Beauty in the Break
Beauty in the Break is a new podcast that explores the powerful moments when life shatters—and the unexpected beauty that follows.
Hosted by public speaker Cesar Cardona & filmmaker and poet Foster Wilson, each episode dives into conversations of healing, transformation and resilience through self-awareness, storytelling and mindfulness. Whether you’re navigating change or seeking inspiration, this series uncovers the common threads that connect us all, to help you achieve personal or professional growth.
Beauty in the Break
How to Feel Seen in Love: A Live Couples Session with JJ Brake (Pt. 2)
In part two of this powerful conversation, licensed therapist JJ Brake sits down with Foster and Cesar for a live couples session, revealing how her Internal Family Systems and Intimacy from the Inside Out work helps partners connect beneath conflict. You will hear Foster and Cesar unpack a real moment of tension, guided by JJ’s compassionate framework for understanding triggers, defensiveness, and emotional parts within relationships.
JJ also shares her own breaking moment: losing her family home in the devastating Altadena fires. She opens up about grief, resilience, and the concept of “post-traumatic growth”, reflecting on how tragedy can become fertile ground for healing and renewal. This episode is a raw and heart-centered exploration of love, trauma, and the courage to stay connected through it all.
In this episode they explore:
- What happens when a therapist leads her clients (live!) through a real couples conflict
- How Internal Family Systems (IFS) reveals the hidden “parts” behind our reactions
- The surprising power of humor in therapy and emotional repair
- What it really means to feel seen versus dismissed by your partner
- How anger, grief, and resilience can coexist in the healing process
To connect with JJ Brake, visit jjbrake.com. Her app Unblend.me is the first platform designed for between-session mental wellness. Try it for free now!
Also mentioned:
- The Gottman Method
- Intimacy From The Inside Out
- Non-Violent Communication / Courageous Communication
- Internal Family Systems
Listen to Part 1 of our conversation with JJ Brake here: Curiosity Over Conflict: How to Heal Relationships with JJ Brake. 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!
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
Special Guest: JJ Brake
The birth of psychology a hundred years ago was there was such a power dynamic separation
and you wouldn't even look at the therapist.
You'd lie down and the therapist would sit behind you.
You'd never even look at them.
Fuck that.
I want to see you.
I want to interact with you.
I want to joke with you.
I want to know who you are as a person.
So I'm on the journey with 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.
Welcome back, beloved, to another episode of Beauty in the Break.
This is part two of our conversation with my therapist, JJ Brake.
If you haven't listened to part one, oh my goodness, please go back and listen to part one.
Today in part two, we are going to get deeply personal on multiple levels.
First, JJ is going to walk Cesar and I through a mini couple session and we're going to break down an actual conflict that we have.
It's very vulnerable.
It's very real.
And you'll get to really hear how JJ puts her work of internal family systems and intimacy from the inside out into practice with a real couple, which is us.
And then JJ opens up to us about her own personal experience with the tragedy of losing her family's home in the fires in Altadena in LA earlier this year.
So I know you're going to want to listen all the way to the end to really hear the just heart-wrenching and heartbreaking story that she has to tell.
Enjoy the episode.
We were wondering if you could give us a little real-life example right here with us about the work that you do with couples and how you engage with them.
Because we're a couple.
We host this show, but we are a couple right here.
Just in case listeners didn't know.
Yeah.
I was just flirting.
But would you kind of explore some of your work and how you talk to people?
So in case our listener doesn't have access to you or someone who does the work that you do, they could start to understand what that could look like with their partner.
What would be helpful for me is to know maybe something that has come up or something that I can help you with.
I often say sort of what's on the buffet table of the relationship?
What's out here
That feels like maybe I can help facilitate or create a conversation around.
Yeah.
So let's give a very specific example.
I have to go to a meeting.
He's come over to watch the kids.
And great, fantastic, he's going to be with the kids.
But there's still an element of like they're probably going to have a lot more screen time than I would normally do.
I came home the other day after the meeting.
It was 9 o'clock.
I fully expected one of the kids to be in bed and asleep.
And they were not.
They were up and they were running around.
And I come in fully like tired from this meeting and ready to like bond a little bit with him.
And it's like the kids are still up.
And I'm like, oh, okay.
And now I feel like I turn into I'm parenting you a little bit in that moment where I wish it was
I wish this had been done.
And I don't really blame you, but it just, okay, now I have to still mom.
And it's late.
Okay.
I'm just taking some notes as I hear it.
So I'm just listening for the different parts that might be coming up.
So let me ask you both.
This moment when you came home, let's say the instance that you just gave, would this be, could I pick that one apart?
That moment?
Would that be okay?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
So walk me through what happened.
You came home.
It was late at night.
You were tired and it sounded like maybe there was a part of you that had an expectation of what you would find maybe.
Okay.
So walking in the door, feeling really tired, but maybe an expectation of what happened.
When you walked in the door, suddenly there was a whole different scenario.
Right?
So what ended up happening for you in that moment when you walked in the door and you saw what was happening?
I was kind of, I was upset and annoyed because I wanted to have some downtime after like
an emotional meeting and I had to then be, put my responsibility hat back on.
So I felt like I wasn't thought of, that he hadn't thought about what I would need when I would get home.
Got it.
Wasn't maybe considered.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
So when you walked in the door and you saw all this happen, you were feeling upset and had to be,
things had to be managed.
You didn't feel considered.
What did you say or do to Cesar in that moment?
I know I did not connect with him.
Okay.
I probably rolled my eyes on some level and went sigh, a big sigh.
I went, okay, let me take over here.
Okay.
Let me get you in bed.
Let's get your teeth brushed.
Let me get you in bed.
All right.
And I kind of just, I feel like I probably discarded you a bit in that moment and just focused in on my kid.
Got it.
Okay.
Mom hat back on.
Great.
Got it.
Okay.
And I'm curious, what did you say to yourself about yourself or about Cesar or about the relationship internally, not necessarily outside?
Probably said to myself, I probably said he gets away too easy with this.
Got it.
This must be easy for him.
He just had to have the TV on and be here.
He didn't have to do the responsible part.
Got it.
Okay.
Yeah.
Good noticing.
Yeah.
Okay.
That okay with you?
Well, hold tight.
Your feelings are okay.
Yeah.
Your feelings.
Good.
I'm not going to hold those against you.
Thank you.
And I appreciate.
And this is really, this is part of the process because actually you're beautifully allowing him to see what's happening inside for you.
And even when I asked the question, what happened inside, he may not have known.
Yeah.
Those were the thoughts.
And whatever evaluation happens right now, we'll work with it.
It's really important that he sees what your internal monologue is.
So he can't be in relationship with things he doesn't know.
Right.
If he doesn't know that's your experience, then we can't fix it.
I'll put that in air quotes.
Mm-hmm.
Make sense?
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
All right.
So walk in the door with expectations.
Suddenly it's not.
Feeling annoyed.
Feel like you're not being considered.
Starting to feel like, gosh, he has it really easy.
All he had to do was hang out with the kids.
And then you rolled your eyes.
You sighed.
You sort of disconnected from him.
Mm-hmm.
Perfect.
I'm going to pop over to Cesar.
So are you remembering this moment?
Mm-hmm.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Good.
And what happened when you saw, I'm imagining you felt it or saw, what happened when she rolled
her eyes or disconnected?
Did you see that moment?
I knew that before you even got there, I knew you would feel something along those lines.
I don't know where to begin, actually.
But you want specifics of what happened from then forward?
Because I already was loaded with information from how it had been earlier that evening when
we were all together.
Mm-hmm.
And I mean this as dear heart as possible, how it habitually is.
Mm-hmm.
It quite often is this particular way.
Right.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
So remember one of my top five of the couple's context of it doesn't matter.
Ah, ah, okay.
Most importantly, what happened to you when you felt that impact from her?
Thank you.
Thank you for putting me back on track.
Okay.
Um, yes.
She walked in the door.
I mentally prepared myself for this sort of-
Ah, so you were like bracing yourself.
Ready for this sort of response.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, I can talk about what I feel, but can I talk about what happened and therefore what
my feelings were?
Mm-hmm.
Or just feelings?
That's not necessarily just feelings.
It sounded like something happened before she walked in the door.
Is that right?
Mm-hmm.
Correct.
And that feels important to you because, just curious.
Because how she was when she walked in the door was what had already happened before she
left.
Oh.
So it sounds like the way you experienced her in the door was the same energy that you
had felt earlier.
Correct.
So it feels like maybe you were bracing yourself and it's important to understand you did these
things maybe because the energy was going to be the same or you anticipated it would be.
Is that right?
Correct.
Okay.
Correct.
Okay.
But not quite.
Not quite because it's more than that.
It's also just what the kid was doing.
And some of it wasn't involving me.
Mm-hmm.
There's a better way to say this.
Very often, my love, if something isn't exactly the way you're requesting it, you respond that
way in a physical demeanor.
So it was, again, I know no context, but it's easy to put a pattern together.
Yeah.
So when you did walk in, I expected that.
And I saw your body language.
Our kid came running in to say hi.
And you were very tense.
Your body language, your jaw was a little clenched and you were, and then you questioned
me as well.
You said, they're still up?
The answer is yes.
Yeah.
And that made me feel like, it made me feel like that my choices are not valid.
That there's a, for me, it feels like there's only, what I'm taking from you is that there's
only one way to do something.
And I don't fundamentally think that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Good.
Yeah.
So what was the emotion for you in that moment, if you can clock it?
First emotion that shows up for me is a bit of fear.
There's a feeling that, and she's never done this, but there's a feeling that she will snap
at me, yell.
She will critique what I'm doing, talk down to me, belittle my choices, my ideas, my reasoning,
not even ask my reasoning, actually.
Just be upset and make me feel bad about it.
So that is my feeling at first.
Right.
It's a level of fear.
Right.
And then I have a physical, I have an intellectual response to that and realize, well, that's
not necessarily all the way yet, but it still informs my actions because, I mean, shit,
what doesn't, right?
Sure.
Sure.
And when you feel this fear with this, the meaning inside of it for you is, it sounds
like she could criticize you.
She could, there could be an adverse reaction from her in some way, which by the way, feels
like your choices aren't valid.
Some of the meaning that comes out of that moment.
What do you say or do when you feel that or when that happened for you?
To her or to my own feelings?
What did you say or do to her?
What did you say or do in that moment when you felt all of that?
Okay.
If you can clock it.
To her, for the most part, it is being as gentle and docile as possible.
Hey, babe.
How was it?
When you asked, are they slept?
I said, yeah, yeah.
They brushed their teeth already though.
The show finished already.
I knew that they would be going to sleep quite soon anyway.
So it's a matter of just being very welcoming and how was the event and trying to meet her
right where a familiar, friendlier level is.
Okay.
Got it.
All right.
Good.
Can I hold that for a second?
Absolutely.
Okay.
Can we keep going?
Yeah.
What happens for you, Foster, when he greets you with that gentleness?
What do you need?
Yes, they brush their teeth.
What happens for you then?
I appreciate that.
And also there's a part of me that feels like he's not acknowledging that the ideal would
have been that they were already asleep when I got there.
Right.
It feels a little dismissive of what he knew that I wanted.
Yes.
Good.
So let me hold that for a second.
I just saw your reaction.
Did you know that she had those feelings about feeling?
It's dismissive.
I'm going to say yes, but I wasn't conscious.
There's a thing between subconscious and conscious.
There's like a pre-conscious that I've been feeling lately.
We talked about this some years ago.
There's something back there.
You know it.
And then when you think about it later, you go, oh, I didn't know it.
Yeah.
But you didn't tap it.
You didn't grab it.
Yes.
There's a part of me that would know you would feel that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So let me pause here for a second.
Just for a point of showing, this is called tracking a sequence.
Cool.
So look at, we're talking about, I don't know, two minutes of an exchange.
And look at how much is inside of that two minute of an exchange.
That these feelings of feeling upset for you, Foster, that you feel like you haven't been
acknowledged.
There's a lot of, which I, if I took this down the rabbit hole, my suspicion would be we get
to some part of you that needs to be, doesn't feel acknowledged, doesn't feel seen really.
And for you, Cesar, there's, this felt significant to me and I can't know if it's right.
We're all just starting this, that this bracing and these parts of you that have what I imagine
could be a deep script of, of punishment quite possibly, even though intellectually,
you know, that's not true.
There can still be some deep parts that hold that instinctively.
That's something bad.
She's going to be upset.
She's going to, I don't know that that's about her that could predate her from times past that
if I got to maybe what was tender underneath it is maybe that feeling of needing to be validated,
needing to be connected with possibly.
So in tracking all of that, you begin to see how granular this really is.
And eventually, if we could have worked a little longer, I might have then said, what, what would
have happened to you?
This is a sort of a very powerful question.
What would have happened to you, Foster?
I'll ask you each the same question.
If you hadn't have rolled your eyes or in some way shown him the lack of acknowledgement, what,
what would have happened if you didn't do that to you?
What would have happened to you?
If I didn't show him any of how I was feeling?
Mm-hmm.
I don't know if this is what you're looking for, but I would have just buried it deeper
and kept it in.
And that's no bueno for your system.
No.
That's right.
Yeah.
That's right.
So this, this part of you that is trying to, it's trying to be, I mean, it just keeps
done coming back to being seen and heard.
You can't bury it.
And you're in a place in your development where it's really important you'd be able to express
that.
Yeah.
That sound right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And for you, Cesar, I'm curious, if you didn't meet her with gentleness when she came
at the door, what do you, what would happen to you if you didn't meet her with that gentleness?
It's hard to imagine.
I'm just going to walk through my thoughts if you can help me with it.
Yeah, sure.
Because I have to do the imagination first of not doing that.
And the next question is, well, how would you?
What, what would happen to you if you did?
What would that be like for you if you didn't?
I'm getting stuck because my next thought is, what do I do?
What would I have responded with when she walked in?
If I don't meet her with gentleness, I don't know another way to meet her.
So I can't imagine it.
So then therefore to find out what happened to my system.
Okay.
Does that make sense?
It does.
It does.
And, and, you know, this could be my fallibility in this moment of asking the question incorrectly.
So I'm appreciating what you're saying because there's an attunement piece where I'm
trying to really discover what is being protected.
Uh-huh.
This behavior ultimately is somehow protective of you, her, of the kids.
I'm not sure which.
So the question that I'm asking is to help reveal what's the protective nature of why you
did what you did.
So there was the, in the, in the saying hello, how I said hello to her.
Did that.
Okay.
I see.
Uh, this one I know from the very jump, as far back as when I was a kid, if a particular
parent would show up and something wasn't done that they asked me to do, I would get yelled
at and, and, and hit.
Right.
Uh, spanked, yelled at, talked down to.
Yes.
If I didn't do it.
So does it make sense to you that there is a very deep innate, I want to make sure that
she knows I didn't meet with gentleness.
I'm going to say this and you tell me how this lands.
There's a, something called a fawning response.
Okay.
That is, is a protective measure to make sure that you don't get punished or, or, or,
so there is this sort of response and I don't think that the intention is there in that way,
though it's very deep when you say it goes to childhood.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Means to me, there's some deep narrative here about what it is to have done it wrong or to
feel like she might in some way criticize what you've done.
Right.
Oh yeah.
So then my question to you guys is what if in the future when this happens, because
I also heard that this is a pattern, but there is a way to even notice while you're driving
home, you're giving a call and you're saying, I'm noticing those parts of mine that are so
worried that this is going to be off the rails.
The kids haven't.
I'm just acknowledging that.
And for you to be able to say, and I'm also acknowledging that there's this part of me
that's worried about your reaction.
I'm just really feeling it already.
I felt it earlier.
I wanted to acknowledge that too.
So that when you walk in the door, you feel seen and heard foster.
And when you walk in the door, you feel safe, Cesar, that I know, you know, this intellectually.
My body just doesn't care about intellect.
It just starts responding.
Yes.
It is something so much deeper, a deeper practice, if you will, to really recognize those parts
that are trying to essentially make sure she's okay.
Make sure this is okay because I'm not sure what the outcome is going to be.
To say, even just noticing that.
And now, you knowing Foster, he has those parts.
Yeah.
How does that impact you?
Make a difference?
Did you know that?
Did you?
I mean, I did know that.
Yes.
And I didn't know that it would come up with me.
Right.
Behaving that way.
I think because the, if it is a fawning response or the, there's an, sometimes, and we talked
about this on our earlier episode.
There's an oversimplification of something of like, that's not a big deal.
Right.
But everything's fine.
They're going to go to bed soon.
You know, there's a dismissing of it that is perhaps your protector part, trying to diffuse
a situation that could be familiar and what would have been in your past, something that's
violent.
And then that feels like my feelings aren't being, are being dismissed.
That's right.
And yeah.
And what I want to walk in that door with is, even if it's not ideal, feel like I'm on the
same team as you and be like, oh my God, what happened here?
Like, you know, can you tell me about, well, yeah, listen, we were having a good time.
And it's like, that's all I need.
But I, I walked in with immediately disconnecting.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yep.
Yeah.
How's this landing for you, Stephen?
Uh, two things.
Yeah.
One, first thing first, and it happens all the time.
My first thought is to try it when you were bringing up those instances.
Mm-hmm.
I am trying to bring up instances of my, like, wait, wait, she just got to share something
that I did.
I should be sharing something that she, and then I'm like, okay, that is not helpful
whatsoever.
So put that down.
Okay.
And then the second part that came up for me after that was along that same line, though.
It was very like, okay, however, like that sort of thing.
Mm-hmm.
It's a defensiveness that's showing up in there.
Yes.
Good.
And I don't care for that, obviously.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't like it.
But I can feel it.
Well, there's a part of you that doesn't like it.
It doesn't like it.
And then, right?
Right, right, right.
Sure.
Devil, tell me more.
Right.
Frog, I'll kiss you, right?
Right, right.
What I don't like about it is that it slows me down to get to the better thought, the healthier
thought.
Oh, I see.
That's what I don't like about it for the most part.
Oh.
I've just now spent, while she's saying that, I spent 80% of what she was saying being that
version.
Yeah.
Instead of being the version that can listen to her.
Yes.
And I don't like it.
Yes, ma'am.
I'm talking to you now, and the voice in my head is like, but still get some in there.
Yes.
Get your points, too.
I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Why?
Well, for a minute, I want to acknowledge that part that wants to get to that point.
If we were doing this work ongoing, I'd be like, next session, Cesar, you and me, you're
going to start.
I really want to hear what's happening for you.
I want that part to know it's going to be heard.
And right now, I feel so terrible that that part is...
Oh, it's so sweet.
I mean, we can keep going if you want that part to be heard.
And I also want to acknowledge, I hear the parts that don't like some of the thoughts.
Yeah.
And I feel for them, too, because I see they're trying to get you to that better path, the
path that you have been training yourself to get to.
And sometimes that's hard.
They get tired, I would imagine.
Oh.
Just acknowledging that, too.
Thank you.
Thank you for saying that.
Thank you.
So, would this be an okay place to stop?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Thank you for doing that.
Can you just really quick just give us...
We're really out of time.
Right, right.
Our time is up.
You can pay me on the way out.
There has been no financial compensation.
No, it's great.
It's great.
Thank you for that.
How is that?
Can I ask how...
I don't get always to ask.
Oh, my gosh.
That's a fantastic thought.
You're right.
Yeah.
You're not getting this feedback.
What, do they yelp you?
They can't do that.
Right.
I guess I could, but...
Right.
Yeah.
What did you think?
I'm just curious.
It's fantastic because I feel like you did slow everything down.
I love the hold this part.
Hold it right there.
Let's move to the other side.
Because I also don't want to go on and on.
I want his side to be heard and his parts to be heard.
And holding that is really great.
Yeah.
And it's careful work because it's all within these tiny little moments.
Yep.
Yeah.
It's not only that you slowed it down, but you unpacked something that you said was...
It was way less than two minutes.
It's 10 seconds.
Yeah.
It was.
Yeah.
You gave...
You literally wrote the Declaration of Independence on a grain of sand.
Like, I guess not literally, but...
You know, like...
But that...
When you said that to me, it reminded me how baked into a dialogue that every second is.
Yes.
How much we bring with us.
Yes.
You gave me really good mental models.
Really good mental model of...
Remember, this is a good pattern to see things for your own self.
To take that with me.
Not just the rule of like calling her on the phone and saying,
Hey, I'm feeling this way.
Yes to that.
Fantastic.
But there's a system, a way of thinking of something that I take with you.
I take with me as well from listening to how you just did that whole session.
Yes.
Noticing.
That might be number six.
No.
Noticing.
It is.
It's noticing the stick, Cesar.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Notice the stick.
And it's not with the goal to put it down.
It's the goal to say, Oh, it's a stick.
I had no idea that stick was there.
Now I have an opportunity to be in relationship with it and choose what I want to do with that.
Yeah.
And give you the autonomy and the power so that you don't feel powerless in these exchanges.
That happen often because they do in couples.
The Gottman say 69% of issues are gridlocked and perpetual forever in relationships.
Wow.
69% of issues.
Great number.
And it isn't about making those issues go away.
That is the sign of successful therapy or successful coupledom.
Mm-hmm.
It's learning how to navigate.
Navigate.
Yeah.
With those 69% always being there.
Yeah.
And for the record, just to name this too, humor is one of the ways we can deal with that.
Humor is hugely healing inside of relationships.
You asked me about my humor.
And it is, to me, it's just another connective point.
It is how we come together.
We go to comedy shows to be in community with people to laugh because it feels good.
Why can't a therapist make people laugh and have a personality?
Thank you.
The birth of psychology 100 years ago was there was such a power dynamic separation.
And you wouldn't even look at the therapist.
You'd lie down and the therapist would sit behind you.
You'd never even look at them.
Fuck that.
Yeah.
I want to see you.
I want to interact with you.
I want to joke with you.
I want to know who you are as a person because I want to be in relationship with you.
So I'm on the journey with you.
Yeah.
And I want to be, in a way, that parental figure, if you will, without having a power dynamic.
A parental figure who simply knows things, take what you have some things here and you want them.
Don't.
That's okay, too.
I'm here to guide you.
I can't do that if I don't attune.
I don't know you.
So humor is one of those things.
I think anybody listening right now is feeling very refreshed to hear that part.
Yeah.
Because there's a taboo, a stigma about therapy that has to be this stoic individual who sits
still, writes on a pad, who went to college, who's only going to ask, what does that mean
for you?
How does that make you feel?
Like, there's so much more to it.
There's, to quote Charles Darwin, there's beauty in this way of life.
There's so much to it.
When I heard you say that and read it on your website, I was like, that is just beautiful.
We're a great way to break into a conversation, to break into the gridlock, right?
Again, let's break into that with humor.
Yeah.
Thank you for saying that.
Yeah.
That's so refreshing.
Awesome.
I have a couple of questions I want to ask you to pivot back to you for a moment.
You see, this is my chance to really ask you anything I want to ask you, right?
And one of the things that I want to talk about with you is that earlier this year, the fires
happened in Los Angeles.
Yeah.
In the Palisades and in Altatina.
I found out that you had lost your home.
And personally, I was like, oh my God, my therapist.
Like this was one of those things where I, I don't know if I understood the bond that we
had built so deeply when I was like, I knew a lot of people who lost their homes.
And when I found out it was you, I wept.
I would love for you to share with us a little bit about what that was like as a huge breaking
moment.
Ooh.
Um, really highly don't recommend anybody go through this.
I give, uh.
Zero stars.
I was just about to say.
Oh, damn.
I took your joke.
I'm sorry.
2025 is the worst year ever.
You know, it's so fraught, this.
We lived in, we lived in this home for 20 years.
My children were born in this home.
In this home.
We used to, it makes me emotional.
Uh.
We used to stand in the, um, in the kitchen where the kids were born.
And we said, you were born here, right here.
You don't understand the amount of things you have in your home until it's taken from you.
And I see taken like robbed from you is what it feels like.
And there's this part of me that's like 10,000 people.
Well, 10,000 in Altadena and, and the Palisades, which I'll be honest, it's hard for me to even
look at the Palisades just because I can't even focus on my own community.
Yeah.
All of these people who went through this also.
So there's this part of me, it's like, oh, does that thing your people do?
It's not so bad.
At least you got away.
At least you got, you know.
So I grapple sometimes in sharing this information because yes, we all evacuated, not to say that
we got an evacuation notice.
We were on the side of town.
For those who might not know, people, I have to do that, never eat soggy worms, that never
eat, peace of, people east of Lake Avenue in Altadena got an evacuation notice at 6.30 PM.
And the people, uh, west of Lake Avenue never got one.
And so we were essentially monitoring it ourselves at like around nine or 10 o'clock.
We live, we, our home was, I never know how do I say it, my home was, where my home will
be.
The lot that is currently there, uh, is on a dead end street about 9.30 at night.
One of the, the wind was so awful.
I'm sure everybody in LA remembers it was, it was, and it carried this energy that just,
we all knew it was destructive, felt wrong somehow.
9.30 at night, a tree fell down on our street, effectively cutting off the back half of the
street.
They couldn't, we couldn't drive cars.
And we were trying to shield each other.
And then the power went out and people who had gas powered, you know, anything.
Finally, we cut the tree out so people could drive if they needed to.
My youngest was the only one that was home.
My other two, my middle child is at UCLA.
So she was on campus.
And my oldest had just happened to take a trip to New York.
He left the airport the night of the fires, which I can't even imagine what that looked
like from the air.
He had no idea until he got to New York, what had happened to his childhood home.
My youngest started having panic attack after panic attack.
He has a great deal of anxiety.
He's also on the spectrum, super high functioning.
My oldest is also on the spectrum as my husband is on the spectrum.
For the record, out of five people, if three of them are neurodiverse, is it really diverse?
Is it possible?
This is the norm.
I'm just saying.
Now we're talking.
So he has a lot of anxiety and he kept saying, are we going to have to evacuate?
Are we going to have to evacuate?
We said, we don't know.
It looks like we're going to be fine.
The fire looks far away.
So my husband would, after the power went out, because we got no reception up in Naltadena,
he would scout.
He drove the car every hour until two o'clock in the morning.
And he was listening to an AM radio to see if there was any call for police.
Because maybe you've heard the stories.
There was nobody out.
No, no policemen, no firemen, nobody.
It's like we were just left to fend for ourselves.
And at about two o'clock in the morning, my husband comes in and he pulls me into the kitchen.
He said, look, and you can see the flames licking the, like what looked to be the end of our street.
And so I said, we have to go.
And we, my, my youngest was freaking out.
If you've ever been with a child who has a panic attack, it's very crippling.
He grabbed, the only thing he grabbed, bless him, was all of his journals.
He had like six journals.
It was the only thing that he grabbed in a blanket.
And I had just happened to, I said, you know, if we had to go, what would I grab?
I always thought my jewelry, it's signature for me.
My jewelry is signature.
I love wearing pretty things.
So I just grabbed some jewelry and a sweater.
To this day.
Why that sweater?
I think because it was cashmere.
I'm pretty sure because it was cashmere.
Grabbed it.
And my husband happened to, I said, aren't we supposed to grab like our, our passports?
And he said, probably good idea.
And he went down to his studio, which by the way, he worked from our home.
So his entire studio over 20 years of works in the entertainment industry and sound and music.
He's a music editor, an Emmy award winning music editor.
He went down to his studio and he was working on a show at the time.
He said, I should take my drives just in case we have to evacuate.
And it has over 20 years of all of the music that he had ever gotten from libraries, from
other places that he used constantly when he attempts a show or a movie or whatever.
He just happened to grab all of his drives and we evacuated to my office in Pasadena and
had no word.
We knew nothing.
Oh, we had three dogs.
And by dogs, I mean like small horses.
We have giant dogs.
Our biggest, his name is Bob.
He's a mastiff.
He's like 160 pounds.
And then our shepherd is 130 pounds.
And we have a little 60 pound boxer.
And we all crammed in my teeny tiny little office and waited.
And we were actually texting with my daughter who was on campus at UCLA.
If she got, if she saw that there was an evacuation notice, but she was getting notices from the
Palisades fire because they were going to evacuate UCLA at that time.
My husband tried to drive up there about six o'clock in the morning, the next morning.
And he said he'll never be able to wipe that image from his mind.
He said it was like everything you see in the movies, the war zone.
There were fires everywhere.
And this was, you could barely see the smoke was so thick.
He saw no emergency vehicles.
He saw two.
He did see two, which he thinks they were trying to get somebody out of the house.
But he couldn't get up to our street.
We live very close to the foothills, really close to the mountains.
About 10 o'clock the next day is when our neighbor called.
And she said, I'm so sorry.
It's gone.
Our world fell apart.
Only it's like this slow burn, which I think is what trauma does.
When something traumatic happens, you don't realize it's, you know it's happening.
You don't realize how it's sinking into the fiber of your being.
It's like a tattoo.
It's always there in some capacity, but it forms over time and comes out in the weirdest
fucking way.
You never, I have a book in my office that says trauma is weird.
And it really is.
These little things you don't expect to.
My husband put wind chimes over, we're in a rental house now, put wind chimes over our
air conditioning unit.
So when it goes, the wind chimes chime.
And every time it chimes, I think there's winds and I start to have a somatic response.
Weird things like that.
I mean, not so weird and weird just to my everyday existence.
So we, you know, we had to hop from place to place, eventually found a rental, which I'm
so grateful for.
She gave us a two year lease on this house, which is very, very small.
Everybody's shoe horned into little houses.
My son, my oldest son moved out because there just wasn't enough space.
But it sort of fast forwarded his leaving the nest.
So, you know, to which I say, huh, silver lining.
I keep looking for those little silver linings.
I love collecting them all through COVID.
I kept collecting little silver linings.
What's the good that's coming out of this?
It feels terrible right now.
So he moved out.
Our youngest is still with us and our middle is still on campus.
And my husband no longer has a studio.
He lost over 1500 hugely cultivated records.
He had a vinyl collection that he had cultivated.
He had thousands of CDs since, you know, the 90s that he had collected.
The list goes on and on.
Irreplaceable things.
Paintings, one of a kind paintings, all the stuff.
Yeah.
Now we live in this weird purgatory.
So what now?
We know we want to rebuild.
We do want to rebuild.
We feel strongly.
And our neighborhood is gone.
Yeah.
It will never be the same.
And that was traditionally a black neighborhood where there was so much diversity in that neighborhood.
It was eclectic.
It was unique.
I don't know if you remember, everybody wanted to move to Altadena before the fires.
Yeah.
I love Altadena.
Yes.
It was, it was walkable to the park.
We moved there because we had, there were parks that you could walk to, the trails that
you could walk to, which by the way, are all closed.
You can't for like next two years, can't hike there anymore.
So that's sort of the story of it.
I mean, I know I smile at times when I say it, which I know is a part of me.
That's like, I don't know what to do with this piece of information.
I keep saying, I think that when we rebuild, I'll fall apart.
Once we go into this new home.
Oh my gosh.
You know, like I have to get through all of these hurdles.
Is there like a psychological name for that or something?
I had delayed gratification.
Something.
It's gotta be.
It's, it's such a common thing.
Yeah, it is.
Right.
It is.
You hold on.
Yeah.
Here's the thing though.
I really, I am such a glass half full kind of gal.
I always have been.
I, it's not my first brush with trauma to name it.
I mean, I, I kind of been through shit, I will say.
I, I had an accident, uh, when I was 15 and my scalp was ripped off and I had a year of
reconstructive surgery while I was going through high school, which was awful.
And by the way, kids in high school are assholes.
It was really terrible to be disfigured in the way that I was and all of that.
So I think there's sort of parts of me that know also having been through something that
was really hard breaking, if you will, that there is always this other side out of it.
I think that accident at 15, there was such a sense of purpose.
Why did I live?
How did I, how did I live?
This board that, that tore my scalp off in a car, it was a car accident and it, it went
through the car.
It got tangled in my hair.
It hit my skull going 50 miles an hour and ripped my scalp off and then embedded itself
in the engine of the car.
That's how fast it was going.
Wow.
Wow.
Wow.
Wow.
Wow.
Why did I live?
And starting at 15 began this journey for me of, it felt almost spiritual.
Like, okay, I'm here for a reason.
That board, had it been a millimeter over, that would have been it.
So I think there's this, I don't know, maybe call it resilience.
It feels spiritual.
I'm going to hold it as spiritual.
I'm just going to hold that part that like feels.
There's something to this.
There's something to be grown.
This can become fertile ground.
It's called post-traumatic growth, by the way.
Oh, wow.
This term that's now being coined.
Have you heard that before?
No, I'm writing that down.
That's right up my alley.
It's got both sides, the yin and the yang.
Trauma and growth.
Exactly.
Post-traumatic growth.
And, and I feel that heavily.
I think my Achilles heel in it is to honor the trauma.
Yeah.
And, and I see people that have experienced it that are in the trauma and can't get out.
And I don't want that extreme necessarily.
Not that anything's wrong with that.
Everybody's got their own process.
And I don't want to just be like, but it's fine.
I'm okay.
I don't want to be that either.
And I didn't mean to judge it.
That's a part of me that judge that people say that.
And I get what they do.
I get that's a protector, right?
That's, I can't look at it right now.
I'm just going to say it's okay.
Yeah.
I would love to find the middle ground inside of it to honor all of it.
That feels to be my journey right now.
How do I really embrace it without diminishing it or without getting stuck in it?
Yeah.
Thank you for sharing that.
Yeah.
That is, I don't lose any words actually for that sort of stuff.
I don't think there's any words for it.
And kudos to you for being so strong with it.
And not in the sense of you can handle it.
In the sense of facing every single aspect of what you're feeling.
Thank you.
And then still moving forward in what needs to be done.
What's best for you and your family.
That's the real strength.
It reminds me of what you said when somebody doesn't have the birth that they want.
To hold both, feel like, yes, I'm safe.
And my family's safe.
And there's some silver linings about the empty nest part and all of that.
And also this was really fucking shitty that this happened to my family, to me personally, to every single one of my neighbors, to the entire community.
I think that's what's so shook about the whole thing is that you couldn't lean on your neighbors to recover.
Everybody was recovering.
And the entire collective of the entire city of Altadena, minus maybe one or two, like literally everything was gone.
And that means memories.
And that means the restaurants you went to.
And that means the stores you shopped at.
And that means the businesses that were owned by the people.
It's only been, at the time of this recording, six months.
It feels like forever ago to me.
What you're doing is you're holding both of those things at the same time.
And this third thing of, I know I'm in purgatory and I know there's another part of this story that hasn't been told, which is the rebuilding and then the going and living in that space again thing.
Not knowing how.
In a totally different neighborhood.
In a different neighborhood.
Yes.
Not knowing how much of it's going to even be a neighborhood at that point.
Right.
What will that feel like?
Yeah.
And you're holding that at the same time.
Yeah.
And that holding pattern that you're having right now with an inevitable change, but you don't know when that change will happen.
For me personally, that breeds, that would make me frustrated, make me angry.
And then I think about the people that you talked about, your neighbors who didn't have the glass half full mentality.
I'm sure anger washes up to your shore.
How do you manage that in all of this?
I don't have a lot of anger in me.
Anger implies, for me anyway, fault.
In which, you know, to name it, there's a whole lawsuit that's going on right now.
And I think I've seen also so many people be angry and want to blame.
I think there is fault to be had.
I have a hard time knowing what to be angry at.
Angry at the winds.
I'm angry at Southern SoCal Edison.
Listen, I'm angry.
And at the same time, I don't...
My husband feels it.
I'll just speak.
Let me...
He represents the anger.
He gets very, very angry.
We have this thing where he'll take on traits that I don't necessarily want.
And I take on traits he doesn't necessarily have, per se.
And there is that sense we work in partnership.
He carries a lot of the anger in that way.
I don't.
I feel angry that we have to account for everything if there's anything to be angry at.
This grueling process of insurance is gut-wrenching.
I find myself not wanting to do it.
But you have to go through everything you've lost.
When you've lived in a home for 20 years, that's a lot of stuff.
And that's stuff that you can't put a price on.
These were...
There was a Christmas village that my husband's mom gave us that she had collected since the 80s.
That some of them are discontent.
You don't get that.
And whatever.
It's a Christmas village.
I get that.
Only it carried meaning because it was handed down from the family.
And things that my grandfather made.
He made this statue that was made from shells.
Is it worth anything?
No.
And this was my grandfather's that he made from shells he found on a beach.
In Daytona Beach, actually.
You know?
Having to represent that and then fight for it.
Know it really is worth something.
That is the closest I come to feeling angry.
I have to justify my life.
Sure.
Yeah.
That's a great line.
Last line.
I have to justify my life, too.
An institution, by the way, that's supposed to be helpful and easier.
And it's supposed to vehicle you from A to B.
I also felt some of that listening to you tell that story.
I felt some of that when you said you were on the block and there were no first responders,
no cops.
I would feel similar feeling about dealing with the insurance company.
These are institutions that are made to help us and they didn't fulfill their side.
Yeah.
And you I would be angry for that.
Yeah.
Personally.
Yeah.
You not feeling that anger in the capacity in which I was asking or that I see most people
feel.
Is that something that you learned or is that something that you were born with?
I think that's a lovely question.
I appreciate that curiosity.
Sure.
I actually learned.
Okay.
I used to have horrible anger.
Damn right.
Like the kind where you see red and you don't remember what you did anger.
Yep.
really bad anger.
And that was 20, almost 30 years ago when I realized it.
That was actually what got me into Buddhism.
I practiced for quite some time and everything that I could to be in relationship with it.
So I would say that's a skill and I don't find it savory in my system anymore.
I do feel it on the freeways of LA.
It is the most challenging.
It is the ultimate test to my Buddhism.
Truly is.
Being on the highway.
It is the ultimate test.
I can tell how much I've been meditating that week depending upon or how much Buddhism I've
read depending upon how I respond to people on the one-on-one.
A hundred percent feel you.
Or the four or five.
Yep.
I totally feel you.
Oh, absolutely.
It's worse.
Dude.
I could talk to you literally for hours, which we have been.
But I want to wrap up today and I want you to share with the person listening how someone
could find you if they did want to work with you.
But also tell us a little bit about what you're working on and how people can connect with you
regarding that project.
Yes.
Thank you.
So you can find me on my website, jjbrake.com.
B-R-A-K-E, not to be confused with Break, B-R-E-A-K, which we joke about the fact that we
should have named our children things like emergency or summer or only a spell differently.
Anyway, jjbrake, B-R-A-K-E.com is my website.
That you can find everything there, how to contact me through there.
And that will be linked in the show notes as well.
Great.
Yes.
If you wanted to work with me and not really work with me, I'm developing an app right now
with a programmer.
It's called unblend.me.
It's very new.
So we're still working out some of the kinks.
It's a lovely way of unblending these parts that we talked about.
It's designed to help you notice what's there.
And then the ability to say, okay, can you take a moment to notice it and see if you can
just separate a little bit from it.
It's a very gentle, it's not meant to replace therapy.
It's meant to be a quick access that you feeling hijacked by an emotion or a feeling or a sensation.
You can tap into this app.
You can talk to it.
You might notice the voice.
If you use the voice feature, you can speak to it.
It can speak back to you.
So you can close your eyes if that's helpful.
That's already available right now.
You can try it this afternoon if you wanted to.
Oh my goodness.
Yeah.
That sounds incredible.
What a great, what an amazing tool to have.
Like you're, I can literally have you in my pocket.
Yes, you can.
Yes.
That's unblend, right?
U-N-B-L-E-N-D dot me.
That's correct.
Fantastic.
Oh my gosh, that's so exciting.
JJ, thank you so much.
Thank you from the ends of the earth for being here with us and sharing so much of your wisdom
and your life and you're just a gift to this world.
So, and to me in particular.
So thank you for being here.
Thank you.
Thanks you guys.
It was really lovely.
Really appreciate you both.
Everybody, as usual, please be kind to yourself.
If this episode spoke to you, take a moment and send it to someone else who might need it.
That's the best way to spread these conversations to the people who need them the most.
And if you want to keep exploring with us, make sure to follow Beauty in the Break wherever you get your podcasts.
We'll see you next time.
Beauty in the Break is created and hosted by Foster Wilson and Cesar Cardona.
Our executive producer is Glenn Milley.
Original music by Cesar & the Clew.
