J.R. Martinez | Survival, Strength, and Spirit in the Face of Adversity Part 1

Srini Rao: Jr. Welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join

JR Martinez: us. Thank you for having me on your show, man. It's a pleasure to be here and excited about the conversation.

Srini Rao: I found about you by way of your publicist who told me, you know that you are a Dancing With the Stars, that you had served in the military, like all these crazy things together.

But then I had a chance to read your book Full of Heart and got a really deep understanding of kind of everything. Has led you to where you're at. So I wanted to start by asking you, what is one of the most important lessons that you learned from your mother that have influenced and shaped what you've ended up doing with your life and your career?

Because the thing I got from the book was that this is like a pivotal relationship in your

JR Martinez: life. Oh man, there's so old. And sorry to little sound effects, but it just makes me. Because, and we can, I'm sure we'll probably unpack some of this stuff. You're right, yes. It's a very pivotal relationship in my life.

But what if I told you that my mother and I have not spoken for the last four years? Whoa. Okay. And so that would throw people as you just responded, with a whoa, that would throw people com that would throw 'em off. And just a curve ball coming outta nowhere, and, but I would tell you this, I would tell you this, and there's two ways to look at this, and that's at the stage of life that I'm in.

There's, I'd look at it both ways. So my mother experienced, as you read in the book, a lot of trauma, a lot of trauma from losing a child to just relationships to my grandmother, my grandfather essentially abandoning her, getting rid of her. She. There was a lot of physical abuse verbal abuse, emotional you name it.

And my mother experienced all that trauma before she had me. Then she has me and she unfortunately falls into this really abusive relationship that was physical and I witnessed a lot of it, and it became a routine where. I would, when he decided to drink and get triggered by something on a weekend, that it was my responsibility to call 9 1 1 and have them come to the house, take him away only for Monday for him to get out.

And we would just keep the routine going. All right. That was the cycle. And we did this for a few years and I remember one time he. He was triggered so badly that he actually put my mother and I in a car and told us that he was gonna kill us. And he drove around with us for a few hours and he was just he was literally driving around drinking and he was, we were just like, kinda I don't wanna use the word hostage but essentially like we, there was no way for us to get out of his grasp.

But then finally we were able to. Cops showed up, whatever, took him away. And I remember the next day being with my mother out in public and my mom had this demeanor, this like attitude of chirpy, happy, smiley. And my mom's four foot 11, right small. But man has the biggest laugh, the biggest smile that can fill any space.

And I remember looking at her. And I was so dis distraught by this. I was like I, it doesn't make any sense why she's in such a good mood after what happened. And I asked her, why are you smiling so much? And she straight out said, I smile to invite the blessings. I smile because whatever good that is coming our way, I'm able to receive it.

If I don't smile, then I'm not able to receive those blessings. Now you hear that and the listeners hearing this right now and saying, wow, that is so beautiful. That is so poetic. That is so whatever. And yes it is. Although at that age it didn't make sense to me. But as I got older and I said yes, that is at the root that is focusing on what you can control.

That is finding ways to. Still be grateful for this moment, for this opportunity that blessings will still come. To be able to receive them all of that is incredibly beautiful. However, as I got even older, 'cause I'm 40 now, as I got older, I then realized, oh wait, no, there's some, a lot of that's not really healthy.

Part of that is my mother being she's from El Salvador and she came to the United States as an undocumented immigrant. And then she became a citizen and then she learned English and she worked multiple jobs. And the typical story of most immigrants. And my mother never had the ability or the resources to go and talk to anybody.

About her trauma, about her experiences. She never got the opportunity to just cry and grieve. She always had to put on this face that everything was okay, and I'm inviting these blessings. But in that all she was doing was essentially just kicking the can down the road as we've heard the same.

And as I got older, I realized I had similarly been conditioned to follow that. Although there's something in that's beautiful where you don't let things get the best of you, and you find ways to just push through a day on the same token, because both things can be true. It also made me realize I wasn't really dealing with a lot of stuff, and I was putting on this front and this smile like everything was great yet.

Behind the scenes, I was struggling and nobody would've ever known unless you were really connected and close to me. And that was a whole separate conversation because I didn't let people get close to me for a very long time. I didn't trust people, I didn't believe, I didn't understand what unconditional love was.

I didn't believe people could unconditionally love me. I mean it. So my mother gave me a lot in a sense of where. She, just by living I learned just by watching her, by witnessing the way that she showed up. But then in the same token, she also gave me a lot in the way that it made me realize, oh, that's the things that I want to break.

Those aren't the things that I want to carry on for me, JR. But then also as a parent, as a husband, as a friend, as whatever that I may be to people. And it's no different than my father who when I was nine months old, left and wasn't in the picture. And I finally met him for the first time in 2019 and I told him, I said, man, even though you weren't in my life, you taught me so you taught me so much.

And you could still be taught things even though there isn't really the intention of trying to teach anybody something. I. And what I told him he taught me was not what not to do as a parent or as an individual in general. And it's when things get difficult, when things get a little cloudy and confusing, you still show up.

That's what matters.

Srini Rao:se.

So with all that in mind you mentioned also that you haven't talked to your mother in four years and I think that it would be hard for us to continue this thread without addressing that open :** loop.

Srini Rao:

**JR MartinezIt'd be funny it'd be fun though, right? Just to keep a listener on suspense and just have to like, sit there and then literally the last five minutes we talk about it and people are like, ah but we're not gonna do that to, to the listener.

But listen, my mother, because of a lot of the trauma and the losses that she experienced. Now I'm very careful with words. I try to be at least sometimes I get a little too excited, but for the most part, I try to be careful with words. And so when people say, this person is dealing with a lot of, and I'm like are they dealing with it or are they just experiencing it?

There's a difference between the two. And so my mother has experienced it. She hasn't dealt with it. And again, I understand when I was a child that she didn't have the luxury, the resources. Also culturally that wasn't something that was highly encouraged, was to go and talk to somebody. And so my mother had developed these ways of prevent protecting herself from ever feeling that loss again.

I was the only constant thing in her life. The only I was consistently in her life for. My entire youth, right? I was the only person that was there every single day, and my mother used guilt as a way to also, because of her fear to keep me there, that I would never leave her because that was her biggest fear.

She used guilt. My mother took out a lot of things on, out on me that weren't even my fault. And listen, I. I love my mother. She's still alive. I love her to death. I am forever grateful for the things that she did for me. She did the best that she could with what she had and what she knew. But at the end of the day, this is my truth.

And it's not that I'm trying to expose her and trying to get it is just my truth. And these are the, these are the honest conversations that I had to come to terms with. I realized for so much of my adult life I had been burying and oppressing these thoughts and not wanting to think of my mother this way.

And my mother, when I was a child, man, I. A typical boy I got a two and a half year old son and I see my, I see myself in him. I see how he, how wild he is and how much energy he has and he gets into everything. And that's how I was I was the same. I was a typical kid and a typical boy for that matter and I got into trouble a lot.

But I also got into trouble a lot at school because of the things that I was experiencing in my home life. My home life was not healthy. And if it wasn't my mother, that was, having somebody put her hands on her and drag her around the house by her hair. It was somebody in my complex that was, it was happening to I was just, that's what I was surrounded by and I was struggling and no one ever, including my mother, ever sat down to really say, let's talk about this.

Instead, the only thing my mother knew how to do was to give me a hug to tell me she loved me and to make me a delicious meal. And man did I enjoy that meal. But there was never a, like a real in depth conversation. It was never real. We all strive for connection and there was no real connection in, in the midst of really discussing the trauma and the adversity and the challenges and so my mother, when I would get into trouble.

My mother, instead of sitting down and saying, Hey, what's going on? Let's get to the root of this. My mom punished me for it. Now again, I'm 40. So I still was in that era where it was like understandable and acceptable to some degree that your parents put their hands on you. But my mother had just put her hands on me.

Man. My mother whooped my ass, man. Like my mom, I grew up in Arkansas and there was a thing called capital punishment, where literally if you got in trouble at school, a parent could agree for the, for a principal staff member to literally give you like spankings? Yeah, like with the paddle.

Like this wooden paddle that they had, and I can't tell you how many lickings I got at school. And they were like, all right, cool. Go back to class. And my ass is sore for the rest of the day and I can't sit down in my seat comfortably and it's all a mess. But my mom took it to another place because my mom was filled with anger.

She had so much anger towards life. Life had been incredibly unfair to her, and unfortunately she took it out on the one thing she knew was it gonna leave her, and that was me and my mom. When I say my mom beat me, man, like my mom. And I know there's a lot of comedians or a lot of people that would joke my mom got a switch.

I'm like, yeah, my mom did that too, but that was light work for her. My mom at one point grabbed a rope, like literally a rope, and tied my hands and my feet together and literally just didn't care where she was aiming. Just went, and of course I put my hands up to block my face. She would hit me on my arms, on my back.

I. My head, my legs you name it. And and I remember my uncle one time he lived with us for a period and he finally interjected and he told her, you're going to kill him. Stop. And as a kid, you're just like. I was conditioned, man, where I was like there's this book, I think it's a great book and it's a great book for me and I, because it applies a lot to my life and it's called Walking on Eggshells.

And I didn't read it till I was in my early thirties. And when I read this book, it really clicked because for me it was, that was my entire youth. I was always walking on eggshells around my mom. I was al, I come home from school and if I can sense it. The moment I walked in the door, I was like, Ooh, something doesn't feel right.

I was conditioned that I had to be the one to make her happy. Hi mama. Are you okay mama? I love you, mama. Give her a hug, mama. I had to make everything better. That's the way I was conditioned. Now listen, you can really deeply get into some really deep emotional psychology in the sense of we're understanding how that all that behavior would affect my relationships as an adult.

Yeah. And all. I never told anybody, man. I never did because I had to protect my mom again. Another thing I was conditioned to do, protect her. I couldn't. There's, it took me years for me to get to this point where I can comfortably, openly talk about this. Without breaking down or without feeling anger or, and I never really cared about it even as an adult, but my mother as an adult, she started to verbally abuse me.

She knew she couldn't physically put her hands on me and didn't have the same effect, but she knew she could verbally abuse me, and she did. And I remember speaking at this event and it was this in California and it was like this. A trauma organization and you had a bunch of therapists, counselors, social workers, and prior to me speaking the night before, my buddy and I were at the bar and we're grabbing a drink and we ended up running into a couple of people that are gonna be, that are in attendance at the conference.

And I'd meet this guy who's a therapist and we started talking and. And he literally, he was the first one that ever said this to me. He said, wow, JR. You are in a abusive relationship. He says, and it sounds like you're still in it. And I was like, what? And he was like, yeah, you're in an abusive relationship.

And I never would've, I never would've put those words in the same sentence with my mom. Because that's your mom and my mom as a and here's the thing and I talk a lot about rebirths, and I think rebirths are, I think it's a beautiful word. And a lot of people tend to look, hear the word rebirth, and they maybe immediately think of something ending, something dying in order for something to be born.

And I don't, for me, I don't put a lot of emphasis on that because all I can focus on is the birth component. All I could focus on is the beauty that's on the other side of something ending. And all of us have identities and they're all connected to these different things, our roles and who we are and what creates our identity.

And for so long, the identity of. How do let me carefully choose these words because I wanna make sure that I'm getting conveying what it is that I want to convey to the listener. But for so long, like I had, my identity was to just protect my mother and that was my role.

That was my job. I never wanted to out her, I never wanted anybody to think she was a horrible mother. But the thing that my mother's identity for as a parent. Was to take care of me was to, like I was dependent on her for so many years of my life. And then what happened was after I was injured, which if you throw that into the equation, my injury, and we can unpack this, but my injury was essentially there was all this fuel, all this gasoline, all these cans of gasoline just sitting on top of like a pile just waiting for something to ignite it, and my injury was the ignition. That's the thing that lit all of that because once again, it threatened the possibility once again of her losing something else and the only thing she's had in her life consistently. And so naturally, and I understand this and this is why I don't have any anger or anything towards my mom.

I forgive her because I know she was just a broken, and she still is a broken woman because I can relate to that because I remember her period in my life when I was just lashing out and hurting people, but I was broken as well. Now luckily, I was able to surround myself with some amazing people and have so many amazing experiences that.

And it encouraged me to, one, learn how to be vulnerable and be completely transparent with myself. Forget everyone else, be honest with myself, but then go to therapy. And not go to therapy. Listen, there's a lot of people that love to throw out that they're in therapy right now, and that's cool. I'll applaud you.

But listen, there's a lot of therapists and I've been around a lot of them, that they'll ask you all the right questions just to get through it. They'll follow what you want them to hear. They'll validate it. Tony Robbins did this exercise and he asked this host that he was, that was interviewing him, he said, look around the room and see and tell me if you see anything that's brown.

So the host looks around, he says, yeah. And he's like, all right. Tony's did you see anything that was red? And the guy said, no. He said, because you were looking for Brown. He said, now look around to see if you see anything that's red. And the guy looks around and he is oh yeah, I see red. And he is yeah.

The point of that is whatever you're looking for, you can find it to validate your point. That's just, and so as much as I love therapy and encourage therapy, I also know sometimes you can go into a therapist's office and tell 'em what you really want to hear, and guess what? You can feel good when you walk out and tell people, I'm in therapy, and it'll validate a lot of things for you.

But are you really being honest with yourself? And in my opinion, a good therapist will also find ways to be like no let's really unpack that. Let's really talk about this. Let's dig a little bit more. But I luckily had been surrounded by some really incredible people and still am to this day, to where when I went to therapy, I was honest about.

Me being an asshole at times and the way that I would cut off people or, and then and obviously a lot of that stuff from my youth. And so my mother struggled when I, after I was injured, I found my purpose again, and I know we'll get into that. I found my purpose and I just literally took off, man.

I like was, I was like left the hospital and I was like, I'm gonna conquer the world. And I was traveling everywhere. And then. There were some rocky periods of course, but then things started clicking years later and then all of a sudden now I was at the height and I didn't need my mother the same way, and so my mother was unable to have that rebirth from a parenting standpoint and shift to my son doesn't need me.

He's not dependable on me and to provide food or to provide shelter to provide. What my son needs me to do now is to literally just be there for him when he's on the road and it's and it's exhausting or he's he's, there's something going on in his personal life. He just needs someone to talk to, someone to listen to him, someone to tell him that, Hey, I love you.

Someone to say, Hey, I'm gonna pray for you because I don't pray for myself. But my mom always did, and. My mom was unable to, because her validation and her importance was her purpose was taken away from her. And what she did, once again to combat that, was I'm going to verbally abuse you.

I'm going to tell you that you are not good enough. I'm going to tell you that that she literally would tell me many times she did this. She would tell me. I tell people that I don't even have a son and dude, this is literally me. Like for the first six weeks of me being on Dancing with the Stars, I didn't know where my mother was.

Like my mother. My mother, literally three months before my uncle told me, he's dude, she just left in the middle of the night. And I'm like, what do you mean She left? She left. And I'm calling my mom, calling her. She's not responding. I'm tracking her 'cause I paid for her cell phone and I see she's leaving Georgia and she's driving like towards Tennessee and the Midwest. And I'm like, where is she going? She's not answering. But then I see the phone constantly being used. This is wild shit, man. And to the point where I was like, enough, I'm not gonna tolerate this anymore.

And I turned my mother's phone off. I cut her phone off. I paid for it. I cut it off. Do you think my mother ever said, Hey, I'm sorry I just uprooted and left. I'm sorry that I didn't give you an explanation thinking that maybe you'll be worried about me. No, she never acknowledged that. Instead, when she finally came back into the picture and came back home, she, all she was mad about was the fact that I would, had the nerve to cut her phone off.

And I'm like, how do you expect me to still pay for something? When you were, God knows what you were doing like and you weren't even. Had the courtesy to respond to me and with the text and man, I feel like I'm doing therapy right now. I'm sorry. To the listeners that are like, God, Lee Jr. You're unpacking all your trauma on us.

And I'm not trauma, I'm not trying to trauma dump. I'm just being honest. And I want people to understand that as beautiful and profound as that moment was when my mother said, I smiled to invite the blessings. How later in life without her really digging in and. Really doing the work, how it came to bite her, and it came to affect her life to the point where now when she should be smiling to invite the blessings, which is her son doing so well and having two beautiful grandchildren that I know she would love and enjoy to be around, and they would love her.

She's not able to appreciate those blessings. She's not able to receive those blessings, so it's. It's one of those things that had worked on that very micro, but in a macro way of life, it didn't work. And so I finally got to a point through therapy, man. I said, I gotta establish boundaries with my mom.

And I remember, listen, we, there's a whole thing. When I started dating, like that was always a threat to my mom because, oh, now you're gonna forget about your mom. There was always that guilt associated with that. And I remember one day my mom calling me and she went down the rabbit hole blaming me for joining the military because I presented that trauma to her.

Blaming me for so many things. Telling me, once again, she tells people she doesn't have a sign yet on the same. In the same monologue, she's asked, telling me how I don't do anything for her financially and I don't give her any money. And I bought her a house and I pay for her property taxes.

I pay all her bills. I was giving her a stipend every month of just to just be retired and live her life because she was entitled to that and I wanted to try to do the best that I could to help her. In that conversation, I said, mom, I love you. I love you. I'll always be grateful for what you did for me, because I never cared about how she put her hands on me and the way she did.

I never brought that up as an adult. She was the one bringing that up. Oh, you probably hate me because of the way I put my hands on you. And I would say I, I didn't. I don't even think about that because I'm able to bury that and just appreciate you and love you for who you are, but you keep bringing it up.

So that tells me you have guilt. Finally in that conversation, I said to my mom, I can't keep doing this. If you wanna call me and we want to talk about the future and healing and moving forward, I'm a hundred percent game for that. But if you wanna constantly call me and put me through this, then I can't take that phone call.

And she said, fine, then I don't have a son. And she hung up. And that was the last words I heard from my mother till this day so far. Wow. Now whether that changed or not, I don't know. We'll see. Time will tell. I hold space for my mother and my heart and I always will welcome that conversation if she feels inclined to reach out.

But I also know it's not fair to me. It's not fair to the people in my life that if I continue to put myself through something, because I'm not gonna be able to authentically be the best that I can be for the people that I know are. Need me to show up for them,

Srini Rao:

Wow. I appreciate your transparency

JR Martinez: . I guess you didn't expect that, did you? No, I It's funny you mentioned the therapy thing because you're not the first person to say an hour an interview with me feels like an hour of therapy yeah. I don't think you have anything to worry about there.

Srini Rao: You're not the first thing because I was thinking to myself, man, there's so many different directions we could go with this. You, you alluded to the immigrant experience and I relate to that because even in the Indian culture, like I didn't grow up in nearly that trauma as traumatic an environment, but like therapy was stigmatized and it's changing with generations I think as my parents have seen like things like their own friends lose kids and have to go to therapy or.

I remember, like even with among my closest friends, it was the narrative. It's oh the fuck, do you need a therapist or therapist for crazy people? Then they started getting, then our friends started getting divorced and it, and that's very much a cultural thing. Yep. So

one of the things I wonder about it and this is a multilayered question, but what has been the impact of having no steady father figure in your life both on you during and.

JR Martinez: And you as a father as always. There's I I jokingly tell people that know me, that work with me, that are in my circle. I talk, I joke about how I'm, I know I'm going to be that. Older man one day that is gonna be like, let me tell you a story. And the reason I know I'm gonna be that guy because I'm him now.

I'm already that old man now. So you ask me that question, I'm like let me tell you a story and I just have so many stories. And I think that's the cool thing about the life that I've been able to live since since my injury is because I've just. I've just constantly found ways to just show up even when I didn't feel like it.

And through those experiences I get these beautiful stories. So my father, so look, the challenges, man, the challenges is as pretty standard, typical stuff we know in regards to not having a male figure, someone that could guide you, someone that could. Everyone talks about playing sports or how to even potty train you and how do you hold your, how do you hold your penis when you go pee?

I didn't, no one to teach me how to talk to girls. No one to teach me how to like, use tools. No one really talked to me about life, no one else to vent to when oh, mom doesn't understand me, or or anything. I didn't have that. I didn't have. And that, that was a challenge for me.

And I, I yearned to have his presence in my life. As a kid. I just constantly yearned to have him in my life and he was nowhere to be found. Now there's a whole experience where at 16 I actually on my own was able to locate my cousins on his side, and they were in Houston. And I app. I approached my mom and said, I wanna meet him.

I know where they are, and I know where he is. I hadn't spoken to him, but I knew where he was 'cause of my cousins. And my mom, of course, was not happy about that. But after a while she was like, fine. All right, I'll drive you there. And she wasn't driving me there to be like, all right, you know what, you have a right to meet him.

She was driving me. That'd be like, I'm gonna show you the deadbeat that he is. That was her motive. But anyways, I. It was. We showed up in Houston at my grandmother's house, my dad's mom, and she hadn't seen me since I was a baby. And literally I knock on the door by myself. She opens the door and my middle name is Renee.

So that's where JR comes from. I'm Jose Re Martinez. And I just decided not to go by Junior, I go by JR. Jose Renee. And so she literally looked at me, 'cause they used to call me Nene as a kid, and she was like. And I was like, wow, like you, you know who I'm, and she brought me into her house. We sat down, we talked, my mother ended up coming in and ultimately I was like, so where is he?

And she was like, he's not here. And I was like, where is he? She's he got picked up by the cops literally a couple days ago because my dad was always involved in some shit. And whatever. I just put that behind me and I was like at least I tried and just moved on. And I noticed something, man, that in my early twenties when I would I was drinking age and I'd go out and after you leave a club or a bar, like they got the, I I spent the early twenties in San Antonio, Texas, and as soon as you walk out, they got the little taco trucks on the corner and you're like, yo, let's get some tacos.

And I remember one exchange specifically with this man that came up and asked for something. And I said, nah man, I won't give you any money, but I'll buy you something to eat. And he's nah, I don't want something to eat. And it triggered me, man, and I lashed out at this dude and I it, and I asked him, I was like, do you have any kids?

Or whatever? And he was like, yeah but I don't talk to him. And all I did was just unpack everything that I had been dealing with or not dealing with experiencing. And I just unloaded on this guy because this guy was an extension of my father. Oh, here's a man that I can that's not my father, but I can tell him everything that I would tell my father because this man is equally on the streets and doing things that he's not supposed to be doing and not talking to his kids.

And I remember my friends were like, yo, Jr. Chill. What's up man? I'm like, ah, man, the hell with that dude? And they were like, we don't know where that's coming from. And neither did I. And I just kind that's what I, that's how I. When I met him for the first time in 2019 I was 36 years old and my dad is in Mexico.

That's where he is, that's where he is from. My, it turns out my dad got into a lot of trouble and ended up finally having his visa. Restricted and taken back to where he he couldn't come to the United States that he was now banned from coming, ever coming back to the us.

So he's in Mexico, I go visit him. Turns out my dad's homeless. My dad's homeless. My dad literally sleeps on the porch of this lady's like concrete building. It's not even a home, it's a building, a limp.

I asked him, of course, the question, man, why'd you leave? And he tells me very candidly, I just forgot about you. And as hard as that was to hear, because all I ever wanted was this dude just all I ever wanted was to be wanted. And this dude was never in my life. Like it also was like I got I got everything I needed out of this visit.

All the answers I, I had been looking for, I got 'em. I realized that I wasn't the only one. He left other kids. It was like I got seven siblings out there, man and I'm the only boy, which is scary because I'm like, yo man. I could have dated one of my sisters. This is wild. You know what I'm saying?

You really think about it like that. You're like, I could have been one of those stories where it's yeah, we did ancestry.com just to kind see what our what our makeup is and turns out we're related. And I'm like, ah, that's nasty. What do you do now? Did you divorce? You got kids like as weird now, right?

It's creepy. You can't unknow what you know, kind of deal. Yeah. But but I realized. Everything in life is, has its purpose and its timing, and you don't always get the answer when you want it. And you just have to just be patient because life will eventually present you with the opportunity to get that answer.

And I realized at 36 years old, I realized this is why he wasn't in my life as a kid, had he stayed in my life. This would've been the example that I would've followed. My best friend who was with me said to me, man, think about it. God looked after you, man. Like he, he removed him as a piece because he was not emotionally capable to try to give you a hug and at least tell you he loved you and all this stuff.

So he removed that piece. Now your mom presented other challenges, but at least your mom showed you love and. Gave you hugs and took you to the park and took you on trips and did all these great things. And I have such beautiful memories with her. And it all there's closure now.

I haven't spoken to my dad since that visit, and I'm okay with that. If if he passes, if I pass, I'm not gonna have regret. I'm gonna be like, I got the answer that I needed.ß