Hi everyone, this is Reverend Ronnie Roll with Hearts Unlimited, the heart behind Hearts Unlimited and your Rebel Reverend. I'd like to give a special shout out to Katherine Lillie and Icon Realty, our show sponsor for believing in Hearts Unlimited and my mission to spread love around the world. You can find more information about Icon Realty on all the pages where you download each episode. Please say hi when you reach out to her for me.

Hey everyone, Thanks for bringing your curiosity to Hearts Unlimited where we're going to Explore all sorts of relationship topics from the bedroom to the boardroom, from traditional viewpoints to non-traditional ones. I'm Rev. Ronnie Roll and I am the heart behind Hearts Unlimited, and I'll be your guide along our journey together.

Each week I'll be talking with guests, helping you to solve your relationship challenges, and perhaps challenging you to look at your relationships in your own life and how you might be able to make them better. I'd like to share a little bit about me, so perhaps you feel a little bit more comfortable in opening your ears and heart.

They say that sometimes in life, your mess becomes your message, and that's very true for me. I came from a pretty normal looking family on the outside, but it was anything but on the inside. There was pretty much every kind of abuse happening in the walls of our home that occasionally leaked out into the public eye in the small southern community I was growing up in.

My mom was a raging alcoholic. My dad was a traveling salesman who was gone a lot. My grandmother moved in with us to try to help out, but that didn't work so well. So in typical codependent fashion, my brother became the underachiever and I became the overachiever, so that we each could get the attention we so desperately craved.

By the time I was 17 and going to college, I knew I had plenty of negative role models and not so many positive ones. So instead of taking classes in math or science, I took classes in parenting and family relationships, group dynamics, and things like that. I also began a lifelong journey to interview couples who have been happily married for a minimum of 25 years or more, asking them what they believe the key to their success has been, and I've been tracking that information ever since.

For those who look for the plaques on the wall that they believe prove someone has expertise in an area, there's the undergrad degree in Individualized Studies that's focused on spiritual and emotional development, adult training and development, and religious studies. There's the certification in Conflict Resolution Studies from Hamlin Law School's Dispute Resolution Institute. There's the interfaith seminary one that culminated with my being ordained as an interfaith minister, where I studied many of the world's religions. And most recently, there's the certificate in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion from Cornell. Work life took me into sales pretty much early on and was a common theme for many years.

I also worked in several areas of law, including employment law. I've owned and operated a myriad of businesses for myself and others throughout the years, giving me a solid foundation that when we talk about business relationships, I kind of know a thing or two about those as well. I'm a wife, mother of two grown sons, have three grandchildren, and three furry children I adore.

I'm actually an introvert who loves to hide behind my work as I marry couples, baptize their children, and help them say goodbye to their loved ones, as well as help people design their healthy, happy, and hot relationships that will last a lifetime. Now we have just a couple rules to the show. The first one is, whatever we talk about comes from a place of love, infinite and unconditional as much as we can humanly give.

The second is that we bring open hearts and ears when listening to guests and their points of view. My dad used to say that healthy discourse between two people helps you both either affirm or change your belief in something once new information is received. In a world of cancer culture where we often quickly cut people out of our lives if they don't think or act the way we do, healthy discourse stands to help us find ways we can learn and grow from each other without ending the relationships that may have held deep meaning for us in the past or could in the future.

Each of us is in control of our own lives. The views and suggestions you may hear on this podcast are those of the person expressing them. And it's up to you to decide if you wish to apply them in your own life or not. You have free will, and I urge you to use y our good judgment and freedom of choice in what you do with what you've, I don't have all the answers, but I have a wealth of experiences, lessons learned, and a desire to spread more love into this world.

My message and & why in life is this. The heart is a beautiful gift we're given to share with each other. It's like a prism that shines a beautiful rainbow of colors everywhere when it's whole. If it gets chipped, it can't refract light from that place any longer, and in essence, gets dark. The more chipped it gets, the less light it can bring to the world.

Our hearts are like those prisms that get chipped from time to time, but they don't always reflect the beautiful rainbow that exists within them. But the heart is a beautiful, resilient, living being that can be healed. In doing so, we can shine those beautiful colors of the rainbow out into the world and make a huge difference.

Hearts Unlimited and I exist to help people see the rainbow of love within us all, and to help people celebrate it, cultivate it, and connect with it in all its many forms. This podcast is a way for me to shine a little bit of love, hope, and healing into the world. Maybe I'll touch your heart in some way that illuminates it just a little bit more.

For that, I would be eternally humbled to have been a part of, but here's the thing. What if you picked up that little bit of light, love, hope, and pass it along to someone else who does the same. Can you picture the world lighting up in all sorts of colors as we pass the love to each other? As those lights touch each heart along the way, we become so much more, capable of so much more.

Our hearts expand and we truly become one. Hearts unlimited. So please join me in this journey of love as we look to illuminate the world with love one heart at a time.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Hearts Unlimited's podcast. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe to receive a notice when new episodes are released by going to www.heartsunlimited.org/subscribe. HeartsUnlimited.org is where you can go to find more information about how to intentionally design your relationship, resolve conflicts at home or in the workplace, find more resources on how to have healthy, happy, and hot relationships where appropriate. and more. If you want to make sure you get all the deep dive interviews with special guests, extra content just for members, and advance notice of live events and more, make sure you check the box on the subscribe request to receive more information about the Ace of Hearts Club coming soon.

Lastly, if you'd like to send me a message, let me know what you thought about this episode, give me ideas for what you'd like me to address, or whatever, you can reach me at [email protected] or on the Hearts Unlimited Facebook page. Until next time, here's to a life full of love and blessings along your heart's journey.