What if your private practice could be a place where people stop trying to fix themselves—and start actually feeling what’s going on inside?
In this powerful episode, Kerry Thomas pulls back the curtain on her 25-year journey in mental health, sharing how a personal wake-up call challenged everything she thought she knew about therapy, medication, and what it really means to heal. We talk about the connection between nutrition and mood, why numbing emotions isn’t the answer, and how private practice therapists can stop pathologizing normal human experiences.
This one’s honest, eye-opening, and a little bit rebellious—in the best way. Let’s get into it.
Meet Kerry Thomas 
Kerry Thomas is a holistically based Licensed Professional Counselor with over 20 years of counseling experience in many different settings and with diverse populations. In addition to the traditional approaches often used in cognitive behavioral therapy, Kerry will incorporate tools, practices, and strategies encompassing the totality of the person she is working with that are extremely powerful and often overlooked. After 20 years of work in this arena, it is difficult to imagine an issue that has not crossed her threshold. In your session with Kerry, you will be met with profound kindness and a deep understanding of what it is like to be human. Kerry is the mother of two grown, adult children who are her best friends. In her spare time, she enjoys hiking, exploring the countryside on her motorcycle, growing her own food, and laughing at herself. She most enjoys empowering her clients to take brave steps towards living their most authentic lives.
25 Years in Mental Health—and Still Shaking Things Up
Okay. So let’s start with this: Kerry has been in the mental health field for about 25 years. And when she says “about,” she means that in the “I’ve-seen-some-things” kind of way. You don’t clock two and a half decades in therapy land without collecting a few stories, shifting your perspective a few times, and realizing that sometimes the most radical thing you can do for someone is just hand them a glass of water and remind them they’re not broken.
From Divorce to Diagnosis
Kerry didn’t start out with a grand plan to overhaul mental healthcare. Like many therapists, her story is personal. She watched her own kids navigate the stormy waters of divorce and thought, “Okay. I want to help with that.” So she dove into community mental health, driven by a desire to support children in crisis.
But what started as a mission to help kids through family transitions evolved because she began noticing something: a lot of these kids were also struggling with eating disorders. And not just struggling quietly, struggling in a world that often handed them off to professionals who had no lived experience with what they were facing.
So, Kerry pivoted.
She started working more deeply with clients battling restrictive eating disorders, mostly folks dealing with what we label as anorexia nervosa. And here’s where her curiosity really kicked in.
Nutrition, Mood, and the Great Dopamine Surprise
Remember fifth-grade Kerry? Chubby, sweet-faced, and just trying to do her best in a Twiggy-obsessed world. She went on a diet—not because she needed to, but because that’s what the culture whispered (okay, screamed). And like so many others, she started restricting food without really knowing the biological chaos it would cause.
What she didn’t know then—but has since learned inside and out—is that restricting food actually floods the brain with dopamine. Yep, the very thing that’s supposed to help you go out and hunt a buffalo (or at least forage some berries) kicks in when you stop eating. You feel energized… at first. But then? Cognitive function tanks. Mood crashes. And what began as a little diet spirals into depression and disconnection.
This led Kerry to ask what should be an obvious question, but somehow still feels revolutionary: Could what we eat (or don’t eat) be affecting our brain and our mood?
Short answer: Absolutely.
Longer answer: The brain is hungry. It’s our most metabolically demanding organ. It doesn’t want a diet soda and a granola bar with seventeen unpronounceable ingredients. It wants real food. Minerals. Amino acids. Water. Nutrients that let it do its job. And when it doesn’t get those? It throws a tantrum in the form of brain fog, mood swings, and depression.
The Medication Question (Brace Yourself)
Now this is where Kerry starts to get a little… let’s say, fired up. And honestly? For good reason.
The more she learned about psychiatric medications, the more concerned she became—not just about their long-term effects (which are often under-discussed), but about the way people are funneled into prescriptions without full, informed consent.
She shares stories that are hard to unhear, like the group of women in a corporate sales department where every single one was taking something for mood or focus. Or the increasing number of toddlers—yes, toddlers—being prescribed psychiatric meds before they even learn how to ride a bike, let alone process big emotions.
And it’s not just anecdotal. In recent years, the U.S. has spent tens of billions on psychiatric medications, and the numbers keep climbing. One of the most surprising trends? A growing number of prescriptions are being written for the youngest among us—children under five.
Let that sink in.
So, What Do We Do?
First, Kerry’s not saying people should never take medication. What she is saying is that people deserve to know the whole story. The side effects. The long-term risks. The alternatives.
Because there are alternatives—many of them beautifully simple.
- Food. Not “food-like products,” but real, whole, nutrient-dense food.
- Water. Like, more than just coffee and Diet Coke.
- Sleep. Maybe not with your phone next to your pillow radiating EMFs into your dreams.
- Sunlight and movement. Your ancestors weren’t scrolling Instagram under fluorescent lights all day.
- Human connection. Sitting across from someone and making eye contact? Still undefeated.
And maybe the most radical idea of all: feeling your feelings.
Fear, Discomfort, and Failure—Our Greatest Teachers
Kerry believes there are three non-negotiables when it comes to developing as a human being: fear, discomfort, and failure. (You know, all the things we’ve been told to avoid at all costs.)
But here’s the twist: these things grow our resilience, deepen our compassion, and sharpen our character. Shielding kids from discomfort, handing them devices at every moment of boredom, or rushing to fix their every misstep? That’s not helping. That’s handicapping.
And it’s not just kids. Adults are struggling too—terrified of their own anxiety, desperate for quick fixes, and sometimes forgetting that we’re supposed to feel all the things.
So what does Kerry suggest?
Sit with it. Don’t shove it away or numb it or try to hack it with a supplement stack. Just… be with it. Get curious. Ask it what it’s trying to show you. That anxiety? That grief? That restless itch that makes you want to scroll for three hours straight? It’s a message.
Final Thoughts (With a Wink)
Kerry isn’t trying to spark a revolution… okay, maybe just a small one. One where people remember that health isn’t about perfection or pills—it’s about presence. About food, sleep, and community. About remembering that we’re human beings, not human fix-it projects.
And maybe, just maybe, it’s time we start trusting our bodies a little more—and the billion-dollar pharma machine a little less.
Because sometimes the most healing thing you can do is step outside, feel the sun on your face, eat a real meal, and let yourself feel.
No app required.
Gordon Brewer: Well, hello everyone and welcome again to the podcast and I'm really thrilled for you to get to know today. Kerry Thomas and Kerry turns out that she is an old.
But new friend and so I'll, we'll, I'll tell a little bit of the backstory between how Kerry and I connected here a little bit. But Kerry, as I start with everyone, tell folks a little bit about yourself and how you've landed, where you've landed.
Kerry Thomas: Okay. So I have been in the field of mental health for about 25 years now.
I originally came into this field inspired to help children who were, his parents were maybe divorcing because that's sort of what led me there, watching my own children struggle through the divorce that I had with their dad. And I got into the field very excited to help children and. For the first five years worked in community mental health and then after that I went into private practice and I, I kind of pivoted really more towards working with folks who had eating disorders because I was finding a, a lot of children having them.
A lot of recognizing that there were a lot of people that were seeking treatment, that were going to, people that didn't have experience with that themselves. And I had when I was in the fifth grade. And so I was, I was hearing stories of maybe how people, what people's experience, experiences were in therapy.
And I thought, this is a field that I think would be really helpful for, for people who actually had that as an, as a lived experience. So I started really focusing on working with folks who had eating disorders, and most of them were, you know, restrictive eaters, what we characteristically call anorexia nervosa.
And I began to notice trends in the people I was working with. And what I noticed was that the longer they went without food the more their cognitive function and their mood was being. Really affected, and it caused me to reflect on my own experience in the fifth grade and, and how that looked was, you know, as sort of this chubby little fifth grader, as most fifth graders are.
The beauty standard at that time was Twiggy with the very pronounced cheekbone. Mm-hmm. That mm-hmm. And being a very impressionable fifth grader with this very round face in this little plump body, I thought, well, I'll just go on a diet. Right. I didn't know what I was doing, but I started restricting food intake.
Now, what happens within the human brain when we begin to restrict food intake is we, it, our brain responds with a dopamine, with a, with a flood of dopamine, which is meant to energize us. Right? Because back when, you know, when thousands of years ago, when people were living. Roaming the Serengeti or whatever.
Mm-hmm. And they weren't eating. It was probably because, you know, they didn't have access to food. So the body energizes itself in order to help the person get up, get food. But it creates an addictive response is really what happened to me too. And, but what I was really thinking about noticing. Was that, you know, when I started that process, originally I was not depressed, but by the end of like that year, year and a half, I was knee walking, depressed.
And so I started thinking like, could there be a relationship between nutrition, cognitive function, and mood? And so I started doing some research and what I learned sort of blew my mind quite honestly. I. Of course there's a relationship. I mean, our brain is our most metabolically demanding organ, so it consumes the vast majority of nutrients and minerals that we give it over and above every other organ in our body.
And so when we are not getting what it needs, you know, it, it depletes mood, it affects our ability to think clearly, to be present, to, you know, to use that prefrontal cortex. To make the best use of it that we can. And so I just continued to do a lot more research and then started learning a lot more about psychiatric medications that I never knew before, that I found very troublesome.
And the more I read and the more I researched, the more troubled I became. And, and now you know, it is, you know, it's almost hard to find people who aren't taking them. I have a, a dear friend, and this was many years ago, who worked for a very large company in the Research Triangle Park, and she was working in the inside sales department with like 30 other women because it was a group that was, you know, predominantly female.
She had told me that every single woman she knew in that department was taking something. My children's father who had a kids or kids franchise was telling me recently, just a few months ago, that it was not at all uncommon for parents who were bringing their children in who were two years old.
Putting them on psychiatric medication. And so I'm kind of at a point where I feel like it's imperative. I mean, nobody's getting informed consent about the psychiatric medications and what the long term effects of these meds are, and I just think that's wrong. I think that people, when they are, you know, desperate for help, struggling suffering, yeah.
To take something that they think is going to help improve them, they deserve to know. And it just breaks my heart in particular to know that so many children whose brains are still developing are. You know, taking lots of different medications that are having profound impacts on brain development and thus, you know, going to affect them for the rest of their lives.
And we don't know what that looks like. We don't know what it's gonna be like for a child who's, for example, been taking medications since they were two. Mm-hmm. Right. And as their brain is developing through their lifespan, what is that outcome gonna look like at the end? Mm-hmm. You know, I think about, for example, amphetamines just for one.
Which really suppress your growth hormones. And that's not just gonna affect the height of the child, right? It's gonna affect the growth of every organ in their body and their heart, their lungs, right? And so I, I really feel like we are taking a lot of chances that we are believing things that are coming from chemical companies that are profiting.
To the tune of, you know, billions of dollars a year. I think it was like in 2015, the, there was, we spent $40 billion in this country on psychiatric medication, and that was 10 years ago. And it's hard to find current data. I think that what I, the only thing I could find was like in 2019, we spent 3 31 $0.7 billion on psychiatric medication in the United States just for adults, people over 18.
And the fastest growing, and this goes back about seven years, the fastest growing segment of the population taking psychiatric medication were people under the age of five.
Gordon Brewer: Wow. Yeah. Wow.
Kerry Thomas: Yeah. So on the one hand, you know, I became very disturbed and bothered by what I was learning about the medications themselves and what they're doing to the human brain and the human body.
But then I also learned a great deal about. You know, how we really can modify and improve mood, how we really can affect brain function focus, you know, that work in harmony with the body, you know? Mm-hmm. I mean, the body operates on, you know, vitamins and minerals and proteins, amino acids, you know, like, and, and so.
I don't think it's ever been true, and it has been proven to not be true that serotonin affects depression. They've done multiple studies. To try to prove this. And actually what they've done is proven the opposite. So we don't, you know, if we're, if we're depressed, we're not experiencing a serotonin deficiency the same way.
If you have social anxiety and then you drink beer and it makes you a little bit, you know, more relaxed and you can talk at a party, we're not gonna say your social anxiety is due to an alcohol deficiency, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so. I just, I guess I just feel so compelled to certainly let the people in in our role know this.
Mm-hmm.
Kerry Thomas: You know, I've compiled a lot of data. I was presenting on this prior to 2020. The last presentation I did was for the LPC Association conference in November of 2019. Mm-hmm. Ever since then, I've been busy doing so many other things. I moved to the mountains. I've been growing food. I've been rehabbing this 71-year-old house.
But I think it's time now to kind of get back into this mode of helping people understand that there are much better ways that don't have negative side effects. Really, I have absolutely positive side effects. Right, and empower people so that they're not dependent on a system, right?
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I know, I know Kerry, when you, you and I got the, got the privilege of being able to just kind of spend a, an afternoon together just talking about all of these things.
But a little bit of the, I I wanna share with people a little bit of the backstory because Kerry lives over the mountain for me. I'm in East Tennessee and she's over in North Carolina. And we, when we recon, when we connected, Kerry had. Reached out to me, just curious about podcasting and that sort of thing, and lo and behold, we realized that we grew up literally a block apart from each other.
I'm a little older than Kerry, but we lived in the same neighborhood, had some of the same friends and all of that. And just who would've known that we were, were that, that in that close of a proximity, I saw that she was from Cary, North Carolina, which is where I grew up. And so we, we connected on so many levels around all of that.
But you know, I think one of the things that just in impressed me the most is just how much passion Kerry has for this, this whole area of being, taking a much more holistic approach. To what we do and really just thinking about you know, the, the, the fix, if you will is probably not, and we know this, just kind of intrinsically, not about just giving somebody a pill.
Mm-hmm. And, and then expecting things to magically change and their life getting better and that sort of thing. It really has to do more on. On the psychological level, of course, of being more self-aware, more mindful, more grounded, all of those things that we know are important, but also doing the same with what we put into our bodies around nutrition.
And just our food and all of that sort of thing. Absolutely. And so Kerry, yeah. And so what, what are you finding Kerry, as some pretty significant alternatives to the traditional Oh, let's, let's get somebody on an SSRI and then. Put 'em in therapy kind of approach.
Kerry Thomas: Yeah. I mean, so this, what you're describing is like this medical disease model, right?
You have a feeling, oh my gosh, there must be something fundamentally wrong with your brain. So that's my first issue, because we live in a world now that wants us to believe that every time you have a feeling there's something wrong with you, and we're supposed to feel things, you know? Mm-hmm. We have pathologized, just sort of the experience of being human.
And the other thing that I think is so important for us to all recognize is that this world has changed so much from like when you and I were kids. Mm-hmm. And when you've got. These little handheld computers, right? Mm-hmm. You think that, I mean, I think it's really important to sort of sit with how sort of fundamentally detached we are from like our connection to one another and to nature, right?
Mm-hmm. And we've been kind of programmed to be, you know, working really hard and we're, and we're being terrified on the daily. You know, like when we were growing up and the only information that was coming at us was through three television stations. Mm-hmm. It was more manageable, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
And so we have these little devices that we pull up and we look at and we're, you know, we're being terrified and over just even overwhelmed. We can see within like a ten second scroll, our brain is being pulled in all these different directions, which is just incredibly overwhelming to the human animal.
I mean, if you, if you go back thousands and thousands of years, we were living in tribes, right? And so we were so much more connected. We were so much more connected to nature. We, we, we had a lot, like a much stronger social connection. We were watching the grass blow on the prairie, you know? Mm-hmm. Like we weren't being just completely overwhelmed.
And so like, I think it's important to sort of keep our expectations realistic. Mm-hmm. And to also understand these things that are going on and really modifying our exposure to a lot of that. Mm-hmm. Understanding. So for example, like the exposure to the EMFs and maybe not sleeping with the wifi router in a bedroom.
Right. Like being very thoughtful of all the different things. So I think really the, maybe the, the first thing we should really look at is sort of like. Looking a across the whole landscape, right? Like, am I spending time in nature? And how much time am I spending on this device? You know, am I eating a diet predominantly of like processed food, which is not food?
And it's full of so many toxicants. I found this really interesting statistic today about the difference between the food additives are allowed in the United States and those allowed in Europe, and you will find this fascinating. So in Europe, they allow 363 food additives, like in their food production.
Here in the United States it's over 10,000. So we have to think about how these things affect us, because like going back to the brain being so nutritionally hungry, right? Mm-hmm. Like it requires so much nutrition to function well and you know, and one of the, the biggest, I think one of the biggest.
Challenges for, for me, when I think about people going into a doctor's office and saying, look, I'm depressed, right? Because depression correlates almost perfectly with inflammation. So if I am inflamed, I have a rise in what is called a cytokine, which is just a protein, but cytokine and depression, one-on-one correlation, right?
So. That might be the body's first signal that there is something physiologically going on in your body, right? So in the United States, we act as if, you know, if you have some sort of issue as far as like how you're feeling, maybe anxiety or depression. It's just something that exists in your head. It's almost like this thing is detached from the risk of this body, right?
Mm-hmm. And this is just one, you know, one. Machine, right? It's one system and it's all mm-hmm. Completely interrelated. So if I'm having, you know, issues with mood or cognitive function or focus, I really don't wanna think about am I fueling this well? Number one, am I putting things into it that are gonna cause or am I doing things or not doing things that are gonna increase, like, for example, my toxic load and then causing inflammation that is going to immediately set off depression or anxiety.
Mm-hmm. We wanna be really thoughtful with how much exposure we're getting to things. How connected we are to people in nature. How are we eating? Are we eating closer to the way our ancestors ate? Like real food, right? Like is it, is it, is it coming in a package with a lot of. Ingredients on a label, right?
Because that's really not food. It's a, it's a food like product, right? Mm-hmm. But it's not going to give my body what it needs, and it's gonna give my body a lot of what it doesn't need. So it's, you know, it's, the funny thing is, you know, when it comes to impacting mood and cognitive function in a more healthy, reasonable, maybe human way, it's really not that hard.
It's really not that difficult. It's not that complicated. You know, and, and I think, but the first step is awareness. The first step is understanding that we hold some power here, that we don't need to be chemically dependent. Right. On products that have, you know, there was a study that came out of the Women's Health Initiative just recently, within the last few years that showed that women taking antidepressants within a year.
They increase all cause mortality by 32%.
Mm-hmm. We need
Kerry Thomas: to sit with that. We need to sit with how toxic is a product that when I take it for just a year, I have increased my odds of dying by 32% and really think about is that really a solution? When I can, you know, when I can learn about how this thing functions and how to fuel it mm-hmm.
And I can live my life more intentionally, make sure I'm getting some sunshine, make sure I'm getting some time out in nature, make sure I'm eating real food, make sure I'm getting a lot of clean, filtered water, right? Mm-hmm. And feel so much better and not, you know, not make my situation worse.
Gordon Brewer: Right.
Right. And, and you know, if you think about it in, in, just in our field and the mental health fields we know firsthand the whole somatic effect of. Of, you know, what happens in our bodies when we are feeling stress or we're feeling trauma, all of that sort of thing. That's something that we know. And so it makes sense that it would translate in other parts of what we put in our body.
And, and I think one of the things that that really strikes me with all of this, Kerry, is being able to, I guess, educate people on the fact that part of, part of being human is, is that we have to I. I have to have some discomfort at times with feelings and, and thoughts and that kind of thing, and that that just because that is happening doesn't mean that we need to immediately inoculate that or get rid of that.
Right. Right. But learning how, learning how to sit with that, learning how to move through that. And all of that, that sort of thing. And so, yeah. And so it's just really, I think, just really important for us to remember that yes, and just working with people,
Kerry Thomas: there are three things necessary for human development, fear, discomfort, failure.
Mm-hmm. You know? And when you think about the fact that we are. You know, we are, and I saw this when I became a parent, and it certainly feels like it's gotten worse today, where parents really struggle when their children are struggling, right? And wanna rush in and solve it and fix them, and almost like insulate them and wrap them in a bubble and stick them in the corner, right?
Mm-hmm. That's the absolute worst thing you can do. I mean, they're not, they're not developing things like compassion, resiliency.
Mm-hmm.
Kerry Thomas: And so then they're, they are really struggling, but the only way we're gonna sort of develop that backbone is through practice. Mm-hmm. You know, my kids will tell you I was the parent that sometimes would intentionally terrify my children when they got much older, just to give them.
And, and, you know, and I always thought when they failed, when they did something stupid, when they were younger. Right. I didn't rush in to solve it. I just said, okay, what do you think you're gonna do about that?
That
Kerry Thomas: sounds like an interesting decision you made, right?
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Kerry Thomas: That sounds like it could, what, what, what could have gone bad, right?
Like you, you, you kind of got out, you, you skirted that, but what, what could have gone wrong? Mm-hmm. And so I, I really do think that there is. That there really is a need for parents to become a lot more involved in the practice of parenting and to not stick screens in front of their children's faces if they're bored at the restaurant.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Let
Kerry Thomas: them be bored, you know? Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, boredom
Kerry Thomas: is what caused us to be creative, right? To build forts. Mm-hmm. Out in the woods and to be doing things that. Really expanded our minds. And then also, you know, working with groups of kids, right? Like you learn the spirit of cooperation and play and those things are so important, you know, and so seeing, you know, kids being really kept in the house and stuck in front of the screens and listening to the teachers.
I've seen some videos recently of teachers talking about. That, you know, that have been in the profession for many years and talking about how much the kids are changing and how they're, they're becoming so dependent and addicted to these, these devices. Mm-hmm. That when they come into the classroom and they're removed from their possession, they literally meltdown.
And I've seen some videos of this with kids just, they can't even manage being without their devices, and it's just heartbreaking. I mean, I really, really worry about the direction of the world really, and with, in particular, with this younger generation not learning. How to, you know, how to build emotional resiliency, you know, how to just sit with, and, and, you know, I hear this with adults too.
So many of my adult clients, like, you know, I, I feel anxious. You know, what, what can I do? You know, make this go away. I'm like, okay, so you feel anxious. Can you just sit with it? You know, can you just make space for it? You know? Yeah. A part of the human journey, you know, we're meant to feel all the things.
Right? Right. And it just feels like we've become, you know, like so fearful. We're afraid of fear. Right. We're afraid of pain. We, we, they, they register as uncomfortable and we're so accustomed to like the immediate fix. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, so many of the clients that I work with, you know, they're just like, you just want me to sit with it?
Yeah, yeah, I do. Yeah. I want you to sit with it. I want you to talk to it. I want you to swim around in it and see what it's here to teach you. Right? Mm-hmm. See how you grow and develop from these feelings that are so uncomfortable, and yes, inconvenient, but they make sense, you know? Yeah. I've, I've had clients who are in my office, they've lost their spouse of 40 years, right.
And it's
Kerry Thomas: like six months later, and they're just like, but I, I feel grief. And I, you know, this feels so uncomfortable and I can't do this and I can't do that. And my family's becoming impatient with me. And I look at them and I say, well, but can you imagine not feeling that?
Mm-hmm. I
Kerry Thomas: mean, what would it say if you didn't feel grief?
Right. Right.
Mm-hmm. And
Kerry Thomas: so I think we've become so impatient. With just the experience of being human. Yeah. And it's breaking my heart to see the degree to which we're pathologizing this, and the degree to which people are being led to believe that every time they have a feeling, or every time they maybe are overwhelmed, they can't focus, oh, it's their a HD, it's their, you know, it's their depression or their anxiety.
Maybe it's just the fact that you're human. Yes.
You know,
Kerry Thomas: maybe, maybe, you know, we're not meant to be perpetually happy all the time. I remember the first self-help book I ever saw, and I, I don't know how old I was. I was really young and it was on the bookshelf at my house. My dad had, it was called The Road Less Traveled.
Gordon Brewer: Yes, Uhhuh.
Kerry Thomas: And the very first line in that book, I will never forget. It was three words. Life is hard.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Life
Kerry Thomas: is hard.
Yes.
Kerry Thomas: And I don't, I I think it's supposed to
be right. You
Kerry Thomas: know, I don't think we're here to have, you know like a, a, an easy experience. I think we're here to grow and to evolve, and I don't think those things happen when life is easy.
Gordon Brewer: Right. Right. You know, a thought occurred to me, and I know we've gotta be mindful of our time, Kerry, but you know, nothing, nothing nothing stays in motion without stress.
Right. And
Gordon Brewer: so yeah. I mean, and so you've got to have. You've got to have that in order to, I mean, the only way we learn anything new, like you said earlier, is through failure and through Yeah.
Trying stuff and, and doing, going going beyond our comfort zone or putting ourself in an uncomfortable place. I mean an example I like to use with clients is you're, do you remember when you learned to ride a bicycle? And how scary that felt and at the same time exciting. Yeah. And all of that. But if you hadn't pushed past that fear or sat with that fear, you never would've learned to ride a bicycle.
Kerry Thomas: Yeah. And
Gordon Brewer: so, yeah. And so, and that,
Kerry Thomas: yeah. That's really heartbreaking, right? To see how much people hold themselves back. Mm-hmm. Out of fear, right. Fear of what mm-hmm. Most of 'em don't even really know. Right. But they're not really living. They're just sort of existing and they're not, they're not really going out and, and grabbing life by the big kahunas.
Right. And having, you know a real joyful experience while they're here. Or just an, an interesting, rich experience, you know? Right,
Gordon Brewer: right. So, and that's
Kerry Thomas: heartbreaking. Yeah. You know, there's, there's one of my favorite poems it's called The Grasshopper. By an author by a poet, Mary Oliver. And the last line of that poem she asks, you know, tell me what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Kerry Thomas: I don't think we were meant to just sit on the couch and watch TV and not go out and truly live. And yet it takes courage. Right.
Gordon Brewer: Right. Yeah, it truly does. Truly does. Well, Kerry, we could spend all day and we might do that sometime just talking about all of these things, but tell folks how they can get in touch with you and connect with you.
Okay. If they would like to. Yes. Yeah.
Kerry Thomas: Okay. So my website is divinely driven.net. I've just started writing articles that I've been putting on Substack. I think it's at Kerry Thomas. I will be producing a podcast here soon called The Grace of Being Podcast, which will be happening very, very soon.
So.
Gordon Brewer: Yes. Yes. Yeah. And I'm excited to be with Kerry on this journey and I'm just so glad that we connected after all these years. Me too, Gordon. So yeah. Yes, yes. So we'll have links in the show notes and the show summary so people can get to that easily. And Kerry, thanks for joining me on the podcast for this first time.
It's been
Kerry Thomas: my pleasure. I've really enjoyed it. Thank you so.
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