Dec. 3, 2025
A Thanksgiving Reunion, Recovery, And The Weight Of Hope
A snow globe of a day turns into a reunion years in the making as we welcome my brother home and share our first Thanksgiving together in decades. We open about addiction, boundaries, small business stress, and the hope that comes from second chances.
• early holiday stress, small business sales push, and marketing noise
• seeing Christmas through our daughter’s eyes and finding perspective
• family history, addiction, prison time, and grief across years
• reunion timeline from halfway house to Thanksgiving Eve pickup
• first Thanksgiving together in twenty years and what it meant
• balancing hope with accountability and clear boundaries
• messages to people battling addiction and to their families
• gratitude for listeners and new cities joining the community
If you're gonna give a gift this year, make it a gift proudly made in the USA. Support your neighbors and your friends. Shop small, buy local, buy American give, the gift of Loud Proud American. WWW Loud Proud American dot shop
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Thank you for Supporting My American Dream!
00:00 - Opening, Mantra, And Holiday Setup
04:50 - Snow, Money Stress, And Small Biz Grind
12:30 - Seeing Christmas Through A Child’s Eyes
16:40 - Family History And Brother’s Downfall
23:10 - Release, Reunion, And Thanksgiving Eve
28:00 - The First Thanksgiving Together In Decades
33:00 - Hopes, Boundaries, And Second Chances
38:00 - Messages To Addicts And Families
42:00 - Gratitude, Community Shoutouts, And CTA
WEBVTT
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Last week at our Liberty Thanksgiving table, I did something that I haven't done in at least 20 years.
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And my wife did something for the very first time in her life as well.
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A special moment for the Liberties, that and more on this week's episode of Share the Struggle Podcast.
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Let me tell you something.
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Everybody struggles.
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The difference is some people choose to go through it and some choose to grow through it.
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The choice is completely yours.
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Which one you choose will have a very profound effect on the way you live your life.
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Uncomfortable conversations.
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Uncomfortable conversations challenge you, humble you, and they build you.
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It all makes sense.
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Most disagreements, they stem from our own insecurities.
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You are right where you need to be.
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What it do?
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What it hot did it do?
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Good Lord Almighty, episode 282.
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And hot diggity damn is your boy.
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Excited to be back with you.
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Oh, it's true.
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It is damn true.
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Okay.
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Episode 282.
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Y'all already know what that means.
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That means for 282 consecutive weeks.
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It's been me and you.
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That's right, Boo.
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You know it to be true.
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Girl, you know it's true.
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Girl, you know it's true.
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Get into my boy band mode.
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I don't know why I'd be in my boy band mode era right now.
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My boy beep baby boo boy mid.
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Man, that was a tough word for me to get out.
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Did y'all catch that?
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If you didn't, I pointed it out for you like a big idiot.
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I'm apparently right there in the moment, I was living in my boy band era right there.
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When I should be embracing the Christmas season, okay, because it is upon us.
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And I'll tell you right now, folks, I am recording in the Loud Proud American studio, which today happens to be the kitchen.
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Okay.
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Nothing fancy over here.
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But while I'm recording, right across from me in the living room, I can see the Loud Proud American Liberty Family rotating Christmas tree.
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That's right.
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One of the biggest claims to fame that I have over here.
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And I guess it's that one secret special touch that each family has.
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Like, hey, what's special about you and your family's Christmas decorations?
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Someday they're gonna ask Little Paisley that.
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What do you what does your family do that's special that not every other family does?
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What do they do for decorating?
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Well, my daddy, he uh he puts a Christmas tree in a spinner rooney.
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Yeah, the tree spins around in a circle, like you're at Macy's or something.
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Mike, first off, my little girl's not gonna sound like um a redneck in the bayou.
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I don't know.
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I don't know where that came from.
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Lord, I apologize.
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And the words of my wife, she would have said, Lord, I apologize to do with the pygmy goats down in Tennessee.
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I don't know why she says that, but uh, here we are, folks.
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My house is beginning to be surrounded by Christmas.
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We have the rotating Christmas tree.
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It only has two ornaments on it currently.
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One of them is Santa Claus and a cowboy hat, and the other one says Merry Christmas, y'all.
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But that's rather fitting.
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We have stacks upon stacks of boxes and and uh totes just waiting to be put away.
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Christmas decorations as far as the eye can see.
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I'm standing in the corner of a kitchen just trying to make magic happen.
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To my right, I see the rotating magical Christmas tree.
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And to my left, I look out the uh double pane door there and I see the falling snow.
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That's right.
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I, folks, am coming to you from an absolute snow globe today.
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The Loud Proud American Snow Globe Studios is where I'm coming to you from today.
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I'm gonna tell you right now, typically, when these two things happen at the same time, shall I say three, when I'm recording for you and me, and the Christmas tree is rolling and blinking and twinkling, and the snow is falling, I get about as festive as a fat guy can be.
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The only more festivous, fatimus guy out there is old Snake Nick himself, okay?
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I usually get all geared up, all jacked up, all jollyed up.
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Ho, ho, ho.
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You believe me?
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But I'm not feeling quite as festive this year, and um, I guess I'll peel back some of that onion with y'all real quick.
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But um, first reason why I'm not feeling all so festive is I didn't take these snow threats seriously, and I'm not ready for it.
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We had way too many projects going on, too many things going on.
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The plow is not on the plow truck, the new plow tires are not on the plow truck.
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Shit, I ain't even bought them tires yet, but the ones that are on the truck, they ain't gonna get me too far.
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I didn't even buy diesel for the tractor, okay?
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I didn't take none of this serious.
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I said, shoot, we'll just drive over it for a little bit, okay?
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I live on a dirt road driveway.
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That baby is too soft.
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I'm not looking to be out there making little Debbie Swiss rolls, learning how to plow the driveway, okay?
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I don't need to be doing that.
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I'm not up for ruining that.
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But I realized while walking to the mailbox today, taking the new employee out for a little walk, a little whaling, which I mentioned that chaos to y'all last week.
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While taking Whalen to the uh mailbox, I realized, shoot, you just got a dumpster, you're now on a dumpster rotation.
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They're gonna be rolling in here on Thursday, and you have a couple people that are supposedly coming off the old marketplace Facebook sales situation, which I've had about 80 people stand me up in a week, so I'm not gonna put too much faith into that.
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But if I get pounded with snow, I'm gonna be out there figuring it out.
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So that's in the back of my mind.
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I didn't stake the driveway, I didn't mark the lanes, I didn't do nothing yet, so I'm not quite ready for that.
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I didn't even close everything off that should be closed.
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During the snowstorm, I'm pushing lawnmowers and covering tractors.
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That's how unprepared and unserious your boy was.
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I said, you know what?
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I got more stuff than that to take care of.
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Old Joe Cupo can put a frickin' cork in it.
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I had to breathe.
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Because I got off on a little rant there.
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So, number one, I guess that's one reason why I'm not feeling as festivous.
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Number two, I am uh steadfast, focused, bound, and determined to um create as much Christmas sales activity for Loud Proud American for the website, uh, trying to get things going.
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As you know from listening over the past few weeks, we're not on the road right now uh due to some vehicle situations and um just a lack of events that we could actually get into.
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So I'm trying to be as creative as I can from home.
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A lot of you might have tuned in and seen our Black Friday lives, our small business Saturday live, our Cyber Monday live.
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We're doing everything we can to drum up some business the best that we possibly can.
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I'm gonna just right now, I'm gonna put a plea out there to the people.
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Can we break up those things?
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Like, Black Friday is Black Friday.
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I always thought Small Business Saturday was a week after Black Friday.
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Doesn't make sense to me to do them together.
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All right.
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The next thing is Cyber Monday, they all shouldn't be in a row.
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It should be something like Black Friday, weekend off.
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Everybody's gonna be doing that thing, anyways.
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Maybe Cyber Monday on that first Monday after Black Friday, but I digress.
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I think we should go Black Friday.
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Everybody's hitting the old big box store scenario.
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They're gonna do craft fairs and such too.
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Following week should be Small Business Saturday, and then that Monday after should be Cyber Monday.
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That's gonna do a few things.
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It's gonna help all of us spread out our marketing, first and foremost.
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And y'all ain't gonna be getting pounded by all the same stuff, and we're gonna spread deals out all the way through the holiday season.
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I don't know why this isn't happening.
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I need to talk to some people and straighten this out, and I decided to talk to you people first because I feel like between all of us, we should be able to figure something out.
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So there's that.
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Been dealing with that, and it's weird.
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I think I'm getting older and I'm feeling more and more like my old man.
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My dad used to complain about the holidays um leading up to the holidays with all of the stress that he put on himself about like, well, I'm just gonna figure out how I'm gonna afford it.
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How am I gonna afford, you know, Christmas for the kids and and the wife and paying the mortgage and running the business and all these things?
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I've heard all that from my dad forever.
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I've always seen the stress on his face, and I always tried my own little way to help him out.
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My dad always felt guilty if he couldn't do enough.
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And now that I'm a dad, I'll be damn it.
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I tell you what, I'm feeling the exact same way.
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It gets me feeling a little guilty, and uh it hurts me a little bit that that's um the way I'm feeling.
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But there's so much uncertainty right now um in the world when it comes to business.
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I feel like we're on the cusp of a tremendous year.
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As y'all already know, if you've been listening to the show, Loud Proud American has already had the greatest, the largest, the biggest uh net sale year in our history.
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I'm extremely proud by our um our success this year.
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But I've never been broker, I've never been more paralyzed by the business and the debt because of everything else that's going on around us, right?
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Cost of living, all those things, um, big chances, big risks, all those things coming to fruition and stacking up.
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And uh I would be out there trying to overcome a bunch of these things if I didn't destroy a friggin' the Low Proud American Express.
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All these things weigh on you, and then you're like, okay, what do I do?
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How do I how do I change this?
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How do I get in front of this?
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How do we fix this?
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With those things happening, with all those things swirling inside the snow globe, I'm a little less um festivous this year.
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So I'm hoping that will clear.
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Um shortly after recording this, I got a feeling the wife's gonna put the heat on me to get into the Christmas decorating to take care of the scenario in the kitchen or living room here and get ourselves looking festive.
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My mom's house is already uh the North Pole, and Paisley loves it.
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And seeing my daughter look at the Christmas tree for the first time, the joy and wonder in her eyes, I truly know the meaning of the season.
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Like when you see that, you know the meaning of the season.
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It's right there, it's right there in front of you.
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Paisley was here last year for Christmas, but she was a newborn, it wasn't the same.
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She loves staring at the tree, but it was different.
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This year, to see her run up to the tree and to stand there and to stare at it and try to steal something off of it, it's um it's amazing.
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I made this uh fence for our Christmas tree a few years ago to keep the puppy off of it at the time, and I gave it to my mom, and it just looks rustic and authentic, and it just covers up the Christmas tree.
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So Paisley will run to that tree and stand at the fence and hold the fence and just gaze at that tree and just shore awe.
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And I don't think there's a better feeling than that.
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Like I'm I've always heard people say, Oh, you know, Christmas is for the kids and this and that, and well, until you have one, you don't really know that.
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I always thought, well, Christmas can be for everyone, pal.
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I mean, come on now, and it uh it can and always will be, but just seeing the excitement in her eyes with everything is amazing.
00:12:21.519 --> 00:12:34.559
And I I think many people probably do the same thing, but I find myself now often looking at her and seeing how she sees the world and be envious of it.
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Like just being envious of my child, seeing the world and knowing no harm, knowing no evil, seeing only pure good is amazing.
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And you just think and pray and wonder if somehow, someday, some way, can we get back to that?
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Will we ever be back to that?
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Will we ever be as eager to see the world as we once were as children?
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And as I think about that, I often sit there and think of how disappointing it's gonna be for her to learn the truth about this world when she begins to learn how much evil and so much hate is out there.
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That's the sad thing.
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That's the sad thing when you sit there and you go, someday she's gonna figure out that this world isn't as great as she feels it is right now.
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So it's my job as a parent to keep her feeling the way she is for as long as I possibly can, and to show her as much good as I possibly can.
00:13:34.080 --> 00:13:38.480
And I guess that's probably where some of the Christmas pressure comes from in the first place.
00:13:38.799 --> 00:13:48.159
But all those things considered, I'm so tremendously excited to do so many things with my little girl for the first time this year.
00:13:48.399 --> 00:14:02.000
And speaking of first time, we're gonna get into something that we did for the first time as a family, and something that I did for the first time in shoot, at least 20 years, man.
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And that is this year at the Thanksgiving table, I sat down and had Thanksgiving dinner side by side with my brother.
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My wife across from the table, my little baby girl staring at her uncle.
00:14:25.440 --> 00:14:32.879
If you guys are listening today's show for the very first time, if this is the first show, then you don't know.
00:14:33.120 --> 00:14:35.840
If you've been here for a day one, get your ones up.
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I acknowledge you, I appreciate you, and I thank you for being on this 282 consecutive week ride that we are on.
00:14:45.279 --> 00:14:48.000
And if you've been on this ride, then you know this.
00:14:48.080 --> 00:14:51.039
And if you're just arriving here, then I'm gonna share a little bit of this.
00:14:51.200 --> 00:14:56.080
I'm just gonna kind of paint the picture and pave the road for the story to be told.
00:14:56.559 --> 00:15:02.000
I came from a big family, but oftentimes I felt like an only child.
00:15:02.720 --> 00:15:11.039
My father had five kids in a previous marriage, my mother had one child in a previous marriage, then they got together and had me.
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The bulk of the kids from my dad's marriage never really accepted me, and uh most of them resented me.
00:15:22.080 --> 00:15:24.320
Two years ago, I lost my father.
00:15:24.559 --> 00:15:38.159
Leading up to that, we learned the true colors about that side of the family and how they really felt about me and all my assumptions that I grew up with, those hunches and notions and feelings that I thought might be true, that I was always told, no, sir, those aren't true.
00:15:38.240 --> 00:15:40.639
Those people love you, those are your brothers and sisters.
00:15:40.799 --> 00:15:42.159
Well, they didn't.
00:15:42.480 --> 00:15:47.200
And uh the ones that did love and care about me, they've already passed on.
00:15:47.360 --> 00:15:51.759
I lost two brothers, one of them who I was really close to.
00:15:52.639 --> 00:16:17.120
And the rest of them have disowned us, and um one of them, I've literally he lives across the road from me uh in a tar paper shack camper out in the woods behind my cousin's house, who let's just say they're not even blood related, and the fact that he's disowned me and my family means that technically y'all aren't related at all, but that is what it is.
00:16:17.360 --> 00:16:29.919
I see that deadbeat piece of garbage all the time, and uh we don't wave, we don't acknowledge, we don't recognize, we just move on like two shifts in the night.
00:16:30.240 --> 00:16:34.320
That part of my family is gone and over with.
00:16:34.799 --> 00:16:40.559
My mother's only child without my father.
00:16:40.799 --> 00:16:48.559
So my mom's child before getting with my dad is my brother Charlie, who is 10 years older than me.
00:16:48.799 --> 00:16:55.919
And um, we were two peas in a pod, uh, and grew up with him as a role model and as an idol.
00:16:57.039 --> 00:17:09.839
And as he entered high school, he started smoking weed, and it kind of took him down some um bad paths and directions, and it started as a gateway to him making a lifetime of poor decisions.
00:17:10.079 --> 00:17:14.240
Some things his fault, not all things his fault, right?
00:17:14.640 --> 00:17:21.039
But you don't get through life with everybody else making poor decisions and you paying for them.
00:17:21.200 --> 00:17:26.720
Some of those decisions are 1,000% your doing, and he made a lot of those choices.
00:17:27.759 --> 00:17:38.559
I watched my brother throw his life away, and he spent and has spent more of his life behind bars than outside of bars.
00:17:39.680 --> 00:17:58.559
And I had a love-hate relationship because I poured everything into him every time he would go to jail, and I would write to him just about every day, and I would go see him every weekend, and I would talk to him as much as I could, and every time he would come home, he would choose his friends or family over me.
00:17:59.039 --> 00:18:09.440
And that got to a point of resentment, and oftentimes we would, you know, overcome those things, and then um it would rear its ugly head again, right?
00:18:09.519 --> 00:18:15.119
We'd come, he'd come out and we'd start having a relationship again, and before you know it, he's going back for something else again.
00:18:15.440 --> 00:18:31.839
So I dealt with that uh for my whole life, and um my role model, I felt lost his way and began to choose drugs over family and over himself.
00:18:32.160 --> 00:18:35.039
And here's a little remarkable fun fact for you.
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I always blamed weed as the gateway to this.
00:18:40.960 --> 00:18:52.400
I always blamed it as the first tipping point, the first decision that my brother made that took him from me, that took his life away from him.
00:18:52.480 --> 00:18:58.160
I know that's not the only blame, but that's the way I looked at it, and that's how I justify it as a small child.
00:18:58.480 --> 00:19:09.359
Now, at age 42, I have never smoked weed in my life because I blame it for contributing to my brother's downfall.
00:19:10.240 --> 00:19:18.160
With all that said, unfortunately, my brother didn't really get to see his kids grow up.
00:19:18.319 --> 00:19:20.240
He wasn't around for a lot of those things.
00:19:20.400 --> 00:19:27.920
I think that I've seen or been a part of a lot more of his kids' lives, unfortunately, than he has throughout the years.
00:19:28.079 --> 00:19:35.920
And I'm saying all these things that just to put out there that he's made bad choices and poor decisions.
00:19:36.079 --> 00:19:37.680
But I love my brother.
00:19:37.920 --> 00:19:39.680
I love him with all my heart.
00:19:39.920 --> 00:19:43.440
We don't always get along, we don't always see eye to eye.
00:19:43.599 --> 00:19:48.319
But I spent a great portion of my life looking up to him and wanting to be like him.
00:19:48.480 --> 00:19:52.720
Like every little boy with a big brother, he was 10 years older than me.
00:19:52.960 --> 00:20:02.720
He was the star in football, in wrestling, he was charismatic, he was just had a great personality.
00:20:02.880 --> 00:20:04.720
He he was a heck of an athlete.
00:20:04.799 --> 00:20:08.160
Everything about him you just wanted to be.
00:20:08.480 --> 00:20:13.200
And it was heartbreaking all the times that he went away to jail.
00:20:13.359 --> 00:20:42.240
And as I got older, we grew a little further apart, and you know, I resented him for some of his decision making, but I would always forgive and give the benefit of opportunity because I love my brother, and I've always wanted him to live the life that I know he deserves, and to have the life that he so certainly deserves.
00:20:42.559 --> 00:20:57.680
And it's not gonna be easy for him to repair and replace and remend and rebuild bridges and relationships, and I'm not gonna speak for him and his, you know, his relationships and and those things that he has to do.
00:20:57.759 --> 00:21:11.519
I'm not gonna get into any of that, I'm not gonna weigh opinions on um family relationships, whatever they are, whether it's between him and my mother or um his kids or his friends or or other relatives.
00:21:11.680 --> 00:21:13.039
I'm not here for any of that.
00:21:13.200 --> 00:21:18.079
I'm just here to say that I hope and pray he has found his way.
00:21:18.319 --> 00:21:24.559
And there's been a couple of things that have um given me glimmers of hope.
00:21:24.799 --> 00:21:30.160
And one of those is him asking to go to church with me and Allie.
00:21:30.319 --> 00:21:33.119
And um, I'm looking forward to that.
00:21:34.000 --> 00:21:39.359
And for that to have come from him, not from us, I think is tremendous.
00:21:40.799 --> 00:21:44.160
But that's just me kind of setting the scene a little bit here for you guys.
00:21:44.319 --> 00:21:48.400
There's episodes on this in the podcast that you can go back to.
00:21:48.559 --> 00:22:11.599
I've had difficulty with my brother during his times in jail where I felt he was selfish, I felt that he was taking advantage of my mother, I felt he was taking advantage of situations, he wasn't accepting responsibility, he was pushing blame on others, and because of that, I really wasn't ready to forgive.
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