Cesar's Accident: The Scars of Rebirth

In this powerful episode, Cesar bravely recounts the night he was physically assaulted by a group of men—a traumatic event that left him with severe physical injuries and a deep, unshakable imprint on his psyche that changed him forever. He details the harrowing moments of the attack and the grueling recovery process that forced him to confront deep-seated anger, self-loathing, and the loss of his previous identity as a boxer and physical trainer. 

Throughout the episode, Cesar shares how this life-altering experience, though steeped in pain and vulnerability, ultimately led him to a transformative journey. By choosing to let go of his justified anger and embrace forgiveness and self-love, he not only began healing physically but also embarked on a spiritual rebirth. For anyone facing a rock bottom, this episode may resonate with hope for renewal and inner peace.

In this episode: 

• The raw truth behind facing trauma and finding unexpected beauty in the pain
• The challenging question posed to Cesar—and why saying “no thank you” changed everything
• His mother’s powerful reaction and Foster’s maternal connection to her
• How breaking the cycle of anger was Cesar’s ultimate act of self-love
• The hidden power of forgiveness—and how letting go of rage became the key to renewal
• The surprising role of vulnerability in reclaiming control and peace

Foster also mentions the loss of her son Wilde, which is discussed in Episode 3: Foster’s Loss. 

You can also watch the episodes on YouTube. 

If you enjoyed this episode, take a moment to follow Beauty in the Break on your favorite podcast app and leave a review—it really helps!

Reach out to the show—send an email or voice note to beautyinthebreakpod@gmail.com and be sure to follow on Instagram. 

Cesar Cardona:

• Attend his upcoming speaking engagements
• Listen to music from Cesar + The Clew on Apple Music and Spotify
• Receive his monthly newsletter Insights That Matter

Foster Wilson:

• Buy her poetry book Afternoon Abundance
• Learn about her postpartum services
• Receive her monthly newsletter Foster’s Village

Created & Hosted by: Cesar Cardona and Foster Wilson

Executive Producer: Glenn Milley

Editor: Bessie Fong

Transcript

It hit me like an epiphany.

It washed over me after that.

And I just became a part of that understanding of,

if I continue to go through this cycle of anger,

what else is waiting for me?

There is a huge value to anger as a reaction to that.

That is a piece of this grieving process.

And I saw this opening of, this is your opportunity.

When anger is most justified in your life,

where you turn to it and say, no,

thank you.

Hello and welcome to Beauty in the Break. I'm Foster.

And I'm Cesar.

This is the podcast where

we explore the moments that break us open and how we find beauty on the other side.

So whatever

you're carrying today, you don't have to carry it alone. We are here with you.

Thanks for being here

and enjoy the show. Hello, everyone. Before we get started, I want to offer a content disclosure

for today's episode. We are going to be talking about a sensitive subject for some people involving

assault and suicidal ideation. If this is a difficult subject for you, please hit pause

and come back to this episode only if and when you feel safe doing so. And now on with the show.

Hello. Hello. What's going on?

I feel like I haven't seen you in a couple of days. Yeah.

I feel

Like sometimes we get into the thing where we're together, but for the sake of the kids or for sake of an event.

And then at some point it all like, you know, transitions to the next moment.

And we look at each other and we go, hi.

Oh, yeah.

Hi.

We go, hi.

In L.A., when it rains, for the most part, people are kind of like glum about it.

But considering all the stuff that's happened recently, everybody's thrilled for the rain.

I see people going outside for no reason.

And then the sun came out on top of it.

So it kind of compounded the joy.

Everybody's outside.

People in the streets like, no, no, you go first.

No, no, no, you go first.

No, no, no, no, it's okay.

I can't tell you how many texts I got this week of, enjoy the rain.

Hope you're enjoying the rain.

I'm like, I was last night.

I did not put my white noise on because I was like, no, I'm going to listen just to the rain.

That's

good.

Another thing that's been working for me is getting back into training.

With the exception of yoga, I haven't done any physical like demanding workout in almost two years.

There has been a place in my head that just didn't want to do it.

I'm not going to force myself to do it.

I spent many years doing a lot of intense workouts.

I want to give myself the space.

I used to be able to go

extreme

as much as I want to, but

I

can't do that anymore.

the incident that happened to me some years ago,

I now have

pains

in my stomach from scar tissue from the surgery.

Like I'm reminded of my strength,

how I've been able to get to this point

in

my life

and

also my fragility.

Yeah. Well, let's paint the picture.

Also you were a boxer for many years.

So you were in prime physical condition.

Let's get into what, what changed for you.

Yeah. Physically.

Physically.

Yeah. So a couple of episodes ago, I shared my, probably the most pivotal moment of my life thus far, which was the loss of my son Wilde, which is an episode three. We'll link that in the show notes. And I would venture to say this might be one of the most pivotal

points

in your life.

I would say this is probably the worst night of my life.

About six years ago, almost.

Yeah, six years ago, I was assaulted by a group of men.

Horrible, painful, absolutely demonstrably tragic.

Every day now gives me an opportunity to think about it and also to realize where I am.

Because I almost wasn't here.

let's go back to the night of what happened.

I know there's a lot here.

Take me back to this night of this event.

Typically, when I think about it to my own self, my own life,

I think about the circumstances of who I was as a person.

First off, I wasn't being healthy to my own self.

I was in an unhealthy relationship

as

well.

I wasn't tending to myself

in

a healthy manner.

I didn't even love myself.

What's more is that I'm going out in the world,

participating in things that I shouldn't be participating in anyway.

Spending time with people that I don't need to be around.

These people are not focused in a way that

I

want to be focused in my life.

I came to Los Angeles to be a musician and to help connect people.

And instead, I was being more divisive and being loathing to my own self

and putting things in my body that are harmful and being

risky

in my life.

Just not good.

Nonetheless, I was out at a bar

with

my partner at the time, and there was a woman who was

talking to somebody, and we had talked to her briefly as well.

And she looks to me, and she mouths the word, help me.

Now, I remember her face

saying

that.

I remember her eyes, very detailed.

I remember that very much.

I don't remember anything else around that, but I remember that moment.

So my partner and I at the time walked over, we put our arm around her and we said to the guy that she was talking to, hey, she's with us.

We're together.

We're friends or whatever.

She's not interested.

He didn't like that.

And a pushing match started.

And then at some point, my partner and I left the bar.

The security was like, you guys should go.

When we were outside, we went to go walk back to our car.

He went and got

about

two to three of his other friends.

They went outside, and there's multiple entrances and exits to this place.

They went outside, came up behind us, and hit us from behind and knocked me down.

They knocked my partner down.

One of the guys hit her and held her down.

I tried to get up, and someone pushed me back down.

They started kicking my abdomen and stomping on my head and my face

on

the concrete.

The police report says that I tried to get up again, and they pushed me back down.

And then at some point, they kicked me, and I completely went unconscious.

While I'm unconscious, they didn't stop.

They kept kicking.

At one point, one of them picked me up by the shirt while I was unconscious and kept hitting me.

And then they dropped me and started stomping on me again.

Eventually, security and some other Good Samaritan came and kind of broke it up.

and those men

who

assaulted me, they

ran

off.

I'm completely in the middle of the street.

I'm unconscious.

To this day, I have no recollection of this.

You know what?

I remember one thing.

There was a moment where

I

was,

I remember feeling the concrete on my head.

I opened my eyes and my mouth was full of liquid.

And obviously it was blood, but I don't remember tasting blood.

I remember feeling like I woke up

And I had the same feeling you feel if someone

pulls

you from underwater.

And then I remember something in me was saying, drop your head, close your eyes.

It's much better over there.

And I went back.

They did all that to you.

What kind of injuries occurred after that?

They had kicked me so hard

and

knocked me unconscious while continuously kicking and stomping on me.

They fractured

my

right eye socket.

they fractured the

the

walling of my nose i don't know what the phrase is for that

they smashed the forefront of my teeth they were completely out of my head

your teeth are attached to what's called a bridge it's the space that is

the

bone that's behind your

lip

your

top lip

that

was completely smashed

in

addition to that my tongue the front of it from

being kicked was about 80% removed from the rest of the tongue.

And it was bleeding.

In the ambulance, they had to, while I was awake, they had to just cut off

that

piece

that was left.

That's called, there's a charge for that, it's called mayhem actually, which I've always

found that a little comical.

And then on top of that, they were kicking my abdomen and they didn't puncture my stomach,

but they did puncture my bladder.

so

at some point they put me into the ambulance and i woke up and started saying that i had to pee

and so they cut my jeans and said you can and i couldn't

that's

when the ambulance knew that

something

was wrong

so

and my stomach is hard to swell

with

a punctured bladder it doesn't take much

for you to have an infection,

for things to bleed internally,

and you could die.

Not to mention all my head trauma.

Okay, so you're in the ambulance.

They've just torn off a piece of your tongue.

What, you get to the hospital, what next?

I

have no recollection of any of this.

There's head trauma will make you forget

like the hour before,

and then who knows how long after.

Even though I was conscious,

which

is such an interesting note right that your brain protects you in that way so that perhaps you

don't have to relive that in your memory i

would even take it a step further and say there's something

in us that will remove you from that sort of situation because

when

i was a teenager i was

troublemaker and there was so many times i could see myself doing things but i didn't

wreck it feel what was going on

there's

some part of you that's like you were taking you out of this

because this is animalistic and you should be something else.

You're, you know, whatever.

So after that, I had to go into surgery

immediately.

They tried non-invasive to see what was going on and they weren't able to.

So they had to cut my stomach open

from

the top of the belly button to my pubic bone.

And then they found that my bladder had been ruptured.

They stitched, closed my bladder and then

stapled,

closed my stomach, which if I may say that is one of the most painful things in the whole world for the next few weeks is brutal.

You use your stomach

to laugh,

to cough, to sneeze, to talk.

Sneezing was horrible to have about 15 staples in your stomach.

And every single time you're about to sneeze, you know it's coming.

You

have to put a pillow over it.

It's the same with cesarean, too.

Recovering from abdominal surgery is no joke.

I wish I knew that.

What do you remember?

At some point, you woke up.

I looked the nurse in the eye, waking up from surgery, and I said, I'm dead, right?

And she said, no, you're not.

I said,

just

do me a favor.

I've had enough of a life.

I've seen enough.

I don't want to be here anymore.

I am tired.

can you please kill me

of

course she said no

and they rolled me through the hallway

when I rolled into my room

it looked straight down

into

the

bathroom

and there was a mirror there

and

I got to see myself for the first time

and

I saw my face

and my lips covered in blood

no teeth in the front

my

eye pushed in

my nose smashed

everything about my body hurt

everything about my soul hurt

I

was an atheist at that time

and

everything that I couldn't even

put words to because I didn't believe in that stuff at the time

hurt

I rolled through there

saw myself in the mirror and I said

damn

verbally

my partner called my sister

because it was the middle of the night.

My sister

waited until

daytime

to

call my mom

for the beautiful generosity of her.

But I think about my sister often having to sit with that thought

because my partner called my sister while I was in surgery.

So there's all these question marks.

Now, because my stomach was cut open, I couldn't walk.

Try to stand up

from

a chair.

First thing you're going to use is your core.

couldn't do it

because

I had no teeth because my tongue was cut off because my lips were swollen

I couldn't eat

couldn't

talk

I

felt like a baby

it

felt like being an infant and I needed to be tended

to

when

your mom flew out tell me the story of what happened when she came out

yeah

so my mother

I'm her golden child my mother adores me and I love her just the same

I'll

never forget this I was

sitting on that L-shaped couch. My mom walks in, goes straight to me and just starts kissing my

face, looks me in the eyes, makes a full 180, goes straight to the bathroom and vomits.

In that moment, my first thought was, what have I done to my mom?

I

didn't deserve

that

attack.

And also, I don't need to be in situations like that.

I didn't need to be there at 1130 at night, just hanging around.

I just feel that pain of a mother, like, to not react to your face and not to show you what's happening to her inside.

You know, it's that, the ultimate duality of motherhood.

I must protect my baby and I cannot stand anything to happen to my child.

Yeah.

I love your mother so much

for that.

Yeah, she's a wonderful woman.

There is something to be said about

wanting

to help somebody

and

getting this in response.

There's something to be said about wanting to save the day

and

getting that.

Do you regret helping that woman?

No.

Nope.

Nope.

Not one bit.

not one bit whatsoever. I have no regrets in helping that woman. And for so long,

there was a voice in my head that said, this is why people aren't good. This is why they don't go

out of their way to help. This is why people are evil.

It's

like a no good deed goes unpunished.

Right.

And this was maybe one of the ultimate punishments.

What was your recovery process like from all of that?

It

took me a long time to heal again.

I was still a physical trainer, so I couldn't train.

I couldn't work.

The recovery process was slow

and

daunting.

The very first time I was able to go shower,

I

got in the shower.

I was with my partner at the time, and she got in the shower with me to help

because I couldn't stand on my own.

And then at some point, the water washed over my eyes, and I closed my eyes,

and then I could feel water in my mouth again.

And

it immediately made me cry.

And she had to hold me while I was in that shower crying

because it felt exactly like that moment

where I was on the ground and I came to

for

that split second.

Time goes by and

I'm

doing what I can to learn to eat again,

learn to walk again.

It is actually like a rebirth.

What

happened with your teeth?

Somewhere in the street, gone.

The process of the healing was the worst.

Any food, because the gum line was ripped open, the tongue was ripped open, any food with any flavor burned my entire mouth.

I had to live in L.A. for four or five months with no teeth in the front.

One, that is a thing of vanity because we live in a city where people are good looking.

Yes to that.

But two, it's something else to be said about.

You have to go out into the world looking like that.

I had a lisp.

I couldn't.

Anytime I would sleep on my back, oh, I just remembered this.

because my mouth wouldn't close fully if I slept on my back.

Any saliva would go to the back of my throat and I would cough.

So I would be woken up

to

cough out of nowhere with a stapled stomach

in complete misery, this pulling pain at my stomach.

I'm reminded of, what is the myth of dragging the rock up the hill?

Sisyphus.

Thank you, Sisyphus.

Like I do this and then I get hit the other way and I'm knocked down again.

And I try to do this and I can't.

It's just a brutal process.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I remember feeling that and feeling that running that ball up the hill and it just being tumbling

back down.

And every single time I grew more anger and my anger started building up.

This was another version of you though.

This was a person who was very angry at the time.

Most people today don't know that version of you.

You are a much more calm and peaceful person.

So I imagine you couldn't work for a while in this recovery, but your business was working

with clients.

How did that affect your business and your clientele in those weeks, months?

The irony of being a physical trainer and not being physical your own self took me a while

to leave the house for periods of time, let alone driving with the seatbelt because the

around your stomach.

By

the time I was able to, I couldn't work out with the client. I would have

to just give them things to do. I lost about a handful of clients, which is a good amount.

And then the clients that stayed were

there

for me. If I needed to move something, they said,

I'll move it. One client in particular, when I showed up to her for the first time, she handed me

two to three checks. And she said, I already had budget for it anyway. I'm sure you need this money.

Take it.

From

what I understand, this event and incident really, you said, rebirthed you and

changed you.

Yeah.

I grew up around angry people, yelling people. And I thought that's just the way

it was. And I inherited that and started living my life with anger and yelling and violence and

loud volumes to make my point

to

be at this almost ground zero for my body and my mind the first

thing that comes up is to go back to the anger

oh

rightfully so i mean hello

you

tried to help

someone

and

this happened to you you didn't ask for it you didn't provoke them

and

they

piled on you and you were completely outnumbered and you were unconscious like it is

there

is a

huge value to anger as a reaction to that that is a piece of this grieving process that is a valid

response i would say

very

much one of the guys in the police record he's 6'2 220

i'm

5'10 at best

160. So much of me wanted to

feel

anger in order to feel revenge.

If it were me, I would be

constantly thinking about these people that you have no recollection of and these people that hurt

you in this way. Was that on your mind in these early days and weeks after? Were you thinking about

who they were? Where are they? What are we going to do about it?

Yes, especially and particularly

through the filter of anger

a

small percentage of fear also because i don't remember what they

look like

oh right

yeah

what

if they just see me

i

don't know what to do with that

putting

together

the story as much as possible was by way of asking my partner

i

called the detective to go over the

case he was gathering the video footage of the entire location i i he said he would let me know

what he found if he found the people and a lot of those thoughts were almost instantly stopped by

saying

you

shouldn't have been there anyway you deserve this this is what happens in this world

this is why you don't want to be here to begin with

did

you think it was your fault this happened to you you know there's a

part of me that

thinks you don't need to be in that environment of things you don't like anyway i don't like i

didn't like loud crowded places to begin with yet i'm putting myself in places that i don't want to

be anyhow because i didn't stop and say if you don't like it don't do it

there's

that self-loathing

again

it's

such a long recovery process and there's a lot of ongoing pain what was your

pain management look like? Was it healthy? Was it not healthy? What did you use to manage the pain?

Not healthy. At the time, I didn't have any healthy coping methods in my life ever. I already wasn't

loving myself anyway. They gave me medication

that

helped. And then at some point, I started drinking

to kind of numb myself. I started using other drugs as well to just get out of it,

Just

to wake up with it all just waiting for me again.

And now more

struggles

from using and overindulging.

I got to imagine looking in the mirror ongoing with no teeth.

And all of this bruising is very painful to relive every time you walked past a mirror.

So at what point did that normalize for you?

Or did you sort of feel like yourself again?

Never.

Never?

No.

I don't feel like myself. It's always there. It's always going to be there. When I saw myself in the

mirror, it looked

like

something I deserved

because

I grew up self-loathing.

And

today,

I love myself

and

I look at myself in the mirror

and

I still see the scars.

The mirror stayed the same.

I changed.

Were these men held accountable for what they did to you?

The detective was able to get names of these people

and

have footage as well.

So we'd look up their social media profile,

look at the video, and put them together.

The question often went from,

were there four people or three people?

It seemed like four often,

and then the video showed that that fourth person

was the one going in there to help break it up.

It

took him a year to get enough evidence for it because the charges are assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated assault, and mayhem.

Mayhem is what's called when you cause injury to somebody and a piece of their body is removed.

So the deadly weapon is their hands.

They were using, right?

Their hands, their shoes, I suppose, maybe.

Their feet stomping.

Aggravated assault clearly is, I'm just unconscious.

My partner had said multiple times

in

speaking to the detective, it looked like Gumby, the way he was just being

flung

around.

God,

it must have been so hard for her to watch that.

She had a tough time with it.

I am forever grateful for her because she tended to me.

There's love in my heart for her for the rest of my life.

So once they arrested them, they started to build a case because of the footage and because of the eyewitnesses.

Gosh, okay. So for so long, these were these mystery men who you had a lot of anger towards.

And then they find them and they arrest them. What is it like now to know that they're detained

and also that they have an identity?

Yeah. The entire year

was

led up to this,

again, this mystery. It feels like a spirit or a ghost or a monster because you can't humanize them

because you don't know what they look like. And your mind is going to put in the worst case scenario.

Right, right, right.

I chose to at one point.

There was an arraignment or hearing for one of them.

I chose to go to one of them.

I still didn't know what he looked like.

So I went there.

I was, again, a year and a half had gone by by now.

I have my injuries still, but I was mobile enough.

If you meet me now, you can't tell something wrong until I tell you.

I just deal with the pain.

And I'm sitting in the room while the arraignment's happening.

And it was one of those where like multiple people are getting called up.

Right.

I don't know what he looks like.

And then I turn to my right and I look at someone and he looks me dead in the eyes.

And somehow I go, oh, that's him.

That's the guy.

And he

saw

me after that

and

then just stared.

There wasn't a feeling of anger

or

malice

or

any of that.

He just,

it

almost like he got to see me as the human I was.

He just saw me.

I have to imagine if he

wondered

whether or not you were alive or dead.

I mean, you very well could have been dead.

All along the way, there were so many opportunities for you to have

passed.

I wonder what he thought.

Well, time comes that both of them are soon to be sentenced.

the judge got message to me

if

I would like him to give them maximum sentencing.

Now here's where that anger comes in. Here's where I realized, oh, this is, these are three

felonies. I can be full, this is my chance to really give it back to them. And then it was in

that moment I realized if I'm speaking and living and choosing from that anger, then they have

me every day of my life. And I realized, and I saw this opening of, this is your opportunity

when

anger is most justified in your life, where you turn to it and say, no, thank you.

For once, I'm going to choose peace.

How

did you come up with that though? Because in every

other situation, in pretty much anybody else's case, it would feel right to get the justice

How did you, I mean, you got justice, but how did that idea pop into your head?

I couldn't tell you.

I don't know.

That's not in accord with who I am as a person all the way up until that age.

It hit me like an epiphany.

It washed over me after that.

And I just became a part of that understanding of if I

continue

to go through this cycle of

anger, what else is waiting for me?

These people

are

also angry.

And look what they did.

Why would I want to give that back out?

It's going to make them more angry and they're going to have a miserable life and they might do it again to someone else.

I

can't be accountable for that.

It hit me as clear as a California day.

And instead, I told the judge, you

apply

the sentence that you think is most necessary.

They still were accountable for so many things.

There were still so many effects to their cause.

they had to face. For me to push and poke that is only activating fire in me. Nobody out there can

make me angry. I make me angry. Yes, I work through that as much as possible, even though I

really wanted to, of course. But for once, I saw this whole new door. There was a wall there before

and I saw a door. And I had been in this other door for 28 years of my life.

At

the very least,

give that door a chance. And I walked through it. I turned back around and that door was gone.

And I felt more relieved than I ever had been. And then at some point in the future,

I was with a friend of mine and she wanted to watch the news. And the news was on about a person who

had been murdered

and

they caught the assaulter, the murderer. And they interviewed the family and

the family said, we forgive him. And my friend said, I don't know how somebody could forgive them.

And it hit me.

I go, oh, that's me.

Oh, that's me.

That's me.

That's me.

And I could see myself in that person.

And

finally, I understood why people forgive.

Why people understand forgiving.

Because you'll carry that with you for the rest of your life, that misery.

I almost wonder if like,

it's

like there's all this, you know, we have generational trauma

and we have cycles of anger that are passed down,

but also passed around within a community.

If violence begets violence, it's continuing.

And like you're saying,

you're some version of a cycle breaker in that

where the anger, you received the anger

and you said, you soothed it

and you said it stops with me here

and you didn't pass it along.

Almost like karma.

I don't know a lot about karma,

but that almost like that,

that you kind of put that fire out.

It was, the anger was in you already.

The anger was in those people and you actually just smoldered that fire right there.

You're right.

You're a hundred percent right.

Karma, the Sanskrit word, it means fruitive action.

So the action you do fruits more life.

And in that fruit, there's a seed and the cycle keeps going.

So your fruitive action can be determined.

Is that fruit bitter or is it sweet?

What are you going to do with that?

And the cycle continues until you extinguish that, which by the way, extinguish is the word in Sanskrit is nirvana.

So I can extinguish that fire, that rage that was within me.

And in that moment, I learned the deep value of self-love because I didn't need to feed into that

because

I said, no, no,

I'm

okay here.

What do you think about the people that did that to you?

What do you think about them now today?

Today, I

wholeheartedly

hope that they have some sort of revelation in their version

that

I had for me.

And I hope that they

feel

something close to peace of some sort, some sort of transition in their life that everybody deserves to have because they were angry also.

This must make you look at the world differently today.

Well,

one, I see a lot of anger in the world

because

I see that version of myself in people.

Two, I

see

how this happens in the world.

There also was a line of people outside that they just watched it happen to me.

Some people

don't

want to participate

because

of what could happen to them.

There's a deep sense of awareness of here and now

because

I asked the nurse to kill me that now somehow in this,

place where I am now is almost like a bonus because I could have died. And then I asked

for it as well. So both sides, the external and the internal wanted to go. And they both weren't

given that. There's a part of me that feels like all of this is a bonus. So why shouldn't I

be

kind,

be peaceful, work through it on my own and share this sort of story to talk about it? Because if I

go out in the world and I am the person that I am now, and then I tell them what happened to me,

they see an example of somebody who went through the worst thing

and

they still came out

shining.

I think what's so interesting in knowing you,

and you and I have known each other just over a year, not that long,

and everything I know about you, the you before this accident,

and the choices you were making at the time,

the kind of person you were in the world,

and who I know you to be now, your appearance,

your hair, but also how you operate in the world is completely night and day. Like I, I don't,

I don't recognize you in the videos I see of you from seven, eight years ago. I don't picture,

I don't recognize the person that I know. To me, it feels like a rebirth in the retelling of this

story, but what does it feel like to you the before and after?

Absolutely. It's a complete

rebirth it's it is and i've said this multiple times i was an atheist so i feel like there was

nothing after any of this but instead i'm a very spiritual man who believes in god in some capacity

in a but i've i really believe there's something larger

bigger

more dynamic than than what i just

have here

both

of those came around and there was new growth from there

and

then physically i had to

learn how to walk again like a baby

eat

be fed like a baby

i

had to be tended to like a child

that's a rebirth on its own

and

that old part of you that part of you had to die

almost

absolutely

had to

absolutely

and this is this is a you watch any movie read any narrative anything whatsoever

there's a time and all stories where the

character

in the story either actually dies or comes really

close to it or has this dark night of the soul that's the that's the death because there needs

to be the resurrection afterwards there needs to be this sort of shedding of the old way for the new

way it

has been six years since the accident but in preparation for telling us your story today and

not having told it anywhere else before

you

had to research the police report and watch videos

of what happened to you. Can you talk about that?

Yeah. To go back through the police reports,

I had to see the photos of me lying on the ground. I had to read the step-by-step moments of what

happened. I remember reading it the first time. And also when I read it this last time,

my body just kind of gets numb.

My whole body, I stopped feeling what I'm touching,

what I'm sitting on or laying on or whatever it is. It goes completely numb.

When

they were arrested, I was shown the video then

in

front of a lot of people.

I had to see it happen to me.

I had to hear my partner screaming for help.

And I had to watch my own body be just tossed around the malice of them kicking and stomping me.

I had to watch that happen.

It almost seemed as if they hoped

I

died.

It

almost seemed like they didn't even care for my human life.

I don't think anybody should have to watch themselves go through that.

Some part of me felt like you poor boy.

It

was like watching my little brother go through it.

To go back to what you're saying, six years later, my body still hurts.

My stomach hurts.

There's always pressure in the front of my mouth.

I didn't know this, but a good amount of your tongue will grow back.

It took me about four years until the front of my tongue wasn't numb.

It's back to normal now.

There's a bit of fluttering sometimes on this side of my eye.

I got not much air going through this nostril for me.

And I

am at the most peaceful place in my life.

Because I didn't follow through with that anger that was there.

I was literally broken.

And from that comes the beauty of peace and self-love.

and not shooting back at somebody

because they mistreated you.

Their karma is their karma.

It's not my karma.

And that still to this day,

six years later,

makes me feel lighter than ever

because I didn't act on that deep

anger.

And I live from that now as a Buddhist

who understands compassion,

loving kindness,

and the unity

between

me

and everybody else in the world

because I was hurt,

they were hurt.

And for them to hurt me,

they've hurt themselves.

and if the cycle continues for them,

I hope it doesn't,

but I'm not going to be a part of it.

I refuse to be a part of it.

Thank you for sharing your story with us today.

Thank you for always being there for me.

I love you and I'm sorry that happened to you.

Thank you.

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Beauty in the Break is created and hosted by Foster Wilson and Cesar Cardona.

Our executive producer is Glenn Milley.

Original music by Cesar and the Clew.