376. Overcoming Adversity with Cheryl Hunter

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Cheryl Hunter: `

Look at your own life and consider that everything you've previously believed is wrong with you, is actually what makes you magnificent, is actually that which comprises the building blocks of your superpower.

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Hello and welcome to The Daily Helping with Dr. Richard Shuster, food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, tools to win at life. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. Whoever you are, Wherever you're from, and whatever you do, this is the show that is going to help you become the best version of yourself. 

Each episode, you will hear from some of the most amazing, talented, and successful people on the planet who followed their passions and strived to help others. Join our movement to get a million people each day to commit acts of kindness for others. Together, we're going to make the world a better place. Are you ready? Because it's time for your Daily Helping.

Thanks for tuning into this episode of The Daily Helping Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. And our guest today, oh my goodness, she is brilliant. Her name is Cheryl Hunter. And she is a TV host and media personality who's been featured worldwide by major outlets including People Magazine, GoldCast, Dr. Phil, NBC News, Dr. Oz, CNN, Fox, PBS, and so many more. She believes in the potential that the right message has to change the world. 

So in addition to writing and producing for HBO, CBS, Paramount, and NBC, Cheryl and her team of major media gatekeepers help mission driven experts leverage the power of major media to get their message, story, and business known by millions. Forbes has said that she has something very important to teach about reaching your fullest potential on the planet. That's the mission of the show. So we are all grateful she is here. And she has an incredible story too, which I can't wait to share with you. Cheryl Hunter, welcome to The Daily Helping. It is awesome to have you with us today.

Cheryl Hunter: 

Dr. Richard, I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Well, I kind of teased it, right? So, to me, every superhero has a superhero origin story, and you're definitely a superhero. So, let's jump in the Cheryl Hunter time machine and go back and share with us what put you on the path today. What was that seminal experience or experiences that really shaped what you're doing in the world?

Cheryl Hunter: 

I grew up in the remote Rockies of Colorado on a horse ranch and it was amazing as a child. It was idyllic. I spent my childhood back a horse. I used to actually do my homework sitting on my horse facing backwards, using his rump as my desk. It was delightful. 

As I got older, however, and I entered my teen years, I wanted to go someplace that I'd read about in books. I wanted to meet people I wasn't related to by blood. It was so remote from our ranch that it could have been hundreds of years ago, it would have looked the same there. The signs of civilization were completely absent with the one exception that as I would lie on my back in the horse meadow, looking up at the sky, I could see planes passing by occasionally. 

And I would lie there in the meadow, looking up at the planes passing overhead and think, I wish I could be the girl in the plane looking down at the girl lying in the meadow. But to be the girl in the plane and to be going places like that, I'd have to have something to give the world, some way that I could contribute. Right now, all I do is ride horses. I'm not the best at that. I don't always win my events. I can't give that away, but maybe someday if I got out to the big world, I'd find a way to have something to give people. And I became bent on figuring a way to leave this cloistered, remote place in the Rockies to get out to the big city, to find a way to contribute something. 

I, at the time, read things like Glamour Magazine for life advice. Like any teenage girl does. And I remembered reading that they're always on the lookout for models and I thought I don't care about modeling and I'm not particularly into fashion. I'd love to wear something other than bootcut Wrangler jeans, but I thought that could be my ticket. I was tall enough. I was on the boys basketball team. I thought if I just could get somewhere that they need models, maybe that would be my access to living in the big city and then I can figure out what my life is about. 

I talked my best friend into going with me to someplace they needed models. I figured Europe, I think that's where fashion comes from, let's go there. We both got several part time jobs, saved up our money, the big day came, and we left. No sooner did we get to France than a man with a big, fancy looking camera around his neck approached me, literally asked me if I was a model. Said he could make me one if I just went with him and his big friend over there.

Now, my best friend was thinking and said over my dead body. She wanted to go back home afterward. I wanted to parlay this trip into a life in the big city. I didn't really care which big city. I just wanted to be out of the mountains of Colorado. And so I said, okay. I ditched my friend, and I went off with the men and I thought to myself, I'm tough, I'm strong, I know how to drive a tractor, I can wrestle a steer, I'll figure it out. How hard could it be? 

It turns out these men had nothing to do with modeling. I mean, it doesn't take that much deducing to come up with that. I was a teenage girl. They were two criminals. They drugged me, took me to an abandoned construction site, and held me there for days, torturing me. Everything you could think of, you can fill in all the gory details with your mind. But as I was lying there on the cement, I'd never dealt with anything like this. And my best way of getting out of it was to bargain with God. I started in my head bargaining, God, if you let me go, I will be a better person thinking that somehow, I was to blame for being in this situation. 

Now, Dr. Richard, I'm crystal clear that this is the kind of phenomenon that you've experienced over the years, that this is what someone who goes through something awful thinks. I wasn't alone in that regard, but I was thinking as I was saying to God, I'll be a better person. I won't talk back to my parents. I will be nicer to my little brother and sister. I'll hold my grandma's hand when we're at the mall and she tries to hold my hand in public, thinking that somehow, I was being tortured and raped because I was such a bad person, and I had been mean to my little brother and sister and not shared my clothes or whatever thing a teenager has happen. 

And I'd seen their faces. It was illogical that they would ever let me go but in fact, they did. They dumped me on this grassy patch of land days later. And I was so naive that I, again, my survival skills had never been developed in any way. I played dead after they drove away. That was the best I could come up with. I didn't move until I could see out of the corner of my eye that the car was gone. And I got up and ran for my life.

And that's when the logic that I'd had while I was captive started. It started to hit me that I had no idea what I was thinking and how to survive. I'd said to God in this bargaining phase, I'll be happy all the time, just let me be free. And here I was free, and I suddenly realized I was more captive than ever. I was now captive in my mind. I was now captive between my ears. I had nothing but thoughts of how disgusting and dirty and ruined and filthy I was, how I had obviously been scarred in some way beforehand that led to this horrible occurrence happening to me, that it had been punitive and that I had deserved it.

And further, I was so absolutely idiotic and gullible, and that if anyone ever found out what happened, they would know all of those things to be true. And so, armed with what I had, which was just simply logic and the best way I could imagine, I decided that how I would cope with, by pretending it didn't happen, even to myself, pushing it down, never breathing a word to another soul, and never letting them ever find out. Now, I know you know from your own work, that's not a particularly effective strategy.

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

How long did you keep that inside? 

Cheryl Hunter: 

More than a decade. I had gone to therapy and hinted at non-consensual sexual acts, potentially asking for a friend kind of thing. I said to my mother, what I did say to her was I'm so depressed. And my mother is one of those unique souls who never experienced that. So whether it was not knowing what I was dealing with or just seeking clarity, she said, do you mean bored? I was like, nope, definitely not bored, depressed. And she said, well -- because I wouldn't reveal anything. What's going on? Nothing, nothing. It's all, you know -- she said, well, there is a common belief that if we've got it bad, there's always someone who's got it worse. Find those people, serve those people, help those people. And I realized she was right. 

Look, I'm not the first person to go through something unplanned, unchosen, traumatic. What about those who went through way worse than I did? What if I found them, spoke to them? Sure, there are books out there. I could read the Viktor Frankl's had have, it's brilliant, right? But I felt it was consuming me in such a large way that I needed to find something that was as active a path and roll up my sleeves somehow, rather than simply the somewhat passive active breathing. 

And so I started volunteering at old age homes. And I thought first, boy, I'm young and screwed in the head. I've got no future. My mom talks about somebody who's worse off than me. I've got literally no future. Oh, wait, old people. God, they've got no future either. And people ignore old people. They discount them. They discard them. They're used up. God, I feel used up. Oh, these are my people. 

And I volunteered through an organization, found my way to these homes and War Vets, Holocaust Survivors, people who'd gone through the absolutely unimaginable. And what I found is, first, they just wanted to talk, because no one listens to them, which was wonderful for them and for me. I no longer had to listen to the cacophony of voices in my own head, plotting the revenge against the men from France and everything else, how ruined I am and how stupid I am and all of this. 

But soon after I started to realize some of them had based this adversity and had gone on to live happy, fruitful, productive lives. Why? While others understandably had faced something similar, dissimilar, equally trying, but had become again understandably bitter hardened and closed off. And I had to understand why. And I listened for what I thought was seminal and what were those decision points that made the difference between one trajectory or another? 

And I found little nuggets that I could try, that there was something transferable, actionable, that I could utilize in any way. And I tried these things and put them together, codified a step-by-step formula. I didn't know. I mean, it was better than just reading, as I'd said, or suffering. And it started to work, and I kept testing it, and it worked. And I found other survivors, trafficking, sexual assault, et cetera. And hey, I'm no mental health professional, but I've done something that's been helpful. Let's see. If you're willing to experiment, this may be helpful. And to a person, everyone was getting the benefit from it.

Now, my mom, what she did professionally, she was a university professor who designed curriculum instruction, and she had a facility with designing educational frameworks. And I told her I'm fascinated with adversity and how certain people overcome. Now, I'd never said why but asked her help in creating an educational framework. And she helped me with speaking to multiple intelligences and all the things that she contributed. 

And I thought, wow, everybody faces adversity. Not everybody overcomes. There is -- in the words of Evelyn, one of my elderly people, all roads lead to main street. I was like, I'm pretty sure I heard it that it says all roads lead to Rome, Evelyn, but tell me what you mean. She goes, we're all going to get there eventually. And I thought that about the work I was doing. Like this way of helping people overcome adversity that, hey, for some people, it is the books. For others, and it's absolutely psychotherapy. For others, maybe they feel like I do that they need to do something more active. I don't know. But if I could contribute, I want to.

Now, thinking back to the girl I was lying on the ground and on the horse meadows looking up at the planes thinking I'd have to have some way to contribute something to give people, tell this was not the thing I wanted to give people, but here it was. And so I wanted to give it to the world. 

It was harder than I imagined. It's frustrating to have some way you want to contribute and nobody's listening, right? Nobody knows that you have it. And so many people are suffering and could use it, but you don't know how to bridge that gap. How do I let them know? Felt immensely, it’s just challenging, frustrating. I had dreams each night that I was trying to fly and there was a brick ceiling always. And I thought, I think there's some correlation here. I'm not exactly sure. 

But one of the things I had also done to overcome the adversity was, I started journaling at first. And writing and putting pen to paper, I tried to keep myself very distant from people. I thought, God, if anyone gets near me at all, they will know something's wrong with me. So I --

Dr. Richard Shuster:

Put up the walls. 

Cheryl Hunter:

Yeah. Precisely. Writing, having my head in a book all the time was a great way to keep people away. And after a while I thought, some of this is funny. Some of this is good. I think it's good. Maybe it's just, it's therapeutic. I don't know. And I started doing standup and staging plays. And I first tried to get a group of actors together, but half of them didn't show up and others called in sick, and others are like, oh, I got a gig. And I thought, oh, this is too much. It's like wrangling cats. Hey, why? I'll just be all the characters. 

And I did a couple of one person shows. Like at plays, I had one developed by NBC, one by HBO. And eventually, miraculously, I'm a cowgirl from Colorado, but I sold TV shows to big networks and studios. And here I am, my day job is writing network TV. And on the other hand, got this whole world that I want to help people overcome adversity. 

And I start to put them together and I'm thinking, wait a minute, I can see the power that major media has to shape the common narrative. Like those water cooler moments, a kid falls down the well or what have you, and everyone in the country, everyone in the world is praying for them because they've seen them on media or talking about it. What if I could get my message out? What if I could help people know that adversity doesn't mean the end? It's actually a path to what you really want. Wait, I got to get out in media. 

And it took me another decade to finally do that. It's so counterintuitive. How? Why? I already worked in TV. Why would it take so long? I did not realize I was doing everything wrong, got blacklisted, et cetera. But ultimately when I did get the message out in a big way, I realized, you know what, there's an entire industry dedicated to helping people overcome adversity. I'm going to step back and leave the professionals to that and instead dedicate myself to helping people who want to help people, have a voice, have a platform, become known so that they can serve at the highest level. 

And it's an odd turn of events to end up from kidnapped and lying on the cement floor to PR, I mean of all things, right? But it's PR for a purpose, for people who quite literally want to change the world, what their message or their work.  

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Cheryl, if you could go back to that moment when you were kidnapped as your adult self, as your current self, what would you say to your teenage self?

Cheryl Hunter: 

Oh man, Dr. Richard, that question is just beautifully timed. I just came back from a trip to Colorado. And I went into a bathroom at a restaurant where I used to go as a teenage girl, and I remember sitting there. This is before the kidnapping, but sitting there and thinking my parents were getting divorced and I just felt awkward and a lot of kids just, like a lot of kids, I just felt lost in my teenage years. And I would lock myself in there and just sit and study the tiles and these beautiful hand painted Mexican tiles there. 

And even though that was before the whole France thing, I felt lost and had no idea how it was ever going to work out. And as I stepped into that restroom present day, I just said, ah, thinking of myself sitting there, it's all going to be okay, honey. So much better than okay. And it was as though the worlds merged, as odd as that may sound, Like I was speaking, and I was present in both that former self and now. 

And I would say to the to the teenage girl before France and the teenage girl during France and afterward going what now, it's all going to be so much better than you could have imagined, and I would tell myself to have faith. When I was -- when I did become free, right, when I'm there and “free” and I thought who on earth will I go on and I questioned God and the universe and my place in it and thought this is a mean punitive world and I just couldn't see. It wasn't and isn't that it's a mean punitive world. It's that it was all being orchestrated in my favor, but I couldn't see the whole picture at that point. 

Now, look, is that true? One could empirically say that, okay, that's a nice interpretation and great, I'll own that. That's a nice interpretation. It beats the hell out of the alternative saying, oh, it's a negative, malicious, nefarious universe in which God is punishing me. I mean, you could have said the same after your own accident and it's like -- 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

I mean, the language you're using very much resonates with me. And it's something that I've said in many places that when something happens to you, you really have a choice. You either can say what are the lessons, what do I learn, how do I either do things better or differently, how can I be better from it? Or you could ball your fist up at the sky, blame whatever deity you choose and be angry for the rest of your life. It is a choice. It doesn't feel like it always at the time, but it's a choice. 

Cheryl Hunter: 

You make such a good point. The difference between the two existences that one gains out of choosing one way or the other, it's immeasurable. It may seem like they're close together, but they aren't. And Dr. Richard, I went down the bad path first. Initially, it was far easier to say forget you, you've ruined me, why, if you're against me, I'm against you, and all that to God and be hardened. And I very much understood why the people who I met at the elder care facilities that were angry why they were that way makes total sense. 

It's just life became so absolutely intolerable there. I had to choose differently. I had to choose differently. It was, one could say I was traumatized or victimized or whatever word you want to use. I don't like victimized, but it's common vernacular, right? That happened once. Choosing to fight with what's so made that victimization continue to happen every moment onward in successive increments of time. But no, the only way for it to stop is for me to say enough. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Cheryl, your ability to articulate what you experienced, even without the details, is unbelievable. And I know that for you to be on the right side of this, took a tremendous amount of work and learning to forgive and learning to love yourself. Forgiveness is such a huge part of overcoming adversity. At what part in the process did you learn to forgive yourself and even perhaps the gentleman that did this to you?

Cheryl Hunter: 

It was comparatively early on. I have the grace of having grown up to a mother who was a seeker. She was very spiritual when she was a girl. She was quite religious. She just loved all things, personal development. And even though I hadn't told her, now I did get to tell her before she passed, but she gave me the insight earlier on when my parents got divorced about forgiving my father. And she used that analogy about non-forgiveness, holding a grudge, just like holding a sharp iron poker from the fire and trying to burn them, but you get burned fire far worse. And I could feel the weight of the unforgiveness. 

And ironically, I forgave them before I forgave myself. I realized that it wasn't that I was condoning them or any of that. But as this old saying goes, hurt people, hurt people, Lord only knows what would happen to these men to have them torture me and do that in those ways, I have no idea. But I no longer chose or choose to be tethered to them in any way. And the way that I could end it was to bless it, release it, forgive it and all. 

And ultimately, I realized finally that I still had this experience of existing in a punitive existence. I don't know how else to say that, but, and after much introspection, I realized, oh, because I'm still judging myself so harshly and believing that something's still wrong with me and that I brought this upon myself. And way back after the whole France thing happened, I became a model anyway. And it did, in fact, allow me to live all over the world. It was a true delight and a blessing. 

And one of the places I lived was in Japan. And I learned this beautiful Japanese principle known as Wabi Sabi. And the principle itself, at the time, was it rocked my world, but it stayed with me over the years and the distinction has seeped in more deeply over the years. The principle as I was taught by the grandparents of my agent say that Wabi Sabi is the most important of all Japanese principles. It states that the beauty of anything, anything, any object, any season, anything, lies in the flaws or the temporary nature of it. 

So the blooms of the cherry blossoms are so beautiful because they die, because they wither and die, and because they're temporary rather than permanent. And the beauty of any object can only be seen when juxtaposed against the damages or the ruined parts or the bleeding temporality of it. 

And it was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. That's not how I was reared to think beauty is. I thought it was the polished up perfect things. And that really became the inquiry, not can it, but how does this apply? And ultimately, it was through Wabi Sabi that I was able to forgive myself. And I was truly able to own that the things that I thought were so wrong and broken about me were the things that I had to contribute.

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

And now you're contributing at a ridiculous scale, helping people all over the world who have stories that they need to express, that they need to share. You're helping them get their voice out there. So you are making an impact as you wanted to. Probably not the journey you expected, and yet, because of that experience, we're all better for it. 

Cheryl, I have loved our time together. You are one of the most compelling and powerful storytellers I have ever had on this show. In fact, I've ever met in my life. As you know, I wrap up every episode by asking my guests a single question. And that is, what is your biggest helping, that single most important piece of information for somebody to walk away with after hearing our conversation today?

Cheryl Hunter: 

I'm going to go back to the principle of Wabi Sabi, Dr. Richard. Look at your own life and consider that everything you've previously believed is wrong with you is actually what makes you magnificent, is actually that which comprises the building blocks of your superpower. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Well said. Tell us where people can learn more about you online.

Cheryl Hunter: 

My website is CherylHunter.com and it's C-H—E-R-Y-L. And all my social is linked to from there as well. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Perfect. And we'll have everything Cheryl Hunter at the show notes at drrichardshuster.com. Well, Cheryl, I am immensely grateful for our time together today. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your stories and your wisdom with us today.

Cheryl Hunter: 

I'm honored. Thank you. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

And to each and every one of you who took time out of your day to listen to this, thank you as well. If you're inspired, if you're going to discover your own Wabi Sabi, go give us a follow and a five-star review on your podcast app of choice, because this is what helps other people find the show. 

But most importantly, go out there today and do something nice for somebody else, even if you don't know who they are, and post it in your feeds using the hashtag, #MyDailyHelping, because the happiest people are those that help others.