S12e19: Julie Shapiro – Bubba, Buddha, and a Bench

“It was always in a weird way, I wouldn&#8217;t say triggering, but I just didn&#8217;t like it. And then by the end, I really did love it. It just felt really heartwarming when different people in the Process, even still, since we all &#8211; a lot of us still keep in touch, and they call me Bubba, it makes me smile.&#8221; &#8211; Julie Shapiro Hoffman grad, Julie Shapiro, found herself at a crossroads. She knew what she wanted to change in herself. Yet, she also felt unable to make that change. There&#8217;s change we can make through our choices, and then there&#8217;s change that must come from deeper within. The Hoffman Process works in this deeper place within us through the Cycle of Transformation. This is the place where the &#8220;magic&#8221; of the Process happens. Julie&#8217;s story is one of courage, desire, and willingness. She came to the Process with profound scepticism. But she also came with a willingness to fully enter into the Process to allow change to happen within her, even though she couldn&#8217;t understand how it would happen. In moments of silence in nature, time with a Buddha, and places where Julie knew she had to go deeper, the &#8220;magic&#8221; of transformation happened. She gained new insights and saw a deeply rooted pattern. In one moment that allowed her Process to go deeper, Julie realized she had to use the childhood nickname her father had given her on her name tag rather than her given name. She knew that, even though her nickname, Bubba, triggered her, using it would be important. And it turned out to be. As Julie shares, using Bubba &#8220;was the real way to connect with my childhood, connect with my parent relationship, work through some things that I may not have had the opportunity to do before he died, and just really connect with him.&#8220; Connecting with her childhood unlocked something deeper within. Hearing fellow students call her Bubba began to bring her joy. Beautiful, ineffable things can happen when you surrender to the Process, as Julie did. We hope you enjoy this heartfelt conversation with Julie and Sadie. Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify More about Julie Shapiro: Have you ever known exactly what you wanted to change about yourself — but felt unable actually to make the change? It was at that crossroads that Julie Shapiro signed up for the Hoffman Process. At 42, she felt that certain milestones, like marriage and starting a family, were out of reach. A lifelong New Yorker, she’d recently moved to Los Angeles and unexpectedly lost her dad within weeks of moving. A Stanford graduate, she set impossibly high standards for herself, both personally and professionally. <img decoding="async" class="wp-image-30824 size-medium" src="https://www.hoffmaninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Julie-Shapiro-Hoffman-Podcast-image-3-209x300.