The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – I Drank From The Nile, A Memoir by Katya Dunko

Episode Date: December 26, 2024

I Drank From The Nile, A Memoir by Katya Dunko Katyadunko.com About the Guest(s): Katya Dunko is a Ukrainian-American writer whose journey has taken her across 33 countries and four continents.... A former resident of Egypt, Katya is an author with a forthcoming memoir titled "I Drank from the Nile," which delves into her personal experiences with addiction, toxic relationships, and generational pain. After immigrating to the U.S. at a young age, Katya found herself grappling with addiction, but she ultimately transformed her life and is hopeful about inspiring others with her story. Katya is based in Reno, Nevada, where she lives with her husband, daughter, and two cats. She is also interested in music production and painting, along with managing family properties and working part-time as a realtor. Episode Summary: Join Chris Voss on The Chris Voss Show as he dives into the riveting and inspirational journey of Katya Dunko, a Ukrainian-American writer preparing to release her memoir, "I Drank from the Nile." In this compelling episode, Katya opens up about her experiences with addiction, her international adventures, and the powerful story of reclaiming her life. This episode promises insights into resilience, personal transformation, and the courage it takes to start anew. Throughout the episode, Katya shares her experiences navigating life as an immigrant, battling opioid addiction, and finding herself in the heart of Egypt. Her journey is marked by her decision to confront her struggles head-on, eventually leading her to escape a dangerous situation and transform her life. Through her story, Katya hopes to inspire listeners to find strength and courage within themselves to break free from generational cycles of pain. Listen in to discover how Katya overcame her challenges and what she learned about self-worth and transformation. Key Takeaways: Katya Dunko's memoir, "I Drank from the Nile," is a candid exploration of overcoming addiction and generational pain. Her journey includes living in Egypt, where she confronted dangerous relationships and found her inner resilience. Through self-deconstruction and transformation, Katya was able to break free from the cycle of her past and start anew. The episode highlights themes of perseverance, finding self-worth, and the importance of reclaiming one's narrative. Katya's story serves as a beacon of hope for others struggling with trauma, encouraging them to rewrite their futures. Notable Quotes: "I'm gonna do something really bold, and I'm gonna move to Egypt and survive and, you know, teach English and be this awesome person." "The memoir is for people that want to find their worth or struggling to find their worth and their place in this world." "I made a promise that I will not pass this pain on to my daughter. I cannot, because that's what my mother did to me." "It was the lowest, but the most resilient moment of my life." "Hopefully, the story inspires everybody to reclaim and rewrite their life because it's never too late."

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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, 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. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.
Starting point is 00:00:41 One of the earliest things that makes it official. Welcome to the big show. For over 16 going on 17 years, we've been bringing the Chris Voss Show over 2,200 episodes. The CEOs, the billionaires, White House presidents, advisors, the Pulitzer Prize winners, the smartest people who share you their stories and journeys of your life, as we like to say on the show. Stories are the owner's manual to life. They help let us know that we're not alone.
Starting point is 00:01:01 They give us guidance of people who've maybe gone through similar circumstances and the way that they've fixed their issues and found a way through the cathartic times that we all kind of go through. And just knowing that you're not alone in the universe and somebody might have a blueprint to save you is one of the reasons we do the show. It helps lift the world into a better place. And sometimes the darkest times, the darkest moments we go through, there it is. Boy, I just read that like it was an ad and i just made it so well that's a perfect voice for it chris thank you it's how i get all the girls on facebook dating i just leave them a voice message and they're like holy shit it's barry white is that that's the bumble one too if i send text messages they're just like, who's this guy?
Starting point is 00:01:45 But if I do the voice, they're just like, hey, here's my number. True story. Serious. I'm not kidding. It's the one gift God gave me. The rest of me is a complete mess. Anyway, we have an amazing young lady on the show. You can hear her in the background.
Starting point is 00:02:00 We're going to talk to her. She's from the Ukraine, too. So we'll be talking about some of her life experiences, experiences international order and all that different craziness that's out there in the world today we have katya dunko on the show with us today she is a writer multi potent give me that in your word potential light so that's the scientific name for you know professional student jack of all trades somebody that has many passions. I'm adding that to my Tinder profile. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:02:30 And she's the author of a new book that will be forthcoming. You can sign up to get the news now. It's called I Drink from the Nile. It's a raw and unapologetic memoir about breaking free from addiction, toxic relationships, and generational pain. Her journey began in Cairo, Egypt, where she left with nothing but two bags and her daughter determined to rebuild her life. Through her story, Katya hopes to inspire others to confront their struggles, find resilience, and rewrite their futures. She spent the last six years writing her memoir and managing her family's properties while working as a part-time realtor and transforming a historic ranch on the truckee river into an events venue she holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from the university of nevada reno and is pursuing her nursing license
Starting point is 00:03:16 she lives in reno with her husband daughter and two cats enjoys music production djing and she is a multi-point delight i'm working on that learning that word cooking and painting in her free time welcome to the show katya how are you thank you chris thanks for having me thank you thanks for coming as well give us any dot coms where do you want people to get to know you better on the interwebs mostly i'm known on tiktok so it's katya underscore dunco i have a 14 part series series about my story in Egypt. Also, I have my website as well, myname.com. You can join the wait list and on Instagram that I post mostly from my journey as a writer and little snippets from my book.
Starting point is 00:03:59 And your book's not up on Amazon. Do you have a release anticipation yet, date, or where are you at with that project? So right now, I'm querying agents. I have had a couple of referrals with the holidays. You know, you got to wait for a while to get any answers from anyone, but I got that out. If I don't get a response, I'm going to, I'm going to publish, self-publish on Amazon and join my wait list. You know, you'll, you'll get to know all that when that comes out. But it's ready to go. I'm just can't wait to share my story. Shopping the story, as it were. And I love the title. Where does the title originate from? Tell
Starting point is 00:04:31 us a little bit about that, if you would. So I drank from the Nile. They have a saying in Egypt that once you drink from the Nile, you're destined to come back. And that's what happened to me. I traveled there in 2012 with an ex-boyfriend that's now a pretty famous youtuber and then we were there during the revolutions and i drank some of the now then then i came back in 2014 and ended up living there ah oh quite the adventure and multinational i remember the egypt uprising and the oh what did they call it when a lot of the Arab authoritarian countries were falling?
Starting point is 00:05:05 The Arab Spring, I think. Spring, yeah. Yeah, and now we've got the extension of it. Syria just fell. For those of you watching 10 years from now on YouTube, we're in December 2024. Give us some more details about your journeys. How were you raised? I mean, what were some of your influences?
Starting point is 00:05:21 You clearly are pretty comfortable on the international traveling front and understanding you know how that all works yeah so i as of date i have been to 33 countries i've lived in four originally obviously from ukraine and we immigrated with my mom she was actually one of those mail order brides from the 1-800 number are you you serious? You're not putting it on, right? Yeah. So she went in as a joke with her friend and then this guy from Alaska picked her. So we traded from Kiev, Ukraine
Starting point is 00:05:55 to Alaska when I was eight years old. Is there more snow or is there less snow? I know Ukraine has winter, right? No, we have less snow, but it's kind of like the East Coast. There's a lot of humidity. East Coast snow. Yeah, really cold.
Starting point is 00:06:09 But Alaska has a lot of snow and not enough daylight. Yeah, that's a hard probably move to make when you're a kid. Did you have a hard time with it? Yeah, I remember actually we tried to get in through Mexico City. We would go to the embassy there, and then we were sent back. But I remember landing in landing in Anchorage, and my my stepdad had a truck. And then I, you know, I didn't, I've never seen automatic windows, and they, and they leaned on it with my elbow. And just seeing all the mountains. So I remember, yeah, it was a culture shock, Feeling carpet. You know, we grew up poor in Ukraine and, you know, Soviet blocks. You know, we're all sardined in a 540 square foot apartment block. So that was, you know, seeing the mountains and I fell in love with nature and growing up there. So it was beautiful.
Starting point is 00:07:01 I think Alaska is probably one of the best places to fall in love with nature if you really love nature maybe unless you like unless you don't like getting eaten by bears that's probably or if you don't like eating by bears but then my sister that was you know she's born from my american stepdad she's a super city girl so if you're if you're born with that and you grew up in alaska you know we had nothing to do do. We had not a lot. They get eaten by bears. That's what you do on weekends. Bear, moose, and you know, the moose,
Starting point is 00:07:29 their eyes don't reflect in the headlights. That's why there's a lot of moose killings on the road. They ended up killing people because they hit them with their cars? Is that what you mean?
Starting point is 00:07:37 Yeah, people hit moose with their cars and that's because their eyes don't reflect. Oh, wow. I know deers do because I lived in Utah for quite a few years where we hit deers. Yeah, I that's because their eyes don't reflect. Oh, wow. I know deers do because I lived in Utah for quite a few years.
Starting point is 00:07:47 We had deers. But yeah, I had a similar problem where I grew up in California on the beach in San Diego. And then when we were 12, my parents, I'm pretty sure they mixed some psychedelic drugs because that's the only reason I can find to move to Utah. We woke up from a hangover and we were in Utah. I mean, should people really move here voluntarily? Anyway, that's true, people. Utah is nice. I don't know about that. Anyway, I teased the Utah. But having to wear a coat all the time, I was like, what is this coat business?
Starting point is 00:08:18 From San Diego? Yeah. Why do I have to wear a coat? What the hell? Why is it cold here? I can't wear shorts anymore. What place have we moved to? We can't drink Coke anymore? What the fuck? Anyway, that's my story. I'm sticking to it. So tell us more about how you went from Alaska to Egypt, where your story starts. Yeah. So in Alaska, I mean, it was hard for my mom to adjust to the
Starting point is 00:08:46 life of, you know, just being, being in America, the language, I didn't have a good relationship with her really much ever. So in Alaska, I kind of introduced me to, as we're talking about, you know, there's not much to do there. Painkillers. My backstory is I was a closet addict for almost 10 years. And it's, you know, holding on to that. I was highly functioning. That's another topic in my book is how I overcame that in Egypt. You know, you don't know that you are an addict until you realize, you know, I take a pill every day. It's just, you know, it's just a pill.
Starting point is 00:09:24 My back hurts. My this hurts, you know. I take a pill every day. It's just, you know, it's just a pill. My back hurts. My this hurts, you know. And it's opioids? Opioids, yes, the pain killers. And so that was something. Those are hard to get off of too. Yes. And like I said, I didn't understand that that's what I, you know, that I was an addict for so long, you know.
Starting point is 00:09:43 And then I started to realize how much it affects my, you know, that I was an addict for so long, you know, and then I started to realize how much it affects my, you know, my relationship. So with after Alaska, I moved to here in Reno, I got a full ride scholarship. So despite all those, you know, despite my addiction, I still did really well in school. And I got scholarships and came to Reno and studied abroad and then met that first love and we traveled a lot. And that's when that 2012 trip, I fell in love with Egypt. And two years later, I decided to come back. You know, let's talk about this a little bit. You know, you start on painkillers.
Starting point is 00:10:23 You don't think it's a problem. You know, there's a lot of people that can highly function as addicts. And I think that kind of masks or deceives them. Like, you're like, I don't have a problem. I'm functioning. I have a job. You know, I'm doing the things everyone else seems to do. You know, I got a little mother's little helper sort of thing going on.
Starting point is 00:10:43 You know, I drink alcohol, not out of addiction, but just kind of abuse. It was fuel. At the end of my entrepreneurial nights, I still had more work to do and more paperwork. And so I'm like, oh, there's sugar. And I don't think I really thought about it at the time. I just knew that vodka would relax me and I could get more work. I could suddenly have energy and get more work done because I was relaxed. And, you know, I didn't realize I was just basically injecting sugar in my veins and a lot of other crap too.
Starting point is 00:11:12 And you think you're functioning well. I thought, I even thought it made me sleep better. I've talked about this a lot on the show. Turns out it doesn't really make you sleep better. But I thought it did because, you know, I had a pretty ADHD brain. But it's deceptive, huh? Yeah. It's violent. I always had an excuse. It made me feel normal. So when I took my pills, I didn't feel the high. I just felt normal. I never had a lot in my system at one time,
Starting point is 00:11:43 and I write a lot about this in my book. I introduce it. I have this perfect world and I never had a lot in my system at one time. And I write a lot about this in my book. It's kind of a, I introduced it, you know, I have this perfect world. I have this relationship with this world traveler and we, and we have all these adventures yet. I'm harboring this little, you know, addiction, painkiller thing. And I justified it for so long. Like, it's just a little sliver, you know, I just crush it. I just put it in my body and then we're good. We're good to go. We've, all my past is, is behind me. I I'm numb, constantly numb. And you know, was there an underlying thing? I mean, maybe I'm jumping ahead to when you got off it. Was there an underlying thing that you, you felt like you
Starting point is 00:12:22 were numbing? You felt like you were medicating? Was there something that was under the surface there that was the bugger? Yeah. So just as we're kind of now we're talking through the book. So I introduced myself, you know, what my perfect life and I have this addiction. And then that follows just a very turbulent and neglectful childhood, obviously. And sadly, my mother was the one that actually introduced me to these pills. And she's been, you know, the driving force behind that. So I...
Starting point is 00:12:56 My parents sometimes drove me to drink, but I think that happens to all kids. Yeah. So it's this, you know, this generational pain. My mom had that addiction. She passed it on to me and that's how I got into them. Wow. So you go to Egypt. Tell us about Egypt. And then you got married, I think, and you had a child. Well, at the end, yeah. I went to Egypt first to teach English, kind of experience life on my own, you know, be, be this worldly independent woman. And I was, you know, again, with the traumatic childhood, we all have these traumas, but I was a people pleaser. I wanted to be better for this man that I thought I was going to marry that we traveled so much together. So I said, Look, hey, what if I live in Egypt for a little bit, you know, I'm
Starting point is 00:13:42 going to figure myself out, I'll become this worldly person and maybe when i come back you know we can build a family together and that was something he agreed with and he thought that would be a great thing to do but i went in there with you know vulnerability and then this addiction so this is where i really realized how much it affects me egypt is scary place it's being a woman a white woman there people will just you get catcalls harassers i don't know if you want to look it up but it's number one country for harassment 98 percent of women have been harassed there there was a cnn i believe it was a cnn reporter who was raped during gang raped raped, I believe, during the, it was in one of those uprisings against Mubarak. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:14:30 Yeah, her name. But yeah, it was horrific. Yeah, so us, you know, expats. But I'm coming in, landing in the heart of the Arab world with this, just dazed constantly, you know, I don't even know what I'm doing anymore there. So that's when I get into a lot of trouble. I meet not really nice people. I actually met the ex president's grandson and I don't want to reveal his name because you got to get the book. But as of 2021, he, I think he was put in jail for also gang raping. So I was involved with some pretty bad people there. And I realized, I got to get out. I'm going to end up really hurt. So this is when
Starting point is 00:15:17 I asked my boyfriend here in Reno for help. I was like, can you get me out of this country? I want to come back home. And I was going to confine in him and tell him that I have this addiction, but I was so afraid that he wouldn't love me. So, my memoir is for people that are going through things like that. They don't feel self-worth in their problems and they want just to hear a story that where it can get you if you don't seek help and things like that. Yeah. You know, we had Nina Burleigh on the show several years ago for her book. And I can't remember what it was.
Starting point is 00:15:52 I think it was about Trump and the election. But she had written extensively when she was at CNN stuff about this. There was a 22-year-old Dutch journalist who was gang raped in Tahrir Square. Tahrir, yeah. No, I'm not pronouncing that correctly. Thank you. And then there was Nina, there was Logan, Laura Logan, Dutch journalist. And yeah, I'm just Googling this now.
Starting point is 00:16:14 And it says gang rapes in the dark side of a gypsy's protest. You know, when you're a tall, blonde, white woman in the Middle East, you really stuck out. You really stick out. really stick yeah i did my best to conceal i mean i wore you know long maxi skirts i wore really baggy clothes i even try to veil myself and this is me you know getting to work and teaching english i you know they would they they noticed how just even how the rapping was wrong and I try to hide basically in a city of 15 million people and at that point you know my life I I don't have a good relationship with my parents very I can't call anyone really for help
Starting point is 00:16:54 isolate you right it isolates you and then my addiction just keeps getting deeper and deeper because you're you're medicating that you don't have resources you know we we interviewed clarissa ward the cnn chief international correspondent several years ago on the show for her book and we talked about that because she she told these stories in her book about being in the middle east being iraq during war i just recently saw her in syria and she sticks out like a sore thumb i think she's six something foot tall. She's very, she's very blonde and very pale. And I'm like, how do you, you know, you're, you're trying to hide who you are and you're
Starting point is 00:17:30 trying to infiltrate different areas sometimes under the cover of the enemy or, you know, she's the press, but you know, she's in, she's in the part of the enemy's area where they, you know, they cut people's heads off that are white. And I'm like somehow you blend in and and it's it's i wouldn't do it i i'll be honest with you i'm a man i wouldn't do it it was it was a bad bad decision and that it was fueled by you know my my really heavy addiction i was like oh i'm gonna i'm gonna do something really bold and i'm gonna move to egypt and survive and, you know,
Starting point is 00:18:06 teach English and be this awesome person. You know, the harassment I was just hit with, there's a moment I write about. So I lived with two other Ukrainian girls. So you can't live with another man in Egypt unless you're married or have roommates or any of that stuff. So foreigners kind of stick together. So it was me and two other Ukrainian girls, my roommates.
Starting point is 00:18:28 And we had this landlord, Mr. Harish. And he came in, he would come in every month to collect rent. And he would use his key, walks in, and he sets a big bag of money, just cash on the table. And he was trying to buy us as his bride every time he's like how much for you to be my bride i was like mr harish we go through this every month no thank you you know it's like oh i'll bring you more money i'm just how much money are we talking about here because i'm single i can be bought oh we were bride oh yeah i don't know an egyptian
Starting point is 00:19:01 pounds gosh back then now it's so diluted but back then i don't know. An Egyptian pounds, gosh, back then. Now it's so diluted. But back then, I don't know, maybe 10 grand, 20. Do you still have his number? No, I'm just teasing. Maybe. No, but it's just, you know, it's coming in through everywhere. I can't get away from this city. I'm just like, I got to go home.
Starting point is 00:19:19 But where is home? You know, where do I go home? Ukraine, I haven't lived there for a while. I'm on this rocky relationship with my boyfriend here that I thought we were going to get, you know where where do i go home ukraine i haven't lived there for a while i'm on this rocky relationship with my boyfriend here that i thought we were gonna get you know married and everything so i just start kind of deconstructing myself and i put that in as every good engineer you know they have to take apart the machine to find the broken pieces and see how it operates so i started my analogy by the way Do you write about that in your book? That is a great analogy.
Starting point is 00:19:45 Yeah, so I started my deconstruction. I'm like, okay, I want it to be weak. I was like, let my life be going in the wrong direction. I almost wanted that. I almost, it's very detailed. So it's very broad that I write about the human condition and what's lethargic was for me to actually deconstruct myself. And so you go through that.
Starting point is 00:20:11 What drags you to the point of eventually where you have to kidnap your daughter in Egypt and how you did it? If you want to tease a little bit out of that, we want people to buy the book, of course, but if you could tease that a little bit. So I get in trouble with this president's ex-president's grandson, and I'm hiding out from him. I mean, I get into a very dangerous situation. I'm hiding from him. I had to dye my hair. I'm looking for a hero. So there's a hero that comes in, and I didn't know,
Starting point is 00:20:42 but he would be my future husband. You know, he gets me out of Egypt to the States and we kind of go for two years, you know, back, not back and forth. He would come travel and, you know, visit me. And then eventually I don't want to give it out, but how I came back to Egypt and to marry him there. Wow. So you actually go back to Egypt after kidnapping?
Starting point is 00:21:06 Yeah, after all of this. And he knew, yeah, yeah, it's crazy. You also felt pretty secure with him then. Yeah, he was my hero in a lot of things, with my mom. It's a train wreck. It's a train wreck. And every chapter, it's a page turner. Like, how are you going to get out of this situation?
Starting point is 00:21:24 You know, it's about this resiliency. It's about, and I, when I was writing with my editors, I was like, gosh, they're not going to like me for the first few chapters. What are you doing? What are you doing? But it all comes back in the end. So anyway, so I have this, this, you know, he's, he's my hero. I go back to Egypt. We actually have a normal life. You know, his family accepts me. I'm not this expat. I belong to an Egyptian family. His family's really nice. They're very, his father's very high up in the government. You know, they love me. They take me in. They, I have a maid. I live in this bubble. I lived in this place where I just saw the pyramids, front of me. Wow. A beautiful place.
Starting point is 00:22:06 Wow. And so you go through this whole, would reinvention or saving of yourself be the right words to use maybe? Yeah. So transformation, I guess, as I would say. Yeah. And what eventually I learned is that I'm harboring all this pain and it's because I have this pain and this victimhood, poor me, my life, and all of this thing happened, that I keep making the wrong choices for myself and my future. And that's what eventually I do learn at the end, this breaking this generational pain. So when we get married, he you know, he leaves us about 10 days after she's born my daughter and tells me that I can never leave Egypt, that you are to stay here
Starting point is 00:22:52 and raise her. And basically, I'd be like, just a wet nurse. That's how I was treated. So I went from being their favorite to pretty much a wet nurse. And I was scared. I had, you know, I had no bank accounts there. I can't, I'm a foreigner, I can't get a was scared. I had, I had, you know, I had no bank accounts there. I can't, I'm a foreigner. I can't get a bank account. I had some money in savings. I don't know what to do. I was the lowest, but the most resilient moment of my life is I planned out our escape and made it and decided to, you know, to become the mother I never had to, to. So when I came here, I thought, you know, what do I, what do I do with all this pain? What do I, how do I move forward? You know, having kid,
Starting point is 00:23:30 I don't know what my repercussions are. I don't know if he's going to come fight for me in court. I don't, I am sure I just kidnapped my daughter, you know? So I made a promise that I will not pass this pain on to my daughter. I cannot because that was what my mother did to me and I lived with this victimhood. And it's all going to be in your forthcoming memoir. Yes. You're still learning to speak, evidently, after 16 years on the phone.
Starting point is 00:23:57 Do you have a cover for the book yet by chance? You know, I had a few that I wanted. I can send you some that I prototyped, but you know that they always change. Most authors don't even get to pick their cover sometimes. Yeah. It's an unknown fact most people don't know. And with the big publishers, sometimes they pick your title and your cover.
Starting point is 00:24:18 But you have a great title. I really love it. And it's seated in the lore of Egypt and all that sort of good stuff. So as we go out, tell people where they can onboard, give people the final pitch out to get in touch with you and find out more about your story as it emerges. Yeah. So my story is for anyone that is wanting to find their worth or struggling to find their worth and their place in this world. It's an inspirational story, transforming of motherhood, of what you can do with this generational pain. You don't have to hang on to it. So if this is something
Starting point is 00:24:51 that interests you, you can reach me out on my website, katyadunko.com, sign up for my waitlist or newsletter. And then I'm heavy on TikTok. If you're more interested, more about my story, I have it all there in details and on instagram but love to connect hopefully get that story out sooner than later and to inspire you know everybody to just to reclaim and rewrite their life because it's never too late and i'm i have 19 chapters to prove it to you that you can you can do it you can delete as i like to say and if you're a publicist check out what she's doing and all that good stuff see if we can't get this story lifted this is one of those stories that people
Starting point is 00:25:29 need to hear i'm sure it's a it's a i mean i don't mean to minimize it but it's a journey a lot of people go on through with addiction i don't know how many people are i don't know what the stats are on addiction i live in vegas you live in reno we we kind of know there's a larger group of addictive people around us and it's. And it's an issue. It's an issue. And, you know, it's like we've talked. We've probably had two or three hundred psychologists on the show. And trauma, childhood trauma.
Starting point is 00:25:55 You know, I mean, this is all stuff that people really need to resolve in youth and deal with. And not pass it on. That was my biggest. That was my biggest. I'm like, I cannot pass this on to was my biggest that was my biggest i'm like i cannot pass this on to my daughter because hurt people hurt people and then it's just this this cycle and and i just i hope my story inspires you know somebody going through whatever they are to just break that cycle break that cycle break the cycle folks because we need to do that thank you very much for coming to the show we really appreciate it thank you chris thank you for having me yeah thanks for sharing
Starting point is 00:26:29 your story sometimes these are hard to share sometimes they feel a little you know you're like i really want to share does anybody really care about my story but the great thing about our sharing our stories is there's always someone out there who needs to hear our story and they need to hear from us and that was an important thing. Someone told me he was an author one time and they, they said, people need to hear your story, Chris. You won't know who that person is, but they need to hear it and they need to hear it in your words. And so you need to, you know, be there for them. And I was like, wow. And it really is powerful. And sometimes you never meet those people. I've told stories on Facebook about some of the crises I had with my dogs and
Starting point is 00:27:09 different things. And it was amazing how just almost a decade later, people come up to me and they go, hey, that thing with your dog that you wrote that one time in 2013. Yeah, that resonated with me. I'd realized that I didn't have closure with my father's death or my dog's death or you know it's just amazing how far it went and i just was like wow okay my my tiktok i have so what i did by taking my daughter out of egypt is is an anomaly the statistics is that the children get kidnapped to the country and are forced to stay there it gets very hard to get out because i don't have legal custody of her there because I'm not Muslim. So I had women reaching out to me on Instagram, you know, stuck in Dubai, how do I get, you know, they need support. You know, I'm stuck here with my kid.
Starting point is 00:27:55 This is a really big issue in the Middle East, you know, children are stuck there. And I just took the risk and got out. And, you know, maybe like you said, years down the road, I'm not bashing on the countries at all. I, you know, like I said, my daughter's half Egyptian. I do love it. It's just that there, there are a lot of cases like this and a lot of, I had two people I'm talking to, Egyptian women that want, you know, that are getting out with their kids. And so if I can help even one or two, that's, that's. Change the world. And, and, and generationally, it's more than helping one or two people too.
Starting point is 00:28:30 I mean, that's the thing people want to remember. It's, you know, those people have kids and all that stuff. So thank you for your story. Thank you for what you're doing. We really appreciate it. Awesome. I look forward to seeing the stream too. So thanks for having me.
Starting point is 00:28:43 Thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Christmas, LinkedIn.com, Fortress Christmas, Christmas 1, the TikTokity, and all those crazy places
Starting point is 00:28:50 on the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. And that should have...

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