Just Being Intentional - with Thomas Harris

Overcoming Domestic Abuse: Amy Johnson's Journey from Survivor to Advocate

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In this deeply moving episode of the "Just Being Intentional Podcast," host Thomas Harris welcomes Amy Johnson, a mother of six boys, an attorney, and a survivor of domestic abuse.

This episode is a must for anyone who has faced or is currently facing domestic abuse, or for those who need a reminder that with support and determination, it’s possible to overcome even the darkest of times. Amy Johnson's story is one of hope, courage, and the unbreakable spirit of a survivor.

Amy's story is one of incredible resilience, courage, and transformation—a journey that will leave you inspired and hopeful.Amy begins by sharing her roots, growing up on a farm in Manitoba, and how her life took an unexpected turn when she faced the collapse of her marriage. Raising six boys was challenging enough, but the real battle began when domestic abuse entered her life, impacting both her and her children in profound ways.Through raw and honest dialogue,

Amy opens up about the complexities of enduring abuse—explaining the emotional and psychological toll it takes, especially when trying to convey the experience to those who haven't lived it. Her breaking point came when she realized that staying in her marriage was no longer an option if she wanted to protect herself and her children. This decision led to an incredibly difficult period of homelessness, where the support of her church community became a lifeline.Despite these immense challenges, Amy's story doesn't end in despair. Out of necessity, she embarked on a new path, attending law school and eventually becoming an attorney.

Her journey from homelessness to becoming an NFL mom, as her son Theo made it to the NFL, is a testament to her strength and perseverance.Throughout the episode, Amy reflects on the importance of community, the power of self-care, and the role her children have played in inspiring her to find her purpose. She leaves viewers with a powerful message: “When you’re ready, you can do anything.”

Duration:: 45m
Broadcast on:: 12 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

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I want to introduce my guest for today's show. She is a mother to six young men. She is an attorney and she is also a survivor of domestic abuse. So in a very short amount of time that I've known her and just by hearing her story, I see her as a mom, a lawyer, and a hero. Amy Johnson, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate you coming on. I met you probably about a month ago or so. We were on a leadership call with a mutual friend, acquaintance. You were a special guest on the show and I was like, I got to reach out to this lady and see if she can come on and let me chat with her. So again, I thank you for that. My pleasure. To kick things off, could you entertain us just for a second? What is the origin story of Amy Johnson? So she was born on a farm in a province called Manitoba, which is north of North Dakota. She discovered work ethic from her farming father who never took a break and worked from son up till sundown. Her mom, who was a teacher, a helping profession. So I always put others first as well. Eventually made my way to Ontario as a result of a move during my marriage. I was married for 11 and a half years, had six children. And ultimately in 2009, the marriage came to an end. I knew that I had to do something when I grew up that would feed six children. So I went back to school, did my undergrad and then law school. We're going to get into all of that. You are a native Canadian A. That's right. A Tim Hortons and Buttertards. Yes, all the things. Sweet, sweet. So as you indicated, you're the mother of six boys. Wow. That has to be a lot of energy. I wasn't one of those high energy boys myself. I was always cool, calm, collected. I just didn't get in trouble. I didn't do anything that was dangerous. But I can imagine having six boys. What was that like having all that energy in the house? So six boys in eight and a half years and no multiples. So that's a little different. And yes, very loud, very competitive. To stay sane, I had to be very organized. There were certain options that other kids might have that were not an option for my kids. So if we went somewhere, we all went somewhere. It wasn't an option. Oh, well, one kid can go to a football practice and everybody else stays home. Nope. One kid has football practice. We're all going to football. One kid has a football game. We're all going to football. Somebody has basketball. We're all going to basketball. We all went to the doctor's appointments. We all went grocery shopping. We had to travel as a pack, as a team because for so many years, I didn't have anybody who was old enough to look after the younger ones. If I was going to go to the grocery store, nobody was old enough to stay home. So we just aren't together or we didn't get groceries. That wasn't really an option. So what are a lot of fights? So one thing that I noticed, so first of all, birth order is real. And if anybody's done any reading about birth order, it is real. And the ones who are closest in age get along the least. One in two don't get along as well as one in three like that, that kind of thing. As they get older and they don't always live under the same roof and things like that. It's a very different dynamic growing up. Number one, very typical number one overachiever, very focused. Number two said, oh, you're good at sprinting. I'm going to jog. Oh, you don't want to swim. I'm going to swim. He didn't want to compete. He wanted to really set himself aside. Again, that's very kind of male childish. And then number three was like, well, I don't need to compete with number two. I got my eyes set on number one and I'm going to be better than number one. There's a sports center feature about Amy's story and her kids. You had an abusive relationship with your husband. There was domestic abuse in your relationship. And you were endured that for 11 years. The whole time. The whole marriage. The whole time. With six kids. Four of those six boys were also abused during that time. They were all abused, but there were charges related to the oldest four of a particular event. But the younger ones were three and two when we separated. And so they don't necessarily have particular memories. They were always witnesses to the abuse, but they don't have particular. I remember seeing this. What's more. Sadly, interesting about the younger two is that. It changed how their brain developed. And so they can't articulate why they have certain feelings or actions or reactions. It's because that's how their brain was built. So with the older ones, their brain was also built in trauma. But they're able to say, I remember particular events, which makes me feel this way. And so I understand the root of that feeling. But with the younger ones, they don't understand the root of their feelings or why they have certain behaviors or focus or whatever. They can't identify where it came from, they just feel a certain way and don't know why. How does one endure that much trauma in a relationship for as long as you did? Being a victim of domestic violence, it's really hard to explain to people who haven't been invested in that kind of a relationship. Because a lot of people stand out and say, wow, the first time he hit me, I would have been out of there. Man, if it was that simple, it's never just about the physical. In my view, the physical is probably the least important because birds is healed. It's the mental, like the manipulation, the degrading, the emotional violence, the verbal violence. It's that that sticks with you and makes you think you did something wrong. Like you deserved it. And if you were just a better wife or a better mother or a better woman or a better human, then you wouldn't have to be treated that way. Like it really changes. It sort of distorts your whole perception of the world. And with that comes isolation from the outside world and from people who you could rely on, from people who could help you and people who could tell you, that's not normal and that's not okay. It started slowly and it just grew over time. With each child, it became more and more impossible to imagine that I would be able to provide for them. I really believed all the things I was being told. You can't do this without me. If you leave, your kids will end up in the ghetto. They're going to be drug dealers. They're going to get in fights. They're going to be in gangs. Like all the things. And so I kept believing incorrectly in hindsight's 2020. But I kept believing that I could fix it. If I just tolerated this. If I just was silent. If I didn't challenge where he was going or what he was doing. If I just kept the kids quiet so we didn't wake him while he was sleeping. I just kept thinking that I could just do more than we could continue to live in our safe neighborhood and go to our safe school. It was a real cognitive distortion. But at the time, like that's real. That perception is reality. And so it's only owing to a particular event when I realized I can't fix this. This is never going to get better. In fact, it's going to get worse and I will be dead. And my children will have no one. They won't have me because I'll be dead. They won't have their dad because he'll not be gone away. They'll have no one. And I just couldn't let that happen. The Bible talks about how dangerous the tongue can be. It's deadly. You can do just as much or more damage just by your words than you can physically to a person because it's so mentally degrading. And you start to believe the lies that are being thrown at you. Like fiery darts and you start going from that to taking over yourself and telling yourself that I won't amount to anything and I'll never be anything and I'm nothing special and no one's ever going to love me. All of those things. That's just as traumatic as the physical part having your life threatened. It builds you into something that you can't turn back or it's going to be that much more difficult to turn back. That makes sense. It absolutely makes sense. My reality is that Bruce's heel, but the cuts from the tongue, from the emotional and verbal abuse, those never quite heal. And you'll hear a trigger word and it just opens up that cut again. And it oozes for a little while and then you have to work on it and you have to heal it and then there'll be another trigger word. It opens up another cut as appreciative as I am for the experiences that I have had. Because without them, I would not have discovered my strength and I wouldn't have grown and developed and evolved. It is something that I continue to carry with me. It is a lifelong work in progress. It is for all of us, for all of us who have experienced trauma, it is a lifelong work in progress. And we have to continue to deal with how do we handle triggers? Can we predict the triggers? Can we avoid the triggers? Learning how to act instead of react to the triggers? Like all of those things, they don't just go away. And it doesn't matter how much therapy you have, they don't go away. You just learn to manage them. With all of that, thank God you had the strength and the awareness that you needed to get away to save your kids and yourself from this horrible situation you were in. What was the catalyst that led you to finally decide that enough was enough? So two things. There was an event involving the children and then very soon after that there was an event involving me. So the event that involved the children was I came home after an exam. There was a blizzard. I had started university. And in taking four classes, I had been out writing an exam. And I came home and I was late because I had stopped to pick up pizza for the boys on my way home. And I had made him late for the gym. And he was furious. And when he came back from the gym, he pulled all the boys, all of us, me and all of the boys into one room and he beat them. He beat them with the hockey stick and the two little ones and myself were forced to watch this. The wailing, the screaming, the begging, the pleading. It didn't matter. He beat them all and told them it was my fault. Because I was late and selfish and all the words that you can imagine would go along with that. So at that moment, I was like, oh, we're getting out of here. I just need a plan. And so I started to figure out, you know, what our next step was going to be and how we were going to exit. But before I could actually execute any kind of a plan, there was another event. That was an all night adventure. I thought the kids didn't hear it. I thought the kids were asleep. It was all night long. Come to find out. They heard all of it. They weren't asleep. They were huddling, afraid because of the sounds that they heard coming from our bedroom. But he threatened to kill me and did it in such a way that I realized he was very, very serious. He was very calm, like ridiculously calm and whispered in my ear as he had his hands around my throat. He said, you don't know how badly I want to stab you with the steak knife 65 times. And I went, he's really going to kill me. And he totally painted the picture for me. My youngest son, who was two at the time, he used to wake up really early in the morning and he'd come down to our room and he'd knock on the door. And I didn't want to get up yet at five o'clock in the morning. So I would let him crawl into bed so I could get another hour of sleep. And he said, and your baby's going to knock on the door and he's going to step in a pool of your blood and he's going to find you dead. Your baby's going to find you dead. And I thought to myself, oh my God, like this is it. This is this is really it. I kind of escalated, accelerated. My, how are we going to get out of here? I accepted at that moment what really happened. Okay, if we're being completely insightful. What really happened is I realized I couldn't fix it anymore. I had let go of this idea that staying married to him was the only way we could possibly survive. I let go of that. And I said, no matter what happens, it's better than this. Because in this chapter, in this performance, I'm dead. So anything is better than dead. Ghetto is better than dead. Yeah. Yeah. Like ghetto is better than dead. Right. And so I just kind of accepted that this is over. And that was really the first step was accepting that it was over. Because after that, it didn't matter where we were going. It didn't matter how we were getting there. Nothing mattered. I could just let go, just kind of cut bait and go. I'm a person of faith. And at that moment, I kind of just left it up to God. There's going to be a way made because this isn't God's plan for me. And there was. There was a way that was made. Absolutely. At some point, you got to take someone's threat seriously. They're actually going to follow through with this. And I can't imagine the danger that you must have felt. Not just for yourself, but for your kids. And it was the Holy Spirit was telling you it's time to get up and go. You have the mental fortitude to make that decision and not delay that decision any longer and just make a move. Not particularly knowing what would be ahead of you, but knowing that this was the first decision that was post-haste. We have to go and we have to go now. And this is the moment that was set up. He was gone. He was out of town. Now or never, basically. Yep. If we don't make this decision today, I'm not going to be here tomorrow. So it had to be done. It took incredible bravery on your part to think about six other souls that had to go to the unknown, leaving your house. I want to talk about next. You were homeless after that for a short time. How long were you homeless? Give or take about three months. Three months too long, right? I don't know about where you are, but where I was at the time. Women's shelters were not equipped and to my understanding are still not equipped to handle a family of seven. Family of two, three, I mean we called around within like two hours of where we were currently living. And there was no women's shelter that said, yeah, let's come on over. Like we've got room for six kids and a mom. We're built to fit that kind of a fit like no, it's not a thing. You know, through faith in my church community. Fortunately, there was a family who was going to Florida for a couple of months. They let me stay in their house. So effectively homeless. We were in temporary housing and I was looking for a more permanent solution. You know, if you were in Nashville, there would be a place for you and your kids. I actually work at homeless shelter and we house families all the time. So I want to stress the importance of community and because you brought it up, you had a church community. And the way it was designed for the church was that we would be, we would live in community with one another. We would take care of each other. We would share each other's burdens. And when someone was in need, the church would step in and take care of those needs on behalf of that family that was trying to figure things out. The definition of community was we're going to take care of each other and we're going to do whatever it takes so that people can continue our life. It's a motto. It's a testimony for the rest of the world to see that this is what true community looks like. And I'm glad you had that. So I'm sure that kept us alive. Absolutely. It was everybody in that community. It was the priest. The priest's wife was my first contact. The priest and that particular family and some other lady who had a garage that she let us store things in. And the ladies who just showed up at my door with food and it was everybody just kind of took us under their wings and said, we've got you. There were certain things that they couldn't help with, but in the areas that they could help, they just made us really feel important. I'm sure that's so unimportant for so long. Feeling important was like, what is this? I'm sure that was such a vital part of your story and how you were able to rebound and get back was that you have people come around you to support you and that. So you earned your law degree from the University of Windsor Ontario Law School, correct? Yes. How did you convince yourself that you can not only pursue school, but also finish the job that led you to becoming an attorney? Necessity is the mother of all invention and it's our struggles that help us discover our courage and strength. It was through these struggles that I had in 2009, shortly after my separation, that led me to intersect with some attorneys. We were selling our house and, you know, I tried to warn people. I know what he's going to do. Like I've been married to him for 11 years. I know what he's going to do. When he's released from jail, he's going to leave the province. And if you don't get him to sign the documents before he leaves, he's not going to sign them once he's done. And people didn't take me seriously. They have a way of doing things and they're going to do their things. Not surprising to me, but shocking to everyone else. That's exactly what happened. So I had to work with these attorneys. Hey, everyone. It is Ryan Seacrest here. Ready to heat up your summer vacation? Get ready. Things are about to get sizzling at Chumba Casino. Your summer getting a whole lot hotter with a special daily login bonus waiting just for you. So sign up now for reals of fun and reals of prizes right here at Chumba Casino. With yours truly, join me at Chumba Casino.com and dive into a summer of social casino fun. I'm sponsored by Chumba Casino, no purchase necessary, VGW Group. Ford were prohibited by law, 18 plus terms and conditions apply. To make sure that we didn't get sued because the deal fell through. And so that required me petitioning the court myself. That required all kinds of communication with the bank because the mortgage company was prepared to foreclose and so many pieces. It was encountering the lawyer for the mortgage company and the lawyer for the purchasers who said, if you haven't considered law school, like they knew that I was in university at the time. And they said, if you haven't considered law school, you should probably consider law school. And I said, oh, no, nope, can't do that. Not smart enough. I'm too old. I had all the excuses and they were like, no, like we've been through law school. We know what it takes and you've got the goods. I kind of dismissed it, but it never left my brain. Like it just kind of sat there and percolated. And then I thought, well, maybe I should give it a try. That was the birth. So you have no regrets about that decision to pursue law. Okay, that's awesome. I'm doing what I meant to do. This is my service for the world. That's finding a purpose. That's what that is. So you found your purpose. That's awesome. Now I want to move into an area that I'm particularly excited about. Your whole story is exciting. It's so powerful and I just love hearing it. Your third son, number three, right? Theo? Yes. Theo, he found his passion. He fueled his frustrations with life and with the trauma and everything. And he put it into football, right? He sure did. That child poured into football from the minute he was allowed on the field. So he went to Penn State for four years. He played at Penn State for four years. You did? Yes. Okay. At the tight end position. You got to see some games, but there was a time during COVID that you couldn't come over to border, right, to see him play. Right. I didn't see any games in 2020 except on TV. There was no crossing allowed. And in 2021, I was only able to see two games, one home game. And one at Michigan State, which is only about an hour and a half from me because at that time, there were still restrictions at the border. You had to take a test within a certain period of time and it was all kinds of trouble to get around. So I was only able to see two games, but then I saw a little bit more in 2022 and I didn't miss one in 2023. I'm particularly excited about your son Theo because in the fourth round of the 2024 NFL draft, he was selected by my New York football giants. Let's go. Let's go. I'm super excited to see him play. I think he's going to be great. The fans are going to embrace him. He's going to be tremendous asset to my professional football team. My question to you as the mother of Theo Johnson, what do you think is going to be like to be a mom of an NFL player? I think it means more to other people than it does to me. He's just my son. He's just a guy. I know him as when he was a child. He's not Theo Johnson. You know what I mean? Like he's not the NFL player. He's just, he's my guy. Yeah, he's just my son. The best part of watching him play is being able to watch him living his dream. That's the best part. He could be washing windows, but he's so passionate about what he does. He is so focused and committed to his work. First one in, last one out, doing extra work, taking care of his body, getting extra reps in, taking steps because he takes this so seriously. He has an excellent work ethic. It's just comforting as a parent to watch your son being able to compete and accomplish and pursue something with such passion. I feel that way about all of my sons when they're doing their things. I'm just so excited that I get to be part of their journey. I'm not doing it. I'm not catching throwing, learning the plays, all the words. No, but I just get to be there as an observer to watch them live out their dreams. Like, that is just such a gift that as parents, I would like to think that most parents would agree with me. Like, as a parent, you just, you want good things for your kids. Like, you want them to love life and have success and do something that they enjoy. And he gets to do that. And he's doing it in a huge market where sometimes fans can be a little brutal. They can love you one day and hate you the next day. That is what it is. Do not read the comments. That's it. Do not read the comments. Well, you know, it came out of Theo's own mouth that he, part of the reason why he's doing this is for you. You know, he wants you to be happy. He wants you to be taken care of. And you have given him fuel to go out there and be the best he can be on the football field. So take some credit in that, Mom, that you did that part. That's very uncomfortable for me. It is what it is. He said it himself. I didn't tell him this, he just said it on his own. And a lot of people are going to hear that story on the future. So, well, you are a hero to your six sons, whether or not you know it, you are a hero to your sons. I believe you inspire them. Definitely know a couple of them that you've inspired. My question to you in response is how do your boys inspire you? Well, I think they inspire me to take chances to take risks to try new things. That's something as a parent, you can't afford to do when you're raising a family, like you can't afford to take risks. You need predictability, you need structure, you need to know what's coming next. So, to go outside of your comfort zone, no, no, don't do that. It's not safe to stay in your little box and do whatever is in your box and that's going to be good enough. So, you know, they inspire me by taking chances and going out, putting themselves out there and trying new things and achieving goals that they set and then setting new goals. That's really inspiring for me because I'm so pragmatic. I'm just so incredibly pragmatic. So, that's really inspiring. I do want to make mention since we were talking about football and NFL, we do have family friends, a kid that I've known since he was a little guy and his mom and my sister-in-law were best friends in high school. We've watched him go from winning city championships in high school to going on to the collegiate level and now he's going into his fourth year in the NFL for the Minnesota Vikings. His name is Cameron Bynum, so you'll probably hear about him. These two guys might face each other in the near future, but it was about a mother's sacrifice with him, you know, both his parents. He has both his parents in his life and they're both very supportive, but particularly, moms do something that that's don't do. I think it goes back to the connection that you have in the womb with your child. They're part of you. The sacrifice doesn't stop from caring for nine months, but you're carrying them until they're able to carry themselves. I don't want to discredit that. I have a very strong respect for ladies who are moms because they do a job that dads can do that. That's why we weren't chosen to be the carriers of our children, so God knew what he's doing and picking the ladies to do that part because we would really suck at that. Just getting to the end of this, the name of this show is just being intentional, and I like to ask my guests what it is that they can think of that they need to be more intentional about Amy Johnson Miss Johnson. What do you need to be more intentional about? So I've given this some thought, and I really think that where I need to be more intentional is with self care. I am programmed and have really fine tuned my ability to care for others. I've done it forever, even before I had kids. I was always the caregiver of my group, my friend group. I am really good, caring for others. And I am equally not good at caring for myself. As I get older and my kids get older and needs change, and we evolve as people, I know, and I'm working on trying to take better care of myself. Because that's my responsibility. It's nobody else's responsibility to take care of me. It is my responsibility to prioritize myself, especially as my kids launch. They don't require the same amount of energy as they once did, and so theoretically, I have that energy, and I can put some of that energy into caring for myself. I am really working on that. Yeah, in the professional world, if you take the strengths assessment, our strengths also have a balcony, and then as the basement. Our strengths can definitely be our weaknesses if we're not careful, but the self care part is the part I struggle with a lot. I live a life of being a service, you know, in the military, working with those, struggling with addiction issues, and homelessness, and serving in church. All those things can really tap you out, but you have to be able to take time for yourself because you're not going to be of any good use to anybody if you don't take care of yourself. I just have to continue to be mindful of that, and I see you see that as well. Do you have anything else that you would like to share with other moms that can relate to your experience with trauma from domestic abuse? So I continue to tell my story because I choose to believe that somewhere out there, somebody will hear this, and they will think, well, if she can do it, I can do it too. We all know science tells us that women, and I use the word women because the vast majority of the statistics that we hear intimate partner violence are still women. That doesn't mean that men aren't victims of intimate partner violence, but that isn't what the science tells us right now. It could just be because they're not reporting it in fairness. Ultimately, the message that I'm trying to send and that I hope people receive is it doesn't take a superhero to change their life. It's a choice. We always have a choice. We may not like the choices that we have, but we have choices. And so, if somebody hears my story, and they think, I could never do that, or nobody has been through what I have been through or anything like that. I want them to hear my story, and know that when you're ready, you can do anything. You have to be ready. And I tell people, people who come into my office or people who talk to me about this family members loved ones say we know what's going on over there and we're trying to help her or we're trying to help him. And you can't like they have to be ready. Same as people with addiction, right? Like you can't go to rehab for other people. They have to go to rehab for themselves. It's the same thing. So when you're ready, you're capable of anything. When you're ready, when you decide, it doesn't matter if you're doing it by yourself or if you're doing it for your kids. It doesn't matter. When you're ready, anything's possible. That doesn't have to just be narrowly interpreted for people who are suffering violence of some kind. That can be a transferable statement to somebody who's stuck in a dead end job. When you're ready, you can do anything. Somebody who is frustrated that they can't lose weight. When you're ready, you can do anything. And so that's what I hope my story tells people is that when you're ready, you can do anything. You have to quiet the noise. Because we have noise in our head, things that we tell ourselves and we've internalized whether people have told us. But when you're ready, you can do anything. And you have to be intentional. You have to be intentional. You can do anything, but you have to decide to do so. You have to be very intentional and not say, well, okay, I'll maybe some point, I'll do that. No, it's like, oh, this is happening. It's deliberate, calculated, intentional. I could tell some guys that I come across that are experiencing homelessness. I was like, your life might suck right now. I can see that. I can understand that. But the question you have to ask yourself is, what am I going to do about it? When you're ready, like you said, that's when you're going to know I got to make a move. And I'm going to do this because it's necessary. And you got to take that step out in faith like we talked about earlier. And you just got to make it happen. See what happens if you just do what you're supposed to do. It's scary. People develop comfort and dysfunction. And so that whole like risk taking part that we talked about. It's a perfect storm for just continuing to do the same thing and then hoping for a different result. The true definition of insanity, right? Like you said, what are you going to do about it and taking those intentional steps? You have to be willing to be uncomfortable on your journey to finding comfort. Yep. And sometimes being uncomfortable is terrifying. The devil that you know, better than the devil that you don't. Yeah. So it's uncomfortable for a reason. It's uncomfortable. It doesn't feel good. I like to embrace those not only the good moments in life, but only also the bad moments because that's what builds character in a person. That's what makes you build your strength. It causes resiliency and you face adversity. You say, let's go. Let's do this. And then the next challenges that come after that are a bit easier because you've already done the hard stuff. Being uncomfortable means that you have to be willing to do hard things in life. I had one of my boys tell me that they were in a group setting at one point and they said that the people in the group were talking about things that were very difficult in their lives. My son told me later, he said, when I heard what these people were upset about, or what was bothering them, or what they considered difficulty in their lives, I thought, wow, that's a big deal for you because if that was the worst day in my life, I would be thrilled. Yeah. Another feeling. Another feeling. I also reminded him that he had to be gentle with people because if that was really the biggest thing in their life and they don't know anything worse than that, then that really was the worst thing for that. They can't fathom what anybody else has experienced. That was a really big deal. Exactly. Be gentle with them because they're experiencing it in the same way that you experience the worst day. We're not all built the same. Just aren't. And our history is different, and our future is different, and our community is different in every sense of the word of community. Amen. I say thank you at night. I say thank you for all the good stuff that happened in the day, and I say thank you for the terrible things that happened and the things that make me reconsider life choices on really bad days. But I say thank you because it's all like a step. I may not know what the end looks like, what the goal is on the path that I'm walking, but I know that every step that I take prepares me for the next. If not for the steps that I have taken and the journey that I have taken, all the twists and turns and rocks and trees and mines and bombs that I have experienced. If not for them, I may not be able to do what I do now, advocate in the same way, understand, listen, empathize, and I think I have a pretty exceptional bullshit meter. You and me both. That keeps me in pretty good stead, both with people who think that they can bullshit me and people who are not so closely related, but I'm hearing what's going on and I know friends, that is not how this is going to go. Well, I just want to give a shout out to all the single moms out there holding it down, taking care of the kids. There are single dads that are doing that too, so respect to single dads out there. But in my lifetime, I've known a lot of single moms in my family. Only in my family, they're single moms and just see that they are not making excuses. They're doing what they have to do because it's the right thing to do. If dads want to be a piece of crap and not do their job, that's on them. I have a deep disdain for men who want to do harm to women and children, so they get no love and respect for me. I'm not sorry about that. Many of us can change over time, God can change anybody. For you, Amy, I appreciate what you've done, the things you're doing today and the things you're going to do tomorrow. A deep respect for you as a person, being a mom, being an attorney to help with those, going through the similar struggles you've gone through. Just being a hero to your kids, I can't say enough about how much respect I have for what you do. Thank you for all that. Thank you for coming on the show. You barely know me, and I hope we can continue the relationship. Hope to see you at a football game in the New Jersey medal lands. That'll be a dream come true. I wish you nothing but the best and the future of continued success as a mom and as an attorney as a person, a human being in this world. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. There are no accidents. People come into our lives sometimes for a season and sometimes for longer, but thank you for having me. Absolutely. This was intentional. Trying to believe and trust my own words, so thanks again. Thank you guys again for checking in. This has been just being intentional with Thomas Harris. Again, I'm your host. Thank you guys and God bless you. Okay, round two. Name something that's not boring. Laundry? Ooh! A book club. Computer Solitaire. Huh? Ah, sorry. We were looking for Chumba Casino. Chumba. That's right. ChumbaCasino.com has over 100 casino-style games, join today and play for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. ChumbaCasino.com. Don't forget to stick forward with it by law. 18+ turns the edition to apply.