This book answers the question I am asked most often: How do I stay so positive, kind, and altruistic all the time? How do I problem solve with such ease, mediate conflict with finesse, build meaningful relationships with most anyone in my path, and inspire those who take the time to chat? I once turned to a mentee when she asked this and said “It’s simple, years and tears” and laughed. The simple answer is: I am brave.
When fear is not driving my actions and decisions, I am free to be myself and let others do the same. Once bravery is on the table, the real conversation begins: How do you become brave?
Tell your story. Scream it from the rooftops. Vulnerability is the purest form of human interaction. When we can be vulnerable with one another, we can begin to find love for each other, a willingness to help people heal. Telling our story unabashedly allows us to access our own humanity, heal ourselves, and attain gratitude and serenity. Offering love is one way of healing the tragedies in life; receiving love is the other.
For me, being brave began as a three-year-old. There’s something very empowering about knowing I had enough ingenuity to understand wanting to eat meant having to feed myself and get creative doing it. Pulling out the drawers of the lower cabinets, climbing to the upper cabinets (which at three seemed like climbing to the top of a mountain), grabbing some instant pudding, mixing it in cold water, and calling it “dinner.”
This process created a lumpy, powder pocket, glue-like substance and though it was hard to eat I had food in my stomach. Having the creativity and inventiveness to figure out how to feed myself was an indication that in a world where perseverance is compulsory I’d do just fine. Maintaining the ability to hope, a will to succeed, and a propensity to work hard were guarantees.
Looking back at my childhood, it seems I’ve always been inclined to seek happiness and altruism, especially in the darkest moments. In those days, it was better to have to climb the cabinets due to lack of adult supervision (often spanning days) because the alternative was a (or several) drug-using adults presenting and this was bad. BAD. Whatever the scenario, I remember always feeling grateful because the sense it could be worse was ever present.
Adults in our house meant physical, verbal, and sexual abuse, trips to the hospital from injuries resulting from “asthma” attacks (I would be admitted for weeks at a time with bruises from “falls”), and any other unthinkable form of obscene scenario the mind can conjure, including inappropriate sexual interactions between myself and my mother’s “lovers.” In an attempt to avoid the inevitable, my sister taught me to hide in the window seat at the front of the house when we heard the arrival of someone through the door. Constant fear was normal. The day I was born my mother was taken to rehab to recover from a heroin addiction (she never did). My sister had three years of a normal life and I had none, so I didn’t know there was an alternative way to live.
One of our mother’s boyfriends would come grab me when she was good and high. He would dress me up like a girl and tell me how pretty I was while exposing himself and engaging in sexual acts. One day while Mom was running errands this same routine was occurring. When she unexpectedly walked through the door, she was furious and became extremely violent with me. The abuser took no responsibility and participated in the beating I received. Later, he took a knife and sliced me in the creases where the leg meets the hip. He whispered “you will never tell anyone and you will never forget.” This man severely misjudged the character he was building in me to stand up for injustice fearlessly. After all, beyond death, could it really get much worse? After this, there was nothing to fear. It’s a bit of poetry to tell everyone his story now. I never forgot, but I did tell everyone.
Throughout this time in my life, I sang. I would sing and sing and sing. Mostly I made up melodies in my head and sang them until I cried, or smiled, or felt something. This practice allowed me to escape reality and access my emotions (which were otherwise shut down much of the time), imagine far-away worlds, and the magnificent life I was certain was meant for me. The gift of my voice remains to this day the way I access love in my heart, my spiritual practice, and the light guiding me to live a life of integrity, meaning, and unwavering hope.
One’s voice is most important. A voice allows for world-changing ideas and practices to be shared. A voice is a change-maker, a protector, a convincer; it is one way we access potential (and I’m not talking about falsetto). Learning to use my voice has served me well; it will serve you too.
At the time, I did not understand that staying creative and nurturing a need to learn as much as possible indicated my path would lead me to extraordinary happenings. (Resourcefulness and inquisitiveness are always indicators that a path can be exceptional.) All I knew then was those traits kept me alive. Looking back, these two attributes saved, and continue to save, my life.
Knowledge allows for easy adaptation and learning is like a muscle; the more you use it, the stronger it becomes. Exercising the ability to learn allows for any opportunity to be potentially viable and on the path to purpose circumstance is a lead character. Opportunities outside your scope require fast acquisition of information and expertise; they take you places you’ll never forget. The reward for learning rapidly is living stupendously.
Attaining knowledge grows our ability to be empathetic and allows us to feel capable in any situation. My curiosity and belief that nothing is impossible allowed me, a heroin addict’s castaway, to enter the highest level of the scientific community with no formal education in electro-chemistry, saved my job daily in my days at Bergdorf Goodman, allowed me to become the executive producer of three Grammy award-winning artists, and most importantly has given me the ability to objectively see people and understand points of view differing from my own and approach them with respect and care.
Read every day. Write vocabulary words and their definition on index cards and hang them from your bathroom mirror so you can learn new words while you brush your teeth. Listen as much as possible. Ask questions as often as possible. Grow your skills by doing things outside your wheelhouse and comfort zone, especially when they scare you. This is how we grow. This is how we become brave.
If curiosity killed the cat, it also saved the child. Learning to read by four years old turned out to be the first of many times attaining knowledge ensured my life would take an unexpected path. The more you know, the better equipped you are for unexpected situations. Changing your life is as simple as attaining knowledge and applying what you learn to your circumstance. Cliché as it may be, knowledge paves the road to power. (Actual power comes from love.)
Curiosity and ingenuity are prerequisites for obtaining mastery. One of my voice teachers taught me when a person is dropped into the wilderness naked, the minute that person thinks “I don’t have anything” is the minute he or she is dead. To survive, it is imperative to identify what you have: “I have a rock and a stick. What can I do with a rock and a stick?” The next thing you know, you have fire and a weapon. What can be done with fire, a weapon, a rock, and a stick? Before you know it, you have food, cloths, shelter… Sometimes all you have is will. Will is enough. Sometimes all you have is hope. Hope is enough, too. When my sister and I had no food, we had feet, hands, and drawers. The ability to climb allowed us to eat.
Most everyone believed I would inevitably end up a drug-addicted vagrant just like the stock I came from. After all, I was “at risk” and therefore didn’t stand a chance. Something in me told me I was meant for more. As I grew, my purpose in this world became clearer and clearer. I am meant to use every identifiable resource to empower people to believe in their dreams and this starts with belief in themselves. Whether I realized it or not, every decision I have made has been to serve this purpose. When you know something is true, it becomes real immediately. The story you tell yourself is the true story. Through every hardship, I have told myself I was being prepared to do something exceptional in the world. Every day I have been alive this has become more and more true.
If you believe life has no purpose then it is so. Finding purpose is a choice and hugely important on the path to becoming the best version of yourself.
In early life being neglected was the status quo. There was a fire in my belly telling me I was special… really special. The worse things got, the more I would tell myself “you are special, reserved for the extraordinary.” This resulted in my becoming an extraordinary man, judged only by my own standards. Many people take umbrage at my opinion of myself. This evokes my need to say, “You are as remarkable as you believe you are.” Too often people would rather spend energy worrying about my delusional, elevated sense of self than using energy to look inward and create such a sense personally. The people who feel affronted by my story need to understand the only reason I can see the extraordinary in others is my decision to see it in myself.
When I was old enough, I would stand on the stoop outside our apartment and sing songs. I put out a cup or hat for donations because once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur, though all I cared about was performing. I would stand there belting out “Like a Prayer,” “Bad,” “Happy Together.” I would also take requests (upon donation, of course). The kids who went to the parochial school next door would bully me relentlessly. They used words I had never heard, like “fag” and “queer.” This just made me sing louder. Eventually I made it a point to be singing on the stoop when school let out. I remember thinking none of them could sing and they all just wished they sparkled like I did. After being heckled, name called, and occasionally assaulted, I would go in the house and cry. Only once did I let those kids see me sweat.
One day, about 15 or 20 of those much older kids cornered me in the playground next door. I was on roller skates and they pushed me to the ground, circled around me, and were screaming expletives. I would not back down. Thanks to the abuse I had suffered, fearlessness was already taking root; I always know I can handle what’s coming. I sang as loudly as my vocal chords could produce, tears streamed down my face, and I prepared for the inevitable beating that was to follow. An adult intervened at that moment but I was ready to fight.
My stories are only meaningful if I choose to use them to my advantage. If pain could be converted into a practical power source, our world would run for eternity. Luckily, pain can serve as a personal power source. Pain can fuel our dreams. Pain informs us how to make a positive impact on the world. Pain allowed me to fantasize about the day when my mother, her lovers, the bullies, and haters would all eat my dust; in many ways, this has driven my ambition.
Anguish always reminds us how strong we are if we allow it. Distress shows us we are capable of anything. When you conquer the insurmountable again and again, the idea of impossible no longer exists. Anyone can use a wretched situation to serve a higher purpose; despair only exists to teach us what we need to know on the path to fulfilling purpose.
If pain is not used as a positive, forward driver, it can shrivel you into quiet nothingness. How you process and use perceived misfortune is a choice. When you actively seek lessons, you learn. When you feel sorry for yourself, the worst keeps coming. The story you believe is the true story so it is imperative to make hardship serve a purpose. Hardship makes you stronger, faster, wiser, louder. Choosing to accept, celebrate, and thrive in hardship results in an energy source that can propel aspiration forward. Life is not easy, so you might as well be happy to walk the hard road… in the end, the accomplishment will mark a life filled with twists, turns, breaks, falls, fun, sadness… the gamut and ultimately a life well lived.
I began school at age four because my father (who was in a years-long custody battle with his heroin-addicted ex-wife) was able to convince the public school to allow me into kindergarten one year early. Being able to read was a major selling point (knowledge saves you). This was the first time erudition had a life-changing effect for me. The school had one condition: I MUST attend weekly sessions with the school psychologist.
Dr. Sid Peck, whom my sister and I later saw in private practice, once told my father:
“There’s really no way to prevent Charles from becoming a transvestite prostitute.” (I was four.)
When I was young, I had a propensity for women’s clothing and makeup. This lasted into my mid-teens. In other words, I liked to cross-dress. Until now, no one has known about my first sexual abuser dressing me like a girl, something which certainly colored the psychology behind this inclination. Introspection and subsequent self-actualization showed me the correlation between dressing up and climbing the cabinets to eat. With no positive female/mother figure in my life, I created one. Just like a rock and a stick, I had access to high heels and mascara, so I taught myself to fulfill the need for a nurturer myself.
One of the only positive memories I have of my mother consists of watching her get ready to go out. Gazing at her face in the vanity mirror as she slowly applied mascara stroke by stroke, lined her eyes and lips, and gently chatted with me. She would always ask my opinion on what to wear. “Which shoes do you like?” I always chose the high heels with the sparkles. The closer she got to being ready, the more anxiety I would feel. Being fully dressed meant she would disappear for a lifetime and the person who returned would be the monster who lived inside her, not my mother.
Rather than submit to the idea of having no mother, no nurturing female energy, I created it for myself. Stroking mascara on my lashes and the softness of a blush brush across my cheekbone evoked the feeling of sitting with my mother and feeling loved. As I grew older, the need to exercise these emotions through dress was replaced with positive and nurturing relationships with women and I outgrew the desire.
For years, the shame of dressing in women’s clothing haunted me. It was NOT to be discussed in our house and it concerned my father and his new wife so that if anyone saw their reactions they might have thought I had leprosy. Shame in general surrounded my psyche for many years. Sexual abuse at the hands of men induced severe guilt and many of my decisions have plagued my mind. I carried these with me until I began talking about my story.
Shame and guilt are tricky emotions. Carrying these feelings around is heavy, too heavy. The thought of sharing them is paralyzing and yet the minute you do all their power over you is neutralized. Shame and guilt are parasites whose only nourishment is your soul. Over time, carrying shame slowly dulls brilliance. Eventually we become so dim it is hard to see any light at all. Letting go of shame and guilt allows us to realize the beauty in ourselves and to be in control of our lives. Whatever you are carrying, someone else has been there too. Sharing sets you and the people around you free. It’s as simple as that. The act of sharing the good, bad, and ugly saves your life, illuminates the lives of people around you, and makes you brave.
Over the course of many sessions with Sid, my sister and I (mainly her) began divulging details about our home life. The occasional visit to a crack den, our acute knowledge of what to do if an adult has a grand mal seizure in the middle of the living room (never use a spoon, a wet rag is ideal), our incredible recipes for tuna fish and instant pudding (I must say my command of a can opener is still far superior to most… knowledge baby!), the accident in the Bronco where I was in the front seat without a seatbelt and the subsequent head trauma surrounding this accident resulting in all the skin peeling off my face(we were on our way to my mother’s drug dealer’s house so one can only assume she was withdrawing).
Neither my sister nor I fully understood the ramifications of those conversations. A child doesn’t understand how a simple conversation can set astronomical wheels in motion like child protective service raids and the consequential removal from our home. Those days felt scarier than the actuality of our home life and although most of the details surrounding my early childhood are vague vignettes, the way it felt is distinct: terrifying.
It’s peculiar to think because what you know is safe it is always more comfortable than what you don’t know. At least we were accustomed to the routine of our house: No adult for four or five days, adult arrives, all kinds of abuse for 48 hours, adult leaves, repeat. With the onset of child services, our lives were turned upside down. THIS was terrifying. This reality shines a truthful light on comfort. Comfort wants you to believe it is warm, fuzzy, and safe when in actuality being comfortable prevents us from changing. Comfort thwarts growth and in many cases only promotes living in the status quo. Though terror proceeded in the days following child services raiding our home, in time it became the moment we were freed from hell. Today, the scenario evokes immense gratitude.
During those conversations with Sid Peck, we were unaware we had ensured my father would win his pending custody suit and once he was granted custody I would never see our mother again. Ironically, she has been with me silently on every step of my journey.
There are many reasons why telling your story is important. Mostly, it is the willingness to tell it in the hope your story will help set someone free, maybe even you. The early circumstances of my life showed me this world wounds everyone. Watching people be so cruel had a purpose: People are fragile, I learned, and above all else we must treat each other with care. The abuse of my early life prompted me to approach people with an open heart, with love, compassion, empathy, care, and objectivity.
In one moment life can be turned upside down, dreams can come true, dreams can be lost. One moment holds as much power as years of hard work. Each second holds something extraordinary and, good or bad, the unknown is always escorted by enormous fear. How one uses fear sets apart the great from the meager.
We are all breakable, our cracking bones make noise, and the only thing protecting our heart is a flimsy cage of rib bones. This book is for the dreamers, the odds beaters, and the truth seekers to find and use their voice; be brave.
The stories are about my journey to becoming magical. It is my attempt to show how being vulnerable and acquiring knowledge, as scary as it may be, will lead to understanding the choices you make and finding/fulfilling your purpose. It is my effort to help others replace shame with empowerment and I hope it inspires you to tell your story. Here is mine.