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My 2025 Trauma Cake (Why I Took a Break + What Comes Next)
14 Plays18 days ago
This episode marks my return to the podcast after a long pause.
This is not a crisis update. I’m safe, grounded, and in a much better place now.
This is a reflective conversation about why I stepped away, what the past year required of me, and why I needed to close that chapter before moving forward.
I introduce what I call my “2025 Trauma Cake” — a way of naming the layers of this year without sensationalizing them. Not everything is shared here, and that’s intentional.
The full 1 hour 22 minute episode, where I walk through 2025 month by month and talk about what I built during that time (including future projects), is available on Patreon.
This extended version is shared in a private container. If you choose to listen, please receive it with care and do not repost, summarize, or circulate it elsewhere.
🔒 Continue the full episode on Patreon ($9.99):
Click here
🎧 New episodes will continue from here.
Thank you for being here.
—
Jerome ❤️
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:01
Speaker
and
00:00:05
Speaker
Hey
00:00:08
Speaker
hey everyone, welcome back to Gather Them Podcast. I'm your host Jerome. Jerome. Jerome. I don't know, I need to open my mouth better. um Welcome back.
00:00:21
Speaker
I'm your host, Jerome, and I'm here after a year, actually, which is interesting to kind of take this episode, that's what this episode's going to be, obviously, um you know, you clicked on it from the title, the trauma cake, and I'll get into that in a little bit, but like,
00:00:46
Speaker
I think it was just really hard to get back into podcasting for me because I just had been i'm going through so much this past year. and I just... just I don't know. It was something about getting going camera and just continuing throughout the chaos that felt like a lot for me. And I just want to preference, this is not like a you know mental health episode, like this is or a crisis episode in the sense that like I'm asking, you know I'm in crisis or anything like that. It's more so a you know kind of like a clearing my mind.
00:01:25
Speaker
um clearing my mind because I feel like I i just, even i don't have to, i feel like I can't move forward like until I do.
00:01:39
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um I feel like I'm in a better place now to speak on it anyway. um Things have been a lot better, honestly, for me. Even like you know just mentally, I'll say mentally, emotionally, um primarily.
00:01:57
Speaker
things have been a lot better. Physically, things have been like similar-ish. I'll get into that too. And I just wanted to also just say that I'm going to like end the episode with like a um just kind of like a closure moment of just talking about to reflect my reflections on where I've been over the past year. I think I've been Life has handed me like a very interesting set of cards and i don't often know what I'm doing or like I don't often know what people want for me, especially when I go through really hard shit. um And it's shit that I don't even maybe talk about.
00:02:48
Speaker
um It could be just things I'm, you know, I'm going through because I'm like, okay, well, I'm talking to this person and they's they're telling me about this thing that like is really important to them. And like, I just, um, don't know how to like really talk to people about my feelings, which is funny because I talk to people about their feelings as a therapist. Like that's, you know, what I do.
00:03:17
Speaker
Um, So I find it interesting that it can be hard for me to to do the same. um I think when I last left off for the podcast, I'll say this first.
00:03:29
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um Them episodes, if you check, the episodes are not there. Episodes are on Patreon now for the tier price of $4.44. That's the angel number. So $4.44.
00:03:47
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um I just thought that those episodes were not as great a reflection ah where I am now artistically or Vision wise, I think I have a similar vision and I think I want to keep executing it, but I want to do it in a way that makes sense for me in a way that makes sense for people to consume and for it to be palatable.
00:04:13
Speaker
So more to come on in a different episode as well. um But I wanted to say the last thing I just kind of left off with was, um you know, I paused the podcast because I was just kind of going through.
00:04:27
Speaker
um a lot of the time we had just got, well, Trump had gotten elected. Um, Bernie was still in office. So it was like December 13th was like the last episode. And I remember just talking about like, um, you know, a lot of Pluto and Aquarius stuff, which is very, everything that's happening like in the world is just very on brand for that. I don't really know how else to describe it except for,
00:04:58
Speaker
um
00:05:03
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whatever you believe in this reality to be true might be true. Like, it's a little scary like that. Like, that's where a lot of these thoughts, and I think about it in a sense of, like, I'm not trying to i guess use songs to, like, describe you know, my feelings in this episode, but like, i would say like, it mirrors very much Perfume and Milk by Florence and the Machine. Just the idea of like, the seasons passing, just seeing things just happen so quickly, exponentially, just seeing the ways in which like people, um,
00:05:47
Speaker
go about their lives, even though they know that things are going to be chaos anyway. um And how I just started to feel a lot of empathy fatigue because I started to feel like y'all don't listen. Like, that's the thing. is' like people do It's like people don't listen until it's too late.
00:06:09
Speaker
And so i think as I was going through my own emotional
00:06:20
Speaker
And, you know, my life changed. My life was just changing at the time. um And it was just like, everybody was just doing the same thing. It was like, okay, like, we're going to keep making fun, like, all the lead up to, like, the Trump thing was just, oh, we're going to just, you know, make fun of, like, the the Democrats are just going to make fun of everything, and they're going to make skits on SNL, and, like, you know, we're going to just have a good laugh about it, and it's and it's wild how one year, it's been one year, like, so much has happened, and
00:06:56
Speaker
i have had to ignore a lot, I think, just to protect my own mental health. I've had to just show up for my clients. I've had to show up for my my co-workers.
00:07:12
Speaker
I've had to show up for friends, like, even on them days when I didn't want to. i had to show up for um family, like, and you know, because they wanted to see me or whatever it was, and I just...
00:07:27
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I felt so distraught after I lost my brother. And I, and in my health, just like took a tumble. So, um you know, it's not going to be, i mean, this episode, I want to just say, you know, I'm going to name the gap without,
00:07:51
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um you know, giving myself that space of,
00:08:00
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judgment, I think. um
00:08:06
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I've, you know, started to adapt from disappearing into living a little bit more. um So it's not been all trauma and pain, um you know, that's for sure.
00:08:22
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I think that my journey is for sure something that has been secret. um which is why I'm like even putting half of this on YouTube. Well, not half, but you know, first 10 minutes just because i think it's worth it like to pay to hear the rest and to help maybe put into perspective what my story can maybe, be how it can help you and motivate you.
00:08:58
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In the future, like I don't know if I'm going to do many. If I do any other episodes like this will probably just be on a Patreon like or are we not like that's also been another thing like I've been having a lot of fear around being a therapist and like.
00:09:14
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Being a. Like like a social service figure.
00:09:23
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Trying to also intercept this like.
00:09:29
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level of media that social workers don't normally do. Like, this is not a path that like, I ever really, it's always one that I thought I'd be on, but I didn't think it would look like this.
00:09:42
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I'm going to be so real. Like, I didn't think it was going to like this. I didn't think that I was going to be tested in the ways that I've been tested. um yep see here we go the tears um we're going to start but we're not going to cry yet you know we got to give it a little bit more time then we gotta jump in but you can listen to the rest of this on patreon for 9.99 and that's the number for completeness