Sex, Drugs, and Jesus
Sex, Drugs, and Jesus embraces taboo topics and shares stories about surviving the social outskirts. De'Vannon has had a long journey of self-discovery including being kicked out of his church for his sexuality, serving in the military during “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” becoming a drug dealer and convict, contracting HIV and HEP B, being homeless, and ultimately rising from the social outskirts to become a healthy and insightful entrepreneur. Join De'Vannon as he interviews authors, podcasters and many others who bring valuable insight into issues that plague us and our loved ones in our daily lives and learn how to help yourself and those you care about in new and innovative ways. If you have an open mind or want to be more open minded, the Sex, Drugs, and Jesus Podcast is for you! Let's take a peek behind the curtain...
Sex, Drugs, and Jesus
Episode #175: Mental Health Challenges Brothers Experience Once We Learn Our Sisters Have Been Sexually Abused By Our Parents, with Keeper-Catran Whitney, Author + Storyteller
INTRODUCTION:
This episode is about child sexual abuse particularly from the perspective of the emotional health challenges brothers experience once they learn their sisters have been sexually abused by their parents. Keeper-Catran Whitney has authored a series of books surrounding his experiences with this and today we cover book 1 which is called “Helplessness.”
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Website: https://www.SexDrugsAndJesus.com
Website: https://www.DownUnderApparel.com
INCLUDED IN THIS EPISODE (But not limited to):
· Hearing Your Sisters Were Sexually Abused For The First Time.
· Mental vs. Emotional Challenges.
· Spiritual & Energetic Implications of Child Abuse.
· The Plight of Silent Family Members.
· Let Us Not Compare Traumas.
· Pushed to The Point of Committing Murder.
CONNECT WITH KEEPER:
Website/Books: https://keepercatranwhitney.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/keepercw/
Fb: https://www.facebook.com/KeeperCatranWhitneyAuthor/
X: https://x.com/KCatranWhitney
Email: info@keepercatranwhitney.com
CONNECT WITH DE’VANNON SERÁPHINO:
TikTok: https://shorturl.at/nqyJ4
YouTube: https://bit.ly/3daTqCM
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devannon
Email: SDJPodcastNewYork@Gmail.com
Thanks for listening!!! Please follow us on YouTube + TikTok @SexDrugsAndJesusPodcast
Episode #175: Mental Health Challenges Brothers Experience Once We Learn Our Sisters Have Been Sexually Abused By Our Parents, with Keeper-Catran Whitney, Author + Storyteller
De'Vannon Seráphino: [00:00:00] Hello, all my lovely, delicious, beautiful souls out there. Welcome back to the sex, drugs, and Jesus podcast. My name is De'Vannon Seráphino, and I'm here today with author, a life coach, a storyteller, and so many other things, keeper, Catrin Whitney.
De'Vannon Seráphino: And we're here to talk about this book helplessness. This is book one, there are other books to come. And it talks about stories of childhood trauma, molestation, abuse. Something that is like super duper common, unfortunately within this world, but it's the kind of thing that we can transmute to make us stronger.
De'Vannon Seráphino: If we have, if we can, allow ourselves to overcome it, keep her, how are you doing today?
Keeper: And the man I'm doing outstanding, you know, I love the title of the podcast and I, you know, as we were talking about prior to, to what's coming on, just some of your background, I was really shocked that the sex drug and [00:01:00] then the Jesus part, then I got to it.
Keeper: It was like, aha, there you go. That's what we're dealing with right here. So I am happy to be here and let me say, thank you so much for having me.
De'Vannon Seráphino: Anytime, you know, all of these stories are meant to be told, especially by somebody with the balls big enough to tell them, because most people take their trauma and run and tuck away and hide it, and they don't have the courage to face it.
De'Vannon Seráphino: And that is cowardice. It is what it is. Or the ones who get delivered also sneak away with their deliverances and then don't tell anybody about the deliverances. And then that also doesn't help anybody there. And so. So yeah, so you, so you went through what you went through, you, you're facing it and then you also are bold enough to tell it.
De'Vannon Seráphino: So absolutely. I have space for you on the sex, drugs and Jesus podcast. So we honor boldness and transparency over here because that is what life is [00:02:00] about.
Keeper: Right. Yeah. You know, you just said something that that got me thinking that, you know, not everyone has the courage to, to speak about their trauma.
Keeper: And a lot of that to me is manufactured for us to be that way. But every now and then you get people like you who understand the mission and are willing to embrace what challenges or the slings and arrows that come with doing the mission it's all about. Yeah. And it's people like you that allow people to live through what you've experienced so that they can understand what their experience is all about.
Keeper: I wish more and more people, you know, could could do that, but they don't. And I understand it. And so that's why what you do is incredibly important.
De'Vannon Seráphino: And you as well on y'all. His website is a keeper capturing whitney. com, his books and everything are [00:03:00] on that website. What, what social media are you on?
Keeper: I'll TikTok, Facebook, Instagram. You know, I'll, I'll have all that available to you and you'll be able to share it as which, and if anyone ever has any questions after this, they can always come back to you and get all the follow up stuff in you'll direct them where they need to go.
De'Vannon Seráphino: Okay. And now is there anything else?
De'Vannon Seráphino: I know you're in California reading through your history. You're from San Francisco, as it says on your website, somewhere in San Francisco, a hospital, maybe three. And, Is there anything you'd
Keeper: like to tell? You did some work. Yeah, I was born in San Francisco. There are three months. And so I embrace all of my California ness but we lived everywhere, okay?
Keeper: I grew up incredibly poor, you know, before we jumped into what helplessness is all about, but I grew up [00:04:00] incredibly poor, 21 different places before I moved out, homeless three times, went to 11th grade schools before I graduated high school so I understand the, just the basic life struggles of what that is, and then you start throwing in the work.
Keeper: Things that we're going to talk about about childhood sexuality that takes place in the home and what that's all about, particularly from a brother's perspective, it, it is challenging, but it's funny that you mentioned someplace in San Francisco, because when I, it's only been recently that I actually learned the hospital that I was born in within the past six months.
Keeper: I had no idea. My mother wouldn't tell me. You wouldn't tell me. My birth certificate, we were finally able to track it down. And, oh, is that where I was born? I figured I was born on the street, so I had no idea, you know? So, that's
De'Vannon Seráphino: called life. Why, why wouldn't she want to [00:05:00] tell you that, do you think?
Keeper: My mother, as we will get into the story, Did not share a lot of it. And so why that specific thing? I don't know. It's weird, right? Why wouldn't you tell your son who's constantly asking you, where was I born? What hospital was I born in? Was I born in a hospital? Was I born in an alley? Was I born at home?
Keeper: She just wouldn't do it. And she could hold things to herself. But that one thing just does not make any sense. I don't know. I really have no clue.
De'Vannon Seráphino: Yeah, I experienced that with my own mom, bruh. Like, when my dad had one of his affairs. You know, like I was reading through here, like your mom was telling you, I'm going to read snippets here, but you know, mom was telling you not to, not to talk about it and everything that my mom did the same thing, like, but, but, but we'll talk about these [00:06:00] secretive women and everything like that.
De'Vannon Seráphino: I perceive it as some sort of control that they're trying to keep, even though they don't have control over anything else, and they try to control what they could, which was the children, by withholding information or telling us not to say things. But they were completely out of control of their own lives, though.
De'Vannon Seráphino: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. Issues. Yeah. And, you know, when he says the word brothers, he means, like, biological brothers. He's not talking about, like, black brothers specifically like that. He's talking about, like, sibling brothers. When, when he says that I just, I just wanted to, to
Keeper: I'm glad you said that because I was going to get into that.
Keeper: People ask me that all the time. And it's specifically it, and I'm just beginning to, it's white people asking me this. The book is called Helplessness. The emotional health challenges brothers experience once we learn our [00:07:00] sisters have been sexually abused by our parents. And so as a way to assign blame or to distance themselves from the reality, white people ask me, they'll say, Keeper.
Keeper: So when you say, I know exactly where they're going. I know exactly, as soon as they, when you say, they finish it up, when you say brothers, are you talking about black guys? And I'm like, no, what makes you say that? I didn't say brother. I said brothers in the plural. Every brother on the planet. But that's a way of them protecting themselves, or what they think of protecting themselves, to assign.
Keeper: What race or what group this impacts the most. It just doesn't make any sense, but they do. They do all the time.
De'Vannon Seráphino: Well, not today because this has been clarified. We're talking about all the X, Y chromosomes or people who identify as such, regardless of race. So [00:08:00] thank you for that breakdown. And I mean, a part of being a cataclysmic person who was basically a walking trigger.
De'Vannon Seráphino: You're gonna, I mean, that's just a part of our task, like you're gonna, your work will bring stuff up out of people and force them to face themselves and it's supposed to be uncomfortable if you're doing anything worth doing, you know, so that lets me know the quality of the spirit within the work that you're doing because it's fucking with people.
Keeper: Yeah, it is making them, you know, it's already, you know, once, once, once I share the story, it's already something that says to people, you know, I never even considered that. I never even thought of that point of view. How could I miss it? Well, because no one brought it up or no one forced you to have to deal with it.
Keeper: So you know, if, if, if you want I can go ahead and just share the story and then we can chop it up afterwards. [00:09:00] Okay. As I said, this is going to be about child sexual abuse. So in 1970, 1971, we were incredibly poor living in Los Angeles, South Central LA. A family of ten, four boys, four girls, my mother and my stepfather.
Keeper: And. It was just another home that we could not pay rent, an 80 a month rent. And so one day, my mother decided that she was going to try to sing to make some extra money because her and her family, she grew up in a singing family, so she decided to get together with her brother and sister and say, you know what, this is how I can make some money.
Keeper: But as great as they were, as fantastic of singers as they were, they just couldn't make enough money. So this is 71 and the Jackson 5, they're blowing up, they're all over the place. So me and my seven brothers and sisters, I'm the second oldest of the eight. I have an older brother. Then I have the first sister, the oldest girl, and then so on.
Keeper: The two youngest being twins, my younger sister, we're all sitting around the house. We're all [00:10:00] emulating Jackson 5, ABC, who's loving you. I want you back. I mean, we were doing all of it. We were doing the moves. So one day my mother says to us. Would you guys like to see? Because as a singing family, we could make more money.
Keeper: I'm like, yeah. And if you know, we are all over L. A. After hour nightclubs all over the place. It was crazy within three weeks that we hadn't sang before. Would you go into a club after hours and you would see us? One day we were rehearsing for a Saturday night show and the phone rings. And my mother says shh.
Keeper: Can you go there and pick up the phone and say, hello? Woo! And she looks at us and says, Michael Jackson's on the phone. Yeah, that Michael Jackson is calling our house, [00:11:00] soon to be king of pop. My mother says he wants to speak to my brother directly under me, child number four. And he gets on the phone and says, huh, yeah.
Keeper: And hangs up the phone and screams Michael Jackson said he's heard of us. Just for us to keep going, we'll get there someday. Now I ask you, what little poor family could not have dreams dreams. That of wealth and riches and getting out of abject poverty. After that, jump cut to 1977. We are everywhere.
Keeper: Concerts, TV, magazine. We made the coveted Billboard Magazine Top 100. Not once, not twice, but three times that year. Everything we touched turned to gold. We were with United Artists Records. And we're just doing our thing. We are still living off the money that United Artists is paying us. Cause you know, [00:12:00] we've got this quarter of a million dollar album out there.
Keeper: We've got to pay it back. So we have to keep going. And we're like, cool. We're on our way. 77 is also the year Motown completes an exhaustive three year search to replace Michael Jackson and Jackson 5, who they had lost three years earlier to epic records. They were scouring the planet to find a family group to replace them, and guess who they settled on?
Keeper: Us. We were the group chosen. By Motown, in fact, Suzanne DePaz, who discovered the Jackson 5, was walking us through the door. They were offering us the largest new artist contract they offered any group up to that. Larger than the Four Tops, the Supremes, the Temptations. Larger than the Jackson 5 themselves.
Keeper: Because whereas the Jackson 5 had one lead singer, we had nine. Me and my brothers played instruments. We did everything. [00:13:00] We were on steroids compared to Jackson 5, and so Motown had discovered their replacement group. They even wrote the TV show. I had the pilot. in my office. So a Saturday afternoon or Saturday morning before we were to sign this new contract on a Thursday or Friday, we're just around the house hanging out.
Keeper: But my older sisters and my three youngest sisters were arguing earlier that day. And you know, I'm not thinking anything of it. You know, the girls are tripping, they doing what they do, but they're going in and out of bedrooms, slamming doors, going out of bathrooms, slamming doors. You can hear Ray's voice.
Keeper: But I'm just thinking, like I said, the girls are just tripping, they're doing what they're doing. So about an hour later, my oldest sister screams upstairs, Boys, come downstairs, family meeting! And I come running downstairs. I go [00:14:00] into the living room, this is it. We're about to find out the day we are going to be rich and famous.
Keeper: When I walk into the living room, on the couch, are my three youngest sisters. They're seated at the far end of the couch. But something's odd, something's out of place. They're not saying a word. Hmm, that's weird because all they did was laugh and joke and tease. That's all they did. That's all any of us ever did.
Keeper: But here they are, who we call the baby girls. Quiet, huddled at the other end of the couch are my two youngest brothers. They're not saying a word, but they're like me. They're curious as to the silence. Why aren't the girls saying anything? Don't they know what's about to happen? I'd like to say the bus was [00:15:00] outside, the doors were open, the engine was running, all we had to do was step onto the bus and we were gone, the trajectory of our life was going to go from here to here, frantic, fierce, like, ow, like that.
Keeper: But no, the girls aren't saying anything. As I walked into the living room, my oldest sister, child number three, is pacing back and forth in front of the archway, and she is fucking mad. Okay. Mom had come into one of the meetings, so that morning with the girls, I'm figuring, okay, she and mom got into it again, because they did all the time, and I'm figuring, okay, she's just mad, all right?
Keeper: My oldest brother's standing at the far end of the couch behind my three youngest sisters, and he and I lock eyes on each other, all right? So I just go and sit down between my three youngest sisters and my two youngest brothers, and I wait, and within seconds, My mother and [00:16:00] my stepfather painted it. Now, my stepfather, he's 6'6 250 pounds, and he wore an Afro wig that put his height over 7 feet tall.
Keeper: He was a mountain, huge. We have a brown recliner in the living room that clashes violently against this green carpet. Like, the stuff that we had for furniture, we went into, we went out into the streets and in lots, and we grabbed mattresses, and we did it. You know, couches and chairs and that's how we live, even though we were living this life of luxury or we were incredibly poor, but we were faking it until you make it right and we were about to make it and so he sits on this brown recliner and he immediately bends over and puts his face in his hands like this.
Keeper: What [00:17:00] the hell?
Keeper: Okay. Is he sick? All right. You know, he could fake sick a lot. He did it a lot. Oh, all right. My mother, who's like her eight children, very bubbly, effervescent personality, full of energy, is very stoic.
Keeper: She walks into the living room and turns around and scans the room and looks at her eight children, but stops at my sister pacing still back and forth in front of the archway leading to the living room. And it looks to kill. They would both be dead. What the fuck is going on?
Keeper: Me and my brothers, the four, four of us boys are about to find out now.
Keeper: I live in Southern [00:18:00] California. We have earthquakes all the time. In fact, in the past couple of months, we've had maybe 10 or 12 of them. We have them all the time. Those are material in nature. Crack freeways, the uproot trees, pools, rack, back and forth. You could put those back together. Little spit, little concrete, little rebar, little bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, back together, get back on the freeway, go back in the house, mow the lawn, no problem.
Keeper: Yes, it can be pretty unsettling, but that's what we do. Emotional earthquakes are a different matter all together. My three brothers and I are about to be hit with three emotional earthquakes.
Keeper: My mother takes a deep breath and she's mad. My three brothers and I are about to be told things no brother could [00:19:00] ever prepare for. We're about to hear the words no brother ever expects to hear. Earthquake number one,
Keeper: your stepfather has been molesting your sisters. For years,
Keeper: what did you say? I am shocked. I don't know what to do. I'm about 16 years old and I don't know what to do. I am stunned. I am dropping emotionally. Not us. I'm slow on the uptake because she's continuing to talk and I'm, and I just remember specifically three words, liquor store, park, apartment. That's all I remember about that.
Keeper: And then she delivers [00:20:00] earthquake number.
Keeper: I have known all along, wait, you've known what all along?
Keeper: No,
Keeper: not
Keeper: possible, not us, not the family everyone wants to be a part of. No, what are you talking about?
Keeper: I am continuing to drop. You see, helplessness, the book, is from a brother's perspective. It's when we learn what happens to our sister. Because we are not part of the conversation. It's the first book of its kind that explores and gives the answer to the questions of what happens to brothers. No one ever asks us, are we okay?
Keeper: Or do we need to talk? Or do we need anything? We're [00:21:00] just shunted to the side. We are considered irrelevant and taboo, and this is where my brothers and I, we are in the middle of being shunted to the side and becoming irrelevant to the most important conversation in our life. Earthquake number three was the one that devastated us for 45 years.
Keeper: My oldest sister, who's pacing back and forth, turns around. And points at her four brothers and says, you can't talk about it. It didn't happen to you boys. It only happened to us girls. You can't talk about it. And like that, relationships between brothers and sisters that were so tight are shattered on the living room floor.
Keeper: So you're a brother. What do you do? [00:22:00] How do you handle this? Adults, when they hear this, cannot handle this. The situation is made even worse when you're told it didn't happen to you, but it did. It was always happening to us. We just didn't know about it. But it went a long way forward explaining reactions from our sisters with conversations or just in general, just whatever that didn't make any sense.
Keeper: For instance, we might be laughing and joking and someone would say something and then the girls would just shut down and it never made any sense. But now it all makes, and so helplessness looks at the shock and disbelief, the guilt and the blame and the self, the self blame and anger and betrayals that brothers experience [00:23:00] around the conversation that we are not invited to participate, but are expected to answer for our non participation.
Keeper: And so helplessness. It's book one of a three book series. It's helplessness, then the next one I'm writing now, hopefulness, and then happiness. How do you get there? How do you get through this toughest, darkest period in your life, when the people most important to you want nothing to do with you, and yet, You are trying to remain tethered to them emotionally because you know, your only way back is through them.
Keeper: So that's what helplessness is about. As I said, it's the first book of his kind because it tells this story from my brother's perspective. And, I now, you know leave it to you and we can continue with the conversation however you'd.
De'Vannon Seráphino: So I want to make people [00:24:00] aware when it comes like statistically to the amount of people who have been molested when they are children, those numbers are pretty grossly understated. And so I didn't really bother to even research that and pull it up because it wouldn't do it just as it deserves.
De'Vannon Seráphino: The last time that I was in the mental hospital at the Bronx VA here, for drug abuse and suicidal ideation and things like that, one of the social workers, told me, and I've been in the mental hospital about a thousand times, but, you know, he told, and I, nobody ever told me before that pretty much, I think he said like 50 percent of the veteran males who come through the, the, the VA system, the veterans affairs and mental health system have been molested as children.
De'Vannon Seráphino: It doesn't matter if they identify as straight, which most of them do. And so your stories about females being abused, it goes the other way. And so I wanted to just. Point that [00:25:00] out as well. The thing is not
Keeper: just about emails abused. It's about telling this about giving rise or giving voice to brothers so they can be part of a conversation in which they are not invited to or even allowed to participate in.
Keeper: You're absolutely right from a statistical standpoint just here in the United States. It is estimated that there are some 40Million. Adults walking around who. We're sexually abused. And as you said, these are the numbers that are reported. Of course, it's underreported. And every day in the United States, 160 unique children are sexually abused in their home.
Keeper: So what does that tell you? That tells you yesterday, 160 kids Went to school, played hopscotch, went to lunch, played with their friends on, on the yard, went home, had dinner, [00:26:00]hung out with the family, and somewhere around late in the night, someone opened the door and went in and molested them. It will happen again to 160 unique children tonight, and it will happen again to 160 unique children tomorrow, and then the morrow after that, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Keeper: No one wants to talk about it. And because it's just one of those things we don't want to admit to my initial subheading was the mental health challenges brothers experience, but then I got to thinking about, I'm like, no, that is not it. And I know mental health. Is a very big word term that we use today, but that's not for me.
Keeper: That is not the problem. That's second. That comes later. The first problem, which is why I call it the emotional health challenges for this experience. It's emotional because mental. It [00:27:00] is logic thinking and it is alone. You're, you're isolated. It is your problem and no one else's. There's no community that has to accept responsibility for you.
Keeper: Let us write you a prescription. Let me send you over there by yourself and you deal with it, but emotional, which is what happens first. Your, your challenge is the emotional one. And if those. Needs cannot be supported or met, and in order for those needs to be supported and met, because they're feeling based, they are shared experience, they require community participation.
Keeper: If those cannot be satisfied, or support and tools cannot be brought to bear to help you with it, then you go to that alone space, and that's the place we don't want to be. You go to that place where you're by yourself, and all of a sudden it becomes logic seeking. I have to do this. I must do that. I'm [00:28:00] the only one who can do this.
Keeper: And that happened to me years later when I almost killed my stepdad because I could not find the support that I needed. And I was locked out of the conversations with the most important people that I needed to speak to. So the mental always comes next. It's the emotional thing that gets us through.
Keeper: First and very few people want to talk about the emotional challenges because how do you write a prescription for someone's emotional challenges? Very little money to be made there, but I let me give you a pill. Let me write a prescription. Oh, we can do this all day. But as I said, what happened to me and what happened to my brothers was this emotional shame and stigma started to set in because we didn't want to share it with anyone.
Keeper: Bye. The fear and anxiety and the crisis and confusion was just all encompassing. It was suffocating. Depression and isolation starts to set in. And [00:29:00] so, what do you do? How do you bring brothers into this conversation? This is what I focus on.
De'Vannon Seráphino: So, What I want to point out is, the reason why it's just as important for the siblings who did not were not necessarily molested versus those who were is that that sort of spirit that sort of energy is still present, you know, in the home and in the household.
De'Vannon Seráphino: It does affect everybody with something, you know, that violent and evil is happening. And when somebody, and it affects your relationships with these people, as you were stating, and you didn't know why it was being affected, so everybody is impacted, though not directly impacted, still impact,
Keeper: right?
De'Vannon Seráphino: And, they, it's still like a certain level of control, when somebody's trying to tell you what you can and cannot say.
De'Vannon Seráphino: [00:30:00] And can and cannot do, which nobody has a right to. It's something that spawned forth from like a fear and it's, it's a way, it's a way of the devil stifling the truth in a way of, of further inflicting more abuse and pain. So one question you, were any charges ever pressed against your stepdad for this?
Keeper: No, my mother's definitely certainly wasn't doing that. And my sisters were too afraid to do so. And they would need them. They would need to be the ones to do it and I get
De'Vannon Seráphino: it.
Keeper: I get it. You know, it is very hard for people who have been sexually abused to take that step because most of the time we do not accept that what has happened to us is real.
Keeper: And oftentimes, you know, when I'm speaking at events, invariably there's a woman [00:31:00]who will stand up and say, you know what, keep your sisters absolutely right. You boys can't talk about it. It didn't happen to you. And I said, Well, no, it did. But however, perhaps this will help you. My sisters were first sexually abused in 1971.
Keeper: The two youngest were five and then the one after them was six. And then my third oldest, the oldest girl, she was 10 or 11, she believed. However, six years before, my sisters were sexually abused. My older brother and I were sexually abused by our babysitter almost daily. For six months. So I do get it. I understand both sides of the sexual abuse coin.
Keeper: I understand the direct victim side as a child, and I understand the direct indirect victim side as a brother, and then that just causes them to back up. And they said, and then they tell me, well, I had no idea. I said, no, you didn't have any idea, but you [00:32:00] shouldn't have to. If we're going to play the game of whose trauma is worse, my sister or the boy, because the girls were directly impacted, you boys were indirectly impacted, that's a no win game.
Keeper: We're not trying to assign whose trauma is the worst. Everyone is in pain. What needs to happen is, if you're going to talk about child sexual abuse, what usually happens is There's attention brought to the predator. There's attention brought to those who empower. And I say those because we told our aunts, uncles, and our grandparents and they wanted nothing to do with it.
Keeper: And in some ways, it's from a generational thing. But in other ways, it's not. And that cannot be an excuse. I don't want to get involved in your family because that opens up a can of worms. Yeah, but when you don't get involved, you give permission for the children [00:33:00] to continually be abused. .
Keeper: You need to help us. So, you got that part. And obviously, for the direct victim, attention is brought. And the attention that could be brought once it comes out is, Oh, are you okay? Anson started coming and asking my sister. And even my sisters had friends. And they would tell them, Girl, if that had happened to me, I'd have done this.
Keeper: I would have done that. That is fricking noise. That doesn't help anybody because you don't know what you would do in that situation. You have absolutely no idea. So if you're just going to give me noise, that doesn't help me. My brothers and I, because of what our sisters said, we can't talk about it. We didn't even talk to each other.
Keeper: We were so afraid to talk to each other because my [00:34:00] family, we all have, A family relationship, but each one of us has an individual dynamic or an individual relationship with each other. And we're talking about parents and parents when your children are your heroes, they're the most important people in your life.
Keeper: And so what do you do? How do you navigate this? You just can't. As I said, adults can't handle a situation. So I, I, I say that to say the loop must be closed and the only way to close the loop in terms of healing the family and helping people find the support that they need is you have to talk to everyone.
Keeper: Everyone needs to be addressed. You just can't sit, set the brothers over to the side and say, you guys just deal with it. You're not important. And that's always the case. For brothers. No one ever asked. As I said, [00:35:00] do you need anything? But I tell you what we do hear. How come you didn't see my tears? How come you didn't hear me weeping?
Keeper: How come? How come? This is what we heard from our sisters. And because our relationship is, is being held together by a thread, they didn't say anything. We just listened. And yet we were being bombarded with how come, how come, how come, but you're trying to figure it out. And so we went through so many things over this 45 year journey for me as a brother.
Keeper: Oftentimes people, as I said very early on, they think it's a black family thing. Nothing could be further to the truth. This thing crosses waters. It crosses borders. It crosses education. It crosses political. It crosses [00:36:00] racial lines. It crosses wealth. It crosses every line you could possibly think of. But yet, they oftentimes want to assign it.
Keeper: And so what I tell people, look, this is not a black thing, and the only way that I can explain it to you so that you understand it is me telling you the story of my father in law who passed away five years ago.
De'Vannon Seráphino: Wait a minute before before you get on before you get on that. I want to talk about I want to talk about the trauma comparison thing that you were mentioning an issue a warning to people about this because whatever the trauma is, whether it's molestation or whatever.
De'Vannon Seráphino: I've heard very foolish people say things like they think. They have this idea of this bullshit called like the capital T trauma and little t trauma. I would just like to say that I think that that is a lie. Yes, I don't know where from the pits of hell [00:37:00] that idea came from and how it made its way into a psychiatric circles to ever get this idea.
De'Vannon Seráphino: That any type of trauma is bigger or smaller or more intense or less severe baby trauma is trauma. Yes. Pain. And what I have seen is people take their asses. And they, how did I see this? Like, this one dude was like, I've got problems, but this other person has bigger problems. And so what he was doing was doing all this volunteer work or whatever to try to help other people's problems, but then not tending to his own because he had this kind of like.
De'Vannon Seráphino: guilt about, in his mind, not being as fucked up as this other person. But I'm looking at him, it's like, you're fucked up. And not only are you fucked up, but you're not dealing with your problems as you convinced yourself. That your problems are not severe enough or [00:38:00]traumatic enough to warrant tending to. So while he's out trying to save the world, he's lost himself.
De'Vannon Seráphino: And he's hidden behind things that look benevolent and look like he's trying to help. But really what he's doing is running from himself in this idea that other people have it worse off than him. And so he'll just tend to them and get to his shit whenever, which is never. And I just wanted to caution people about that, darlings.
De'Vannon Seráphino: Problems are problems and you need to fix your own shit of whatever. Yeah,
Keeper: because the psychological and emotional impact of what you just talked about from running from whatever it is you're dealing with. It really begins to impact your self esteem and self worth. You are telling yourself you are not worthy.
Keeper: You are not worth being supported. How does anyone arrive at that? And I think we arrive at that because society [00:39:00] has put that in place. Society has said, okay, you need to help everyone else, and then somehow, miraculously, your healing will just happen. It doesn't. I love to believe you must heal yourself first.
Keeper: Because if you can't heal yourself first, you can't bring the necessary energy and compassionate understanding to help someone else. You must take care of yourself and then you can help other people. And I'm in total agreement with what you just said.
De'Vannon Seráphino: How when you said that you, you almost killed your stepdad, what happened?
Keeper: In 1986, I was. Getting married. In fact, my wife and I, we will be married 38 years this year, three months before the wedding. This is nine years [00:40:00] later at the 1977. Nothing had been resolved with my stepdad. In fact, my mother. Continue to see him and continue to have him around us and my sisters, and three months prior to my, to me getting married, I just couldn't take it.
Keeper: I just could not accept that he's still gonna be around. And so I stopped eating. I stopped sleeping. I lost so much weight because the thought of him being around my sisters without me being around, and I hadn't. Handled it. My mother said she was going to handle it. And okay, and so I'm following my sister's law.
Keeper: Don't do anything, but I'm a brother and I am being eaten away emotionally. And so on Saturday, I tell my fiance, I said, look, I got to go to the house. I have to [00:41:00] handle something this weekend because my self esteem was just beat down. How could I have not taken care of this? No one else was taking care of it.
Keeper: So my fiance said, is everything okay? Will you be back? And I said, I think so. He said, what does that mean? I said, well, you know, yeah, you, you'll, you'll, you'll see me tomorrow. So I go to the house. My mom kept a, a bedroom for me there. So if I ever decided that I wanted to come back and it was upstairs.
Keeper: And the only other bedroom upstairs was my mother's bedroom. And she was seeing my stepdaddy and I'm like, what the hell? So I go into the bedroom and I wait for two hours. I'm waiting for us down and I'm sitting on the bed. I'm lying on the bed and this is the night it's all going to end. I sit up, I'm sweaty, I'm cold, I'm just shivering, and I can do this, I can't do this, he's so [00:42:00] much bigger than you, he's 6'6 250 pounds, you're only 5'8 you're 145 pounds, he's so much bigger than you, all those things kept running into my head.
Keeper: But then I would imagine what he did to my sister. Like, okay. You got to handle this. So a couple of hours later, I hear the sound and I sit up off the bed. They both being on the floor. This is it. He's coming out of that bedroom. So I get up and I opened the door and I see him coming down the hall and I step out and we look at each other and he waves.
Keeper: He's like all happy. Hey, I'm just. And he stops walking, comprehension, I imagine, oh, someone's about to do something. So we walk toward each other, and we come face to face, or what I call, face to chest, because I couldn't look over [00:43:00] his shoulder, he was that much bigger than me. And this, this story is a pretty big part of the book, because it's pretty expansive, but, but this, I, my face is in his chest.
Keeper: And I look up and say, you have 24 hours to leave this house. If you are still here by this time tomorrow, you will be dead because I will have killed you. And I turn around and I walk back. The instrument of his death is in my bedroom. It is resting against the bedroom door jamb.
Keeper: I close the door. I hear footsteps. I grab the bat and I'm just waiting. Come on. Come on through. This is it. But then I hear footsteps start to fade. Okay. He's going the other way. I go outside, [00:44:00] get in my little orange Biotics 1 9, and I come back the next day because I gave him 24 hours. I go back in the house and he's not there, luckily.
Keeper: And I say luckily because when you go to a mental place where you're alone in your head and you logically figured out the only way to do something is through destruction, to take a life, You're in a very bad place. And I hadn't told anyone what I was going to do. I didn't tell my fiance. I didn't tell my sister.
Keeper: I didn't tell my brother. And so I went back to the house fully expected to be killed. And I was okay with that. Because that means he was going to go to jail for murder. Or I was going to kill him. And I was okay with that. Because at least he's gone. Yeah, I'm going to jail for premeditated murder. But he'll be out of my sister's lives.
Keeper: How stupid is that? But that's where I was mentally. I was [00:45:00] a brother in distress. I was in pain. I had to do something. But luckily, as I said, he was gone. And
Keeper: the, the mental place, I've never been in such a dark place in my life. I could not believe that he was gone. I went there, but I've never done anything like that. I've never got into trouble. But here I was, so
De'Vannon Seráphino: I almost committed murder. I was good with it. I want to say, I mean, the mind is capable of, you know, of anything. I mean, of all the murders that have been committed. I mean, I don't know, you know, that you would have necessarily been convicted by a jury of your peers. I mean, that's a, you know, this is not like Ted Bundy going on a spree, you know, this is a little different here, but, but I'm not suggesting anybody go out and [00:46:00] murder the molester in your family.
De'Vannon Seráphino: But, I mean, I'm not here to judge, you know, one way or the other, because, you know, I was molested, you know, as a child, you know, by my uncle or uncles or whoever the fuck, you know, was. So I would like to take a second here to throw a bit of shade at, well, I mean the mothers out there for this, for this weakness here.
De'Vannon Seráphino: The thing is, keeping those men around, who you know have done this, It's very disrespectful to, to, well, to yourself, you know, and everybody else in the family. I get why you do it, because you have this illusion set up, and you have this Fantasy world that you live in where you think everything is like peachy and together and it isn't.
De'Vannon Seráphino: And for you to throw him out means that you know that you confess that you lived a lie for all this time, which is something that you can't handle. However, what I did was I divorced the blood family I was born [00:47:00] into because, you know, dad is a narcissist. All the children are fucking narcissists. You got the abusive ass uncles and everything and, and, and I just said, you know what, when I changed my last name last year to Seráphino, I was basically saying, giving them all the middle fingers, like, you know what, I can't change the evil dynamics of this damn family, but I can change my position to the family.
De'Vannon Seráphino: And I left and walked away from everybody, I kept my mom and my two cats. And everybody else, fuck them. Like, because I can't be getting involved with the devil energy, whoever it presents to, because my obligation is to God first, not to a blood family. And I have my own calling and everything to tend to, and I will not let that be hindered by negative energy from any damn body.
De'Vannon Seráphino: I don't give a shit who they are. And so, the mothers out there, like my mom told me not to speak up, speak about it when dad had one of his affairs. That is wrong. That is weakness, you know, on the part of the woman to not leave those dudes, to not, to not go away, you know, to pack your shit like she did [00:48:00] and then come back.
De'Vannon Seráphino: But without any sort of explanation, nobody explained anything to me. It was the same thing. Secret, secret, secret, hush, hush, hush. And I'm in the eighth grade dealing with all of this affair and, and my mom even had the audacity to put myself and my siblings in the car. To screech up to the hoe's house to cuss the hoe out as she's sweeping her driveway to, and then leave.
De'Vannon Seráphino: I'm all like, if you were gonna, without any explanation of where we were going before we went or when we got back, if we was gonna do all that, we should've got out the car and beat the bitch. You know, why the fuck are you gonna screech through here just to read her for filth you come all this way and you not gonna throw hands?
De'Vannon Seráphino: Like, what was the point, mom? And then no explanation when I got back home. Just go to school, and then my grades went from straight A's to barely passing, and I thought it was something wrong with me, and I did not realize how being around that affected my ability to go to school and concentrate. So, women, when you leave your children [00:49:00] around abusive ass men, whorish, adulterous, molesting ass dudes, you are fucking with your child on ways that ain't worth keeping that fucking dude over.
De'Vannon Seráphino: Before this cheating as narcissistic husband, the husband before this one was a physically abusive one. So my mom has not successfully broken this cycle. And when you women go and have children with these types of men, you're bringing children into bad, bad situations. And then the dudes. Like what you were saying was waving at you like everything's hunky dory, you know, I've heard like my dad say stupid shit Like why do people like Mother's Day more than Father's Day seem like you give women more attention?
De'Vannon Seráphino: I'm like because you're a cheating narcissistic asshole It's like they can't comprehend Why your children will raise up and revolt against you and rebel against you After you've abused us and hit us and molested us and berated us You And, and, which is what I did. I don't fuck with him no more. I just stopped talking to [00:50:00] him one day.
De'Vannon Seráphino: Like, you already know what you did. You already, you have no apologies for it, no signs of changing, and you got a million excuses in the book of why it's my fault, my mom's fault, the tree's fault, the fucking cat's fault, everybody's fault but yours. So, I'm just gonna let you keep that narrative, and I'm just never gonna talk to you again, and you can just deal with that shit.
De'Vannon Seráphino: When you die, leave me a lot of fucking money. At least you could do that. I'm not trying to kill my dad, but. I, I mean, I do think about his death and I, and I'm kind of like, in my head I'd be like, can we get this going? But I'm not about to, I'm not about to fly down to Louisiana and do nothing, but I'm, I'm just going to be honest with the world.
De'Vannon Seráphino: I think about it all the time. I'm like, fuck, why is he not dead yet? I mean, oh man, that is not cool. Can't
Keeper: we get this going? What? What's the hold up here?
De'Vannon Seráphino: I'm like waiting for the funeral, Paul, and I'm not going to his funeral. That'll be [00:51:00] my last clap. Yeah, but I'm waiting for this. Yeah. I'm like, can we get this going?
De'Vannon Seráphino: Jesus. I mean, what the fuck? You
Keeper: know, the, the trauma is, is. It's so encompassing. Oftentimes people don't realize it, or they're not willing to admit it, because trauma to me is like you know, it's already PTSD, but it's like, the trauma is self replicating, like DNA, and like DNA, which self replicates the ways we don't know about, the trauma does the same thing.
Keeper: You know, there's a surface level stuff that we see immediately, the things that we can deal with. Immediately, or maybe 5, 10 feet in front of us, but what's happening beneath us emotionally, we can't see. And so those things impact like with you. The emotional trauma was so intense you went from a straight A student to [00:52:00] barely passing because you're thinking about all the things you've seen and experienced and the support did not come and it impacts your ability to relate to men, women, children, it impacts your work, it impacts everything about you, and we never going to stop to think about what that impact is or what that trauma is.
Keeper: And so from the DNA standpoint. With trauma, we need to embrace it. We need to just accept that it is a part of us. And no amount of running from it is going to heal it. Once you accept that it is a part of you, now you can begin to move forward with your healing, because without acceptance, it is very little, if any, chance of healing.
Keeper: So that's got to be job one. After that, you've got to find a community or [00:53:00] someone that you can talk to who will allow you to speak your truth without any judgment. And that's really hard because you're talking about sharing something you don't want anyone to know. But your only way through is to go through.
Keeper: That's it. So, how do you find someone who will allow you to talk and share what it is you need to share without it? As I said, oftentimes people are just going to say, Dude, I'd have done this. Girl, I'd have done that. No way. That doesn't help. It may be someone that you know, or you may need to find additional resources, either from a psychologist or family therapist.
Keeper: For something along those lines, there are plenty of those out there. For my situation as a brother, I spoke to a number of clinicians. I spoke to a number of counselors, family therapists. [00:54:00] My challenge was this. I told them what happened. And I said, I need, can you help me with this? And to a person, they all told me no.
Keeper: I said, how come? They said, I've never heard of anything like this. I've never heard about the trauma brothers experienced. I don't know what to do with this. Like, what are you talking about? If I lost my entire family in a car accident, could you help me? Like, yeah. I said, what's the same thing I just lost my family?
Keeper: All of them. Well, but if you were a woman, I could talk to you about sexual abuse. Or if you were a girl, I could help you. But I've never heard of anything from a brother's perspective. This is the first time I've ever heard of a story like this. I said, just because it's the first time doesn't mean it's not happening every place else.
Keeper: It's true. And so I've had to try to figure out my healing on my own. I've had to figure out the steps that I needed to do to get through [00:55:00] to the next day. Which, a lot of times, as I said, it's about accepting what has happened to me. Because, as a man, that shit ain't hard to let go of. You know, we don't like giving up that vulnerability.
Keeper: And that's the problem society has put us here, where we need to be down here. Women are so much better at dealing with these things simply because they're more willing to talk to each other a lot quicker than a guy is willing to talk to another guy about this. And that's just because society created this illusion that men are all powerful, we are the hunters, we go out and do this, it is a disservice to us to even think that you've got your feminine side, you've got your male side, and you need to embrace both of them, because both of them have strength, both of them bring you power, both of them give you what you need in order to solve [00:56:00] whatever is happening for you, but if you're just gonna stick over here with the male perspective, the male paradigm, You're fucked.
Keeper: It's just the way it is. You have to embrace the feminine side. I just had to figure out, okay, I need to let this go. I need to be willing to just, this is who I am. I'm embracing all of it. And it allowed me to get back to my sisters 45 years later. Because I took the extraordinary step, or what people would call the extraordinary step, because most people don't do it.
Keeper: I decided to reach out, and I was going to accept whatever slings and arrows came my way. But because I did, today, our story, my family's story, the story of triumph, it's a story of hope, resilience, it is a story of survivorship, and I can easily point to the evidence of that, because in my book, it's a brother's perspective, [00:57:00] but three of my sisters participate.
Keeper: Three of my sisters were, were able to find a way back and allow me a way back that they each contributed sections to the book. Two of my brothers, which I thought would never happen, but I went through what I needed to go through. And as I said, it's not a People Magazine article. It's very deep. It's very gritty.
Keeper: It's very grimy. But for my sisters to say, when I asked them, which I was expecting them to tell me, oh, hell no, I'm not participating in that. Well, I convinced him, I said, look, our family story does not need to end in tragedy. It can be used to help so many families. That's the goal here. And that's when they began to understand, you know what, it doesn't have to end like this.
Keeper: We can be better. We can be better for other people. And so we found our way through [00:58:00] and they have great relationships with three of them now, something I never thought would ever happen, ever. Even the one who said, you can't talk about it, ever. We found our way back, but it wasn't easy. It was work, and helplessness shares about that, and, hopefulness is how do you get from a helpless place to finding hope?
Keeper: Well, the easy explanation is you've got to cling to those people, places, and things that bring you joy, and they keep you tethered, and you start your journey back after that.
De'Vannon Seráphino: What I'm mad about is that your mama didn't let y'all secure that coin and secure your bag first before she told you all this.
De'Vannon Seráphino: I'm like, you done been sitting on this for all these years and we [00:59:00]about to get rich and have all this influence over the world and be able to help people through music and now you tell us? Now, well,
Keeper: it wasn't my mother's choice to tell her. Remember I said my four sisters were arguing that morning, that Saturday morning, 77.
Keeper: This is what they were arguing about. Today is the day we tell the boys. They will know today. Why then, after all those years? Because the trauma, Was was such they needed to say something. I get it. And I understand what you're saying. But but here's the thing. Imagine that we rose to all this stardom. You know what you'd be seeing about us today on, say, VH1's Behind the Music or MTV or BET or something.
Keeper: You'd be seeing our tragic story. And every time that story aired, we would be re [01:00:00]traumatized. Our children would be traumatized. Our grandchildren would be traumatized. It would be generational. We would never be able to escape it. Yeah, we might have, as you said, the coin, we might have the bank, but the sacrifice.
Keeper: Was going to be us. And so, yeah, we were asking, I'm just, you're like, why? But it makes sense. When you stop and think about it, the trauma that would have been following us until the end of our days. You know, I was going to tell you, because it kind of plays into what my, what my stepdad did. And I don't know if you, what would, you know, if I have time to share this or, or, or not, but, okay.
Keeper: My father in law died five years ago. He's 95. He was 95. He's white and he's Jewish. He grew up in New York. He grew up in a middle class family. [01:01:00] He built a very nice business. As I said, I'm black. I barely finished school. I'm homeless three times. I've lived in 200 different places. We are polar opposites.
Keeper: The only thing we have in common is my wife, his daughter. That's it.
Keeper: Right before he died, he called me to the house. And I went to the house and I said, my dad is definitely okay. And he said, yeah, I want you to have a seat. I'm going to talk to you. So he called me over and had to sit at the dining room table and he says, what I'm about to tell you, you can't tell anyone.
Keeper: Okay. He says, I understand. You understand what I understand? I don't know what you're talking about that, but he's padding a book in front of him. And I [01:02:00] looked down. Oh shit. He's got my book. I know he knows I wrote, I wrote a book, but I didn't expect him to have it. But he's got the book.
Keeper: He says, I know. Okay. I'm going to tell you something I've never told anyone other than my wife, my mother in law. He said, I never told my 3 including your wife. Okay. He says, when I was a little boy at about 16 or 17, we lived in Brooklyn. We lived in a two story apartment. Our best friends were upstairs.
Keeper: We were downstairs. We were so incredibly tight as families, as friends. That we've never locked our front door. We can go in and out of each other's apartment anytime, day or night, any of the kids, it's not a problem. One day, my mother and my father, I don't remember which one, sent me upstairs to get something, I don't know.
Keeper: You know, eggs, I don't know, bread, I have no idea. [01:03:00] And so he's got my attention. Where is he going with this?
Keeper: Because I walked into the apartment and there's no one there. I look around and then I hear something from one of the bedrooms.
Keeper: I walk over and I open the door and the father is molesting my son.
Keeper: I stand at the doorway. I don't know what to do. I'm in shock. But my sister My older sister looks at me, I go downstairs, I don't say a word. My sister comes downstairs, she doesn't say a word. Neither one of us tells out. Two months later, it happens again, and now my [01:04:00] father in law, 95 years old, he's crying.
Keeper: You too? Your family too? All I've heard is how perfect your family was growing up. What? And he passed the book. I understand, I understand. And I'm like, Dad, it's okay, it's okay. It's okay. Really, what struck me in that moment is here you've got a guy, 95 years old, he knows he's going to be dead within three years.
Keeper: And he calls me, his black son in law, not his white Jewish son in law or his white Greek Orthodox son in law. He calls me to share this story and says you can't tell anybody until I die because he doesn't want the family to know. He doesn't want to hear from his daughter. He doesn't want to hear from his nieces and nephews.
Keeper: He doesn't want to hear from his friends about this. You can tell the story [01:05:00] after I die, and here he is in tears. He and I had a magnificent relationship. It grew to be incredibly special. But now we have something in common that no one else in the family has. We have the trauma of brothers knowing their sisters have been sexually abused, and we can't talk about it.
Keeper: He's 95 years old. He has been carrying this for almost 80 years, and now he's saying on his way out, I need someone to hear me. I need someone to tell me it's okay. I need you to understand. He didn't have to tell me anything. He could have just finished out his line. But he wanted me to know, and this goes back to finding someone to talk to because they allow you relief.
Keeper: They [01:06:00] allow you a chance to heal. They allow you to say what you've been holding on to. And so, as I mentioned earlier, this crosses race, it crosses politics, it crosses religion, it crosses education, it crosses social economics, it crosses waters, it crosses borders. This happens everywhere around the world, and brothers do not have the space to talk about it, which is what I do.
Keeper: I bring the voice, because we matter. Our story about this matter, and when we tell our stories, we can now talk to our sisters. We can now talk to other women, and we can get away from this, we, whose trauma is worse. We can now move forward in allyship, if you will, to solve this problem. Because without the brothers being allowed to speak, you end up being like my father [01:07:00] in law.
Keeper: Incredibly traumatized and no one knows about it. So, he gave me a gift, is what he did. He gave me a magnificent gift because it allows me to have the real life example of what happens if you do not find a way, as you talked about, to heal your trauma. But in this instance, we need, it needs to be community based.
Keeper: It needs more than just go here, let me write a prescription. It requires the community. Because oftentimes people don't want to do the community. That means the community doesn't want to accept their responsibility before they run. But this is what happens. And if he had gotten help earlier, it is quite possible the trajectory of his life would have been so much more meaningful.
Keeper: Because depending on the support we do or do not get, that will determine what type of man he I was going to grow to become it. It was very [01:08:00] difficult. It would be determined the next boy what the trajectory of his life is going to be. And so we need tools. We need systems. We need to create these things.
Keeper: And I look for people who will help me do this. I don't have the knowledge, but I have the story and I'm willing to go to work to get it done. And so as I said, my father in law gave me something completely unexpected. He really did,
De'Vannon Seráphino: but it's very interesting. You described that as a gift when I was listening to you.
De'Vannon Seráphino: I was hearing it more as a weight, you know, like, like a burden because from the time that he told you that you couldn't do anything with until after he died. It's a really hearing like a weight with you, but it's very positive minded of you to transmute that into a gift that speaks very highly to your perspective.
De'Vannon Seráphino: So what it
Keeper: gives me to explain the story, you know, it gives me to answer that [01:09:00] question as we talked about in the very beginning. This is not just a black story. This is everybody's story. And as I said, people want to assign, you know, agency to black people on this. I'm like, no! And so, that's why it's a gift.
Keeper: Right. You know, he, he, he, he gave me something that I can write about later and really put a bow on this. Really just, you know just tighten it up. This is it. There's no more running from this everyone else. It's everybody.
De'Vannon Seráphino: So. This is the last thing I'm going to say, then we can get over into the, into the dad jokes and close this out.
De'Vannon Seráphino: When the devil does not give a damn how he limits a person in life, if he can keep you from operating at a hundred percent, 99%, 98%, 97%, all of that is [01:10:00] a victory to Lucifer. I need people to get through their heads that there is, that there is a devil. It's not just a universe with all these random energies floating around, but there are sentient negative forces that genuinely do not want you to succeed.
De'Vannon Seráphino: I do a lot of work. And I'm starting to do more work in trying to, to make people understand that the universe and God are not the same thing as I get asked that question a lot, like, like, when I travel around and things like that, it's like, people are worshiping the thing and they don't fully understand because they're asking me what it is.
De'Vannon Seráphino: That means a part of them doesn't fully know yet. They're, they're, they're getting up every day and saying, thank the universe. And I'm all like, yeah. Is that so? But but, but the devil does not care how he suppresses you or keeps you from being fully happy, fully fulfilled. Because like Keeper is saying, you're gonna go out and live according to what is in you and you're gonna show up to your relationships and to yourself according to what is in you.
De'Vannon Seráphino: And if you're [01:11:00] bearing a dark secret, a heavy burden, that is strength that that is required of you. To keep that instead of dealing with it, and that is strength you therefore do not have to show up for yourself positively or for your wife, husband, if you're polyamorous, if you call yourself being polyamorous, you know, all these different ways that you're stretching yourself thin and having children and trying to volunteer and trying to go to work.
De'Vannon Seráphino: You got a large part of your soul catering to the secret. And whatever quality of life you think that you're living. Is not optimal. It is not what it was supposed to be. And therefore, the darkness has a certain type of victory over you. And in your soul, you know damn well that you have not lived up to your, your maximum capacity.
De'Vannon Seráphino: And that is the victory of Satan over you because you were never fully happy. You went and did the things. You got the wife and the car and the money and the children. You did the things, but you did not get the victory within [01:12:00] yourself. Which was the whole point of it all. You know, in the first place. And so, and so, no secrets.
De'Vannon Seráphino: I don't give a damn what has happened to who it has happened to. You open your fucking mouth and you say something to some damn body. I don't care if you gotta start with a therapist in private. Something to get the ball rolling, to get the wheels lubed. Or something like that. Or talk to your cat. Or some damn body, you know, but do not sit there and hold on to those secrets.
De'Vannon Seráphino: The secrets destroy people and they destroy you from the inside out. But it is truth that brings freedom because what, what did Jesus say? You will know the truth and the truth will make you free. Doesn't care how uncomfortable or painful the truth is. It's still the fucking truth is what the hell happened.
De'Vannon Seráphino: And your only way out is through. So we can't be avoiding uncomfortable. Conversation uncomfortable situation and act like [01:13:00] life is only supposed to be comfortable. That's not true We're not supposed to just have good rosy feelings all the time. We're supposed to be fucking uncomfortable. This is balance It's what keeps us humble, it's what keeps us level headed so we don't exalt ourselves against God or against each other.
De'Vannon Seráphino: We have to have pain and discomfort. It is unreasonable to think we're not supposed to ever be uncomfortable. And a part of it is talking about what the fuck we've been through. So, y'all open your mouth, tell the damn truth. I don't give a shit how, or how you think you look. Do you think you would look?
De'Vannon Seráphino: What you would look like if you told the truth about being molested is vulnerable. People would fucking respect you. When I got HIV and everything, I went through the same thing. I didn't want to tell anybody. You know, I didn't want anybody to know that I was so weak and foolish. But by the time people found out, all I got was love.
De'Vannon Seráphino: and encouragement and people thought I was brave for telling it was none of those things, none of those fears that I let the devil put into my head that I thought was going to happen if [01:14:00] anybody found out that I wasn't as perfect as I thought I looked when I never really looked that damn well put together any fucking way.
De'Vannon Seráphino: So I might as well have told what happened and had my peace because it did not go bad like I thought it was going to go. What you're going to find is people open up to you and they draw to you and they want to support you if you tell them you got molested. Ain't nobody gonna judge you like that. Amen.
De'Vannon Seráphino: Not without it being that they're discredit.. You might come across an asshole or two, but I didn't come across anybody. Yeah.
Keeper: Yeah. They're, they're, they are out there, you know, and oftentimes, you know, you'll have 99 people support you and one person who doesn't, and God damn it, we don't hang on to that one support.
Keeper: That one person who didn't, and like, but you got 99 others, like no, you know, you are absolutely spot on. I, I agree. I agree.
De'Vannon Seráphino: We, we, what we do with those few people who have the audacity to project onto us their brokenness [01:15:00] by not supporting us when we are vulnerable about things we've been through, we Mariah Carey those bitches, we don't know her.
De'Vannon Seráphino: Who is him? And we simply move on. We don't know her. Wait, the other thing I wanted to ask before we get into the dad jokes, any of the music that you and your family made back then, is it available anywhere still? Oh yeah, it's online.
Keeper: Yeah, it's definitely out there. People buying it. It's just, it's, it's out there.
De'Vannon Seráphino: What's the group name that it's under? The Whitney
Keeper: family, the Whitney family.
De'Vannon Seráphino: Okay, so break out to Spotify, go on YouTube, go on YouTube. Go to them archives and find the Whitney family. Yeah. Okay. Dad jokes, let's do this! Alright, dad joke number one. Y'all, y'all know, we know we do this to kind of lighten the mood here at the Sex, Drugs, and Jesus podcast, because we talk about real shit.
De'Vannon Seráphino: First question. What kind of shoes do frogs wear?
Keeper: [01:16:00] What? Okay, hold on, hold on.
De'Vannon Seráphino: These are better answered when one is high on weed or like Molly or some shit, but we do these shows sober.
Keeper: Okay, well I definitely cannot answer that way because that's not what I participate in, so I just heard you tell me that I'm at a disadvantage. Cool, cool, cool. I have no idea. What kind of shoes do frogs wear?
De'Vannon Seráphino: Open toed. Come on,
Keeper: my kids would kill me if I told them that joke,
De'Vannon Seráphino: it would be right because you're a dad and telling jokes and these are dad jokes.
Keeper: Yeah, they say you're just horrible. All right. Open toed shoes.
De'Vannon Seráphino: Okay.
Keeper: All
De'Vannon Seráphino: right. Dad joke. Number two. What has a, you should get this one. What has a spine? But no bone.[01:17:00]
Keeper: It's a joke. So, what does it spine, but no bones?
De'Vannon Seráphino: I had no idea. Come on. You're an author. You got to know this other than a book. Precisely. So you got
Keeper: through the lifeline. You're an author. It's fine. Okay, cool. So all that needs to, since there are three jokes, I'm going to bet at minimum. 3 30, which means in major league baseball, that's Hall of Fame. I'm good.
Keeper: So let's do this.
De'Vannon Seráphino: You can definitely being grafted into the sex drugs and Jesus dad joke Hall of Fame. I have send you a plaque. The third one is where do surfers learn it to surf? What type of school do surfers go to to learn?
Keeper: Okay, hold on. This is gonna require. Okay, [01:18:00] I think I'm gonna do a wave.
De'Vannon Seráphino: What do they serve on? What? Boarding school. Right.
Keeper: Is this how you do all of these? You end all of these
De'Vannon Seráphino: like this? No, I just felt like coaching you today and just being generous for some reason. Usually I just sit here and watch people flounder, but today I thought it would be nicer.
Keeper: Yeah, you were, you were very kind. I appreciate it.
De'Vannon Seráphino: So any last words for the people that will let you close the show out?
Keeper: Own your space. Yeah. You know, don't be afraid to step into your space. I found that when I started talking, all the shackles that were holding me back just started to just fall away. And that's where the power [01:19:00] is. Because unless you talk, all the power resides with the people who have who have, in my case, who have molested you.
Keeper: That's the last thing they want you to do. And so they, they hold you in check, but as soon as you start talking, it's cathartic. You become empowered. So if you can find a place to talk, even if it's just to one person, you will find a lot of healing begins to take place for you.
De'Vannon Seráphino: Here's the healing. Thank you so much, Keeper, for coming on the show. We'll look forward to releasing this. You are a blessing to this world and you've been a blessing to this show and we thank you.
Keeper: Well, I appreciate you having me. Thanks.
De'Vannon Seráphino: Thank you all so much for joining us today and for taking some time to invest into yourself and into the lives of your loved ones, please visit us at sex [01:20:00] drugs and jesus. com and check out our resource page, our spiritual service offerings, my blog, my books, and other writings that God has partnered with me to create.
De'Vannon Seráphino: Find us on any social media platform, stay strong, my people, and just remember that everything is going to be all right.
