Episode 006: Joe and Dardi Hendershot

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Christian Moore:
Welcome to the Resilience Breakthrough Podcast. This is Christian Moore.

Dave Biesinger:
And I’m Dave Biesinger. This is episode six, Christian, can you believe we’re already at episode six.

Christian Moore:
Six episodes. Unbelievable, man. I tell you I’ve had a blast doing this. This has been fun. I’ve learned a ton.

Dave Biesinger:
This episode we have Joe and Dardi Hendershott coming on the show. And one of the reasons why we wanted to have them come in next is in our previous episode, Hotep talked about the power of story and the stories that we tell ourselves, and that nobody owes us a nice story about ourselves and that we need to take ownership of that story. And I totally agree with that.

Dave Biesinger:
But I also think as we mentioned, that if somebody can come in and help you to hear a new story and help you understand that maybe the stories that defined you in the past don’t have to define you in the future, they can speed up that process, it’s like a catalyst.

Christian Moore:
And I just saw two in the news this morning driving in here that we just lost more people in America than in Vietnam. And I was like, “Holy cow.” And that’s going to have a big impact on… These are these kids’ grandparents, these kids’ parents. These kids need to be heard and what really heals that wound is they need to… And I know hope is born when we know people are walking with us.

Christian Moore:
When there’s no one walking with us it’s hard to have hope, to keep that hope going.

Dave Biesinger:
It’s not always intuitive how a wound can take shape in either a child or an adult. One of the field experts on this topic is Joe Hendershott and his wife Dardi as well. And so we want to welcome them to the show. Welcome Joe and Dardi.

Dardi Handershott:
Thank you. Thank you so much.

Joe Hendershott:
Thank you. Thanks Christian, David. We appreciate being on the show here today with you. You’re great friends and we appreciate it.

Dave Biesinger:
Well, we want the audience to know a little bit about your background and where you’re coming from. So why don’t you both just jump in and tell us where you’re coming from and where your expertise is coming from, especially.

Joe Hendershott:
Well, thanks for asking. First of all, I spent about 25 years working in public education and was a high school principal, assistant principal, did the traditional route for a while, but really found our calling, our passion working with what we would normally call at-risk youth. And I ended up spending about six years working in a juvenile lock up facility as an educator, spent years as an alternative school principal.

Joe Hendershott:
Worked at a place called Boys’ Village, now called Village Network which is an alternative correctional facility for juvenile sex offenders.

Dave Biesinger:
Wow.

Christian Moore:
Wow.

Dave Biesinger:
Wow, that’s an [crosstalk 00:02:49]-

Joe Hendershott:
Did that for about 20, 25 years, and we will talk a little bit more about that later, the difference between at-risk and wounded. We’ll get into that, but that’s my background. Dardi will talk about our background as a family and how our family is structured.

Dardi Handershott:
I’m a mom to nine, so everybody can just get over that right off the bat-

Dave Biesinger:
Wow.

Dardi Handershott:
… with the eyes bulging out like, [crosstalk 00:03:15] oh my gosh. We have five biological children and four children through adoption. We were both licensed therapeutic foster parents for a season of our life. We had some kiddos come and go. We had the privilege of adopting one of the kiddos that came which we are very thankful for, but it’s given to us a heightened awareness for the people that are in the trenches every day working with children who have experienced trauma in their life.

Dardi Handershott:
It is very real. Those wounds run deep and even if on the surface you don’t necessarily… You might see all smiles and sunshine, but the minute something triggers that child, we’re going down a completely different path. We are so thankful for the people who have stepped into our circle over the years as educators, coaches, you name it. People that step in and have influence in our children’s lives also have the power to influence their mental health and healing.

Dardi Handershott:
I think I don’t want to go too far down the rabbit hole, but in the beginning you were speaking about the suicide rates among our children. That is a really huge concern and one of the things that we talk about and investigate, what is the disconnect between hope and suicide. There’s got to be a disconnect there, so what is that disconnect?

Dardi Handershott:
And we believe it’s truly about relationships, but true authentic relationships stem from first understanding where another person is coming from, and then we’re going to be able to bridge that gap between having hope and having hopelessness.

Dave Biesinger:
What’s interesting about that is I mentioned earlier my own son, and there was a time when I don’t think I was as sensitive or empathetic to his needs as I should have been as a father, and where our relationship really turned the corner was when I stopped trying to teach him what I thought he needed to know and I started to listen to what he-

Dardi Handershott:
Yes.

Dave Biesinger:
… really was trying to tell me about himself.

Dardi Handershott:
Yes.

Dave Biesinger:
That was-

Joe Hendershott:
Yeah.

Dave Biesinger:
… the really real genesis. It’s weird as a parent because you think you automatically have a relationship just because you’re their parent. It’s not true. You have to build a relationship with your children just like anybody else.

Christian Moore:
Yeah. One of the biggest human needs is to be heard and to truly be heard creates that bond, creates that trust, and that intimacy created from that. And when that intimacy is there, then these kids feel so much safer. Joe, I know you talk a lot about the difference between at-risk, being wounded, trauma. Part of my background, my training as a social worker is in understanding trauma and helping people work through trauma.

Christian Moore:
One of the things I’ve been so impressed with you is what you do for, of course, the students, the youth, but also what you do for the adults, and adults go through tremendous trauma when they’re working with kids and families in difficult situations. I know you from the road being out there, speaking on the road with you and stuff, people love the work you’re doing. So it’s an honor to have you here. And yeah, can you define those things out a little bit? The difference between at-risk and wounded?

Joe Hendershott:
Sure, Christian. You heard where I worked and when I would go to these places to work, they would send me to at-risk conferences and I would go and I’d take notes, and they would say, “Take these notes, come back, apply these strategies and these kids’ lives will be transformed and you’ll be an amazing teacher.”

Joe Hendershott:
And I did, I’d get great information and I’d come back, but I’d apply the strategies that I learned at the conference and I would fall short. And I felt like I had a real calling to work with the at-risk youth, but to be honest, early on I wasn’t very successful at it and I thought maybe I needed a new career.

Joe Hendershott:
So I go back and they would say, “Well, here’s the latest, greatest book on at-risk youth. Read it, apply the strategies, these kids’ last will be transformed and won’t that be nice?” And I’d read it, I’d underline strategies, I’d go back and apply these strategies to these at-risk youth and really nothing really changed. Relationships weren’t changing and I was really… I knew something was missing, but I wasn’t sure what it was, Christian, but I’ll tell the story how it came about.

Joe Hendershott:
Our son was hurt very bad in an accident and my wife was rushing our son to the hospital one day and she got pulled over by a police officer for speeding. And police officer had these rules about speeding and he was approaching the car and he was ready to throw the rule book at my wife, but he looked in the back seat and he saw a wounded child, my son, and he had to put those rules aside temporarily and he became a first care responder in the life of a child’s wounds.

Joe Hendershott:
And instead of throwing the book and lecturing my wife on trying to get our son emergency care, he escorted my wife and son to the hospital. His job wasn’t to be a surgeon, to be a doctor, none of those things to do, but to be the first care responder, he had that training. My wife told me the story, everything ended up being fine.

Joe Hendershott:
My wife told me the story afterwards and I said, “I think that’s it. I think that’s what I’ve been missing. I think my son was not at-risk, he was a wounded child.” My one friend Terry Wardle said, “It’s not about guilt, it’s about vision.” So I had to have a different vision of how I was working with the kids, and the research says today that around 47% of the kids we’re dealing with, we’re dealing with wounds.

Joe Hendershott:
The current research today in 2020 says, “Nearly 11 million children will be confirmed cases of abuse and neglect, 8,000 children will die of abuse and neglect, and 7.2 million children will experience the foster care system just in 2020.” Those kids aren’t at-risk. While they may be at-risk, but they’re also wounded children.

Christian Moore:
Amen-

Joe Hendershott:
And so that’s the distinction. I want to get all scholarly on you, Christian, I really do-

Christian Moore:
Yeah, yeah.

Joe Hendershott:
… but really if somebody just wants to say, “What’s the difference between at-risk and wounded?”

Christian Moore:
Uh-huh affirmative).

Joe Hendershott:
A child that’s beyond or at-risk is wounded.

Dave Biesinger:
Wow. What’s so fascinating about that story you told is that the police officer who pulled your wife over could see the wound, it was visible. If someone gets a finger cut off or if someone is dealing with… Even if someone gets cancer and they go through chemotherapy and they lose all their hair, we rally around that person. We throw them a party when they recover.

Dave Biesinger:
But if someone is wounded psychologically, it’s almost like we think less of them. That wound is just as real as cancer, it’s just as real as getting shot and [crosstalk 00:10:30]-

Christian Moore:
Would consider invisible wounds.

Dave Biesinger:
But these are invisible wounds, but they’re just as real. That was a very powerful metaphor, Joe.

Christian Moore:
Yeah, that was incredible.

Dardi Handershott:
Well, and I think that that’s what is so important with our educators. Our educators are experiencing secondary trauma because they end up… They’re mandated reporters, they are seeing things, whether it’s through behaviors where they may see a physical sign that there’s something going on with a child and that has a profound impact on them.

Dardi Handershott:
And so we do have to be sensitive, but that’s also where some of the disconnect is. When we’re dealing with standards, and mandates, and all of those things, and we’re working like robots, it’s not giving people the space to really get to know the kids’ stories and to hear them, and to see the different signs that let people know that there’s something different going on underneath that maybe we can’t see.

Dardi Handershott:
And so I could go down a whole road with all the mandates and everything, but we… That’s why I love that social-emotional learning is becoming recognized as a critical component to developing teaching, reaching the whole child because it allows us to foster these relationships where we can know what’s going on.

Dave Biesinger:
You mentioned hearing the child’s story, and in a previous episode, we had a discussion with Hotep and he talked about taking control and rewriting the story. No matter what anyone else has told us about ourselves, we can tell ourselves a story and that story can become true if we believe it. But what I’m hearing you say is to help a wounded child rewrite their story.

Dave Biesinger:
Sometimes we first have to hear the story that they’re living with right now. We have to listen to the story that’s defining their life right now before we can help them rewrite that story about themselves.

Dardi Handershott:
Absolutely. Joe’s going to take that one.

Joe Hendershott:
Well, the first thing is I had the opportunity to work with Dr. Terry Wardle and he taught me a lot about different types of wounds; wounds of withholding, wounds of aggression, wounds of stressful events, wounds of betrayal, wounds of longterm duress. Those are the different types of wounds, but once we’ve identified the wounds, whether it’s withholding, aggression, stressful events, betrayal, longterm duress, which we could take into today’s message if of the COVID-19.

Joe Hendershott:
We’ve got kids with wounds, we got all of us probably dealing with some kinds of wounds of withholding, stressful events, longterm duress, but how do we help kids to rewrite their story? Wounds cause false beliefs, false beliefs cause the emotional upheaval, and emotional people causes the dysfunctional behavior, and eventually it turns into the life situation.

Joe Hendershott:
And so like our one daughter that we adopted, she went down the rabbit hole one day of false beliefs and she… It was over something minor at the house, her brother got the last donut. It was really minor, but to her it was, “I am always last, no one loves me. Everyone’s out to get me.” But then she hit me with the grand slam of all false beliefs, and that was, “No one loves me.”

Dave Biesinger:
Wow.

Joe Hendershott:
I’ve been trained to try to consequence kids out of their trauma and that was a big flip for me when I realized that, I heard it at counseling conference. And by the way, I quit going to principal conferences, and not that those aren’t important, they are, but I started going to counseling conferences and someone taught me once that you can’t consequence kids out of their trauma.

Christian Moore:
Amen.

Joe Hendershott:
You have to listen to them, you have to help them out of their trauma. And so instead of trying to consequence my daughter out of her trauma, what her feelings were about this were very real, but they weren’t true because the way she said it was, “No one loves me.” I had to kneel down beside her and say, “That’s not true because dad loves you.

Joe Hendershott:
And I’ll go check with mom because I think mom loves you, and I think you got eight brothers and sisters who loved you. And I think your soccer team voted you as team captain because they love you.” So then you attack the false beliefs. We can strategize, we help them reframe their story.

Joe Hendershott:
Now, we don’t want to discount that their feelings are real, not at all. And I think the great news, and Dardi mentioned it already is that a lot of our educators today are getting the training that I didn’t have early on and where we’re approaching it from a different angle now. And I think as educators we’re starting to see different results.

Christian Moore:
Yeah, that’s awesome, Joe. I think rewriting the story in combination with helping kids understand that their emotions, their feelings aren’t really either good or bad. Their feelings are just normal emotional states and that it’s okay to have those feelings, and then we want to really hear those feelings.

Christian Moore:
So many kids in the last week that I’ve interacted with, they’re scared to death to express real emotion, real feelings, and I think one of the first things that I guess that would be the hydrogen peroxide for the wound would be letting them get those feelings out. Agree, disagree, I don’t mind it, just [crosstalk 00:16:29]-

Dave Biesinger:
Well Joe, you told me last time we spoke on the phone, you told me a story about a burn that you had. I think that is a really apt metaphor at this time.

Joe Hendershott:
Oh yeah. We had… Yeah, Dardi’s laughing. We can laugh now because I almost burned our deck down. Not on purpose, not on purpose. I was grilling out in our… First time I’ve grilled out and I realized that my grill actually caught on fire and I couldn’t shut it down. And we had to call the fire department and when I went to try to shut it off myself while waiting for the fire department to show up, I got a couple of serious burns on my hand.

Joe Hendershott:
And those [crosstalk 00:17:11] are wounds and I needed help with that. Something I couldn’t just wish away or I had feelings attached to them, but they’re healing. And the good news about all we’re talking about is hope and that wounds can heal. And that’s the good news with professional help that we encourage everyone to go get.

Dardi Handershott:
But I’m going to take it a step further than that in that his hand has healed now, but there’s a scar there.

Christian Moore:
Wow.

Dardi Handershott:
So I think that that’s one of the things that we have to be cognizant of is that we can move past trauma, but we have to also acknowledge that there are still things where it resurfaces sometimes. And we don’t want to dismiss that and say, “Well, you just got to get over that.” Wounds are real, the scars are real, and it does impact us, and we absolutely can rewrite our story in a positive way and use that to positively influence how we connect with other people.

Dardi Handershott:
But it doesn’t change the story. No, no, no. Maybe that isn’t even the right way to say it. Maybe it’s better to say, “It doesn’t negate what’s happened.” It would be wonderful if we could take an eraser to things, but that’s not real life, so how do we incorporate that moving forward in a positive way?

Dave Biesinger:
Our past wounds don’t have to continue to limit us, but they will always-

Dardi Handershott:
Correct.

Dave Biesinger:
… be a part of our narrative. It’s just a matter of how we interpret them and what we do with that information. Joe, one of the things about the story that you told me before though with your hand that I found so interesting was, correct me if I’m wrong here, it’s your hand, but-

Dardi Handershott:
Yes.

Dave Biesinger:
… you said that you didn’t think it was a very bad wound and you had been treating it yourself. You had been doing some self care because you really didn’t think it was that bad of a wound, but then it kept getting worse, and worse and you’re like, “I think I need to go see a doctor for this.”

Joe Hendershott:
Yeah. That is true.

Dave Biesinger:
Yeah. In that metaphor, it’s like sometimes we may think our own wounds aren’t that bad or we might take a look at another person and go, “Hey, that bad story that you have in your past or that wound that you have, it’s not that bad.” First of all, we’re not a judge of how bad a wound is. What might seem small might loom large to the individual.

Dave Biesinger:
And we have to use the right medicine for the wound. We can’t go in and try to treat a gunshot wound with hydrogen peroxide. That needs some more serious intervention.

Joe Hendershott:
Yeah, absolutely. We talked about that. It’s like going to the doctor. You get a right diagnosis, right prescription, you get a good outcome. Get a wrong diagnosis, wrong prescription, sometimes things can go bad. And judging, we’ll talk about that, but you’re right, I was treating it with hydrogen peroxide and antibiotic, cream and stuff.

Joe Hendershott:
My hand was starting to swell up and get in fact that even worse and I thought I was doing a good job and it was getting worse. And I called and they said, “Oh, don’t do that. We’ve got to send a different type of burn cream,” and it healed.

Joe Hendershott:
But as far as judging a person’s wounds, I have to be really honest with you, I was writing books on this stuff and I was getting introduced as an expert in the area and I thought, well, maybe I am, but I really wasn’t an expert at all because I had a judgment card about kids’ wounds and the things I’m just saying today on the show are just true of me. May not be true of anybody in your audience or anybody you even know. These are things that were true of me and my story.

Joe Hendershott:
But I had a judgment card against some of these wounded kids, even though I said, “Hey, they’re wounded and I understand them,” but I still judge it. And that would save things like, “Maybe if they had better friends, they wouldn’t be wounded, maybe if they had a better family, they wouldn’t be wounded, maybe if they had a better community, they wouldn’t be wounded. Maybe this, maybe that.”

Joe Hendershott:
But you heard we’re foster parents and we got a call for our first foster child and we were told the teenage boys was the biggest need, so that’s what we were prepared for. My wife calls me at work one day and says, “Are you sitting down?” And of course I sat down and she said, “We’ve got a call for our first foster child.”

Joe Hendershott:
And I said, “Well, where is he and where’s he at? And how old is he?” And she said, “It’s not a he, it’s a little girl. She’s in Columbus hospital and she’s five weeks premature, around four pounds and needs a home, is homeless.” She says, “What do you think?” And I said, “I think you’re halfway to that hospital.” And so yeah, she was. She was in the car with their friend Jodi and they were on the way to get this little girl.

Joe Hendershott:
But here’s the story, our judgment on that. When my wife came home by six hours later with her friend Jodi and our foster daughter, four pounds, five weeks premature, I held this little girl in my hand, and she spoke this to my heart and it changed every single thing that I talk about with wounded children, everything, every which way.

Joe Hendershott:
When I held this little girl, she said to my heart, “Dad, some kids just come into the world wounded.”

Dave Biesinger:
Oh. You’re almost making me cry here, Joe.

Joe Hendershott:
Well, and it taught me-

Dave Biesinger:
That’s a transformational experience, it really is so incredible.

Joe Hendershott:
… to put that judgment card away. There is a place for it, that’s just not what I signed out for, that’s not my gig. I was an educator, my job was to teach, and to love, and to care for kids, be a first care responder, get them to the experts if they are hurting, but yeah, that’s judging. And if you’re going to work with wounded people, that’s one thing that I learned was you have to put the judgment card away.

Dave Biesinger:
I know our audience is going to want to know, how long was that child in your house and what’s the rest of that story? Just real quick. Give us a synopsis because I know every listener-

Dardi Handershott:
She’s our daughter now.

Dave Biesinger:
Okay. She’s your daughter now, incredible.

Dardi Handershott:
She is our daughter now.

Dave Biesinger:
Incredible.

Joe Hendershott:
She is 12 years old?

Dardi Handershott:
Yes.

Joe Hendershott:
She’s an A student and we’re very, very proud of her and we couldn’t be more blessed and happy for her life. And she has brought way more joy into our life than I’m sure we’ve brought into her life.

Christian Moore:
Yeah, I think right now coming out of COVID too, I think you might have to add another chapter to your book on universally wounded because I’m telling you, I’m interacting with all these different demographics of society, culture, background, you name it and I’m seeing her everywhere right now, Joe.

Joe Hendershott:
If you can go back to like the typology of wounds from Dr. Wardle, the wounds of withholding, we got half of our grocery order the other day that we wanted. Everybody’s dealing with the stressful event, not just in our country, not just across the world, everybody’s dealing with the stressful event and we just want to say out there that we hope everybody and wish everybody, not just in our country but across the world hood health and-

Dave Biesinger:
I think it was the world health organization that was saying that as a result of the COVID-19 social distancing and halt to the economy, that over 230 million people will experience severe food shortages and starvation. 230 million people across the planet are going to be starving.

Dardi Handershott:
Right. That’s a tangible thing, but then there’s the emotional aspect of it. I’m going to go a little personal here. Our first grandchild, granddaughter was born right in the middle of this pandemic and unfortunately she ended up with a bacterial infection. They’re not sure how, or why, or anything else, but she is still in the hospital right now. And because of COVID, only one parent is allowed in there.

Christian Moore:
Unreal.

Dardi Handershott:
Yeah. And so this is really just… It’s gut wrenching because you’re dealing with new parents, you’re dealing with a baby who’s ill, you’re dealing with sleep deprivation, and then you’re dealing with isolation. And it’s just an enormous undertaking. And I’ve read where it’s enormous for the medical professionals because they know this isn’t the way that it’s supposed to be.

Dardi Handershott:
It’s enormous for the educators because they know this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be and they can’t reach all of their children. One of our children who’s a teacher right now, one of her kids has just completely checked out. She hasn’t heard from her in three weeks and she has said, “I’m worried about her. I don’t know if she’s okay.” And so, yeah, it’s a domino effect. We are all in this together, but it’s impacting all of us the same but yet different.

Dardi Handershott:
I’ve read where some people have said, “I can’t afford to have my groceries delivered even though it’s a few extra dollars, it’s a few extra dollars I don’t have.” And so it just goes on, and on, and on.

Christian Moore:
Yup, yup. That reconnection is going to be so, so important. I’m seeing in Europe they have a minister of loneliness. I think one of the things that has got to come out of this is we prioritize this need to connect and to not leave out in our society always has a demographic that’s left out of connection. It’s usually been some children and often is the kids.

Christian Moore:
My background with ADHD, learning disabilities, we push people away, we can easily, easily push people away, and then the elderly of course. I know in Britain they’re literally trying to have by 2023 that really no one feels lonely. And they again, this minister is literally working on this full time and their countries taking this serious. And I think we in America have got, not say, “Hey…”

Christian Moore:
So many people, you look at loneliness as being a weakness or something is wrong with us. If we’re lonely, that we have a deficit. And I think hopefully that’s one of the silver linings that comes out of COVID.

Christian Moore:
Well, Joe, I just want to drop a plug here for your book, Reaching the Wounded Student available on Amazon and I want to ask, Dardi made a really poignant point a minute ago about a student who had dropped off the face of the planet, and one of the things that your book deals with is reaching and motivating these wounded students.

Christian Moore:
And I just wonder, have you given thought, are there any principles that you discovered in the process of writing your book that would be applicable, and how would you adapt them to this situation of COVID-19?

Joe Hendershott:
Well, I think there are some overlaps for sure. When I went to my first staff meeting, when I was toying with this idea between at-risk and wounded, I had a gentleman on my staff who was a retired military Marine sergeant. And I asked my staff, I said, “I think we’ve got kids that are wounded, kids beyond at-risk.” I said, “What do you guys think about this?”

Joe Hendershott:
And when Joe stood up and he said, “I liked that.” And he said, “Here’s why.” He said, “Because you’re allowing me to be a good soldier again, you’re allowing me to be a good warrior again, because you see, a good warrior never leaves anyone in the battlefield wounded.”

Christian Moore:
I like that metaphor.

Joe Hendershott:
He said, “But I’m going to teach you something about war that you don’t understand, Mr. Hendershott.” He said, “You’re asking us to not only quit kicking kids out of school in record numbers, you’re telling us to go get the kids out in the battlefield that we’ve lost.” And he said, “And I liked that.” He said, “Because you’re allowing me to be that warrior again, but some of some people are going to say, ‘Leave me here. Leave me behind.’”

Joe Hendershott:
But he said to me, “A good soldier and a good warrior never leaves anyone in the battlefield wounded.” So how does that apply today? I think the things I’m seeing as I’m seeing people becoming more compassionate, more intentional with their empathy that we talked about. We’ll talk about empathy in a little bit, I hope, but I have to give a shout out to the teachers with my children.

Joe Hendershott:
[Mr. Antrum 00:29:57], I’ll give him a shout out. He called the other day, one of my 14 year old son’s teacher called and said, “Hey, is Pete Tyler home.” And I said, “Yeah, he’s here.” And he just said, “Hey Pete Tyler, this is Mr. Antrum.” He says, “I just want to tell you I love you and I miss you buddy. And I just love your family and I’m just calling just telling you that I miss you.” and you should’ve seen the smile on my son’s face.

Christian Moore:
That’s so cool.

Joe Hendershott:
That I’m seeing so many cool things like that come up, and my nine year old and 10 year old daughters are talking to their teachers on their MacBooks and having conversations and they’re checking in with them, and I’m just seeing this deep empathic connection between teachers and students that, I’m not saying, it wasn’t there before, but you can see just really more, I don’t want to say purposeful, but you can really see it and feel it at a different level now.

Dardi Handershott:
Well, [crosstalk 00:31:01] and I think it goes back to, we can get so caught up in the standards and the mandates, which is understandable when you’re having that pressure put on you, but right now I think the realization has come. I give kudos, one of our third grade daughters has a male teacher, and bless his heart, he was listening to their stories about little girl nonsense that can go on, but he was just listening and having this conversation.

Dardi Handershott:
It’s relational and that’s what matters right now beyond, they’re learning, they’re doing their math, and they’re reading, and all of the things, but it’s that connection. And going back to my daughter’s student, what finally ended up happening was she did, she called her, just kept persistently calling and finally got ahold of her and they had a great conversation and just got her back on track and she said to her, “Hey, I know that it’s hard to do your work without having somebody there to help you through it,” because she works with people that need intervention.

Dardi Handershott:
She said, “I get that, but I need you to just check in with me so I know that you’re okay because I care about you.” And now this girl’s checking in more than she even expected that she was going to because it’s like Dr. Wardle said to us one time, “Every one of us wants to feel like when you walk into a place that people say, ‘Oh, we’re so glad you’re here because it just wouldn’t be the same without you.’”

Christian Moore:
Yeah, it’s like [crosstalk 00:32:34]-

Dardi Handershott:
And I think-

Christian Moore:
You want to go to a place where everybody knows your name.

Dardi Handershott:
Exactly. And I think that even right now where there’s distance between us, letting people know that my life isn’t the same without you in it, just re-establishing those connector points. The academics will come at some… But I read something that I think was so appropriate. They said, “This is not distance learning, this is crisis learning and we have to treat it as such.”

Dardi Handershott:
Some days the academics have to just go out the window and we have to pay attention to the social emotional piece, not just for the kids but for the adults. The adults have to be able just to let kids know, I’m thinking about you, I miss you. Our other daughter had to go pack up her classroom yesterday.

Dardi Handershott:
They’re doing it like I think five at a time and she sent me a picture of her empty classroom and she said, “I’m crying right now mom.” And it hurts, it hurts everybody.

Joe Hendershott:
And I think that’s where tying these stories in to give just major shout out to our educators, our superintendents-

Dave Biesinger:
Amen.

Joe Hendershott:
… in fact, the superintendents, to the principals, to the teachers, to the support staff. I know there’s bus drivers out there driving meals around town to kids can eat, cafeteria workers coming in and cooking meals. Just a big shout out and just warriors of hope for these children in this tough time and for each other.

Christian Moore:
Absolutely. [crosstalk 00:34:12] Man, that is so powerful. It’s so powerful. And I’ll tell you what, you just taught me a powerful, powerful thing there, Dardi where you said, “This is crisis learning.” This is really crisis education and these educators you could argue are doing almost trauma learning, trauma teaching and dealing in crisis and just working through these wounds these kids are having. But man, that was beautifully said.

Christian Moore:
What was the whole sentence you said there, Dardi? I don’t mean to have you go back, but how do you say that again, the crisis?

Dardi Handershott:
I can’t take credit for this, I read it somewhere and it just resonated with me so much that this is not distance learning, is crisis learning.

Christian Moore:
That’s it, it’s not distanced learning, it’s crisis learning.

Dave Biesinger:
And you know what’s crazy is a lot of these educators are doing this crisis learning, inventing it on the fly while also trying to homeschool their own kids. And I want to get back to something you said a minute ago, Joe. And you said, “I hope we go there with empathy.”

Joe Hendershott:
With empathy, empathy is our ability to not just step in someone else’s shoes, because that’s usually where the definition for most people stop. They say step in someone else’s shoes is the definition of empathy, but it’s to step in someone else’s shoes and to feel what they’re feeling. Like Christian, I grew up with my struggles.

Joe Hendershott:
I grew up with a father who battled an addiction and some health other issues and he needed to go get help with his addiction, and out of grace, he was able to overcome his addiction and helped 100s of people overcome their addiction during his lifetime. So that’s why we’re called Hope 4 The Wounded because there’s hope for the wounded and there’s… I was told once when I was in school that I wasn’t going to go to college.

Dardi Handershott:
Well, let’s get even more specific with that. He was told, “You better go get a job out in the field with your dad because that’s all you’re going to amount to because-

Christian Moore:
Wow.

Dardi Handershott:
… his grades were terrible. You’ve said a million times that you graduated high school as-

Joe Hendershott:
I was graduated at high school out of a favor, I think-

Christian Moore:
Oh, wow.

Joe Hendershott:
… and I’m proud of that, but because of what was going on in my family at the time, our family was going through crisis. My father is battling addiction, which I honor, he overcame his addiction. That’s what people saw the surface level going on, but I think it was John Steinbeck who once said, “To have three teachers in a lifetime who make the difference is the best of luck.” And I can tell the audience out there, I had the best of luck.

Joe Hendershott:
I had three teachers that stepped into my life that made the difference in my life-

Dardi Handershott:
And helped rewrite your story.

Joe Hendershott:
And helped rewrite my story, but they positioned me for success. And so those empathic connections, and I’ll just say this, my actual doctoral dissertation is on empathy. So I studied this stuff just day and night, night and day, and one day I put aside all the fairest, all the strategist, all the practitioners, everything aside, and I thought, what?

Joe Hendershott:
I’ve probably spoke to thousands of kids in their jail cells in my career, what did they say to me? What have they said to me through the years? And it hit me all of a sudden like right between the eyes, when I would ask a kid because counselors taught me to ask what questions, not why questions. Right, Christian?

Christian Moore:
Yes sir, yes sir.

Joe Hendershott:
Okay. Because I’m making sure I got that down right.

Christian Moore:
You got it.

Joe Hendershott:
When I would ask kids what’s going on in their life, they would tell me their story. And these were kids in jail cells, in treatment centers. Every one of the kids at the end of their conversation, when I’d ask them what’s going on, would look me in the eye and say these words, “Do you feel me?”

Christian Moore:
Wow.

Joe Hendershott:
“Do you feel what I’m saying, Mr. Hendershott? Do you feel me?” Now, the definition of empathy is to feel what another person feels. Our kids today are telling us exactly what they need. Here’s what they’re saying to us, see, we pass it off as street jargon-

Christian Moore:
Yup, yup.

Joe Hendershott:
… but they’re just saying, “Hey, you feel me?” But what they’re really saying to us is this, “Christian, can you be empathic with my story? Do you feel my pain? Do you feel what’s going on in my life?” And so I think our kids are telling us today, our wounded kids are telling us exactly what they need.

Dave Biesinger:
What you’re saying is really hitting home to me because I like you have a bit of a rough background and you’re calling me back to some of the hard things I’ve been through. And when I was in that space of feeling hurt and not feeling listened to, I went on emotional shutdown and that was a defense mechanism.

Dave Biesinger:
I started to posture and I started to build up hard walls around myself, and if I ever felt like someone was getting too close, I pulled the plug on that relationship and I ran away. And eventually, actually it was the woman I married. She was really the first one to break through that wall and get me to open up emotionally. And I remember, I’ll tell a very personal story right now.

Dave Biesinger:
She looked at me, and I had been through all sorts of things and I had a rough background and she was young, and pure, and perfect, and all of these things, and I remember telling her like, “I just don’t feel like I’m worthy of you, I just don’t feel like I deserve you.” And her response to that was the first time that she kissed me. She reached over and kissed me and she told me I was worth it, and that meant a lot to me.

Dardi Handershott:
Wow.

Joe Hendershott:
Wow.

Dave Biesinger:
And I’ve been able to feel ever since then and it brought down the wall all of a sudden to have somebody really reach out to me and connect with me like that. I think that’s what people [crosstalk 00:40:23]-

Joe Hendershott:
To feel what you’re feeling.

Christian Moore:
Wow. That’s for sure.

Dardi Handershott:
To feel what you were feeling, but I think also in our day and age, other people’s defense mechanism is to take that initial pushback from a child as rejection and you take it personal instead of saying, “I’m going to keep pursuing you because I see in you what you can’t quite see in yourself right now.”

Christian Moore:
Yeah. It’s interesting. I know three of you pretty good, pretty good. I’ve had intense emotional interactions with all three of you and what’s amazing about all three of you is you see other people… I know when I first interacted with Joe, he treated me like if I was one of his foster kids, a member of your family, almost instantly. I think he could see my pain and what I had been through.

Christian Moore:
When I first walked up to you Dardi, we connected, I felt the same thing. And then Dave, I watched Dave in many, many situations where he has incredible, incredible empathy. I love being around Dave because he literally… He treats my kids with the same love and value he treats his own kids. I think we as a society, we as a world, I wish I could teach this world what all three of you have the ability to do.

Christian Moore:
And I’m going to say something pretty bold here, I think what all three of you have the ability to do is you see other people’s kids, other human beings just as valuable. Is that beautiful baby you guys brought home from the hospital that you raised, your daughter. You treat me with the respect you would treat your daughter.

Christian Moore:
All three of you have this ability to see everybody, we’re all part of this human family, this human condition, and that’s what I feel blessed in all three of you because… And Dave, seriously, man, that was powerful. You just shared there, man from your heart because your wife [crosstalk 00:42:25]-

Joe Hendershott:
Absolutely.

Christian Moore:
… a better mentor for me, man. I just want to encourage the world to see, whatever child they’re in front of, they’re no different than the person they love the most. If we can get to a point as a society where we see other people with the same kind of love we see the person we love the most, I think that’s the type of healing we’re going to have to come out of there.

Christian Moore:
And Amy, I’m going to say your wife’s name because-

Dave Biesinger:
Yeah [crosstalk 00:42:55]-

Christian Moore:
… she’s one of my heroes. I know Amy is that type of person and I think she’s definitely shaped you that way, Dave. And that’s why you’re the person you are, man.

Dave Biesinger:
It’s so true. And Joe, going back to when you talked about interviewing thousands of young men or young women who are in prison, and then when you came to that breakthrough, they’re saying, “Do you feel me?” I think that that’s what you started to do. You started to view each one of those people in prison the same way that you guys viewed that tiny little daughter that you brought home.

Dave Biesinger:
Each one of those human beings was once someone’s tiny child who was filled with potential, who was filled with life and who had their whole lives in front of them.

Christian Moore:
Absolutely.

Dave Biesinger:
Sometimes it’s painful to see how much we love little children, but then once they become teenagers, and young men and young women, our love for them starts to fade and we view them more as a problem to be solved or someone to give consequences to instead of remembering they’re still that little child.

Dardi Handershott:
That’s right.

Joe Hendershott:
Well, first of all, Dave, I would say I appreciate you sharing that story and being vulnerable because I don’t know how you thought that up, was said beautifully. And I agree with you that each child has a redeeming quality. When I go out and I speak, I tell people, “I can teach a lot of things, but there’s one thing I can not teach, and that’s a belief system. You either believe that each kid that you deal with has a redeeming quality and a gift to give this world or you don’t. I can’t teach anybody that. That’s a belief system that you own.”

Joe Hendershott:
The pure raw teachers out there, the majority of the teachers I’m around, that’s what they are looking for. They’re, they’re pulling out those redeeming qualities in these kids and getting their gifts that they can give to this world. And I think that’s so important that we do look for those redeeming qualities.

Joe Hendershott:
I needed that when I was a kid. I’ll be a little vulnerable here too. I had a learning disability. Like Christian, I was struggling and I barely graduated and it wasn’t until a gentleman came up to me, a teacher came up to me one day and said, “Joe, you’re a smart kid.” That blew away. I never heard that. He said, “You just learn differently.”

Joe Hendershott:
And he got me tested and before I knew it, I was off to college, master’s degree, and I don’t say any of this stuff in any boastful way. I give all the credit to the teachers who found the redeeming qualities and the gifts that I had to give. And I wouldn’t be where I am positioned today as a father, as a husband, as a teacher without that teacher in my life.

Dave Biesinger:
Well, you started to believe a different story about yourself, and maybe if that teacher hadn’t come along, maybe you would have discovered that on your own, but maybe it would have taken you another decade. But that teacher fast-tracked that process, that teacher came in and told you, you were smart, and then you chose to believe that about yourself.

Dave Biesinger:
And the consequence of that is you getting a PhD and you learning all of the things that you learned in a 20 or 30, I don’t know how long your career has been, but in all of your career. And then what you’re doing and which I really respect, Joe and Dardi is you’re turning around and sharing that good news that we can transform the lives of children with educators who touch the lives of children.

Dave Biesinger:
The influence that you can have by influencing educators, if you think about it for a second, educators influence how many students per year, and then how many years of their career, right? If you can influence an educator to influence the life of a child, you look at the amount of impact that you have to avert human suffering over the course of an entire career, and it’s substantial.

Dardi Handershott:
It is substantial. And I think that’s such a great point because with our most recent book where we’re talking more to the educators, one of the things that evolves through the book is basically regaining that vision for why we got into this in the first place because you’re hearing so much right now about the educators feeling that secondary trauma and they’re starting to feel compassion fatigue, they’re starting to feel out.

Dardi Handershott:
And then they start… We talked earlier about the defense mechanism as a child that you put up, as adults we can do the same thing. We can put up that defense mechanism and just start going through the motions because sometimes it hurts to feel too. And so throughout the book we remind educators, we remind them, but we also encourage them to revisit for themselves what was my original inspiration? Why did I get into this?

Dardi Handershott:
We’re not diminishing how they feel or what they’ve experienced in their own personal life or what they’ve experienced professionally, but how do we grab that and embrace as part of our story moving forward to make our impact even more authentic and really powerful? Because a lot of times when we draw on those hard experiences, we have the greatest impact on others because they can sense that we’re being real with them, that we do understand what they’re feeling.

Dardi Handershott:
I think that that’s just an important, it’s a whole circle and that’s one of the reasons we talk about that we need to have a comprehensive approach to education where we’re not just focused on the needs of the children, but also the adult because like you said, their power of influence is huge and we don’t want to lose that, we need that.

Dardi Handershott:
For our children who have experienced woundedness, we need those people in their life because mom and dad can tell you all kinds of things, we can try to pour truth into them over and over, but the reality is sometimes you don’t believe mom and dad, but you might believe it when it comes from someone else.

Dave Biesinger:
It’s so true. My mom, bless her heart, she always said nice things about me, but it was hard to believe because I’m like, “You’re my mom.”

Dardi Handershott:
Right. You have to say that.

Dave Biesinger:
You have to say that. But what you just said about educators is so true. These educators have a heart of gold. They’re not getting into this career for the money, that’s for sure.

Dardi Handershott:
Oh, that’s so for sure.

Dave Biesinger:
They’re very under paid. And by the way, I think we should pay them double or triple what we’re paying them today. If you take a look at their effect in terms of the economy and how much what their influence contributes in real dollars and cents to the true economy-

Christian Moore:
Amen.

Dave Biesinger:
… it’s huge and they’re way underpaid. But they get into this work because they want to have an influence. But I think they end up getting bogged down by all of the testing, and the standards, and there’s so much bureaucracy that they have to deal with. I think a lot of them just end up burned out. And it’s hard to regain that spark, it’s hard-

Dardi Handershott:
Right.

Dave Biesinger:
… to help them remember why they got into this in the first place. What kinds of things are you seeing be successful in helping to rekindle that spark in educators?

Joe Hendershott:
Wow. I think there’s a few things. First of all we’re making the distinction between compassion fatigue and burnout because in education we usually use the term burnout. When I go out and speak, I tell people, I say, “How many of you are compassionate?” If I have a room of 500 people, all 500 hands go up because all teachers are compassionate. “How many of you are tired?” Almost all the hands go up.

Joe Hendershott:
“How many of you keep giving of yourself anyways?” Almost all the hands go up. And I say, “Well, that’s compassion fatigue. You’re compassionate, you’re tired, you keep giving of yourself anyways.” But if we don’t take care of ourself, which our third book talks about is self care because we don’t talk about that in higher ed when we’re training our teachers that they’re going to be dealing with high stress, difficult things and they need to self care. At least the of the universities I’ve been around, I haven’t seen it.

Joe Hendershott:
So we want to make a distinction because if they don’t take care of their compassion fatigue can lead to burn out, and it costs the system billions of dollars of teacher burnout within the first five years of becoming an educator, people dropping out and going other things with their careers and their lives and their degrees. That’s costing the education system billions of dollars.

Dave Biesinger:
True.

Joe Hendershott:
We personally, we’re doing a warrior of hope series right now with Gregory Williams, and Christian was the first warrior of hope that we had on a couple of weeks ago.

Christian Moore:
Thank you for that. Appreciate that.

Joe Hendershott:
Because he’s a warrior of hope. When Christian speaks, he’s an educator, he educates children, he works with families. He’s a warrior of hope and we’re going to write a book, our fourth book’s called Warriors of Hope and it’s all about the educators that we’ve met across the world. We’ve been to Australia, Alaska, California, we’ve been all over the place and we have seen the amazing amount of work that our educators support staff, the administrators pour into these children’s lives, that they are complete warriors of hope for our children.

Christian Moore:
Absolutely, absolutely.

Joe Hendershott:
And if we can encourage them and honor them and they can take care of themselves along the process, it’s going to help our wounded kids so much. And there’s so many I could just go name, after name, after name. We just don’t have time to go through it.

Dardi Handershott:
But I think one the important parts, what you said about what do we do to reignite that? I think the first part is just acknowledging feelings, acknowledging that your feelings are real. Last summer at our conference, I had a gentleman come up to me and he really surprised me because I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by their cover, but he had the bow tie, a suit jacket on. He just didn’t look like the emotional sort, if you will. He just looked very put together and professional, if you will.

Dardi Handershott:
And he grabbed my arm and he started to get like choked up and he said, “This conference made me feel so validated.” And that just hit me that so many times we’re so busy fighting the battle that we don’t really feel validated in what we’re doing, or how we’re feeling, or anything else. And I think that we’ve gotten to be such a society of pull yourself up by the bootstraps, and if you work hard, then you get good things.

Dardi Handershott:
It becomes very performance driven and that’s not real life. Real life is full of obstacles, real life is full of crises, real life is full of different challenges. And so we have to be cognizant of how those affect us emotionally and physically even because they’re starting to link all of these things that the emotional stuff has a true impact on our physical health.

Christian Moore:
Amen.

Dardi Handershott:
And so we need to acknowledge that life is hard. With social media and all of these things, it can look like everybody else has their craft together, and so certainly we are just blowing life on a daily basis. And I think that when people really just start allowing themselves to say, “You know what? This one student has broken me,” or, “This year has just been the hardest year of my educational career as a professional,” or, “There’s a disconnect in our team, how can we put that together so that we are functioning better overall and creating a safe, emotional culture for the adults as well as the students.”

Dardi Handershott:
There’s just so many different things like that-

Christian Moore:
I love what you guys are both doing to really prioritize resources, and supports, and even social and emotional education, and the importance for teachers to connect. I’ve spent almost 20 years advocating for children learning these skills, but teachers need just as much social, emotional connection, support, and what you guys have done.

Christian Moore:
Joe, the name of your book is… The work you’re doing for teachers, is it the wounded teachers or wounded educators? Is that the name of the book?

Joe Hendershott:
It just came out in February of this year, mid February. It’s called Supporting the Wounded Educator.

Christian Moore:
Supporting the Wounded Educator, I think that work is so important. I’ve had a blast last three or four years. We spent a lot of time teaching resilience to teachers. We originally started doing it of course with the students and teachers. At the end of almost every workshop would say, “We need these resilience skills just as much.” And I think we’re going to see more and more of that in the future.

Christian Moore:
And I just want to thank both of you for what you’re doing to really give the teachers, it’s just like right now with COVID is so important that the medical workers have protections and they have the masks, they have the gowns, but we got to make sure our educators have the supports, metaphorically speaking, they have the resources they need so they can really do their jobs, and you both have done a great job in doing that.

Christian Moore:
And I think resilience again will also play a big role of that in the future.

Dave Biesinger:
Yeah. So I agree. Just to wrap this up. How could people get ahold of you guys if they want to reach out to you directly?

Dardi Handershott:
Well, our website is a great first spot. It’s www.hope4thewounded.org, and on there are links to all of these books. Eventually there will be a link to this podcast. And then it also just shows the different training options and we have online course offerings as well. You can even get graduate credit if you need that. We try to keep a lot of different options for resources available because we know everybody needs something different and we’ve even started doing some virtual workshops because that’s just what the need is right now.

Dardi Handershott:
Joe just finished up one and it was really a great experience for the people involved. We try to keep them somewhat smaller so there can be still that interaction because we need that, we need to keep having conversations.

Christian Moore:
Yeah. I’m walking away from this podcast, I’m going to make sure my kids are getting those two needs met. I’m going to kick that up a little bit and make sure they’re feeling heard and that they know we’re walking really close with them, and I think those two things are very transformative, man. And I think that’s where some of that healing really, really starts.

Christian Moore:
So man, you guys are the best and I appreciate you guys supporting WhyTry, supporting us over the years and just being a true, true friend. Man, that means so much to me. You were one of the first people I talked to, Joe after COVID broke, and I had over 30 events across the country cancel, I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” My world was falling apart and you showed great empathy and picked me back up, and I’ll never forget that.

Christian Moore:
That meant a lot to me, that conversation right after all this broken, and I was feeling pretty rock bottom, so I thank you from the bottom of my heart for that, Joe. Appreciate it.

Joe Hendershott:
You’re welcome Christian and it goes both ways. Thank you for being a good friend and a colleague and almost becoming… Well call each other brothers, we feel that way, so it’s been a great relationship and thank you for having us today.

Dave Biesinger:
Thank you so much for joining us. We love you guys. Have a good day.

Dardi Handershott:
All right. Thanks, you too.

Joe Hendershott:
We love you guys too.