Welcome to Mindshift Power podcast, a show for teenagers and the adults who work with them, where we have raw and honest conversations. I'm your host, Fatima Bey, the mind shifter. And welcome everyone. On today's episode, we have James Divine from Colorado. He is a speaker and middle school teacher, a musician, and a podcaster.

He also has 10 grandkids. But today, we're gonna talk about something very serious, and, I'm gonna just dive right into it. So, James, can you tell us some major things that happened to you as a kid? Yeah. So I was the victim of a dad who was abusive to my mom, And my mom was from Italy, so the good thing was we left it we left New York where I I was born in, up until the age five, and we moved to Italy to be with my mom's family to escape from my dad.

Now he never had abused me, but I saw that what he had done to my mom almost on a daily basis, it feels like, as a as a kid. And we moved to Italy, and life was mostly good there. So I don't want it sound like it was bad. I've enjoyed being with my relatives. We were dirt poor, but I didn't know it because I had plenty of meatballs to eat every day with my Italian relatives.

But we were part of a, American community there. There there's a navy base over there in, Naples, Italy. And so we knew some of the people who, were there, and I ended up being raped by a friend of the family who I really looked up to. And that abuse continued on for several years of my life from about age five or six to about age eight. Now that's a big can of worms, but let's let's talk about it.

You're a man. Right? And as a boy, I think, you know, sexual abuse is something that that is far more prevalent than it should be, but, also, I think it's different for boys than girls. And that's just what I see as an observer. That's not what I've experienced because I'm not a man.

So can you tell us how it affected you? So it's very complex, and anyone who's been through it will probably have a similar story, but everyone's story is a little bit different. So I had looked up to this man, his name was George. I looked up to him as like a father. And so when the abuse happened, the first time it happened, especially, there's a lot of confusion that comes about with that.

It's like, I love this man, he's like a father to me. Why is he doing this to me? Because it usually doesn't happen right away. I mean, sometimes we hear in the news of someone going into a restroom or something like that, but very rarely does it really happen like that in, with a stranger where someone doesn't know. It's usually with someone that you know.

And so I loved George. I looked up to him. I enjoyed spending time with him. He paid attention to me. And when he finished his terrible act, he apologized, and he said he was sorry.

He said it would never happen again, and my five year old, six year old self believed him. The next time it happened, I believed him. The next time it happened, I believed him. All through ages five through eight, I believed him every time he said, this is the final time. I'm a sick man.

This will never happen again. The abuse stopped when I was eight because he moved away. And you would think that would be when the healing would begin, but what happened is then as I became a teenager and a preteen, 11, 12 years old, and I began to understand what it was that he had done to me. The shame built up. I I don't know why this happens, but when I've talked to other, victims, they've experienced the same thing where they feel like they did something wrong even though as a child, you don't have the wherewithal to know what to do a lot of times.

And so the shame that came about with that as I began to understand exactly what he was, what it was that he did, I began to hate him. And this hate just grew like a cancer. It just ended up, really growing. And in in fact so George was the only time who was the only one who violated me in such an intimate way like this, but I had three or four other men who touched me inappropriately, and they probably would have gone down the same path, but I was a little bit more sly maybe. I don't know.

I I wanted to avoid it. But I remember being troubled in my brain and thinking, why are men attracted to me? Does this mean I'm gay? And that's not that's not what the case was. But because I was bottling all this up and stuffing it down inside, it was creating all this confusion and shame and and false guilt in my brain and in my spirit.

And so it was really a turmoil experience. Now I I I was fortunate because I had a lot of good things happening in my life. I had a lot of men who were positive influences in my life. I had a mom who, although she wasn't perfect, she loved me, and she would do anything to protect us as kids and to and to give us the things we needed. I was I was never wanting for food or love for my mom or a place to live, but this turmoil was still within my spirit and mind and soul.

Growing up first of all, I'm I know you've heard this before, but I'm really sorry that you had to go through that. And I'm sorry for all the other young men who have gone through that as well and aren't talking about it. Can you tell us a little bit more of, some of the ways that it affected your more specifics about how it affected your life? And the reason I'm asking is because I know that there are some young men and grown men out there right now who have experienced this, who might be able to relate to some of the details that you're talking about and know that it's not just them. So I think one of the when I look back now, I'm 57 years old now.

And when I look back to this time in my life and the process that I went through for forgiveness, I think the part where it damaged me the most was probably in my self esteem. So I struggled with self esteem my entire life, and it it used to be on a 10 on a scale of one to 10. And I think I still struggle now even as a 57 year old man with a successful life behind me, but it's probably like a one now. And it was just, it's just the whole self esteem thing, and thinking, you can't do things. In fact, I think we have a very similar mission, because one of my life goals is to take teens from an an I can't mentality to realize that they can.

They can do things that they want to accomplish, but sometimes it's our brain that stops us from doing these things. So that was probably the biggest way that it affected me. But as I go back and look at my life, I can see little falsehoods that I had. So one thing was a fear of authority. And I know this came about not only from the man who abused me, but also because of my father.

And so up until a couple of years ago, if the principal called me into the office as I'm a retired teacher and still teaching half time now, If the principal called me into the office, 90% of the time, it was for something positive or to ask me a question or to say, hey. We're gonna increase your budget, or can you explain this this expense you're asking for? It was something neutral or good. But my thought was always, oh, I'm being fired, I must be in trouble. And so that stems from that, and it's something I've had to wrestle with my entire life.

Now I do want to give hope to people. I just I wanna say that I am 98% healed and 98% on the journey, to that. Well, I I liken it to being a 1,000 mile journey, and that at the age of 16 is when I decided to forgive this man, and that was the first step, the first mile of that 1,000 mile journey of healing, and it was hard to see the end. Now on mile 997, I can I can't see where it started anymore, but I know I can see the end now, and I can see all the progress that I've made through those those years towards this end of the journey? How old were you when you first came out and and talked about it?

Who did you talk to? So I kept all of this bottled up inside, and I really regret that. But when you're a kid, you don't know. And the shame Mhmm. Is false shame because I didn't do anything as a kid.

This man was the one who is guilty of of all of this. The my my faith in Christ helped me to realize that I needed to forgive this guy. And Mhmm. At the age of 16, when I decided to forgive him, that's also when I told my mom and my sister. And that was the first people I had ever told.

And I don't think I told anybody else until my wife and I had dated for two and a half years before we got married. And I think maybe about a year into our dating, she was the third person that I told about what had happened to me. Oh, wow. And what sort of a reaction did you get? How did it feel when you finally started talking about it?

It felt good on my part to get that to get that off my my chest, so to speak, because I think sometimes when things are hidden, they're actually more painful. But there was also some pain that came with that, and I had to forgive my mom later for this. So first of all, my mom was in denial, and it and I understand it now as a 57 year old man, but as a 16 year old, this was painful because my mom was like, no. That couldn't have happened. You would be dead if that happened.

And I said, well, mom, I'm not right here. I didn't die. And she that made her realize it was, it was true. And then she, was friends with the the guy's wife was now an ex wife by this point, but my mom was still friends with her. And my mom has always been a take things take charge of things and try to take care of it yourself kind of person.

So she contacted her friend right away and said, hey, I need his contact info because I'm gonna give him a piece of my mind or whatever. And her friend said, no. I don't wanna give you his contact info because he was retired from the navy by that point. So she had an ID card, and she had benefits and maybe alimony, but she didn't wanna give my mom any contact info. And why I had to go back later and forgive my mom is because my mom dropped it at that point.

And I wish she would have taken it further and gone to the police and gone Yeah. And tried to prosecute him. But because it was her friend and and her friend said, no, I'm not gonna and then she remained friends with that person for a long time. And I I would think if I were trying to resolve this with my own kids or grandkids and my friend who had info that could help wouldn't give it up. That would be the end of our friendship.

But my mom stayed friends with this person. Okay. What I'm hearing from your story one of the things I'm hearing from your story is that talking about it helped. It stirred the pot. It caused some disruption.

You know? It was uncomfortable. That 100 of the time goes with the territory, and that's what people, I think, sometimes don't understand. It it you still should have done it. I wish you had done it sooner too, but I understand why you didn't.

And and I think you have you made a very valid point in that when we don't talk about those things that we need to talk about, they actually eat away at us instead of who they should be eating away at. They hurt us Right. Not them. And talking about it is very hard. And I could only imagine talking about it as a man is even harder.

I think because our society a lot of what you're saying, I've I've heard from female victims a lot. We blame themselves. As females, we blame ourselves all the time too. But females in our society have traditionally had a different expectation of emotionality than men. And, people can be more cruel when it comes to men.

At least, I that's what I see, especially when it comes to this subject. And especially since you're talking about so long long time ago, today might be a little bit different than it was when you're a kid, but I don't really think it's that much different, honestly. I don't think we've come that far. And that's why I think it's so important to talk about this from a man who's been through it, you know, for other young men who may be going through it now or maybe have gone through it and they haven't talked about it. So talking about it is obviously very important.

I would like you to talk to the young men in the audience and the grown men who are as old as you, they went through it too, and they have never uttered a word. Please just talk to them. So I'll start with the with the young men. And for the young men, I want them to know that they're not alone in this. Even if everybody around them is silent, even if they finally come out with their story and it doesn't feel like anybody else does.

In my research on this, I can't cite specific things for you, but I I've read a lot on on this and read a lot of other people's stories, biographies who've been through similar things. And so the the stats show at least one out of 10 boys, if not more. That's kind of the low end, one out of 10 boys. And I think one out of four girls have been through something very similar. And it's just become a big it's not new in the world, but it is for a long time was a secret.

And as you had mentioned, it's usually easier for girls to come out and share their their story for some reason. Because I think for boys, it's something where they're going to just feel the pain. Like, they feel like it's going to take away from their manhood or something to share what has happened to them. And what you have to realize that I went through different phases of this. So when my own boy, I have a girl and three boys for my four grown kids who are all grown now.

But when my boy, turned five years old, my oldest boy, I was looking at this five year old kid and I was thinking, how could someone have done this to a little he he was a little kid. You know, he's not it it made me realize what it what it was that it it was a kid that was abused. And I was able to put myself kinda in his place and realize that that's who I had been. And even though the pain was a little bit less, when my oldest grandson turned five, I was kind of thinking the same thing. It's like, this is a little boy.

He's an innocent boy. He's wouldn't know what to do if something like that were to happen, to him. And we sometimes think that we can, wait A lot of times, young men will blame themselves for what happened, and they think, why didn't I defend myself? Why didn't I punch him? We can all think about those things after the fact.

Why didn't I tell somebody? Why didn't I run away? Those are things that is hard to explain the chains that end up being put on you emotionally when someone is grooming you. Because these people are, they have evil intent. And so they do good things to try to shackle you to them emotionally, that allows them to continue doing those, those, those bad things, to you.

Now to the older men, if someone's my age or older, and they've never told anybody, it's time brother, it's time to tell someone what you've experienced and what you've been through, because it's not too late to start your healing journey. Sometimes guys think it's too late. I had a relative who went to jail for some stupid things he did, and he wasn't in jail for very long, but he had like wrecked an apartment. He had always been drinking. And when he was 45, he came out of jail and he was living with his mom.

And he said to me something like, James, you know, my my I wasted my life. It's my life's over. I'm 45 and I'm living in my mom's basement. And I remember telling him, you know, it's not too late. It's not too late to move forward from all the dumb mistakes and dumb things you did.

And, he could have had, you know, another thirty or forty years after that, to live in the life of fullness that that God had called him to. Now he chose a different route and he he I don't think he still has really emerged from that. And but even now it's not too late. He's probably close to 60 now, but even now it's not too late for him to, to go and do things. It's never too late to take that step and, and move out of where we've, we've been.

Now on something that I'd like to share also is that my mom was against counseling. I don't know where she got that idea, why it was a bad thing, but I wish she would have gotten me into counseling right away as soon as she as soon as I had told her what had happened. And I think that would have that would have exponentially moved my healing journey quicker through through what I what I had experienced. I ended up seeking it on my own a little bit later in life. The but that I could have benefited a lot more from it at a much younger age.

So what I've heard you say is that it it basically it affected your life. And sometimes we don't realize how much undealt with stuff we have inside of us that is affecting our lives right now. It's affecting our thinking. It's affecting our decisions, and, therefore, our behavior. And so when we have what I like to call undealt with stuff, and sexual molestation, 100% of the time, leaves you with undealt with stuff.

It does damage 100% of the time. If you don't deal with it, it it definitely grows and gets worse. So I hear that it does do damage, but what what I wanna know what I want the audience to have a full understanding of is you're 99% healed. How did you go from zero to 99? It was a process.

So that first step of it was deciding that I was going to forgive the the guy for what he had done to me. Telling other people was another step in the process. Then throughout my twenties, instead of, because I still had this mindset from my mom that counseling was bad. So throughout my twenties, I didn't seek the the counseling that I that I should have. But all throughout my twenties, that's when I read all kinds of biographies of people who had been through abuse.

And sometimes it was similar to what I had been through. Sometimes it was a different kind of abuse, but their their stories of overcoming and their journey contributed to my mindset to help me, through that. Then for me, and I think everybody's journey is going to be a little bit personal and different Right. For me. So I I I share my story in front of groups of three to 3,000.

The that but that's not for everybody. It doesn't mean everybody. I started doing that when I was 30, and, I was a public speaker in the nineties before I got into teaching. A friend of the family who's into, he's a counselor. He had he had I had gotten to share my story with him, and he poured some advice into my life and helped me with some of my mindset things.

But he started he had heard me do some public speaking, and he's like, you're really missing out by not sharing your story. And I remembered almost like fighting with him over. It's like, I can't share this as as part of my speeches, what I've what I've been through, but he kept encouraging me. And the first time I I did, I thought I was gonna choke. But then I saw what an impact it had, And I saw the stream of people that would line up to talk to me afterwards to share their own story and talk about how that, that, that journey for some of them, that for some of them, I was the first one they had told and I encourage them get some counseling, get with another person, share this some more in deep because Mhmm.

In-depth because we only have this five minutes together or a couple of minutes together. But there were a lot of men who oftentimes there would be one or two men who would kind of hang back until everybody was gone and they wanted to be the last one. But that shame, they they had so much shame, but they were brave at the same time because they're coming up to talk to me. But that shame of, I don't want anybody else to know, but I feel okay that James is going to to know this. So that was an important part.

And then for me also, I wrote wrote this in a in a book, and I feel like the the book was more important for me to write than almost as much as it is for people to to read it. But that so I think that could be for everybody to actually write their story down even if all they do is burn it later or share it with their closest family members. It doesn't necessarily have to go in in a book. Mhmm. So those were some and then counseling, I eventually sought counseling, but I had done a lot of the work already, myself.

And but I I can see how the the counseling would have helped me go through that faster if I had done it twenty years earlier. I think you're dead on when you when you said that. You you you broke it down pretty well, I think. You could have gone through it, the healing process faster and better if you had gotten counseling earlier. And I I know that there's still a big stigma, in certain cultures with getting and Italian being one of them, with getting, getting counseling.

When you said I don't my mother thought that the counseling was bad. I'm like, yeah. Because she was Italian. I could say that about, you know, you know, you said about, Greeks. You can say it about a lot of other a lot of other cultures.

It's not just Italians. But, a lot of people in the world still have that that stigma, and I think it's especially harder as a male because there's even more stigmas around it, just just from that perspective. So, yeah, being able to get the right counseling from somebody who's gonna still keep your manhood intact while counseling you, I think that that's critical. Because sometimes people are like, I'll counsel you and turn you into a girl. But no no, ma'am.

You know, guys don't wanna hear that. They they still wanna keep their manhood intact as as they should, and there's nothing wrong with them feeling that way. So I think it's important of your approach. As people who are therapists and and counselors of any kind, that when we approach males on the subject, we have to keep that in mind, allow you to keep your man your manhood intact, you know, your masculinity intact while while approaching the subject. And I think I think there's a lot of people that don't get that.

You know, I can I'm not a man, but I do understand that. For and and I know that people have all kinds of different faith beliefs, but, I'm a strong Christian. And I look at Jesus Christ, and, a lot of people see that gentle side of him, which he was that, and that's what what men can be also. But he also had the times, like, when he flipped over the tables, when he has met at people who were abusing the they were selling they were abusing their their ability to sell things to people who had traveled a long way. He flipped over the tables, and there there's a time for that.

And there it seems like Sometimes he told these Pharisees off. Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. He'd he'd he spoke his mind and was very, very strong and then was Yep.

Was gentle when he needed to be. Yes. And that is a beautiful thing to bring up because you're absolutely right. People tend to see, oh, he was just this passive little, you know, little sissy Jesus, but he really wasn't. Not if you actually read scripture.

He he told Pharisees quite a few times because they needed to be. You know, he he was he was gentle and loving too, but that's not all he was. You know? He was he was balanced because you need to be a little bit of both. Yeah.

So do you do speaking engagements, at schools right now? Yes. I love to speak to young people, junior high, high school. I haven't done elementary yet, but I would love to to speak to that group as well. And it doesn't matter what size of the group.

It could be just one classroom, or it could be a whole assembly of students. I actually like the smaller groups better, the classroom size, because people are going to open up a little bit more in that situation than in a big school wide assembly. So people can contact me at James Devine dot net if they'd like to find out more information about that. Yes. And thank you, thank you for coming on the show today, and thank you for being so open and honest in telling your story.

And I'm hoping that there are some young men and especially grown men out there who are listening that have the secret that are considering doing something about it now after hearing you. So you all heard about James' website where he can go. But, also, James has something special just for my audience, just for people who are listening to this podcast right now. What is that, James? So I've got several books that I've written, including one called Sad Boy, Joyful Man, and I it's a shortened version of my of my story, especially focusing on kind of my middle school years.

And I'd like to offer that absolutely free to anybody who would like it, and they just have to go to jamesdivine.net and click on the books and products link. And when they add that book, Sad Boy, Joyful Man, to their cart and enter the code mind shift, all as one word uncapitalized, then it will take off the the price of that, and they'll get a instant download of that as a PDF. That is so awesome. Thank you so much for offering that to to my to my listeners. And I hope that you see some results from that, and some people really take advantage of it, especially if you don't want anybody to know, but you wanna know how he got out of his story.

You know, go ahead and take a listen because nobody will know that you read it. Alright? Thank you once again, James, for coming on, and this is a subject that I, I think is extremely important to talk about. And I thank you for taking the time to to talk to our audience. Thanks so much for having me, Fatima.

And now for a mind shifting moment. If you're listening right now and if this episode was about you and you have not yet talked about it or dealt with that issue and the fact that you were sexually abused. It's never too late to get started, and here's why. Pushing it down and avoiding it doesn't make it go away. Pushing it down and trying to avoid it makes it spread throughout your body like a virus.

It's it is right now affecting your life already. It is affecting your relationships. It is affecting how close you get to people because you don't wanna be hurt like that again. It is affecting your mindset, how you think and how you see yourself. It's affecting your job.

Deal with the issue because it's already dealing with you. And there is hope for you. And your process of healing and dealing with it may be different than his or the next person's, and that's really okay, but deal with it. Thank you for listening to Mindshift Power podcast. Please like and subscribe to my YouTube channel at the mind shifter.

If you have any comments, topic suggestions, or would like to be a guest on the show, please visit FatimaBay.com/podcast. Remember, there's power in shifting your thinking. Tune in for next week.