The Emergeré with Nicole Doty and Bobby Kalinowsky - ENCORE

trigger warning, the Resilience Project provides an open space for people to share their personal experiences. Some content in this podcast may include topics that you may find difficult, the listeners discretion is advised.

Hello friends, welcome to radical resilience, a weekly show where I Blair Kaplan Venables have inspirational conversations with people who have survived life's most challenging times. We all have the ability to be resilient and bounce forward from a difficult experience. And these conversations prove just that, get ready to dive into these life changing moments while strengthening your resilience muscle and getting raw and real.

Welcome back to another episode of radical resilience. It's me Blair Kaplan Venables, and I'm here today with Nicole and Bobby Nicole Doty is a Missouri based philanthropist and co founder and president of the Mr. Shear her experience as a peer counselor to women at thrive in St. Louis. Her training as a trauma sensitive yoga instructor. And being a divine feminine healer has been an integral part of her path. She has tons of experience of you know, she she's really special because this company she started came from a need as an abuse survivor, she learned the hard way that the system to support women like her is broken, which is why she created the emergency. We're a unified network to provide multi level services for those fleeing domestic violence when she's not focused on elevating her not for profit. When she's not focused on moving the needle on her movement. You can find her spending time with her five beautiful children. And Bobby Oh Bobby Bobby, I met on clubhouse which is a social media app. That's how we met Nicole. And you know what, I can't wait for you guys to listen to this episode, because you're gonna hear a bit more about that. But Bobby Kawlinoskly is a Virginia based philanthropist and co founder, Vice President and Treasurer. He's an ally, in empowering women to flee toxic and abusive personal and professional relationships. He has done so much work with women and helping them elevate their lives and their careers. He has built his passion based on his experiences, including surviving abuse and working in a high stress environment like at the Air Force Pentagon during September 11 terrorist attack. This is all what led him on this path to co creating the Emeralds year with Nicole over the last three years he's been helping these Women Helping Women attain success and helping them balance their life's priorities. And he is truly such a gift. His expertise has been featured on this podcast. And you know what, I really hope you listen to their story and what they're building. If you are located in the USA or anywhere in the St. Louis area, I really want you to pay attention to help their biggest goal right now is raising funds to get their movement off the ground and to building strategic partnerships so that women who are fleeing an abusive situation abusive relationships have the support that they need. Welcome to the podcast. Hello, Bobby and Nicole. No, I was. So this is their first interview together and I am so honored to hold that space for the both of you. I think what can be really good like I just you know, introduced you. But let's get to know each of you a little better. Like let's talk about your story. Like Nicole. What's your story? Like? How did you get to this moment in time?

Oh, go ahead. First off, thank you so much for having us. It's such an honor. It's so great that it's you as our first. So um, yeah, just a little background about me. I grew up in a very sheltered background. I was homeschooled through high school. And the world was very narrow in my upbringing. And there were a lot of things that I didn't know. So that kind of work to my disadvantage in in my teenage years. Going into college, I made some really poor decisions with who I chose to hang out with. And my first remembered experience of domestic violence happened at the hands of someone who had you know, had drugged me essentially. So that was really frightening and eye opening. And what ended up happening is my parents decided to kind of put me back into the little box into the little bubble that I had come from. And that didn't work because I finally knew that there was a lot that they weren't telling me. And so you know, with that kind of damage with that kind of pain and hurt and an inability to process, I left my parents house and began making really, again, really poor choices, I feel like I was there was a lot that came through in that time period, a lot of destruction, a lot of just places where I allowed myself to be hurt over and over just because of how naive I was just because I felt like I deserved it after losing my virginity in a rape. It had, that was like, the big thing that I felt like growing up was the most important part of me, most important piece of me was my virginity, I was raised in purity culture, and wait until you're married and all of those kinds of things. So I felt like I've lost all value and treated myself and those around me as such. So I wound up pregnant at 21. From the guy that I was dating at the time, and at that point, it was kind of like a, like, Okay, how do I fix my wrongs here, because the church that I grew up with, had a public called a public confession, where they held me accountable for having sex outside of marriage in front of everyone. And that was really, really difficult to, to stand in front of and accept. But I'm also really grateful that that happened, because it opened my eyes to a lot of the to sightedness, that evangelical Christian, conservative very like sheltered environments can bring and how abuse tends to hide within those walls a lot. So yeah, my after that, I married the guy that got me pregnant, we had three more children. He was a police officer. And I began seeing signs of maybe I didn't make the right choice pretty early on. Within my second pregnancy, I had an incident where he had, we were in an argument, and he began chasing me. And I didn't know what to do. But I ran. He chased me up off the bed and dragged me by my feet and like, threw me onto the floor. And my very first thought at that moment was, oh, no, I've heard the baby, because at the time I was seven months pregnant. And I find it really interesting, looking back, how I took ownership for a lot of his choices of like, immediately, my thought was, oh, no, I've heard the baby. completely disregarding that it was him that drag my feet, then onto the floor. So things escalated from there. And there were different points where I feared for my life and prepare for the lives of my children. And

I but at the same time, I wasn't really able to process it, because I had not done any trauma therapies for the things that happened previously. So I felt like a lot of it was, again held under my cultural belief system that the marriage needed to stay intact above all else, like screw the safety, like you have, I have to make something work. It has to be at its sacred, I can't give this up or else it's going to be the public humiliation all over again. So I stayed within the marriage and really did my best to be the perfect wife to be the perfect mother. And in absorbing all of that pain. And being in such an uncontrolled environment, there was only one thing I could control at that time, and that was what I ate, or in my case, what I didn't eat. So I developed a pretty extreme eating disorder to the point where I wasn't staying conscious anymore. And no one could figure I wasn't able to voice my pain for anyone. I wasn't able to voice what I was doing to anyone like I kept it very hidden and So after going through, you know, the medical profession meant rigging the row, and trying to trying to figure out why I was always collapsing. I found a doctor who was actually the first person who was a chiropractor. And he was the first person I ever met to actually go to bat for me. And because I felt so safe with him, he was the first person I admitted, same as abuse to, he was the one who helped me get into treatment. And from that point, things started falling into place, I began doing a lot of inner work and healing and trauma therapy alongside my treatment for the eating disorder. And things began coming to the surface of what he was doing and how the unsafe the home environment was. So eventually, I was able, in strong enough to leave, and I'm grateful for that, and for the safety of my children, but it was a long, drawn out process to be sure.

Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I'm sorry, you went through all that. And there's lots to unpack there. You know, a lot of what you went through, it's a lifelong journey of healing. And the journey that you're on has brought you to here to this moment, to your organization. And I know when I you know, I knew Bobby before I met you, and we're gonna get into Bobby story soon, Bobby Kay. And I love that I met Bobby on clubhouse and that you met Bobby on clubhouse. still around? I don't know. But I think what's what's really special is that I'm someone who's turning my pain into purpose. And we are experiencing that right now in this podcast. And that is what you are doing. And Bobby when I first met him, I mean, when he first started sharing this project, he explained to me a little bit more about the night you left and that you you fled for safety. Can we talk about what happened the night you left your abusive situation? And because I'd like the listeners to understand because it wasn't just as simple as you leaving? Because once you leave, where do you go? What do you do? And I want to talk about your specific experience.

Yeah, so my specific experience I had tried to leave a couple times. And being a police officer, he was also in the military and his dad was a lawyer. So there were a lot of threats made that if I left, I would never see my children again, that if I called the cops, he would. He knew exactly what to say, to get them to just dismiss everything. He also said that, you know, if I called the cops, the chances of the people responding were his buddies, because we actually lived in the district within which he worked. And he knew that to be true. So I stayed quiet for a very, very long time. And when I finally got the courage to leave after an intensive process of healing myself and realizing that I wanted better and beginning to make myself bigger, when I was talking to, I finally got the courage to leave. And it wasn't as it wasn't as simple as just getting the kids in the car with a couple of belongings and leaving. way when he found out that I love to he immediately, like was calling me and tracking me. He knew where all of my friends lived, he knew where all my family lived. I didn't have anyone that I felt safe going to. I also couldn't go to any of the shelters in the area because as a police officer, he knew where those were. And I was actually I remember the agency that I was working with that I had, like opened up to trying to get help. They were like, you know, like, we don't know what you should do. Like just don't go anywhere. Like don't go to any of the places that he might know, which happened to be everywhere within our within our city. So there was I finally found a place that I thought was far enough away that maybe he wouldn't check there. And when I walked in it again it had been a very stressful day he was threatening to kill me he was threatening to kill himself. The children like it and he had access to weapons like there was no reason for me not to believe him. And so I walked in, and I tried to explain what is going on. And I needed shelter for the night until I figured out what to do. Because what had happened is I had left without much of a plan in place yet, because it had escalated a lot faster than I had expected. They, unfortunately, were full and turned me away. And I will never to this day. Forget that feeling of I truly have no one that I can turn to. I don't know what to do. I'm in fight or flight, I have children like, it really felt like the only option at that moment was to go back to him. And like hope that he was happy enough with us returning that something drastic didn't happen. So thankfully, with a lot of care from other people, I was able to stay away for a bit of time in a place that he didn't know, to allow things to begin the process of the divorce and, and rebuilding our lives. But it was it was a very eye opening moment for me of the terror that can happen within domestic violent relationships.

Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you. And I think this is a really important conversation. Like, you were in a situation where you had nowhere to go and you found one, the one place you could go, and they turned you away. Yeah. And how often like think like, how often does that happen? Right? And it's just telling us that there are not enough beds, there's not enough safe places. And you're really making a difference. And, you know, your story is one of unfortunately familiarity to a lot of women. I myself, like I don't have kids, but I was in an abusive relationship. And I ended up homeless for three weeks. And it was really scary. I didn't think to go to a shelter, I called my mom and we had a conversation that led me to believe that I didn't feel safe enough to let anyone else know how bad my situation was. And I just coached surfed and stayed on random people's like, you know, coaches and I got an apartment three weeks later. And I you know, I you know, I've grown a lot and in hindsight, that I probably should have went to a shelter or, like been more honest with my friends or family, but it's also this level of embarrassment, right, like, how did I get here?

There's a lot of shame. untangles itself, both, I mean, not only from the person experiencing the violence, but I think we're truly with, with the perpetrators as well, you know, there's, there's a yo yo cycle that happens and with the loved ones that I've had that have experienced this, so many of them have said, like, I wanted to believe the best in this person. Like, I didn't want to believe that the person that I had chosen to marry or be in a relationship with or keep as a friend or whatever the case may be, would do this, like, so there is yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up because that that alone, I think is one of the most crippling aspects of of staying silent.

Right. Oh, wow. Okay, so let's keep everything you just shared in mind. And now, Bobby, Bobby Kay. Hi. I want to talk about you. And your involvement because I've I've known you longer than I've known Nicole. And you've actually, we you were one of my clients while my mom died. And you were with me back when you were known as Robert.

I was Robert. Well, I've always been Robert but I was I went by Rob for my life. My story.

Yeah. And we you know, we go way back, we both went through some unraveling together. And I want to talk about now your story and how we got to where we are today with you.

Okay, and again, to echo Nicole's gratitude. Thank you for having us and allowing us to share this message. So I grew up in suburban Philadelphia. My mother was biointensive single mother for most of that time. She was 18 years old when I was born. My father was 17 In the early 70s, her father was on the, you know, the local town government. And so of course, it was a source of shame for a daughter of his to end up, pregnant and such. So, you know, she was forced to leave the house, we were both forced to leave the house, we lived with my father's parents for a while. She's a very strong woman, and I'm gonna give her a lot of credit for that. You know, I've got children that age now. And I, you know, educate imagine those children raising children at this point. But, you know, my mother persevered, we did a lot of that living on our own, lots of public assistance, things like that. And she tried to make a life for herself. While I was still very young, right, went to school, got a degree and found a job. We, you know, the hardest part of my early childhood was how many times we had to change residences in my lifetime, and it just added up. Recently, I've lived in over two dozen places, in just under 50 years. So on average, I'm moving every two years or so things are that unstable across my life. So you know, there's lessons you can take from that, that the what matters in life is really the people. Your foundation is grounded in relationships. And, you know, picking good wins is important, of course, but you've got to have that good relationship with yourself to be able to get through all of that. So, one of the more difficult points in my childhood, my mother had married her second husband, and he fell into some drug problems. And when he was on his drug highs, he would get very physically abusive and I, through my teenage years, became a target. That was something that was was quite difficult. I was Bobby Kay, growing up, that's part of the story, right? That's the I had mentioned, when I decided that I needed to do for myself in my mid teen years was to become a little bit more tougher to stand up to that. So I, in addition to adding weight, also changed my persona, I changed I put away the bobby Kay personality, basically, I had to defend. And so I adopted a persona named Rob, which was a in my mind a more tougher version of body who had the emotional strength to stand up to him and Bobby had less of a willingness to protect themselves, Rob was very much in his defensiveness and even at times, certainly points aggressive. You know, that's that persona, ended up sticking with me through life. And it was an inadvertent thing it happened. That happened one day at my job, there happened to be three Roberts working that day. And it was a union shop, I was the newest person there. So when the customer service person called Robert to come to the front desk, and three of us showed up, she decided we all needed different names. So Bob stayed Bob, Bobby was the choice of the second person. So I couldn't have that one if I wanted it. So I chose Rob. And I felt like that was a good time to make a life transformation. I was working at a new place with new people. And it was time to adopt that persona. Anyway, turns out, I ended up going to college with a lot of those people. So my high school name of Bobby was sort of lost. And I became Rob all the way through college, I ended up working with some of the people I went to college with. So I became Robin, my professional career, my wife that I met at college. Now ex wife also knew me as well. My kids know me as Rob everywhere in my life. I've been robbed ever since. And I carried that persona of Rob with me that whole time. That said, in the marriage that I was in for 15 years, we were together 21 years in total, counting the time that we dated.

You know, you have your struggles in marriage. There's things that come up, sometimes they're they're things that you can't solve, but I became more of a victim of the blame for the things that were out of my control. Things related to school districts rezonings and our kids not going to school across the street anymore somehow became my fault. I didn't make enough money, right. So what ended up happening was I was being told all the ways that I was not meeting my wife's needs on a day to day basis and how that made me not only a poor husband, but also a an angry father when I was of course responding emotionally to what was being said to me. So I would characterize most of what I had to endure as more emotional. Psychological, it was it was more of a daily accounting of all of the ways that I was failing my family, and you know, the toughest person is emotionally tough and you can be that way As on me over time. It drove me to be more successful professionally, when you hear you're, you know, you're not making enough money, you're not successful enough, you put your energy into doing that if you want to be a good husband, if you want to be a good father, maybe that's the way maybe she's right. You start the by the story. Ultimately, it didn't matter how successful I became at work. It was still never enough. The more money I made, the more money we spent trying to satisfy needs for somebody that I could not satisfy. I could not make her happy. And I was too emotionally immature at the time to realize that wasn't my responsibility, right? I needed to be happy within myself. Unfortunately, I gotten to the point where I was on the edge of suicide, I had an attempt to planned and I was in a place where I was intending to carry it out when the only thing I can characterize as a spiritual intervention intervened, right, God literally reached out and gave me a message and said, we've got better things in mind for you, this is all been experienced, this is all growth, you're going to shift your direction, we're going to take all this and do something good with it exactly what you mentioned before. And I've been on a path of, you know, reshift in life direction ever since I would say probably the hardest parts of the next, what's been now 11 years, was deciding that I had to leave that relationship, right. So a lot of the same things that you and Nicole have have already talked about. It's very difficult to be a man in that situation. As you can imagine. Society doesn't want to listen to the idea that a man can be the victim of abuse, and then a relationship. When something happens, it's you know, generally the man that's looked at as perpetrating the incident, telling, telling her that I was leaving the marriage telling her that I was ending the marriage. One of the hardest things that I had to go through because of the ways the laws are written in my state because I had to stay in the house. For almost a year after I told her I was leaving, I had no other means to leave, I had no way to move myself into a place where I wasn't subject to that emotional abuse on a daily basis. If I did leave the house, I was told that I was basically abandoning my family. And as such, I would lose rights to custody to my kids, I would have to pay higher spousal support things that just were unfeasible for me. So I had to stay in the house with her knowing I was leaving, and for most about 11 months, put up with even more daily abuse, how dare I leave my family, how they are I destroy that the life we created. And all the while of not being able to reconcile why she wanted to keep somebody that was just so you know, inferior for what she felt she needed. Really, really hard days, the hardest of those days was when she decided that she would accuse me of trying to push her down the stairs and call the police on me. And, you know, the kids were panicking mom called the police what what's going to happen, they're going to take you to jail. So they're not going to take me to jail, I didn't do anything. There's the moment where you're sitting in the living room of your house explaining to a police officer what happened. They're telling her there's a shelter she can go to. And of course there's nothing from it. Right? That's just the way of the world. In order for me to leave, I had to go pay for my own hotel someplace else. The good news was I had the means to do that. I recognize others don't have a way to do that. That obviously came to more or less an end, after I left the actual house, she finally had signed the papers were able to move on with the separation and divorce.

But you know, the emotional barriers still there. And I still have to parent children with this person. And so it becomes something where even though you're gone, you're still subject to the words are still subject to criticism. There's not enough distance when you're raising children with somebody to keep you safe. And that's it's about developing a strength within yourself to almost tune it out. It's about learning how to go within it's a learning how to believe more in yourself than what you're hearing from the outside. And as a words of affirmation person. That's probably the hardest lesson I've ever had to learn. So that's the that's the short story. You know, and that gets into you know, Nicole and I meeting on clubhouse and almost immediately we we sort of realized we had a similar story. We had similar interests, and I'll let her talk to some of this but really, really interestingly In one of our very first conversations, we realized we both had the same dream to start the same organization, and just didn't, you know, for me, it was it was not a right away thing. You know, I had a longer term plan in mind, but, you know, what do they say? Like, God laughs at your plans, right?

So just thank you so much for sharing Bobby, like, I can't even imagine what it would be like to be in that situation and not have any supports in place. You know, and the state laws seem like, seems very complicated. And I'm sorry, you went through all that both of you, you know, going through abuse, it's, you know, I on a calls, we've been talking about stats, that's one in three, but we're three out of three. So maybe the stats are wrong. Maybe it's more than that. And, you know, I think I just want to just sidebar like for those of you listening who's like, what's clubhouse like, no, not nightclub. nightclubbing. It's a social media network. It's audio only. It was really big later on. It was really big during the pandemic. That's how I met Bobby. And Bobby became a client and a friend. And that's what Bobby and Nicole, Matt. So I want to just, you know, we now you know, their backgrounds. And so they teamed up. And they are the cofounders of

the eMERGE ear

hammer shear. Oh, my God, sue my Canadian accent like Mr. Shea. And they're like, every year, I'm like, better, better, better. And they're Shea. What is this movement? Tell us? What is this movement? Where is it? What is it?

Yes. So the Emerald year was birthed out of my desire to create network looks more starting here in Missouri, but we're expanding we're going to expand across the US and hopefully, the globe where we're filling in the gaps for care for provisions for resources that are needed by people coming out of domestic violence situations. When someone is on the brink of deciding whether they're leaving, a lot of times there's a bit of chaos surrounding that, it's very hard when you're in a fight or flight mindset. And cortisol is up and everything is just like not knowing how to fire not knowing the next right step, we want to be an organization that comes alongside those with people who have already walked the path, who have already found freedom found wholeness found hope and their own peace and restoration to themselves and to relationships. So we are creating, basically a network that unites a lot of the nonprofits that exist currently utilize this one that have capacity to take on more people. And then also begin building infrastructures that will support those that support the gaps of things that are needed, which can change from area to area. So that's what we are on the ground building at this moment.

I love that. So it's now August, August 2023. in case someone's listening to this, and a few years from now, wanting to you know, it's so funny me and my girlfriends were talking today, about like how someone thought it was December 2023. And I was thinking about it, and I've been writing 2019 Like, I

don't know what year it is anymore. No, I

know. Okay, so it's, it's August 2022. And you're listening. And it's gonna be cool to see where you're at in 2023 in a year, but you're just launching this month. You're currently only available like, you have a house like Basecamp. The headquarters is located in Are you open to sharing where you're located most County, St. Louis County, St. Louis, and you do have goals to grow? You know, but you have to start where you are. And I know there's a big conference at the end of the month where you're officially launching. And I think it's I think I want to dive in a bit deeper because what you just said was very high level in the sense of like, resources and being like helping connect the network of resources. So like, if I am fleeing DV situation in St. Louis County. How can you support me like can I come to you at three in the morning?

Absolutely. So we are yes, we're available on all hours. We are wanting to put place things in place right now that meet everyone on Every single level, obviously, physical safety is paramount. Everything else kind of be dealt with after that point. So getting people to physical safety, providing a network of hotels or a safe houses, etc, is something where you have the pulse on in the St. Louis area, you know, at all times, so we can say, you know, very confidently provide that information and then support to get people to those places. Well, that's true, but that's just one. I mean, unraveling the systems of violence that exists within our society is no, no easy matter, it's very complicated. And we really want to take a whole system's approach to this in offering not only services for physical safety of resources, do you know to provide, you know, housing, clothing, food, shelter, whatever,

whatever's needed.

But also translate that to to emotional and spiritual support, I mean, this when you hurt someone, it's the whole self that is affected, it is a body that it's trauma that lives within the body. And so, you know, I've facilitated classes with trauma sensitive Yoga, you know, to begin releasing trauma that is stored there. We also have a couple other methods, methodologies that we promote and use for processing, emotional and spiritual pain. We're getting, you know, we're talking to psychologists and psychiatrists who can come alongside and support in that as well. So this is such a multifaceted approach that we're taking, I don't think it's more than we can chew, I think it's really has to be though a system that's built very securely from the ground up of this is exactly what we offer. And this is exactly what we can do. Yes, we're starting small, and, you know,

putting the framework together, and then you can grow. So right now as we wrap up this conversation, because I feel like we can talk about this for hours, but you're gonna get more eat media interviews. So I think like, let's just put a call out what is there? What can the listeners do? What can our community do to support you? Well, if you have other podcasts that you think they you know, would be great to share their story and their y on, please reach out to them all their information is in the show notes. You guys are looking for donations, financial donations,

when time yeah, we're looking for a number of things, right? A lot of a lot of organizations are looking for money, right. And we're no different, we've poured our own money into getting this going quite substantially. We obviously will need funds to continue it, specifically funds to help the people that we want to get out of those safe or those unsafe spaces quickly. But to build the network that Nicole was talking about, we're also going to need partners, the types of services that people will need in these circumstances are really the same everywhere, how those services are instantiated, and all of those locations is different. The level of resources available in different locations are different. And the specific needs of every individual is different. So our goal is to connect the pieces that are already there. We like we would like to connect to people in this area that are performing and providing some of those services for partners connecting them together. So yes, not only donations, but also partnerships.

So donations, money, clothing, whatever you can do to help support partnerships. Are you an organization that can help these men or women? Yes. All right. people fleeing domestic violence, scenario situation. And do you have an opportunity, a platform for Bobby Kay and Nicole to share their vision because like I said, the stat the US stat is one in three people experienced domestic violence, but right now you're watching 100% of us are listening, not watching watching with your ears. 100% of us all three of us have had experience with violence, with abuse, and what are we doing to support? How are we educating? How are we ensuring people who are leaving those situations that they're safe? We need to talk about this more. And so I'm gonna be putting all the information in the show notes. I really want to thank the both of you for coming on radical resilience, sharing both of your stories, so vulnerably so ra so openly. You know, it's beautiful to watch, you both turn your pain into purpose. And I look forward to having you back on and earlier than a year. But throughout the year for another update, you know, so we can do a check in and see what other support you need from the community. We have a global listeners from around the world that tune in. And together we can all support their vision and their mission. So thank you so much for being a guest.

We appreciate you more than we can express. Oh,

thank you. And thank you to everyone for tuning in to another episode of radical resilience. You know, it is okay to not be okay. You're not alone. There are resources there are people out there to help you. Our community is here for you. Remember, you are resilient. You got this. Thank you.