Welcome back to the place we find ourselves podcast. I'm Adam Young and today I am joined by my friend Kathy Lorzel. Kathy, welcome back to the podcast.

Thank you for having me.

You were a guest before when we talked about spiritual warfare.

Specifically, we talked about curses, agreements, vows, soul ties. But today, I've asked you to come back on to talk about engaging the particularity of our stories.

If you are wanting to engage your story in more depth, if you're wanting to engage your story in a way that brings healing, Kathy and I are going to be co leading a virtual conference on this very topic on Saturday, June 12th.

And we're going to talk about the content, kind of give you a preliminary outline of the content now.

The conference will be held via Zoom and it's designed to help you engage your story in a way that brings healing.

You can sign up right from my website. So Kathy, let's talk a bit about like why we're doing this conference. Why, why are we doing it?

At the Allender Center and in my personal work, we talk all the time and I know you guys do on this podcast as well around the importance of story work. And the reality is we all live in a fallen world. But our bodies and hearts are designed for Eden.

And so none of us can escape harm. I think that's the bottom line. None of us can escape harm, heartache and trauma.

And I think it impacts how we've come to engage the world. And so we're doing this conference to help us bridge the gap between how we relate to the world in both functional and dysfunctional ways, ways that are broken and and the question of why all of our current states of being the ways that we cope, the ways that we

are bringing both beauty and brokenness to the world are all connected to how we were raised. And, and that is, that is science. Like that's, we all know that that's true neurobiologically, you know, your, your first two months all the way up, you know, through formative years directly impact who you are right now. And so for so many of us, even in the midst of the trauma that we're currently in in our college,

and in our culture and through the pandemic, our ways of relating to the world are being exposed right now. This is not an easy time. And I, some of you are doing great, some of you are, are really struggling for those of you who are doing great, awesome, right me an email and tell me how you're doing that because I would love to know those of you who are struggling, we want to be able to help you understand why.

What happened to you? Because we cannot right now are flying blind in so many areas. And this is actually a beautiful opportunity because this cement is wet because we're in the middle of trauma. And we actually have a moment in time where we can sink into it and say, OK, why am I this way? And what happened? And the way to that is through early childhood stories and understanding more of your family origin.

Yes, and we should also say we should also announce not just this conference, but we should announce that you and Dan Allender have co authored a book that is forthcoming called redeeming heartache, how past suffering reveals your true calling.

When's it going to be published, Kathy? September 14th.

And you're going to be teaching some of the material from this book at the conference on June 12th, yes? Yes.

When you think about the material that you and I will be covering and what we will be asking people to engage, who's this conference for?

My first answer is everyone, however, not helpful. So I would really put it into two categories. One, if you are struggling and you want to understand more of why this is going to be really helpful for you.

It's going to help you bridge some connections, understand how present is related to past. Our hope is to never leave you with just what's wrong. Our hope is always to bring you forth to hope, bring you forth to what are the possibilities, not not a fake hope.

That's just like, be better, do better, get a wellness program and be better in six weeks. We're not talking about that sort of hope. We're talking about the deep hope of change and connection to God.

And so if you're in that camp, oh my gosh, I think this is going to be really helpful.

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