Joy, a Podcast. Hosted by Craig Ferguson - Julie Demarest

Episode Date: January 9, 2024

Meet Julie Demarest. Julie has worked in social/human services for 20 years predominately in emergency shelters, homeless services, drop-in centers, and supportive/transitional housing programs. She spent 10 of those 20 years being on-call for any emergencies and due to no real work/life separation experienced severe work “burn out”. She has recently switched careers to massage therapy. To say the least, Julie has an interesting story to tell. Do not miss. EnJOY! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Angie Martinez, and on my podcast, I like to talk to everyone from Hall of Fame athletes to iconic musicians about getting real on some of the complications and challenges of real life. I had the best dad, and I had the best memories and the greatest experience, and that's all I want for my kids as long as they can have that. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For 10 years, I've been obsessed with one of the most bizarre

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What's that, Mango? I've been trying to write a promo for our podcast, Part-Time Genius, but even though we've done over 250 episodes, we don't really talk about murderers or cults. I mean, we did just cover the Illuminati of cheese, so I feel like that makes us pretty edgy. We also solve mysteries like how Chinese is your Chinese food and how do dollar stores make money. And then, of course, can you game a dog show?

So what you're saying is everyone should be listening. Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to interesting people about what brings them happiness. Meet Julie DeMarist. Julie is an interesting person. She's worked with disadvantaged, mentally ill, homeless and marginalised people for a long time. She's a social worker, but has

a very interesting story to tell. Let's start at when you stopped doing... Last year. Right. Yep. When you stepped away from working in the... What do we call it? What do we describe it as? Social services?

Do we call it working with the homeless? Yeah, I mean, I have a bachelor's of social work, so I just say I was a social worker to make it easy for people. All right. So you like to make things easy for people. All right. So you like to make things easy for people. Yeah. So you stopped doing it last year because of the machete attack. So I was already very, very burnt out.

And I had put myself through massage school two years earlier because I knew I needed a long-term out. I didn't think I would quit when I did. But the nonprofit I also worked for screwed me over pretty hard as well, at the same time as the machete attack. And the executive leadership handled it poorly. Like the machete attack happened, they called me, and I had to go in and handle everything. Talk to me about the machete attack briefly, just because it's such a dramatic sounding thing. I know, I feel like I talk sometimes about my jobs and I'm like, oh, yeah, you know.

Yeah. Well, to those of us who have been lucky enough to avoid machete attacks so far it's kind of... so talk to me a little bit about what happened and I want to talk to you a little bit about burnout and then we'll go back and we'll kind of look at your journey through the thing. So we I used to oversee a drop-in center in Albany, New York. So that's homeless people drop in? Yes. Well, the drop-in center, anybody could come.

We would ask no questions. So if you just needed to stretch your budget, like if you were on assistance or anything like that, we had free laundry. We had free showers. We served two hot meals a day. You could bring your kids. We had mailboxes because if you're homeless,

you don't have an address, but you need to get your paperwork. We just wanted the community to be able to kind of utilize this building. And who finances this? So the state and the county would not touch that program because it was so low barrier. So that was all funded through in-kind donations and grants. Okay. So what happens with, did you have someone who came in with a machete and attacked

a colleague of yours? Yeah. So he was a client that we've known very well. I've known him for years, the whole time I worked there. Very mentally ill. So I can see both sides of what kind of happened. And he was just having a not good mental health day. He had a machete in his locker that we didn't know about. So the manager there there, he'd had an altercation, just like a verbal altercation. So they kind of told him, why don't you take the day, you know, take food to go and just call it a day and we'll try again tomorrow. And he said, well, I want to get some stuff out of my locker. And that's when he pulled out the machete and went to go attack a different staff member. Another guy stepped in the way and almost lost both his hands and his foot so it was dramatic and it was bloody and it was violent and and scary

and you were right there when I happen I wasn't there when it happened right the executive director called me afterwards and I had to have all the staff leave I stayed with the police I brought the crime scene cleaners in the next day stuff like that and that was that you said okay I'm done now this is it this is the this is the final straw it was a little like that. And that was it. And you said, Okay, I'm done. Now. This is it. This is the this is the final straw. It was a little like, ironic, because when I was 19, at my very first shelter, a girl pulled a machete on me. So I was like, Alright, full circle.

Alright, so okay, so it has a dramatic. So let's go back to then you're 19. What you're a striking looking person. You have a lot of tattoos, You clearly have made a journey in your life. You made some decisions. Like I have tattoos. I made decisions to get them. There are reasons I have them. So you have this appearance and you have this story. So can you talk to me a little bit about what gets you to you're 19 years old and you decide, I want to do this.

So I don't even really know. My childhood and my teens have, you know, some nice childhood trauma thrown in there. And I think, so when I was like going to college, I had no idea what I wanted to do. Just kind of went to a community college for liberal arts and I ended up taking a juvenile delinquency class. And there were a couple women in that class. So that's when you studied juvenile delinquents then? Yeah, they probably renamed it by now. Yeah, I was going to say.

It's probably not PC anymore. But two of the women in the class were human service majors. And so I got to talking to them and I was like, what is that? And I think given the childhood that I had, there was addiction and different traumas in there. So did you have, your parents were addicts or? Right, okay. Yeah.

And I think I knew that, like, I knew that life. I knew how to handle that life. I knew how to handle, I was more comfortable in chaos. This is before I actually knew all this, you know, like subconsciously. Yeah, yeah. So I was like more comfortable in chaos. I was more comfortable focusing on other people to take care of them. Right.

And so I think that's why I was so drawn to human services. I didn't know at that time I wanted to do homeless services. It wasn't until that internship that was randomly picked for me. I think that that's interesting that you said you were more comfortable in chaos because I very much identify with that. I remember going to a 12-step meeting

in Caribbean Island once, years ago, and a fight broke out during the meeting. People were yelling and screaming at each other. And I remember thinking at the time, I should not feel as comfortable as I do here. It's a strange thing, that, isn't it? Yeah, like I've broken up grown men with knives fighting, but I'm nervous to come to this. It's a strange thing that. Yeah, like I've broken up grown men with knives fighting, but like, I'm nervous to come to this. Like, it's that's interesting. This is I mean, you're totally

safe here. Yeah. But maybe that maybe it doesn't feel that way. I don't know. I mean, it's because we're talking about you. Yeah, that makes me uncomfortable. Yeah, that's kind of interesting. Because you don't get to control the narrative. You know. I mean, it's like I made a decision to stand up on stage. I do stand-up comedy, and people talk about how nervous it would make them to be public speaking. I'm like, no, I would totally sleep on a stage if I could. I get it. So I understand the idea of being comfortable in

chaos and coming from a chaotic childhood so did you ever get attracted to that kind of thing yourself I became very you know I was hopeless I was a hopeless drunk for years I drank a lot right up to my mid-30s and did you did you feel like it was an addiction issue for you was it a coping mechanism for you or so looking back, it was definitely coping. Like I would have a quote-unquote normal day, you know, at work doing Narcan on people, suicide attempts, and just the regular. That's not normal. That's not normal.

And then I would just be like, man, I can't wait to go have a drink later with my friends. And I was more of a binge drinker. Like I wouldn't drink like every day, so to speak. But when I would go out, I love whiskey, and I would just pound my whiskey. I understand the love of whiskey. I also, unfortunately, whiskey hates my guts, but I love whiskey.

I decided in my 40s I'm done with whiskey. Right, okay. Can I just, as a sidebar, ask you what whiskey you drank? I'm a Jameson girl. Okay, I understand. That's fine. If I want to be fancy, I do kill bagging. Okay. I feel you missed

out because the whiskey I always liked most was a whiskey called Highland Park. Did you ever have that? No, I don't think so. It's an Orkney whiskey. Okay. So it's from the northern islands off the north coast of Scotland. It's very smooth. I mean, I still have a little here and

there. I used to literally have a glass because i love to drink it right and then in my like town where i'm from in albany like we say hi with shots we say bye with shots we like shots in between everything so i would just chase whiskey with whiskey and we're not going to do that right okay that's fair enough no and i'm certainly not so you're 19 years old and you start getting interested in, because you've had a life which, so far, a childhood which has been, chaos has been involved, right? And you've been around the unpredictable nature of addicted people. So, you get interested in being around it professionally. Yeah.

You stayed on at college and you did your master's in... So, I never got my master's at 23. I was promoted to a manager. So I just rode the management route right up to a director. So what happens when you become a manager of something like that? What do you do? I'm in charge of everything and the staff. Right.

So you're dealing, it's not only HR dealing with people who are, but you're also dealing with unpredictable, scary. Yeah. Who are the easier people to deal with? The clients. The clients. Is that what we call? Yeah.

I say clients. Okay. Yeah. So clients or staff, who's the easiest to deal with? Clients. Oh my God. I hate managing people. I hate it.

Like you're just like managing personalities. Like right before I quit, I was a director and I was overseeing this like 60-year-old man that was just so set in his, and he would just drive me up a wall. Yeah. I just, I hate managing personalities. Just go and do your job, do a good job and like, it's a drama. I know, but I think that that's quite interesting because you're dealing with people who are, by their very nature, a lot of them are mentally ill, right? Yep. They could be dangerous.

But you find that easier to deal with than the interaction with supposed normal stable people. I'm also not the most professional in my manner in speaking. Professionalism to me is a little silly sometimes. So I would cross the line a little bit sometimes with like the way I would speak to staff and just be like let's just be real like this like when I had to fire people and stuff like I was just like listen you did this this is what it's at I'm the consequence like just stop lying to me. What gets you fired if you're working

in a drop-in shelter? Sleeping with clients, doing drugs with clients. Yeah that that would do it and then just your basic like absenteeism calling out is there a lot of that kind of thing is there a lot of like crossover like people yes a lot especially with like direct care like when you're working the front lines in the shelter and stuff we liked to hire people that have lived experience so a lot of the people are former clients if you like yeah so how do you transition someone from a client into someone who's working for you? How does that, how do they? They need a lot of training. And I think that's where quite a few of the agencies I worked for lacked that.

They kind of had this expectation of the staff to just be like, well, they have lived experience, they'll get it. And it's like, no, they still need to work on boundaries. And the boundary piece wasn't really there. Who do you think, because you worked in Albany and then you worked in the South, right? Didn't you work in South Carolina? Yeah, but nobody would hire me

because I quote-unquote ruined God's temple with my tattoos. Literally two jobs turned me down. Really? Because you ruined God's temple with your tattoos? Yeah. Wow. So I got hired at an inpatient drug and alcohol rehab, which was ironic because I was 24 or 5. The alcoholics would take everybody.

I was like, oh my God. Did you ever like, when you were dealing with inpatient alcoholics, were you like, this is kind of, I feel like this is getting a little close to... Yeah, I didn't care. I didn't care for addiction just specifically. Right. I didn't like that setting. I'm also, I'm a harm reduction type of person. Explain that to me. So harm reduction is kind of the new quote unquote thing.

So instead of cold turkey, which a lot of people can't, then they fail. They try to do cold turkey, they fail. So then they just like, you know, go all in. Right. So harm reduction, like if my client smokes crack and he comes to me and he says, I only smoke crack three times today, not five, that's awesome.

Let's celebrate that. Like reducing and like, so you used to smoke crack and you're only smoking weed. That's awesome. Let's like focus on that. And it works for a lot of people because then there's not the expectation that if you slip up,

you fucked it all up. Yeah, it's funny though because I... Some people need cold turkey my ex-stepmother needed just you don't touch alcohol yeah that's that's my story for sure i mean i and some people need that i used to love saying to people when i was lying to people saying that i was getting sober and i wasn't yeah i would say yeah they uh they told me that i need to taper off yeah i need to taper off. Yeah. I need to taper off. But I think that, you know, in the treatment of addiction,

I mean, I'm the only, I'm only an expert in my own, not anyone else's, I'm not involved in it. But I wonder if you hold with the notion of the, or if you've seen it, you know, the allergic reaction notion that like one drink is the one that gets you drunk. I mean, for me, that is a profound thing. I mean, if I have one drink, it's like, it goes crazy. It's a light switch flip. Have you seen that? Do you think that's, is that something that you? Oh, absolutely. I've seen that. I think too, for me working with this clientele with addiction, like I'd probably be using something too if I'm sleeping on the streets and the things that are happening.

So like if we can kind of work with, okay, you're not doing fentanyl, you know, you're just doing. Well, fentanyl, it seems to me that people doing fentanyl just die. I mean. So weirdly you can build a tolerance. I had many clients that just used fentanyl just die. So weirdly, you can build a tolerance. I had many clients that just used fentanyl. Yeah, it's wild. So you did mention it there about if they were living on the streets,

or if you were living on the streets, you would do it as well, and I get that. It's a kind of chicken and an egg thing for me. What do you think comes first, or is it in a case-by-case basis? Do you start doing drugs and you end up on the street, or you're on the street and you end up doing drugs? So the childhood comes first or is it in a case-by-case basis do you start doing drugs and you end up on the street or you're on the street and you end up doing drugs so the childhood comes first I would say 98% of my clients have extreme trauma in their childhoods or well which is still trauma but like your parents used you were in a you know crappy upbringing and like I 98% of my clients had just horrific horrific like childhoods that just kind of led them you know in a direction how do you get that information out your clients when

you're dealing with them does it come out naturally in conversation yeah especially when i was just a case worker like when i was a director and things of that nature i didn't always have a caseload right um but when i was a case worker and things like we'd have to talk about those things to kind of focus on all right if you want housing like these are the things we have to work on so we'd work on like daily living skills symptom management substance abuse services and kind of link them to different providers and things but we'd have to talk through like you know what's your history how'd we get here did you find that difficult to deal with when people were telling you stuff that was clearly I didn't think I did and then I learned about secondary PTSD and how just listening to those things over and over and over again like there's no way it doesn't have an impact on the person

that you might not be living it but you're the one that has to sit with the person who did and hear those things over and over again I think that that that makes sense to me the the idea of that i mean but if you're taking that and i'm kind of interested in how you survive that because you're still like if i'm thinking like you're doing this if you're a case you're still a young woman and you've had a pretty hard time yourself coming up. So how do you cope? So, I mean, for my 20s and stuff, I partied a lot. Right. That was kind of my outlet. It was hard for me.

Like I have, I would have a guilty conscience knowing how some people live and how my clients were living. If I like traveled or went somewhere nice or did something nice for myself, I just kind of always had this weird, even now we're tired I have guilt that I stopped right so a kind of deservability thing yeah like I just like it's still happening I think Tomas knows this story but twice I have um just like burst out crying blackout drunk that I've not saved all the homeless people yeah like I just it I just, it's, it,

I don't understand our society, how we just can look, especially LA. Like, when people are in LA, they're shocked about, oh my God, there's homeless people everywhere. And I'm like, yes, like, this is kind of the epicenter. And, but nobody really does anything. And I don't, like, it's a weird collective

just acceptance that that's just. Well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about LA, because that's kind of what's talk about that let's talk about LA because that's kind of what led us to this conversation anyway I lived in LA for 23 years and in the time that I lived there homelessness went from being something that I didn't see often it was definitely there yeah I mean but it was I understood that Skid Row was downtown. Yeah. And people, you know, talked about it. I didn't go there.

I didn't see it. It seems to me that Skid Row has exploded all over Los Angeles, the town itself. Skid Row has a mayor and they have, like, rules. That's kind of interesting. But that fascinates me because this is clearly people who are outsiders, society, and yet they're looking for structure. Yeah. Do they have like a hierarchy? Is there a way of... Skid Row has a little bit of it. One that sticks out to me is on Oahu.

In Hawaii? Yeah. Right. There's so much homelessness. There's actually on... So if you are in native to Hawaii, they cannot remove you from any beach. So that's why you'll see like a lot of encampments on beaches in Hawaii. And there's actually like a little town that homeless people put together. There's like little roads you can't use in town. People that have jobs and kids and everything that just can't afford to live.

And so Skid Row is kind of its own chaos but there are like the people that have been there a long time and this is my spot and you don't go here and this person is that person like there is a little bit but the use is the drug use is so active there that it's just kind of a free-for-all and has that changed and we were talking about LA in particular right has that changed because of the new drugs so I will say like when I was 19 in the shelter and people would come home like high on crack or heroin or something I knew how to handle it it didn't bother it didn't like make me nervous right these new drugs just some of them just cause straight psychosis and it's it's terrifying like you don't quite know how you can even like handle somebody so what i'm fascinated by the idea that because when i was taking drugs and alcohol i was looking for relief i was looking for relief from for who

i was or how my brain worked i didn't know i was doing that i thought i was just having a drink yeah but if you have someone who is i mean taking drugs that go straight to psychosis, and presumably many of these people are in psychosis anyway. So you're just like, you're changing deck chairs on the Titanic basically, right? Yeah. How did it get them? And how does it come in? Are you aware of how that happens? Did you notice a change in the and how the drugs came in was there a noticeable i'm not i don't really know that part well um i just watched the shift

over like the 20 years to more synthetic which is just wild like k2 synthetic weed can just cause straight psychosis it's like why don't you just smoke weed? Yeah. The weed thing, for me, weed, I went to, like, right at the beginning, I'm talking 30 years ago, 35 years ago, when I smoked weed, just old-fashioned weed, I went straight to psychosis. It never agreed with me. You know, I think there's a bit of a myth about weed. Like, I've had this conversation with people about...

I mean, I smoke every day yeah you do every night i don't i'm not a wake and baker i can't function well that's interesting because i i i hate weed i mean i hate it like if i had to choose i would choose weed over alcohol oh no no girl you're you're so not we're not the same page here. I hate weed and I hated it when I was drinking. And it wasn't anything other than it didn't work. Right? I think that's what I'm saying is it didn't do what alcohol did. And so when we're looking at the people, your clients,

the people that you're dealing with, they clearly aren't finding drugs that work. Well, no, but the whole point is to just not be present with where they're at in life. Is there a demographic breakdown that you're aware of? Honestly, it's across the map. People used to ask if it was more men than women, if was more african-american than white but to everything that i've seen pretty much was like right down the middle a little bit more men because for women if they have children they can go into family shelters and they get a little bit more services there's a

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app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey fam, I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the daily podcast from Hello Sunshine that's guaranteed to light up your day. Every weekday we bring you conversations

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Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to talk to you a bit about abhorrent behavior because obviously if you're dealing with people who are in psychosis or mentally there's going to be behavior which you just

are going to be very uncomfortable with, like criminal behavior a machete attack I guess which you just are going to be very uncomfortable with. Like criminal behavior. A machete attack, I guess. A lot of sex offenders. That's what I was going to say. You dealt with... Oh, in Portland?

Yeah, you dealt with, was it level five? Four. Level four. Now, I don't know what that means. Can you explain the level four? So that is a violent rape. Violent rapists, and you're dealing with them. I'm kind of shocked and fascinated how you ended up there.

Were you comfortable dealing with these guys? Yes and no. I was alone giving them group counseling every day. The program interested me because it was run by a psychiatrist. All five of the sex offenders had traumatic brain injuries frontal lobe damage so it was kind of this weird little project almost to see if they committed their rapes due to their tbis or if they were just like straight sociopathic because the one guy what's a tbi then that's a traumatic brain injury traumatic brain injury okay um and

because the one guy committed 30 rapes prior, and then the one woman ran him over with her car, causing his TBI. And he always had to be on suicide watch, because he was just, like, disgusted in who he had been. Like, it completely reversed him. It was very weird. I got to say, the woman that ran him over, I'm kind of... Right?

I was like, let's just run him all over, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's the answer. Let's get them all and run them all over, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's the answer. Let's get them all and run them all over. And then there's a small part of me as a social worker. All five of them had incredibly traumatic sexual abuse history in their childhoods. So I can see, I don't condone obviously anything, but I can understand why they may have turned out the way they did.

Well, I think that's the thing I mean the argument is also so many people have trauma in their childhood you have trauma in your childhood I have trauma in my childhood and you know we didn't go that way yeah you know you went in fact the completely opposite direction you you ended up being in a situation where you were nurturing, I guess. And it seems to me that your drive is that, right? Because even now, as you walk away from that world... I'm still in a career where I'm helping people in a different way.

Right. So now you're doing massage therapist, right? Yeah. So what do you think it is in you that causes you, makes you want to do that? Put it right. Is it the childhood thing, you think? Um, I don't know. I think like for as long as I can remember, I just don't understand how as fellow human beings, we just don't take care of each other.

It's just a weird, I don't know, it's weird to me. So I feel like I have selfless tattooed on the insides of my hands to kind of remind myself that my hands are here to serve other people if that's what they want. And I just think that while I'm here, I should be helping other people. Otherwise, I don't know what's kind of the point. Well, that's kind of interesting. So what is the point?

Are you a religious person? Oh my God, no. I don't think there's any point to point. Well, that's kind of interesting. So what is the point? Are you a religious person? Are you a spiritual person? Oh my God, no. I don't think there's any point to life. There's no point to life? Not really. But that's interesting because you fight so hard to make it better. Yeah, well, while we're here, life sucks.

Life sucks, basically. Right. Most of the time for a lot of people. And so if I can, as long as my presence doesn't cause any, like, more pain for somebody or cause your day to be any worse, like, I want to, like, help that for people. Like, I don't want to, like, I don't want my existence to make. That sounds like an informal Buddhist to me. So, I do. First, do no harm, right?

I study Zazen meditation. That was one of the things that I started to do at, like, 35 to kind of work on my mental health because I knew I was really burnt out. Describe burnout for me because burnout is a kind of catch-all term. You hear actors saying, I'm burnout from all the pretending I've been doing. I mean, it's like, so what's burnout for somebody that's on the front line of a very difficult career like yours? My patience was much shorter with clients which i did not like it was a disservice to them i wasn't sleeping i was also on call for 10 years of last 10 years of my career so that's just like the phone goes you gotta go yeah so i wasn't sleeping i was you

know drinking a lot my patience was you know thin i just didn't want to be at work. Like, you know, things like that. I have depression. And so I would just kind of pummel sometimes, like down in some bad areas. How is your life outside of work? Are you in a committed relationship? Do you find it difficult to do that? I used to. So I'm engaged now.

Congratulations. Thank you. And he's great. He's like the kindest person. We just met not even two years ago. Before him, I loved to be alone. I always kind of dated people that I knew I hadn't out. Right.

Because I didn't want to stick around very long. Right. So, yeah. So, you're not in any way religious? No. So, I am, I hate this term, I guess you would say spiritual. That's okay. My mom died when I was one.

So, I kind of learned right off the rip that like tomorrow's not promised and like there's something, something happens. Wait, wait, wait. So, your mom died when you were one. Mm- you don't remember your mom right i don't and um she was like erased from me so i didn't know her name or see a picture of her no she died until i was 16 because i snooped through my dad's stuff did you do did you ever experience any guilt about that uh no because i didn't know anything right it's just funny i've heard people who you know their parents died when they were young and

they've talked about a weird sense of guilt. No, I had no guilt. I think because she was hidden from me, I just had like anger. I'm sure. I feel that that's... But her side is Irish, so we don't ask questions. Yeah, very familiar with that. We don't talk about it, we don't ask questions.

Oh my God, that's so... Everything's fine. Yeah. Oh, it's. Oh, my God. Everything's fine. Yeah. Oh, it's great. I'm fine. Everything's fine. Uh-huh. That's great. You'll have a drink.

Yeah. Uh-huh. What about, so were you mad at your dad then? So I actually was just in therapy a few years ago. I thought I was going to talk about my mom's stuff because also my best friend died when I was 29. I was with her. She had cystic fibrosis. And so with her death, I was able to grieve it properly.

And I think I started grieving my mom at 30 because I had never gotten the chance to do that. So when I was 37-ish, I think, I went to therapy, thought I was going to talk about my mom. And she kind of skewed it to my dad, who I adore. My dad is my best friend. I moved moved back from LA for him like I want to make sure that he is very happy because I've seen him in in very not happy situations which was really tough as a kid and so I would do anything for him and she helped me like understand that I can be angry about decisions he made and still adore him sure Sure, you can be angry at people you love. Yeah. That's an interesting situation, isn't it, though, when you're mad at people?

Because I had kind of that relationship with my mother that I was really mad at her for some things. But she said, my mom, what am I going to do? Right, yeah. It's an odd thing. It seems to me that, look, I'm not a therapist in any way, and I wouldn't dare to try and psychoanalyze you, but it seems fairly obvious that the trauma of that and seeing your dad in difficulty as you're growing up,

that the idea of helping people becomes innate in you. Yeah. I saw him in some very vulnerable situations, and I just don't want people to, I don't know. Don't want to have that. Yeah, that's so so what do you what's your take on then when there are religious organizations that that do that are they any help I mean for example I don't know the little sisters of the poor I don't know

I made that up but so I did work for the Salvation Army that was my first shelter right um I have a hard time with them because they have stipulations. There was a rescue mission in Albany, and if you don't go to the Christian service on Sundays, you will only get a bag lunch that day. You don't get the hot meal. You don't get a hot meal unless you sing for Jesus. That is fucked up to me.

That's not okay to me. I think conditional charity is a little tricky. Yeah, yeah. But it's still charity. Yeah. You know, I mean, and maybe, look, just to play devil's advocate with them, then just saying, well, what I want to do is encourage people to get salvation. Right, yeah.

And it works for some people. For some people it does. I know people that have gotten sober through religion. It wasn't possible for me to do that. But I do find as I get older, I become more interested in it. And I think because as I get older, you know, it's the thing C.S. Lewis said, when death is a horseman three hills away, it's easy to ignore him. But when you hear the hoofbeats, it's a little more interesting.

Do you think, you've clearly seen quite a lot of death and quite a lot of trauma. Do you think about your own mortality? Has it changed your view of it? Oh, yeah. I'm like fascinated of what's next, though. You think there is a next? I don't know. I am incredibly open to the concept that there might be something I can't even comprehend.

And that fascinates me. Or it could be just absolutely nothing and I'll never know. Well, I mean, and I kind of, nobody does. Yeah. You know, and I think that that's the, that's the fascinating. Has that changed over time? So the only thing that makes me a little curious is since my best friend died. So she had cystic fibrosis and it was myself, her mom and her fiance in the room when she passed.

And you just, you drown in your lungs. So for three days, she's just drowning in her lungs. So she finally passes away. And there had been this whole, she'd been arguing with her fiance. She was a crazy little Italian. He broke the like censored paper towel dispenser in her room, right? So it was like, she just could not let it go. And I was like, can we just get along? So it was like this kind of running joke. And then when she passed, we were all sitting around her bed, you know, we're crying and everything. And her fiance had kind of made

the call of like, we just, we need to up the morphine more like this is, this isn't okay, you know? So he was a little nervous that her mom would be upset that he was the one that made the call and it caused her to pass. So he said, you know, he's like, are you mad at me? And like, it still gives me chills from like across the room, the censored paper towel dispenser just spit out a bunch of paper towels and like nobody was near it. It was the weirdest experience. And I've had like a couple weird things with her, like since she passed. So it just makes me, it just makes me question and I'm fascinated by it. Does it make you feel more hopeful about the universe? Because you, I mean, you said in this conversation, you know, life sucks and there's no point.

Yeah. But I don't think you really believe that. No, I think life can be beautiful. I think I'm very jaded because of my career and have seen the worst of the worst. How could you not be? I mean, being through what you're through. I mean, that's an appropriate reaction. Yeah.

But do you find yourself, now you've been out of it for about 18 months? Less than a year. Less than a year. I left October last year. Do you feel a change in your psyche? Do you feel a change in your in your psyche do you feel a change I sleep about five hours a night solidly I don't have to take a bunch of stuff to sleep right yeah I mean my whole point is and I moved out to the country I'm with my fiance he's great we have our two dogs like life's really beautiful right now and uh so I've been working on like

recalibrating my central nervous system out of fight or flight. Cause that's all I've known literally for 40 years. And so I've, I've told myself, I don't want the next 40 years to be just in this state of fight and flight. So what do you want it to be? What do you want to, I want to be able to enjoy life. Like I want to be a happy person. I seem like a happy person. I know everyone says that. I just have, I always have this underlying current of just, I mean, I have depression, so I'm always treading water to just keep my head above the depression.

You know, there's things I have to do every day and like mentally just kind of, to just make sure I don't dip. Right. And it's just kind of who I am. So what would you like to have happen in the future? You just want to keep going the way you are now? I just want a peaceful life, like the 40 years of Ben not come. And I chose part of it, you know, with my career.

But I just want to be peaceful. I wake up in the morning, I make coffee, I can hear birds, we have a creek in the backyard. Like, that's great. I just want simple. I want simple. It feels like the, do you know the movie True Romance? Yeah.

It feels like you're at the end of the movie. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, you made it to the beach. Yeah, we're good. We're good. Yeah. When you think back on your time doing it, do you think that you were better equipped for dealing with that life

because of your difficult start. Oh, yeah. I'll tell you where I'm going with this. I'm trying to kind of cover my own tracks, but there's no point. So here's what I think. Sometimes when I see a drunk, I think, there but for the grace of God or the universe, or however you want to say it, go I.

And sometimes when I see a drunk, I think, get your fucking act together. If I can get sober, you can get sober. And both of these things can coexist within me. And I don't like when I feel angry at people, but I do sometimes. Does that happen with you? I don't know that I'm, like, ever angry because I think I just know I feel bad. Like, there's a reason, nobody would choose

to live a life of homelessness. Like it's not great, you know, long term. Like sometimes I would have young clients that thought it was cool and they were just like, you know, they left their parents and they were, you know, they were just doing whatever. But I just, so whenever I see somebody still, like my stomach still turns. Like I still feel, I feel bad for them. Like there's a reason they got there. So I'm never really angry. And I would have clients come through the shelter all the time, you know, just kind of recycling.

And it's like, let's just keep trying. I don't know. And I would never get really angry. What does success look like for a client? It's totally different. And that was something that I had to learn right off the rip was that my idea of success and my priorities, I cannot put on anybody else. So if I had a client and he was, I got him an apartment and he was housed for three months, that's awesome. Like let's celebrate that. And then if you end up back on the street, we'll just try again. What what do you think because you hear a lot of politicians are not my favorite people and but you hear a lot of talk

about you know the causes of homelessness the causes of people living on the street but it seems to me obviously that that it's as individual as the person who's on the street pretty much right do you think there is a huge contributory factor? Is there one thing more than anything else that puts people there? I mean, cost of living. You think so? Really? Oh, my God. Yeah, that's it.

I mean, when I would try, I worked with veterans specifically in L.A. and trying to find them apartments with the VA housing voucher was impossible. There was literally nothing we could afford. And it's like, that's federal funding. What are you guys doing? You're not even giving us enough money to house anybody. And these are veterans that you're dealing with as well. Yeah, yeah.

And then the VA shut my shelter down. Why did they do that? They didn't want to re-up the grant after five years. I hate the VA. They are awful. They were awful to work with. Really? Why?

So they brought us in as a non-profit to open the shelter. I don't know if you know about the whole lawsuit with the VA campus in Brentwood. I don't know. So there was a huge lawsuit that was going on for years because they were literally renting out the campus to like UCLA and other things and not providing services to veterans. Oh, so they were making money on their property. Yep. And so it was Obama during his,

when he was president, shut it down. And so it was called the Great Plan or something ridiculous. And our shelter and drop-in center was kind of the first program to come out of it. So I had to work with a lot of VA people who did not care for how I looked, which was awesome. But they also didn't pay my paycheck.

So, you know, I could kind of be a little bit more free in how I spoke and like the things that they needed. But then once the grant was up after five years, the VA just was like, nope, we're not funding it. So what did they put in its place? There's nothing in there right now. So veterans have nowhere to live. They built some housing, so there are some other programs

that came out of kind of the lawsuit, but they shut the shelter down. Are you ever drawn into, because I can see, even just talking to you right now, that you're a human being of some passion. And there's certainly, I've sat close enough to Irish women before to know when it's dangerous. Yeah. You are not afraid of a fight, that's clear. Oh, no, no. For other people.

Yeah, but that's what I was going to say. Do you ever think that there may be a time when you may be drawn into not frontline client care, but taking on the politicians? Absolutely not. I would lose it. What I'm saying is I really think you should run for office. I really do. I really do.

And I'll tell you why. Because you don't for office. I really do. I really do. And I'll tell you why. Because you don't want to. And that's who we need. We need people who don't want to be politicians but don't see a way out of it. Yeah. And that was like one of, like the client everyday stuff,

that stuff would sort of burn me out, obviously. But the system and like the federal funding, the state funding and like all the stipulations, like even when and like the federal funding, the state funding and like all the stipulations, like even when we would get state funding, it would very specifically would map out, you can pay your case managers this much, this much can go to this, this much can go to this, and that's it. We'd have to prove every year that that's how we're spending the money. Like it's so tightly kind of wound. And then even when you're in the system as a client. So basically they don't let you do your job. No, no. They give us like peanuts of money.

So every nonprofit I've worked for, we'd get state funding or county funding and then also have to beg for donations. And then if you're a client and you're in the system, like say you're getting your social security check, which is like maybe 700 bucks a month. If you want to work, if you start working over 20 hours

or make a certain amount, they will start to dock your SS check. So like there's really no way out of the system. Like I remember very vividly in college, we read a book called Amazing Grace about when lovely Giuliani shut down, cleaned up Manhattan and shut down the shelters. And it kind of pushed everybody into the Bronx and other boroughs. And this caseworker was talking about how she was helping people in the Bronx and things like that, and she realized that she was just teaching people how to live in the system and how to like it because there's no way out. Right.

So they become institutions. That's always stuck in my head. Right. Mm-hmm. Is there any way you can break it? We need money. You need money? We need money.

We need housing. We need, like, jobs that pay. We need, like, yeah. I can't make that happen. Yeah, I know. That's hard. Julia, it's been an absolute joy speaking to you. You're a fascinating human being.

I wish you well. I wish you peace. Thank you. And it seems to me that, look, I don't know you very well. I don't think you're done. But I think you need a rest. I need a rest. I need a break.

Yeah, that's been in the back of my head, though. I don't know how long I can stay away. No, that's okay. Stay away for a while and get a little me time, maybe. Yeah. All right. Thanks, pal. Thank you.

Thanks for coming in. I'm Angie Martinez, and on my podcast, I like to talk to everyone from hall of fame athletes to iconic musicians about getting real on some of the complications and challenges of real life. I had the best dad and I had the best memories and the greatest experience. And that's all I want for my kids. As long as they can have that. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the I heart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Guess what, Will?

What's that, Mango? I've been trying to write a promo for our podcast, Part-Time Genius. But even though we've done over 250 episodes, we don't really talk about murders or cults. I mean, we did just cover the Illuminati of cheese. So I feel like that makes us pretty edgy. We also solve mysteries like how Chinese is your Chinese food and how do dollar stores make money? And then of course, can you game a dog show? So what you're saying is everyone should be listening. Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Want to know how to leverage culture to build a successful business?

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