Nick McGowan (00:00.495)
Hello and welcome to the Mindset and Self Mastery Show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan. Today on the show we have Amber Richbook. Amber, how are doing today?

Amber RichBook (00:22.403)
Well, how are you Nick? Thank you for having me.

Nick McGowan (00:25.679)
Yeah, absolutely. We were just shooting the shit for like a solid half hour. And again, one of those situations like let’s just record. So I’m stoked for you to be here. I think this is gonna be cool. We’re gonna get into a lot to talk about identity, subconscious limiting beliefs and your story. And even talking about regional and generational trauma and some of the things I’ve talked about on different episodes. But I think identity is a big part of that. I always like to start episodes off with something that’s a little

Amber RichBook (00:29.846)
I know.

Nick McGowan (00:54.319)
odd or bizarre about you that most people don’t know. So what do you got for me?

Amber RichBook (00:58.19)
Okay, so one of my bizarre weird things that people don’t know about me is that I wrote about my life as a single mother of three daughters when I was in the first grade and my mom

She kept like this big bag, like everywhere we moved to, this was like this big bag of childhood memorabilia from myself and my siblings of things we drew and wrote in kindergarten, pre-K, first grade, second grade, like the little macaroni art that’s like happy Mother’s Day. Here’s a flower with glue and there’s missing pieces on it. And so, you know, in first grade when they have the writing pads with the story and you draw the little ugly picture and you think like,

Nick McGowan (01:32.655)
Yeah, of course.

Amber RichBook (01:44.014)
And it’s like Miss A takes her three daughters and the names were like J, E, A, like they were all like names with those initials. And my daughter’s names now have the initials J, A, and E. To get ice cream and they Love driving in their really big truck.

and they love doing all these fun things together. They like dancing. like, there was no, was just this Miss A.

and her three daughters. And I remember years ago when I, well, my mom was like, kind of like, all right, you guys are grown, take your shit. Like I saved all of it. Let me show you guys that I actually cared about you as children. Like do with it what you want. I’m like, okay, so let me go through my stuff. And I’m just sitting there and I’m reading it. And I was like, can I curse? I was like, okay.

Nick McGowan (02:27.96)
Yeah.

Nick McGowan (02:40.958)
yeah.

Amber RichBook (02:42.86)
I was like, Amber, what the fuck were you writing about in the fucking first grade? Like you’re writing about being a mom. Now, fun fact, I was the child, the friend, even in high school that used to call kids creatures. I was like, ill, be a mom. That’s so disgusting. Motherhood. So now there’s a running joke. Like every mother’s day, my friends from high school and college are like, dude, how did you become a mom?

Nick McGowan (02:45.443)
Yeah.

Amber RichBook (03:09.836)
Like that’s the joke. Like you’re a mom, bro. None of them are mothers, but I’m a mom. Dude, how did that happen? So I think that’s interesting because one of my favorite books is The Alchemist. I talk about it in my, started my Ted talk with it and it was like, we really go on this journey of life and all you’re doing is getting back to the core of who you are.

Nick McGowan (03:10.179)
You

Nick McGowan (03:14.423)
Ugh.

Nick McGowan (03:36.569)
Yeah.

Amber RichBook (03:36.992)
and your inner child, like those youthful experience where your imagination is purely untamed, not realizing that many of us have these gifts. We all have these gifts and abilities, but where were they most active? How were they most active?

and I’ll just layer it with this before I give it back to you. There was a thread that I saw recently that said, healers, spiritual people, did you have a near death experience that confirmed your abilities, et cetera, et cetera? And when I was born,

Nick McGowan (04:10.863)
Mm-hmm.

Amber RichBook (04:13.942)
I only had eight minutes to live. Eight is my favorite number. Eight is when I was eight years old. That was like my favorite age. Schoolhouse rock was like a thing when I was growing up. So it was like the figure eight song. I loved eight. When I was in school, I was always drawing eight. I was always like just fascinated with eight. And my birthday is on a 26. So two plus six equals eight. And so.

Nick McGowan (04:26.704)
yeah.

Amber RichBook (04:43.118)
start reflecting on these things and you’re like oh here are how all the dots connect in my life in my reality in my experience so yeah i’m a little woo woo

Nick McGowan (04:56.431)
I don’t think it’s as much woo woo as it’s looking for patterns of things. I’m similar in the sense where I look, like we were talking about even signs before we hit record, looking for signs. I think there’s a level of awareness. And if you’re aware of something, you can at least say, well, that’s something. I don’t particularly agree that there are like coincidences in the world. I think there are things that line up, but then there are also things that just don’t make sense. Like I remember saying,

Amber RichBook (05:07.148)
Yeah.

Amber RichBook (05:19.534)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick McGowan (05:25.679)
People saying to me like years and years and years ago like you might read something in a book or like the Bible or whatever and it doesn’t make any sense at all and then years later it punches you right in the mouth like there are times literally within the Bible or God’s like this thing today means the most thing to you and you’re like, whoa What what does that mean and you’ve read it 400 billion times? Or you’ve seen a situation or whatever. I think there’s a power of being aware to be able to see those things but then

Amber RichBook (05:36.183)
Yep.

Nick McGowan (05:53.229)
like you had even said before we hit record, and we probably should have just hit record way early, was that it’s our responsibility to do something with that. And it’s what we get to do with it from there that actually shapes the way that future generations and all of those sort of things. It’s interesting to me, like right off the bat when you said, I wrote that out in first grade and now I’m living it, because I remember people in grade school thinking or writing out like a five year, 10 year plan.

Amber RichBook (05:56.942)
you

Amber RichBook (06:01.569)
Yep.

Amber RichBook (06:09.336)
Yeah.

Nick McGowan (06:21.967)
There were a couple of the smart kids in school that I can think back to, like fifth or sixth grade that did that. And there was one in particular, I forget what her name was, but she was like dead set. Like this is exactly how my life’s gonna be. And I’ve thought about that girl every once in a while of like, did life work out? Because my life was totally different than what anything I could have ever created. But what a cool thing for you to see, because it sounds like you didn’t say, well, my intention is to have three kids.

Amber RichBook (06:39.5)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (06:51.381)
and nobody around and I wanna do this and we’re gonna go get ice cream and all this like this is the fucking life I’m gonna live and like you pushed for it but what a wild thing for it to create, yeah.

Amber RichBook (06:53.089)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, you just lived.

Yes. And, and, and then I want to say like older years, like in my teen years, I remember being a freshman and we had the opportunity to sign up for vocational school. prior to us hitting record because Nick and I, were chopping it up. we were talking, I said, you know, even as I navigate my own gifts, I had to process, okay, am I speaking things into existence or am I speaking something that’s already into existence and it’s already the same. So even when you say coincidences aren’t real,

coincidence gets a freaking rap because if we break down coincidence, it is coincide. It is all these things that are coming together, but it’s easier to write it off like, it’s just a coincidence. It’s nothing. But if it’s really a coincidence, you should want to do the investigation of.

Nick McGowan (07:37.081)
Yeah.

Amber RichBook (07:52.246)
where is this coexistence happening in my reality? Okay, so Amber, what are you getting to? When I was in the eighth or the ninth grade, they said we could sign up for a vocational school. So school, high school, halftime, then go to a technical school. So I’m like, all right, I wanna do cosmetology because I don’t wanna flip burgers while I’m in college. Like that was what I convinced my mother. I’m like, mom.

Nick McGowan (08:05.377)
Yeah.

Amber RichBook (08:16.898)
And it was $300 and I’m like, it comes with a whole kit. And I’m like, you want me to go to college, right? Like I’m not saying I’m not going to college. So I don’t want to flip burgers. Not that anything is wrong with that. Cause I did end up working at a fast food restaurant, right? Because you’re like, I don’t want to do that. And then you end up where you said you don’t want to be because the universe source wherever it doesn’t here don’t, it just hears focus and attention. And I went through that.

that cosmetology program, graduated high school, graduated with my cosmetology license. I’m still licensed to this day. And I remember when I was in college, I had a car accident where I lost all my cognitive abilities and I had to medically withdraw. Now, once I started to heal up, I didn’t have the cognitive ability to return back to college.

Nick McGowan (08:58.361)
Hmm.

Amber RichBook (09:09.024)
Why? Because prior to my accident, had a brain contusion afterwards, but I could study with the lights on, the music on, the TV on, all these stimulators. But then after my accident, when I say I had to write things word for word, I had to have pure silence, I had to take breaks. I’m like, this is not going to work for me. So I had this cosmetology license to lean back on to create a living for myself and to work prior to returning back to school.

Nick McGowan (09:29.006)
Hmm.

Amber RichBook (09:38.88)
And so that’s where that interconnectedness of the universal law of cause and effect, right? So if you ensure, like get insurance on all these things, you’re also calling in accidents, breaks. You’re also calling in all the things that benefit from having this insurance. So that’s how interesting and coincidental life is, is when you’re preparing and creating these incidents

Nick McGowan (09:53.709)
you

Nick McGowan (10:04.836)
Mm.

Amber RichBook (10:08.784)
that get to coincide with each other. That was so crazy. Yes. Yes.

Nick McGowan (10:13.871)
I think the awareness is the glue of that though. Like if you’re aware of that stuff, you can then do something or not. Like there are certain things I think that happen. Like even with you saying, all right, mom, I’m gonna go to college, but I wanna go this route. You’re really just thinking from a perspective of the system of the world tells me that I need to make Money. I need to do this on my own. So I guess I’ll go do this thing. Yes.

Amber RichBook (10:35.692)
and I need to have something to fall back on, right? So going with that intention of I need something to fall back on because something can go wrong. Yup.

Nick McGowan (10:43.833)
Just in case. Yeah. Which is such a fucked thing. So our parents went through the bullshit like that with their parents and maybe they went to college or they did something and they had something they could fall back on because their parents said, based on the current system that we’re in, in the 60s and 70s, this is what it’s gonna be like. And by the time the 80s and 90s came around, now we’re experiencing what that’s like where you motherfuckers were able to afford a house.

Amber RichBook (10:49.262)
You

Amber RichBook (10:53.975)
Yep.

Nick McGowan (11:13.359)
for $13,000 back in the day. We can’t afford that for a porch on a house, let alone, you know what I mean? But those though are stories and it’s up to us to be able to change. And I think that’s where part of the awakening is happening, where we then look back and go, well, motherfucker, some of this shit really fucked us up. And this was straight up abuse in that time or.

Amber RichBook (11:13.826)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, okay, wait.

Amber RichBook (11:26.711)
Yeah.

Yes. Yes.

Nick McGowan (11:40.751)
You told me I needed to do this and therefore I went down a different path because I wasn’t able to just be my authentic self. Now it’s not like we live in some reality where we just like unicorns and rainbows constantly and we just create whatever we want. Like the Jetsons, you go, I’m hungry, here’s a button and like whatever. I actually don’t want that anyway. Like by the time AI does that shit, I hope to be long gone. But we are not in that space where we can just play constantly.

Amber RichBook (11:47.971)
Yeah.

Amber RichBook (11:57.359)
Yeah.

Amber RichBook (12:00.876)
Yeah.

Nick McGowan (12:09.721)
but how do we be ourselves with our identity to be able to play?

Amber RichBook (12:13.486)
Let’s see, Nick, but that’s the theme. I play all the time. Play is a part of it. I think also, so there’s so many different things I would jump through my head as you were talking. And I’m trying to get there. I’m going to get there. My matrilineal line, my grandmother was brought here by a white family in 1961 from Antigua to be there up here. And my mother was a first-generational.

college graduate and then I was a second generational college graduate and each my grandmother worked to get her GED coming to America. She got her GED. She worked as a maid in upstate New York. And then once she had my mom and my aunt’s and uncle, she went to school to be a nurse because that’s what she needed to or she felt she needed to do.

than my mom or CNA, right? Cause my mom went to college. then there’s me. And so it’s kind of like you mentioned the Bible earlier. I like to tell people like I am an Abrahamic prophecy fulfilled for my grandmother who came to America.

for this opportunity from her little island. And in that rate, she worked for white people. And growing up cultured, I didn’t grow up knowing that I was Caribbean because no one wanted to be, everybody wanted to be American. So I was having Caribbean experiences in the household. And I think by the time I got, cause I grew up, where I was growing up, people were like, you’re mixed, you’re not.

you’re not just black. And my dad’s family, they’re from the Virginia that’s there, we could trace back to there. And I’m like, yo. And so I was in college, I’m like, I’m not just black. I’m not just African American. I’m not just this. But also it was in high school. So why is all of this relevant? Because it leads to my life. In high school, as a ninth grader, the same year that I was like, okay, I don’t wanna be a whatever I wanna be.

Amber RichBook (14:29.528)
do here and this is the first time that I’m telling this story and I’m telling this story because of our pre-show conversation and you said I the real, I want the ball, I want all this stuff. So this is the first time I’m sharing this publicly. When I was in the ninth grade, I went to a predominantly white high school where less than 10 % of the high school population were students of color.

And I had just moved, this was in the Poconos, and I had just moved from New Jersey because my mom was like, I want you to have a better opportunity, et cetera, et cetera. And at this time, these innate things, I have to share my cultural experience, right? Because people don’t, it’s going to make sense.

Nick McGowan (15:11.865)
Context.

Amber RichBook (15:12.022)
you proximity to whiteness will help me be better. That’s why my name is Amber. How many times in high school, right? I remember where there was a substitute teacher and there was another black girl in my class, but she did. She wasn’t there for the day and her name was Shaniqua. Like that was for real her name, but she wasn’t there. So when the substitute got to her name, she’s like, Shaniqua, like whatever. And so she’s looking at me and I’m like, I’m not Shaniqua.

Nick McGowan (15:16.473)
Hmm.

Mmm.

Nick McGowan (15:40.078)
Man.

Amber RichBook (15:41.888)
My name was at the end of the thing. So she’s like, Amber Walters. And I’m like, that’s me. man, what? She was going to write me up, me to the principal’s office because she thought I was being funny. And like my classmates were like, no, she’s Amber. I had to get up and show my ID. So having that experience as a ninth grader, then being voted freshman class president, the first black president at a high school, like that was the thing.

Nick McGowan (15:42.959)
You don’t live here no more.

Amber RichBook (16:11.958)
at 14 and you got all this pressure. And so now you’re on the softball field and you’re in gym playing softball and you beat the popular girl. You beat the girl who’s been in this district since she was in kindergarten and all her friends and surrounding around. And for the first time in my life, I was called the N word and it was swing and N swing, swing and N swing.

And that was my first time. So the culture shock of going from the urban Jersey experience to this predominantly white experience, not harming anyone, just like, yeah, we’re people, we’re ninth graders. Like, it’s cool. Like, I’m just, I’m Amber. Like, we’re gonna be class president. It’s gonna be cool, like class or whatever. And I had never had that experience. And I’m like, all I could feel was like, don’t call me that.

Nick McGowan (16:44.867)
Yeah.

Amber RichBook (17:05.942)
And I remember, swing and then swing. You think you won and you think you won. You cheated, you did. And I’m like, what the fuck? And all I went in is to warrior.

And it was like my mother, my grandmother, my grandmother before them. My grandmother is a product of Portuguese colonization in Antigua, taking advantage of an indigenous woman on the island, right? So she had no home from either side. And I defended myself, but I was punished for that incident.

And I was the first, and I tell my kids, joke about it now, right? I’m like, I was the first black president in my high school, the first one to be voted in, and the first one to be impeached.

And that followed me through my whole high school career. And it was in my 20s that this particular woman reached out to me via LinkedIn. And she’s like, I just want to apologize for what happened in the ninth grade. And I’m like, girl, you fucked up my high school career. I graduated in the top 10 % of my class, but that still followed me. And that followed me. And we talked about the Alchemist early on before we came on the show. And I’m sharing this depth of, because you want the real world, I’m going tell you. It shared that depth because that depth.

Nick McGowan (17:54.403)
Hahaha.

Nick McGowan (18:07.715)
Ha ha ha.

Amber RichBook (18:23.916)
because it then took me on that journey when I did go back to college and I finished in accounting as a non-traditional student and I went to the big four as a public accountant.

the only one who looked like me. And so it was now my 14 year old self back in this swing and end swing. Go get this thing and go get this coffee and go get this thing. And you’re like, what is happening? But that’s where the world is like, where you talked about where our parents, you got to go to college, you got to graduate, you got to get the good job, you got to do what you got to do, you got to keep your head down. For me and my reality, it’s you got to work twice as hard, you got to be twice as this, don’t show your emotion, don’t show

You don’t have these things. So even as I built my career in corporate, right? I built myself to be the corporate mermaid where I tell people don’t ask me shit about corporate because I do what I want when I want how I want whenever I want but I had to heal that 14 year old girl who thought that she wasn’t enough and that thought and and and took the emotional responsibility so me as the adult going to her like we don’t

Like what Michelle Obama say, when they go low, we go higher, whatever she said, right? Like, no, that has nothing to do with you. That has nothing to do with you. And so me moving in the frequency of love.

giving people back their pain. You mentioned trauma early, giving them back their trauma. Because just like people of color have generational trauma innate in our DNA, so do Europeans, so do Caucasians, so do white Americans. We all have these different generational things running through our veins and it’s what are we going to do with them?

How are we going to reconcile? How are we going to bring the healing? And it looks like that accountability, it looks like no. And so what ended up happening and then I’ll wrap it up because I know I just gave you so much at one time.

They tried to, I don’t want to say they tried to set me up, but I live near UNC, like the museum, and they were like, we need you to go audit the museum. I’m a little baby associate. You want me to audit a museum’s millions of dollars painting and do an inventory count? I said, okay. I said, okay. And I used to have my, my Bob, my professional white girl looking black hair.

so I could be palatable. And I remember the museum couldn’t find a painting, Nick. It was $7 million. And they were like, you can leave. And when we find it, we’ll let you know. I was like, I am not leaving here until y’all find this painting. I am not leaving here. But seeing the pressure that was on me in that now moment.

Nick McGowan (21:12.921)
No, my God.

Amber RichBook (21:19.982)
think is the same pressure that I felt in being voted class president as a ninth grade girl. And I sat there and I sat there and they found it because I was like, God, they got to find this. And it was in between some other paintings. But just seeing how my inner child, the intensity that I had and so to bring it home, how

Spirit, source, universe, your life path is gonna keep putting you in positions until you get comfortable. And so I remember my mom, she was in seminary school when I was a kid. And I remember going with her and this was in Madison, New Jersey at Drew University. And we pulled up to Burger King. Again, these are things I’ve never told anyone, right? You want the depth, the raw.

And she’s like, Amber, you didn’t want to get out the car. And I’m like, what? She’s like, I don’t want to get out the car because all those white people are going to look at me. Now, my family, my mom had white friends. Like, we had a very diverse.

friend experience. was not isolated from things. My grandfather, was friends with Italians. I was in school, so it was very diverse, but there was a different energy. It was a different sense. It was a different experience. So now as an adult woman, it was like, right. When we were talking about self mastery and mindset, in my TED talk, I talked about the Oro Burrows, the loop of life, the beginning and the end being one, the death and

and the birth and the rebirth and the death and the birth, that cycle. And it wasn’t until I finally, in my adult years, got into the same space as my white peers, my white colleagues, and I stopped shrinking myself to inferiority. And that looked like my grand living and becoming my grandmother’s deferred dream that she wasn’t able to witness in her living life.

Amber RichBook (23:22.99)
Everything in life connects in that capacity. I had to learn to be confident as an eight year old. I had to learn to be confident as a 14 year old, as a 20 something year old. Now in my thirties to be like, I stand in my power. Now we know that we create our reality. And I was creating my reality at all of those ages. All of those experiences were my own personal lessons to learn. I’m sorry, y’all. Thank you for your patience. I was just running my mouth.

Nick McGowan (23:26.669)
Yeah.

Nick McGowan (23:40.665)
Yeah.

Nick McGowan (23:51.801)
Yeah, thank you for the Ted talk. mean, well, truthfully that’s some of the best magic that happens within podcasting. Even if we just had a few minute conversation, we probably wouldn’t get to this. And I think it’s on me as the host to be able to facilitate this and allow you to have those conversations.

Amber RichBook (23:52.944)
I know I was like

Nick McGowan (24:16.695)
and allow in the sense of like, let’s move in a direction that makes it open for you to be able to do that. There’s a lot that you put out there, obviously, and those that are gonna listen to this, they’re like, yeah, there’s a whole lot. But there’s a lot of great things and it’s all also woven together and there’s patterns to that. There’s system problem to start off with. Those white kids in the fucking Poconos, I know, yeah, it’s much different than East Orange.

Amber RichBook (24:40.782)
because you know the polka-dos, you’re from up there.

Nick McGowan (24:46.243)
and vastly different. I grew up in the burbs, but in a more diverse section of the burbs, not the higher end burbs. Like if anybody’s from Springfield, Pennsylvania, you know, you’re different than Prospect Park and Glen Olden. And there’s versions to that, but then also living in the city at times. And my mom grew up in the city in Philly as a tiny little goofy looking redhead kid.

She got picked on because she looked like Pippi Longstocking basically. And she had problems with Italians and other Irish people as well as African-American people and Latin people and like all these different groups. But all of that comes from a fucking system problem and generational trauma because everybody’s pitted against themselves. And ultimately what I’m learning is that it gets further back to the white people.

Amber RichBook (25:34.796)
Yep. Yep. Yep.

Nick McGowan (25:41.753)
that said, think we’re better than you. So we’re just gonna do this the way that we think. And even with like a male and female sort of thing, like men think they’re better than women and I don’t understand it. Like I thank God daily for my partner because she’s so much smarter than I am and so much more grounded and there are things that we learn. And that’s the way that even when you think of men and women being together, let’s just use that as an example where

Men should be the leaders. That’s not correct. Women actually lead us. She leads me a lot and will lead me into a direction that then I can do my part and go from there. I think there’s awareness to this and understanding what some of those systems are. Like why are there poor sections of a city or a town? probably because they’re all pushed that direction and everything’s fucking concrete. They can’t even grow their own vegetables. They can’t even…

try to get out of the system that they’re stuck within. And even what you’re saying with your mom saying, well, we’re gonna go closer to a white direction because proximity, that makes me think of from the Irish people that were brought over here that were like, well, you’re a slave, but you’re white. And why don’t we just make you a cop? Because, know, fuck it, you’ve got a little bit of authority, but you’re not gonna have all the authority.

I’m not saying that I understand what you went through at all because really I don’t. But I can see how some of that is even within my cells that needs to be processed out. I think of the shit that I went through as a kid being a token white kid. kids would make fun of me because I was a chunky little kid and I think I’ve sized appropriately as I got older. But there are things that I remember going, well, this doesn’t feel right. But I do often think back to

there was literally just a handful of different people, a handful of Asian kids that were in the school or some black kids, but it was primarily a bunch of douchebag white kids that thought they had privilege over anybody that was slightly different than them. And again, I think that’s a system problem and it’s a generational trauma thing. So we, as the people, get to do something with it. I think it’s cool that that person came back to you and said,

Amber RichBook (27:54.594)
Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Nick McGowan (28:00.599)
I’m sorry, I’ve thought about this. Clearly they’ve thought about it for a long time. Does not make it right for what they said. However, I do think there is a little bit of, I don’t want to say grace, but understanding context of how we grew up. Because look, I’ve said some fucked up shit growing up that I didn’t understand was as fucked up. But then when I understood what it was, and that it was, I don’t know, entrenched in racism or whatever.

Amber RichBook (28:14.915)
yeah. Yeah.

Nick McGowan (28:29.537)
I could tie back to where that came from. There was an example. My mom was about to buy a house. She grew up pretty poor and had me at 22. And I don’t know, maybe like 10, 12 years old, something like that. She bought her first house. And I remember her driving, we’re driving down the street and she pointed at somebody doing lawn work. And she was like, we’re going to get one of them. I was like, a lot?

I would hope we’re gonna buy a house. And she was like, no, somebody that can basically be our slave and do our lawn work. And I remember, I don’t know, being 12 or whatever and be like, that sounds kind of fucked up. But all the rest of these assholes that I’m around kind of say similar things. And nobody’s really breaking out of that. Their responsibility was to change that so that we, as our kids, you know, like us, were able to do things differently. But it’s not on anybody else, it’s on us to do something with it.

I think really the failure would be if you and I are having this conversation and then we get off here and we’re both fucking assholes and douchebags of people and we don’t do anything from it. Because I know that I still have problems at times like I’m really impatient, especially driving. And if somebody is driving in the fast lane, going 10 miles an hour under the speed limit, I question how they even fucking put shoes on, let alone do anything else in the world. But I understand that there’s pieces of that that

Once we’re aware of something, we can do something with it. So we started this by talking about identity. Your identity was shifted at that point. Yeah, that girl kind of fucked up your high school. Also, the story that you told by yourself in your own head based on unprocessed trauma that was literally in your genetic code was pitted against you. Like any work that was done prior to you hadn’t been fully accomplished and completed.

Amber RichBook (29:58.018)
Yeah.

Nick McGowan (30:23.981)
and then something came up and you needed to do something with it. It took you time. The fact that you’re doing something with it, your girls are gonna be better off. At the same time, it’s on them to do whatever happens to them. Like I had a conversation with a friend maybe about a year or so ago where they’re like, I’m gonna do everything different from what my parents did. And his parents were, they fucked him up.

Amber RichBook (30:27.714)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick McGowan (30:46.859)
And he’s doing everything he can. And at one point he had a realization. He was like, and still, bet these kids are going to be in Therapy at some point saying something about me because everybody’s going to interpret it the way that they want and how they do it from there. So the systems of this is fucked up, but it is what we work within. The generational trauma is fucked as well, but here we are.

Amber RichBook (30:54.54)
Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Amber RichBook (31:03.328)
Yeah, and so, yeah, yeah. And so even in your response, I appreciate it. And it is multifaceted because we have our own experiences. While your mom had her experiences, you had your own. And while my mom and my grandmother had their experiences, I had my own. So I think that…

I can’t necessarily just leave it to my generational DNA pass down trauma without acknowledging the impact of my own personal life experience and those that the things that could be traumatic had I not chose to heal and navigate through them. Right. And so there are some people who don’t have the higher mind or the discipline or the wherewithal.

Nick McGowan (31:36.461)
Of

Amber RichBook (31:58.134)
to heal themselves so they may not have been able to receive an apology from someone who has caused them harm, right? So when we think about…

the Holocaust experience, people are still apologizing for that experience. Because just because we apologize doesn’t mean it takes away the pain of that experience. And that’s the empathy that…

We have to extend to all persons who have been impacted. It does not take away. We can apologize and extend grace and those groups of people who did what they did to that particular community, they may have learned their lesson, but it does not take away the pain. It does not absolve it. I may, and that’s no different than parents, right? There’s a book called Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. As a parent, you do have the responsibility to

Nick McGowan (32:35.14)
Yeah.

Nick McGowan (32:57.902)
Yeah.

Amber RichBook (33:01.8)
listen to your child and be accountable, but your apology is not gonna fix their fucked upness. It’s not gonna fix the pain. They themselves have to do the work to absolve that. And sometimes even when they do, the relationship may not go back to being the same because of how impactful the trauma is. And that’s just psychological in itself.

Nick McGowan (33:21.945)
Yeah.

Amber RichBook (33:27.328)
And so it’s just so multifaceted and I, and I can’t speak for a collective of people, but I can speak for myself and like anyone listening. One of the things that I teach my collective specifically persons of indigenous or persons of color, but anybody, right? If you heal yourself, you have the ability to heal generations before you and generations after you, which is able to have a healthy, loving, thriving relationship with my mom.

Nick McGowan (33:29.807)
For real.

Nick McGowan (33:50.319)
Mm-hmm.

Amber RichBook (33:57.42)
and healthy, loving, thriving relationship with my children while still having, and I think the other thing is too, sometimes people think that these healed Relationships mean perfection and no mistakes and no disagreements and we are all holding hands and singing the Munchkin song. No, it’s how we navigate through conflict. It’s how we resolve the conflict.

Nick McGowan (34:09.251)
Yeah.

Amber RichBook (34:21.312)
Is my mom accountable for herself? Am I accountable for myself? Are my children accountable for themselves? So, this is good. You’re good.

Nick McGowan (34:33.167)
I mean, I think the big thing here is to really understand that no matter what we go through and how we look at things, there may be an interpretation, there may be things that are kind of blocking us or propelling us in one direction, but it is ultimately up to us to do. And something that has come up as you were talking about, like, I can’t speak for an entire type of people or race of people, et cetera. I think there are things where some people can say, yeah, well, the Holocaust was different than this, or we should look at

what happened with this and we should feel a certain way. Any of these things don’t take away from somebody else. The Holocaust is really not as different as what the fucking people did when they got to this country and they’re like, look at this land, who the fuck are you? you grow things here, cool.

Amber RichBook (35:17.666)
Nick, I wasn’t ready. But they do, right? But they do. And that’s the systemic issue that you started with earlier in the conversation. And it’s no right or wrong. It’s just we have to, for those of us that see, see.

Nick McGowan (35:20.857)
But I mean, it doesn’t take away from that.

Amber RichBook (35:39.934)
understand. And then you mentioned something earlier too that I wanted to reflect on where you were like, this stuff is fucked up. But those that know the yin and yang, the dark and the light, the ugliness, the fucked upness is here for a reason. Because there’s, there’s the balance. And that’s the fairness.

Nick McGowan (35:56.879)
Yep. And there’s a balance to it as well.

Amber RichBook (36:05.386)
of life that is a universal principle and a universal law. And then when we understand like on this mindset mastery journey of life, we have these fucked up experience based on what our soul needs to learn and understand for its own development. Who do, who did I come here to be? Well,

Obviously, I tell people, I’m like, I’m pretty sure in a past life, I was a man and I was an asshole. And then I got sent here to be a woman and specifically a black woman to have certain life experiences to humble me and give me my soul more evolutionary experiences. That’s my own self theory, y’all. That’s just my own self theory. But.

Nick McGowan (36:45.785)
Damn.

Nick McGowan (36:50.127)
I love that. I understand, you know, I get that. think there’s like there’s shit that I’ve learned over the past few years that has propelled me in a different direction where even with that sort of stuff, I’m like, I wonder what will happen next. And how faith and religion and stuff like that ties in. Now full transparency, I’m a big fan of the OG Jesus, not the Republican Jesus, because that’s strange.

Amber RichBook (37:18.23)
tables at the synagogue because he’s like what y’all doing selling stuff in my father’s house I’m throwing all this shit over okay the one who Russia released that the oldest Bible was found in Ethiopia and the oldest form of Christianity was found in northern eastern Africa that Jesus the one with the woolen hair why are you starting problems why are you starting why are you starting problems on your podcast

Nick McGowan (37:19.395)
Yeah! Ugh… Man… Yeah!

shit, even with that.

Nick McGowan (37:35.695)
Well, that’s where we all started from so even if you think of like race That’s what I’m fucking here for This is what I’m here for disrupt things I actually I talk about that a little bit at different times with that specific story about Jesus. So I read a book Maybe mid-2000s called the beautiful outlaw and a little bit context. I’d played in church bands for the better part of a decade so I was

in churches, like in Green Room style in, know, and somebody told me about that book. I read it. It was basically like, well, Jesus will show up to people in the way that they expect to see him. And let’s look at his stories that actually break down context. Like even when they say don’t eat pork, it’s because it was dirty and they couldn’t actually get the viruses out of the pork so people would die. We eat pork now and it’s different.

but people will look at things and like, Bible said this. It’s like lot of it was metaphors and parables and just trying to get you to understand the fucking story in your stupid little brain.

Amber RichBook (38:38.222)
And the Bible was rewritten, one that the Americas, okay, so since you brought this up, there is called the Council of Nicaea. And there once was a king who was upset and scared of witches because witches ruled the world. He also was abhorred by his sexuality and wrote a lot of things against himself as if it would help him. So.

Nick McGowan (38:48.306)
15th century.

Nick McGowan (38:53.039)
Ugh.

Amber RichBook (39:05.934)
What you say? Homophobic and then that. Yes. And then there are missing books because people don’t know that you have the Vatican that has all the books that were written. So.

Nick McGowan (39:06.093)
And then that became literally gospel. What the fuck?

Nick McGowan (39:18.073)
yeah. Well, they changed things in the 15th century because they were like, this is what we want this to be. This is when King James came out. Context people, context is important. And we’re not just spewing this shit to just spew the shit. If there are systems in place, yeah, but there are systems, there are things that happen. There are biases of people that say, I am afraid to be me. So I’m going to do these things. We’re fucking seeing it now.

Amber RichBook (39:22.998)
Yes.

Yeah, you can go to a library. Yeah.

Nick McGowan (39:44.525)
We’re seeing it with everything that’s happening right now. all right, so, I mean, what the fuck? We’re seeing a lot of it now, but so that story specifically, context is important. Jesus actually spent time braiding a whip and then turned it on. The man probably sat there for a while, like an hour, maybe even longer. He might’ve even braided some of the whip at home, because he knew what was going on. He didn’t just walk in and go, what in the fuck?

Amber RichBook (39:50.382)
Nick you are funny

Amber RichBook (39:57.848)
Yeah.

Nick McGowan (40:13.615)
boom, and blow everything up. That’s not how it worked. That’s not what context is about. And the reason why he did that was because these people were doing something against everybody and the actual premise of being community driven. That was selfish. wasn’t just that they were doing something in God’s house and God said, no. A lot of people will just eat the shit that they’re fed and just keep consuming. Reason why it keeps going back to that is again, it’s systems.

Amber RichBook (40:25.046)
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Nick McGowan (40:41.455)
And I think there are biases that people look at, which then infect or affect whichever way you wanna look at it, our identity. I appreciate that we’ve gone on this tangent in certain ways with this sort of stuff. And I think it’s important for us all to understand that the identity that we have right now is evolving and it may not actually be the identity that we want it to be. And that trauma might be a part of that, the subconscious winning strategy, which we didn’t really touch about.

Amber RichBook (40:53.698)
We did.

Amber RichBook (41:02.092)
Yes.

Amber RichBook (41:05.537)
Yes.

Nick McGowan (41:10.903)
is a part of that, these strategies that develop us. But what’s your advice for somebody who’s listening that’s on their path towards self-mastery?

Amber RichBook (41:19.818)
that there is no end to the path of self-mastery.

You must be willing to change as many times, change identities as many times as often of times as you feel led to in your residence. And sometimes in this identity self mastery journey, some people do choose to stop and land at a destination. And that’s where they want to cap their beingness on this identity. And there’s no right or wrong to any of it.

Amber RichBook (41:59.918)
That’s the biggest thing that I would say. There’s no right or wrong to this path of self mastery at all.

you get to decide this is your world, this is your reality. If you want to be a single woman today or a single man today and then say tomorrow you want to be partnered and that’s your reality and that’s the identity you want to shift into, do that. And I think the biggest thing is us being willing to look at our lives objectively, understanding that each individual is just filled with opinions and that.

is what forms the facts of their life and to respect the opinions and facts of one life as a way of you respecting and honoring the facts and opinions of your life, which is much like the namaste, right? The God in me sees the God in you.

Nick McGowan (42:48.567)
Yeah, beautiful way to put that. And I think this has been great. I really appreciate you being on. We could probably sit here and just shoot the shit for like hours and just keep recording. But before I let you go, where can people find you and where can they connect with you?

Amber RichBook (43:03.638)
People can find me on social media everywhere at a.richbook on LinkedIn, Amber Rich Book, arichbook.com. Put my name in Google, I’ll pop up. But thank you, Nick, for having me and allowing me to share these things with your community. Thank you all for having me.

Nick McGowan (43:23.779)
Absolutely, it’s been a pleasure. appreciate your time.

Amber RichBook (43:26.392)
Thank you.