The whole catalyst for writing the book is, and it's called
Restored, because everything in my life needed to be restored.
My relationship with my wife, my relationship with my children,
my health, uh, my soul, my, um, self-image, I mean, everything.
I had to start from scratch and
Today, we're speaking with Randy Pitkin.
Randy is the author of Restored.
Randy, could you please introduce yourself and let people know just a
little bit more about you, please?
Sure.
Um, I'm Randy Pitkin.
I was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut, um, in a very typical
middle class conservative Jewish family in a very Jewish neighborhood.
Um, I had, um, excellent grandparents, very kind, very loving.
We were very close, we saw them several times a week.
Um, but my home, um, was very dysfunctional, there was a lot of trauma.
My mother was very abusive and, um, um, we can get into, we can get into all of that.
I was molested by an older neighborhood, a male neighborhood boy when I
was twelve years old, which really affected the, the rest of my life.
And the other event that affected me as well was, few months after
that happened, my, my mother left my father for an Italian man
twenty years younger than she was.
And in the early seventies, for an unmarried woman to live with a,
a man, um, was quite the scandal.
And especially in a Jewish neighborhood, you can imagine
what a, a scandal that was.
So I grew up with a lot of shame because of those events.
And as I got older, my shame turned into rage and anger, and I became
a very, very angry, angry person.
Um, I wrote a book called Restored, which chronicles my whole, my life, my
upbringing, all the events that happened.
And it also discusses how I finally found wholeness and peace.
And offering some advice, and some insights, and hope to others who are
dealing with either trauma, or they've been molested, or they've been, uh,
abandoned, whatever the case may be.
Um, you know, at the beginning of my book, I, I include a quote that
says, People raised on love see things differently than those raised on survival.
And I did not know how true that was until I was a much older person.
Um, I actually, I didn't realize that until I read that quote about a year
ago, and it hit me like a ton of bricks.
I mean, it really resonated with me because I was, I was not so
much raised on love, more raised on survival, uh, from a young age.
And you know, your mother is the person who's supposed to love you, care for you,
protect you, nurture you, all of that.
Um, my mother was the, the total opposite.
Very abusive woman.
And most people, they could think of bonding moments with their, their parents.
You know, your mother, you think of, I don't know, birthdays, first day of
school, graduations, whatever it is.
Uh, for me, bonding moments were being exposed to explicit
pornography by my mother when I was about nine, ten years old.
Um, my mother worked in a bar that had strippers and I was brought up there
on weekends and so here I am, ten, eleven years old, looking at strippers.
Um, my mother
would have me break windows of business associates or somebody
who she had a beef with.
You know, I was a little older then, you know, seventeen, eighteen, older teenager
then.
um, my mother had faked robberies of her home and businesses.
And one year she came to visit me, uh, in New Jersey, Atlantic
City, which is where I lived.
I moved away from Connecticut where I'm from, at twenty.
And she came down for a visit once and she dragged me to the police, police
station with her to, uh, say we had been robbed, so it was another fake robbery.
So, you know, when you think of bonding moments, these are, these are my
bonding moments, memories of my mother.
And, uh, you know, I, I'm so envious and jealous of friends
that have such great parents.
Uh, my father was a great guy.
He was very kind to me and took care of me and
no complaints there.
Um, but yeah, living with my mother, uh, was very, very traumatic and stressful.
And, uh, because of these events, and the way I, I was raised, and the
things that happened to me as, as a, in a, at a very early age, I became
very promiscuous at a young age.
Like 14, 15, I, I became very, very promiscuous.
And this of course just escalated into my later teen years and, um, adult years.
And just anecdotally, um, Simply Red is one of my favorite groups.
I love Mick Hucknall, the, the singer.
And so while learning about Mick, he was raised in a home where his mother had
abandoned the family when he was a child.
And he was a very, very promiscuous man as well.
And one of the things that he shared that, that resonated with me was, he said that,
um, he felt as if he was looking for a woman's approval, um, love that he never
got from his mother, things like that.
So, you know, when I heard that I, it really made me stop and think that I, I
think I might've been on that same path.
So the big takeaways from the book, the, the reason I, I wrote the book
is 'cause I really want to encourage people who've been, uh, abused,
molested, abandoned, um, traumatized in one way or another to, to seek help.
Uh, I never, I never sought help.
Um, I did a podcast a little while back and one of the closing questions was,
What would you have told your younger self?
And I, I said, that's really a great question.
And I thought about it and then unequivocally my answer was, get help.
Uh, I wish I had sought some help when I was younger, um, but
that was just not on my radar.
The idea that, I mean, I wouldn't even tell anybody what
happened, let alone get help.
But I would really encourage people, I don't care how old
or young you are, um, get help.
And that does not necessarily need to be a, a professional
therapist or counselor, it could be.
It could just be sharing with a, a trusted friend and confiding in
them with what happened to you.
Um, that was enough for me to work through my issues.
And, but there's no one size fits all.
So I just encourage people, you know, find what works for you,
but stop ignoring your past.
Stop ignoring your trauma because it's like a cancer
that's going to eat away at you.
It's going to affect your overall health and wellbeing and unaddressed,
eventually it'll, it'll just kill you.
Just kill you as a person.
And, um, that's what happened to me.
Um, the other thing I would share as, as, as a big overview here is that, um,
raised Jewish and always believed in God.
Um, when I was in my twenties, I, my wife was a Christian and I got
exposed to evangelical Christianity, and, but I, I found a very narrow
minded fundamentalist view of that.
Which also damaged me because it taught me, um, an incorrect view of God.
I was taught that God only loves certain individuals, not all, and
that some people are chosen by God beforehand to be His and to go to heaven.
And others are not chosen, they're just passed over, and they're horrible people,
and they're just gonna end up in hell.
It was much, much later, actually, thirty years later, that I finally was introduced
to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which come to find out has a lot in common
with Judaism, such as the fact that God loves all without condition or exception.
That people are not born bad, people are, are born good, like
the Earth, Wind and Fire song,
you know, Child is born with a heart of gold, way of the
world, makes his heart so cold.
Um, but I, I come to see that people are, are not born bad.
You can become bad through your choices, but usually it's because
of your environment, and what you're exposed to, and those very
strong influences on your behavior.
Um, the Orthodox call that ancestral sin, uh, as opposed to western theology,
be it Protestant or Catholic, they call it original sin, means you are born a
sinner and you are born with that guilt.
Um, you know, Jews and Orthodox never believe that anybody is born guilty.
You don't become guilty until you actually commit a crime or
a sin in, in, in, in that case.
So very, very different.
And coming to understand these things gave me actually a greater appreciation for
Judaism and, um, the influence of Judaism on my, my life and now my theology.
And, um, how Orthodox Christianity is just so different, just such a different view.
It changed my view of God, I started to realize that God loved even me.
I used, some, I got to the point first where God loves everybody but me.
And then eventually I got to the point where, okay, God loves me too.
And, um, it changed my view of myself, my view of God, but it also started
to change my view of other people.
I was becoming less critical and judgmental of other people.
I was very harsh because, you know, you live what you learn
and I was raised very harshly.
My mother always spoke very harshly, um, the Christianity that I was first
exposed to was very harsh, and, uh, I just adopted all those characteristics.
But I began to, as my view of God evolved, I started changing as
well and became a much more open, tolerant, accepting, uh, individual.
Um, even, even when it came to people of other religions, you know, I, I
was taught, you know, if, if you're not, if you're not a Christian, you
know, that's it, you're no good.
Um, that had, that's all gone now.
I mean, my views of that have just completely changed and we could drill
down into that if you like as well.
Um, so that's kind of how I started out, what put me on the wrong path.
Um, I, I think I finally found some wholeness and peace.
It was last year, um, a big beef with my sister, who I never got along with
my whole life, my sister and my mother.
She intended to hurt me and she hurt me in a good way because she opened up
a wound that I did not wanna deal with and ignored for many, many, many years.
And I finally said, last summer, That's it, you people
are not gonna hurt me anymore.
My sister, my mother, I'm done.
I'm done being hurt.
And I began to acknowledge everything that had happened to me.
My wife had reminded me of things that I had totally forgotten, or suppressed,
or both, but I, I dealt with everything and was able to find wholeness and peace.
And so my message to people now through my book and through speaking engagements
is, Whoever you are, whether you've been abused, molested, uh, abandoned, and even
people have suffered abuse at the hands of churches, pastors, priests, whatever it
is, you know, to help them to work through their trauma, to begin to embrace, um, a
different view of God, and to also realize that God has given everybody free will.
God did not do this to me, somebody did this to me of their own free will.
But God is there offering hope, and grace, and comfort, and peace, and,
um, and I believe that's available to people outside of Christianity.
I know that's heresy to some people, but that's what I believe now.
So, you know, that overall, that's, generally speaking, that's basically,
you know, the long and the short of it.
There, there are a lot of details in between, but, um, yeah, so that's,
that's kinda where I'm at now.
Well, Randy, that's a good, well-rounded explanation of who and what you
are, what you've dealt with in life.
Uh, I ran across, in your bio, a quote, From brokenness and trauma to
wholeness and peace, that is a journey.
And when we come from broken backgrounds, it is one of those
things that can devastate us.
And it, it was, I was fifty until I started really getting it,
understanding why I was broken.
And that's from those deep dives into the darkness that I came from.
I, I can, I can see a lot of parallels between our lives.
My, my family was not always a good family.
I love my family, you know, they're my family.
However, we went through some dark times.
We did some things that most people would just be, beyond shocked about.
And my, my mother was a very big woman, and she was very bold, and she
wasn't afraid to put things out there.
And my mother and father were divorced, we came from some poor beginnings.
So this brokenness that you talk about being restored from, it is very possible.
And I really wanna highlight that, that that is the takeaway from
today, no matter who you are, what background you come from, where all
kind of broken in the beginning.
And, and we're, we're thrust into this world of harshness.
And I, I can tell you, there's not one baby that I've ever witnessed being evil.
And it's, it, it all comes from what you explained, that trauma and that
shame and guilt that we experience.
And I've noticed it's not necessarily from ourselves necessarily, it's from
the people around us a lot of the times.
So let, let's get into the granularity of it now, Randy.
What, what was that moment, that time you said, I'm not gonna let this
happen to me anymore, and I'm not going to let you people break me anymore.
What was that moment in time like for you?
Okay.
Um, if I can, let me back up a minute and just give a little, a
little more context to it so people understand what we're dealing with.
Um, you know, my mother exposed me to pornography at nine years old.
She, um, worked at a bar that had strippers and I was watching
strippers at ten years old.
And you know, my mother would have me, as an older teenager now,
she would have me break windows of people she was angry with.
My mother faked robberies of her home and businesses.
She, uh, I left Connecticut and moved to Atlantic City.
She came there and staged a robbery while she was in Atlantic City, had me go to
the police station with her and say that we had just been robbed at gunpoint.
So, you know, when people think of bonding moments with their mother, as, you know,
birthdays, or Christmas, or whatever,
you know, these, these were my bonding moments with my mother.
These are, these are my memories and experiences.
So my mother was a very harsh, um, cruel person.
She, uh, was, could be very, very unkind.
I was abused, I was beaten, I was screamed at, all this kind of thing.
When my mother, my mother left me and my father, I was twelve years old.
And again, I'm, I'm from a, a middle class conservative Jewish family
in a very Jewish neighborhood.
For, um, a woman, you know, for my mother to leave our home and move
in with a man about twenty years younger than her, in the early
seventies, this was quite a scandal.
Um, so we were the talk of the neighborhood,
of course, I felt a lot of shame because of that.
Shortly after that I was molested by an older neighborhood boy, which added
more shame, um, and trauma to me.
And this, this is who my mother was.
My sister was cut from the same cloth, very mean, very mean-spirited,
very sharp tongue, and all of that.
So my mother, when I was, um, my first, first abandonment was when I was twelve.
And she left me and my father, did not ask me to come with her,
didn't want me, took my sister.
When I was twenty-five, my mother, um, had a falling out with the whole family.
My, my uncle, who's her brother, my grandmother, who's her mother, and
me, she stopped talking to all of us.
She wanted money and she asked me to co-sign a loan.
And I refused to do it because I had just gotten married and didn't wanna
jeopardize my future credit and I knew my mother had never paid a bill in her life.
Um, my uncle would not give her any more money and her mother
would not give her any more money.
Um, some of the robberies, I found out, I just found this out last year,
some of the robberies that happened fifty years ago, um, my mother needed
the money to give to her Italian lover that she, she left us to go live with.
She faked robberies, and money, you know, some for insurance, went to him.
Some things were actually stolen and sold, and that money went to, to him as well.
So this, this was my family, this is what I came from.
And
again, when I was twenty-five, she stopped talking to all of us.
She didn't talk, she, my grandmother died with my mother never reconciling with her.
My mother never reconciled with my uncle, I was the one who reached out
after twenty years to try to reconcile.
And there, there was a reconciliation, but it was very superficial.
My mother has, had never met my children, never even inquired what their
names or birthdays were or anything.
Nothing.
Um, I never asked for an apology or an explanation for things that she had
done to me, uh, when I was a, when I was a kid, I just, I just let it go.
I let her off the hook.
Well, last year, this brings us up to last year and what the, the catalyst was.
Last year, my, I'm in the hospital, I had very serious health
problems that started in 2018.
Um, I had emergency surgery, um, I had my, abdomen, uh, my
stomach basically ruptured.
I had to have my stomach removed.
There were all kinds of complications.
I was in the hospital for six weeks and almost died several times.
And since then I've had complications, uh, I've been hospitalized twenty times
in, in the last, you know, since 2018.
Well, last summer, I'm in the hospital again, this is in July,
and my sister sends me a scathing message that, um, You'd never come
up to Connecticut to see your mother.
You know, you don't care about anybody but yourself.
You're, you know, you're, you're, you're selfish, you're this,
you're that, all that kind stuff.
So, you know, it was really kind of hurtful to hear all these
things, but not surprising because she was always harsh towards me.
She's older than me, she's three years older than me.
Um, I was very upset by the whole thing, I started crying, I'm in the hospital,
my daughter's with me consoling me.
And when I got home from the hospital, my wife started reminding me of
things that I had actually forgotten.
That they wanted nothing to do with me, I was the one that reached out to them
after twenty years.
I started piecing things back together that were just all disconnected
from my childhood and my life.
And
what happened was, I, I, I just had this resolve within me now.
It's like, You know what?
I am not gonna let these people harm me again.
Oh, here's another little story.
I left Connecticut and moved to New Jersey.
I would go up to Connecticut very often to visit my grandmother,
'cause my grandmother was alone.
One, one day my grandmother comes home from going to the
market, buying some groceries.
A man approaches her in her driveway, beats the hell out of her.
She had a very large diamond ring on her finger from her husband,
my grandfather.
The man broke her finger getting the ring off her finger, punched her, she
was black and blue, she looked like she had been in a, a boxing match.
And he told her, If you look at me good enough to see who I am, I will kill you.
Now, two things about this.
One, there's no doubt in my mind or my uncle's mind that
my mother was behind this.
Because my mother was always in need of money, my mother was always
committing or faking robberies or some, something of that nature.
No doubt in my mind my mother had this done and there's no doubt in my
mind as to who did it because I knew the people that she associated with.
Um, at this point, she had another lover, another Italian man, and
he had a hoodlum nephew that I knew, uh, I was introduced to.
And I knew him and there's no question in my mind he was the one who did it.
So this is my family, this is my mother, this is my sister.
Um, I'm as different from my sister and my uncle is as different from
my mother as Cain was from Abel.
Just total opposites.
When this happened, again, I, I, I, the resolve kicked in.
That's it, I'm done.
You're never gonna hurt me again.
I dealt with everything that I had been through in the past
that I ignored, suppressed.
Uh, I forgot about the thing with my grandmother, I forgot
that I was the one who tried to reconcile, I forgot all this stuff.
And my wife had reminded me, and my uncle had reminded me.
And working through all of it, I was finally able to have peace about it.
Because part of my message in the book and my message to people
is, you are not the monster here.
You are a victim.
And, um, I finally came to, to recognize that, and deal
with that, and move past it.
Um, but
the things that my family, specifically my mother had done throughout her
life, towards me, towards my father, towards her mother, towards other
people are just, they're atrocious.
I mean, just atrocious.
Now, the last anecdote I'll share with you about it and then, you know, we'll,
I'll let you drive, drive this ship, um, I wrote, started writing the book in July.
The book was published last September.
I get, my father died when I was 18.
Um,
I get a message from a friend of mine on Facebook who was a friend
I've known for over fifty years.
She offers me condolences about my mother.
Now to not make her feel uncomfortable or like she said something that
she shouldn't have said, I just said, thank you, I appreciate that.
And I was like, What the hell is this?
Like, my mother died?
So I try to find obituary, you know, Googling this, that, and the
other thing, I can't find anything.
So after about five days, I called the county coroner, confirmed
some information with her.
And come to find out, my mother died last October.
My sister told no one, okay?
She hates me, right?
So she didn't tell me.
She has, she has no beef with my aunt and uncle, she didn't tell them.
She told no one.
So again, just to, to reiterate, this is my family.
This is what I come from.
Um, I am not the only person that has had a horrible family, you know?
Um, but again, the whole catalyst for writing the book is, and it's
called Restored because everything in my life needed to be restored.
My relationship with my wife, my relationship with my children,
my health, uh, my soul, my,
my, um, self-image.
I mean, everything.
I had to start from scratch and rebuild, realizing that it's not me.
You know, I, I,
I was the victim here.
And, um, it's important that people know who've had, you
know, really crappy upbringings or families or things like that.
Um, you can either follow their example and become like them or not.
I chose to not become like them, but I was carrying out, I was carrying
around damage and trauma that was unhealed for many, many years.
And I always, I, you know, there's this expression, Hurt people, hurt people.
So I ended up hurting my wife and my children and, and other people
as well because, um, I was hurt.
So it, it was a very long, difficult road.
There's a lot more to it.
There's a lot that happened between me and my wife and uh, my health issues and all.
But it's basically a story of overcoming tremendous obstacles,
tremendous disadvantages.
You know, from the start being set on a wrong path so young.
Um, but there's a happy ending and I try to offer people encouragement,
hope, insights, some practical steps to help yourself to become a
better self, and things like that.
So that's my goal, is that other people themselves will become
restored and find wholeness and peace.
Because you and I both know there's, there's no shortage of
hurting people in the world today.
That is for sure, Randy.
You know, I, I like to always say I have this muddy shoe life theory
and it really is the key to success.
Life is like a muddy shoe going down a muddy path.
And the mud that we're walking in, in that shoe is the people, the
places, and things in our life.
And if you've walked a muddy path, you know that mud collects
and your shoes can get so heavy.
Enough where it wears you out, tires you out.
Take some time and scrape the mud off of your shoe.
Find a rock or a stick and scrape it off.
This is the people, the places, and the things that hurt us or destroy us.
These things are not healthy for us.
The good mud, it will stay with us in the tread of your shoe and keep going with us.
But we don't have to pack all that mud with us.
And the secret to a healthy, happy life is truly what we just talked
about there, wiping that mud off.
Getting those people out of our life that are harming us, doing those
things that are not good for us.
And this is really key to success.
What, what's your thought on that, Randy?
Well, I mean, is that your analogy?
I mean, that was really excellent.
Yes.
Wow, that was fantastic.
I love that.
Thank you.
I'm gonna steal that.
Do, do, I, I like to share that.
It, very well put, uh, Ed, very well put.
Um, but you reminded me of something that I also reiterate several times in
the book, and that is you do not need anybody's permission to cut out of your
life anything or anyone that is harming you or not adding value to your life
and helping you become a better person.
And you don't, you don't need anybody's permission to, to get rid of that.
And, um, you know, I know a lot of people find that hard to do.
They, they, they, they, for what, whatever reason, they feel guilty,
they feel bad, you know, oh, what's gonna happen to this person?
Well, if that's what your thought is, actually, that's your pride.
Because you're thinking what's gonna happen to this person without me?
So, you know, examine that a little bit.
Take a look at yourself, sometimes that's our pride saying that.
Um, but put that aside.
Because you know what?
It's, everybody in this world is not your problem.
You, you, you, your first priority is yourself, your spouse, your
children, you know, whatever it is.
But it's, it's like concentric circles that go out from there.
So somebody who's just an acquaintance at best, bye.
You know, you don't, you don't owe these people anything.
You don't.
You owe yourself and you owe those closest to you.
Yeah.
You know, and people will allow people to hurt them.
And it's that Stockholm syndrome thing where we get
comfortable with those people.
And, you know, our, our life is ours after the age of eighteen.
There is no one in control of you, but you.
And those people, those places, and things, we get attached to
because those people told us, Well, you have to feel this way.
And that's subconscious.
It's like the crabs in the bucket syndrome, and you can look that up, where
if somebody tries to crawl out of that bucket, the others are gonna pull you
back in and even destroy you at times.
So it's very interesting.
If we take the time to educate ourself about what happened in our life, because
you, you even stated it, your wife had to remind you of some things, your
uncle had to remind you of things.
That's because we shut that valve off and we don't wanna remember it.
But remembering those, yes, remembering those dark things
is actually the key to success.
It really is, it really is.
It's, it's like a cancer, you know?
I mean, you can't ignore it.
You, sooner or later it's gonna affect your entire body
if unchecked and kill you.
You, you have to deal with it, you have to cut it out, you have to remove it.
And that process may be painful, but you're gonna come out healthy.
You know, you're gonna find wholeness and peace on the other end.
And if I could say one thing, 'cause you mentioned Stockholm Syndrome and you
reminded me of something really important that I would like to share with people
who, who have been abused, molested, suffered trauma, or whatever it is.
Um, shortly after I released the book, uh, maybe three days after, a panic set in.
A panic and I felt like, what have I just done?
I've just outed my mother.
I've just, I've just told everybody the secrets, every, that my mother did to me.
And I contacted a friend of mine who's a, who's a therapist, and
I said, You know, what is this?
Is this a normal thing?
He said, people like yourself, this is a very normal thing.
And, um, I worked through it after a couple days.
But it's important to, to say, to mention to people that you, you defend, I, I
kept my mother's secrets for fifty years and you begin to defend your abusers
and you do it for so long, you don't even realize you're doing it anymore.
It's just, it's just second nature.
And when you, when you, uh, go in a different direction and you finally
expose it, what happened to me was, like I said, this panic set in,
oh my God, what have I just done?
But I worked through it and realized, wait a minute, I'm telling the
story, but she's the monster, not me.
You know?
Um, it's very important for people who've had similar experiences and again,
that Stockholm syndrome kind of thing.
I now know what that feels like.
I mean, I never experienced that.
It was an emotion I never experienced in my life, ever.
So, uh, and it was unexpected, Ed.
It was a very, yeah, but I never expected it.
I didn't know that I was gonna feel like this, you know?
So it, it was really, it was really something to go through
that and work through that.
So I share that, hoping that that might resonate with people out there who've
had similar experiences, um, because we're finding out that many more people
than we've ever realized have been, um, abused, molested, uh, whatever.
I mean, you know, a lot of people have had horrible experiences in their childhoods.
Um, and it happens to boys and girls, it's not just one or the other.
It happens to all people, all kinds of people.
Um, did I, did I, yeah.
Forgive me.
Did I mention, uh, I did.
Nevermind, I did mention it about my mother passing away.
Okay.
I remember that.
You know, and, and, and you know, Randy, with that, you know, you,
you had that shame and guilt for outing your mother, but wasn't
that after she had already passed?
No, she was still, she was still alive when the book came out.
It was before, it was before, yeah.
Oh, interesting.
It was right after the book came out, but she was alive.
But here's the thing, um, and this was unexpected as well.
When I found out my mother died, this, I've read the thing, I'm standing,
I'm standing at a, at this like coffee house where I go to, and I'm
standing at the, at the counter.
I look at the message and I just said to the girl who works there behind
the counter who I'm friendly with, I just went, Oh, my mother died.
Just like that.
I had, I felt nothing.
Nothing.
Um, I spoke to my uncle and I asked, I told him what happened.
I said, I didn't feel anything.
He said, I didn't feel anything either.
So I contacted a friend of mine, the therapist, and I said, Is this normal?
I said, I felt absolutely nothing.
He said two things.
He said, one, your mother had broken the bonds of familial
love with you so long ago,
so many times and had pushed you away and wanted nothing to do with you for so
long that there was just nothing left.
You know, I did not know how I would respond hearing that my mother had died.
It was not the reaction that I thought I would have.
And then when I did have that reaction, Ed, I was like, Something wrong with me?
Am I, am I a psychopath here?
I mean, you know, what is this?
So I, you know, I had to speak to somebody and say, Well, you know, is this normal?
And he explained to me, for some people, um, and with my circumstances,
this is perfectly normal.
And the same thing with my uncle.
My mother had pushed him away,
she hadn't spoken to him for close to forty years, wanted
nothing to do with him.
There was nothing left, there's just nothing left.
So it was, it was, again, an unexpected emotion or lack of emotion.
And I share, again, I share that because, um, for anybody else out there
that may have experienced that, uh, I'm, I'm thinking of going through my
book and maybe doing a second edition and including these things that
happened after the book had come out.
Because I want, I want these things to resonate with people
who've had similar experiences.
I want them to know that these are normal feelings or emotions or lack
of feelings, if that be the case, depending upon what happened to you.
This may be perfectly normal and you need to know that.
Um, so I want people to know that, and that's why I'm doing this show.
That's why we're talking about it now.
I want to encourage people who are, um, victims of different things to
let them know that you're not the monster, you're not the bad guy.
And not only that, but to go beyond that, to bring them to a place of, of wholeness,
healing, and being restored themselves.
That's, that's, the whole point.
I mean, I didn't write this book to make a lot of money.
Uh, I wrote it because I, I real, that's my real motivation, I
really wanna help other people who've been through similar things.
Well, also it's self motivational when we get behind the pen or the
microphone and we share our story.
You know, it's self-healing.
This is therapy.
I found out big time that it has helped me recover and actually
pinpoint some of those dark secrets that I shut off in my life.
So when, when we get on the mic and share, or we write books and
we share these experiences, it's really part of that trauma release.
And it, it really empowers us because we overcome and we decide, no, we're going
to push forward with a new beginning.
This is so helpful for other trauma victims.
It, it doesn't matter what type of trauma we go through, a lot of
it is sexual, but there's mental trauma, there's physical trauma, and,
and it all happens and breaks us.
What we're doing, Randy, is helping heal people.
And that's why I started the Dead America Podcast.
I was broken and I am well on my way to recovery and restoration,
but it's a never ending process.
So that second book, the third book, it's part of our healing.
And it not only is healing, it's bridge building for those people
suffering trauma now that they're trying to get over that chasm.
Randy, I, I have had a wonderful, uh, episode here with you,
I think we've covered a lot.
Is there anything else that you wanna add before we conclude?
I would just say, you know, I did a podcast last week and the
interviewer asked me a question, um, I really wasn't prepared for.
She said, What would you tell your younger self?
And I said, What a great question.
And I pondered it for a second, and then unequivocally my answer was, Get help.
Um, I never told anybody what happened to me.
And because of that, a lot of it had to do with the era that I grew up in.
You know, I grew up in the sixties.
My dad was a Marine and you know, you didn't talk about emotional stuff.
That's just the way it was back then and for me.
But we live in a different world now,
uh, people are more in touch with their feelings and emotions and all of that.
And I would just encourage anybody, um, get help.
Uh, whether it's professional help, confiding in a trusted friend, whatever,
you know, you don't have to go through this alone or feel this way anymore.
There's help there.
Um, and if I can be restored, I suffered, you know, sexual trauma, emotional trauma,
physical trauma, I mean, you name it.
And at the hands of somebody who's supposed to protect you,
love you, and nurture you.
Um, I, I worked through it, I found healing, I found wholeness and peace.
And there's hope out there for, for, for, for everyone really.
And I just wanna be an encourager, um, and an inspiration to other
people to help them on their journey.
That's awesome, Randy.
Could you let people know how to get the book and how to connect with you?
Sure.
Um, they can easily get the book on Amazon.
It's, it's available all over the place, but that's the easiest
place to get it, on Amazon.
Um, just look up my name, Randy Pitkin.
And it's Restored From Brokenness and Trauma to Wholeness and Peace.
And, uh, it's available in ebook, um, print.
And, uh, on Google, they also have an, there's an audiobook available on Google
Play if they want, uh, the audiobook.
Um, as far as connecting with me, uh, right now I just
started a YouTube channel.
I have a Facebook page and I also have an Instagram, just RandyPitkin@Instagram
and Randy Pitkin on Facebook.
And I have a business page there dedicated to the book.
So that's, you know, reach out if you want.
And if you have questions, ask questions.
I'd be happy to answer any questions.
I'm available for anyone.
Randy, it's been a good conversation today with you and I thank you for
participating on the podcast today.
Thank you, Ed.
I appreciate being here and, uh, I enjoyed it very much as well.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you for joining us today.
If you found this podcast enlightening, entertaining, educational in any way,
please share, like, subscribe, and join us right back here next week for another
great episode of the Dead America Podcast.
I'm Ed Watters, your host, enjoy your afternoon wherever you might be.