Fresh Take: Mike de la Rocha, SACRED LESSONS

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0:31Hello and welcome to Fresh Take from What Fresh Hell? Laughing in the face of motherhood. This is Margaret. And today I am talking to Mike Della Rocha. He is a visionary strategist, acclaimed artist, and compelling voice for change. He is the co-founder of Revolve Impact, a globally recognized creative agency that merges art, activism, and storytelling to drive social change. and Tapito Coffee, a company dedicated to providing meaningful jobs for formerly incarcerated individuals through its partnership with one of my favorite organizations, Homeboy Industries, the largest gang intervention and rehabilitation organization in the world.

1:14His debut book, which we will be discussing today, is Sacred Lessons, Teaching My Father How to Love. Welcome, Mike. Thank you so much for having me. This book starts with you approaching writing a book. As you start thinking about your father, you write, I was running away from addressing my own issues because I was spending countless hours writing his story, not recognizing that his story was intimately connected to my own story. So tell us about coming to this book and how that revelation kind of was wrapped in the beginning of writing this book? Yeah. Well, first off, thank you so much for having me on this podcast.

1:58The catalyst was unexpectedly losing my father. He went in for a back surgery. And, you know, for all intents and purposes, we thought that he would be fine after this. He was in immense pain and he didn't survive. And that quote that you read from the book was, I was trying to maintain my father's legacy because he did so much for the community. And so I was painfully listening to interviews and interviewing like his first roommate from college and everything else to get a sense of who he was outside of being a father. And I wanted to write his book because he always wanted to write a book. But that's when I realized that I hadn't processed the grief of losing the most important man in my life.

2:37And I was hiding behind his voice. That's why I said I was hiding behind his voice and not realizing that I had inherited both consciously and unconsciously the same patterns that led to his premature death in that I was emotionally silent in distance with my own family, my own wife. And so that's what led me down to the journey of writing Sacred Lessons. We mostly talk to moms on this podcast, but I think there's so much about the mysteries of those of us who are married to men, like how they communicate with each other. And I just think all I have three sisters. We're on the phone all the time parsing every moment.

3:13And I watch my husband and his internal life. And it seems very mysterious to me. And sometimes, to be honest, it seems shallower to me than my own relationships. And I thought this book was extremely insightful and really useful for me because for moms listening who are like, hmm, how is this book for me? It really informing my husband and I just went through a kind of personal tragedy and watching the two of us deal with it very differently. This book really kind of had a lot of aha moments for me about how men process intimate relationships. I don't mean sexual relationships. I mean, intimate relationships, connected relationships.

3:58So that's what our whole conversation will be about. But what were the revelations around your own relationship with your father and how you related to the world? How did that start as an idea for you? It really started with trying to tease out and explore. Honestly, the most basic question I keep saying is my father loved my brother and me more than life itself. Right. If you were to ask them, you know, Maya, what was your greatest accomplishment? Without hesitation, he said my boys. But hearing the words, I love you, you know, less than one handful, I could remember. He wasn't a Tichefili kind of guy.

4:34or person. And it wasn't that I didn't know that he loved me. It was just that the vocabulary to express the emotion was difficult for him. And the more I impacted it, I started to realize and learn that my own grandfather never said the words, I love you to him. So therefore, it wasn't something that was a customary to him. Later on in life, though, when we had our kids and he had his grandchildren, he was everything my brother and I wanted. And I always joke around, you know, being in our 30s, watching him play with our sons, it was everything we wanted in that moment. Even as a 30-year-old, he was emotionally expressive.

5:07He was loving. He was kissing them. And it was socially acceptable for grandfathers or grandparents to be like that with their grandchildren. And that showed me that the capacity was always in there, but the societal constructs or just this weight of what a real man is prevented him from doing that with his own sons. And so I started to unpack that. And I realized that I was probably right now, to be honest, overcompensating with my own son. I tell him every day, I love you. I love you. Hey, you're everything to me. I say, come here, give me a kiss. And he's 12. No, but you know, it's like the pendulum, right?

5:43Swinging and the biggest, not the biggest, but what I see so harmful for families is the inability for men to be expressive or to share any kind of feeling that myth, that lie, is really what's leading to a lot of us being unwell and suffering in silence because we think that it's only us when in fact it's all of us. And that's been the biggest revelation is realizing that I'm no different than my father. My father's no different than my grandfather. We're all in this kind of mutual thirst for love. And we can't say it. You know, we can't say that. But somehow behind a wall that's protecting us or defending us from it somehow.

6:21Yep. I'm going to quote you to yourself. you say about your father. A man who taught, mentored, and transformed the lives of tens of thousands of students as a beloved community college professor for over 40 years. A man who played an absolutely critical role in massive social movements of the 1960s and 70s. A man who, if you asked him what his greatest accomplishment in life was, would immediately respond to you saying that being a loving and present father to his two boys was his greatest legacy. I guess that's the oxymoron of my story. Despite knowing that my father loved me and my brother more than life itself, I'm still trying to understand and accept why my papa had such a hard time telling me those three insignificant yet massively significant words, I love you.

7:09And that I think is so beautifully rendered and it's familiar to a lot of us. I mean, I come from a very Irish family, which has a strong sense of patriarchy. My father always tells a story that when his father learned he was going to wear a wedding ring after marrying my mother, that his father said, well, you might as well just get a ring in your nose and let your wife lead you around by it. The idea that a man would wear a symbol of devotion to a woman was, I mean, my fire chief Irish grandfather was like, I don't think so. And I also think generations before us, especially from like immigrant families, had really difficult lives and maybe didn't almost have the luxury of softness sometimes.

7:57Do you think that played a role with your father and his grandfather? So talk about that a little bit. Well, first off, no wonder it has such a connection because I'm in love with the Irish, the Mexican, Mexicans of Europe. So. Exactly. There's so many. I mean, I read this book and I was like, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. I get it. Yes. Uh-huh. I will say exactly what you said is absolutely true. My grandfather immigrated to Mexico on the Brasado program, which was a U.S. sanction initiative where folks in Mexico, millions of people from Mexico worked in the fields for like slave labor in these barracks that were...

8:34My grandfather came to the U.S. in a cattle car and they sprayed him with DMT. He gets to Oxnard, the city I was born. They lock him up essentially in military barrack. He had to work before sun rose, after sunset, and he couldn't leave only for a few hours on a Sunday. And in those conditions, you had to be hardened to survive. And so the thing I'm learning from all these intersecting stories is that all these multiple truths are existing at the same time. And that the more that I can understand the context of how and who my father and grandfather are, the more I can have a sense of compassion.

9:09Because they did, at the end of the day, they did the best that they could with the circumstances. My father had a very complicated relationship with his grandfather because he didn't know him until he was seven when he moved out to Boyle Heights. And here's a stranger for all intents and purposes. And then even coming to America, my grandfather's working multiple jobs, so he never saw him. Right. And my father, like me, are both mama's boys. And I know some other podcast. We're mama's boys through and through. So if someone is hurting our moms, this tribalistic or innate nature comes out to protect our mom.

9:43And my dad did the same thing. And so seeing all that, but also what I do recognize is the later years of my father's life, seeing the reconciliation between my father and grandfather was like the blueprint for me to learn how to forgive. right because they weren't talkers on the phone they weren't talkers in general obviously that's what we're talking about right but when my dad would spend like three minutes on the phone i mean three minutes is nothing but that three minutes meant the world because knowing someone that didn't like to be on the phone knowing that someone didn't like to talk to his dad to ask my grandfather in spanish hey how was your day or how you feeling was his way of saying i may not have forgotten but i have forgiven the mutuality of harm we might have caused each other and then And the context, obviously context is what your question is at.

10:30The context is like the driver. There's a larger system at play here that I believe was designed to separate father from son, emotion from child, all that kind of stuff. The system we live in right now doesn't really prioritize loving relationships. It really prioritizes productivity, competition at the fullest extent, even if that means not being your family or. And it prioritizes a kind of manliness that is in conflict with loving your children. And there's a soft, it's like we were saying, when you have a hard life, you don't feel the access to that softness, but that it seems that we've divided the world into soft people and real men somehow.

11:16And that those two things are not the same. And that to sit down and play with a child and tell a child you love them, you're on kind of one side of that divide. And that seems like something that needs to be broken down. Yeah, I mean, I've been touring this book since the end of May. And I found that the strongest in quotes men I've encountered are the ones that are able to express themselves because the amount of courage it takes, especially in this society that doesn't necessarily affirm men that are able to express themselves. And that ability to do so, that courage is to me, the strongest form of strength.

11:52So I feel like we're living in this time where masculinity is in complete crisis. I mean, the statistics show that. We've definitely discussed it. Yep. Yep. The levels of loneliness, depression, suicide are astronomical because there's this myth or fantasy of what a real man is supposed to be and how you're supposed to act. And the truth is it's unattainable in this current society. Every other Thursday, I have the privilege of co-facilitating a men's circle for men who lost their home in the Eaton fire in Altadena. And men are taught in condition that we're supposed to protect our families, provide our families.

12:27Our worth is defined by how much we produce, not how much we love. And so what happens if your house burns down, your work you can't go to because it also burned down? These are the kind of questions on top of like the disruption of AI and gender norms changing. Like it's a really complicated time for men, but there's no sense of conversation or compassion. So therefore men feel like we're suffering or dying alone. Like no one else can relate to us. And that's for me, been the biggest power of the tour has been bringing together people, men, so they can see the reflection in each other, but also realize like, oh, I'm, I'm not alone.

13:03You're going through something that might not be exactly the same, but it's similar. And so this idea that I can't ask for help. Well, if I don't ask for help, then what's going to happen? Well, the same thing happened to Mike's dad. I'm not going to live long enough for my own children. Because just literally the weight of stress, the weight of like the unexpressed emotion is what affects people's bodies. That's what led to my dad dying. Like I feel ultimately a lot of different things. But the weight of patriarchy or the weight of unexpressed emotion and trauma literally crippled his body to the point where it broke down.

13:37I'm talking to Mike De La Rocha, and he is the author of the book Sacred Lessons, Teaching My Father How to Love. And we'll be right back after this break. Oh, Amy, I hate to say it, but based on the 17 ,000 emails and app notifications I am already getting, it is almost time to go back to school. Dun, dun, dun. Time to go back to the Skylake calendar. The Skylight Calendar syncs your family's sports and school and orientation schedules onto one device with a sleek digital display, giving everyone a clear visual guide of where they're supposed to be and when. I cannot say enough about my Skylight Calendar.

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14:55Go to myskylight.com slash WFH for$30 off your 15-inch calendar. That is M-Y-S-K-Y-L-I-G-H-T dot com slash WFH. We wanted to share a terrific new children's album with you. It's called Magnificent, and it's by Lachi, a Grammy-nominated musician and author. Lachi's work focuses on inclusion and helping kids feel confident in who they are. It's one of those albums that parents can enjoy as much as their little ones. Lachi's playful songs celebrate difference, diversity, self-expression, and imagination. There's a gentle message that runs through the whole album around confidence and emotional well-being, but without ever feeling heavy or lessen-y.

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16:30Let's say it together on three. One, two, three. Great Wolf Lodge. You got it, Amy. My kids loved Great Wolf Lodge when we went. You probably already know that it has a huge indoor water park with a wave pool, Lazy River, a bunch of massive water slides. But then your pack can hit the other attractions because, wait, there's more. Great Wolf Lodge has adventure-packed attractions like Magi Quest, a live-action game kids can play throughout the lodge. Plus, the Northern Lights Arcade spent some quality time there. So your kid who loves the Lazy River and your kid who loves fantasy games will both have a great time.

17:07Great Wolf Lodge also offers great dining options and complimentary daily events like nightly dance parties. All under one roof. Unpack the car once and you're settled in to have fun. And with 22 lodges across the country, you're always a short drive away from adventure. We've both had such great times at Great Wolf Lodge. So bring your pack together at a lodge near you. Learn more at greatwolf.com and strengthen the pack. so talking about this idea it's interesting because i teach in an arts facility and we always start with a circle and i facilitate we call it a go-round like people go around the circle and i was just saying the other day i wish everybody had a go-round in their life a time where they could sit in a circle and say i've had a terrible week i'm struggling because i think especially, and I see it with my spouse a lot in hard times, you know, we'll be, okay, the house, the window is going to take more than we have to repair it and blah, blah, blah.

18:06And then he always answers the phone. Oh, everything's great. Everything's doing great here. And I understand that he maybe doesn't want to share with whoever the person who happens to be calling about all the struggles that are going on. But I do often say like, is there somewhere you're putting that other than with me, you know? And I think that as a mom of two boys, I think about it all the time. How do we start to look at these patterns of men before us who lived with tremendous amounts of stress, who weren't able to express their connection to other people, and therefore weren't able to benefit from a connection?

18:43You can't get the benefits of connection if you won't admit that you are connected to people in the first place. Correct, correct. And so what lessons do you draw in the book? Talk a little bit about the relationship between your grandfather and your father and the disconnect there and kind of what you learned about connection watching their relationship progress. Yeah, I think, like I mentioned, my father and my grandfather had a very complicated relationship. And I feel like the way I am raising my son, my father was very intentional about raising this differently than the way that my grandfather raised him.

19:19Right. And in the quote you read earlier about him being a present father, that speaks to the core of the relationship breakdown with him and his father. Right. We complicate so much about love. For example, this is, you know, subtitle teaching my father how to love. But love is really just presence. It's just being. It's just like showing up. You know, for me, that's why I know my dad loved me because his presence was consistent, was constant. constant, my biggest cheerleader may not have had the words to say, Hey, Michael, I'm proud of you, but his being there wherever there was. And that was a whole, I believe in my father's heart because all he ever wanted was his father to be present when he was a track star in high school, or when he was graduating from college, like he's pivotal life moments.

20:07You look out in the stand and you see, you know, it's kind of like a movie and you see everybody cheering, but then you don't see the one man. And we need more spaces where men can process that with other men so that they can understand, well, yeah, you were scanning, you didn't see your dad, but that's because he was working to make sure you had a roof over your head or, hey, that was happening because he had to leave his own father to go work in the fields, like without the ability to be in circle, like we were talking earlier, that circle gives us the context and the understanding to be like, oh okay let me look because me telling my dad that it might not have worked but another man talking about his relationship with his father he might have saw the connection and the similarity and be like oh i never thought of it that way and so that's the power the magic if you will of circle and of ritual and of ceremony it connects us to each other into the land into the cosmos in a very deep and profound way where these insights happen the insights are just intuition so when you're talking about when you start with the check-in in the circle, that's basically an activity, an exercise.

21:11Some folks would call it ritual to ground us and remind us of our inherent connection to each other. And the most beautiful connections are those rooted in love, which is those rooted in presence. In that moment, you're present for each other. There are no phones in the way. There's no television in the way. It's literally just people seeing. We all want to be seen. You all want to be heard, listened to. And so the building blocks, I believe, of this new kind of masculinity are literally what we're talking about right now. And I like the way that I feel like we often speak on the podcast when dealing with difficult relatives or difficult situations, operate from your place of maximum generosity, as long as you think the other person has basically good intentions.

21:57It doesn't work when the other person is taking advantage of you. But I feel like you come into this book with that mind space that you give a tremendous amount of generosity to the people you're writing about. And you say in the book, I've realized that I'm trying to break unhealthy patterns that have been passed down to me, passed down to all of us for generations. I'm still working to dismantle bad habits I've inherited, not just for my son and daughter, but also for my father and abuelo, who I learned these habits from in the first place. I've learned that the division within my family is a result of our unwillingness to listen, our inability to express what we truly feel, and ultimately our inability to forgive and let go.

22:42in this passage, you're talking about a family conflict that comes up around your grandfather's funeral, which let me tell you, as an Irish person, check another one where I'm like, I don't think we've ever had a family. It's like, if you don't have somebody who's banned from your funeral in an Irish family, are you even an Irish family? But this idea of, I think we come sometimes at conflict with so much armor on that, like our job is to protect ourselves and our own. Everybody's coming in with swords drawn. And how do you start to work on the process of coming from that place of generosity? I think it's hardest with family because you've got a lot of history.

23:22You've always seen me as, and you've always done this and you've never done that. And so what did you learn in this book about trying to come from that generous place and seeing people's stories as part of their behavior? Yeah, that's a great question. What What I've learned is I have to consistently be doing this in practice because it's hard. And even the chapter you're referencing, even the paragraph you're referencing, took me years to get to that place. We started talking to my father, Gregory Boyle. And this new book is really making me reflect on there are no good people or bad people. There is no right or wrong.

23:58There's unhealed people that are acting out in a harmful way to themselves and others. I think this biggest lesson I'm learning from this life journey right now is if I truly believe that I am connected to every person on this planet, then I have to find a way to call in rather than call out people. From a place of love, but also as my other mentor, Harry Balafonte taught me, you always enter into a space with non-judgment. If you can like come into a place and just suspend your first judgment is what he used to say. Then that allows a deeper sense of connection because the armor is off. You talk about coming into a funeral, coming into a space with your armor on.

24:38The armor is judgment. The armor is projection. It's all these things. It's a skill. It's a muscle that I got to keep doing. Because oftentimes if I'm feeling a particular way about a person, what is it within me that it's triggering? but also that person, it's the wound that's actually talking. And that's the thing that homeboy is so great at is someone lashing out, you could rationalize it, but the heart is saying that that's a wounded child. Get to the root of why that person is acting that way. And the same way where I've come to understand the complicated, beautiful relationship between my father and my grandfather, I have to start to also feel that same kind of compassion for my aunt and uncle and those that may have severed relationships in the moment.

25:21But what was it? Because these are all wounds. And wounds aren't healed by judging more or running away from. Wounds are healed by presence again. And I'm not necessarily even there yet, honestly, right? Like, there's a lot of work I still have to do with myself to like let go of all the, well, you did this and you did that and I didn't get to do this and I didn't get to speak in my grandfather's field, all these, and you, you, you, you. but what am I actively doing to allow the fertile ground of forgiveness to take root? And that's only a question that each person can ask. But I think it goes a lot to the parenting experience in general that we often talk about behavior from children is communication and that we get in trouble when we're like, my kid is bad.

26:09My kid is misbehaving. My kid is broken. My kid is a nightmare. I mean, every parent, has these feelings. They're very, very normal. But I think a lot of what is reflected in this book is behavior as communication, as opposed to behavior as an attack against me. And that we often talk in dealing with our children. It's a practice to constantly get to that same place, which is you came home. I'm tired. I've had a long day. I just bought you$250 worth of back to school clothes. And you came in and slammed the door and didn't like dinner and are a complete in great because I did something terribly wrong when I was raising you and now I have a selfish, ungrateful brat of a child.

26:52Those kind of stories, we have to take some armor off and say, wait a minute, what is this behavior trying to communicate? And maybe it's not totally about me, maybe it's about what's going on with the other person. And I think that's 90 % of the work of being a parent. Yeah. And then they also say communication to your point, right? I don't know the exact stat, but it's like 90 plus percent of communication is nonverbal. Right. So the cues are there. Do we pick up on them or do we ignore them because we're tired? Right. Do we see the signs or we're just too busy making dinner, just going through our daily day that we're not picking up on the fact that, hey, my child's actually sitting there crying, whatever the child's doing or slamming the door.