#174 From Disfigurement to Discovery: Building Real Confidence

Today, I interview John Kippen who spent years hiding after a surgery left half of his face paralyzed. His story is one of deep courage, transformation, and learning what it really means to be seen.

As a child, John grew up in a successful family and learned how to perform, achieve, and seek approval. But beneath that confidence was a longing to be understood for who he truly was. When a brain tumor led to facial paralysis, everything he knew about identity and worth was shaken.

What followed was a long season of silence and isolation that eventually became a doorway to rediscovery. Through his love for magic and storytelling, John began to connect with others again. The stage became a space where he stopped hiding, shared his truth, and turned what once felt like a limitation into a powerful message of authenticity.

Today, John uses his voice to help others find theirs. As a speaker and empowerment coach, he reminds us that real confidence isn’t about appearance or perfection. It begins with self-acceptance, compassion, and the courage to show up exactly as we are.

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John Kippen is an entrepreneur, professional magician, speaker, resilience and empowerment coach, and published author.

In 2002, he was diagnosed with a large benign brain tumor that, while successfully removed, left him with permanent facial paralysis. The experience stopped his forward momentum and led him into hiding for more than twelve years.

During that time, John rediscovered his childhood love for performing magic and storytelling. What began as a way to cope slowly became his source of healing. With renewed passion and hope, he came to see that his facial difference was not a limitation but his greatest superpower.

Today, John lives with joy and purpose, helping others rise above self-doubt and fear. As a resilience and empowerment coach, he teaches people to get out of their own way and step into a life of confidence and connection.

His guiding mottos are simple yet profound: Being different is your superpower and Feed your heart with your art.

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Find John here:
https://www.johnkippen.com/

https://www.facebook.com/kippen/?_rdr

https://www.instagram.com/johnkippen/?hl=en

https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnkippenspeaker/

Transcript

Transcript of Interview

Find Your Voice, Change Your Life Podcast

Podcast Host: Dr. Doreen Downing

Free Guide to Fearless Speaking: Doreen7steps.com

Episode #174 John Kippen

“From Disfigurement to Discovery: Building Real Confidence”

(00:00) Doreen Downing: Hi, this is Dr. Doreen Downing. I’m here as host of the Find Your Voice, Change Your Life podcast. I interview people who have fascinating stories about their life and how, at some point, they either lost their voice or maybe never had it in the first place. They talk about their journey to find it.

Today is going to be absolutely fascinating. I’m really excited to share it with you. John Kippen had—well, he’ll tell you more about it—but it has something to do with having a diagnosis and how, after an operation, it changed his looks. That made him hide out for quite a long time. That’s just the beginning of what we’ll be covering today. Let me first say hi to John. Hi.

(00:59) John Kippen: Doreen, great to be here.

(01:01) Doreen Downing: We’re waving at each other for those who are just listening. You can also hear what a fantastic voice he has. There’s a lot of confidence in this man’s voice, right, folks?

(01:12) John Kippen: Thank you.

(01:13) Doreen Downing: You’re welcome. I’m going to read the bio you sent or that I found. John Kippen is an entrepreneur, professional magician, speaker, resilience and empowerment coach, and published author.

John was dealt a bad blow in 2002 when he was diagnosed with a large benign brain tumor. Its removal, although successful, left him with permanent facial paralysis, which stopped his forward momentum and forced him into hiding for more than 12 years.

As John hit bottom, he rediscovered his childhood love for performing magic and storytelling. Now filled with passion and hope, he discovered that his facial difference had become his greatest superpower.

This new mindset gave John the strength to live life with joy and become a sought-after resilience and empowerment coach who uses the lessons and methodologies he learned from overcoming his adversity to inspire and assist his clients to get out of their own way and live their best lives.

You’ve got two mottos here, and I’m going to read both of them. “Being different is your superpower.” Oh, thank you, John. And the second one, “Feed your heart with your art.” We’ve got lots of nuggets already just in your bio. Where do we start?

Usually, where I like to start—because I’m a psychologist—is by getting curious about where you were born, what family you came into, and what that situation was. It gives us a good grounding for where you started.

(03:23) John Kippen: I grew up in Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley. Both my parents were attorneys. I was an only child, and I went to one school from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade. It was a private school. I got interested in music and band and theater, and I saw opportunities and I just went after them.

(03:53) Doreen Downing: Well, already what I’m getting is that it almost sounds ideal—two parents who are successful, and you having a lot of room in a household just to be yourself. I liked what you said about feeling like maybe you were born with this sense that opportunity is around you. That essence of who you are is already showing up early in life. Were there key moments that stand out? Go on.

(04:31) John Kippen: I work along with a lot of clients who have limiting beliefs, and they all come from their parents or whoever raised them sharing their dreams of what they can be.

A lot of people are stuck, realizing after spending years working at a job or following a path that was really designed by their folks and not by themselves.

You get to retirement age and you look back and go, “Is that it? Is that all there was?”

(05:13) Doreen Downing: Or they get halfway through their life and wake up—luckily.

(05:16) John Kippen: Right.

(05:17) Doreen Downing: Or like you, something happened that was a medical thing and you had to change your life. But before I go further into your story around that situation, two attorneys—that’s impressive.

Traditionally, attorneys can be very structured. I don’t want to be stereotypical, but did you find that there was a lot of oversight in how you should be or what you should do? Any ways in which they put pressure on you?

(05:59) John Kippen: My mom was the first female public defender in Los Angeles. And my dad had a private practice. My mom wore the pants in the family, and I would watch my dad give in to whatever my mom wanted. That’s how he made himself happy—by making her happy. That was a really strong lesson I observed throughout my childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood.

(06:35) Doreen Downing: You have some self-awareness already, and I’d like to follow through a little more on that. Observing one parent finding happiness through another person—by focusing on making them happy—what did you feel about that?

(06:59) John Kippen: I always thought my dad understood me and my mom didn’t, because my mom’s patience was very short. I was a creative problem solver, and I needed to understand things. When my mom would say, “Go do this, go take out the garbage,” my brain said, “Why should I be doing that?”

If they explained it to me and it made sense, I did it without any quarrel or apprehension. But my mom’s stock answer was, “Because I told you to.”

(07:41) Doreen Downing: Yes, and in that tone. I’m so glad you said it that way. You demonstrated it well.

(07:48) John Kippen: Absolutely.

(07:48) Doreen Downing: I know from what I’ve read, and what we already know about you, that you were into drama. I really appreciate you actually dramatizing that voice.

(08:01) John Kippen: I wouldn’t understand it, and she would just close off and send me to my room. I would go to my room, cry, and be upset. My dad would come in, rub my back, and say, “You know, your mom really loves you a lot. She just has very little patience, and you just need to let her be who she is and not try to make her who you think she should be.”

(08:31) Doreen Downing: Well, there’s kind of a smart lesson there, isn’t it?

(08:33) John Kippen: Oh, yes. It was harder to do than it was to think about it.

(08:39) Doreen Downing: You’re right. Luckily, you had a caring person who understood more deeply and was there for you—almost physically, like you said, he would rub your back and calm you.

(08:53) John Kippen: Yes, he would calm me down. He was a very wise man. Unfortunately, he fell into dementia, and that was so difficult for my mom.

(09:11) Doreen Downing: For somebody who wants things done a certain way.

(09:17) John Kippen: I would work with my mom on trying to teach her how to enter his reality instead of forcing him back into hers. That’s the only solution to keeping your loved one who has dementia at home before you have to institutionalize them.

(09:38) John Kippen: Because there is no other reality but what’s going on in their mind. The more you challenge that, the more agitated and angry they get. So I’d just say, “That’s wonderful, Dad. I think that’s great.”

(09:56) John Kippen: It calms them down, and they’re happy again. It was a lesson my mom just couldn’t appreciate.

(10:09) Doreen Downing: It’s really interesting—the circle of what your father gave you. It felt like deep compassion, and you were able to give that back to him.

(10:23) John Kippen: Yes, we had a great relationship even after he lost his ability to communicate. He would talk in phrases—things that he used to say. His favorite phrases, he would just string them together, and that’s how he communicated. So I coined a name for that language and called it “Kanese.”

(10:48) Doreen Downing: Well, that’s your last name with an “ese,” huh? Kanese? Yes, thank you.

(10:53) John Kippen: I don’t know why we got on the track of talking about my parents, but I learned a lot from being their son—both ways.

How they dealt with life and how they didn’t impose their will or desires on me. They wanted me to be happy, that was it. As long as I was doing something to make myself happy, they were happy.

(11:25) Doreen Downing: You mentioned that early in life you were drawn to magic.

(11:32) John Kippen: Yes.

(11:32) Doreen Downing: And that was in your youth?

(11:36) John Kippen: I was six. My uncle came over to visit my grandma, and I was there. He was introduced to me, and the first thing he did was pull a quarter out from behind my ear. I was immediately hooked.

Every year on my birthday and on Christmas, there would be a box from Uncle Milton. Inside was a new trick for me to learn. I would practice it, and when he came back into town two or three times a year, we would sit down for a couple of hours, practicing and adjusting the nuance and presentation. He taught me how to build patter and create a connection with my audience.

(12:18) Doreen Downing: What is patter?

(12:20) John Kippen: Just the scripting.

(12:21) Doreen Downing: You mean the way you talk to your audience?

(12:24) John Kippen: The story. The story behind the magic. Why the magic happens. When I perform, I make the magic about the spectator. I’m just the conduit. You make the magic happen by what you think or what you say.

As I started performing after my facial paralysis, people would be distracted by the left side of my face. It wasn’t judgment; they were just curious. They wanted to know if I’d had a stroke or Bell’s Palsy. That curiosity distracted from their enjoyment of the magic.

(13:05) John Kippen: So I came up with an idea. I would come out on stage, sit down, and say, “Guys, welcome. A little bit about myself—I’ve been doing magic since I was five or six, but in 2002, I had a brain tumor. When they cut into my head, they traumatized my facial nerve. Hence the paralyzed face.”

But something happened to me on that operating room table. I don’t know what it was, because I was unconscious. All I know is when I recovered, I realized I had acquired some new skills. Then I would pause and wait for my audience to get on the edge of their chairs, wanting to know what possible skills I could have gained from brain surgery.

(13:47) John Kippen: I would look to my right and my left, like it was the biggest secret, and then lean in and whisper in a loud voice, “Guys, I am able to visualize people’s thoughts.” Then I would do some mentalism—some mental magic.

That did two things. First, it answered the question the audience wouldn’t ask: why my face was paralyzed.

(14:14) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(14:15) John Kippen: And number two, I shared something personal about myself. I opened my heart to them.

(14:21) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(14:21) John Kippen: I trusted them with that dark secret of mine—how many years I hid from cameras and mirrors because I didn’t like the way I looked. Suddenly, they opened their arms and were completely entranced.

(14:40) John Kippen: They were invested in the magic and in me.

(14:47) John Kippen: I’ve tried to teach other magicians how to use their personality, their passions, something unique about themselves, and share that with their audience so it feels like a one-on-one conversation.

The other skill that I acquired was remembering people’s names. When you’re performing, that is so important because everyone loves to hear their own name. If you use their names, you immediately have their attention.

(15:24) John Kippen: So magic became my therapy. It gave me the understanding that my facial difference did not define me if I didn’t let it.

(15:34) Doreen Downing: Exactly. I love what you’re saying about the empowerment of self. There are so many links to people who don’t have any kind of disfigurement but still carry emotional or mental scars. We all have scars.

(15:52) John Kippen: We all have scars.

(15:53) Doreen Downing: Yes. Let’s go back for a moment. Since today’s podcast is about how you didn’t have a voice and then how you found it, you’ve just told us about how you found it. Let’s go back to the moment after your surgery, when you woke up and realized that you were paralyzed on half of your face.

What did you feel? What were the thoughts that came up? Because that feels like such a powerful moment. You’ve shared how you describe it to an audience, but what was the real, raw experience for you—the shock of it?

(16:36) John Kippen: My surgery was 16 or 17 hours. As I woke up, it was like I was fighting to get to the surface of a deep pool. When I finally came to, I looked and my dad was sitting on the bed holding my hand.

I smiled, and then I looked around the room for my mom, but I didn’t see her because I needed glasses. I asked my dad to put them on me, and I immediately tried to do it myself but realized my head was bandaged. That was a trick in itself—just getting my glasses on. Then I looked across the room and saw my mom, and the look on her face was one of horror.

(17:23) Doreen Downing: Oh. Let me just feel that for a moment. I can imagine that feeling.

(17:31) John Kippen: “What did these surgeons do to my poor son’s face?”

At that point, I didn’t know my face was paralyzed. I could feel something was off, but I didn’t understand why I couldn’t move it. That reaction from her confused me. In hindsight, as I healed, I realized that was the moment that sent me into darkness.

If my own mom didn’t accept the way I looked, how was I supposed to love myself? How was I supposed to move on with life?

(18:09) Doreen Downing: Wow.

(18:11) John Kippen: That realization came from really thinking about it.

(18:15) Doreen Downing: John, how old were you?

(18:17) John Kippen: I was 31.

(18:20) Doreen Downing: Was there something about the diagnosis? Does this just happen to people, or was there a cause?

(18:30) John Kippen: The tumor was an acoustic neuroma. It’s a tumor that grows on the hearing nerve.

(18:36) John Kippen: There are three nerves in your head on each side—the hearing nerve, the balance nerve, and the facial nerve. My surgeon described them as having the consistency of wet linguini, all bundled together. To remove the tumor, which was the size of a golf ball, they had to carefully scrape it off the balance and facial nerves.

(19:06) John Kippen: When I realized my face was paralyzed, my mom handed me her little compact makeup mirror. I looked at my face and, within an hour after I had woken up, I called the nurse and said, “Get the doctor in here.”

(19:29) John Kippen: One of the neurosurgeons came in, and I said, “Doctor, what happened? What’s going on with my face?” He said, “John, we monitored your face throughout the entire 15–16 hour surgery, and we had good electrical connectivity until we closed the incision.”

(19:50) John Kippen: We think the swelling caused a temporary effect on the nerve, but we have every confidence that as the swelling goes down, your face will start moving again.

(20:05) John Kippen: So I had hope. After spending a week in the hospital recovering, I went home. One day, I coughed and realized the back of my head was wet. I had developed a spinal fluid leak from the base of the incision. I had to go back to the hospital and have them redo the incision.

It took a couple of weeks before I could start healing physically. During that time, I hid at home. I ran a computer consulting company and could work over the phone, so I didn’t need to see people. That was long before Zoom and video conferencing.

(20:51) John Kippen: At some point, I became so miserable that I decided to see how I could play the part of myself. I was a trained actor as well, and magic became the spark that allowed me to celebrate my differences instead of hide from them.

(21:20) Doreen Downing: Your message is so transformative. I’m going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we’ll hear more about that transformation and how those of us who are listening can take in what you’ve shared.

How does someone with that kind of challenge—whether it’s facial or invisible—find something within themselves that becomes their superpower?

We’ll be right back.

(21:45) Doreen Downing: Hi, we’re back now with John Kippen, learning about his journey through a 17-hour surgery to remove a brain tumor lodged inside his skull. After the operation, he discovered that the nerve controlling his facial movement had been damaged.

At first, there was hope. The doctor said his face would return to normal soon, but it didn’t. Imagine living with that. How does someone adapt to life feeling like they have a visible difference?

If you listened to the first part of this episode, you’ll remember the story John shared about a significant figure in his life—his mother. He described the moment she looked at him in horror. That moment was chilling. To have your own mother look at you as if you were deformed or ugly—a monster.

(22:41) Doreen Downing: Thank you for being so forthright with your words. Those are the kinds of things people with visible differences or disabilities often hear. Though I hesitate to use the word “disability,” because what we’re really talking about today is the shift from disability to difference—to celebrating it.

And we’re talking about voice. Coming back to voice, you said you were hiding in your office because you were doing computer work and didn’t need to face people. What was that journey of transformation? You mentioned remembering your love for magic.

(24:28) John Kippen: I loved magic. I would practice magic at home. I was watching television and saw a David Copperfield special, and then a friend of mine reminded me about the Magic Castle, which is a private magician’s club in Hollywood. I was making good money, so I joined as an associate member, not as a performing magician.

I was greeted with such warmth from that magic community that it gave me the courage to put together a fifteen-minute routine and audition. I auditioned and passed. Once I started feeling comfortable, there was one magician who took me under his wing and said, “I know it’s intimidating to have to put together fifteen or twenty minutes of magic. So what I’ll do for you is anytime you want to perform, give me the high sign. I’ll be in the middle of my show, I’ll introduce you, you’ll sit down, take my chair, do two tricks, and then you can fade into the background and I’ll finish the show.”

He only had to do that once or twice, and then I was hooked. As I described why my face was paralyzed and how I turned it into a superpower—being able to visualize people’s thoughts and do mentalism—people accepted me. Especially women.

Being an overweight guy with glasses, balding hair, and a paralyzed face, trust me, attracting women, especially in Los Angeles, is no easy feat. But at the Magic Castle, you have to dress up. You have to wear a suit as a man, and women wear very fancy clothes. It’s a time for everyone to show their best selves.

I would be sitting at a table with four or five women, and I’d look at their posture. Their hands would be across their chests, their legs crossed, leaning back. They didn’t know what to make of me. They didn’t know if I was going to be inappropriate or come onto them. They were there to see some magic, but they were very standoffish.

Once I started performing, learned their names, and made the magic about them, I saw those walls start to drop. Walls that women are forced to put up in today’s society for self-protection against predators.

(27:49) John Kippen: By the end of the thirty-minute performance, they were asking permission to hug me. I thought long and hard about that. A couple of the women allowed me to call them in the following days and talk about what was going through their minds, what was going through their bodies and their hearts.

They went from being standoffish to being the most feminine they could be by offering a hug to a strange man. As I started talking to these women, they didn’t really know how to phrase it. So I said, “Let me give it a try. Did I give you permission to be vulnerable again?” And they would spontaneously start crying.

Because in that moment, they realized what they had lost. They had lost their ability to be feminine, to be nurturing, just because of what today’s society is like.

I noticed it so many times. There would be a couple, and the woman was fixated on me. Out of the corner of my eye, I’d look at the husband, and he was starting to get jealous. I was very aware of that. The women had no clue their significant others were getting jealous.

That built my confidence to be able to go out and share my story and share my methodology.

(29:37) Doreen Downing: You talk about being an empowerment coach. In some ways, I see that you’re doing that on stage and maybe in a magic routine because of what you understand about how to connect with people in your audience. But actually being an empowerment coach, what was that?

(30:00) John Kippen: It was once I learned how to accept myself and love myself again. Not in my head, not mentally, but emotionally. I could look in the mirror and say, “Yes, I’ve got a screwed-up face, but I’m not going to let that stop me.”

Once I shared that—either verbally or just through my actions—something shifted. Funny story: I spent twelve years learning how not to hide my face. And then what happened in 2020?

(30:38) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(30:39) John Kippen: The pandemic came.

(30:41) John Kippen: And now, covering your face with a mask was not only politically correct but government mandated.

(30:50) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(30:51) John Kippen: And I thought to myself, I am not going to hide my face another minute. I found a company online, sent them a picture of the lower half of my face, and they printed that picture on a mask.

(31:06) John Kippen: That’s the mask I would wear.

(31:08) Doreen Downing: Oh, wow. How brave of you.

(31:11) John Kippen: Strangers wouldn’t understand.

(31:13) Doreen Downing: You’re right.

(31:13) John Kippen: But people who knew me would do a double take.

(31:17) John Kippen: And that said volumes. They realized I was not going to allow a global pandemic to make me hide again.

(31:31) John Kippen: I was selected to do a TED Talk. When you do a TED Talk, it’s one idea, and the idea I talked about was how to treat people who are different with respect and compassion. That was the moral and subject of my TED Talk.

(31:51) John Kippen: I tell the story of being at a restaurant, sitting in a booth. In front of me was another booth with two parents and a little boy, about six or seven years old. He was bored, so he turned around, faced me, and started looking at my face.

(32:10) Doreen Downing: Curious.

(32:11) John Kippen: Curious. He got up, came over, looked up, and said, “Mister, what’s wrong with your face?”

(32:17) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(32:19) John Kippen: Before I had a chance to respond, his mom grabbed him by the arm and said, “Don’t bother the nice man. He has enough troubles already.”

(32:27) Doreen Downing: Oh.

(32:28) John Kippen: And in that moment, I knew my role was to share my story with them.

(32:37) John Kippen: I went over and knelt down so I was eye level with the boy and said, “You know, you had a really good question.” I explained that I had a medical procedure that caused me not to be able to move my face, but that this was my new face. It was just different, like his.

The boy immediately accepted that answer. I looked up at his parents, and the look on their faces was one of shame. They realized they were imposing their own discomfort on their son.

(33:10) Doreen Downing: They saw it—how quickly attitudes form, and how powerful self-acceptance can be.

Your story also shows our listeners how using your voice can transform not only your own perspective but also others’. The way you spoke truthfully to that child and his family helped them understand.

It’s a little like your beginning story today about taking out the garbage. You wanted to know why, and in essence, it’s the same here. People want to know why. All you need to do is give a simple explanation.

Yes. So we’re coming to an end, and I want to make sure we point to the coaching that you do—the empowerment coaching.

(34:08) John Kippen: I teach my clients how to accept themselves, how to love themselves, and how to take whatever their passion is and use that to introduce themselves to other people. When you are passionate about something, people are attracted to you because you exude confidence.

I help my clients get out of their own way. I teach them that being happy is a choice. You can choose to be happy, or you can choose to be upset—it’s all a mindset.

(34:57) Doreen Downing: There’s something else here that I think you help people learn. I’ve only spent a short amount of time with you, but you can say, “You could choose to be happy, or you could choose to be upset.” Yes. But what is happy, really?

I think that’s what you help people discover inside themselves—what happiness feels like. It’s like looking in the mirror, saying hello, and being happy as you look at yourself and feel it. It’s an inside job.

We’re running out of time, and I need to say goodbye. But before we do, I always like to take a breath and clear the slate. I’d like to ask you to reflect for a moment. You’ve already given so many nuggets of wisdom and guidance about being proud of who we are and embracing our differences.

In closing our time together, as you listen to this moment, what wants to be said?

(36:16) John Kippen: Follow your heart instead of your brain when dealing with other people, because you never know what they’re going through. I’ve seen people post things on social media that are out of character. We’ve all seen it. Most people just say, “Oh, they’re having a bad day.” Not me.

I stop. I call that person and say, “I saw that post, and it didn’t sound like the person I know. What’s going on?” And often, it’s their cry for help—their way of asking for someone to notice them.

(37:04) Doreen Downing: You’re demonstrating what it feels like to connect with people through the heart. You have a big heart that takes that extra step to reach out.

(37:16) John Kippen: It makes life worth living.

(37:18) Doreen Downing: Today, speaking of social media, I saw the phrase, “Follow your heart. It knows the way.” So maybe that’s how we’ll end our conversation today.

Thanks, everyone, for listening. This is Find Your Voice, Change Your Life, celebrating our differences. And thank you, John, for being here.

(37:42) John Kippen: Thank you, Doreen.