Speaker 1: My next guest understands doing the radio thing first. Because
Speaker 1: Wendy Korea, she's a writer, a yogi. She's worked in
Speaker 1: film and television, multimedia and music and as a radio
Speaker 1: DJ in Aspen and now lives here in Denver. And
Speaker 1: she's written a memoir. I usually don't read memoirs. I
Speaker 1: don't know why, I just don't. But I got this
Speaker 1: and I got the pitch, and I said, ooh, a
Speaker 1: fellow radio traveler, I would love to talk about it
Speaker 1: and her new memoir, My Pretty Baby, is fantastic.
Speaker 2: And Wendy Korea, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Mandy. It is awesome to be here. I'm
Speaker 3: so excited to talk with you today.
Speaker 1: So I always like to ask a question like this,
Speaker 1: when what made you decide?
Speaker 2: You know what? I got a story to tell. I'm
Speaker 2: to write a book.
Speaker 3: Well, I realized that My Pretty Baby is an autopsy
Speaker 3: of my family. I peeled apart the layers of intergenerational
Speaker 3: and childhood trauma, family dysfunction, family secrets, alcoholism, addiction, and
Speaker 3: I found healing through Buddhism, meditation, yoga, sobriety, music, psychotherapy,
Speaker 3: and Native American spirituality. And along the way, I had
Speaker 3: incredible encounters with icons like Ringo Starr and Joni Mitchell
Speaker 3: and Hunter S. Thompson. And My Pretty Baby is about resilience,
Speaker 3: recovery and creating your own chosen family when the one
Speaker 3: that you had is broken.
Speaker 2: I love the part about Hunter S.
Speaker 1: Thompson, and we all know he was a fixture in
Speaker 1: Aspen for many, many years. Tell me about that relationship.
Speaker 1: Tell the listeners about that relationship and how it came about.
Speaker 3: Well, I had been in Los Angeles for many years,
Speaker 3: and I was in the music industry, as you said,
Speaker 3: I was in film and so on. And I left
Speaker 3: Los Angeles for a job as a DJ on KSPNFM
Speaker 3: Roaring Fork Radio, and my program manager asked me if
Speaker 3: I knew who Hunter S. Thompson was, and I said, oh,
Speaker 3: I've read articles of his Rolling Stone magazine and isn't
Speaker 3: he a character in the Doonesbury cartoons? But I didn't
Speaker 3: know a whole lot more than that. And sure enough,
Speaker 3: the first week, you know, and of course, as a
Speaker 3: newbie DJ, I had the ungodly hour of two am
Speaker 3: to six am. Of course, so in my first week,
Speaker 3: at four in the morning, I, you know, answered the phone,
Speaker 3: good morning, Wendy Moore here on KSPNFM, Roaring Fork Radio,
Speaker 3: and here comes the voice. Yeah, can you play me
Speaker 3: some warrens ivon Lawyers, Guns and Money? And I played
Speaker 3: Warren Zevon for a Hunter for many more times thereafter
Speaker 3: a few weeks later, I actually met Hunter and he
Speaker 3: asked me if I wanted to be his assistant. So
Speaker 3: I was his assistant as well as being a DJ
Speaker 3: on KSPNFM. And by that time, I'm oddly enough, I
Speaker 3: was sober. I had quit drinking, I had quit smoking,
Speaker 3: I had quit it all. And you know, my years
Speaker 3: in working for Geffen Records and A and M Records
Speaker 3: in Los Angeles finally caught up with me and it
Speaker 3: was time to let it all go. And although it
Speaker 3: was just a professional relationship with Hunter, I was his
Speaker 3: assistant there. You know, he uh decidedly was not sober
Speaker 3: and he was doing it all and I was right
Speaker 3: in front of me, and in restaurants where we would go,
Speaker 3: he would you know, just unflinchingly snort lines of cocaine.
Speaker 3: And so it was an incredible experience because underneath that
Speaker 3: grufphic stereor underneath that facade of you know, his notorious habits.
Speaker 3: There was really a vulnerable and very soft center to Hunter,
Speaker 3: and that was the part that I connected to. And
Speaker 3: he was such a unique human being despite his notorious reputation,
Speaker 3: he was kind to me, and he was generous with me,
Speaker 3: and he really appreciated my work ethic and he mirrored
Speaker 3: back to me my self worth and my loveability. And
Speaker 3: that was why I in the book My Pretty Baby,
Speaker 3: I talk about that experience and why I talk about
Speaker 3: my experiences hanging out with Joni Mitchell and meeting Ringo
Speaker 3: Starrs because these larger than life celebrities were so kind
Speaker 3: and loving to me. And the message really is that
Speaker 3: you just never know how a simple act of kindness
Speaker 3: to another human being is going to unpack them for life.
Speaker 1: Do you think that your tumultuous family dynamic perhaps made
Speaker 1: you better suited to deal with the tumult of Hunter
Speaker 1: s Thompson or even the music scene when you were there?
Speaker 1: You know, I think that if you come from a
Speaker 1: we'll call it a leave it to Beaver background, right,
Speaker 1: those those perfect nuclear families, I think that the excesses
Speaker 1: of that age may have seemed too much, but because
Speaker 1: you didn't have that cleaver kind of family growing up.
Speaker 1: Do you think maybe you were better equipped somehow.
Speaker 3: You know, that's a really good question, and I never
Speaker 3: thought of it, but you're absolutely right. Of course, I
Speaker 3: also had a degree in psychology and a degree in theater,
Speaker 3: and I always thought that my degree in psychology helped
Speaker 3: me to deal with, you know, the likes of all
Speaker 3: the musicians that I met working for A and M
Speaker 3: Records and Keffen Records, and I was used to people's
Speaker 3: access excesses because my stepfather was an alcoholic, and so
Speaker 3: I did have experience with that. And you know, it's
Speaker 3: very interesting as you read my book, you'll you'll learn
Speaker 3: that my mother always would ask me to look at
Speaker 3: my stepfather's good side, which of course he had, and
Speaker 3: he had a good side, and he could he could
Speaker 3: be kind, and he could be generous, but he was
Speaker 3: also an alcoholic, and he was mentally ill, and he
Speaker 3: was violent. So I had been trained, literally since growing
Speaker 3: up to always look at people's good sides, even though
Speaker 3: they were notoriously high or drunk.
Speaker 1: The book is fantastic. It's an easy read. It is
Speaker 1: I think I read it. I know I read it
Speaker 1: in one sitting. It's just a really interesting story. And
Speaker 1: one of the things I said this to Wendy off
Speaker 1: the air. When you live in the public eye, even
Speaker 1: if you are a DJ in Aspen or you're working
Speaker 1: in movies and television, there's this perception that exists that
Speaker 1: you have led this charm life and you've never had
Speaker 1: a challenge and you've never had difficulty. And it's memoirs
Speaker 1: like this that I think help other people who have
Speaker 1: had similar difficulties, because gosh, I hate to say it, Wendy,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure you've had people tell you this. Your
Speaker 1: story is probably a lot like other people's stories, right
Speaker 1: in the sense that you had those challenges growing up,
Speaker 1: and yet you went on to have this absolutely fantastic life,
Speaker 1: it seems, I mean, from the outside looking.
Speaker 3: In, absolutely And that's why I one of the reasons
Speaker 3: why I wrote it, because I have friends that I've
Speaker 3: known for thirty years who are reading the book now
Speaker 3: and saying, oh my god, I had no idea that
Speaker 3: you had gone through this and gone through that. And
Speaker 3: originally I wrote My Pretty Baby because I realized that
Speaker 3: my family's dysfunction and secrets had written my biography and
Speaker 3: hince my biology, and I wanted to rewrite my story
Speaker 3: and choose my own happy ending. But as I was
Speaker 3: writing it, as you said, I realized, more than just
Speaker 3: my story, this is about how millions of us carry
Speaker 3: wounds that science now shows rewires our biology and impacts
Speaker 3: our health and relationships for life. So as I was
Speaker 3: writing it, I realized, this is a call to action.
Speaker 3: I want us may to be able to have these
Speaker 3: conversations honestly and openly, without shame, without guilt, because I
Speaker 3: believe this is how we're going to heal society. And
Speaker 3: fortunately for me, as I was reading writing my book,
Speaker 3: I was reading all of the latest research by the
Speaker 3: likes of doctor Gabor Mattey, who wrote The Myth of Normal,
Speaker 3: and doctor Bessel vander Kolk, who wrote The Body Keep Score,
Speaker 3: and realized, oh my gosh, all of this latest research
Speaker 3: is showing that about sixty one to sixty four percent
Speaker 3: of adults have at least one adverse childhood experience. And
Speaker 3: the listeners can go online and google adverse childhood experiences quiz.
Speaker 3: It's ten questions. You can take the quiz to see
Speaker 3: what number you have. And now we know that so
Speaker 3: many people carry trauma from their childhood, and we know
Speaker 3: now that it can increase your risk for depression, for anxiety,
Speaker 3: for rage, for chronic diseases, and if you have a
Speaker 3: score of six or more without seeking some kind of
Speaker 3: help and healing, your life expectancy can be affected. Now
Speaker 3: I have a score of seven out of ten. But
Speaker 3: the good news is that all of this research shows
Speaker 3: and is proving that the damage can be reversed with
Speaker 3: the very same modalities that I intuitively practice for the
Speaker 3: past forty five years. And so that is why my
Speaker 3: Pretty Baby is like a guidebook to other people who
Speaker 3: may not know how to begin or where to begin.
Speaker 3: And I hope that it inspires them to look at
Speaker 3: all of the things that I did to heal myself
Speaker 3: and maybe they could just choose one and start there,
Speaker 3: because it turns out all the things that I tried,
Speaker 3: like meditation and spirituality and yoga of course sobriety when needed,
Speaker 3: and all the somatic modalities like massage, yoga, movement, hiking, dance, meditation,
Speaker 3: we know are very healing. And in psychotherapy, one of
Speaker 3: the most important modalities for processing trauma is called EMDR
Speaker 3: I movement desensitation training. So I hope that the listeners
Speaker 3: if you're just beginning to heal. You know this is
Speaker 3: good information. This is a call to action for us
Speaker 3: to have these conversations and for us to heal, and
Speaker 3: perhaps for you to be the cycle breaker in your family.
Speaker 1: Love that the book is My Pretty Baby. The author
Speaker 1: is Wendy Corea. Wendy, thank you so much for writing,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for sharing your story, and thanks
Speaker 1: so much for joining us today.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate having
Speaker 3: this voice for my pretty Baby.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thanks Wendy.
Speaker 1: You can find a link to Wendy's website and where
Speaker 1: you can buy her book.
Speaker 2: It's a great book.