What does it mean to truly love yourself? In this episode, we sit down with Ronald Zion Roseboro to dive into his powerful book, Woman, If You Only Knew. From personal struggles to deep revelations, Ronald shares his journey of self-discovery, healing, and what it means to embrace authentic masculinity. We’ll uncover the hidden struggles many men face but rarely speak about, how childhood wounds shape relationships and self-worth, the difference between conditional and unconditional love, and so much more. Whether you’re navigating grief, relationships, or your own path to healing, this conversation is one you won’t want to miss. Tune in and discover what true communication and self-love really look like.

Thank you for viewing this post. I am not a licensed therapist or professional life coach. I am sharing my experience of loving the same man for 32 years, a mother to two adult children, a retired military officer, a breast cancer survivor, and my connections with others.

Anyone experiencing suicidal thoughts should reach out to a suicide hotline or local emergency number in their country: Psychology Today Suicide Hotlines and Prevention Resources Around the World

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Unmasking Masculinity: Love, Healing, And True Identity With Ronald Zion Roseboro

Welcome to the show, Ronald.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you for being here. This is going to be a conversation fit for the month of February 2025. We are going to go over Ronald’s book titled Woman If You Only Knew. I must say, when I picked this up and I received it in the mail, I almost stayed up too late. I was like, “I need to find out what we are talking about here.” Before we get into this, what’s your favorite dessert?

My favorite dessert is red velvet cake.

Where’s your favorite place of vacation?

This is where I need a little bit of help in that area of taking more vacations to have more selections. I love the Charleston area. The Charleston, South Carolina, and Hilton Head.

What memories in those areas?

The beaches and the low country restaurants.

True Communication And Self-Love For Men And Women

I’m going to dip back and forth into some questions and we are going to go with it. What I thought was very interesting was the acknowledgements, “I dedicate this book to every woman that your mind will become expanded to the reality of the fears, struggles, and vices of many men. My hope is that you’ll become a tool of education and understanding to open the lines of true communication. I would also like to dedicate this book to every man.”

“We live in a world of enormous pressures and stress. However, when we learn to love ourselves despite our imperfections, I am certain that we will come to a place of power, freedom, and authentic identity. Not communication, but true communication.” Oftentimes, I hear us talking about women love ourself, but I don’t often hear it in men love ourself. How did you come up with that acknowledgment?

First, we have to examine the word love. What does love mean? It has a very subjective meaning varying from person to person. When you talk about the true essence of love, that love that is without conditions, timeless, and doesn’t have any bounds. It’s that type of authentic love that oftentimes we have yet to come in contact with or if we have come in contact with it, you’ll never forget it.

It’s that God type of love. He is loving you through someone else. He’s loving you through a situation. As far as men, I think that we love ourselves to an extent, but oftentimes, it’s very difficult to love yourself if you don’t appreciate yourself. You can’t celebrate yourself until you appreciate yourself, which is rooted in the true essence of love.

I’m not talking about societal love and love that we see in books and magazines, on your favorite show and movies. That trivial and shallow love, but I’m talking about real deep love and loving yourself. Not all men, but many men, struggle in that area because of that conflict between having never experienced that type of love, that true love and caught between societal love or love that’s passed down from generation to generation or our friends, colleagues, and society, so we struggle.

You said we, so this is a personal experience. When you hear the word love, what is trivial, topical look like versus this real love that you speak of from your own experience?

Societal love always comes with conditions. It always comes with stipulations. If you do this, then I will love you. If you don’t do this, I won’t love you. You have to drive a certain car, live in a certain ZIP code, dwell in a certain tax bracket, and then you will receive this type of love. Those types of love are attached to symbols of status, which can go away like that.

One car wreck, and now, the handsome, beautiful person is no more. One car wreck and you could be a paraplegic, then what? Do you stop loving me? One job loss, and now you are making six figures, and you are down to above poverty level. Will you still love me? I have to preface it by saying that God type of love because of the way that he loves us, which we can never truly understand and grasp, but it’s love without conditions. I love you because I love you. I’m not interested in trying to get something out of you, but to impart something in you. That type of love, even though it’s reciprocal. Those are the two different loves that come to mind for me.

What has been your personal experience in either of those?

In growing up without brothers or sisters in a household, predominantly with women until my mother remarried. I never knew my biological father. Later on in life, I was introduced to him and we made peace with the absence of one another before he transitioned, but I didn’t have a proper role model as far as a man. My role model was one of my peers, guys that I went to school with. My role model later in life and not understanding what manhood was truly about.

I was looking up to all the men who had 50 women that were chasing them, looking up to drug dealers that were making all of this money and driving all of these foreign cars and spending $100 here and $500 there. I loaned for that type of love, attention, affirmation and validation. I looked at that as being manhood, but it was quite the contrary. I was hungry and I was thirsty for love. By and large, I never came in contact with it.

My mother later remarried and my stepfather did a wonderful job as far as showing me from a male perspective how to maintain the home, how to pay bills, and how to be responsible. He was wonderful at that. However, he was very poor at showing me how to show up as a man, how to truly love and date her as your wife. Those types of nuances I never learned in my home. I was always hungry for something that I had an appetite for, but nobody could provide me the nutritional value.

Building True Communication And Fulfilling Relationship Needs

How did you start fulfilling that need? Thank you so much for sharing that because your story is going to resonate with not just the men, but the women. When we have our relationship with our husbands, boyfriends, or fiancés, it’s not the person they are now. It’s the person that they became over time, and who they are with us.

I hope in this month of love in February, we are not just buying flowers and gifts. Maybe the best gift that we can use is to have that true communication that you talk about to reinforce those relationships and make them in this month of love strong. There may be some widows that you may be recalling the relationship with your late spouse. Some of you may be dating or may have remarried.

There may be people reading this because they are supporting someone that’s grieving. That concept of a relationship can expand in a lot of different ways. Thank you for elaborating on that. When you talk about being thirsty, desiring, and wanting that and looking to your peers, what are some ways in which you started cultivating those types of relationships to bring that into your life knowing you wanted it?

My cultivation was very skewed because I didn’t have a proper blueprint. Even with building a house, you’ve got to have a blueprint, and I didn’t have that concerning manhood. Since I didn’t have that around me, I began to look at faulty blueprints that were around me and those were my peers. The longing that I had the innate feeling of loss of not having a father figure that I could learn and glean from was grief for me.

My mother worked a lot of hours being a teacher. I didn’t get a chance to spend that a lot of time with her. I spent a lot of time with my grandma. Later in life, I began to identify that as being grief. To quench the reality of the grief, I began to now follow my peers and began to follow them because they provided a blueprint for masculinity. If you don’t receive a healthy blueprint from someone that is close to you, then you will receive a healthy blueprint, unfortunately, from those that are around you.

That’s how I begin to cultivate that, and go down that path of having no clue about manhood. I’m looking at my peers and they have given me because they were available. Emphasis on availability. They were available to give me a blueprint, even though the blueprint was faulty. At least, it gave me at that time some sense of belonging and some sense of community because I didn’t have any.

That makes sense. What was the pivoting point to identify you wanted a better example, or you realized this was faulty and it was better to acquire? What was that point of change for you?

It wasn’t a one-time a-ha moment. I think it happened in stages in my life. It happened in stages of having to deal with so many tragedies, traumas, acts of injustice, and different things that pushed me closer and closer to the pinnacle of manhood. That it brought me all the way up to the death of my mother. At that time, I began to do a deep dive because there were so many layers of trauma, betrayal, rejection, and abandonment that now I’m faced with myself and I’m faced with this mirror.

I know that there’s something on the inside of me that I haven’t yet discovered because it’s been so hidden or camouflaged under all of these layers. Now, I’m no longer a caregiver for my mom. I have all of this free time. I need to invest this time in me. It catapulted me to a journey of self-discovery, self-awareness, and ultimately self-healing.

Ronald, that is a lot, to care for your mother. Thank you and I am so sorry for that. When we care for people and they are no longer here, that void of that space where we were a caregiver, and then also come to terms with our own mortality in what we are doing with the life that we have. All of those things play into what we do. I want to pause to talk about how many books you have written.

Unspoken Truths: A Journey Through Men’s Inner Struggles And Soul’s Battles

I have written nine books.

Did you dream of being a writer? How did that come about? What was that journey to become a writer?

First, we have to go all the way back to my dream of being a rapper. The way that I write the poetic style in which I write, I started out in hip hop. My dream was to be a rapper. I lived in the studio. I had the opportunity to open up for Snoop and Dre when they came to my city. I got a chance to open up with a couple of other local acts for Biggie when he came through my city. I always had such a hunger and a thirst for entertainment because I love to write and hip hop but that didn’t work.

Where can we find some of these opening acts? Is this on YouTube? Have you taken it all off the internet? Where can we find some of the hip hop version of Ronald?

I have some old demo tapes. I can try to convert into something a little bit more technologically or savvy for everyone to download, but nothing on YouTube. Back in the early ‘90s, I don’t think YouTube existed.

Let’s talk about that. How glad we are that we have a life that was not recorded? There is no proof of a lot of stuff.

This is not alleged. This is according to me and witnesses that were there, such as my DJ and my dancers.

Identity Crisis: The Essence Of Who We Are

That’s it. We don’t have to be afraid in nothing we did. Thank you for taking us way back. I want to read the table of contents. “Scene one, identity crisis. Scene two, she has my body, but you have my heart. Scene three, from lap dance to romance.” I was like, “He played way too much.” “Scene four, dollars over cents. Scene five, drowning in invisible tears. Scene six, manhood beyond molestation. Scene seven, little boy on the Inside. About the author, bonus poem: Black Velvet.” I am not going to read the bonus poem because I need you folks to go out and search out his book. Where can they find the book at, Ronald?

You can go to my website, The ShameFree Life.

In this, is there any chapter that’s your favorite? I picked out some things I want to talk about. I do want to see if you have a space that you want to start with.

Let’s go with what you picked out.

I want to read this one. “Introduction. It would be both a mistake and a travesty to approach this book or to have an expectation of this book to mirror the many male authored, written, and spoken to women from the perspective of a man. This is a far greater in ingenious sales and marketing pitch. This is a passion spoken from a place of truth. Woman, if you only knew, takes you on an epic journey of unspoken and taboo issues that many men wrestle with the main event of their souls.” The table of content proved that to be true. Are these your stories? Is this coming from your experience or from others or a balance of both?

It’s the culmination of my own life’s experience as well as those who are around me.

Thank you. When’s the last time you read the introduction there?

It’s been quite some time.

What are you thinking when you hear it now?

At a different place in space in life, what was downloaded and given to me to write then is so applicable now. The only thing that has changed is the difference of time and fashion.

What have relationships looked like for you? Where is relationships for you now?

Relationships then, and trying to navigate through manhood and having to filter myself from all of the indoctrination of what a man is supposed to be, how a man is supposed to act, and all of those things that do not equate to true masculinity and manhood. My relationships reflected where I was spiritually, psychologically, emotionally, and otherwise.

It was very difficult then for me to treat a woman. I have always treated a woman with common decency and respect, but I always withheld the best part of me because I had not yet come in contact with the best part of me. It was a fraudulent counterfeit me. The relationships were in love with the persona of who I was as opposed to the real me, which would later, I would discover the real me again under all of those layers.

Where I am in understanding my mission and what a man truly is and what he is not filtering myself from all of the past junk food of manhood at a place in life since I have embraced manhood and my purpose. When I look at a woman, this is my now help me, to help me meet my purpose in life because I had no clue what my purpose then.

What did you discover the real Ronald was or who was underneath all of those players?

First, I had to discover the little boy. That little boy who always wanted to make people happy and always had a thirst for just to belong in a community. I also had to allow that little boy to be healed. Even though that little boy is now on the inside of an adult man, I had to go back and give myself permission to heal that little boy.

The striking difference between then and now is that I didn’t feel that the little boy was worthy. I didn’t feel that the little boy was loved, and very misunderstood. The antics matched that reality. Now, I understand that it was just a little boy that was wounded and injured by life’s circumstances and people, but it doesn’t negate that he’s still that caring and loving little boy that wants to give and doesn’t ask for anything in return except to belong. I had to come to terms with the reality.

You’ve taken a lot of training over the years, certifications, and becoming knowledgeable. What does that look like? If someone bumped into you and your resume fell out of your briefcase and they read what you have been doing. What would that look like? What are some of the trainings you acquired over the years?

Outside of the training of life, the classroom of life, which we all have enrolled in that curriculum. I received my undergrad from Lee University and Christian Ministry with a concentration in Pastoral Counseling. I went on to get my Master’s degree in Human Services Counseling, Crisis Response and Trauma. I also have a certification in CBT, which is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and helping others. I had to be the first recipient. Not just a teacher, but the student of reframing real trauma that has happened.

I’m not denying it, but reframing how you look at it so we can become unstuck and take responsibility in life. We do have a life and it does matter. We are responsible to make sure that we get to a much better place of healing. Through a university now, I am getting ready to finish. I’m a couple of hours away from my certification and trauma informed care.

By and large, I deal with primarily trauma from a coaching perspective. Not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, but a coaching to create an environment that is safe, comfortable, confidential, and conducive for your growth. Also, that will hold you accountable to growth because I see the best in you. I’m trying to bring that out and you can see it. Now, you have a responsibility and you see what I see, and come up with a plan of action.

I like the plan of action because coaching should be centered on the client and encouraging them to do that. Scene one, identity crisis. I’m going to read something from here and I’d like for you to share where that stands now and what you think you’d like to share. “Knowing who you are is far more important than having knowledge of what you do. What you do is not the substance or essence of who you are.”

Unfortunately, we live in a society that when you meet someone on the street or at a party or some type of gathering, after they introduce themselves, “My name is Ron. My name is Tina. What do you do?” We ask a person what do they do in regards to their vocation or their career as opposed to who are you? Tell me something about you.

Not about your job, your career, or your financial portfolio, but tell me something about you. Though we say that those are icebreakers, they are not. Oftentimes, if you don’t have an elaborate resume, you may feel that you don’t matter, but you do. Identity has nothing to do with your vocation, and this is something that unfortunately we tend to miss out on.

I would agree with that. I remember an exercise we had in church, and they asked us to describe ourselves without mentioning our family, our spouse, our children, or our job, and to watch people struggle with that answer, “I’m in this situation because my late husband passed. I was on the dating scene.” I remember so many times me wanting to talk about what they did instead of telling me who they were. I spent a great deal of time trying to understand who they were as a person, trying to understand their friendships or the people they engaged or finding out what was valuable to them.

When I read this part, it made me think. Society varies much, especially men, that to me it appears what you do, what your job is, how much you are, and women, their body, or what that looks like and those different things. If you wash somebody’s face off and finally find out what they look like, versus all the stuff that’s going on, to come to the real meat and potatoes of who you are as a person.

Those conversations are much more interesting to me, finding out who people are such as conversations like this. Now I think about it, I slid into your DMs and you are probably like, “What is this about?” When I reached out, you probably said hello because we connected on TikTok watching your content. Seeing how intentional you are with what you share, the information drew me in to want to have a conversation and learn more about you.

I appreciate that because had you not taken the initiative, we wouldn’t have this platform. We would not have intersect in life. When we look at career, it is not synonymous with character. You can make 6 or 7 figures, and people will look at you as being a man or woman of character solely based on your career. How many times have we seen episodes of domestic violence? I can’t believe that he did that. I don’t know why you wouldn’t or she, because you placed that person on a high pedestal based on their functionality in the job market and have nothing to do with their integrity and character outside of the job market.

You make a good point. In the romantic dating scene, what are some questions or things that women should observe or men should be observing to find those true items out about a person?

I think we spend a lot of time talking at one another instead of to one another and getting to know the very essence of a person. Now, that’s not going to happen on the 1st date or 2nd date, but we should lay the groundwork that this is a safe haven for us to have a safe and real talk in getting to know one another. We have developed a behavioral pattern that’s based on escapism that oftentimes the real person doesn’t show up, but the representative does.

It takes a while for you to earn that space. I’d been with my late husband for 32 years. I was a Q and A person. I had all these questions and my son was like, “That is not cute. What are you doing over there?’ It was like I was trying to speed up learning somebody. One of my sisters said, “You can’t do that.” The dating experience and relationship building happens over time. As you become more comfortable with someone, then you start giving a little bit more of yourself.

It’s one of these things where I say like, “At what point are you willing to belt in front of somebody?” You don’t do that on the first day, but you know everybody’s got a belt so it’s not a big thing when it happens. There’s a level of comfort when you are not always trying to hide these imperfections of who we are as human beings. I would say there’s a lot involved in that process in trying to date, as you said, it would not happen on the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd date.

I want to circle back to a live that we had. I want to say it was the first of 2025, and so many positive comments from that. We started about talking about encouraging yourself, and then we pivoted to relationships and conversation. I want to tell you that we talked about men silently quitting. I can’t remember the full amount of the conversation but myself and another woman, we took the conversation back to our husbands.

One of the things that you talked about was we’ll ask our husbands or our significant others to talk, and then when they start talking, then we are going someplace else or we are doing something we are not focusing. Here I am thinking I am slaying the wife game, and I asked him, I said, “Are you ever talking sometimes and feel like I’m not paying attention?” He looked at me with too much of a hardness. He goes, “Yes.”

I didn’t even have to ask him to give me examples then he started and I was like, “Thank you, Ronald.” I made sure I put my phone down and I am paying attention. If he has an extended long story, I’m just like, “Pay attention.” I want to tell you, folks, that are reading, I have tried the Ronald advice for myself. It works. I’m not just reading his book to gas him up. He didn’t even know that until now because I had not shared that with him.

A lot of times, we feel like the invisible man. We have a lot of conversations, but the conversations take place. We don’t vent, whether you feel that you are not in a safe environment to be vulnerable or you don’t have the right words to articulate, but having that ear and that audience of one means so much.

What’s on your shirt? I see a little peekaboo or something there. What’s going on with that?

This is the ShameFree Life as my banner says. We have all types of apparel, and you can find those on TheShameFreeLife.com.

Understanding Relationships: A Man’s Heart And Actions

Thank you. Scene two, she has my body but you have my heart. First, allow me to preface this chapter by screaming. Ladies, a broken and juvenile man will treat you according to how you view yourself. He will also treat you according to how he feels about himself. Explain.

There’s a passage in the book of Ephesians where Paul was right into the church of Ephesus and says, “Husbands ought to love their wives as their old bodies.” If you don’t love yourself, then the first recipient of that will be the closest one to you, which is your mate. Having self-love is so important. I’m not talking about self-arrogance or cockiness, but self-love. You love and appreciate yourself. You understand the value that you bring to the table just alone. Only you. You are not looking for something externally to validate what you have already come in contact with yourself as to be the truth.

You are fearfully, and wonderfully made. You are a great person and, on the road to become much better. When you are in a relationship, and I’m speaking from this standpoint from a man who does not love himself, whose definition of manhood is quite the contrary to what a man truly is, then he’s struggling in that area. If making six figures is a part of his equation of being a manhood, what happens when he doesn’t hit that mark?

If driving a certain car or living in a certain ZIP code matches what a man truly is, and if he doesn’t hit that mark, then how does he feel about himself? It’s got to be something a little bit more sustainable than symbols of status. Also, if he only sees himself as a victim of everything and the horrible things that he’s been doing in life, and he doesn’t see himself as being victorious but a victim, then he will operate out of victim consciousness. It’s challenging for him to love you and appreciate you when he struggles in appreciating himself.

In your journey of life, what have been some examples of this type of interaction where this man is immature in this woman? What does that look like in a relationship have you seen?

Let’s say for the sake of conversation and the statistics are probably much higher, correct me if I’m wrong. If you do have the data, 1 in 4 men have been sexually assaulted. That data was years ago. Perhaps back in the ‘90s. These are reported cases. If you have a man who was sexually assaulted, and now he struggles in his masculinity because the criminal act was perpetrated against him and against his will. Now he questions, “What did I do to deserve that? Am I this way?”

He’s caught in the crossroads of being tormented. Why did this happen? Am I this way? Let me prove that I’m not this way and let me go to the far right and become a womanizer. With every sexual conquest and every phone number that I get, it proves to myself that I am not this. That internal wrestling of the brokenness of the soul, which is fragmented in so many different parts now and needs to be made whole. He will bring that fragmentation into a relationship, so it’s challenging.

In many ways and some ways, it’s impossible for him to appreciate the whole woman when he’s a fragmented man until he’s healed. There was a woman who told me something, and it was one of my most popular videos on TikTok. She told me, “I don’t understand why you guys always talk about you. You want a good woman, but when you find a good woman, you always go to the ratchet woman instead. Make it make sense. Why?”

I did a video on that and it got a whole lot of looks, likes, comments, and everything. The bottom line is, when you are dealing with the fragmentation of the soul, he’s not going to show up whole and not going to see you as being whole and to treat you as such until he’s healed. This is why he may be tormented. I will say this and I will digress, I have seen in my journey and I have been there myself. It’s impossible for a woman to satisfy you when you are not satisfied yourself.

There will always be a selection or buffet of different women until we come to a place in our own mind and soul of inner healing to become whole so now everything we do is whole and not fragmented. We are not over here with Jennifer or Tamara or Tanya. To silence the demons that I am not what happened to me at 6 years old or 8 years old, I was not responsible for.

If that part of us is not healed, then we are on a fast trajectory to prove that wrong, which is the violation that occurred by doing something wrong that we say is right through justification. The more collection of women that I prove that I’m not that. It’s like putting money in a bag with a hole in the bottom. It’s destined to come out. You have nothing to sustain it. Lust can never be fulfilled.

You said a lot right there. I’m going to try to circle back to a couple of things. I heard you talk about that woman needs to know her own self-worth and her own value. When she’s in a space that someone’s not treating her well to move away. I hear too many times, “I’m going to hold him down, or I want him to see that I’m a good woman. If he sees this, then he is going to do right by me.” He already had to come with the do right unless I’m missing something. There’s no amount of her being fabulous that’s going to change unless he may be willing to do that work and change for himself, but if he’s portraying to do something else to please her, the possibility of that falling down is very high.

Not only that. You probably have two people who are glued together through the bond of trauma. There’s a transference being that’s taking place that she needs to feel that she matters, beautiful, desirable, and wanted because there’s a deficit in her life that needs to be filled. She’s looking at her partner.

She’s looking at him to fulfill that, but he’s incapable of doing that because now he needs to feel that what happened to me has nothing to do with my sexuality or, I feel more desirable as a man if I have twenty women chasing after me or if I have all of these extra curriculum activities going on. Now you have two people who are traumatized and they are bound together.

They call it love, but it’s trauma bonding. They are bonded by their own individual trauma. Now, it is me and you baby against the world. No, it is you against you. A lot of times, we have to look at these dynamics. Is this truly love? This is not the essence of true, genuine, and authentic love. This is trauma bonding.

Invisible Struggles: Men’s Silent Battles

I have one left. We are now in scene five, drowning in invisible tears. Many men have secretly hidden themselves under the blankets of life as they silently cry the night away.

You could see it in the behavior from the youth all the way up to adults. Bars are filled with them. Not everybody at a bar, but the majority. Many at a bar drinking it away, at the Hookah lounge just smoking it away or at the nightclub dancing it away or sexing it away, and trying to find an outlet. Trying to release the pressure valve because of so much built-up pressure from age 5 to age 50 looking for escape. We are told as men to not cry, so we hold all of that in. We bottle all of that tension, stress, and trauma on the inside. You see it explode during a road rage, a shooting that took place outside of an apartment complex. These are signs of drowning in tears.

The Impact Of Male Molestation: Breaking The Silence

My last Post-it note here is scene six, manhood beyond molestation. Male molestation, rape, incest, and sodomy is that 800-pound gorilla that we have become conditioned to ignore with many families and communities. This uncommonly and embarrassing reality is a taboo subject that many family and church circles. However, interesting enough, many male victims are violated within the sphere of these circles. Both the emotional and psychological impact of male molestation can be damaging and become an interlude of self-destruction. What do you think when you hear that now after writing this so many times ago?

It’s like I just wrote it last week. Even when you look from a church standpoint that we ought to stand against injustice, against abuse, and of any sort. Yet when you have someone that may have been abused in that particular setting, now you have complicated grief and compounded trauma. There are so many men that will take to the grave the things that have happened and don’t have a form that they feel comfortable in being able to vent because as a man, these are not things that you do.

One thing about women, you all will get together. Whether it’s on Zoom or in person or at a wine bar or wherever, and comfort one another. Have an inner circle of support to get through it. As far as men, unfortunately, many of us don’t. We don’t seek help as far as a counselor or a therapist or a life coach because of the stigma that’s attached to it. You don’t feel like going to your significant other because of how she may look at you in some way, or maybe you all don’t have that rapport.

You can’t go to your friends because they are like, “I don’t want to talk about this. You are blowing my high. I’m ready for the Super Bowl.” Where do you go? You don’t want to go to the pastor because the last time you went to the pastor, he molested you. We are not talking about every pastor. I’m a minister, but I am saying that these things exist. Now this person feels boxed in and doesn’t know what to do, so they check out a life and not even participate.

No wonder he cannot show up in a relationship. What does he have to offer you? Everything that he thought he was, he does not know, and everything that he held onto that was valuable was taken from him. What does he have to give outside of his money, car, and looks? What does he have? He has to find his soul again.

For the man that is reading this or the mother that’s seeing this in her child, or this partner that’s seeing this in their significant other, how do they show up for them? How do they guide them? How do they get them to connect to get that healing and get that restoration they need? What are some ways in which they can do that or support them?

Not trying to change a person, but show up for the person. Create an atmosphere where they can feel comfortable to talk. Encourage them on their journey to wholeness. If there are individuals that you feel comfortable with from a therapeutic standpoint, I see so much value. It’s amazing how we will see one another at a bar. “What are you drinking?” “I’m drinking Crown.” “Tequila.” “Bartender on me.” We will finance a drink, but we won’t finance a therapy session. Make it make sense.

The copay is $35. Go for it.

You spent $50 here or more on drinks as opposed to something that has a long-lasting impact and effect in someone’s life to begin them on this journey to wholeness through a copay. That would be something. You can say, “I see so much value in you and I’m here with you. I am with you on this journey. I don’t want to buy you a bottle of Jack Daniels, but what I will do is let’s go over here and let’s make this session happen. Let’s talk it out.”

You mentioned grief and trauma. How do they differ?

According to them, we talked about it before the DSM-5, which is a psychological manual that people within the therapeutic community use as the “Bible” to make a diagnosis about a disorder. We oftentimes look at PTSD as being a disorder as is described in that manual. Alan Wolfelt wrote The PTSD Solution, I am 100% in agreement with him. He tends to believe that post-traumatic stress is not primarily a disorder but is connected to grief.

Whether you are a veteran and deployed overseas and you saw different sights and sounds that will remain forever in your psyche. You come back home, the tour is over, in civilian life, but it’s still there. You grieve for those that have fallen, or for those who psychologically snapped because they were unable to deal with the reality of things. You grieve because while you were away on deployment, one of your loved ones passed away and you were not here.

That trauma is rooted in grief. They show up together oftentimes, and we want to call it a disorder but it’s not a disorder. A disorder denotes that, “There is something wrong with me. I am defective.” No, you are not defective. You are traumatized by a situation that is rooted in what you have lost and you are going through bereavement. That’s grief.

Listening And Understanding In Relationships

I have never heard it explained in that fashion. I continue to learn something new about you every time we speak or I’m watching your content. I love how you show up wholeheartedly and your intentionality is for people to know they are not alone. Do you have any questions for me? Does anything come to mind? Ask me at this point.

The only question that I have for you, Tina, since your husband felt very comfortable and transparent enough to go up and say, “I need you to listen to me more. How is this working out?” You got a place where you’re all ears.

Every Wednesday, we have date night. Between all the different stuff I do, he is like, “Pay attention right here.” I have been pretty solid on date night. Even to the point, we rearranged some of our furniture then we put the dining room in a space where there’s no TV. My husband’s retired and he is a fabulous cook. He probably cooks dinner at least 3 to 5 times a night.

We sit down at the table and have been watch television while we are eating. I moved everything around. We ate dinner on a Wednesday, and we just talked. We sat there. It was a movie that he wanted to go out and see. He pulled out his phone to play the trailer, but besides that, our phones were down. The other thing that we have been trying to do is go to the gym together.

I thought, in between sets, I could do whatever I wanted to do on my phone. He called me on that. He was like, “I need you to focus on the next exercise. I need you to think about where you are pulling down and what you are doing. Can you not put your phone down?” I heard him say, “I want you to be present.” That’s even more of a dating experience us working out together and doing that.

My husband used to be a personal trainer, so he has experienced that. He’s watching my form, and what I’m doing. That’s investing time in each other in doing that, and I can see the benefit. I see a little bit of a difference in his disposition because he sees I’m paying attention to what he said. I’m not just blowing it off, but I’m engaging. Now when we go to work out, my phone is not there. I am paying attention to what it is, and whatever it is, I will get to later.

Congratulations.

Thank you. Lesson learned, paying attention, and doing that. I don’t say this often. I may share people’s books, but I recommend you pick this up. This is not a big book as far as pages, but it is weighty as far as the information that is in because so many times we want to have the conversation to hear from the men’s perspective, and you delivered on that. Thank you for being here. Thank you for making our February a little bit more spicy in with this book, and I will allow you to close out this conversation on whatever you want to share.

I want to thank you so much. Once again, the platform is always a wonderful experience. I am so grateful and appreciative. I thank God for you, your family, and all that you bring to the table and instilling so much hope in the lives of others who are going through the grief and don’t know what to do. You have been used as being an instrument. Also, your platform is a lifeline for so many. I’m so grateful for what you do.

If anyone would like to know more about what we do at the ShameFree Life, and it’s called ShameFree Life for a reason. We believe that you can live your life shame free. You deserve to live your life shame free and drama free. You may not be responsible for what happened to you, but you are responsible for healing.

You can reach out through discovery call, which is to make sure that if in fact we are a good match for one another. If not, then I will be more than happy to refer you out, or if we are a match, we would love to work with you and walk with you down this road of self-discovery and self-healing. All you have to do is go to TheShameFreeLife.com.

Thank you so much, Ronald.

Thank you.

Important Links

• Woman If You Only Knew
• The ShameFree Life
• The PTSD Solution

About Ronald Zion Roseboro

Ronald Zion Roseboro is the founder and owner of The Shame Free Life, which provides expert shame-based trauma recovery coaching services. With a Bachelor of Arts in Christian Ministry and a Master’s in Human Service Counseling with a focus on Crisis Response and Trauma from Liberty University, Ronald is dedicated to helping individuals find healing and strength. He is also a Certified Cognitive Behavioral Coach, Certified Mentor, and Leadership Coach, and holds an Honorary Doctorate in Humanities.

As an ordained Minister, Best-Selling author, and International Radio Host, Ronald brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to his coaching. He is the Founder and Executive Director of Pinnacle Community Outreach, which serves communities in need.

Having personally experienced the chronic trauma of complicated grief; Ronald understands the emotional paralysis that often accompanies trauma. He believes that while we may not be responsible for the injuries we sustain, we are responsible for our own healing. With his expertise in shame informed coaching, Ronald helps individuals rebuild their lives and step into their full potential.