ACEs, Trauma & Forgiveness ⚠️ Viewer Discretion Advised

Episode Disclaimer and Introduction 0:00

Hey, it's Dr. Jen. There is a disclaimer with this episode. It is amazing information, but it may be a trigger to those that have experienced sexual abuse or concerns with child trafficking. So if you have little ones, listen to this episode apart from them, but definitely listen. It is an amazing episode and you will gain so much knowledge and wisdom from it. Appreciate you guys. Thank you. You need to expose these people. Like the Epstein files and stuff. And you know what? Expose them. And then they can say, hey, I gave into the flesh.

I gave into sin. This is why maybe they were abused. But I repent of that. And I'm going to do better. And then we hold them accountable. Hi, welcome back to the Integrative Health podcast with Dr. Jenn. Today we are going to be talking about childhood adverse events or ACE scores and how this can influence our health. Many people don't think about this and it is very important. And I know when I'm going through a new patient, I asked them, well, how was your childhood? Is it traumatic or not? Or sometimes our jobs can produce trauma.

So this impacts our health. So that's why today we're going to be talking to Dr. Gregory Williams. He's on the senior leadership team at Baylor College. of medicine in Houston, Texas. So he actually travels the country speaking to thousands of people on child abuse, the aftermath of abuse, the detection and recognition of abuse, and the importance of adverse childhood experiences or ACEs, we call them. He's the author of Shattered by the Darkness and When the Dark Clouds Come, which has sold more than 3.4 million copies around the world.

Dr. Williams' Background and Calling 1:58

In his latest book, Embracing Your Scars, Learning How to Turn Life's Pain into Life's Power and Purpose was just released in January of 25. He's on the advisory board of the Institute of Trauma-Informed Practices at Columbia College in Columbia, South Carolina and the chairman of the steering committee of the United Against Human Trafficking and is a state of Texas certified trainer for medical physicians and human trafficking awareness. So he is just so much a wealth of knowledge in this topic.

So we're going to dig into it and we're going to hear about his story also. Welcome Dr. Williams, so excited to have you. Well, Dr. Rizzo, an honor and privilege to be with you today and I'm looking forward to getting to know more about you and just having a great, let's get together chat. I'm looking forward to this. This is going to be awesome. Yes, yes, absolutely. Now, you are well sought after and not only are you teaching people, you've experienced trauma. So that's kind of paying the purpose and we see that a lot.

So why did you start out as, you know, you have your PhD, started off in psychology. Why did you go down this road? Because this is a very uncomfortable thing to talk about. Well, I wish I could put my Superman cape on and go, hey, folks, this is the way to do it. I put my Superman cape on and it's tattered way too late. It took me over 35 years, doctor, before I ever came around to the fact of letting anybody know. And in reality, it really was an error. I was speaking in front of a group and I was going, you know, I started slinging sweat and I said, you know, I know that I was sexually abused and I got halfway through that.

The entire crowd went silent. It's like, what did he just say? And I had to kind of end the thought. And then after the fact, I had about six, seven people come up to me afterwards and said, you know, I was two and I've never told anybody. And it was an aha moment of like, well, okay, they still accept to me. They didn't tire and feather me and throw rocks at me out in the parking lot. Okay. And then I finally started to deteriorate in my hell. in my mid-40s to where January 10th, 2010, I ended up having open heart surgery, completely out of the blue.

And the doctor basically said, great, we don't have a medical reason why your heart went bad, but we're going to repair it. Have any guarantees that this is going to hold because we don't know what caused it that valve to pop to begin with. So I remember going under the surgery came out and went through all that process and I started to realize, wait, there's something going on in me. that I need to admit, even though I still kept it quiet for several years after that. And then finally, I came to another moment of having to deal with almost dying.

I lost everything. physically, mentally, emotionally, and the entire Lee family in my life. And I had to come to grips. What's the cause of all this? And here I was at Baylor College of Medicine, climbing the ladder to beat on the leadership here at Baylor. but not telling anybody. And doctor, I don't know if you've ever been in that situation before in your life, but it's like, this is scary because I was, hey, you have a good day? Yeah, awesome. And I was going through that game of that mask, but then I would go home and I would be in a room alone, even though I had people around me.

And when you're in that room alone, mentally and emotionally, but the room's packed, you know there's something deeper. And I finally had to come to grips with that. And that's when I started writing the book. That's when I started journaling every event that I can remember. And then I did discuss briefly with my mom what had happened. She claimed she never knew, even though it lasted all through my childhood. The first line in the book is I don't remember a day in my life, in my childhood, that I wasn't sexually abused.

So all the way up to my 17th birthday, I was ignoring it. So I told her a little bit about it, and she immediately sold the house, moved to Florida, and said, you know, I'm not going to live in a house that did

Childhood Abuse and Early Trauma 7:00

this to you. And I promised her that I wouldn't release the book until she passed away. And when she died, I, way back, from Florida to drive to Houston, I started putting the book together in my mind how I wanted to lay it out. Yeah, and what's so hard about this is it usually is someone that they know, the person that abuses. Yeah, it's someone close and then there's this whole thing like, you know, believing it. There's just so much shame in it. And it's that shame that keeps us in bondage, you know, if we do have someone that's abusing us.

And I don't, you would be better with the statistics, but last time I checked one in three children are sexually abused or molested. Well, I think on the internet right now, the ones that all the big organizations run with say one in four of females have before the age of 18 have been sexually abused or traumatized and one in six or seven males. And I say this at every time I speak. There's a Greek word for that, baloney. I don't believe any of that because the real facts are 85 to 92% of the people that have ever been abused, doctor, never tells anyone.

They go to their grave with that secret. So how can we even balance it? But just look at the newspaper, just in the last few years, what's happened in the churches, what's happened on the Olympic teams, what's happened with Epstein, you can go right on down the list. I don't even think that's the tip of the iceberg. It's everywhere, absolutely everywhere. I bet I could go out here at the middle of the medical center here, which is as big as downtown Dallas, just the medical center here in Houston.

I could go out and screen who here has never had anyone that you are aware of that has been sexually abused. I'll give you a hundred dollar bill. And I bet I couldn't have anybody come up and say, I've never had anybody that I have. I know somebody that has been, because everybody knows someone. And it's just overwhelming. It's time that we really realize every neighborhood, every skin color, every organization, Every profession has that darkness that we need to shed the light on Yes, and from it and in the shame is Is what's horrible and it affects their health and from a biblical standpoint?

Yeah, I think darkness needs exposed and it's gonna people are gonna look bad but otherwise it just keeps going on and you have to like break the cycle. And if we don't talk about it, because of that shame or we're worried people won't believe us, if we don't talk about it, it will just keep getting worse and darker and darker through generations and generations. Because, you know, your abuser obviously, like someone probably abused him. Did you find that out? Okay. I did not find that out, but the statistics are about, it goes about three generations before the cycle breaks.

So for instance, you know, if, you know, I believe probably dad was sexually abused and I believe Probably a grandfather was too. I don't have facts on that. I don't have stories on that. But dad's sexual appetite was so demented to literally sell me for every Monday night for three years from 11 to 13 almost 14 to sell me in my own bedroom. where my bedroom door became a revolving door. There has to be something up here that snapped in him. So I think the only thing that could have been was him being abused also.

Yeah, it's almost like demonic. It's like, where's that coming from? Now, gosh, forgiveness um how how have you dealt with that like i just i mean we all like there's verbal abuse there's physical abuse you know and there's people that do us wrong but sexual abuse is just another it's next level it really is and and i i really think the enemy the devil really skews this you know and makes you know especially if you turn on the tv and stuff just makes it makes it awful and not to go through you know what we can the abuse on the internet and the porn industry and all that.

But how do you forgive? I mean, if someone out there is listening, which some we know people are, they haven't talked about it. They haven't even forgave. And that is, we're going to talk about what that does to the body later. But how did you personally like forgive? How long did that take? And how did you work through that with your mother? Those are some wide open questions. It's amazing that my body was literally going like this and just churning up inside. So the rage, the pressure was already starting to build up in me in my young years.

And I never had an opportunity, even though I was a believer, even though I have the faith and we can talk about that if you're not against that later on about how faith was a major that that's what saved me through all of this and I never you won't read anything about that in the book until the very last page of the book it talks about the true light and because I didn't want it stuck in the religious section I wanted it out to where everybody right next to the child called it and those kind of books I wanted to write in that center for everybody and I wouldn't be allowed to speak at Baylor College of Medicine or some of these other places if I came off by saying hey I'm a believer in Jesus Christ and we're going to talk about but I always pray before I go in to a session saying Lord have somebody during Q&A ask me how did you make it through it and then I go well since you asked did I let them have it but back to forgiveness it's huge because the devil tries to isolate us and if the devil can pull us out of anybody else that we need to connect with and have intimate discussion and communication with then he can start whispering in our ear don't ever forgiving, hating, and it starts building up.

It starts corroding on that battery terminal of your ability to be able to create power to the source when you need it. And literally, that rage was inside of me, but I never let it become exposed. So I just pushed everybody away. Even though I was married and had children, the relationship was never what it should have been. It was my fault. But dad, I still had a relationship until the day he died. Dad was in the hospital having a throat surgery. The same issue that he's having, I'm having on my throat right now.

It was at the age that I am now when he passed. And he didn't come out of that surgery, he went straight into a coma. And I remember walking into that ICU unit there in Missouri, just right out of St. Louis, and I walked in, saw dad on the ventilator, and pulled the drapes, and I thought, I got you now. All I have to do is unplug this thing and you are gone. I have you. And there was a little, almost a little devil on one shoulder and the angel on the next, he goes, go for it. You can't, you know.

And I was playing that spiritual battle in my mind. So I just sat there and I put my arms up on the hospital rail and I just started talking to him. And I said, dad, you've done this to me. And I went right down everything that I could remember. And now he was in a coma and people can believe what they want about people in a coma. But tears started flowing down his, out of his eyes, down the side of his face and just started soaking his pillow.

Forgiveness, Faith, and Family Reckoning 15:30

He never, two days later he passed. He never acknowledged besides that. We never had a verbal conversation. But at that point, when I was talking to him, I said, Dad, I love you and I forgive you. Not for you, but because I can't live with this anymore. I have to be able to get up from this chair and move on. And doctor, to be honest with you, I didn't immediately whistle Dixie and Zippity Doo Dah out the room. I still had a battle that it was a forgiveness process, but the wait was immediately Yeah, I still had the fight, you know, I spoke at his funeral, I sang at his funeral, but I was there at his grave making sure that the gravedigger put the last scoop of dirt on him because I did not want that man to come back.

I mean, I knew he couldn't after he did, but it was just that process. I want to watch him go down and cover him up. But that forgiveness was hard. And I get a lot of people going, Bologna, Greg, you cannot. Doctor, don't you tell me that you can really forgive and I should forgive and forget. I said, no, no, no. You don't ever have to forget. your mind never forgets. I wish I could delete that and I'd be a great man, but I can't. I still play through that. I still shave sitting on the rim of my shower, my bathtub, because I can't stand what I look like in the mirror.

So those things still affect me emotionally and mentally and the way I look at myself. But the forgiveness is like hurt people, hurt people. And my dad hurt me like I never thought I would ever. And now people want to get close to me. And I'm thinking, Hey, wait, every person that's ever got close to me has screwed me over. The trust has been damaged, but the forgiveness is huge. And I write a lot about forgiveness and I have two hour seminar on forgiveness. It's huge. Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah.

And I like how you said hurt people, hurt people. We know that. And I just, for me, I don't put my faith and trust like completely in people because we live in a fallen world and people are sinful. So for me, it's not that I'm waiting for them to let me down. It's just like, if they do let me down, I'm not going to hold them against it because they're fallen sinful people too. And then that's why, you know, Jesus is really all that we can put our trust in. But we are told to forgive and we are told to do better and pick up the cross and follow Him.

So doing that and part of forgiving people who hurt us. But also, and this is something that I struggle with as a Christian, you know it's if someone is abusing you you can forgive them but you can also report them to the police and they can get justice moral justice in the society so it's not that we're you know like you said we're forgiving but we're not forgetting and also we have to stop the cycle and sometimes that is exposing people um like you wrote the books you know and stuff or calling people out you know so i think that we we have to make sure to stop this from happening that we do have to talk about it and hold people responsible for absolutely horrible behavior.

Now you were not only abused, you were trafficked then a little bit. Yes, from the earliest childhood memory and I tell about it and it's a long story so I won't go into it, but how I remember almost the exact date was because of a goofy Christmas catalog and I looked up online this catalog and there the cover came up like I remember holding that book on a day that my dad abused me, the Christmas catalog. And then I typed that in and looked up images for that cover. And it said, December, 1967. And all of a sudden you thought, I was only four and a half years old.

So from that moment, I remember, from that moment, I never was sexually abused. Now, I have thoughts, I probably was prior to that. I did have two older brothers. We never talked about it. My middle brother abused me also. He's five years older than me. Were they abused also? I think so. I've never discussed that with them. My middle brothers died in these mid-30s. One that, me and my oldest brother, we have never had that discussion. In that, around 11, that's when my dad started to, I was gang raped one night at our pool.

We had a pool in the back. You know, we were in a very upper middle class affluent family in our little southern Illinois town. My dad drove a Lincoln. My mom drove a Cadillac. When we walked you know, down the street. Oh, there's the Williams's. When people drove by our house, they slowed down and go, ooh, who lives there? And our house was a house where everybody partied during that, those weekends and Saturday nights during the summer months, the warm months. And they were all at a pool party at our house.

And I was swimming in the pool, it was getting dark out. And dad said, hey, say good night to everybody. The men were all drinking around the pool. The women were all inside playing cards. So I said good night to everybody, went to my bedroom and got out of my swimsuit and was drying off. And I turned around and dad was there with four of his friends. And that was the first time I had ever been touched sexually by anybody besides my dad. And my dad didn't touch me that night. But four of his friends held me down and took turns on me.

And the four friends of his were the chief of police, the state's attorney in our county, morning radio talk show host, and one of dad's friends. Who's going to believe an 11-year-old kid over them? And after that, a few weeks later, mom got a promotion where she was out of town Sunday through Friday night. And I was alone with dad. My other brothers had already moved out of the house. I was alone with dad. And I could tell we were getting ready to ramp up. I had to be home on Monday nights, five o'clock in my room.

And from five to 10, my bedroom just became a revolving door. One man. two men, one woman, a man and a woman, two women. It didn't matter what, but they would come in and take turns with me. I would have time, just enough time to wipe down, put my pajamas back on, because I had to have my pajamas on, and then the next one we'll walk through. And without blowing the story out of making a small fish I caught to a big fish, I'm not doing that. About eight to 10, 11 times every Monday night, 8 to 10 people, groups of people would come through and take turns with me and then go outside and pay dad at the dining room table each Monday night.

They would tip me in my little Superman cup, here's a quarter kid, thanks, and go out. What? This is crazy. And this is... Dad and I would count money at the end of the night. I would count my little change and he would count his bills. But you guys didn't need the money, right? No, no.

Health Consequences of ACEs and Trauma 23:30

I was clothed with Sticks Bar and Fuller and famous bar clothes. Down in St. Louis, we would go and I was one of the nicest dressed people in school. We didn't need it, but dad had that. It was power. Well, and what's so scary about this and it makes me so sick and so sad is that we don't think that this is in our backyard, but it is. There are sick people there, you know, and it could be at the church, it could be at the school, it could be in your neighborhood. And you have to be so diligent and so have so much discernment and talk to your kids about it.

Talk to your kids about how there's, you know, and I hate to say they're weirdos, but yes, there are broken people that have mental problems that are that they will go after kids and that's the thing the enemy the devil you know this he's in play here he hates kids and he uses good things like sex for bad for disturbing gross things and It just, it breaks my heart. I just think, you know, this is hard to hear, of course, but if we don't realize that it could happen to anyone, it could, you know, and we don't have conversations or don't know what to look for, that is when we're doing a disservice.

Yeah, sex is such a addictive drug. I don't want to offend anybody just listening, but when a man would walk in, I knew even at 11, 12 years old, because it didn't stop until I was right at 17. The trafficking stopped when around 14 years old, but that still abused me all the way every day until I was about 17. But when a man would walk in, I even knew back in those days, all they want is to get excited and when they're done, they're done. When a woman would walk in, doctor, it was a different ball game.

It would always scare me. They wanted to hurt me. There was a power there and I knew this is going to hurt. Oh no, this is going to be bad. Two women. It was a different type of control. Men were just wanting to get excited. Women, it was a different ballgame. They did things to me that I still have yet, there's no way to write about them because there's no way to even put it into words. So do you think the women were being abused? It could be. And it very well could be them taking all their hatred for what a man has done to them out on me.

Yes, that's what I was thinking. But it was a different level. And I've only shared that I think on one other show. And because I don't want to be offensive, but that's just the way it was in my life that I noticed. And it was visible. Yeah. So how did this affect your health? So this is like huge for, you know, an adverse childhood event. But I mean, this does happen like in the emergency room when I would see, you know, the psych patients, most of them had abuse. Most chronic illnesses, there's some layer of some sort of abuse or trauma in their childhood.

emotionally, sexually, physically. So how and why does this affect our health? Well, in my particular situation, I started noticing, even in college, I started getting brain odds. I started having a throat that I couldn't, my motility in my throat was starting to fade. And matter of fact, when I was at the rheumatologist, years later, in my 40s, I was there to get more rheumatology medicine. And they was listening to my heart and discovered, you got a heart murmur? No, we needed something's going on.

That's how they found the heart problem was because I was at the rheumatologist. But over time, it started wearing on me to where now I have a feeding tube, Right here. It's called a Mickey. I just had it changed out. As a matter of fact, I have an endoscopy at 8 o'clock Friday, and I see my hard doctor at 8.30 Thursday. Wow. Well, I mean, how you said college is when you first start noticing things. So the abuse, you know, start when you were really young and then stop. But like autoimmune disease, which rain odds and the things you're going through, they appear, you know, a couple years, sometimes 10 years later.

So that's why we look at our health picture with autoimmune disease, which is not normal. It shouldn't happen. The body is attacking itself. It usually is trauma or some significant event. And trauma can also be like you know, different things like- Yeah, witnessing event or- Yeah, but like a mold, you know, you're exposed to mold or something. But really the psychological trauma is hard and this is your body is operating in fight or flight at all times. And how sad, it just breaks my heart because kids are supposed to just feel loved.

They should always be in rest and digest. They shouldn't have that feeling. fear. They just shouldn't and especially not by people they love. So now you're having all this throats. So it's still like when you forgave when your dad was before passing and you had that moment with him and you're still working the forgiveness, like did you notice your health got better or has it slowed down? No matter of fact, it's revved up over the years. My throat now has no motility. I was in a 46 jacket. This is a 38. In the last year, I've lost probably 50 pounds.

I was just diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease and they told me I probably wouldn't live much longer. And I basically told them, I'll take your medicine. I give myself a shot every week. I'll take your medicine, but I'm not coming back to you. I'm giving this to a higher power, a higher doctor that created you. And when he wants to take me, I'll let him take me. But and that's why I literally book myself solid. I won't tell no to anybody. I'll go anywhere because I want God to not have an excuse to bring me home.

Oh, we slow down. Come on up. So I just stay busy trying to help as many people as I can. because that gives my life purpose. That's a reason to get up. I'm really afraid if I sit down in my recliner, the same recliner I sleep in every night, if I sit down there and go, okay, I'm done, I'll die. So I just keep on keeping on, but my body is literally falling apart. There's days I can't walk down the hallway because my legs aren't working because of the Lou Gehrig's disease.

Foster Care, Trafficking, and System Failures 30:30

ALS is so wicked. And I'm starting to notice that I'm drooling a little bit. And if my voice ever goes or my ability to speak. That's going to be tough on me. We're seeing the long-term effects of what ACEs can do. Now, you said though, your middle brother died young, right? He was ran over by a car, but he was drinking. At the time, he probably should never have been out in the middle of the road when he got hit. He was crossing the street, full force, the guy ran over him, ran out in front of our house.

But he turned to alcohol, and alcohol was what my dad was not alcoholing. I never, you know, and I think people need to hear this too. Because of what happened to me as a child, I have OCD, ADD, every letter thing you have. can have and I'm smart enough to know that if I would have taken one drink with obsessive disorder that I Would take more and more and I knew Don't touch it. That's why when I go when I went to my ALS doctor cement, is there anything give me for pain? Oh, yeah, we have this narcotic No, no, so I don't because I'm if one pillow work.

Hey four work better so I deliberately don't even go there because I can't control that. I count my steps. I count tiles in the ceiling. I have all those little things that I'm aware of that I have to be really careful or it's going to overtake me. Yeah, absolutely. What do you think about childhood abuse and trafficking with the foster system? And what have you noticed with all your traveling and speaking? Well, I think in the trafficking world, the foster care, once they get to the level of where they are emancipated in hate, you're on your own.

It's in the upper 80s, if not higher, that they become people that live on the street. for a while and they become high statistically in the traffic area or they become in the sex clubs or dancers or things of that order because they don't have another way of making a living. And somebody sees them, offers them, hey, I'll take care of you. I'll give you a place to sleep. I'll feed you, but you have to do this. then it becomes to where it is out of survival. And our country has to do better than what we're doing with the foster care system.

There's a lot of people that care and I was a foster parent, loved it, had three or four different times boys living with us and loved being able to take care of them and offer them that security and safety. But we just don't have enough of that. And then there's not enough training after they get out to be able to protect them. And a country our size ought to be able to do something a little bit better than that. Well, and what do you think about the younger foster kids though? Because a lot of the times people are taking them in, you know, to get money, even though if you give them a good life, it's not enough.

And sometimes they're using them and abusing them. There in Ohio, where we moved from, there was someone that was like a baseball coach that then found out he was abusing and doing horrible things to his foster children. So that I see is scary too. I've had a lot of people on my talk show that have told me the very same thing. While I was in foster care and I was in four different homes and three of those four homes, I was abused continually. And it's like, wow, I mean, the numbers are way too high.

I mean, it's everywhere, but it shouldn't be a place. Foster homes should be a haven of peace and safety as much as our homes should be for the children. Unfortunately, they're not vetted until it's too late in such a way that we find out about it. And it goes all the way up the ladder. Or like, so the whole foster situation is very interesting because the foster care system in the US, the court system in general in the US is very demonic I think when it comes to dealing with children. I mean, they will take these foster kids away from a stable loving Christian home and put them back for reunification purposes to a sexually abusive on the street drug home.

And I think that's disgusting. It's like, how many chances are we gonna give people if they're literally abusing their kids as opposed to being in a stable home. So I just think in general, the court system will, for sake of reunification, reunify people with either their sexual abusers, bad home life, drugs. It's really bad. It is. And it's interesting. I think it's in January. I'm speaking to all the judges at the annual Texas Judicial Training, and I'm the keynote there, and I am just going to lay it out.

And I'm not saying it's all judges and all that, like it isn't with all teachers or all coaches. There's no paintbrush or covers, but they need to be aware that, hey, wait, we have a huge issue in our country and each day how can we get a better grab on this a better handle on this a better way to once they get out or while they're there they're protected but once they get out they have a place to go and there's just not enough beds uh available for them to go to safe houses if anything for uh even even the the people that are picked up for instance in houston uh just did a documentary uh for netflix and on the street over here in houston when houston police officers arrest uh of a trafficker, somebody that's prostituting, they usually arrest the prostitute and they let the one that has been buying them that's in the suit like this go.

It's like, whoa, we got to stop that. We got to disrupt and shut down the demand. And we need to start arresting them. And then we have to have a place to where these victims can go for let's say three days mandated, not jail, but a safe house where we can go in and get them help, show them resources, keep them safe and get them away from their Romeo. their seller and then find out maybe who it is or at least disconnect them from that to where they can be released in a safe environment maybe in a different town to try to disrupt all of that cycle.

But the whole cycle is built backwards and it is also in the foster care system. Yeah, I would like it if they, you know, the people that are buying the services, they should take pictures of them and put them on the internet and put their credentials if they're a judge or a supervisor or a business owner and let everyone know that they're buying services, you know? We need to expose these people. Like the Epstein files and stuff. And you know what? Expose them. And then they can say, hey, I gave into the flesh.

I gave into sin. This is why maybe they were abused, maybe something. But I repent of that and I'm going to do better. And then we hold them accountable. But we're not. We're not even doing any of that. And maybe they're just not They don't want to repent. And then they should go to jail if they don't want to. Absolutely. It's like we we just like you said, it goes three to four cycles. Like the one movie, you know, it ends with us like that's like a thing like trauma. We have to end abuse. And I just, you know, stopping the cycle.

And I just give you so much just applause for stopping the cycle of abuse in your generation and your family. But Doctor, if we don't, who will? Right. I mean, who are we going to leave this to? I'm on a survivor board with Street Grace, a great organization, and they are creating a whole system that goes that the police departments can use inside of these chat rooms and these porn sites to where now the people that are talking to people trying to hire them to come over to the house and give me a massage or whatever.

They don't know now. if it is a real person or a police officer. And that is going to, because if, if they get arrested, all you have to do is post, like you said, those pictures.

Accountability, Hope, and Closing Remarks 40:30

Hey, look who in our government had just been seen, had just been caught trying to get a sex for pay on a porn side. You wouldn't have to expose too many people to tell everybody goes, Hey, wait, Now, I don't know what they would do to be able to get, go to darker places. I don't know. But there has to be a way to disrupt all of that. Yeah. And we have to stop it in the US. I love like Tim Tebow. He's just like balls to the wall, like literally just unapologetic, like on fire for Jesus, like getting calling people out and bringing awareness.

So that's great. Absolutely. He's on fire for that. Well, thank you so much for your time. I want to wrap up with a few like lightning round questions to ask you and then we have to know where to get your book and everything. So Dr. Williams, what career did you almost choose other than what you're doing now? Well, I went to school with a music major and I was going to I played piano like crazy. But they're at Southwest Baptist University in Baltimore, Missouri. I got a little bit of scholarship singing and playing the piano.

And when they put Mozart in front of me or Beethoven, I would throw in all my little runs because I never really took organized piano lessons. They said, Oh, no, you have to play it the way it's written. Like anybody can do that. I want to add, we don't add to Beethoven, apparently. So I immediately dropped out of that and then went through like four different changes, but it was going to be that, court reporter, radiologic technology. And then, you know, it just went from one to the next to the next.

I was looking for something that I could finally excel in. But yeah, that was my, that was going to be my first goal. Was to be in music. What is your favorite habit that rescues a rough day? Andy Griffith's show. I have to watch three to four episodes of Andy Griffith every 24 hours. I have to. I was OP. I wanted to be OP. My dad looked a lot like Andy Griffin there at Mayberry. But that's just good humor. That's how I release. How does people release now? What do they watch? This stuff at late night that all they do is bash each other in politics and that's not really, but for me, Andy Griffith, I have to watch Andy Griffith, I love Lucy and Dick Van Dyke every day.

I just love that kind of humor. What is one wellness rule that you happily break sometimes? Oh, did I happily break? I have a lot of rules. People don't come into my home. That's my safe boundary. that I happily break. I guess I always try not to spend so much on clothes, but I'm at the suit store every weekend and I just bought three this past weekend. So that's probably, I always try to limit myself on that, but That's what I enjoy. I sleep in this, so I love buying suits and ties. And then one last question, and it's one word only.

What is one word you want listeners to carry with them this week? No doubt. Hope. That's the word. That's the only thing that may help me make it through. There's hope. There's always, always, always hope. Yes, there is. Yes, there is. Amen. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Williams. We really appreciate it. I know I want to grab some of your books to read now and just thank you for bringing awareness to this really difficult subject, which really impacts our overall health. How can everyone find you?

I know you have a speaking schedule. Do you have a website where that is posted? You know, I'm not very savvy on websites and things like that. I had three boys for two purposes. One to help me with the computers and two was to mow the lawn. Neither one helped me with either one of those. So I'm not very good with computers and things, but you can get the books. This is the this one and this one together are so I think now about 3.8 million but shattered by the darkness and when the dark clouds come this one is this is about my story and this one is the book that I wish I had when I was being abused I wish I had on my dresser to be able to do it and then the other one embracing your scars is still It goes out and in and out of print because it's more of a magazine.

I wrote that for people that don't read books. So I've made it into a magazine and that has become really a hassle trying to get that as a book on Amazon. But those two can be found on Amazon right now. The other one probably by the first of the year will be in that format to where Amazon will say, oh, this is a book. But you can go down on Amazon, just type in my name, Dr. Gregory Williams. it'll come right up. And it needs to be the blue version. The brown version still sells for like 30, $40. Somebody in Tennessee is selling a brown version of this.

I don't even know where they get it. But it's the blue version. Yeah, it comes right up. Comes right up on Amazon. Oh, good. Maybe they're taking care of the brown or outside of it. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate your time and expertise so much. We really appreciate it. Well, if anybody needs me, my phone number, I mean, my phone number, email, feel free to give that out. I literally will talk to anybody at any time, 24 7. You just have to text me and say, hey, you have a second and I'll call them right back.

I'd love to do that. Love to touch out, reach out to people. That's amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you, doctor. Good to be with you.