Ep 1: BK Loren on Nature, Grounded Spirituality, and the Power of the Unnameable

Join me as I talk with BK Loren about the power of nature and the things that can't (and shouldn't) be named.

Brad Wetzler is the author of the new memoir INTO THE SOUL OF THE WORLD: MY JOURNEY TO HEALING (Hachette Go). You can buy the book on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Into-Soul-World-Journey-Healing/dp/0306829304/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1683471841&sr=8-1

This powerful memoir shares an adventure journalist’s story of a decade-long, round-the-world quest to overcome his drug addiction and to understand and heal from past traumas. Suffering from PTSD and severe depression from past trauma, battling an addiction to overprescribed psychiatric medication, and at the rock bottom of his career, journalist Brad Wetzler had nowhere to go. So he set out on a journey to wander and hopefully find himself—and the world—again. Into the Soul of the World is Wetzler’s thrilling, impactful, and heartrending memoir of healing—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. An adventure journalist at heart, Wetzler mixes travelogue with empowering insights about his inner journey to better care for his own mental health. Journey with him as he travels across Israel and the West Bank, before moving on to India, a candle-lit cave on a mountaintop in the Himalayan foothills, and a life-changing encounter with a 100-year-old yogi. Wetzler's writing is full of the poignant, amusing, and occasionally heart‑breaking situations that unfold when we finally decide to confront depression (or any mental health struggle) and declare ourselves ready to heal: How do we heal our past and thrive again? What does it mean to live a good life? How can we transform our suffering and serve others? His answer: live to tell the story and find the humility and courage to be the best human you can be. 

BK Loren is the award winning author of the novel THEFT, and the essay collection, ANIMAL, MINERAL, RADICAL. Her short fiction and essays have garnered many national awards and have been published in The Best Spiritual Writing Anthologies (2004 and 2012), Parabola, Yoga International, Orion Magazine, and many others. She is from a working class family and has usually worked in jobs that allow space to write as she works. She’s been a ranch hand, a cook for a gourmet catering service in NYC, a cook, also, in a cafe run by a reverend healer who cured people’s ailments with a pendulum and herbs. She was also an aide on a locked psych ward, a tenured college teacher, and a furniture builder. She was extremely grateful for the chance to go to college (not a given)–and she attended the University of Colorado (Classics/Philosophy), the University of New Mexico (Lit), and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, (Fiction). She feels that her varied experiences in other fields inform her writing as much as her schooling has. The publishing editor of her first book told her I wrote like she was raised by wolves. She tries to live up to that daily. TWITTER FACEBOOK RADIO KRUU, WRITERS’ VOICE KBOO, a podcast from Orion Magazine and something completely different than Theft or Animal, Mineral, Radical. Theft has been optioned for film, and BK will be writing the screenplay.

Brad Wetzler is an author, journalist, podcaster, and yoga teacher/meditation teacher. Read about his work and offerings at www.bradwetzler.com.

www.bradwetzler.com

Music credit: "sun of the most high" by ketsa