The Power Transformation Podcast
The Power Transformation Podcast hosted by Alethea Felton, celebrates the resilience, determination, and hope of entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and visionaries who have conquered adversity and various challenges to create meaningful lives.
With her own inspiring journey of living with autoimmune disease since birth (and now thriving), overcoming severe stuttering, and more, Alethea's authenticity adds depth to intimate conversations with her guests who have overcome extraordinary obstacles.
Alethea's heart-centered, introspective, and engaging style elevates this podcast into a movement that inspires listeners to embrace their inner strength, cultivate empowerment, and rise wiser, stronger, and more courageous to achieve their next level of success.
The Power Transformation Podcast
84. Healing from Domestic Violence Through Music & Advocacy with Linda Marks
What if an act of forgiveness could turn a life-threatening situation into a catalyst for personal and spiritual transformation? Linda Marks, an award-winning singer, songwriter, life coach, and social architect, did just that and she takes us through her incredible life journey on this episode of the Power Transformation Podcast.
Join Us As Linda:
- Shares how her love for music became a beacon of hope and determination even as she faced opposition from her own family;
- Recounts surviving a violent assault in her adolescence and how it led to her spiritual awakening;
- Discusses the critical issue of domestic violence, the importance of recognizing and responding to it, and how bystanders can play a crucial role in preventing abuse;
- Describes how she balanced being a single mother with a demanding career as a psychotherapist and life coach and how those roles drove her quest to understand and facilitate healing; and
- Explains the development of the Sanctuary Project, a groundbreaking musical endeavor dedicated to healing and empowering domestic violence survivors.
Connect with Linda:
Episode 84's Affirmation:
I deliberately find ways to grow and stretch and expand my life.
- Thanks for being a part of The Power Transformation Podcast community!
New episodes are released every Wednesday, so follow to not miss an episode.
- Want to be a guest on The Power Transformation Podcast? Send Alethea Felton a message on PodMatch, here.
What comes to your mind when you hear the title the Sanctuary Project.
Alethea Felton:I want you to think about that, because you're going to learn more about what that actually means in relation to today's guest, linda Marks. Linda Marks is an award-winning singer and songwriter, a performing artist, a life coach, author, body cycle therapist and social architect, as well as so much more. But when I say the Sanctuary Project, this is a major project that Linda, as well as other musicians, have been working on, and it all connects with her purpose in life of healing the traumatized heart, the relationship between the emotional heart and empowering people globally. Linda is definitely an incredible person and I am so glad that I have had the opportunity to meet her, and she has so many insights to share, as well as telling us more about what the Sanctuary Project is all about and her journey on this road to healing through music. All on this episode of the Power Transformation Podcast.
Alethea Felton:Hey y'all, welcome back to another episode of the Power Transformation Podcast, and if you've been listening for a while, you all know that I love to say hey y'all, that's just me, that's my phrase, that's what I say. I am a Southerner, born and raised in Southeastern Virginia, and I use y'all pretty often in casual conversation and with people with whom I am close, and you are my podcast community and I am absolutely grateful for you. So that is why I say y'all more often than not, and I want to jump right into this interview today. I am so grateful for those of you who are new to the Power Transformation podcast and for those of you who have been with me since the early days or from the beginning. I am so grateful for you and for those of you, as I said, who are new. You are now a part of the Power Transformation community.
Alethea Felton:A lot of absolute wonderful things are happening with the podcast and with the overall branding of who I am as Alethea Felton, and I'm going to be sharing so much more with you in the weeks to come and months to come. So stay tuned with that. You continue to make this podcast a success and so, therefore, I thank you for it. We're going to begin with our affirmation Continue to say these affirmations so that it becomes a part of you, and I'm going to say the affirmation once and then you repeat it. I deliberately find ways to grow and stretch and expand my life. I am so thrilled today to have Linda Marks as my guest on the Power Transformation podcast. I am so happy that we connected, linda, welcome.
Linda Marks:Thank you so much, Alethea. It is a total joy to be here.
Alethea Felton:Thank you so much, and our audience is going to learn so much about you. You have an amazing resume of sorts, but even outside of that, just what you do to help others and the things that you have overcome in your life are so inspiring, and so I look forward to this interview today. Linda you all, I don't even know where to begin with her. She is a singer, songwriter, but, more importantly, she is an award-winning singer and songwriter. She is a psychotherapist, she is a life coach, an author, social architect, a mom, a friend and so much more. And, linda, before we get into the heart of your interview, I always just like to ask a random icebreaker question, something fun and lighthearted, but this is my question for you today, linda what was your dream job as a kid?
Linda Marks:As a kid. Well, there are two different sides of it. I wanted to be a veterinarian because I love cats and dogs and I wanted to help them. I would take strays in off the streets, any kitty or doggy when I walked down the street. I would just know how to approach them so that they'd come up to me. So I very much wanted to work with cats and dogs.
Linda Marks:And while I didn't become a veterinarian because when I was in college I had would have had to take this class called mammology, which would have required me to dissect a cat, and I refused to dissect a cat it was bad enough when I had to do a frog and a worm and then a rat. You know, I didn't want to have to do a cat. So that's why I didn't become a veterinarian. But on the other hand, I've written music for and done benefit concerts for animal shelters. I volunteered at animal shelters. I have seven cats and a dog right now and three of my cats are shelter cats. So the love of the four-legged has been a thread that's gone through my life, even though I wouldn't dissect a cat, which kept me from being able to become a veterinarian a cat which kept me from being able to become a veterinarian.
Alethea Felton:Wow, that is such a remarkable story and I had no idea of that. I'm glad I asked. And I do have to admit to you. My senior year of high school I took a class called anatomy and physiology and we did have to dissect a cat. So I did. Oh my goodness Listeners, don't stop listening to me just because that happened. That was many years ago, but we did. That was part of the course.
Alethea Felton:But one of the things why I don't think that we felt so badly about them is that they weren't cats who had been killed for that purpose. There was something wrong. They had passed away or had been euthanized. But what was fascinating but also kind of interesting about my experience is that when we got down to the very ending of it, our cat had kittens but she had passed away of cancer. The cat we had had had cancer and that's why she passed, and unfortunately they couldn't save her baby.
Alethea Felton:So imagine all these 17 and 18-year-old high schoolers and our group, our specific group I think it was a group of four of us, per specimen got this cat. So that was fascinating and, as you know, I'm a cat lover. But that experience until you brought it up, I kind of blocked it out of my head because it was traumatic. I can't yeah, I would have been bawling the whole time. We did cry when we got down to it because it was bit by bit throughout the entire course. So when we finally got down to it we said oh my gosh. And our teacher came over and even she cried. So I'm like, oh my goodness, we didn't know this. So it's interesting. But, as you, I don't have as many cats, but I do have a cat. So we definitely have that bond. But outside of the pets and the vet life that you once desired, if a person were to ask you who is Linda Marks, what would you say to them?
Linda Marks:I'm a quiet introvert with a very deep, passionate vision and mission that I've had since childhood. That's forced me to go outside of my comfort zone and let my creativity design and create in all facets of life.
Alethea Felton:Wow, wow, design and create in all facets of life. We're going to get into that deeper and I like how. That's a very good segue to my first question of sorts. But thinking about everything that you do, now, let's just kind of go back some on your journey and, linda, tell us how did your childhood experiences shape the person that we see today, or who you are today, and how did they inspire your mission to raise awareness about various social constructs or social events, such as domestic violence? So tell us more about that.
Linda Marks:Well, I was a child who was born with a very deep sense of mission and purpose, and I was also a child who was born with a very deep fountain of music. I didn't talk till I was three, but as a toddler I was magnetically attracted to pianos and whenever I went somewhere there was a piano I would just be pulled over and I'd start writing music and playing, because that was really my voice. So I had these two different innate parts, you know, the singer, songwriter, musician part of me who had that voice, and also the social visionary, social architect part who was disguised in a shy, introverted little kid who'd rather go under the table and play with a kitty than be at a cocktail party. So it was an interesting combination. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I grew up in a family where who I was didn't really match the family I came from. So in many ways, even though I was the child, I was the wise old soul who was containing what was happening in the family with domestic violence. My parents each have their own stories, with their own trauma, and one of the things I've seen is how the trauma gets passed down through the generations. So you know, I could go into more about my mom and my dad, but the sort of the bottom line is my dad was a rageaholic and he took out his pain and his anger on my mother and on me and his temper was quite extraordinary.
Linda Marks:I've written a number of songs addressing those kinds of issues, and my 2025 album called the Silence of the Stars the title song, the Silence of the Stars. 25 album called the Silence of the Stars the title song the Silence of the Stars, is a song about a little girl and her love affair with the piano and her journey to overcome all the obstacles and, against all odds, by herself, her own piano, because her father's mantra is, music is a waste of a good mind. So when my father would be yelling and screaming and raging, I would find sanctuary, either with a pet, you know, with the door closed, in my room or in the backyard, in the garden, sometimes lying on my back on the grass looking up at the stars. That's why it's called the silence of the stars. So nature, you know, became part of my solace. It still is to this very day, for, like animals who are my souls, guards and companions. But somehow this little girl who came from this house with domestic violence and ended up being sort of the container and the attempted peacemaker and even the attempted family therapist as a child, to try to see if there was a way to bring peace or to calm some of my father's rage or to stop the fighting between my parents. Somehow this little girl still would go into the world and just be a natural leader.
Linda Marks:You know I was. That was a capacity that everybody saw in me from an early age. I was elected to be the eighth grade president, even though I didn't want to run. You know, I was forced to run against my will. And then I was elected and my way of having a campaign speech because I didn't believe in them was to sit on the stage and just speak from my heart. And I won, you know so. So there was, I think all the adults saw this natural leadership tendency in me, even as a child. But there were all these sort of competing forces, like there were the ways I were, but there was no emotional safety. There wasn't a seeing who I was. There wasn't support for what my passions were.
Linda Marks:I worked very hard, you know I was dyslexic, but in those days, you know, all I got told was a gym teacher when I was like five or six, when I couldn't learn lefts and rights to tie a shoe, because I could learn kinesthetically but not intellectually by lefts and rights, because I couldn't process left and right Eventually to learn what left was. I took my left hand and said this is a left hand, this physical thing. So if I want to find left, I orient in space using my left hand, this physical thing. So if I want to find left, I orient in space using my left hand, my right hand, which I can feel is called right. If I want to find right, I oriented right in space using my right hand. Like I had to translate things to make meaning, because I process kinesthetically through my body and not just through intellectual concepts. But in spite of all of those things, you know, I always found ways to reach people, to lead.
Linda Marks:I was like a little kid who, besides being put in town positions of leadership or elected to office, there was a girl when I was in high school who was told she was stupid about math. And I didn't believe anyone was stupid. I felt what was important was to learn how somebody learned. So I spent time with this girl. She was only a year or two younger than me, but she seemed like a little girl, even though I was just an early high school student myself and when I figured out how her mind worked, so I learned how to translate math in a way she could learn. And she was blown away when she realized she could learn math successfully. And the same thing happened in high school.
Linda Marks:I was a singer and I always just had an innate knack for music. And there was a girl who was told she was tone deaf, she shouldn't sing, to just sit, stand there and be quiet, and it broke her heart. So I took her aside and I said I don't believe you're tone deaf. What I believe is you just need someone to help you connect to how to hear the music. And I took her aside and I figured out how she learned and I helped her learn how to process pitch, how to match pitch, how to feel it, you know, and she learned how to sing on pitch. So that's the kind of kid I was, you know. You could say I was already a healer kid or a coach kid, even as a kid, because I could just like. I really love to see how does someone work, how are they wired, and if something can be translated into a way that that will make them shine. How does one do it? And I just had an innate knack that I could do that.
Alethea Felton:And that's absolutely yeah, that's absolutely amazing, especially keeping in mind everything that was going on in your household. It almost seems as if you separated yourself from the environment and still you were determined to make the best out of the gifts that you currently had and helped people at a young age. That you currently had and helped people at a young age. And that leads me to when we talk about the fact that you are a singer, a song writer. What role or describe the role that music played in helping you navigate through the difficult times in your childhood?
Linda Marks:It was complicated because my father was terrified that I was a musician. It was very threatening to him and I. My first word was piano and he refused to get a piano. You know, and I knew I needed a piano. I had to work at whatever a little kid could do to earn money, whether it was painting rocks and selling them, having a lemonade stand. You know, shoveling snow when I was very small, at ages younger than anyone would today ever shovel snow and as a girl you know, to mow people's lawn like I would do whatever I could. When I got old enough to be a babysitter, I did that, but I basically would do anything I could to earn money, because I got my first official job at 14, which was when you could get working papers legally in my state and started working there. But when I was 13, I'd actually saved up enough money to buy my own piano.
Linda Marks:But while I was on the way to that, when I was about three, my mom enrolled me in an experimental free music program for recorder at the Lange School of Music and I had no interest in recorder, but free was the operative word. My family didn't have a lot of money on top of my father didn't value music and in the program I learned to play recorder as a three-year-old, in spite of the fact that I had absolutely no interest in it. I still did well and the people told my mom I was gifted and talented and I should be encouraged, which only made my father more angry. So I went through a series of free lessons. I learned violin and a free Suzuki violin program the school had. I had absolutely no interest in violin but that's what I was given. What was a little more fun is it only cost for a drum pad and drumsticks. But my grammar school needed a drummer and I became the girl drummer in the school band and that was fun because I always had a sense of rhythm. And it was fun playing the different percussion instruments because it wasn't just snare drums and a drum kit but percussion through the timpani, through claves, you know, through different sounds of triangles and you know there were all these different instruments and used in all different ways. And tuning the timpani was quite something to do because everyone was playing and you had to hear it go up or down to just the right note before your time came in. So that was fun and I did like playing with a drum kit and with drumsticks, because I've always had a sense of rhythm and that let me be the sense of rhythm for the other musicians.
Linda Marks:I always sang, even though I had this crazy chorus director in high school who was intimidated because I did buy my piano when I was 13 and I taught myself guitar when I was 11 because I couldn't afford a classical guitar that had been in a flood at a place called New England Woodwind. So it was being sold at a very low price because of the flood and of course I snatched it up and taught myself guitar. So, having learned chords on a guitar from chord charts, when I finally bought my piano at 13, I taught myself piano off of what I learned from guitar. But I loved ragtime, so I started to learn all the different Scott Joplin rags. Yeah, and as a dyslexic kid I'm what? Not the kind who can just like read right off the paper. What I do is I'd hear it and then I'd look at the paper and sort of decipher the notes one at a time, and like put them in my fingers and then I'd play them enough times that I'd memorize it, and then having the music in front of me was more just a symbol, because I'd memorized it and it was in my my skin, in my bones and I'd play ragtime. And then I started to write ragtime.
Linda Marks:So the high school choir director was totally freaked out by this kid who was writing Ragtime. So he started to mess with my head about singing, which was really you know it was. It was really not good. You know, in today's world a teacher like that, if the student reported it, would lose their job. But in those days the student is just quiet and just sort of you know, hides and goes away. But that sort of got in the way. You know, having this guy messing with my mind because he was intimidated by me.
Linda Marks:Unfortunately that happened with a number of people.
Linda Marks:I was also the yearbook editor and the faculty member who was the yearbook editor was intimidated by the fact that I could build these teams of other students and make these amazing, visually extraordinary products and I wrote poems and I did photography and I learned to play with different colors that you could use that the yearbook company publisher had.
Linda Marks:And when I look at what I produced in a couple of years, they're beautiful, they were very artistic, they weren't your basic yearbook but he for some reason was like obnoxious to me and what? What they none of these people realized, because they were so insecure themselves is I was just a kid with a lot of creative imagination who just wanted to make something beautiful. You know, writing a rag was beautiful. Coming up with this elegant yearbook was beautiful. It wasn't about power. You know, I wasn't trying to win approval. I was just trying to make something meaningful for the community and something beautiful. So you know, I had a lot of those obstacles to overcome, but the biggest obstacle, which was what I call the turning point in my life, so let me pause you here because I think I know what you are going to say.
Alethea Felton:but I want to kind of transition into that, because it seems as if certain people could feel the type of energy you had. It could sense who you were, almost, as if sometimes you come across certain people and it almost feels as if they can peer into your soul. It could see who you are, for who you are. But you had no ulterior motives. It was genuinely trying to help make your community and people's lives better and pouring out all of the gifts that you had. And so, with that being said, you even had that gift during one of your most challenging times of your life. So, linda, tell us about that defining moment in your life that really helped you to solidify resilience when it came to adversity. Something very powerful happened to you at 16. Tell us about that and how that helped to kind of catapult you to where you are even now.
Linda Marks:Thank you for that contextualizing. If I get to the heart of the matter, as a little kid I was very much like a Martin Luther King little kid. You know I'm a young baby boomer and so I was very, very, very small, like young enough that most people my age wouldn't have even noticed when Martin Luther King or John F Kennedy or Robert Kennedy was shot. But it hit me like a bolt of lightning was going through my soul, because I always had the sense that my purpose was to make a big difference. Not for me, it was a spiritual mission, you know, to give people hope, to empower people, to bring people together. And I think particularly of Martin Luther King, because many of the quotes that you'll read by him in his speeches are those kinds of quotes. But what I saw as a very, very, very little kid was these people that had that sense of social vision were all shot when they were out in the world doing what they do. And I was afraid as a child to be who I was, because I was afraid that if I was public in that very way, someone would try to kill me. So when I was 16, and I had a job at Fenway Park, boston's ballpark and I took public transportation home from Boston One night when I came off the MBTA and I crossed the street and there was an ice cream store where I had a second job and I walked right by it and then there was an alley behind it. As I was walking by the alley, a man came out of the shadows and he took my pocket book strap and wrapped it around my neck and grabbed me and he dragged me into the yard behind the alley and he started to beat me and started to strangle me and I was really really present, which was quite amazing considering what was happening to me, and I was. I was aware that this man could kill me, like with what he was doing. He could kill me and I tried to talk my way out of it. I'd taken this class called the Law and the Individual and I knew what the different criminal punishments were for different acts of violence that he was doing, from beating me up to potentially killing me, to statutory rape, all the different things that someone could do to a 16 year old kid and it would only piss him off and he'd say why did I pick you, lady, why did I pick you? And I tried to fight him off.
Linda Marks:I was a five foot seven, a tennis player in good shape, but this was like a six foot two raging man and I couldn't fight off his rage. So I I was trying to breathe when he was strangling me, and I was a singer, so I knew how to breathe diaphragmatically and I was using all the power of my diaphragm to try to fight him squishing in my neck and my lungs, and I was successful. And then I was right at the point I couldn't do it anymore. I was just about to collapse and then he gave up and he said you won't die. So he picked up the strap, he dragged me by the neck across the yard, threw some shrubs into a pebbled alley and started to beat me some more. He beat my face, he ripped my lip off my face, and that's when he decided he was going to rape me and I realized that there was a very small chance I was going to get out of this alive with anything I knew.
Linda Marks:So I turned it over to the god I was never raised to believe in as a child. I didn't really have a religious background, but I did love animals and I used to say god is dog spelled backwards and I don't think that's the worst definition. I have a corgi and I have had other dogs, as well as my kitties, and they are definitely very divine. And so I basically said to God I want to live. And a little voice came back and said you need to commit to your mission. So here I'd been afraid to commit to it because I was afraid someone was going to kill me. Now I was a 16 year old kid and while I was in quite a few leadership positions for my age, compared to what I could do as an adult, compared to Martin Luther King, I was just a kid. And here it was already happening. So I said to God, I commit. And then a little voice came through my heart that said you need to forgive him. And, without using my brain to understand what forgiveness meant, I opened my mouth. I spoke from my heart. I said I forgive you.
Linda Marks:And he burst into tears and stopped beating me and metaphorically, that was my first therapy client, because here I was a beaten up, you know, naked 16-year-old kid lying on my back on a pebbled alley, all bruised up, and this man is like bawling from the depths of his soul.
Linda Marks:And the first words out of his mouth were. I don't want to be doing this. I've been in jail before and if they ever put me back I'm going to take a gun to my head and kill myself. He'd raped and murdered other women. He was just like bawling and emptying out and catharting and I went from the potential crime statistic to the sacred, intimate, holding the space for this man to heal in a very, very deep kind of way, and just held the space and presenced him and my guess is about 45 minutes passed and then he realized he just exposed himself. Now he was, all you know, embarrassed and angry again for having exposed himself and he, like, put a hand up to strike me again and now I knew that it was out of my hands and a car came down the alley at that moment.
Linda Marks:And the man picked up his clothes and ran away. So, so I grabbed Wow, wow.
Alethea Felton:Okay, at that moment, what's going through your mind?
Linda Marks:Nothing other than the presence of God. Yeah, nothing other than the presence of God.
Alethea Felton:And so when the car came and he ran off, did the person in the car stop or did you pick up what happened? He?
Linda Marks:stopped because, you know, right in front of his path was this man beating up this kid, and the guy ran off and I grabbed my tennis jacket and put it on me because I was stark naked and I knocked on the window of the car and I asked the man to drive me home and he said the same thing had happened to his wife when she was my age.
Alethea Felton:Did you ever report that to the police or how did your parents react? What happened after you got home, especially coming home to an environment where violence was prevalent? Did your parents see your state? How did they respond to it? Did it cause a shift even in your family to have more compassion? What happened next in terms of your own household?
Linda Marks:What happened next was more domestic violence.
Alethea Felton:I came to the door.
Linda Marks:I had just the jacket. I'd left the rest of my clothes in the aisle. I was disgusted by them and as soon as I came in, my father took one look at me and started to rage. I and he started to rage at my mother. He started to do his domestic violence thing to my mother. He was blaming her for the fact that something happened to me. There was no attention to me. I went into the bathroom for a minute, looked at my face in the mirror just to get the reality, went into shock for a minute when I saw how beaten up I was. Then I realized I had to pull it together and handle the situation. So here I just survived an attempted rape and murder and I'm having to pull it together and captain everything. I called the police. I reported it.
Linda Marks:When the police came over, my father was still yelling and screaming at my mother and at me and he kept freaking out, saying you know you have to take the morning after pill, you have to have an abortion. He wouldn't even hear what happened. He wouldn't even hear what happened. You know I did not need a morning after pill because I was so you know I fought the guy off and he did not complete. He did something against my will when the police officer came for some reason, because my father worked in the field of medicine. He worked as a hospital administrator and he was so worried about was his daughter a virgin that when I was upstairs lying on my bed he insisted on doing a vaginal exam with his hand. He literally stuck his hand up me and physically raped me and if I weren't in shock I would have killed him. When I went into therapy later, I had so much rage for what he did to me when that had just happened in front of the policeman and my mother like what's wrong with these people that they would ever let this raging man take over and rape his daughter in front of a police officer and my mother. Like what's wrong with these people that they would ever let this raging man take over and rape his daughter in front of a police officer and my mother. So it was pretty bad.
Linda Marks:And then somehow I convinced them that I had to go to the hospital. The police needed me to go to the hospital, and what I told the people at the hospital? Oh, my father wouldn't even drive to the hospital. He wanted to get out and go to the spot where the accident had happened. He wanted to like beat up the guy, you know, but the guy wasn't going to be there. I just said, could you just get to the hospital so I can like file the report with the hospital, please?
Linda Marks:Presence of mind. This young woman has extraordinary presence of mind and I was begging them to, you know, speak to my father to get psychiatric help from my father. I was trying to disclose what was going on, which they totally ignored All they all they could do is say this young woman had presence of mind. And then I went off to college when I was 17 and I worked I actually worked with the police. After what happened, I, because I was good at drawing, I drew a picture of what the man looked like. I gave it to the police. They kept bringing suspects in and a lineup and they wanted me to look at them and see if I could pick the guy out. And I was afraid I didn't want to pick the wrong person out and no one ever looked quite like the right person, so no one got picked out. So when I went off to college when I was 17, early in the year, because it was the end of August when he did the attack on me.
Linda Marks:A year later he attacked another woman. Only this time they caught him. It's like it was like out of a psychology textbook. I didn't believe these things really happened. I'd read it in a psychology textbook and go right, sure. But the people who like on a particular date each year was when he did it. Well, that same day, the next year, he attacked another woman, and this time they caught him and it was in the Boston Globe. He was put in jail and when he was in jail he did exactly what he said. He put a gun to his head and he killed himself. And I felt, when his spirit left the earth, I had been afraid, you know, after that happened, that he was going to try to come find me and hurt me. You know, because I survived the attack. But when I read in the paper that he'd indeed put a gun to his head and killed himself, part of my spirit was thank you God, because I knew he couldn't come after me again.
Alethea Felton:Gosh, that is something else, and, yes, it does sound like one of those textbook cases where certain criminals honor the anniversary dates, so to speak, in terms of their crime, and to know that he had this pattern in this history and that your life was spared is a miracle. And so this starts to lead to your journey in college. And then you had the audacity, linda, to become a psychotherapist after all of that, but I say that in a lighthearted way, and so I want us to talk more about a project you have going on, but before that, let's talk about this journey as a psychotherapist. Sometimes, in traumatic events, people will run away from it and just want to keep it to themselves, but you chose the opposite in going down this path to help others with their trauma. What made you decide that you wanted to be a psychotherapist? But you're also a life coach, and so what caught that aha moment to say I want to do this professionally in order to help people heal from their traumas.
Linda Marks:Well it it. The roots of that were in my own path. After what happened, there were many ways I was dissociated. My will had been broken. You know my, my solar plexus. I could feel there was this big hole in the solar plexus. The man broke my will, but so did my father. You know that was such a violation. I could feel that I was aware my body knew things I didn't know. So I was on a quest to say how do I learn to listen to my body, how do I learn to know what my body knows and what that did? Is it put me on a quest to study all different kinds of more body-centered psychotherapy? I was aware that intellectually based, non-body-centered psychotherapy wasn't going to touch what I knew, because when the attempted rape and murder happened, I felt like I was an actress. Instead of being an actress on the stage in the protagonist's role, I felt like I was in the audience watching it from a distance, even though I was on the stage and it was happening to me. So I felt that dissociation and I wanted to reintegrate myself and I found my way into all kinds of different trainings and approaches to mind-body psychotherapy and I studied them both for my own healing.
Linda Marks:Like I was, most of them were experiential and I started very, very young. I, when I went to college, I ended up getting projects. I worked for a company called Digital Equipment Corporation where, in spite of the fact that I was very young, I had a knack in the field of organizational development. I just intuitively knew how to do that stuff, even without training. So I was brought in to do projects and there were some professional trainings through the national training labs. That were all these experiential personal growth workshops that I got to go to as part of my work, and that was an initiation. And then there were people who worked in the organizational development field, who did other kinds of training, including in core energetics, which was a form of mind-body psychotherapy. So I studied both the methodology and I did experiential work and I studied the spiritual side. There was a man named John Karakis who did a lot of this work and his wife, eva, who died of cancer, had a spiritual side called the path work. I was like immersed in all of that. You know 18, 19, 20, 21.
Linda Marks:And I realized over time that, as I studied other methods as well, what was missing was the heart and I came to realize that was my contribution to the field of body psychotherapy, to add the heart to the mind, body kind of work. And so I actually organically started develop a body of world called emotional kinesthetic psychotherapy, that eventually I turned into a school and I had a training program and I had a three year thousand hour apprenticeship based training program. I trained people. They became part of my staff. I looked at trying to integrate that into a university program, although I was told by the. I brought together people from all the major universities in the Boston area, from Harvard, from Boston University, boston College, northeastern Lesley University, boston College, northeastern Lesley University. And what they said to me is there was such integrity to my program because it was apprenticeship based and there was a lot of attention to the development of the person, not just learning the tools and the methods of the body of work. They said no college would allow me to just do it in that purity because of all the bureaucracy and administration of a school, even though what I had was at least a master's if not a doctoral level program. So they basically congratulated me on what I was doing but said that a university would probably make me have to change things in a way I wouldn't want, which was not what I wanted to hear, but the long and short of it is, it was an organic progression of my own work on healing myself and then realizing that what I had to add was the power of the heart, which led to the approach that I developed and, you know, developed a training manual for, and a thousand hour three-year program, you know, which eventually had people who I'd trained become part of the staff and what, what event actually along the way as well.
Linda Marks:I wrote my first book came out on my 30th birthday. It was called living with vision reclaiming the power of the heart. Okay, and and that I I used to travel to Europe and speak and teach there as well as around the country. That book did it. You never make a lot of money as an author, but it did very well in terms of reaching people and I was invited to teach and speak in a lot of places. I I was on different national public radio shows and, and, and that was meaningful, except I'm a shy introvert who wants to be at home with my cats and even though I did like going to places, and I met a woman who became one of my two best friends in Indiana through this work when, because I'd go to Indiana probably every three months and I'd go to London every three months to do the work it was.
Linda Marks:It was amazing who I met through my work but, but in time I wanted a simpler life and if I was ever going to have my own children, I couldn't live that way. So in time I tried to simplify things, have my school just based in my area and when my son was born in 1996, I had to simplify. And then, when I became a single mom in 1998, I really had to simplify. And by 2001, my last apprentice had finished my program and I really couldn't continue the school because there was no way a single mom, who ultimately had no child support and a small child to take care of, could do all of that, wow.
Alethea Felton:Yes, I can see that your journey has had so many loops, but yet you have continued going and moving forward and thriving, and so we don't have a lot of time left and you all. This is an audio only podcast, but if you could see this, one of Linda's beautiful cats just came, hopped on her lap and just wants cuddles and snuggles, and my heart is melting.
Linda Marks:I love it. This is Max. He just turned two. He's a light red Siberian kitty, beautiful.
Alethea Felton:Absolutely beautiful. Oh, my heart is melting. I love that. Okay, so what I want to get into now, because I could talk to you all day and we don't have that much time left but you are doing something that is absolutely world changing, literally along with others, and that is called the Sanctuary Project. Linda, tell us what the Sanctuary Project is, your inspiration behind founding it, how it contributes to your mission and then also, as a transformational, healing songwriter, how does that influence others around you? It's a loaded question. You can answer it any way that you want to, but the floor is yours.
Linda Marks:Okay. So if I go to the first part of your question, with the Sanctuary Project, I do write songs. At the heart of our times, that's what I call them. I am, you know, pulled and moved by all kinds of things going on in the world, you know, from gun violence to what's it like to be a child growing up in the world today. I we for six years would do an annual benefit concert for some important community charity.
Linda Marks:So last year 2023, we chose domestic violence shelters. So I got in touch with the biggest one in my area called Casa Myrna, and I told them we were doing a show and we wanted them to be the beneficiary. They invited another domestic violence program called Respond Inc. That was in Somerville, Massachusetts, a town where the Burren, which is the venue we were doing the concert at, was. So then I collaborated with senior managers from both of those two organizations because I wanted to write a song for the show and I wanted to base the song on the stories of some of the domestic violence survivors they'd worked with. So they gave me stories some were written and some were videos and I listened to the stories and I found the common threads and pulled out some of the words and I wrote Sanctuary, which is an uplifting song of hope and transformation and inspired by including words of domestic violence survivors. When we did the show November 5th last year, I had someone from each of the two nonprofits on stage with me premiering the song.
Linda Marks:And in the process of writing the song and premiering the song and having both nonprofits in the room, part of what became really apparent to me was that domestic violence cuts closer to home for most of us than we ever realized. Including it was bringing up for me the reality that this wasn't just me writing about other people, that I had lived this myself. Only when I was a kid there weren't places like Casa Myrna or Respond that I was aware of, that I could have reached out to for support and help, and instead I was in a house with shades pulled down. My mom said so the neighbors couldn't hear, even though if my father was raging the neighbors could hear just fine, closed shades or open shades. So I realized that to take this song and share it globally, that to take this song and share it globally to help people look at the roots of domestic violence, to provide support and resources both to domestic violence survivors and their families and the good organizations that support them, to move towards a world with more safety and peace.
Linda Marks:That was the mission of the Sanctuary Project, so I pulled together a global team of singers and musicians. I happen to be fortunate enough to be a member of the Recording Academy, and fellow members of the Recording Academy were good enough to accept my invitation to participate. We have people including Germany, Greece, India and Israel, as well as the US including Germany, Greece, India and Israel, as well as the US between singers and musicians, and two phenomenal sound engineers mixed and mastered the song, and they also are members of the Recording Academy. So I produced what I call the global version of Sanctuary and on June 23rd, at the album release concert for my 2024 album, A Recipe for Hope, we're going to be releasing a video of the global version of Sanctuary, where I put together photos that go along with the story of Sanctuary.
Linda Marks:I have images donated by both Casa Myrna and Respond Inc that have been incorporated into the video, as well as some of my own photos, and we will have both organizations there to premiere the video on June 23rd, and that's the first of a series of steps for the sanctuary project and where is that going to be the?
Linda Marks:Burren is in Somerville, massachusetts. If anyone lives within driving distance of the Boston area, come on out to the burn on June 23rd. It will be an absolutely amazing show between the songs on the album A Recipe for Hope. We all need a healthy dose of hope in our world today and this show will definitely provide it for you with the premiere of the Sanctuary Project video. It will be absolutely inspirational in the Boston area. Um then, on august 23rd, the song is going to be released globally on all digital platforms. August 23rd is my deceased mom's birthday, so it's a way of paying tribute to my mom.
Linda Marks:On september 15th, um myself with another singer, songwriter who's part of big records, which, which is an artist collaborative I'm part of. Her name is Randi O'Neill. We're going to be doing a benefit concert for Casa Myrna and Respond Inc. At a venue called One Broadway Collaborative in Lawrence Mass. All of this is in the greater Boston area. And then, on October 1st, to commemorate Domestic Violence Awareness Month, I'm going to be doing a special live stream and I'm looking to put some really interesting elements together for October 1st to bring awareness to the roots of domestic violence and to try to engage people to look at how to transform this issue.
Alethea Felton:And Linda, this is just absolutely astonishing how you have been able, time and time again, to really navigate through these challenges but also bring others into the fold to help support the cause that. There's a listener who is currently facing difficult circumstances, who are facing excuse me, I got all tongue-tied facing difficult circumstances, especially in relation to domestic violence. What would you tell them? And then also, on top of that, how can all of us contribute to raising awareness about domestic violence, as well as the organizations working to address it?
Linda Marks:Well, if a person is in a situation where there is domestic violence and sometimes people don't recognize it because when it's the water you've been swimming in, it's just the way it is Like. For when I was a kid, you know the violence in my home. I thought that's just how it was. You know, when I started going to other people's homes I realized not all families are like that, you know. So it's. It's really important. If something doesn't feel right, if you don't feel safe, if someone is hurting you, if someone is yelling at you, if someone is neglecting you, if someone is physically hurting you or psychologically hurting you, that isn't okay and often there's a sense of shame and wanting to hide when that's going on. I felt that way. That was a thread going through the stories that I was given. It's really important to say if something is wrong. Finding a safe person to tell is really important and you know counselors are really important. There are, thank goodness, nonprofits that help domestic violence survivors not only all over this country but all over the world. You know, to reach out and investigate who in your area is around to help you. Some police departments actually are working to address this issue too. It's very important to see who can listen, who can hear you, who's not going to shame you or make it go away, who's going to actually take you seriously and listen. That is the first step and in terms of where people are and people around the world and what we can do if you witness something like if you're my son is a teacher and at one point last year a little girl came up to him to talk about what was happening at home and you know, she somehow trusted my son, which was a huge thing. If you're a teacher, if a child ever comes up to you, please listen. Please listen to that child. And if you suspect something is going on in your neighborhood, if you witness someone being cruel, you know, in a public setting I've been a person in a supermarket.
Linda Marks:When I see a parent being really mean to their children, or once it was at a zoo in Indiana when I was visiting my best friend, you know I will be the person who walks up to the parent, even if they scream at me and say, excuse me, you know, and it's okay if they scream at me because it's better me than their child. So you know, I once did that with a basketball coach who was being abusive to a whole basketball team. I stood up in the stands and I said this isn't okay. So if you see something, be a person who actually says it's not okay. If you don't feel safe speaking, then speak to someone at a store, speak to someone in a program, call the police. You know, speak, because what happens is someone's doing something that's not okay and then people are afraid or they just ignore it or don't want to think about it, and that allows it to happen.
Alethea Felton:And I'm glad that you mentioned that because sadly and we have seen it even on television we are in that era, specifically in the US, where a person would rather take outa phone and film something bad happening instead of calling 911, yelling out. It is appalling the amount of videos I've seen of a person getting attacked, even if it's a vulnerable person elderly, children, women, et cetera and nobody is doing anything. Or there might be a lone person trying to help and everybody else I mean sometimes large crowds are just spectating. And when I was in the classroom as a teacher, and then even after I left out of the classroom, but just as an educator, I would tell my students you speak up, you don't be afraid. And then sometimes people come from that you know snitches get, you know stitches, era. But I always tell them what if it were you, or what if it were your mom, or even your brother or your grandparent? Would you speak out then? And it hits differently, it lands differently when you put it like that. So I am also of that nature of speaking out.
Alethea Felton:I'll never forget when I was a child, my parents, sister and I were leaving an amusement park and we visibly saw a man in the parking lot. He actually slapped and knocked down his girlfriend or wife in the parking lot down his girlfriend or wife in the parking lot. My dad, we were quite a distance away, walking towards the car, but I will never forget how my father yelled out at that man and my father's yelling out caught the attention of other men who also stopped, saw and it scared the gentleman and he basically ran off and so we were able to get security officers. But just seeing that as my father standing up like that for this woman he didn't know meant so much and he told us if you see something, say something, don't worry about if people are going to say X, y and Z. So thank you, linda, for bringing that awareness. I think it's important because so many people just don't today and it's really sad it is.
Linda Marks:It is really sad. It sort of gets into the whole bullying thing and it gets into the police violence thing Although I feel sorry for some police officers because they're being put in ridiculous positions. But there are all kinds of controversial issues that are brought up by this. But I got very involved in anti-bullying work and so did my son when he was 13,. He gave a very courageous speech before 250 people about the effects of bullying in middle school and you know some raising awareness about the impact of bullying. But what was really clear is bullying is a whole community phenomenon.
Alethea Felton:Yes.
Linda Marks:You know, there's a bully, there's a target, but there are bystanders, and when bystanders don't do anything, it perpetuates it. And even a bully isn't all bad. There's the backstory of like how could a person get to be like that? Something had to go wrong for a person to be able to do that. So there's a need to hold everybody in the system in order to heal.
Alethea Felton:Linda, we could go on and on, but if a person wanted to connect with you outside of this platform, what is the best way a person can reach?
Linda Marks:you. Old-fashioned AOL email is the best way to find me. It's L, as in Linda S, as in Susan M, as in Marks, and then H-E-A-R-T, which is heart, the body organ, so ellisonheartataolcom is probably the best way to find me. My Facebook is Linda Marks and Linda Marks Music. If you message me under Linda Marks, that's another good way to reach me. I have a website, linda Marks. That's another good way to reach me. I have a website, linda Marks Music. I also have a Healing Heart Power website, but that's sort of like an old archival one because I haven't been keeping that up. But I have a YouTube channel. Lsm Heart is my YouTube channel, but my email or Facebook message are under Linda Marks to the best way to reach out.
Alethea Felton:Thank you, and I will also put those in the show notes. And, linda, again, it has been a joy having you as my guest on the Power Transformation podcast and I will also list those dates of the various events happening. And I just want to thank you and continue doing this transformative work to really help just not your local community but globally, and for being a voice for people that may not think that they have one. So it's an honor to have met you and connected with you. I am grateful for your presence and let's definitely keep in touch.
Linda Marks:Thank you so much, Alethea, and thank you for your vision and your heart and what you're doing sharing messages of inspiration and transformation and hope.
Alethea Felton:Please take heed, especially if you are in her area. Take heed to supporting what Linda is doing, and also, if you don't live in that particular area, there are things you can also do to support her music endeavors and so much more. So thank you for that and share this episode so that other people are aware of who Linda Marks is and the change the global change that she is making in terms of her music and healing. We're going to go ahead and close out with our affirmation Join me again for another episode of the Power Transformation Podcast. New episodes are released every Wednesday, but let's go ahead and end with our affirmation.
Alethea Felton:I will say it once and you repeat it I deliberately find ways to grow and stretch and expand my life. If you enjoyed today's show, then you don't want to miss an episode. So follow the Power Transformation podcast on Apple Podcasts, spotify or wherever you usually listen, and remember to rate and review. I also invite you to connect with me on social media at Alethea Felton, that's, at A-L-E-T-H-E-A-F-E-L-T-O-N. Until next time, remember to be good to yourself and to others.
