Introduction to our Board member Abraham Lopez
Listen to the podcast episode here.
Eva:
Hi, this is the Pure Living Family podcast. I'm Eva, my little brother is Theo, and my mom and dad are Shawn and Angela.
Shawn:
Hello fans, and welcome to another episode of the Pure Living Family Podcast. Today we introduce you to Abe Lopez, one of the founders of our nonprofit. We have established the Pure Living Family Foundation. You'll get to know him a little bit better, where he came from and why he wants to be involved in the foundation to help serve this community of parents of special needs kids. We've gotten to know him and his family really well. We've traveled together to Mexico and did fecal microbiota transplants for our kids. We rented an Airbnb together in Mexico and went through that whole experience together, and over the last few years of becoming closer friends, and I really appreciate his passion and his willingness to serve others.
I'm really excited for you all to get to know a little bit more about my friend Abe Lopez. Check it out. Hello friends, and welcome back to another episode of the Pure Living Family Podcast. I'm really excited to talk more about our Pure Living Family Foundation, our nonprofit that we started, and I wanted to introduce you to one of the founding members. The foundation would not exist without this gentleman's help in paperwork and getting it started. So I'd like to introduce you to Abe Lopez. Abe, thanks for joining the call.
Abe:
Thank you, Shawn. Thank you for having me here.
Shawn:
Well, just to give everyone an opportunity to get to know you, we met through our wives, but why don't you tell us a little bit about your background, where you're from, where you grew up, and then how you and Laura met, and then we can kind of pick up from the foundation after that.
Abe:
Sounds good. Yeah, so I was born in Guatemala City, Guatemala. Lived down there for the first 13 years of my life when my family decided to move up to the United States. So that was 2002. It was literally the day after the Olympics because airfare was much cheaper, the day after the Olympics in Salt Lake City than during the Olympics. So I just remember coming out here, it was February something, I don't remember the exact date, but I left Tropical Climate, came here in the middle of winter, and back then it was small Lake City, right?
Everything was much smaller than what it is today. Now that Salt Lake or Utah is big for that matter, but it was definitely a much smaller place and everything felt forever away. Driving from the airport up to Farmington with the family that we were staying at felt like it was an hour and a half drive when it's really probably 15, 20 minutes. Obviously, your perception of time when you're young is a little bit different as well, and everything was new and you didn't know where you were going. But yeah, when we moved up here-
Shawn:
And did you speak English at the time?
Abe:
I didn't. I spoke very little English. I had a very small amount of English that I knew. In Guatemala I went to a private German school, so I knew more German than I did English. That doesn't mean that I spoke German either though, but it was good to come here. It was fun, it was exciting. I didn't want to move. I was against the move, but I was 13, so I really didn't have much of a say on what I did and what happened in my life at that point in time. I just kind of followed where my parents were going and what they were doing.
We were lucky enough to have a great support system when we moved up here though. We were able to come up with a family that supported us and gave us somewhere to stay for the first couple of months until my parents were able to find a job and rent an apartment for me and my two older brothers, at which point we left Farmington and went down to the Bountiful area, so just a little bit south, closer to Salt Lake City, and we lived there in the two bedroom apartment for three to four years, probably, give or take. I shared a room with-
Shawn:
How much older are your brothers than you?
Abe:
Two and three years. So the middle one's two years older. The oldest one's three years older than me.
Shawn:
Did they speak English?
Abe:
[inaudible 00:04:48] all fairly close. They spoke it better than me or they knew more than I did, but none of us were fluent or could hold a conversation. It was very basic. Hi, how are you? My name is so-and-so. It's many years old, very basic, just getting into it. I remember just going, the first couple days, we showed up on a Tuesday, Wednesday, my mom went out to the school, signed us up for school, and my first day of school was on that Thursday, the following Thursday. So I remember showing up to school and just sitting down in class, and the only thing that I understood was the math class, because it's universal, right? You don't have to understand two plus two equals four. It doesn't matter what language that's in, it makes sense. So everything else, I just kind of sat there trying to listen and understand, and I just looked forward to recess so I could go out and play and go play soccer in the middle of the cold. That's the only thing I cared about back then.
Yeah, obviously we moved here in February, so we had what, a month or two of school? March, April, and we got out in May. So it wasn't a long time that I had school. Then we had summer, that summer is when we moved down to Bountiful. So all the friends that I had made in elementary school in Farmington, there were no more, started a new school year at Centerville Junior High, and that's actually where I met Laura. It was that seventh grade year. Funny story with that is, I mean, obviously being a new kid back then you still had lockers. I think they got away with lockers nowadays, but you got to choose your locker partner, right? Since I was new, I didn't know anybody. They just assigned me a locker partner, and my locker partner for some reason knew everybody's name in the school, and I thought he was the most popular kid of life until a few months into it, when I realized that people got to pick their locker partners, and I'm like, why did this guy, since he's so popular, didn't get to pick his locker partner?
In fact, nobody really liked him. He just knew everybody and tried to be friends with everybody. But I thought it was the complete opposite. Funny story enough, it's because of him that I met Laura, because he knew Laura's friend, and we went out to her house and Laura was there, and that's kind of how we met, and we started a friendship from back then on. I finished that in Centerville, then went out to Viewmont High School from there on, see what else? Laura's family moved at that point down to American Fork. So I mean, we kind of talked every now and then, but it wasn't anything. We weren't hanging out or anything like that.
Shawn:
So you were friends, you weren't boyfriend and girlfriend?
Abe:
No. We had a boyfriend girlfriend stint in junior high that lasted about two weeks, and then she dumped me.
Shawn:
A little heartbreaker.
Abe:
Yeah, I just moved on. Go on to the next one. Mentality back then.
Shawn:
So did you go to Viewmont High School, play soccer there?
Abe:
Yep, I played soccer there, tore both of my ACLs while I was playing high school ball, had surgery, so both of them, fixed them both. After that I did a semester at Slick and then went on the mission down to Brazil, served down there for two years, came back, tried to go play out in Iowa for a little bit, but it didn't really work out. It wasn't really what I was expecting it to be. Came back and went down to UVU instead, and that's where me and Laura started. She was down there, and that's where me and her started dating at that point in time. This was 2011, 2012 timeframe. We dated for a few years and we got married in 2014 and shortly after that, we were pregnant with Kingston, and he was born in September of 2015.
Shawn:
Just a few months after Theo.
Abe:
Yep. So not a very long time. From there, at that point we lived in Sandy. We were actually pretty close to where you guys were at. I think that's where the connection between Angela and Laura came from a preschool thing or something like that. Forget where they actually met, but it was...
Shawn:
Yeah. I don't know either. I don't know.
Abe:
Yeah, I know they met at some school thing that both Theo and Kingston were in, and they met there, and that's kind of where all this sprung from. So yeah, Kingston was born in 2015. We sent him, we had our two dogs at that point, lived in Sandy, and about a year and a half into it, we saw some issues, some regressions. He was talking, saying words, a few words here and there, and then at about that 18 month timeframe, he stopped saying those words. The regression started happening.
His physical stuff was still pretty normal. At that point we were pregnant with our second, with Mia, and she was born in July of 2017, and that was around that time frame, the last two months or three months before she was born, we started noticing things. We scheduled the time to go get a diagnosis, but at that point in time, everything was booked. So we had to wait until December of that year to go get a diagnosis at the University of Utah. We went up there, they did the evaluation, and then they let us know that he was diagnosed with autism.
Honestly, at that point, I took it pretty hard. I guess I had set my own expectations of what I wanted in a son and what I wanted him to be and what I expected him to be at that point in time. Mainly wanted him to grow up, play soccer. He was going to be my buddy and take him out to all this stuff, and it felt like all that got ripped away in a matter of minutes.
Shawn:
When he was diagnosed, did they give a level?
Abe:
They didn't, and I think it's, a lot of people have asked us that, and they didn't give us any levels. They're just like, yeah, he's got autism, and that was it.
Shawn:
So I went through a lot of denial during the whole autism diagnosis. I had this belief that Theo was going to outgrow the diagnosis, and it was just a stage. Did you have any of that, or what were you going through during that period?
Abe:
It was a little bit of everything. It was denial. It was self-hatred for a while? Did I do something wrong? It also almost felt in a way like, I felt like the Kingston that I wanted or the expectations that I had, had been killed, and now I had this new child looking back, that's a stupid thought, right? Because he is who he is, and whatever expectations I've had of him wouldn't have mattered regardless of an autism diagnosis or not, but that's really what it felt like. It felt like the Kingston that I had made up in my mind, or the son, my firstborn, that was killed at that point in time, and it was a lot of thoughts, a lot of processing. The idea of what I wanted him to be or what I expected out of him was gone, and I had to reset new expectations. Had to reset what I really now needed to focus on and what I needed to help him with at that point in time moving forward.
Shawn:
But even with that realization, were you able to accept that or was it still a struggle for a period?
Abe:
It was a struggle. So it was a rough, probably six to seven months from December to probably till around Mia's first birthday in July. It was probably a six, seven month period, but it was rough of accepting it, understanding it. I had no clue what autism was. I didn't know the first thing about it. At that point, I started researching different things. Came across a study about, up in the University of North Carolina where they were doing stem cells for autistic kids, and the results of it. I started researching a bunch of stuff, treatments, can they be fixed, blah, blah, blah, those types of things. That's kind of where my mind went at first, and the more and more I read and studied about it and learned about it, realized that it's not a fixed thing, but it's like, how can I help him get better? How can I help him achieve the best that he can do with the issues that he's going to have? How do I reduce any type of issues that he might potentially have and help us navigate those the best way possible.
Shawn:
With that, so you're researching that. You look at stem cells, you decide against that for a period, and then you go and find fecal microbiota transplant. Walk us through that.
Abe:
Yeah, so honestly, it wasn't me that decided to do that at all. I researched stem cells. It seemed very interesting, but it was very new, and I felt like I couldn't experiment with my child. I felt guilty enough already, like I had done something wrong. I didn't feel like I could experiment at that point in time. Back then, it was very new. They were just starting the research, and it wasn't really, it was Laura that started research into FMT. She's the one that did all the research for it. She came up with the idea to me. I was very against it at first.
Mainly because I didn't know anything about it. I had no clue what it was. I'm like, what do you mean? What are we doing that, no, why do we have to go to Mexico for this, doesn't sound right. If it's so good as it sounds, as it claims to be, why isn't it approved here? I was still very naive about a lot of things at that point in time. But yeah, it was Laura and it was, you guys were doing a lot of research. So she was feeding me all this research over.
I would read through it, do the best that I could to try to understand most of it, but just the result themselves. After researching, really at that point, we were thinking about doing stem cells or doing the FMT, and for me, there was a lot less risk with FMT than there was with stem cells. At least that's the way that I viewed it. I just felt like there were a lot less side effects that could come out of FMT then that could potentially go wrong with the stem cells. So we decided to go do FMT at that point in time. He was what? Five, three years [inaudible 00:16:33]. How long ago was that? Three years ago?
Shawn:
It was 2020, yeah.
Abe:
Yeah, so three years ago. So yeah, he was roughly around five. He was four or five years old at that point in time. At which point we had done a bunch of stuff already. Again, Laura's the one, I can't take any credit for any of the research she does a bunch of the research for us and then just kind of feeds me all this stuff, and I have to go read it. But we switched up Kingston's diet. He doesn't eat anything with gluten and anything with dairy or soy, any processed sugars. So he follows a pretty strict diet, and that was kind of the first step that started me getting bought into a different lifestyle, seeing those effects of what his diet had on him. Then that's kind after Laura did that. Then we did all the FMT stuff. We decided to go to the FMT after she did all the research for us.
Shawn:
Well, and that. You drove from Salt Lake to Rosarito, Mexico. So Rosarito is just across the border from San Diego. So we flew and we ended up getting an Airbnb with you guys, which I think was ideal for everyone because we had our own little pool and everything was shut down during COVID and whatever. But walk us through that. I feel like you guys had a lot of really amazing results from FMT after that. What did you see, from the results from it?
Abe:
Yeah. For us, the biggest result was Kingston being present and aware. Prior to FMT, he was with us physically, but it never felt like he was there mentally. He was doing his own thing. He would come with us. He was very high flight risk. He would run away from us all the time, and wouldn't necessarily listen a lot. But after FMT, it felt like he was present mentally as well, not just physically, but the awareness of where he was at, the awareness of being who we were, who mom and dad were, who his sister Mia was at that point in time. All that kind of increased. His speech started to improve a lot as well.
He had a few words at that point, but it was very limited words, not a ton. From there on his speech started to improve a lot to the point where he can communicate what he needs at this point in time. He's not conversational unless he cares to sit down and talk about Jurassic Park and Jurassic and dinos, he'll talk your year off about that. But if you're not talking to him about that, he doesn't care to talk to you, unless he needs something like food or wants a treat or something like that.
But yeah, the awareness, it was crazy. That was the first thing we noticed within a couple of weeks, was just his awareness of being present. I mean, unless you were around him and knew him, it is kind of hard to explain because it doesn't really make sense. But before he was just there physically like a kid, and he would just play and you wouldn't think anything of it. But after that, you knew he was there, he was present, he would talk to you, he would say things, he acknowledged you. Just felt like he knew where he was going. When we went to my parents' house, he knew exactly where we were going.
He was excited about it or was not excited about it, depending on the day. If we were going to Laura's parents, same difference. So he knew exactly where we were going. The awareness and the presence was huge for us. So I think we saw benefits for a good two years, two and a half years post that of him just looking to improve, get better, his speech getting better, his awareness getting better, all those different things. So we've been happy with it, to be honest.
Shawn:
Now with Kingston, tell us about his schooling and what other things like healing modalities or different things that you guys are doing to help him.
Abe:
Yeah, so after FMT, I don't know how long, I think it was you guys that introduced us to Dr. Nathan and his chiropractor, but we started attending over there. So he goes to chiropractor work every Saturday morning. He goes to the chiropractor, and the big things that we saw from there was more calmness, less fight or flight. Before, if we were trying to go do something in public, it was like I had to hold him the whole entire time or be holding his hand because he would just want to book it. Not necessarily run away forever, but he saw something that he was interested in and he would want to run to it.
Now it's like, we can go to Disneyland, we can go to Disney World, we can go to Universal Studios. We can go to Lagoon for that matter, right? Go out to a park and he'll walk with us the whole way there until we tell him, hey, go ahead and go play or go do your thing, and then he'll go out. So a lot of that fight or flight went away with the chiropractor work, which made it a lot easier to be out in public, especially as we had our third kid. You get outnumbered at that point. You can't really chase three kids going three different directions. So it was really nice to have a lot less to do with that. It was a lot less physically demanding at that point for us as well as he continues to get bigger and stronger. So the kid’s thick, he holds his own.
Shawn:
He's one solid kid, that's for sure.
Abe:
Yes, he is. I mean, that's what you get when you just feed him protein pretty much all day long.
Shawn:
Yeah. Okay. Well, now tell us why you would want to be involved in the Pure Living Family Foundation. Why do you want to help the nonprofit?
Abe:
Yeah. Thankfully, I've been blessed beyond belief with me, both with my family and financially. I've been able to pay for these things and these different treatments for Kingston, providing the diet that he wants or needs, maybe not what he wants, but the [inaudible 00:23:01] that has helped him, provide for the chiropractor's weekly work. These are all things that cost money that don't get covered in insurance. FMT, doing stem cells, those different things or any other type of treatment for that matter, like doing sauna work, doing hyperbolic chambers or whatever you want to do. These are all treatments that are very helpful, that can help depending on your situation, that aren't covered with insurance. We worked through insurance. I have insurance, and he's had a therapist come to the house since he was two until probably May of this year. So he's had a therapist with him pretty much for five years straight, helping them with different things, with ABA, with speech therapy, so on and so forth.
Those things could be covered with insurance, but everything else doesn't. The biggest benefits that we've seen have been from those treatments that are not covered by insurance. I've always wanted to help, be able to provide, and help other families provide for their kids. Because I can't imagine what my life would be like right now if we hadn't done those things with Kingston, it would be a lot harder to deal with him. It's a lot harder to deal with things in public, and that adds a lot of stress to a family unit from that perspective.
So I want to be a part of the foundation just to be able to help families get what they need to get to a better spot as a family unit. Because when you have a kid with issues, regardless of what those issues are, everybody suffers, right? Everybody deals with it, whether you like to think about it or not, kids pick up on it. Parents have extra stress on their minds for it. Something as simple as going to the grocery store becomes a very hard task to do or anything like that. So that's the biggest reason to be able to provide and help others and hopefully be given the opportunity to get to a better place on their own.
Shawn:
So with that said, we've got about five minutes left. If you could say something to Abe when Kingston was diagnosed, if you could go back or just offer this advice to a family, a dad that just has his son newly diagnosed, what would you say to them?
Abe:
Be patient, both with your son, your spouse, and yourself. Because there's a lot of frustrations along the way. There's a lot of ups and downs. It's a roller coaster. One day it will be great. Like you said, there were days that Kingston would be doing great, and I'm like, oh, he's going to outgrow this in no time. Then you wake up the next day and it's back to day one. So yeah, be patient and just love one another. Really love your child and love your spouse because as hard as it is to do it with a spouse, I can't imagine doing that without it.
Shawn:
Yeah, I'm glad you said that, and I can hear the emotion in your voice and I appreciate you sharing it. I feel a lot of guilt for a lot of the thoughts. I think you might relate, the anger that I felt towards God for this being my calling, this my responsibility. I don't know if you went through any of that or why.
Abe:
Again, like I said, I went through a lot of thoughts in my head. Some were not very pretty, but again, it's when I came to the realization, I think there were a lot of things in my life, like tearing my ACLs when I was young. That was like, why did that happen to me back then? That kind of led me to the point where I stopped asking why, and I try to have the mentality of how can I make it better? How can I be better? Which is not easy to do, especially in those times. Again, I struggled for a while. It's bad thoughts, one after another that come in your head, and they're not easy to deal with, but it's when you settle to the reality of okay, this is my child and this is what I have to deal with.
I can sit here and ask, why is this my calling? Why is this? Even if I knew why it was, it still wouldn't make my day to day any easier. Knowing the purpose sometimes is not necessarily the answer, but it's just getting up every day and how do I make his life better, how do I make my life better? How to make my kids' lives better? What can I do? What is in my control? That's all I can focus on. I can't focus on anything else. It's whatever I can control and that's what's in front of me. That's what I do at work. That's my attitude when he gets home from school. That's my attitude with my wife. That's what I can do with help out around the house, anything like that. That's what's in my control and that's in front of me and everything else will come by the side.
Shawn:
Well, I'm glad you shared your story. Any final thoughts you feel like you want to share with everyone?
Abe:
No, I'm just excited to get to work on this and finding ways that we can help families and individuals and hopefully seeing results here and hopefully helping others. That's really what I'm excited about.
Shawn:
Well, thank you for joining the podcast, and thanks for being part of the foundation to really allow it to have a voice and take up space in this world that we live in. So thanks for joining today.
Abe:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Eva:
Hi, this is the Pure Living Family podcast. I'm Eva, my little brother is Theo, and my mom and dad are Shawn and Angela.