in particular.

I really want to share my story with teachers so they understand the psychological impact that the labels have on children. You know, I had to struggle and figure out a way to fit into a classroom that wasn't designed for me. And I was six years old. That's not really my job. And I want people to understand that. And the dyslexic label and the inferences and the bias that came with that almost destroyed my life. Yeah. I mean, it devalued me and hurt my self-esteem and self-worth so much it made me vulnerable to the predators. And that's how I ended up in that marriage. And telling that story, telling that personal story, and I've heard you talk about this on some of your other podcasts,

the power of telling your story is a great way to convey that information. The owner's manual life. Yes. I mean, even the Bible's full of you know stories that's how information historically that's how information has been conveyed through stories movies tv all the things we consume you know media reading books we're all we're all reading stories like i woke up at 50 and i'm like holy shit everything i do I do is stories. It's all stories. All life. History is stories. You go to the movies.

You watch TV. It's all about collecting stories and living stories and learning from them. There you go. I didn't get my owner's manual. It got lost in the mail. And I think it did for most people evidently because it was the U.S. Postal Service. I think you've created your own. That's kind of what I... Yeah, I've just made up most of it, really.

But you can. That's the beauty of life. You know, we just had actually somebody on the show recently who wrote a book about recreating or redesigning your stories and how, you know, you can look at something where you're a victim in a case like, you know, you initially were. It's the author, Karina Kilcone was recently on the show last week, Rise Above the Story. I don't think it's published yet. I think it might be on hold until January. But, you know, she basically talks about how, you know, you can choose multiple stories. So if someone tells you you're dyslexic and you're not going to go anywhere, you can adopt and go, that's my story.

Okay, I'm not going anywhere. Or you can choose a different story of where I'm resilient and I'm going to do stuff in life. And that's what you did. You fought back against this thing where people are trying to push this story onto you. And you went, no, I don't think I want to do that story. Exactly. And I had the support of amazing parents. You know, that's what really made the difference for me.

Not everybody has that. And that's another reason why I'm telling the story is because I got lucky. My parents, especially my father and I were super close and he was an amazing man. When he passed away, there was no room. There was standing room only in the church. Wow. And that says it all. So, you know, it's important.

And this is also my hero's journey. You know, the last piece of the hero's journey is to bring it full circle, is to bring what you learned back to your tribe and share it. And I feel a tremendous amount of responsibility to do that. There you go. And now you're on that path. You've got your book out there, telling your story,

sharing your story, and improving lives. And that's what we do with stories. So give us your dot coms as we go out. Tell people how they can onboard with you, think up with you, reach out to you, find if you're a good fit to work together,

et cetera, et cetera. Sure. Sure. To answer your question fully, always looking for speaking workshops. I'm also coaching people as well. So I can,

my website again is ellenbush.com. Don't forget the C and I'm on LinkedIn, Ellen Bush. I'm easy to find with red hair. And I'm on LinkedIn, Ellen Bush. I'm easy to find with red hair. And I'm on Facebook under Ellen Bush. And then Instagram is eBush or EllenBush1500. There you go. Yeah.

There you go. Well, thank you very much for coming on and sharing your story. We really appreciate it, Ellen. Thank you. It's been such a pleasure to be here and to talk with you. Thank you. Thank you. Folks, order up where refined books are sold.

Disempowered. How I turned an academic death sentence into my life's greatest adventure. I flunked most of school, so I did the same thing. Her book's available May 13, 2023. In order of where refined books are sold. Go to goodreads.com, fortuneschrisfast, linkedin.com, fortuneschrisfast, the big LinkedIn newsletter. Subscribe to that and the LinkedIn

130,000 group as well thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe and we'll see you guys next time