Good morning. Today is Sunday, April 16 2023. My name is Rebecca Gilbert. And this is my coming to path talk. When Trueman asked me not that long ago, like a couple of weeks ago, if I'd be willing to give this talk, I froze. It's been a long journey of recovery. And I felt worried about what it would be like to go back and my thoughts and revisit all the suffering that led me to the Dharma. 24 years have passed since I found my way to the Zen Center here. And yeah, I was, I said, Yes, because I was, I thought it might be helpful for people to hear and understand, you know, a little bit like, you're not the only one who's gone through some things that I've gone through, and I thought it would be also I was curious to see what wisdom I would understand better now, looking back. It's been a long time since I thought about these events. And so, so here I am. And I hope it's helpful. So I entitled this talk. The layering of suffering. First Noble Truth is all life of suffering. And I'm going to just try and describe some of the layers from my life that I thought drew me here. Starting with my early family life, and college, grad school, and then finally what it was like when I finally came to the Zen Center. I was born in 1966, two teenage parents at an army base in surely Massachusetts. My dad joined the Army as a college dropout when the news of my mother's unexpected pregnancy changed both of their courses. My mother dropped out of college at the same time, and they quickly got married, thinking that the military would be the fastest way for my father, to secure an income to support his wife and child. dropping out of college was not a big sacrifice to either one of them. Because my parents families are rooted in rural Wisconsin farming communities, farming communities, and there was little expectation for anybody to go to college. Most people just, you know, continue the family business farming or worked in factories. I'm the only person on either side of my family who went to college was my maternal grandfather, who became a high school biology, biology teacher and athletics coach. My dad on my dad's side of the family, my his father, worked as a laborer in a playground equipment factory, Harley Davidson. He worked for Harley Davidson and then he also worked for his dad's painting business. He has dad had a painting business. My grandmother, on my dad's side was a sales lady at Sears and Roebuck. My grandfather died at the age of 54 of colon cancer and left my grandmother a widowed mom of three my dad was the youngest. And so I never knew him but or my never knew my grandfather, but my loved my grandmother, she was so joyful. I don't know. She just we loved being with her. She was just she loved us. It was so free, the joy she had she she had wisdom from all of that, raising those kids, by yourself. And my dad and his siblings grew to adulthood and had married and had children right in the same small community and in Wisconsin, so we all gather together. You know, for birthdays, anniversaries, all the holidays, we were together a lot. When I was young, on my mom's side my mom lived her life as an only child in the shadow of her older brother's death. Her brother was disabled with cerebral palsy possibly caused by oxygen deprivation during a long and arduous labor and delivery. I spoke to her about this just a couple of days ago. She said she thinks the doctor could have intervened with a C section. His name was David her brother's name was Dave and he lived in a nursing home and my grandparents visited on holidays just very rarely. And my mother was never allowed to meet them or see them. She says she really remembers the I said, did your did your parents ever talk to you about it? No, they never talked to talk to her about it. But she was very aware of the pain that they suffered. And he died at the age of eight of 16. He was 16 years old when he died. And she said he choked to death on his tongue during an unattended seizure. And she says she never they never spoke to her about her brother, or or their pain. But she remembers learning of his death because she answered the door when the police officer came to the house to tell us tell them they were staying at a cottage that didn't have a telephone. So the police officer had to come to the door. And tell tell them the news. And my mother answered the door. So she really remembers this. I think we absorb a lot of our parents suffering without knowing it at the beginning in our early lives, and I know I did. My parents are alcoholics. We lived in Wisconsin, Milwaukee, this beer capital of the world. When I was in elementary school, a big school trip was to the paps brewery, and we couldn't wait to taste the beer at the end, although it was root beer. But you know, this is German. I mean, I don't have to tell many of you. I know many of you are from Wisconsin. So ironic. Sidebar. I've never been to Madison. Weirdly enough. But it's you know, it's a German my family are German heritage. German immigrants from long long we checked on at Ellison island, but they didn't come through they came through before Ellison Island.