Ep #61: An Interview with Jay Aedo

Mikki: I'm Mikki Gardner and this is the Co-Parenting with Confidence podcast, episode number 61, An Interview with Jay Aedo. Mikki: Welcome to Co-Parenting with Confidence, a podcast for those courageous moms out there who wanna move past the conflict and frustration of divorce and show up as the mom they truly wanna be. My name is Mikki Gardner, I'm a certified life and conscious parenting coach, with my own personal dose of co-parenting experience. Throughout my co-parenting journey, I have learned to become confident in who I am as a woman and a mother, and I'm here to help you do the same. If you're ready to learn what it takes to become a great co-parent and an amazing example to your children, well, get ready and let's dive into today's episode. Mikki: Welcome friend, thank you for joining me today. I know that there is a gazillion things that you could be doing and probably are doing, but I'm just grateful you're taking me along with you. And if you're new here, thank you, I'm excited that you're with us and I'm so glad that you found us. This podcast is really intended to bring you new perspectives, some encouragement, and a whole lot of love on your journey in co-parenting. And oftentimes, I love to bring on experts who can share their perspective and support us on topics that are relevant to divorce and co-parenting. And you can be assured that the thing that they all have in common is their beautiful soul and mission to support moms and kids and families, and showing up as the best versions of themselves. And today's guest is no different. Jay Aedo is an international entrepreneur and children's book author. Jay is retelling the classic Bible stories that so many of us know in a new conscious way, so no matter what religion you are or are not, I believe that this conversation is for all of us. Mikki: The fact is that every single one of us has been handed down belief systems, stories, whether that's from religion or families of origin or society, or just the experiences that we've had, but we do not have to blindly accept them. It's only through questioning, evaluating and reconstructing them that we can learn to heal. And so without further ado, let's take a listen. Mikki: Hi, and welcome, Jay, to the podcast. I'm super excited to have you here, thanks for coming. Jay: Thanks for having me, Mikki, I'm really excited. Mikki: Me too. So I just gave your bio, I gave a little history of you at the top of the show here, but this is a really unique episode, and I'm excited that this is sort of at the beginning of the holiday season and because Christmas is around the corner. And when I think of Christmas, I'm probably not alone, I think of church and all the stories and the celebrations, and just all the family activities and everything that's going on, and I know for divorced moms and co-parenting moms, religion and holidays, it can be complicated when things are different and separate. Mikki: And so, what I love about your work, Jay, is how you are really taking these really ingrained ancient stories and giving them kind of new life and giving them sort of a second wind here, if you will, and I love this for my audience, because this is what we're doing, when we're co-parenting after divorce, everything's kind of in shambles at times, and we're rebuilding. And how are we doing it? Are we doing it in a conscious positive way? Are we taking all the, schlepping all the old stuff with us? And so I really thought this would be a fun way for you to share with us about what it is that you are doing with these beautiful stories and how they can impact us and our children. Jay: I'm looking forward to it. Mikki: So, tell me about what it is that you write about and what you do. Tell us who you are and your mission. Jay: Sure. I have taken it upon myself to essentially retell the ancient Bible stories that we've been told and tell them in a way that I see fit. So this is something that I do with life, not only with these stories, but I tend to think a lot. So I tend to think things thoroughly, and when you think things thoroughly, I have this ability to take things apart and then put them back together the way I see fit. And so, these stories from the Bible represent something very important to me, very intimate, because I've been told these stories my entire life, many of us have. The majority [0:04:48.3] ____ know these stories; God and the devil, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, these are very popular characters in our life. Jay: But these aren't pleasant stories to hear, and kids don't know the difference, that's why we just absorb them for what they are, but when we grow up, we realize that these stories are quite unpleasant. None of them are great. And so what I do is I take these stories apart and I put them back together. For instance, the Cain and Abel story which I recently published, is the story of a brother who became so angry and jealous of his brother that he decided to kill him. So the original story goes, is that they make a sacrifice for God. Cain and Abel are supposed to make a sacrifice for God, and Abel as a shepherd, offers the best of what he has, and Cain doesn't. Cain wants to save the best for himself. And so, there's a misunderstanding there, and what that leads to is Cain becoming very angry and jealous and resentful toward Abel to where he kills his brother. Jay: And this story is repeated on a loop throughout history, we all know the story. And so what I've done is I ask myself, what would I actually want this story to be? I want Abel to be able. Even his name is like... He's supposed to be able to do more, but for some reason he just doesn't, and he just takes it and dies. And so the way I've retold the story is that when Cain does become angry and jealous, he goes to kill Abel, but because Abel is disciplined and composed within himself, he sees the attack coming and he's able to subdue Cain and put him in his place. And when Cain regains consciousness, he asked his brother what happened, and Abel tells him the truth. He said, "You tried to kill me and I stopped you. Why did you do that?" And so when Cain is confronted by the truth, he's essentially put in a position where he has no choice but to respond with the truth, and so he says, "God favored your gift over mine, and I became so jealous and angry that I just wanted to kill you. It's all I could think about." Jay: And so this is where the misunderstanding is unveiled. You see, Cain had a misunderstanding within himself, he didn't know who God was. And so in his mind, he didn't know why he would offer his best to someone he doesn't know, and so Abel cleared this up for him, he said, "Well, when I say I give my best to God, I mean, I give the best of myself for the benefit of myself and everything around me." And so sometimes we get caught up with what words mean or what we think they mean, and we don't have this ability to really just clear up the misunderstanding. And so when Cain realizes what Abel was showing him in this illustration, he realizes the error of his ways and he begs for his brother's forgiveness, but Abel had already forgiven him, which is why he decided to choke Cain unconscious instead of choking the life out of him. Jay: You see in life, we tend to mirror what we see, and so if someone is mean to us, we're mean in return, and what Abel was able to do, he was able to break that pattern of behavior. He had so much love in his heart for himself and his brother that he stood up and fought for what he believed in. And so this creates a new reality for me, at least in my imagination, to where when you do stand up and fight for what you believe in, it isn't easy to do, it's very difficult, but on the other side of that, there's a freedom that is very difficult to imagine otherwise. Jay: And so, Cain was put in this position where he now realizes what he had done as opposed to, in the original story, when he kills his brother, and God confronts him about it, he denies God the truth. And these stories lead us to believe that the voice of God is coming from the heavens, but in reality, it's coming from within, the voice of God is within ourselves. And so, Cain couldn't lie to himself, even though he tried, he couldn't deny himself the truth of what he had done. He knew what he did, and he couldn't face himself, and he definitely couldn't face his family after he killed his family, and so... In the Bible, it says that God exiles him, he sends him away, but in reality he runs away because he couldn't face himself, he couldn't face what he had done, and so he runs away. And the Bible just nonchalantly says, well, then Cain goes on to build cities. Jay: And it's not like Cain runs away and learns the error of his ways and changes his behavior. He continues that same behavior and he's haunted by what he had done for the rest of his life, but he goes on and builds cities with this anger and resentment, and he's still cheating and lying, and that continues, and so you can see this in our society today. You can see that the majority of people in our world, we're running off with that antiquated program of Cain. We are essentially little Cains still running off with that old program, we're angry and we're resentful and we are jealous and we are ashamed and we feel guilty. And this to me is very evident that it's from the stories we've been told from our childhood, and they're imprinted into our system. And our bodies and our minds operate off of systems, including our nervous system, and it includes our belief system. And so we have this ability to change our belief system, but it takes conscious effort, and so that's what I've done. Jay: I've put in a lot of thought into this, a lot of conscious effort into taking these stories apart and putting them back the way I see fit, the way that I want Abel to be able to act. And essentially, he puts things in their place, and then instead of Abel dying and Cain running off and building cities off of this momentum of anger and resentment, the brothers work out each other's misunderstandings, they talk things out, and then they go on and build cities. And so we become the descendants of two brothers who worked out each other's misunderstandings rather than run off with this antiquated program that just repeats. And so we can repeat any story we want, we can program our belief system any way we want. Mikki: I love this. Thank you for sharing that and for all the work. I'm curious, how did you get into this? Because it is... We've all heard that you can try to change your belief system, you can believe whatever you want, you can change your life, all of those things, but I love how very much you've taken these base stories that many, many, many of us have learned. And what prompted you to do that? Jay: Well, this journey started off for me many years ago, like seven, eight years ago. I started questioning my belief system, I started questioning the religion I was brought up in, I was questioning my parents, I was questioning everything in my life because I wasn't in a good place. I was suffering from a lot of pain and anxiety, and I didn't have really a career or anything in my life. And so I began the process of healing myself. Within this process of healing my body, my physical pain, I realized that the physical pain wasn't just physical, it was emotional pain, and I had just built up this momentum. Jay: And so in the process of learning to heal myself emotionally and physically, I learned that these stories have been affecting me for a long time, and not just me, my parents and my grandparents, and just generationally speaking, we've been repeating these stories for such a long period of time, and I can see it in my world. It wasn't just me that was in pain, it was everyone in my world was in pain, but just nobody was good at communicating in the same way that kids aren't good at communicating because we just don't have the vocabulary to communicate these things, and we just tend to cover things up, cover things up. Jay: So, for me, I covered things up for such a long period of time that I couldn't take it anymore. And so I put myself in a position where I started making a conscious effort to heal myself, and within this is the practicality of the stories. To me, it's all just words and stories. There's a really great quote that I like by Terence McKenna that says, "The world is made of words, and if you know the words the world is made out of, you can have anything you want." So to me, it's just stories. That's all we have really. If you notice, nobody else is telling stories, it's just us, mankind, there's nobody else, it's just us, and it's... We're the same thing thing. We are the same thing over and over, there's just copies of ourselves. We may look different and act different, but it's just one thing. It's just like these small levels of consciousness disguised in these meat bodies, show us who we are. And so I just... I needed to heal. That's where it all came from. Mikki: Oh, I love that, I love that. So I'm really interested, Jay, you are writing these as children's books. And so I'm curious what would have been different in your mind if you had understood the stories the way that you're now portraying them for yourself when you were a kid. Jay: Sure. These stories represent a fundamental truth within us. They are truth because they're told to us by people who we trust, our parents. And so our parents have no reason to lie, and as a matter of fact, they're not lying, they're actually doing their best to tell us the truth, according to their upbringing and their beliefs, which... Their parents beliefs, which, so on and so forth generationally. And so I would imagine that if I were told these stories when I was a kid, in the way that I'm telling them now, I would imagine that I would be a lot more empowered because they're empowering stories, because the stories and the way that I'm telling them, leave the responsibility upon yourself as opposed to the antiquated stories, they leave things to put that responsibility on someone else outside of us. Jay: The stories lead us to believe that God is outside of us, coming from the heavens, but when we realize that these stories are coming from within, then it's within ourselves to make that choice to change the story. So I would imagine that if I was empowered from childhood, because I can see within myself now, I'm a grown man and I'm empowered by these stories that I came up with a couple of years ago, a year ago, so just momentum speaks for itself. I'd be much more empowered, and then that's why I write them as children's books, because I feel efficient... To be more efficient, well, then let's just talk to the kids, give them the story that [0:17:21.8] ____ most. Jay: And something that I'd like to clear up is that I don't think it would be empowering to show them just one side of the story. I don't think my story is gonna save the world. What empowers you the most is to show them all the stories, to tell them the stories of where we come from. Denying our history isn't gonna save the world, it's acknowledging history for what it is, and then empowering yourselves with the new story, and then allowing kids to make their own choice. Empowering them to make their own choices, so that they can learn to empower themselves. They can see [0:18:00.7] ____ themselves and come up with their own conclusions, and that to me is the most empowering part, and I can't wait, I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes. Because to me, it's like I have a vision and it's not super clear. Jay: I'm doing my very best to communicate these ideas, these are fairly new ideas that I'm working through, I'm still talking these things out because in order for me to clear things up within myself, I have to be able to get some sort of feedback. This is where you come in. I can share these ideas with you and you can share your ideas with me, and then you can challenge me. We're supposed to challenge each other, not putting me down or anything, but if it doesn't make sense, tell me how it doesn't make sense, so that I can clear it up within myself. Because I'm just doing my best to tell you what makes sense to me, but it's only within myself. Because it's not until I get some reflection back that I can clear things up even further. And I feel like the misunderstandings go so deeply that it takes time and effort to clear up the entire misunderstanding. Mikki: Yeah. And I love what you hit on, sort of I know a lot of my audience is definitely... Has a religious background, and in many of them, we've been taught not to challenge that. We've been taught to just take it for... It's the truth, to just accept it. Just move on. And I love that you're challenging that in a beautiful way of saying, these stories are valid, these stories have merit, they are empowering, but we need to kind of move them and redo them into a way that's palatable, in a way that we can talk about them and it opens up to conversation, which I really applaud you for doing. And as you were talking, I couldn't help but I'm always thinking of the mom that's listening to this podcast. Who is oftentimes, our lives... Nobody gets divorced, or nobody gets married and has children to get divorced. It's not how the world works. No one would sign up if they knew that this was coming. But it also is and can be, and I know from my own life and each of the women that I talk to every day, that it can be the greatest gift when things are shattered, when we have to put the pieces back together. Mikki: And that's really what was intriguing for those of you listening. What I found the connection here, I love that Jay is helping children, but I think that you're also helping parents look at all of these things that we've been taught. All of these stories that sort of we've just taken and just put into our brain. But really offering an opportunity to think of it in a different way. And if we can do that with these basic stories, what else can we do in our lives? How else can we tell a different story in different areas? And so I love that you're opening that door Jay to sort of these fundamental stories, but it opens up a door to everything else when we learn how to do it. So thank you for sharing that. So what drives you to publish these books? You said it, it's sort of like unfolding and you're moving through it and you're learning. What's really driving you behind it? Jay: Yeah, first, thanks for seeing things for what they are Mikki. Other people have challenged me and they've asked me, what gives you the right to write these stories? To me, I feel like I respond with, well, what takes away my right? Mikki: Exactly. Jay: If the person asking that question is telling me they're taking away my right, well, I don't accept that. Because, well, who are you? Who is anyone to take something away from someone else? I feel like we have something within ourselves. And so the reason I write these stories and what drives me, as you say, is I have this fundamental unsettling within myself. There's something wrong in the world. And to me, the world represents who I am on the inside. So I'm unsettled. That's what drives me to settling things within myself. I'm uneasy, I'm angry, I'm jealous, I'm resentful, I have all of these feelings too. I'm not above any of them, that's why I like talking about them, because when I do talk about them and I expose myself, I expose the truth about myself. Well, then that helps me clear up the misunderstanding even further. Mikki: I really do applaud you on this, and listeners, we've had a couple of conversations before this, because there's a part of me, if I'm being completely transparent, that was a little nervous. And I'm sure, Jay, you had to have felt this, when you're sort of going with basic stories that we've all been told and challenging those, right? There has to be some... There's going to be some challenge. And I love how you're welcoming that and sort of opening up the conversation to it because I think that's what we all need to be able to form our own opinions, is to be able to challenge and think. So you've done the Cain and Abel, and I love that you shared that story with us. What other ones are you looking at putting a conscious twist on? Jay: So I've written so far, Adam and Eve, three part story. And I can tell you a little bit about that. Mikki: Yeah. Jay: So the stories, the Adam and Eve story, when they eat of the forbidden fruit, and God again, exiles them from paradise. That's the idea. So the idea behind these stories is to program us to think that we're never enough. So we're always in debt. If you look at, in America, for some reason, we believe that we're in debt to China trillions of dollars. We're always in debt, we're never enough. And the number has gotten so high that there's no way out, and essentially these stories stem from the same place. The same way these stories are told to us today, it's just a new story, but the story stems from there. So when God confronts Adam again about having eaten the forbidden fruit, he denies it. He denies the truth because he doesn't want the responsibility. And the same for Eve in the sense of where... When she goes behind Adams back and eats the forbidden fruit. This programs us. It's a very subtle program. Jay: And so the way that I've retold this story is when Eve becomes curious about eating the forbidden fruit or eating the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, it's just an attractive name. I just wanna eat this thing that I'm not supposed to eat. Of course, it's like it's just curious. And so instead of Eve going behind Adams back and doing that, she goes to Adam and tells him, "Hey, you know that forbidden fruit God told us about, I'm thinking about eating from it. Do you wanna eat some with me?" And Adam's like, "Well, I don't know, it seems kind of dangerous, doesn't it? We could loose everything we know and love." And very playfully just says, "Well, not if we do it together, we can hold hands and never let go." Jay: And so what they do is they make a conscious choice together to do something dangerous. And on the other side of that, they wake up, they wake up on the other side of that, and they realize something new about themselves. Eve says, "Well, look around. There's nothing else like us." And this is when they become conscious of themselves, they realize [0:26:08.1] ____ new that they didn't know before about themselves. "There's nothing else like us, look around. We can make things like God does." And so they start creating. What do they want most? Well, we want more of us 'cause there's no one more. So they start consciously reproducing, they start building shelter for themselves. It just puts a new perspective as to [0:26:36.9] ____ potentially come from, and that's kind of the spin that I put on that story. Mikki: Oh, I can't wait to read that one. It just... It keeps coming back to me as I'm sort of thinking through this that I just want to reiterate to the audience whether you want to put a conscious spin on these things, whether you want to believe the way they were. It really just is about opening up to a different perspective. And if we can think differently, if we want a different life, if we wanna feel differently about things, we have to think differently. And it starts with just questioning. So many of, I know my listeners, they checked all the boxes, they did all the right things to have a "happy life," and yet here they are; divorced, not feeling good about it, being really frustrated, being stuck in conflict, and all of that. Mikki: And so it really... I love that this conversation, I hope, opens up just an inkling, at least in their minds, that they are in charge of rewriting the story. Right? Because as you said, the God is within, it was never outside of us, when we believe that it's outside of us is when we suffer, that's when we struggle, that's when there's conflict and separation. When we know in our hearts who we are, which is... I always love the saying that "You are a master piece because you are a piece of the master." When we know we are just a drop in the ocean and the ocean is the Divine. When we start to understand all these things, we show up so differently in the world. We show up loving, open, willing to question, willing to let people question us, and vice versa, without making it mean that everything's wrong. Mikki: And so I really love that you're sort of offering an opportunity with these stories for children to think of it a different way. For parents to tell it a different way, and to open up conversation. Because I think that's the important thing, to let your kids ask questions and form their own opinion. Because when we all are more aware, that's when our world can change and shift and be more awake, and it's painful in the process sometimes. Jay: That's what makes it valuable. Mikki: Yeah, exactly. So tell me, I try to keep everything in bite size 'cause I know that your time is valuable, my listeners time is valuable. So where can readers find these books if they wanna start to read them and share them with their children? Jay: We're at consciousbiblestories.com. You can find us on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, anywhere books are available. Right now, it's only the Cain and Abel story that's available. I'm still working on the illustration for the others. Consciousbiblestories.com, we're on Instagram @consciousbiblestories. Mikki: Perfect, and how can readers connect with you? Jay: Instagram is great. Mikki: Okay, awesome. So I have one more question 'cause I would be remiss. I always ask this of all my guests, and so this is Co-Parenting with Confidence, so what does confidence mean to you and how does it show up in your life? Jay: That's a good question. Confidence is being able to express yourself in a manner that exposes you for who you are, but in a way where you're not in any way ashamed of it. You're just consciously sharing something about yourself. And so I like it that... These stories really I wrote them more for parents because the parents are the leaders. They are ones who are gonna be able to express these ideas that understand their children's language on a deeper level. And so, I always like to say that kids are never gonna do... As kids, we've never done what our parents tell us to do. We do what our parents do. And so if we have the super ability to lead by example, to lead from the front, meaning, expose ourselves and to show that we're still making mistakes, even at our age. Kids [0:30:43.7] ____ know that our parents used to be kids too. And if they see us expose ourselves and admit our mistakes and take ownership and responsibility for our mistakes, well, then that gives them the permission to do it too. Jay: They'll easily put this together within themselves, if they see their parents are grown-ups and they're still making mistakes, well, then obviously they're gonna be okay with making mistakes and they'll be more confident in being able to make those mistakes and learn from them themselves. And so the idea about changing these stories is to change them within ourself as adults, so that we can lead by example and our kids can take it to another level, a level that we can't even imagine yet. Mikki: I love that version of confidence, and I agree with you. Well, thank you so much, Jay, for your time. Thank you for the stories, and I look forward to hearing back on what my listeners think of all of this in this conversation. So thank you for your time today. Jay: Yeah, my pleasure, Mikki, I'm very grateful for you. Thank you for having me and asking great questions and bringing the best out of me. Mikki: Thank you. Mikki: I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I enjoyed having it. There were a lot of takeaways I had, but I wanted to just share a couple with you. I really appreciate that Jay is an example of a unique journey that he went on to heal his emotional and physical pain. And then once he did, he's actually gone back to the source to start to evaluate where it started, so that maybe he can help others avoid the same trappings. I really admire that he is deconstructing these stories that we have all just been told, and rebuilding them in a way that empowers. He's using his imagination to reimagine a new reality. Mikki: And this is such a great reminder for us to really engage our children in conversation. It's not about denying stories or ignoring them, but it's actually talking about them that will help all of us heal. Because when we talk about them and we open up conversation for questions, our kids learn. They learn how to question and draw their own conclusions. And this is what creates empowered resilient children. If you enjoyed this or if you know someone who would enjoy this conversation, I'd be so grateful if you'd share it with them. Just take a screenshot and then share it on Instagram, and please tag me and Jay, we would both love to hear what you took away from the talk today. Thank you for spending time with me, I'll see you next week, and in the meantime, take really, really good care of you friend. Mikki: Thanks for listening to Co-Parenting with Confidence. If you want more information or resources from this podcast, visit coparentingwithconfidence.com. I'll see next week.