Sebastian Scales is a stand up comedian, host of the What Happened to You Podcast, and founder of the What Happened to You Foundation. For our fellow nerds – he graduated from Cornell with a degree in engineering which launched him into a career at Microsoft, which after 2 years, he walked away from to do far far far more important work. He embraced his powerful, important and truly challenging mission of using laughter and the art of stand-up comedy to normalize conversations of trauma. He is boldly, compassionately and shamelessly (in all the most essentially healing ways) sharing the story of his childhood molestation so that others may feel comfortable and safe to talk about their traumas, whatever they may be. Not only does Sebastian emanate the deep joy, and love of life that comes from healing the scars of our past but he is a beacon for all other to follow. I feel so honored to get to share a little of his energy and story with you all today and open up a little more about mine. Together, we hope to inspire and invite you all to not hide from the things that hurt but to consider that they might be the very things that will make you smile like you’ve never smiled before and laugh like you’ve never laughed before.

Sebastian and I could talk for for ever about this topic so we had to make some cuts a long the way – so forgive the random mentions of mushrooms and other non sequesters – we swear it was super funny - but we figured we would get right down to it…