Real Talk with Tina and Ann
Tina and Ann met as journalists covering a capital murder trial, 15 years ago. Tina has been a tv and radio personality and has three children. Ann has a master's in counseling and has worked in the jail system, was a director of a battered woman's shelter/rape crisis center, worked as an assistant director at a school for children with autism, worked with abused kids and is currently raising her three children who have autism. She also is autistic and was told would not graduate high school, but as you can see, she has accomplished so much more. The duo share their stories of overcoming and interview people who are making it, despite what has happened. This is more than just two moms sharing their lives. This is two women who have overcome some of life's hardest obstacles. Join us every Wednesday as we go through life's journey together. There is purpose in the pain and hope in the journey.
Real Talk with Tina and Ann
What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Quotable
A 93-year-old powerhouse and her equally remarkable daughter share wisdom gleaned from lives spanning Depression-era hardship, wartime childhood, personal loss, and professional reinvention in this captivating Mother's Day conversation.
Meet Gwen Borden and Amy Goober, co-authors of "My Mother Always Says: 25 Lessons for Finding the Silver Lining"—women whose combined 150+ years of experience offer profound insights on resilience. Gwen's extraordinary journey began when she was born during the Depression, lived through her sister's polio diagnosis, was just 10 during Pearl Harbor's bombing and spent nights, alone during wartime blackouts, while her dad worked the war and her mom was an air raid warden, and later witnessed the Twin Towers fall during 9/11. Rather than being defined by tragedy, she channeled her experiences into becoming a pioneering social worker who opened the first bereavement center of its kind and counseled many directly affected by the 9/11 tragedy.
Their central philosophy—"there are no bad experiences in life, just ones we don't learn from"—has guided them through profound challenges. When Gwen's husband received a terminal diagnosis at 49, she transformed grief into purpose by focusing on giving him "a good death" at home. This approach of relabeling negative experiences and finding opportunity in adversity forms the foundation of their shared wisdom.
Amy embodies this resilience in her own journey, having lost her father as a teen before launching multiple successful careers—from a bakery business at 26 to coaching hundreds of women through midlife transitions. Her mantra of "get comfortable being uncomfortable" encourages women to take action rather than remain stuck in comfortable routines. Now through her Wandering Women travel experiences, she helps others build confidence through community adventures.
What makes their perspective so valuable is their commitment to continual reinvention. At 93, Gwen published her first book and remains vibrant and engaged with life. Their intergenerational wisdom reminds us that our later years can be among our most meaningful chapters—and that asking "how will I handle this?" instead of "why me?" transforms our darkest moments into opportunities for growth.
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Welcome to Real Talk with Tina and Anne. I am Anne and today we have a Mother's Day special like no other. We're joined by the authors of my Mother Always Says 25 Lessons for Finding the Silver Lining a very unique mother-daughter duo, by the way over 150 years of experience. Yes, I said that right. 150 years of experience. Yes, I said that right. 150 years plus experience. Gwen Borden is 93 years old and her daughter, amy Guber, is in her 60s. Their book isn't just a collection of sayings. It's a treasure trove of life lessons from two strong, resilient women.
Speaker 1:Wen's story alone is incredible. She was born during the depression, came home as a newborn to assist her with polio, living through two pandemics, and she was just 10 years old when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Her resilience led her to become a social worker and to open the first bereavement center of its kind. She was in the midst of history again when she witnessed the planes go into the Twin Towers during 9-11 and has spent decades counseling individuals and also helping people who were directly affected by the tragedy of 9-11. And today, at 93, she's an author and speaker and still making a huge impact. Amy Guber, gwen's daughter, brought her own incredible strength to the project. Though they're different in many ways, they share the same spark for leadership and life. You know, amy lost her dad to brain cancer as a teen, but she built a career of reinvention, launching a bakery business at 26, coaching over 700 clients and starting a thriving business in her 60s. She now empowers women to take the driver's seat in their own lives and credits much of her spirit to her amazing mom.
Speaker 2:Apples don't fall far from the tree. We come from such a great orchard. Oh, the women in our family are such innovators and doers and brave. So our orchard has fostered all of this in both of us. We come from people who have given us this over the generations.
Speaker 1:Oh, I don't doubt it. I can see that you guys are living what you guys have experienced and you're just passing it on from generation to generation, as I also saw in the book, with your daughter, jessie Amy. But first of all, you know, I just want to thank you for being on. I am so honored to have you on and I've also been so excited to meet you.
Speaker 3:Thank you, we're happy to be here.
Speaker 1:So, first of all, I really just have to ask this what made you sit down and say you know, let's write a book together?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, I found that I was really quoting my mother a lot more recently. So I'm 65 now, so I would say in the last like five to eight years, you know, even more than usual. I was saying just in conversation well, my mother, as my mother would say, and my mother always says, and I realized a lot of her wisdom and sayings and mantras are things that have really helped me through a lot of things in my life and I felt like they were very, very shareable. And so I just sort of said to my mother, what if we write this book? And she said, well, that's great. And now, two years later, it's finally done.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I like to say I gave birth to Amy, but she gave birth to this book. Oh, ok, she did all the labor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but, gwen, you spent a lifetime saying these words.
Speaker 2:You know, I said them because that's just who I am. I always talk to myself. And if I didn't talk to myself, I was a teacher talking to children, or I was doing grief work, teaching other people how to live through their losses in their lives. Right right, I've been a teacher all my life. Right right, I'm going to teach her all my life.
Speaker 1:You know that just says, that just really speaks to me so much that that's how you've wanted to just constantly give back to others. You know you were born during the depression and as a newborn, like I said, your sister was diagnosed with polio, but that led your mom to rely on others to care for you, which really set the tone, I think, for the relationship that you two had. So then, at just 10 years old, you lived through the bombing of Pearl Harbor. How did all of these experiences in your young life shape you as a person as you grew into who you are today?
Speaker 2:Well, there were things that had to be done and we did them. In other words, when we moved down to North Virginia later in that December that same year, we moved into a house with no heat, no water. It was unfinished, this was the beginning of wartime and I had to go to school, so they just marched me off to the nearest elementary school, all by myself, and I presented myself at school was a Francis E Willard school, where we began every single day singing Onward Christian Soldiers. I was the only Jewish child in that school, but I learned that song and I sang it out, even though I was called a listener. So I was just sent off to school because you had to go. We lived in the house because you had to live somewhere. It was simply a question of this is the situation, get into it. No excuses, no, no, no notes saying please excuse Gwen, you just went in and did it.
Speaker 1:Well, I love your no excuse attitude. I mean, I've always had that same attitude. It can appear a little tough at times, I guess, but I mean there's, I live by that.
Speaker 1:So, good for you. I very much appreciate that between the two of you. You have faced tremendous grief and loss, yet you never let it get you down when one of your core beliefs really struck with me. There were many, by the way, but there are no bad experiences in life, just the ones we don't learn from, and I think that's where so many people get stuck. They're focused on the pain instead of the growth. Life is way too short and it's all about perspective. Can you share how this mindset shaped your journey? I mean, maybe you were just automatically built this way, but you know it helped you move forward.
Speaker 2:Just lucky. Luckily, I have a core of optimism in me, so that when my husband was diagnosed at 49 and death sentence, there was no, he's going to get well, he was definitely going to die within months. And people were saying to me oh you, poor thing, we feel so sorry for you and the children. And I said don't feel sorry for us, we, we are going to be all right. And I knew we would be all right.
Speaker 2:I feel sorry for that man who's dying in the prime of his life. On the other hand, I said you know, it's not so bad. He's dying at the top of his life, the top of his game, looking great, having huge success. He's not going to have to face old age or failure. Maybe it's not so bad. And then I was thinking what could I do for him? And I realized I could not save his life, although I tried. I realized I could give him a good death, and that was a very powerful force for me to give him as good a death as I could, taking him home from the hospital, having him be in his own house with his own family, eating food he liked, being as comfortable as he could be until the very end, which is what he was. So that was a feeling of accomplishment, of what could you do in the worst of situations was do something for the person who was facing the ultimate death moments who is facing the ultimate death moments.
Speaker 1:You always have perspective shifts in how you handle some of the hardest times, and one of the things that you said was that you can relabel your bad experiences, which is what you just did, and what a perspective shift.
Speaker 2:It's what social workers do all the time. So when I became a social worker, I was right at home, because social workers are change agents and we're all labeling the people's lives to give them hope that they can make their lives better. So this is the laboratory of life.
Speaker 1:Amy, you said in a book that your mom has the ability to boil down her insights into a single phrase or a sentence that just is so memorable and effective. I was just curious was she like that as a kid? Did she just put out those zingers?
Speaker 3:I don't. You know, I don't really, to be honest, I don't really remember as much of it. You know, growing up, because you know my tendency was to kind of I'm very independent in a lot of ways. So my tendency was, you know, growing up, because you know my tendency was to kind of I'm very independent in a lot of ways, so my tendency was what? You know what? What are many young girls do? Their mother tells them something and they say no. You know they want to do the other thing, or you know, to be like a little oppositional. So I don't remember that they were like little zingers. I think it was more as I got older.
Speaker 3:Don't forget, we don't really appreciate the parents and the teaching of our parents when we're being parented. I think we don't. Even three grown children I don't know that they appreciate us as parents while we were parenting them. Now they're in their 20s and 30s and they will often comment just the other day my son was talking to my husband at his birthday and we were saying you know what was it like? You know, and you hear your adult children say now that they appreciate what we were like as parents. And I don't know that kids, even young teenagers and adults appreciate their parents when they're parenting.
Speaker 2:I think part of growing up is that pushback. Part of growing up. When I was in her early teens I had to say no to her. For example, she couldn't go to a party where there was no appropriate chaperone. Some mother's idea of an appropriate chaperone was my 17-year-old daughter and her boyfriend will chaperone them. And I'd say you can't go to that party. And she was very angry and I'm not going to go. I said then you don't go because I have you cry than me cry. And so there were times when she pushed back and it didn't do. I was a very firm mother about keeping her safe as long as I could.
Speaker 1:Right, that's what we do as moms.
Speaker 2:Right, push back. Amy was one to say no, and I don't want to and I I'll die. You know all those things that teenage girls.
Speaker 1:Well, it sounds like Amy did her job as a kid. Did you learn from that? Yeah, yeah, you know. One of my favorite things to do as a kid, though, was um and Amy. I'm a little bit younger than you, but I would sit and listen to my uncle tell stories of riding the trains and, you know, I would listen to my aunts and things like that talk and the wisdom that they would just share. I mean, why do you think that this is just so important to pass down these words from that generation?
Speaker 3:I mean, I really think it's because in the world today, a lot of what we call influencers are young people, young, young, young, young, young. They have a different color hair or you know, they're influencers. We don't know how, we don't know why. I'm generalizing. It's not always based on content and you know, inner truth or anything. It's a flashy something and I really feel that this book is not geared toward midlife at all. It's geared toward anyone. You know, yes, any age, man or woman.
Speaker 3:A lot of my friends have bought the book and their husbands have picked it up and messaged me and said I loved this book. So, you know, you think you're sort of gearing yourself maybe toward women, but the men have loved it as well, but also younger women, younger women are looking for direction and this, this is a very hard world today for I think, for many, many reasons that we don't need to go into, but I think there's a lot of people, young people, who are very much adrift and I think for them to hear a story of a 93 year old and what she faced, and then what are some of sort of the mantras and the sayings. So you know, describing this book to people and say, well, what's in the book? And I'd say, well, it's, you know, my mother's kind of life lessons, but it's not. Don't forget your lipstick, that's not what it is. It's things that are going to help you pass through and make things easier and things that you can tell you. My kids quote her.
Speaker 3:Well, we just did. I just did a big event on Saturday. I do women's events. We had almost a hundred women in the room. We spoke and eight other women spoke on all different topics, different experts and somewhat my younger daughter happened to be there. My 23-year-old flew in to be here, to be with us, and she was sort of moderating this book talk and people were asking her questions and they said you know what are you going to say? Are you going to say you know, my mother always says, my Nana always says like you know what are you going to say?
Speaker 3:And you know, she said she grew up with this, she grew up with the, with the example, with the illustration of, of, of what we say and what we do and how we, and that is what she's learned.
Speaker 2:I want to say something about this young woman. When she was 15 and her father was dying and we were going, when he was in the hospital getting treatment people in the room she'd walk in with her homework always a cheerful word for people, always a cheerful word for her father. Now, where'd she get that from? My father and mother were still alive. She had never seen me do that. Somehow she knew exactly what to do. She was this cheerful ray of sunshine and cheered up the people in the hospital. I mean, that's cheering up everybody around her at that time.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I can tell that you both just have a heart for that kind of thing. Both of you do, I mean, it just comes naturally. One of the best gifts that my family gave me and it has to do with your generation, gwen is that you know your, your generation taught us perseverance and overcoming, and I think that you know you went through so many hardships but you showed that there were no excuses. You just kept going and you didn't need. You know, like the different colored hair and the different crazy things that some of these influencers have to do to get across to people. Now, you know, I mean, you just were, you just did. There were no excuses and no matter how hard things got, you know you just did it. That's just that simple. And I remember watching my elders, you know, and I was just so impressed with who they were, even as a kid. Thank you for what your generation went through and showing our generation that it can be done, and I bet that generation learned from the generation before it too.
Speaker 2:Probably, I would think so. Our parents and our elders all our lives, and they are our first teachers, sure, best teachers. And the best we learn is by watching what others do, not what they say.
Speaker 1:You know, Gwen, getting back to your younger years and what made you who you are, because I think you too are some of the most incredible women that I've ever met. I think you two are some of the most incredible women that I've ever met. Gwen, you were what you call a latchkey kid and, like that, Cinderella of the family, because you were expected to come home with nobody there and you did all the chores, but yet you remained so positive. You were living through wartime blackouts alone at night because your mom worked, as I think it was an air raid warden, if I remember. I couldn't even imagine when I read that. I mean, could you share more about that season, how you got through those tough nights? You know it's interesting.
Speaker 2:During the war we all had war fever so that we were all doing things for the war effort. I took a first aid course when I was a Girl Scout and I took a day. I just injured my finger badly and I said I know what to do with this finger. I learned that when I was 11 years old in first aid class. So the war caught us up, we were all part of the war effort and that helped do what we were doing. We weren't left home because we had mean parents. We were left home because my mother was doing her work for the war effort. My father was down in Texas doing his work for the war effort and I was the kid at home so my job was to stay home and guard the house. And you know, I can't even imagine Make it into something important and good. It's positive. It wasn't like the poor little girl was left home all by herself.
Speaker 1:Would you consider that you did parent yourself?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and it was a great gift my parents gave me that they taught me how to swim alone, walk alone, be alone. It was the greatest gift they could have given me for my adulthood to learn to do things on my own, because I could. I went away to college by myself and people were horrified today to say you went all by yourself on a train out to?
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, because your dad said if you wouldn't, then you weren't going.
Speaker 2:Well, no, what he said was if you're not ready to do this, you're not ready for college. Right, right, he was absolutely right. Yes, he was absolutely right. The first time I had to fly alone, I said I don't know, dad, about flying. He said if you can't fly home for Easter, then don't come home. Well, that was the choice you either were going to do it or you were going to miss that.
Speaker 1:I love that and it is a choice, you're right. But so many times just people automatically think I can't and they don't see the choice. But I love that you see the choice.
Speaker 2:Well then, if you don't see the choice, you feel like a victim, and that is not a good thing to be in life. Amen, absolutely. And I've been made to do this and I can't do this. The more you do, the stronger you get, the more capable you are, and so the growth really continues. It's like exercise If you don't use your body, it's going to fall to rot.
Speaker 1:You know, my dad died when I was 11. And my mom went out and she created a very successful tax business, but she wasn't home. You know, I mean I too would come in and make my TV, dinner and do all the things in the house without her being there, at 11, 12 years old. And you know, you just do it, you just figure it out. You know, you just do it, you just figure it out. And I mean, what other choice do you have? And I had an imaginary family living in my head and we did.
Speaker 2:We did just fine, exactly. But you see, if you took the road that said I can't do it and played the victim, you end up being a victim the rest of your life. You're always saying, but I can't, would try it, but I can't do it, I don't know how to do it. So your mother gave you a great gift when she said you can do it. And you did do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know you said also that be grateful for the people who did show up. You know that's such a powerful perspective. It's easy to focus on the ones who didn't. You know if our parents weren't able to be there for whatever reason, and that can leave a big hole in your heart. But if we shift our focus to those who did show up, we can start to heal and fill that space.
Speaker 2:So much of. It is a case of seeing the glass half full or the glass half empty.
Speaker 1:Well, the two of you really do point out in this book that it is critical how we talk to ourselves, so could you talk more about that, amy?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I think that well, I say this often, which isn't a complete answer to this question but I always wanted a sister. I have one brother a year older and I always wanted a sister my whole life right, that's trying to have more children. You know, I always wanted a sister. I have one brother a year older and I always wanted a sister my whole life right, that's trying to have more children. You know, I always wanted a sister, and so what ended up happening over time was now I run women's events and women's travel, and I just spoke to 90 people two days ago. I couldn't what can you control and what can't you control? I couldn't control whether I had a biological sister right, that was not in my control, but I've created like a sisterhood. So you take what you're given and then you decide what you're going to do with it, and I think that is.
Speaker 3:I think that many women don't take the reins, don't get in the driver's seat. They don't have a lot of confidence or they feel victimized or they just kind of you know, they're like they shudder, they're meek, and so it's really important for me for women to know what they have inside, what their value is and what they can do and it doesn't. It can be small, medium or large. It can be big. They don't have to go start a business. I mean that's too big for some people, that's not for everybody, but it could be medium, it could be. I'm going to go take that class, you know, I'm going to go talk to the neighbor. I've never I'm going to knock on the neighbor's door. That's medium for a lot of people, right. Or it can be small and I think that we forget what we do have control over and that's the positivity I think that you're talking about.
Speaker 3:It's just said in a different way and I just these women the other day at this event, and I basically said that life is like a game board, it's luck and strategy, and most of these women are midlife women, ish, you know, that's sort of a group somewhere younger. But you know, I just said to them you know, roll the dice like go do it, go do something, go do anything. That's so comfortable in what we're doing. Right, we have the same routine, we do the same things, we talk to the same people, we eat the same seven foods, we, you know, we do the same of the same, of the same and that's very comfortable. But then don't complain that you have kind of a humdrum life or that you're missing out, right? How many women do you hear say oh you know the parade's passing, I'm missing out on so many things. I think it's because they're nervous or uncomfortable. And so I say get comfortable being uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:They were afraid to fail too Right, being afraid, unafraid to fail. Say so, if I fall on my face, what's the worst thing that's going to happen? I'm going to get up.
Speaker 3:You may there you go, he knows, but I am going to keep walking right and and even, and just to piggyback on that, even when writing this book, you know, and I do what I call scary things, you know, I, I do scary. Writing this book was a scary thing, you know. It's a lot of sort of responsibility, and I felt that I was representing my mother. So I felt even more responsibility. And at one point, in the middle of all of this, with the publisher and that, you know, I said to my husband I couldn't, I can't sleep, I couldn't sleep last night, didn't sleep last night, you know. And I went to this whole thing about how, what if it comes out? What about the reviews? You know, right, all of a sudden, I wasn't anywhere near publishing, I was in the middle of it and I said what if, what if? All these bad reviews? I'm going to feel horrible, I'm going to feel terrible.
Speaker 3:And he just said to me this isn't the scariest thing you've done. You've done so many scarier things than this, so just keep going. And so that's the key, though it's exactly what you said. And we're so fortunate, we have beautiful reviews and, you know, so far, so good, like a lot of positivity. But you know, you, you can't write the script. Moving forward on everything you do. I'm sure you starting this podcast right. Was that something for you that you said, oh my God, I can't start it, but you know you did it and look at, look at you now. So we all have to kind of take a chance.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely, and everything is a stepping stone to where we're going. Even if we do fail, you know it, it really does teach us what we need to do in order to just do something else open up another door or a window or whatever, and go through, and it leads us to where we're supposed to be.
Speaker 3:I totally agree and I think we're some of our experiences. So if you stop having new experiences, you're really stunting your own growth, at whatever age you're at. She just published her first book, at 93. I know I mean. So what a good role model for that right.
Speaker 2:Besides, if you don't fail, you're missing a big chunk of life's experiences, of learning some humility. What you can't do well is better sometimes than knowing what you can do well, because you put it into a dry perspective. I'm never going to be six feet tall, I'm never going to have curly hair, I'm never going to have dimples. Oh, poor me At five. You know, shirley Temple was the big hero in everybody's life. And there I was, this kid with straight hair, no dimples, fat, couldn't dance, couldn't sing. Woe is me. And look what happened. I still don't have curly hair, but that's okay. But you're here at 93. You know something I am not only here. I'm happy to be here, I'm happy. I'm in very good health, I feel good, I jump around, I walk, I cook, I cook every day, all those things.
Speaker 1:You know, one of my heroes who is in his 90s is Dick Van Dyke, and what I love is that he just says you know, when they asked him, you know how are you doing this. And he's like well, you just keep moving.
Speaker 2:That's what you do Well. He also married a younger woman, so I give him credit for being smart enough to do that. Yeah, I am married to a man for 44 years, my second husband, who's 98. Yes, and he's doing well. He's doing as well as any 98-year-old man I ever knew. How many 98-year-old men do you know? I don't, I don't, he's the only. He's still in our bridge group. He's the oldest man. He's still the best looking, the best dressed. I mean he, you know, he's, in his own way, amazing because we have lived so long. He's a world veteran. I mean we have lived so long that by now we have become the amazing folk. Everything we do is amazing, that we walk, we talk, we breathe, we do anything.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, you guys have the stories and and like, my dad died and when he was 55 years old and he was in World War II and I was only 11.
Speaker 1:You know I didn't get to really ask those questions and get those answers from what his life was like, but I mean it's such a blessing to be able to sit down and talk and listen to you who also lived during that time, and you have the wisdom and the knowledge of what happened back then, that so many people don't get to hear it from maybe their parents because they're no longer here, you know. One more question about this because I really am curious when you've shown how even the hardest negative experiences can become positive teachers for you, you chose to be the opposite of your mom, like when you paused your PhD to support your son's needs. You know that kind of selflessness seemed to come so naturally for you. So when your mom dropped you off at the hospital before you had your first child and was like you know, I just want to go shopping, Did you ever wonder why? I know blame probably wasn't ever in your vocabulary, but did you ever wonder why that instinct didn't come naturally to her?
Speaker 2:Well, I knew why, and the longer my mother's dead, the more I understand her life. She was the youngest of six girls who, at eighth grade, was forced to leave school to work at her father's butcher shop. This was a woman of great intellectual capacity who never had an education, but maybe her daughters did so. Everything my mother did didn't have a negative piece. Some of the fact that she did not know how to be a mother I chalk up to the fact she didn't have much mothering herself. A woman with a children who was poor did not have much time for mothering either. So learning from whence she came, what made her the way she was, really helped me understand that she could have been no other way than she was, and luckily she had so many good qualities that she passed on to me, not the least of which was insisting that I have a good education and all provided for that.
Speaker 2:That's a gift a lot of people didn't have from their parents. Both my parents, my father, also had to leave school. He was the oldest son of six children. You know, in those days people were just poor and there wasn't much in the way of advantage they could have from their parents, and they didn't have parenting the way we know parenting, I assure you. You know, my father 98, will say his father never said I love you to him. Well, in those days parents didn't say I love you to their children. They were busy enough just supporting them and keeping them healthy, but they didn't say I love you or you're wonderful. He didn't have any of that kind of softness and supportiveness. That was not considered good parenting, really, really. That was not considered good parenting.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Really it was not considered good parenting. My mother always said I never praise my children, let others praise them. So she never praised us. She never had a good word to say about any of us because that was the way she was raised. Let others talk about you, we don't brag.
Speaker 1:How about that? You were so different with your kids.
Speaker 2:It's called the power of negative modeling. There was such a thing to be said, but saying I'm not going to be that way when I grow up. I said it a thousand times growing up. So the negative modeling has a positive effect too. It does. It absolutely does Something to bounce off of to say, well, I know, I'm not going to be that way. So you see, there were no bad experiences, as she said.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I live the same way. Okay, good for you. So I believe in that 100%. Amy, you often talk about how different you are from your mom, but I really saw so many similarities in the book. Neither of you do anything halfway, by the way successful cake business and you've kept pivoting and following your heart ever since.
Speaker 1:Whether it was helping women on their health journey, supporting women through menopause or becoming a health coach, every chapter of your life became something that you like. Invited people into your world and you wanted to help them as well. You may have had different jobs than your mom, but you both kept growing and giving yourselves permission to evolve. What would you say to someone who feels stuck or scared to make a change? How do we trust that even the wrong turns are still leading us to where we're meant to go?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, I think it's a little bit of what we said before about getting comfortable, being uncomfortable. And so I run women's travel and these women sign up, potentially alone, usually alone on these trips. So they don't know me, they don't know the other women, right, they're nervous. And so I say to them it's okay to be uncomfortable, you know, to need like a little nudge, right? I never push women to do anything, but what is the alternative? And that's the answer to your question. So I say to these women come along with us, even if you're a little bit nervous, try it. What's the worst thing that can happen? You come home and you say, well, I'm not going to do that again, or well, I didn't really love that, but what's the alternative? What's the alternative? You're home. How many days are you home? How many days in the year are you home? Do you want to be home those four days, more, more? Or do you want to come with us for four days?
Speaker 3:And we have all kinds of video testimonials and written testimonials of these women, every one of them saying I wasn't really sure if I wanted to go. It seemed kind of nervous. I'm not with my friends. I'm so glad I went. I'm so glad I tried, I'm so glad I did it. And so there's something about the power of taking a risk, even if it didn't turn out well. There's something great about saying I did that, I did that, I went there, I tried that. So, again, it could be small, medium or large.
Speaker 3:I think that when people feel stuck, it may be because what they're trying to do is too big. It's too big, so maybe they're not going to go join some pickleball club because they don't know pickleball and they're nervous, or whatever. Maybe they're not going to go join some bridge group. You know, maybe that's too big for them, but maybe what they can do is is make a list of 20 people they know that they haven't spoken to in a year or two, and they're just going to once, a one person a week. You know you have to start very small. They're going to reach out to somebody that they haven't spoken to, just that. Those are people they already know, and so I do encourage them to start small and stack up the wins. You know, I love that Stack up the wins.
Speaker 3:Little doesn't really matter what it is, and I think that the other thing about midlife women is a lot of them may still be married or may not be married and may be divorced or whatever, and their children feel very responsible for them, the women, and so the more that they do it's like a gift to their children, like saying I'm OK but actually doing things. A gift to their children, like saying I'm okay but actually doing things. One of the women that came to a dinner that I ran said you know her daughter who was living with her, who was in her twenties, you know, finally, you know. The mother said what are we going to do this weekend, daughter?
Speaker 3:said mom like I love you, but you need to get your own life. And she started doing all these things and now she travels with us. She does all these things. Now she goes to other groups, she does other things because she thought she could do it Right. Right, she thought that her children were relieved. Okay, yeah, I could see that For her own happiness.
Speaker 2:The success of separating from your parents, the success of learning to walk alone, the success of learning to feed yourself, the success of knowing you can make it in this world on your own, that successful separation is successful parenting.
Speaker 1:It can be hard sometimes to let those things go as a parent, but it's also, you know, it's thrilling at the same time.
Speaker 2:But where is it written that any of this is meant to be easy?
Speaker 1:It's not. I just love how you just say it the way it is this is just the way it is.
Speaker 2:That's the people who have. No, those are the people who, when they reach a great age, have a long list of regrets in their lives, of things they did not do. People do not regret the things they do do. They regret what they didn't do. Yes, and if so, you think everything had to be easy and you took the easy road. Remember Robert Frost the road not taken is the hard road.
Speaker 1:And you guys have absolutely taken the hard roads. Gwen, I'd really love to pause on one of the moments that changed everything for you and we kind of you talked a little bit about it with your husband who he was so healthy and he was so full of life and he was suddenly diagnosed with brain cancer and it was unexpected and one of those life shattering moments that's hard to make any sense of. And in the book you talk about not getting lost and asking why you know. One of the lines that stuck with me is, instead of asking why, ask how am I going to deal with it. You can explain how that shift gives you know. You back a sense of strength and purpose in your book. You were so good at that. Get past the why Get to the how See?
Speaker 2:the point is that's a very childish idea to believe that there's a reason for everything. It's a little kid saying why Don't ask? Why questions? Okay, the things you might say to yourself is why not? Why not? The sudden death comes in my family, comes in other families, why not? Bad luck comes in my family and then deal with it as you must to live through it. But asking why? You know people sometimes. I found this very true with the 9-11 families who were suddenly catastrophically thrown into another planet of life with their experience. It was unbelievable. You had to be there to know what I'm saying. It was a life-altering experience to stop asking why me? Why not me? These men all went to work that day saying I'll see you tonight, honey, and not one of the firefighter widows and I've worked with hundreds of them ever said to me I never worried about my husband's work. I never worried about his work being dangerous. He was well-trained, he loved his work. So maybe we all worry about the wrong things.
Speaker 3:Well, that's one of the lessons also.
Speaker 2:Maybe we worry about all the wrong things in life.
Speaker 1:Maybe we shouldn't worry at all you know, worrying takes up too much time.
Speaker 2:It's counterproductive. It doesn't do a thing for you. It doesn't do a thing for you, but fill up a lot of space.
Speaker 1:It makes you lose sleep. You know it really does rob you of other things in life.
Speaker 2:It's counterproductive, it's like jealousy, it's like envying other people's lives, some things we do that do nothing good for us. What we do that are good for us is the doing of them. You said something interesting way back. You said you had a family in your head that you imagined. You did something about the fact that you didn't have a father and your mother was working. You helped keep yourself going with an imaginary family. That was a good coping mechanism.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it helped me through my imaginary family, helped me through a lot. Any family you're going to have nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1:It was absolutely true. You know, like we said, I mean, even the hardest things in life become what leads us to the next chapter in our lives, and those kinds of things really made me who I am today, as they did you. You know, gwen, you had degrees, you already had been a teacher and had many life's experiences, but you happen to be in a school again and you wrote a paper on a bereavement center. And you wrote a paper on a bereavement center and, of course, of course, your professor liked it. And you got a phone call saying not only do we want you to open the first one of the of its kind bereavement center, but we want you to be the director. You know to take such a huge loss things that you've gone through and dedicate yourself to helping others who are grieving.
Speaker 2:Well, that's not the way it works out. The way it works out is these things fall into your path as you're walking through life. And this thing came out of my head there were no courses in social work school at that time about bereavement or grieving. Trust me, there were no classes about this, luckily. Luckily, I had a creative part of me which I always had as a kid, and I dreamed this thing up. And then I had a director, sal Ambrosino, who said I love the idea, let's do it. And I said why not? So we did it and luckily, it came out to be this huge. It was such a need that it fell in your lap.
Speaker 1:But you know you did the work and that's why you were in the right place at the right time, because you were working hard. You wrote this paper.
Speaker 2:I had been widowed two years when I went to social work school and part of my internship. The second year was you had to lead a group. So I decided to do a group of widows because I had just been widowed. It was interesting to me and the people who taught me how to be a widow were the widows themselves. I learned from those women how to be widowed. I learned from men how to be widowers. I learned from mothers and fathers how to be a parent who has a child die, because those people were my teachers. So I really feel it wasn't all my hard work. It was that I was in a place and open to learning from other people's experiences. They were my teachers.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I've often said if you want to heal yourself, help others. But you put pain into purpose.
Speaker 2:I believe you have to make friends with pain. There is no life without pain. So if you're going to be limping, you might as well know why you're limping, what caused the pain that made your leg hurt you, and get on with it. You can walk with a limp. You can walk with only one leg. You know there are people who ski with only one leg. You know there are people who ski with only one leg, people who do remarkable things because they adapt to what they cannot change. Well, we might limp, but we're still walking, that's right and dancing there you go.
Speaker 1:you know what? Nobody. Nobody wants a crisis in their life, but, as you, it opens up opportunities, and I guess that there is a time for being shut down and allowing ourselves to feel the depths of the loss at times, but then there is a time for us to get back up and use what we are doing and going through to help others. Like you said, any action, any action almost always feels better than standing still.
Speaker 2:Now, if I might say, grieving is a lifelong process. You don't get over the death of a significant person. You wouldn't get it into your life, so that, even though your father died when you were 11, some part of your father was still in your head. There were things that you still know. I had a father. It's not like you never had a father. So that grief is something we live with all our lives because we're having losses as we age. I can't think of a worse loss than losing your good looks and your waist. It's the body we have. You have no place else to live. When you think of it that way, if you can't have back your 26-year-old body, where are you going to go live? Right, so make friends with this new body.
Speaker 1:Right. One of the things I really love about both of you is that you didn't wait until you had it all figured out. When you did things in life, when you didn't know exactly how to to start a bereavement center and, amy, you didn't know how to launch a cake business, like we talked a little bit about earlier, or any other coaching careers that you went on to build, but you did it anyway, and it just shows that, first, you're never too old to start something. Second, you have to give yourself permission to pivot and, third, you have to be willing to take that leap, even if you don't know how, because that's how you learn and if you stay open to learning while you're building success, you know it's not just possible, it's probable. So please talk more about taking that jump, even if we doubt ourselves and don't have a clue what we're going to be doing.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, I'm a, I'm very much of a open the parachute on the way down, kind of person.
Speaker 3:So you know, I had the idea for my drive, your life program. It was during COVID, so it was virtual. I had the idea, I wrote the program and then I just found the first eight women and I I just did it. And then after the five you know it was a six week program and I thought after six weeks that was the end of it. But I realized that wasn't the end of it, that there was more. So I just kept adding on to it as I was going and they knew they were kind of the beta group. You know what I mean? I was very hopeful. This is the first time I'm running it. So I mean I, before you're going to start, forget it, you'll never do anything.
Speaker 2:And speaking of COVID now, during COVID, our bridge group, the whole senior center closed down, everything closed down, schools closed down, and I said, being me, I'm too old to die young, I'm not going to do this, I'm not giving up bridge and companionship. So I had bridge people coming into my apartment. We all played bridge, we all had a good time, nobody got sick, nobody wore a mask and we're all here to tell the tale of how we got through COVID without losing our cognitive ability, our social skills, because we just did it. Nobody gave us permission to do it. I said I'm going, just did it. They're not going to give us permission to do it. I said I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1:Well, you didn't live afraid.
Speaker 2:If you're afraid, you're cowering in the closet waiting for the bad guys to come and get you. More children die hiding under the bed in the fire than those who try to leap out a window.
Speaker 1:Wow, you do have zingers, you do like. You just come out with these things.
Speaker 3:I also. I disagree with you to the point that I think you have it's okay to be afraid and do it anyway. I don't think it's. Either you don't do it or you're not afraid and you do it. You can be afraid and you can try to do it anyway.
Speaker 1:Oh, so many things I do afraid.
Speaker 3:What I encourage women to do is you know what have you got to lose? And if not now, when? I mean I started a business at 60 because I thought what am I waiting for? Well, I'm 60. Like, what am I waiting for? And I think that that's really important that you know you can start things. You can try things. If it doesn't work out, who cares?
Speaker 2:The thing we have to fear, said Franklin D Roosevelt, is fear itself. If we make fear bigger than it needs to be, it cripples us. It's okay to be afraid. I'm not saying I haven't been afraid and had clammy hands, but I didn't and you didn't let it own us to the point where it cripples us.
Speaker 3:Because a lot of people feel if they're nervous or anxious or fearful, they don't do it. And I'm saying recognize it. Okay, I'm kind of nervous, I'm a little afraid of this, but do it anyway. And I think that a lot of us are raised to believe like, well then, you know that's your intuition and you know you got to follow your gut. You do have to follow your gut, but not if it's holding you back, don't use it as an excuse.
Speaker 1:Amy, I just want to talk a little bit about your. You were 15 when your dad passed away, and you know I had lost mine when I was 11, as I said, and so I really understand that sudden life altering loss as a kid and you mentioned that you didn't realize how young 15 was until your own kids reached that age, and I, too, have done the same thing with my kids when they turned 11. I was like, wow, I was really just a kid, and it's amazing how our minds freeze us in those moments in time and we think differently of ourselves until you know we're older. I also, too, had a difficult time in that I had lost some friendships at school because I didn't know anyone else who had lost a parent.
Speaker 1:And that made it really difficult for my friends to relate with me and me with them, and you described that time as being very lonely. How did you handle it and how do you think that that experience shaped your journey?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, there wasn't a lot of options of how to handle it. If you're in a group of friends and they just start doing things without you, what are you going to do? But what ended up happening was that I did develop two really close friendships in high school that I probably wouldn't have sought out and who are still friends of mine today. Okay, I do think that it's the old. You know, when one door closes, a window opens, but you have to be open to it. So it's sort of like what my mother was saying. I always say you know, opportunity is everywhere. Are you going to take advantage? So it's sort of like what my mother was saying. I always say you know, opportunity is everywhere. Are you going to take advantage of it? But I knew that I needed friends and I veered toward these two. You know high school girls that I probably wouldn't have really made the effort toward. So it to me it just kind of comes back to what you can control and what you can't control. Right, you have to get through things, but you don't have to get through it alone. And so you know, I think we're just on the side.
Speaker 3:I think groups of girls and group friendships are very challenging for a lot of people. It's definitely for me, and I did better in high school with what I call individual friends. I didn't do well in a group. It just wasn't. It's just I didn't realize it till I realized it, you know. But I think the idea of being what I say in the book and I think it's what you're referring to is I say I was 15, but it was the oldest I had ever been. So I didn't know it was young, right, I was 15. Like that's how old I had ever been. I think you don't realize how young you are until you get older and look back. That was when, right, and that was when, when each of my children turned 15 and their father, my husband, was still alive. I would think, imagine what a loss like that would have done to this child and look how young this child is at 15. You can't always see it in yourself.
Speaker 1:It gives you a different perspective of who you were. Correct, right, yeah. And you also talk about your weight and you started. You know why? Why do you think that people go to food oftentimes after a tragedy?
Speaker 3:Well, I think there's a lot of things out there that you could go to. So again, when I look back I say, well, it, it food wasn't the worst of the things I could have been going for, absolutely Right. But I think for me it's a numbing agent, right it's. So you know, it's, I don't, I don't, I don't. I did a lot of reading when I was in college about this because I was like still sort of in it but a little bit past it. But I think it's a comfort, like other people go toward other things and it's readily available. And again, you don't even realize that you're doing it till you've done it and you're 40 pounds heavier and you're like, oh my God, what have I done? And now it's just, it's very hard to undo those habits it makes you feel good?
Speaker 3:Right, it's a feel good thing.
Speaker 2:I was a chubby kid because I was alone so much. I am the thinnest I have ever been. Since I was maybe nine years old since I've become a real grown up but my adolescent years I went to graduate school. I weighed 150 pounds pounds. I was square, not fat, but eating was a comfort, as Amy said.
Speaker 1:Very well, there were a lot worse things you could be doing yeah, we, when something happens, we try to find something to comfort us. So but again, you know you became a health coach, so you, you turned what you went through and you went into helping others. Tell me a little bit about wandering women. You've talked, you've touched on it, but what I really like about that is because you know I have three. Well, I have five kids, but three of my kids have autism. They're very special needs and they have difficulty learning. So last summer we went to 16 states and I just believe in exposure and even the school says you know they're learning and doing things because of the things that you guys have done and exposed them to. So I mean, I think that that's so important. How important do you think it is to take our passions, like you have done, and use them to bring people together to heal, to strengthen and to help each other grow?
Speaker 3:I mean, I'm a big fan of connections and community for women and I think it's really important. So I, because I had this Drive your Life program and I was doing it virtually somebody said would you do an in-person retreat? And I said okay, and I figured out how to do it and that's how the travel started. And so then I was doing sort of retreats that had a whole coaching program woven through it. That's how it all started. Could you just do women's travel? And you know, and I said Okay, and you know, then I started doing that and I think that many women want to travel. They don't have anyone to travel with or they don't want to plan the trip or they're afraid to do it, or they just don't do it. And then they hear about we do small group travel 15 women, 18 women.
Speaker 3:I plan the trip, I go on the trip for the most part. So it's it's not some big, you know, getting on a Greyhound bus, it's all very small group. We stay together, we all eat breakfast, we do everything together. So cause women think how am I going to travel? Who am I going to eat with? Who am I going to sit with? Right, so you have to you. I try to look for the need and there's a big need. And women it's just crazy. Women want to travel and they, they, they love having it planned. The women on my trip say we love this because we don't have to worry about it. And Amy does. Amy will tell us where to go, amy knows what to do and I'm like I should travel with Amy, like that's just so great for them. They love that. They just that. You know, women are usually the planners in the family, so they love that they don't have to do anything. They literally show up.
Speaker 1:I just love that concept. I just want to tell you a really funny quick story and then I'll ask a few more questions. But when I was 12, and you talk about this in your book, because when you took a trip to the Rockies and it hit me so much because right after my dad passed away, my mom said we're going on this six week trip across the country, we're going to go West and we ended up in the Rockies on Loveland Pass. Oh my gosh, I don't remember a ton about that trip, but I will never forget that my mom's white knuckled grip, the drop to the right of us with just like trees and no guardrail and cars going faster than they should have. And when I read that in your book I was just like, oh my gosh, I did that too. I mean, I just thought that was so cool.
Speaker 2:You had a great mother that she did that and didn't drive in herself. You know we needed to get away. We needed to Courage to do that. That took a lot of guts for a woman at that time to get behind the wheel of a car and cross the Rockies just the two of us.
Speaker 1:My hat's off to your mother, yeah, and I also. She kept saying look at this, look at this. I'll tell you what I was done at that age with all the trees, all the mountains and everything I would. I had already seen it all and I was just like you in the book and you kind of mentioned that I was reading my Nancy Drew books and I was just had my head down. And you know now when I take my vacations with my kids and everything I'm doing, that I'm like look, look, look. Yeah, I very much felt that part of the book it brought.
Speaker 2:It took me back it never left you memories like that. Do not leave you they. They become part of who?
Speaker 1:you are Now. One of the lessons from your book that really touched me was your very first one. You can be parented by others and, I'll be honest, I didn't expect that to be your first lesson and it stopped me in my tracks because I was adopted. All five of my kids are adopted, so it was incredibly personal to me, and thank you for putting words to something that so many of us carry quietly. You shared that you reached a point where you simply accepted your mom for who she was, even with the hurt she caused. Could you talk about what it meant to truly just accept people for where they are and who they are, and if it helps you in the healing process?
Speaker 2:There's no other way. It's like not liking your body and I say well, where else are you going to live If you're a child and you're living your life? And maybe you don't have the mother or the father that you saw in the movies or you saw in somebody else's house, but they're the parents. And then learning, looking back and learning about the lives they live helps illuminate what created in them even the fact that they had the hope to have other children, because they didn't get much loving and they didn't get much support and it made them who they were. Dr Frankel says after the Holocaust and the concentration camps what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and I think that is a profound saying If it didn't kill us, it's going to make us strong. I guess there are people who collapsed under the weight of having poor parenting or no parenting or having a father die when you're 11. But the weight of that need not kill you, it can make you stronger.
Speaker 1:I used to work in the jail system and help women who had been through these similar things. I mean, you know, the Father's Day cards just weren't going out, the hurts that I would hear across from me, you know, when I was counseling with the women and my heart really did go out to them. But I can remember one woman saying you know, I'm praying and praying and nothing is happening. And I'm like, what are you doing? And nothing is happening. And I'm like what are you doing? You know we all have the ability, no matter what happens to us, to continue on and it's going to hurt and sometimes it's just one step at a time and it's only the step that you can see right in front of you. But you just have to do it Like any true love land pass.
Speaker 2:Like getting through.
Speaker 1:Loveland Pass. It is, it really is. Oh my gosh, it really is. How did you guys land on these 25 lessons? That's all, amy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we started with a lot more and we reached out to family and friends and people that know my mom, some of our friends. What are some of the lessons that you remember saying that? You remember her saying so we had a lot more, we had double and we just sort of whittled it down. And then, you know, she talked about the lessons and then I did, and we thought we were done. I thought we were done with the book and we were then moving forward and my mother said you know what?
Speaker 3:I really think we need the story to tie it together, cause originally it was just the lessons and she was right. So now, for those that don't know the book, there's 12 chapters and the beginning of each chapter is the memoir, is in first person, is her telling her story from when she was born until now and what are the lessons that were learned during that time, as we look back right. So she gives her take on the lesson and then I give my take on it, so it ended up where it really needed to be and that was actually her idea, and maybe you'll have a second book now because you've got more lessons.
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:I don't know that we'll do a book. We might do something else. Maybe we'll do a movie.
Speaker 1:There you go, and the structure of the book is so well done and it's so short that I love each chapter where Gwen, you have your words, which tells your story, and then Amy, your words, that tells yours, that you know goes along with hers, and then the lessons after. I mean it couldn't be better. It's so well put together.
Speaker 3:Thank you. I wanted it to be an easy read. I didn't want people to be like, oh, I've got to read this book. You know, I wanted there to be a story, which there is, and people want to keep going to see what happens. I wanted there to be content. I also just created a whole card deck to go with it. That is yeah, I didn't bring it with me, but it's beautiful cards and each card has the lesson on one side and an action step on the other side how to put that lesson into your life. And then there's blanks at the end for you to add the lessons that you grew up with.
Speaker 3:So, you know, I think it's so, so important that it not be onerous. You know that people pick the book up and they read it and they put it down or whatever it might be, and I love that. You, in the email to us, said that you took notes. I mean everything you said I love because we want people to be able to incorporate some of these just a few, you know, of these lessons into their lives, and that was the whole purpose of writing it and why we're marketing it is so we can get into people's hands. I mean, that's the whole point of all that we're doing. Why are we doing podcasts? Why are we doing all these things? Is so that more women and more men and more kids can get this book in their hands.
Speaker 1:Well, I think I underlined just about almost every sentence. I love that and I've already read it twice, so I mean that's how good it is, and I don't normally do that, gwen. I just want to ask you. I mean, this is this was very hard for me. You know, living back in the 9-11 times, I we watched it over and over. It did affect my brother in law who was in the Pentagon at the time, but I can't imagine what it was to see it. What was that like for you?
Speaker 2:You know, the interesting thing is I became her youngest child, jessie. I was 70, but I became a grandmother for the third time. It was during 9-11 that I was 70 years old and I drove back from the Boston area to Long Island, into this middle of this horrific, catastrophic event, and I remember saying to myself if I see one more beautiful young woman come into my office who has four or five children who she has to now raise by herself, losing the man who was the love of her life, I am going to scream. And I said you're going to scream how about these women and what they're going through? So what we did, I did with them was to work one situation at a time, get to know each family as it was, and it was a remarkable learning experience.
Speaker 2:I am still in touch with so many of the people I work with. I used to call these women my new daughters. I had all these beautiful daughters, all these grandchildren, because being the good parent was the best way to deal with getting them through this. There were just so many people who were so affected by this horrible, horrible event. So the way you do it is you just do it. I kept one hours. I worked seven days a week. I stopped saying you're 70 years old, you should be retired. I just kept going because it was so urgent the need to see these beautiful young lives that had been so upended so suddenly. And so there you are. They became the great laboratory of my learning. I learned more from those people than those families that I could have ever learned from all the courses and all the PhDs in the world.
Speaker 1:Is happiness possible again with tragic loss like that? Do you think Absolutely?
Speaker 2:You know, one of the things that most of these young women and men learned was you can love more than one person in your life. That's a fallacy. After all, if any of you have more than one child, you know you love the first one. You think you can't love another. You have a second. Guess what? You love that one too. And if you have a third, you love that one too. So our capacity to love people is infinite. We go on and on loving more and more people, and so most of these people did learn that they could love more than one person, just as they did more than one set of parents in their life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. When you're sitting across from somebody that is hurting that deeply, from something that tragic, work is to walk along and to see where is the person in this journey and people came in various places.
Speaker 2:There were some women who came in who had no family support whatsoever. Hard as it is to believe. There were some women who had lots of family support. So you went where they were, saw what they had, what was holding them together, and you walk alongside and let them know you can share their pain, you can cry with them, you can laugh with them. You just go on the journey with them and so they're not alone. Again, it's that old business of we will be all right, we will get through this. Not a great deal of learning goes into that, it's just being on the journey with people.
Speaker 1:And one of the hardest things, I think, for a lot of us to admit is that we need help to bring someone in from the outside, and it's a surrendering of so much. What words can you say to people who might feel like they feel like a failure if they need help or that there are other reasons why they don't want to let others in to?
Speaker 2:help. Nobody has ever come into my office who was a happy person. Believe me, nobody who's happy comes into an office like mine. You have to be hurting enough to say I need help. It's a very painful thing. Believe me, a person who's all together and has no problems living their lives is not looking for me. I mean, I used to say about Rose Kennedy I said Rose Kennedy never went for grief counseling because her religion was so strong. It got her through the deaths of all her children. She'd never be looking for someone like me because her faith got her through. Faith is not an everyday thing. If you have that faith, you wouldn't need grief counseling, except that it's part of the burden of life.
Speaker 1:Do you have any words for those who are in the thick of it, I mean the middle of loss? I read that part of your book when you're not just grieving but also handling the logistics of it all. You know the paperwork, the signatures, the legal steps. It's always stuck with me how, in the final chapter of someone's life, everything becomes so clinical. How, in the final chapter of someone's life, everything becomes so clinical. It's about declaring someone incompetent, sorting out wills, dnrs, making sure every I is dotted and every T is crossed, and honestly, that part just breaks my heart because it feels so impersonal, like grief has to wear a suit and carry a clipboard.
Speaker 2:That is the death business. There is a business about dying. Death is very public and there is a business with dying, with property, with allocation, with caring. But the thing to understand is that grief is the price we pay for loving. If you didn't love anybody, you would not be sad and grieving them. So if you accept the fact that you were lucky enough to have this wonderful marriage with these wonderful children and this wonderful life, then say there was a price to be had for having that and it's the price you pay for. Loving is to experience loss. It's part of life.
Speaker 1:I mean you do say that things just are. I mean you just can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. You say you know, and some of these things just are.
Speaker 2:It humbles us. We have to learn humility, that we are not in control very much in our lives. Learn to accept what comes your way, the good and the bad you know. Very few people will say, oh, I'm so lucky, I have this wonderful husband, I have these wonderful children, but should there be a loss? They say, well, why me? I say why are you in the first place? Why do you have this wonderful husband and wonderful children? Where'd you get off? Thinking that that was your entitlement in life. So it's really a humility accepting that life is this way it is.
Speaker 1:It is, it is it's all part of it it is.
Speaker 1:All of your family is so strong, and even Amy, your daughter we mentioned her earlier Jesse you didn't even realize how much she was struggling with dyslexia until her ACT scores came back, and that just speaks again to your family and the resiliency that you guys have. And you just swallow hard, you dig in, you just kept moving forward. You didn't sit in the struggle and you acted. You got Jessie the help that she needed and now she's also. She's dedicated her career to working with people with disabilities. I just love how you guys give back to where you are in life that full circle moment for you guys. How is Jessie doing right now? What is she doing?
Speaker 3:Boy, she would have loved to be on this podcast. She actually, I told you we just did a big event and she flew up from Charlotte to Boston to be there with us for this book launch and she had never seen any of these events and she was the moderator and the audience was asking her questions and so she was sharing her perspective on all these things, on resilience and moving forward and all this. So she's doing great. I mean she. It was hard for her to accept that kind of a diagnosis, so what was considered late and she didn't want any help from the school, but she did. She needed extra time because she had slow processing and that, to her, wasn't who she was, so that was really difficult. She went to a very challenging school and she did great there and they didn't have a lot of help for students with disabilities and she started a student run group for for students with disabilities, because they didn't have it then.
Speaker 3:So you know, she is an activist of of her own creation. Um, she works for two different nonprofits. She does bake sale. She's, she's, she's unbelievable because she, she has seen action and she knows what you said before quoting us, which is, you know, action always feels better, almost always, than inaction. But I think that you know she has the biggest heart of the three of us. She is the most loving and giving of you know, even compared to us, and so you know. Thank you for asking about her. She's amazing. She's the one that offered to be in the book because when I'm looking for examples, she said are you going to talk about the dyslexia diagnosis?
Speaker 3:I don't know if you would want that. You know I didn't feel about that. She said well, if it can help somebody else, if it can, you know, if it can make like another parent saying huh, I wonder why my kid is complaining about reading when they never had that problem before. Or whatever yeah. So, um, yeah, she is, uh, she's a force, that, uh, that young woman, she really is she's, she's a doer, and that's what we think I said to you I was 70 when she was born.
Speaker 2:So when she was about four or five, I took her out for lunch and she said nana, you are wicked old, she's right, I am wicked old, she's right, I am wicked old to be a grandmother of a baby. So she's always said it like it is. She is a joy in a lot, and what has made her who she is are the pain she has suffered. I really believe that that is what molds us, smooths over our edges, makes us have a sense of humor. When sometimes we want to be angry, it helps us to be humble that we are not perfect beings either.
Speaker 1:I say that all the time that I learn from the harder times in my life more than I do from the easy times. I mean that's just what we do. And the learning disabilities I have some, my kids have some, and it's made us stronger.
Speaker 2:I still can't add. I have three degrees. I'm going to spell or add yeah, how did you get where you are? I say I have a phenomenal memory.
Speaker 1:You know I wanted to go back to you for a minute because you had something happen to you at almost 90 when you could have died. Did that change you at all after you got your cancer scare?
Speaker 2:I would say this If you smoke for 70 years, you're not surprised when the thoracic surgeon says Mrs Borden, you have lung cancer and you better do it right away because that thing is red hot. I went in there saying, well, I smoked for 70 years, what can I expect? Then I walked out of there with him saying you can count your blessings. You have the best immune system in the world. You have stage one. It has never metastasized and I'm still alive. I never was afraid. I kind of thought that comes with the territory. You know I'm going to have lung cancer because I smoked all my life. But I got lucky and I walked away from it and it made me move up here to be nearer to my family and my grandchildren. So I see it again. No bad experiences.
Speaker 1:I did learn that I did stop smoking at 86. Real quick. And you know what my aunt did? My aunt, she did the same thing. She quit too, but she always carried a cigarette with her but she never would smoke it. Anyway, really quick, I promise. I love that. You say that life slows down at 60s, 70s and you were getting started now in your 90s. Look at what you're doing. I mean, that's just so incredible that you have not stopped in your 90s. I needed to say that to you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. I'll only stop when I stop, when it's over. It's going to be over.
Speaker 1:Amy, do you have a message to your mom on Mother's Day?
Speaker 3:for Mother's Day Well yeah, I mean, I say it in the book. I'm grateful that I have the mother that I have, and she's taught me a lot about the kind of mother that I wanted to be and that I am. And we were just saying that we think that Mother's Day should be every day, instead of one kind of a holiday. Okay, our mothers every day. If you're a mother, you're a mother every day.
Speaker 2:And who's true mother is having a wonderful daughter and son, our children. You know the student makes the teacher look good. So if your children turn out to be wonderful human beings who are high, achieving high accomplishment, loving good people, it makes you look like a wonderful mother.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that you have been a wonderful mother. Just listening to you guys and what you guys have done, I just think it's just beautiful who you are. You guys are beautiful humans, and your daughter too. Now the next generation, and I just want to thank you both so much for being on Real Talk with Tina and Anne. It just meant so much to me to get to know you a little bit more and to our listeners. As usual, we will see you next time.
