The Determined Society with Shawn French
How Jo Weatherford Rewired Her Brain After Trauma and Addiction
Fri, 16 May 2025
Jo Weatherford opens up about the trauma that shaped her early life and how it led her down a path of addiction and self-destruction. From the adult modeling industry to relapse and finally radical healing, her story is raw, real, and powerful. This conversation is about owning your story, and rewriting it with strength. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Jo Harvey Weatherford and what is her background?
No.
You're probably thinking at that age, right? Okay, that's an elder. I'm just going to stay in line here, right? How did that coming to... You know, because you repressed it, right? But in the meantime, you went to modeling, right? You went to modeling for Playboy and you did some reality TV for them and then got out and went to rehab, right? So how does it all connect for you?
How can you make sense of all that? Because you didn't uncover it until you were, you know, healing, right? Yeah.
Well, and that's the thing. Our unconscious programming will dictate our life, which is where it's so important that we do the work to uncover those stories, those belief systems, because we don't realize it, but it is dictating the course of our future. And so for me, as a little girl, I developed this belief that, A, my worth is my body, that I am just here to please men in that way.
And I also got my wires crossed that... being sexually exploited was connection. So it was like, that's what would make me special. That's how I connect, you know? And it really, it was a lot to untangle. But when I finally was like, oh, this happened to me, it started making sense. Now I still didn't know what to do with it.
And this is an important thing when it comes to healing, like knowledge doesn't change behavior. It opened this window of opportunity for me to go, oh, okay, this is starting to make sense, but I still didn't know how to change. I didn't know how to work through my sexual shame. None of that had happened yet, but at least a seed was planted of, oh, I think this is the origin story.
Wow. Wow. And so when you're working through your therapist through, you know, getting sober, like how did the therapist teach you to walk through and kind of peel back the layers of what happened and how do you connect it with some of past behavior? You know, mainly, you know, feeling like, you know, giving up your body, right, or whatever is kind of your service or however you put it.
Yeah.
How did the therapist help you work through that to help you understand like, no, no, no, that is not where you need to be?
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Chapter 2: How did childhood trauma influence Jo Harvey's life?
I love that because we all go through these things, right? Whether it's an attachment to money, attachment to the wrong partner, attachment to an identity like a career or being an athlete, right? When we fear losing things, it's because we've wrapped our identity in something else and we've given our power, like you said, to another thing or another person, which leaves us.
coincidentally, powerless. So of course, how could we ever make it on our own? But when we quickly realize by doing work on our own selves that, wait a second, the power's still here. I can turn it on, but I got to prime the engine a little bit, right? I got to do some work and then I have to choose to believe.
Well, and it's, again, it's all energy. It's all framework. It's all perspective. I was working with a NFL player that retired and he goes, who am I now? Instead of who am I now? Like, it's just that it's the same words, but a different energy of possibility. And what if you didn't have to be anything to anybody anymore?
What if you just got to be, and you got to sit on a couch and talk to somebody cool and learn some shit about life and connect and have a real moment. And that were enough.
You know, I could dig that, Joe, because I think one of the biggest things, whether, see, it's an identity shift, right? So I did, when I did my TEDx talk, I did it on identity crisis after leaving sports because I truly felt that when I left, you know, college baseball, I was like, I was done. I didn't go pro. And my last game was in the college world series in 2003 in the right field.
When we lost our, when that last hour recorded, my season was over. I didn't know who I was. I've talked about this a lot. I'm sure you've heard this before from you before, but Over the last year or so, I go, wait a second, this just isn't in athletics.
This isn't if you're a teacher and you go to a salesperson, or if you're a salesperson and you go to a teacher, or if you're an HVAC technician and now you're the business owner. There's an identity shift there. It's not a crisis. It's only a crisis if you allow it to be, but there needs to be an identity shift. Right. And too many people are getting caught up on the negative aspect of that.
Like, well, who am I now? Instead of like, Ooh, wait a second. I get to play a different role. What does that look like?
Yes.
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