Leroy’s Story And The Big Idea

Dear listeners, there is a man named Leroy. He lived on the street. Most people who pass him be a label, homeless, and keep walking. But one woman stopped. She bought him a four-dollar cup of tea. And what happened next changed both of their lives in ways that neither of them expected. Because it turns out Leroy is a world-class checkers champion. You're smiling, right, dear lessons. And then and it it it it turns out that when Yuri's father was sleeping away to dementia and she was drowning in burnout, it was Leroy who threw her the lifetime. Helping is never one side. And is a proof of that. So hey day listeners, welcome back to another powerful episode of Healthy Mind Healthy Life where we talk about well-being, not as a personal project, but as something what or that happens between people. I'm your host Avik and I'm really, really glad that all of you are here today. And um as I said, my guest today has a story and a framework that I think is going to land differently for everyone who hears it. He talks about the invisible trauma string that connects all of us and mining for golden people instead of managing their levels and uh about the profound two-way nature of human connection and literacy. Let's get started. Please welcome our guest, Jordy Darn. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to talk to you about this stuff.

Amazing, amazing. Zori,

Bullying And Learning Self-Worth

like uh before we get into the uh Leroy and the framework and everything else, I want to start with you. Like um, you mentioned uh childhood pulling as a part of your own story. Uh so from there I want to ask, like, how did that experience shape the way you eventually learned how to see other people? Like um, we have to uh uh clear it, like I mean, particularly people who are carrying something heavy or wearing a level that the world has placed on them.

Yeah, so so I I have some experiences in my life that I think have really shaped who I am and and how I operated. And they started from a very, very early age. So when we think of childhood bullying, we think of it as as very negative. And it is, it's a very serious thing that can happen in schools. Uh childhood bullying can happen in communities, in you know, the family home, and and bullying itself can happen in in all sorts of arenas and it's can happen anywhere. So when I was a young teenager, maybe 13 years old, I experienced some bullying, bullying from the hands of some individuals who were in my class and who were in my school. And it it really, for the most part, it it made me really question who I was, because as you can imagine, bullies go after your character, who you are. And I was labeled as the weird kid in school, the ugliest kid in school, and I was tormented for a good full year. And it it really played havoc with my self-esteem and my self-worth. And I got to a point where I almost didn't feel like I was worthy of being alive. And this is a very common occurrence for people who are being bullied. That, you know, we do hear of teens and and kids who do choose not to be alive anymore. And that's what it did to me. It made me feel like I I shouldn't be here, that I was I was too ugly to be here, I was too weird to be here, that nobody liked me, nobody wanted me. And um, you know, before I get too far into the story, I do have to say that if any of our listeners are are experiencing that right now, or maybe your kids are experiencing that, I do, I do have to tell you that there is hope and there is a good way out because uh you are worthy. You are supposed to be here, and you don't need to change yourself in order to be loved and accepted for who you are. So when I got to my darkest place in that time, I I had this kind of strange experience. So I live in the middle of Canada and the prairies, and um, I I went out for recess one day and I was standing on the playground by myself, and I was I was just staring up at the sun. I was alone and I I felt defeated. And then all of a sudden, you know how you kind of get this voice in your belly or in the back of your mind that just kind of speaks to you silently. And this voice said to me, she said, You need to be here. And it doesn't matter if other people want you. I put you here, I want you here. And and so I I was stunned, I didn't know what to make of it. And so I I just kept listening. And this voice said, It doesn't matter what other people think, it doesn't matter what what the what other people are telling you, you have a purpose on this earth. And so that woke me up. Uh it just woke me up so wildly, and it had this huge effect on me because then I realized it doesn't matter what other people think. I I'm supposed to be here and I learned how to how to love myself and how to accept myself. And that that kept me alive, it kept me going. But what it also did was that it it shaped the way I saw other people and the way I connected with other people. Because from that point on, I think I saw other people for who they were and what they needed. And and I was able to spend the rest of my life um giving that same gift to other people who needed to hear the same message that they are worthy and they're loved and they're valued. And even if you might be different, even if the people around you might not appreciate you, you still have a purpose on this earth. And so it led me down this path where I was able to connect with people uh from all walks of life and hopefully give them give them the gift that I I got myself as a teen.

Trauma As The String That Binds

Exactly. And um also like uh the invisible trauma string. Right. So you use this phrase the idea that our shared bridges connect us rather than the separ rather than separate us. And that's a beautiful and uh countercultural idea because most of us use our wounds as walls and we protect ourselves with them. So we use them to mark that distance between us and other people. So from there I want to ask, like, what made you see them differently, like as a thread of uh connection rather than a line of depletion?

Yeah, and and you're so right when you say that we use our wounds as walls, and I think I did that for a long time. I I went through, you know, periods in my life where I didn't want to get hurt, and so I did build up this wall around me because uh, you know, to protect myself. But I I met uh a man, he's uh he's uh a trauma expert here in Canada, and um, he taught me a lot. And he I met him at the same time that I met Leroy, and and he had a good line. He said that trauma is the string that binds us all together. And it and it really woke me up to the fact that we all have faced our fair share of adversity and and it affects us in many different ways, and and we're all connected to that. And it taught me that, you know, when we when we interact with others who who we may not understand maybe the way they're behaving in a certain way, or maybe, you know, we think, oh, this guy's being a jerk. If we can remind ourselves that that person also has a has experienced their share of trauma and adversity, then maybe we can have some compassion and empathy for that person rather than just going to that place of judgment. And um, it's interesting when I met Leroy, what happened very quickly um was that um people really connected with his story and his journey. Uh social media is an interesting thing because we can we can meet people from all over the world and but we can also share our lives with people all over. And so as soon as I met Leroy, I started sharing what I learned about him and what I learned about myself through our friendship. And I shared our our kind of our path as we became friends and and I I worked to support him. But what was interesting was that I I very quickly began getting messages from people from all over Canada and the US telling me that they connected with his story because maybe they had a family member who had lived on the streets, or maybe they had lived on the streets, or maybe they suffered from from addictions or mental health issues. And people really wanted to offer him support because they felt emotionally impacted because they could connect with him on a personal level. And that that adversity that we all face, it ended up uniting us all in this quest to to give Leroy what he needed. And um it it it got to the point where we called ourselves Team Leroy because we were this huge community of hundreds of people all across the country who were connected by by our our adversity and our need to support this man. It was really it was something to witness.

Exactly. Exactly. And for the listeners who has uh always experienced their own history of uh pain as something that sets them apart. Like something uh isolating. So what would you want them to understand about what that uh invisible string is actually doing?

Yeah, that that I think there comes a time in in many of our lives that we do feel like we are set apart, right? That that maybe we're the only one who is going through something like that. And um uh I I can relate for sure, and and and we we all feel different to some degree, but the a couple things is that what makes us different makes us makes us special and makes us and that's it's kind of a cliche, but it's really the truth. Like I think, I think some of the greatest innovations and some of the best art and magic and and all the best things in life have come from people who are embracing what how they are different. They're embracing the magic that they're you know, their special skills and their talents and that kind of thing. I mean, the world needs that to be the rich and magical place that it is. And I also think that it for me, what I've learned is that it's okay to talk about your stuff. And um I, up until a few weeks ago, didn't really talk very publicly about the fact that I had been bullied so badly. Um, I'm in my mid-50s and I hadn't talked to my mom about it. And people had read my book. I've written a book about it, but I hadn't really talked on video to a large degree about everything that I experienced. And I made a video, oh, I don't know, three weeks ago. And I just shared my stuff because I needed to connect with a young, young man in my same community who was experiencing the same stuff as me. And I thought, well, I can't, I I can't live with myself if I let this kid feel like he's alone and he's the only person that's been bullied. And, you know, if he feels like he's a weirdo and stuff like that. I would never live with myself if if, you know, he he did something, you know, and and so I shared it and I was very uncomfortable and I was very scared. We're scared to tell people that we've suffered. We're scared to people, to tell people maybe that we have mental health issues because it's, you know, for years it's been such a taboo topic to talk about ourselves. But what happened of this video that I made was 20 minutes long. And I thought, nobody's gonna watch this video. It's 20 minutes long. And to date, it's had over 26,000 views. And I've had all sorts of people communicate with me that they've experienced the same thing. They've been bullied, they felt like the outsider, they they felt like the weirdo. And what what this whole journey is teaching me is that we we need to make it okay to talk about our stuff because when we talk about our stuff, then we can show other people they're not alone and and they've got a community of people who are there with them because they they understand and they support them. And then it makes it easier to get through get through tough times and have empathy for each other and and build the human connection, which is I think something that we all need.

Very well said. Very well said, yeah.

Meeting Leroy Beyond The Label

And um, tell me about Leroy, like because I think the story of how you came to know him and what you found when you looked past the label is the heart of everything that you were teaching. So what happened? I mean, what did looking past the word homeless actually reveal?

Yeah, it was a fascinating thing because like I for years, you know, I've really loved buying people coffee, and that's kind of goes back to my my need to kind of give to others and connect with others. I've I've really, you know, it's it's super cool too, and I love giving strangers coffee, like helping out your friends and family is one thing, which is great. But seeing that look of surprise on a stranger's face when some another stranger does something kind for them is just magical. It's it's so cool to see see them light up that you know, somebody has paid them a kindness. And so I work downtown in the city where I live in, and of you know, being in Canada, it's like wildly cold here in the winter, like like freeze to death cold. And uh was early November, and it was kind of like the first cold day that we had. And so I I got off the bus to head into my office about 7:30 in the morning. And there was these two gentlemen standing on either side of the lobby. And I sus I suspected that they were both either really, you know, down on their luck or or homeless. Uh, there was a tall young man on the left side, and he was missing the fingers on one of his hands. Um, and then there was Leroy on the other side, and neither one of them had coats on, which here it like you just have to be dressed for the weather. So I thought, you know what? I gotta, I gotta give these guys something to drink and something to eat. And I was just, I felt really compelled to do it. So I I hit a coffee shop by by uh the doors and I brought them back a coffee and a muffin. And the the first guy, the young guy, he was super happy to get his coffee and he thanked me and we went on his way. And then when I approached Leroy, he actually said he didn't like coffee, so he wouldn't take it, but he would take the muffins. So that kind of started our friendship. Uh the next day I noticed he was there, and I kind of had a depth feeling that he was there because he hoped that I would come back. So I introduced myself and uh I said, I know you don't like coffee, but can I get you something else? And he said, Yeah, I'd I'd like a tea. And I realized, and even on the first day, I realized that Leroy couldn't see anything. He was pretty much completely blind by the time I met him. And he had been living on the streets for about 15 years and had gone blind while he was on the streets. Uh, he was in his late 60s, and um uh we began our friendship where he would meet me at the mall every morning. There was a little kind of corner by the door that had a phone booth, like a little stand there. And so he would huddle in the corner and wait for me, and I would bring him food and supplies from home and like granola bars and sandwiches, and if he needed socks or mitts or anything like that, then and we would have a little visit and then I'd head back up to work and he would spend the day in the mall. The security team was really kind to him, so they would let him stay there till about 11 o'clock at night, and then he would um take a bus to um a coffee shop, and then he would stand outside in a bus shelter all night long. He kept getting assaulted. He was he was kind of a he made for a good target because he was blind and um uh he was elderly, so he kept getting assaulted when he would go to shelters. So he was a very resolute and proud man. So he would just go in these little bus shacks, which were nothing more than glass walls, like it was nothing. And he would run in place and do jumping jacks all night just to keep alive. So um every morning when I I visited him, I only had like five or ten minutes before I had to go back to work. And he would, he would just give me little snippets of his life. And and uh he did suffer from mental health issues, as we all do. We all suffer at some point. And so uh sometimes he was really angry, sometimes he was really stressed out and you know, kind of fighting as in the demons. But piece by piece I was able to get little bits of information about who he was and what his life was, and and and and that kind of thing. And that's when I eventually I was able to get his last name and I was able to Google him, and everything that he said was true, and and he was, who was a world-renowned checkers champion and was wildly, wildly intelligent and came from a middle class life that any one of us would aspire to. But he had mental health issues that really got away on him, and he had uh an eye surgery that went bad, and he had a run of really bad luck. And it really taught me that homelessness can happen to anybody. Like it's we're all like kind of one lost wallet or one paycheck away from being homeless ourselves, and so we built a friendship where I was able to earn his trust and advocate on his behalf to help him get long-term accommodations. So it was it was a wild journey.

I didn't totally understand, yeah. And like a four-dollar cup of tea that detail stays with me and really, and because because it's so small and so specific, and uh yet what it communicated was in a mess, and uh you described this as a kind of microinvestment that signals to a stranger that your presence in this world actually counts from that perspective, like what is it uh about a small or concrete act of kindness um that carries that kind of weight?

Why Small Kindness Hits Hard

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question, you know, because um it's been really interesting how the how people have kind of reacted to to our journey. And, you know, when we we often think that, you know, we don't have the power to change the world, right? That like what can I do? Um, you know, we've seen some we've seen our world experience a lot of challenges in the last few years. And and I remember laying in bed thinking, well, what can I do? I'm just one person, like I can't save the world, I can't change, I'm not a superhero, right? And uh what it really taught me is that these small things can have such a huge impact, and the small, the small kindnesses mean more than we'll ever know. And the small trend, the small unkindnesses have a bigger impact than what we'll ever know, too. And um what's interesting is um exactly a year before I met Leeroy, I had some skin cancer on my head. And it wasn't a huge surgery, like it wasn't life-threatening, but I hate getting attention for that kind of stuff. Like I hate like the hashtag handsome prayers and stuff like that. But people knew that I really liked buying coffee. So I thought, well, I'll deflect because I don't want people like feeling sorry for me. So I'll I'll get them thinking about coffee instead. So when I announced that to my world on social media that I had to have this surgery on my head, I said, let's call it coffee for Zarno Day, because my nickname is Zarno. And I said, on surgery day, when I'm getting this this big patch of stuff taken out of my head, um, go out and and do me a favor and buy a stranger a cup of coffee and post it on social media so I can see it and do the hashtag coffee for Zarno. And uh hoping that people would think about that rather than feeling sorry for me. And I didn't actually expect anybody to do it. Like I uh, you know, my mom would do it to be a good sport, you know, and my husband might do it. But uh so I went out for surgery and I I got this rectangle taken out of my head and I came back and I had a sleep. And when I woke up, I was just mind-blown because it wasn't just a couple people that did it. In the course of 24 hours, we had over 800 people all over Canada and then the US and some in the UK go out and buy strangers coffee. We had uh schools have bake sales and they donated the proceeds to cancer agencies. We had restaurants give out free coffee for the day. Coffee groups did stuff. And um it just, it just went bananas. Even the mayor of our city went out and bought people coffee. And and the cool part is, is that um, a couple of things is that through the day, I would get messages from people saying, I woke up feeling really depressed today. And I went out and I bought a stranger a coffee and I told them why. And it just made them so happy that they were just so thrilled that that I did this. And uh time and time again, I got messages all over saying it, it really helped me and it felt so good to do something. And um, even now I will get messages saying, I pulled a Zarno, I went, I bought a homeless guy lunch, or I saw this family having a tough time. So I I did something kind for them. And um, you know, I think for that day, you know, it was a a lot, it was a the world was a kinder place because they they say that if you buy a stranger a cup of coffee, it makes three people happy. Uh it makes the person happy because they got a free coffee and maybe they're going through a tough time, right? We don't know. Yes, but it makes it makes you happy because you get the that there's kind of like that spark of positive energy and human connection that comes from it, especially knowing that you've helped somebody. But that person who gets the free coffee, they'll also go tell people, hey, I got a free coffee today. And it just really made my day. You know, I was, you know, feeling kind of blue because whatever. And um those little sparks of goodness that that come from from just doing something small, I think that creates a real positive energy and and it it helps people because then, like you say, like the invisible string of of adversity and that kind of thing, maybe the person that's on the receiving end, maybe they maybe they have their own cancer diagnosis, or maybe they just lost their job, or you know, maybe their kids having a tough time in school. Well, if somebody out of just out of the blue peas, then that kindness, that could be the one thing that gets them, gets them through the day and gets them through their own adversity. So I think we have a lot of power ourselves to to really make make a big difference. And for Leroy, having me talk to him every day, it and made it reminded him that he had a place on this earth still, that he was still he still needed to be here because he had he had value to offer.

Exactly. And um, and uh I also want to ask, like I mean, this is for the person who is listening, who has been walking past their own version of Leroy, um, who has been too busy or too uh depleted or too protected behind their own labels and assumptions to stop. So who has a four-dollar cup of tea to give but hasn't given it? So what do you want to uh tell them?

How To Stop And Help Safely

Yeah, that's that's a really good question, you know. And I've had a lot of people come up to me and say, you know, like, you know, like hearing about Leroy's journey, it's made them look at homeless people differently because we we have those assumptions. A, we have assumptions about our homeless community um that aren't necessarily accurate. We also have fears, I think. Like I think a lot of people think, I'm afraid, uh, I'm afraid to do something because um I don't know how it's gonna go. And um uh first of all, like always beware of your safety. Like, of course, that's always important, but it's going to make you so happy. Um when I when I'm able to connect with somebody who's on the streets, uh, there's a man named Jamie, actually, that I meet now um regularly when I get off the bus. And I've heard his story, he got hurt at work. Um, his disability payments aren't enough for him to afford his apartment. And it makes me so, it makes me feel so good to connect with him because it shows me that they're every person living on the streets has a story. They have a family, they have, you know, they have skills and they have they have something to offer. And you are always, always, always going to walk away feeling like you're the winner, that you've been able to connect with somebody in in such a positive way. And sometimes people think, well, I I don't know what to do because I don't have any money on me and I don't have anything anything to give, or maybe you don't want to, or whatever. But you know, if you are approached, the but you know, even just saying making eye contact with that person and saying, hey, I I don't have anything, but good luck, you know, like I want you to have a good day. Like that goes a very long way because again, um, then our friends who do live on the streets, they know that they're still they're still there. They're they're not invisible. And you know, well, after I started helping Leroy, he said to me one day, he said, you know, people are watching you. And uh I said, Well, like, what do you mean they're watching me? And he said, they're mimicking you because you have you have started helping me. Now other people are coming and bringing me food and helping me too. So it's this ripple effect. So even just a smile, uh, like a uh, hey, how's it going? Like, good luck, you know, have a good day. Um, you are always, always going to walk away the the winner because you're gonna feel good and your life's gonna be better by doing it.

Very true. And if someone wants to connect with you, what could be the great medium to

Jordy’s Book Links And Closing

connect?

Well, yeah, there's a couple ways. So I've written a book about my journey with Leroy, and uh it was really important to Leroy to have his story told. He really wanted he really wanted to offer value to the world and he wanted people to know his story, to know that, you know, to see people beyond their label. So the book is called Um Higher Power Betty and the Homeless Man Who Changed My Life. And it's available on Amazon worldwide. So if you can if you can find Amazon. And I also have a website, it's uh jodiesarn.com, so j-o-d-y-z-ar-n dot com. And yeah, jody's arn on Instagram. If you want to follow me on Instagram, so yeah, we would like to share this story with the world because I think it's something that a lot of people can connect with. Yeah.

Amazing, amazing. So um, dear listeners, what I'll do is I'll put all the links and the details into the show notes for your easy reference so that you can easily reach out to her. And with this, that's that for today's episode on Healthy Mind, Healthy Life. And if something Jordy said made you think of someone that you have been walking past, metaphorically or literally, please don't let that pass. The invisible trauma swing connects you and the four dollar investment might be the most important one that you make this week. So, um, as I promised, glory's reviews will be the area of the strong notes, and if this conversation belongs in someone else's wall today, please here to them. With this, I'm your host of this is Hellyman Healthy Life. We are all more connected by our bruises than we are separated by them. So take care of yourselves and each other and see you next time. Thank you so much.