Kim Hamer | Dealing with Loss, Being Resilient, Showing Up for Others, & 100 Acts of Love

Hello friends, I’m David Pasqualone and, and welcome to this week’s episode of The Remarkable People Podcast. I’m super pumped because we’re not only starting a new season, but in this episode, Kim and I had a great time. We went deep, we went wide, we covered tons of topics. In areas of her life, she was completely transparent and real and was a blessing to spend time with and learn from and grow together.

She talks about the truth when she was being a brat as a teenager, and then how she had to learn the hard way and mature as an adult. Today, she’s an HR expert. She’s a consultant, she’s a coach, she’s an author, and as you’re going to see in this episode, she went from someone who didn’t live with her parents.

in her teen years because of the relationship with her father and her own just issues that she needed to grow and mature through. But then it talks about her journey through life, the highs, the lows, the everything in between. Losing her husband to cancer and at early age, how she got down and depressed and got into alcoholism and eating food addiction.

How she even not only consider. Suicide for herself, but then she actually thought about taking her kids with her. [00:02:00] This episode is packed. It’s positive, it’s upbeat, it’s fun, but it’s really serious. It’s touching. So listen, check out this episode. Take notes. Apply the truth so you can have a better life in this world, and most importantly, attorney to come.

If you have any questions, if you need help, reach out to Kim or myself and we’ll do everything we can to hook you up with the right people to help you heal and thrive. So listen to this episode. Enjoy this episode. But more than anything, apply this episode. I’m David Pasqualone. Welcome to the Kim Hamer story.

Share it with your friends, like the podcast, rate it, review it, and do all this stuff. Not so we get a fat heads, not so we get a bigger, more popular global podcast. But because when you rate the podcast, when you review the podcast, when you share it with your friends and you share it [00:03:00] with your family, and you share it with your coworkers, It helps more people and that’s the whole point of the show.

We want to help you grow and thrive, and we want to glorify God so everybody in the world benefits. Now at this time, let’s hear from our friend Kim Hammer.

Copy of INTERVIEW RPP S7 Kim Hamer 22 Dec 22-1: Hey Kim, how are you today? I’m good, David. I’m so happy to be here. I’m happy you’re here too. And you and I were just having a great talk before the camera started recording. And to our listeners, we just told them a little bit about you and your story, so they’re pumped to be here. Before we jump into your life, if someone’s listening to this episode, whether it’s their first time listening to the Remarkable People Podcast, or they are a regular community member who’s listening to all 150 episodes, what’s the main message you want them to take away from our time together?

How much I’m gonna speak directly to everybody, how much you matter, how much you matter to [00:04:00] your friends, your colleagues, to the, to the clerk in Ralph’s or whatever grocery store you go to, and how you, through small little actions can make a big difference in somebody’s life. Amen. Amen. And we were just talking about how small the world is and how crazy

So for the listeners, Kim and I just found out that my son, John, who I love greatly moved to LA and now he’s about to move back home to Pensacola. And when we were talking about where he lives, he lives 0.3 miles away from her . So it’s a small world and when Kim says you’re, you matter and you’re special, it really does.

And you don’t know whose life you’re gonna impact win or where. So Kim, at this time, you have a whole life of journey and experiences and highs and lows and everything in between. So let’s start off, where were you born? What was your upbringing life? And let’s [00:05:00] just go through your journey cuz everything that happens to us makes us who we are today.

So please start us off. Yeah. You know, David, that’s such a gr it, it’s a little overwhelming to even think about it because rarely does one get the opportunity to sit back and go, okay, this is where I started. These are all the little things that happened to me along the way, and this is where I ended up.

So I was born in New York City. I was born of two New Yorkers. My, my mother grew up in Jamaica, Queens. My father grew up in Harlem. The interesting thing about my parents is my mother married my father sort of as a, I don’t know, it’s sort of as a kind of a way to stick it to my grandparents. My grandfather was a graduate of Cornell.

He graduated in 19 24, 25. So when African Americans didn’t go, or some of them weren’t even allowed, a lot of Ivy Leagues weren’t allowing black people to go to school. My grandmother actually had a master’s [00:06:00] degree in teaching. And they got married. So they were highly educated individuals. They got married and they partied for a very long time in their lives.

So my mother wasn’t born until my grandmother, I think my grandmother was 35. So the expectation of my mother was that she would marry a lawyer, a doctor, an accountant and architect, somebody who had the same type of education. Instead, she marries my father, who is from Harlem, who grew up in a, pretty much a single parent household and who doesn’t even have a college education.

I don’t know that he went to college, but he was extremely smart, really, really smart, street smart and book smart. He was, you know, off the charts. So my parents got. , they had me, I was born in Manhattan and then they had my sister and then again another sister. So I have two younger sisters. And then they decided that they wanted to move [00:07:00] to Connecticut.

And the way that they reasoned it, it was either they were gonna pay private school fees because they weren’t gonna send their children to public schools, or they were gonna pay higher taxes. So they went for the taxes, cuz that seemed like a cheaper option. And they moved us to a town called Westport, Connecticut.

And Westport is a suburb of New York City. And it’s where all the, all the fathers in my day used to get on the train and take the train into the city. Or they worked in White Plains like my dad did for I B M and. When they did that, you know, they, they wanted to make sure their kids had this, you know, beautiful and wonderful upbringing, which we did, but we were one of the few black families in the town.

So without meaning, you know, they had, they made that difficult choice of do we keep our kids around other folks and you know, you know, basically support their education through all the extracurriculars that we can do and give to them cuz they’re not gonna get the kind of education they need. [00:08:00] Or do we move to a new place where, you know, where they’re gonna be ice, they’re, maybe they won’t be so isolated, but they’ll get the good life, they’ll have experienced the good life and they chose that.

And it’s very interesting because I actually end up making the similar choice for my children. And there have been some drawbacks of that for sure. So my sisters and I pretty much grew up in, in Westport. I started, I started there in second grade and graduated high school from there I think a couple defining moments for me in that town were one, I remember not really thinking about money, not really knowing much about money and then, and then started in my junior years, I junior high school years, I started going to friends’ houses and these people lived in big houses.

It’s also where I [00:09:00] learned to play tennis because they had tennis courts in their backyards. It’s also where I learned to ski because they had ski houses, so I thought that we were poor. And given what we, given the comparison, we absolutely were, you know, I went to school with people whose, you know, parents were VP of Coca-Cola and, you know, did X, Y, Z and, you know, Xerox and I b m and so all those big names back in the seventies and eighties.

And I didn’t, you know, back then I thought that I was poor. So I remember feeling the lack, and then I also remember feeling different because when I swam, my hair didn’t go down flat, like all my white friend’s hair. I kind of went a little bit flatter and then, you know, held water or you know, I remember sitting out back tanning in my backyard with an old album cover.

If you were, if you were in the, if you’re like born in the sixties, you know what I’m talking about. Tanning was all the rage, right? And you didn’t use sunscreen. And so you [00:10:00] would take the double-sided album covers and you would line them with tinfoil and sit outside so they would tan your skin. And I.

My poor parents were like, what have we done that This black child feels like she needs to be blacker. Right. . But it was all about fitting in. So I think that, you know, there, there was some really great, I, you know, I feel very comfortable working in those circles because of where I was, because of where I grew up.

I’m also very aware that I am oftentimes the only one or two in the room because it’s also where I feel the most comfortable. Got you. Now, when you moved, you were in second grade, you said? We, yeah, I was, we ended first grade and I moved, we moved the summer of second, my summer before my second grade year.

And your sisters are younger, so they didn’t really go to school yet, so it was all new when they got there. So do you see like your perspective as more of like reflective and you [00:11:00] can see a compare contrast where they only know one way or did you all feel the same way? I think we all felt the same way.

I think that’s a very good question. I don’t remember much about growing up. Yeah. You’re so young. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I remember nursery school and my, my, interesting enough, a girl and I were fighting over the same boy. That girl now lives two miles from my house. And we’re friends. We’re best, we’re really good friends,

So I, you know, I remember that piece of it, but I don’t remember, I, I broke my leg when I was living in New York. I re, you know, I was three and a half. So there are pieces that I remember from that, but I don’t remember the upbringing. I just remember my parents telling me I could not go outside by myself.

We always had to be accompanied by an adult. Mm-hmm. . And I remember the story of this girl. She had like five sisters and she was abducted, but they caught him like as he was leaving the, the, the buildings with the building area with her. And so that was a terrifying story as a child. Yeah. [00:12:00] And I’m sure your parents are like, we need to get outta here.

Exactly. . Okay. So now you grow up and you stay in that area through high school, college? Yes. So from birth to when you’re graduating from high school, pretty much, you know, stable, steady, average childhood, or is there anything you want to discuss that was, you know, like really forming for today? Or just keep moving?

Yeah, no, the, I think the really forming piece of my father was an alcoholic. And I remember, you know, I was listening to another one of your podcasts or another guest was mentioning that he was a high functioning alcoholic, so that meant he held a job. He was always bringing home the pay. Did he get as high as he could have in the corporate world if he hadn’t been drinking?

For sure. Not. . And so that was a very defining thing for me. I remember, you know, coming home and never being sure what you were going to get when he, or when he came home, were you gonna get the sober dad or were you gonna get the drunk dad? Right. And [00:13:00] mm-hmm. , there were rages and were that were very frightening.

Later on in life we realized that he was probably a manic depressive. And a lot of people, especially, you know, you think about this is, this is not nowadays where you can discuss being a manic depressive and there’s a lot of medication available. You know, he was a manic depressive, undiagnosed. And so what a lot of people did at those times, is they self-medicated and alcohol was his self-medication.

Yeah. There was a huge, I mean, even through, I mean, I’d say through the early two thousands, yeah, there was a real shame that went around attached to mental illness. And then finally it’s like, It just, I think there’s just so many people struggling that it just became mainstream almost. In some cases. It’s almost cool.

Everybody wants a disorder. Right? Right. , it’s like, I don’t wanna slap people when I say, oh, I have O C D. I’m like, you have no idea what o CD is, but you deserve to be punched in the face just for saying that. Right, right. I’m like, the people who really struggle with O C D would [00:14:00] want to hit you too. Yep.

Yeah. So, and I’m not advocating violence, but I think our world would be a better place, if we used a little more violence. It’s correction. Correction and, and you know, I don’t think, I think people. Sometimes want the story to go with their lives, but we all have things that we struggle with, so they don’t need to make up something to find out, you know, to, to make themselves feel important.

My story is not very unique or different than many other people’s story, especially growing up, you know, and it wasn’t until I found out, it wasn’t until I left co. You know, collaging would come back and then I would find out that so-and-so’s dad was, you know, consistently punching holes in the walls.

And that’s why he didn’t have people come over to his house because there were holes in the walls that his dad punched. Right? So you find out, I mean, the problem with alcoholism or any other type of drug addiction as as a child, is you feel it’s only in your house and you will do anything to cover it up because it feels [00:15:00] like it’s.

it’s shameful. And it feels like it’s your fault as a child who didn’t, doesn’t have the lexicon, doesn’t understand the adult world. It seems like it’s your fault. It seems like there’s a cause and effect, and it’s not to you leave the house and start to share your story with others that you begin to see, oh, there wasn’t, it wasn’t, and maybe it wasn a cause and effect, but I wasn’t always the cause.

Mm-hmm. . And then you start to learn, wow, my story is bad, but whoa, that story is way worse. Yeah. And you know, but growing up I didn’t know that. So I had the double isolation of being one of the few black families in the town, but also having a father who was an alcoholic. And then seeing all these families with a lot of money and feeling like, oh, like, like clearly there’s something wrong with this picture.

I’m not enough. And I think that’s really what the defining thing was for me, is really thinking that I wasn’t enough. When I was a junior. My, my parents were very big on grades. Obviously my father having not gone [00:16:00] to college, , you know, who figured he’d, you know, he met my mother, who actually at this point, when he met my mother, my mother had a master’s degree.

So my father really thought education was really, really important, and he wanted us to work hard, but his idea to make us work hard was to yell and to put the pressure on. And so my junior year, I got really good grades. I remember I got really good grades, but then I got a D in physics. And my dad, this is my recollection, his recollection, unfortunately, we’ll never know, we never discussed it, and he died.

So, but my recollection was that I got this d I had all A’s and B’s. I got this D. He started yelling me about this D. and at this point I was feeling like I wasn’t good enough. Clearly I was taking on his drinking because I felt like his drinking was my fault. And so there’s that piece of it. And I I, I, I wanna say I didn’t attempt suicide.

It was really a cry for help. I went down to my mother’s cabinet, I took a whole bunch of sleeping pills, and [00:17:00] then I went upstairs and took the sleeping pills, . And then I realized like it was nine o’clock at night, so it’s easy. I could have gone to bed. And it was, at that point I was like, oh wait, so like you could die.

And I was like, I don’t think I really wanna die. And so this is the type of town we lived in. We had two phones in the house cuz there was a kids’ line and a parents’ line because the parents’ line was always being tied up because the kids were always on the phone. So we had a kids’ line. I called my friend, I told her what I did.

She told her parents, her parents called my parents on the parents line, and my parents came in, they called the ambulance. You know, I remember them giving me charcoal to absorb the stuff in my body. I remember being in the hospital and feeling people’s cold, nurses cold hands on me and being like, oh, it’s cold.

Yeah. And then I remember waking up a day later and, you know, my mouth was all crusty because they had done a bun. They had, I think, I don’t know if they pumped my stomach, but they had given me a bunch of stuff to [00:18:00] absorb all the stuff in my system. And that’s when, you know, that’s when I got my parents’ attention.

It was, it felt like that was the only way I could get it. So I think, you know, and I. In hindsight, well, I can’t do hindsight, right? I can’t do hindsight with all the experience and the in information that I know now. I can’t reflect on what I did then because I wasn’t, I didn’t have that information. But I am very glad that I was able to sort of cry for help because it was that point that I realized, oh, this is not normal.

Something is not normal in this family. And I, and I was validated with that and I needed that validation to continue to move forward. Yeah, and I think that’s a good point to stop on cuz we have listeners from all over the world, all different cultures, all different regions, all different income levels.

But love is love. Everybody wants to feel love, special. Understood. And within your family, all children. [00:19:00] Have a tendency, you’re not born with the intellect to process and to discern and to separate. Oh, mom’s yelling at me. Or dad’s punching holes in walls. You know, they don’t understand. Oh, they must have had a bad day at work.

Right. , everything for a child is black and white. It’s, they’re mad. It’s my fault. Yes. And it’s not selfishness or narcissism. It’s every one of us as a child and then we grow and mature. So for you right now, Kim, talking to the children and the teens, maybe they even cut relationships with their parents cuz they didn’t understand Not that bad behavior’s Right.

In any way. But how many of us are out there and we feel like we’re not good enough or you know, my mom is this way because it’s my fault or my dad, it has nothing to do with you. Right. So speaking even to the adults listening, maybe a light bulb just went off you speaking to them, what did you learn?

That you, you want to stop here and just drop that nugget a goal. Like, Hey, this [00:20:00] is how you need to think about it and deal with it. So this is gonna sound harsh, but you’re not that important. And what I mean by that is you cannot cause someone to get better. You cannot cause someone to get worse. And that was a hard lesson for me to learn because I used to think it was all my fault.

Right. But my dad’s drinking, my dad drank because he had, was dealing with his own set of demons. Mm-hmm. And if I had been the perfect child, or if I had been the off the completely off the rail child, I was somewhere closer to the, completely off the rail child. Right. It, it, it, it, I wasn’t the cause of his drinking.

And I think really understanding that is so important. The other thing I would say is, There’s life beyond what you’re going through right now. You know, I will tell the [00:21:00] story quickly about my husband. My daughter was born at, I think it was 8:20 PM at night. She was born at home and every night. Now, did you guys plan that?

Not that it matters, but did you? Okay. Yes. Yes. I didn’t know if it was like, whoops, this just happened too fast. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. No, no. She was born, it was planned. Okay. So every night at around 8:00 PM for years, she would lose her. Can I swear? . Yeah, just mark it explicit. Okay. She would lose her shit.

She would just, she would just scream and it would sometimes she’d calm down in 20 minutes. Sometimes it would take her an hour. We were living in Vegas at the time, and my husband would put the B baby bor on. He had this big old l l bean coat with the toggles, and he’d put his big old LL bean coat on with the toggles and he’d set out for a walk around the neighborhood with her and she’d be screaming her head off and he would just walk until she quieted down.

And I would try it every now and then. [00:22:00] And he would say, and I would be like, oh my God, I’m gonna leave you on the side of the road. Like I’m leave you right here, . And I finally him, I said, how? Like, how do you not leave her at the side of the road? Like, how do you just not do that? And he said, you just need to know that you can outlast.

And that saying became so powerful in my life. I heard him say the same thing to his youngest sister, and she was in the last legs of her PhD and she was like tired and exhausted and wanted to quit. And he said, you just need to know that you’re, you can outlast it. And so that’s what I tell people you know, as a teenager you just need to know that you cannot last it, and you can, that the thing you’re going through right now will not last forever.

It’s impossible for those emotions to continue for that long a period of time. It gets better. And so that’s the message that I would give. And I [00:23:00] think that’s an excellent spot on advice. You know, they talk about suicide as a permanent solution for a temporary problem. Yeah, it, yeah, it’s totally not the right decision.

And then I think that’s excellent advice, just knowing. you can make it. And that’s, that’s the truth from God. Don’t listen to the lie of the devil. Yeah, yeah. And just, you know, have that, there’s that, find that pinhole a light and follow it cuz there is a pinhole light there. You just gotta get up and look for it and follow it.

Yeah, no, no doubt at all. I agree. Man, I have so many thoughts popping off, so we’re gonna continue with your story, but when you were talking about your husband and you and how your daughter, every day at like eight o’clock, she’d go off and start crying and you made the joke, like, how do you take it? There’s people out there, and I remember myself [00:24:00] as like a teenager, even a young adult. How could you ever shake a baby? What kind of sick person are you?

Right. . Right? And then they became a parent. And then you become a parent. So even the kindest, most loving human on the planet when you have a child, now I’m, again, there’s 0% okay to shake a baby. Right? But the insanity that a crying baby for days and days and days can drive a human to it’s bad. So if you ever, if you’re listening to this and you have a child grandchild, a neighbor’s dog, , like walk away, like don’t get to the point of violence.

I remember one time my kid was screaming for the whole time, my wife was grocery shopping, like three hours. Oh. As soon as she came home, I handed her my daughter. Yep. I’m going in the garage. Yep. And I beat my heavy bag. Until it broke. Like it came off, yeah. The support systems. Wow. Yeah. [00:25:00] So, but it didn’t hit my daughter

Okay. Yep. Yep. So if you’re listening, you’re not a freak or evil if you have these emotions. Just don’t ever pursue ’em. Put the baby down, make sure it’s safe, walk away. And if Kim could attest, she’s a great human, she’s not a bad person. And if you’ve never had kids, don’t judge Herme or anybody else because those little kids can drive you bonkers.

There is a reason their cry, like literally raises the hair on every single adult. Like, you know, and I’m sure you have this now when you hear a baby cry in the grocery store, I’m like, where’s that baby? I will help that baby. I will do something with that baby right there. That cry is evolutionary on point because it just, it, it gets into your brain.

It can drive you crazy. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as a man, there’s, I think there’s, we all have iniquities. We’re all made differently. Yes. But there’s foundational ailments of human nature. Yes. And then men verse women. Yes. And as a man, when I hear a baby cry, I’m like, ah. I’m like, I don’t have that same motherly [00:26:00] instinct.

Right, right. comfort it. I’m just like, shh. Like yesterday, I had dogs barking next door. I didn’t think, oh, what’s the dog going through? I thought, is somebody breaking in? Nope. All right. Shut my door. just a stupid dog. But if somebody was breaking in, I go down with a baseball bat and beat him like a pin.

So I’m glad you were a good human and your motherly, but I just walk away from the grocery store when that happens. . All right. Going back to your story now. Yes, sir. Actually, too, while we’re derailed. Mm-hmm. you, did you ever read the book? Rich Dad, poor Dad? Yes. Yes. When you said that story, you said, sober dad.

Drunk dad. Man, that would be a great book. If you ever wrote God led you to write about those experiences a little, that would be really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Instead of Rich Dad, I’m just Right. Not yourself. I’m just throwing that out there. If you do, you can gimme a little Hey David, it work, but sober dad in a Rich Dad drunk dad.

All right. But go on. So now you’re, you have an attempt at suicide. You’re about how old at this. I am [00:27:00] 16. So you’re 16. Mm-hmm. . So that’s right. When everything, you’ve lost your brain as a teenage girl. Mm-hmm. to begin with. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Exactly. Humans have Exactly, exactly. Hormones are running wild and everything else.

I hating your dad because girls at that point hate their dad. Yeah. And I don’t, you know, I think, you know, to be really honest, I think that you’re coming into your sexuality and there’s this, oh wait, there’s a man in the house, but wait, he’s my dad. But wait, there’s, you know, there’s like all that confusion.

So hating my father was way easier than, and I didn’t have the tools to deal with Yeah. That sexuality and what that meant to, you know, and he didn’t have the tools to deal with it either. He’s got three girls in his house, plus a wife. I’m guessing he lost his hair, right? He’s bald or . No, he wasn’t. He never, no, he never went bald.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s awesome. That’s awesome. Yeah. Yep. You know, I had a doctor tell me when my daughter was like 12, he’s like, get ready for it. She’s gonna hate you. I’m like, what? Yeah. I’m like, no way. That’ll never happen. Yep. Yeah. She hated me. Still does. I’m like, I just can’t wait till she wakes up one day and she’s like, [00:28:00] oh, crap.

That was me. . Yep. And hopefully, you know, some of our kids don’t ever wake up. They were just a bummer. But they usually always do. They usually always come back around. But it’s also part of the separation, right? We know, you know, 200 years ago, being 16 meant you could get married. So, you know, instead we’ve got 16 year olds in our house and they, they are starting to think differently.

They wanna separate and they’re just not sure exactly how to do it. Mm-hmm. . And so the easiest way is to be angry and do it through anger. So what ended up happening was I ended up finding a place to live. There was a church in our town, it was the Presbyterian, it was a a. Nok Suk. Congression, what was it?

Uck? Yeah. It was a Suk Congregational church. So it was a Protestant church and they had a home for girls. And it wasn’t like a home. It was these, this wonderful couple and shoot, I wanna remember their names. Miller, Mr. Miller, and I don’t remember his wife’s name. They had a baby and they had two extra bedrooms and four girls could live.[00:29:00]

And so I was one of the girls who lived there, but I knew, so what happened was I committed sui, I tried to commit suicide. We went through lots and lots of therapy. The summer of my senior year came around and I was miserable. I was like, I feel like I’m in the exact same place. I don’t wanna be here. And that’s when I sought out help.

And the help I, the help I got was I went I taught, I lived with my friend’s family for a little bit and then we found this place and that’s where I lived. And there was a small fee my parents had to pay for me to live there, but that’s where I lived my whole senior year. And they were curfews, you know, not unreasonable curfews, but they were curfews and rules I had to follow.

I don’t remember much of my time there, but I do remember my father gave to me, I have the book still someplace. He gave to me this book, Alice Wonderland book. And it was a popup book. And it was the first time he ever told me that he loved me. Hmm. And I [00:30:00] remember hearing that and being resentful that he didn’t tell me earlier, because I think what happened for me as a matter, I know what happened.

I had an idea of how I should be loved, right? I had this idea in my head. I didn’t share that idea with anybody, but my father clearly was not reading my mind and had not had, and was not telling, was not loving me the way that I thought I should be loved. So therefore, I wasn’t loved. Basically, I was trying to bend him to my will.

I didn’t understand that then. I didn’t understand that that’s what I was trying to do, but that’s what it was. And because he wasn’t loving me the way that I wanted to be loved, well then screw him. He, you know, he’s not caring for me, he’s not thoughtful. I’m And so I spent the senior year there and that was the most, that was a really good year for me.

I was lost. It was a really good year for me. I was lost. I also didn’t make the cheerleading team. I had been a cheerleader my junior year. I tried out, [00:31:00] I didn’t make the cheerleading team. They offered me an alternative position. I was too snobby for that. I was like, I’m not gonna be an alternate. Ugh. I was a full-time cheerleader, you know, we lost, we had a lot of there a lot of drunk driving accidents in our town.

So that was starting to build. You know, a couple kids killed themselves driving drunk. One other child killed two girls. They, he was driving drunk. So it was just a very tumultuous year for me. I really didn’t feel settled, but I knew being at being outta the house was a, was a gift, was an absolute gift cuz it was exactly what I needed to get that space away from my dad and to really focus on myself.

And just to be clear, to make sure I understand, your main reason for the separation was because your dad’s mood swings from the alcoholism. . And then on top of it, you had normal teenage girl emotion. But then the, you know, and we have to learn, [00:32:00] even if we’re given tools, we have to learn how to use ’em. So you had to learn, like you said, you were expecting your dad to be behave in a certain way.

One, it wasn’t communicated to him, and two, it wasn’t even reasonable. But that’s a normal human thing. I mean, that happens all the time. I mean, how many times do you tell somebody, especially men and women, I’m not a mind reader. Like, I’ll do whatever you want. You just gotta tell me. Right, right. So, so yeah.

So, okay, so now you’re in this home. It’s still a rough year, but you’re getting that separation and that space to kind of breathe, heal, reflect, and where does your life go from there? So I won, I intended to apply. A lot of colleges didn’t, and I ended up going to Eastern Connecticut State University, and I felt shame about that.

So there was this, I was always so surprised that people did really well on SATs. I’ve never been a great test taker, but while I was out hanging out with my friends and partying, they were actually doing schoolwork. Like I wasn’t, I was just going from friend to friend to friend. They were actually doing schoolwork.

So they were getting [00:33:00] into Cornell and Syracuse and Tufts and all these top tier schools, which a lot of us, we all admit we wouldn’t be able to get into today, . But you know, so, so they were getting into these schools and I was like, what? What do you mean? Like, one of my best friends, she got the Syracuse, I’m.

How did you get the Syracuse? You’re with me a lot of the time. She’s like, I’m just getting my work done, and I took tests. I, you know, practiced the SATs and so I, you know, I’m, I know my parents wanted me to do those things, but I was very, I was very stubborn and I was like, I’m not, I’m, I’m, you know, I’m fine.

I don’t need your help. That’s the way I went about it. And then when it came time to applying, I didn’t really apply anywhere and I, so I only got into eastern Connecticut. I started my, I started this, the, the, the second semester. And that was eye-opening because it was a state school, it was a school.

I had three roommates, all of whom worked to ha to get their [00:34:00] to get their tuition for school. My parents paid for my tuition. It was assumed that my parents would pay for my tuition because my grandfather paid for my mother. So it was just assumed that that would happen. . I remember going to English class and the teacher going over how to write a proper paper, and I thought, oh my gosh.

Like my junior year in high school, we had to write a research paper. It was a junior year research paper. It was like 20 pages long. You had to have a thesis, you had to outline it. You had to figure out how are you gonna prove your points. So all I remembered thinking this is the real. , like the world I was in was fake.

This is the real world where, where students don’t know how to put together a two page paper. Mm-hmm. , they don’t know about, you know, full sentences. They don’t know about punctuation. So that was a really good eyeopener for me to really understand that. And I worked my butt off. So if I could go to school, I chose to go to school in Boston.

So I, good choice. [00:35:00] I’m from Milford, mass. There you go. Of course you think it’s a good choice. . So well, Boston has more colleges and universities than anywhere in the world. Like Yes. Yes. Like they literally have more schools than anywhere in the world. Exactly. Pound for pound. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s a fascinating place to go to school because of that.

So my, my going to school there, really, I went to Emerson College. and I decided, I I, I don’t know if I, I remember I got into bu but they wanted me to do the post-secondary program and I didn’t wanna do it. So I decided I was gonna go to Emerson College where I got a degree in where I worked and got a degree in speech pathology.

And even that didn’t come easy because I had one class left and I didn’t finish that class till 1994. I was supposed to graduate in 1986. Later on in life, I realized that’s a plus cuz people think I’m younger than I am. But Well you look like you have the blessing of youth. You have a youthful [00:36:00] face. I, I can’t see the rest of you, but I’m saying you look young.

So if you were graduating 10 years later, they probably couldn’t tell. No. By, by, by, by grace. For sure. I’m sorry.

My, my, my son is trying to signal to me whether or not I want more ice in my ice machine. And I’m telling you. Oh, that’s right. Now you can tell the audience why he asked that. That’s great. Yes. So y’all, I just had a total knee replacement surgery, and it’ll be two. It’s, I think I’m on day 17, 17 days ago.

And so I’m very fortunate enough, my oldest son is a nurse and he flew in to take care of me. So he’s here from Amherst, Massachusetts. And my youngest son is a junior and he’s here just for quick Christmas break. So I’ve got my two boys and my daughter here. But my son, my sons are doing an incredible job of, it’s really sweet.

They’re really taking good care of me. It’s really, really sweet. That’s awesome. That’s why they wanted to know. Do you want more ice in your ice machine? I’m good. Thank you. . . All [00:37:00] right. Well back. We’re, we’re gonna have a, we’re having a squirrel session, right? Because of me. And, but thank you for your patience.

So, all right, so now, , you are seeing that, oh, I’m just expecting a free ride. I have an entitled attitude. And these girls, oh, I didn’t, are walking their butt off. I didn’t. Right. I didn’t quite see the whole thing. I didn’t think I was entitled. I just thought, oh, so sad that your parents can’t pay for this.

The entitled, the Seeing the Entitlement really didn’t happen until I got much older. Hmm. You know? Did you, did you at least acknowledge, like at any point did you acknowledge like, wow, I should be grateful? Or was it It wasn’t till later, it was just like, you’re, you suck. Good luck. Yeah. , I did acknowledge that.

I was feeling very fortunate about where I grew up. Yeah. I didn’t realize what my town offered me until I got to college. And the education that I got, which was, I mean, we had a huge, [00:38:00] I had 500 kids in my graduating class, huge school. But man, they really educated us well. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I still, I still bow to them and honor them with what the, you know, I had incredible teachers, I had teachers who really cared about me, who, who could hold, were holding that space of potential for me where I couldn’t see it.

So I think that was very important. But, so that’s what I understood about my time there. I didn’t feel like I was, I didn’t understand my entitlement until I got a l much older. Yeah. Well, it’s good. It’s good that you acknowledged it and your roommates didn’t kill you, right? ? Yes, exactly. Exactly. . All right.

So if you don’t know what I’m talking about, just skip that comment completely. . All right. So where did your life go from there, Kim? So you’re in college, you’re seeing, I got a head start. Where do you go? So I’m, I’m, I move over to Emerson. I’m loving a [00:39:00] creative writing class. I’m taking, I’m not so big on the classes that I’m taking for speech pathology, but the way I look at it is it’s too late for me to switch.

I, of course now I’m thinking, oh, Boston University would be be, you would be a great place for me to go. But I don’t really wanna switch. I don’t wanna go through the hassle. I don’t know that my parents can afford it. I don’t know how much aid I’m gonna get. I make up all these stories. So I stay where I’m at and I then find where, oh, I know I went to a party, a Harvard party.

Cause that’s what you do when you live in Boston. and I met this incredible girl, her name was Franci Randolph, and Franci was taking a bike trip with teenagers on the Cape. And I thought to myself, well that sounds like fun. So I called the company and they had already made their decisions. I met Francie probably in April or May.

So they had already made the decisions. They had their leaders. They didn’t need any more help, but they said Apply next year. So I applied the following year and. I don’t know what I mean, I went to Girl Scout camp when I was younger and I loved [00:40:00] being the outdoors. Now I’m the child of two New Yorkers who like, they think outdoors is like the small patch of grass, right?

I fall in love with being outdoors. I love the smell. I love the smell of hiking trails. I love, you know, we, we had to, we had trust. We used to brush our teeth in. We have to just clean the latrine. I loved all those things, but I didn’t make that connection that could actually make money doing those things.

So I apply for this job. I get the job. I like have to go buy a bike cuz I don’t, I haven’t ridden a bike in a long time. I have to take a first aid course and then I think y’all are crazy. Like you’re putting me in charge of like 15, 13, and 14 year olds with another leader. Okay. , but I have the best time.

I really enjoyed myself. We did the Cape and North, we did the Cape and Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, which were all part of that elbow, you know the area. They’re all part of. That elbow. We end in, we ended, we end in Truro, which I’m not Truro. We ended Provincetown, which is the very tip [00:41:00] of the elbow.

And then we took a ferry over to Boston and that’s where the trip ended. And I was like, I gotta do this again. So the next year I went back and worked for a different company and we did a trip. What did we do? We did, oh, I did a trip in Europe. I rode my bike with 12, 14 year olds from Amsterdam to Paris.

Wow. Incredible trip. Again. Loved it. It was fantastic. Wasn’t really. Nice. Wasn’t really great at, at with the kids. I mean, I was, I think the problem was I was probably chronologic mentally their age. And so chronologically I was older, but mentally I hadn’t matured. I hadn’t really gotten away from the alcoholic home yet.

And that childish thinking but had a really great time, loved it. And then I thought, this is what I wanna do with my life. I wanna work in the outdoors. I had no idea how to do it. I didn’t even think it was possible. My parents were like, you wanna what? Like uhhuh ? What do you mean work in the [00:42:00] outdoors?

What is that? and I ended up finding a way to do it. And I ended up working for a company that took school trips, schools out on these outdoor courses. They were all mostly private schools and it was a way that they would bond their upperclassmen together. So they would have all the freshmen come out, all the juniors come out, all the seniors come out.

So that, and sophomores. So I started working for a company doing that and that’s where I ended up actually meeting my husband. And the, the summer before I met him, I led a bike trip. I don’t remember where it was through, but the guy I was leading the bike trip w with was six, eight. So really tall. I then start working for this company that’s taking these students out and my husband gets off the bus as one of the chaperones, and he’s really tall, but he’s only six six, so his height.

[00:43:00] Doesn’t phase me at all. And he said in the beginning, that was one of the things he really liked about me, because every time someone tall, you know, we think it’s just because they’re tall. We think it’s okay to make fun of them. Like, Hey, how’s the weather out there? You know, up there? Or, gosh, you’re tall.

How tall, you know, do you play basketball? You know, all the kind of insulting questions that we don’t think are insulting because they’re do, because they have something that we want. So I didn’t say anything to him because to me he was like two inches shorter than the guy I just spent three weeks with, you know, biking with and together.

We, oh my gosh, I’m forgetting one big part of the story. One big part of the story is I really get into cycling and I decide that this, my boyfriend and I are gonna ride our bikes cross country, and that’s exactly what we did. We started in New Jersey and we kind of stayed in the northern route. So we went through Pennsylvania, Ohio through Illinois Nebraska, Kansas, [00:44:00] Nebraska.

We went up through Wyoming through Idaho and then you know, hit California coast and came down. So that was when I realized that really I’m meant to be an outdoor person. I don’t know how I’m gonna make this work. I’m just gonna have to make it work. So I do this so I come back. It’s so funny you asking me this, like it’s so hard to, I always thought that I would remember the timeline.

So y’all, I know you’re young out there. If you’re young and you think you’re gonna remember the timeline, write down the dates now while you still can because it gets kind of muddled as you get older. Yeah, and I’ll echo that. There’s so many times that I even remember a teacher in eighth grade, I made a video on this cuz I just so much respected her for so many reasons.

Her name was Mrs. Toti and she’s like, every time you write a book you should at minimum beat not just highlighting the points that stick out to you, but you should really take notes, like mini book reports. And she’s like, that way when you go back you can just read the notes. You know, if time’s an issue.

[00:45:00] Yeah. And I’m like, who’s gonna forget what you read? Well, you’re like two years old. You’ve read like five books. You know Exactly. When you get older, you start valuing the power from knowledge. Yes. And I actually forgot the true story. I made a video about this just this year because you know that it was actually that book, rich Dad, poor Dad.

Oh, I completely forgot I read it. I didn’t even know I had it. Oh yeah. And then I’m like, why does that sound familiar? Long story short, I happened to run across a digital file with books I read, rich Dad, poor Dad. I had five pages of notes from it. So it’s like your personal experiences, the timeline, journaling books you’ve read and really gleaned from that you wanna review each year to grow from.

Yep. And I’m with you, Kim. I think, yeah, if you’re listening, that’s good wisdom. Kim’s dropping, start applying it. Yes, yes. Start writing it all down because you will, you don’t the, as you get older, you’ve got more stuff that happens in between things and so [00:46:00] other, unless you renew your memory all the time, it starts to fade out.

Right? Yeah. So yeah, so I decided to ride my bike cross country and that was an incredible experience. It was myself and my boyfriend at the time, and it was it, this sounds so corny, but I came back and I would sing the national anthem and. , I was so moved. And for those who don’t, you know, who are only hearing me, I’m an African American woman and I never thought that I would be so proud to be an American.

You know, and I, I, I often like to say, you know, I’m a flag wa waving liberal or a flag waving moderate is what I consider myself, right? So I fell in love with this country. People were so kind and so curious about us and wanted to know what we were doing and took us in and helped us and, you know, wrote letters to us.

And I mean, I got to stay on a cattle ranch where the guy had something like 40,000 head of [00:47:00] cattle. I got to sleep in a, in a barn with, and hay, which you don’t wanna do cuz there’s a lot of mice in there, . I got to see someone, some guy built his very own telescope. It was the very first time I ever saw Saturn through his telescope that he built in his backyard.

So I got to see so many things that I would’ve never experienced had I just driven across, or had I, you know, just decided there was nothing in between. Mm-hmm. . So that made me, and it’s still, I still take great pride in being an American based on that journey. And the people I met on that journey, and I’m sure you know, if we’re gonna talk red, blue, I’m sure some of them are red, some of ’em are way blue, some of ’em are purple, you know?

But it was the time that I got to meet people for people. I’m also grateful that I did it with just my boyfriend at the time, because I think if we had been a group of four that feels more intimidating to approach if there’s four people and four bikes. And our, our [00:48:00] bikes were loaded with, you know, we had pans, we had sleeping bags in the back of our bikes.

Our bikes were loaded. So I, I’m really grateful I did it with just him. Our parents were terrified thoughtfully, so. . Yeah, rightfully so. Exactly. . They were absolutely sure that, you know, someone was gonna like, you know, if someone decided to kill us, they could like go home, eat beer, drink, drink beer, grab a pizza, call their buddies, and still find us on the road four hours later because we weren’t going that fast.

But I didn’t, I didn’t die. I had an incredible experience and it’s something that makes me very proud to be an American. So I have this experience. I come back, I’m still working in the outdoors. And and then I, I, I hook, I, I meet this man on this, this trip. I really like him. He’s really nice. And I don’t realize I really like him because he’s so nice that I sort of take him for granted.

But what happens is I stop dating [00:49:00] everybody else. And then, you know, he comes back for Christmas and I’m like, oh, right after Christmas. And I’m like, wow, like I really missed you. And then I start thinking about moving to continue this outdoor pursuit. And I knew it was serious when he said to me, look, wherever you go, I’ll find a job I, and I’ll go with you.

And he was a teacher, so it was completely possible for him to find a job anywhere in the United. And I remember I had this job in Minnesota working in the outdoors with girls who needed some extra support. A lot of ’em, they, they weren’t murderers, but they weren’t angels. They were sort of like in between this.

They, they were on their way to being in a lot of trouble. And I remember asking if there was gonna be enough money that I could fly home to see my boyfriend at the time, you know, about every six weeks. And they said, I asked for more money, and they said they couldn’t do it, and I didn’t take the job. So my, my, my, he then he went with me and we did a cross, we did a trip in the Canadian Rockies with a bunch of [00:50:00] teenagers, and that was the last trip that we did.

But he’s, so he, my husband was, Different than I am. We really were yin and yang. And that’s why we were, and it worked really well for us at a lot of different levels because I respected the fact that I wasn’t the smartest in the relationship. He was really smart. Mm-hmm. , he respected the fact that I could talk to anybody about anything, and that was not the way he was.

So we really worked opposite each other, which worked great for us. But that was the last, that was the last time, that was kind of the last big trip we took was we took this, this, we took these, these these kids through the Canadian Rockies. Great trip, really fun. Got to do some great things, but that, that we came back from that.

And a little bit later is when he asked me to marry him. Beautiful. Beautiful. And then, at that point, were you already starting to, now your view of the [00:51:00] world of yourselves changing, were you reconnecting with your father or were you still at odds there? So, interesting enough, I stopped talking to my dad.

and I mentioned I had to cut off my mother. I was very insulted that my mother wouldn’t side with me not understanding the dynamics of marriage at all. Mm-hmm. . And so now I think she did the right thing to not side with me. I still think we could have had a little bit of relationship, but my mother didn’t side with me even though I, well I don’t know if she thought I was right or wrong, whatever.

I wasn’t talking to my parents. My parents found out that I was engaged from my sister’s friend who came over to the house one day and said, oh my God, congratulations. I heard about Kim. And they were like, what did you hear? And she, she got engaged. So I still regret that cuz I can imagine how painful that was to them to hear this from them.

So I stopped talking to my dad and then I realized I needed to reconcile. Like there wasn’t any point in my [00:52:00] trying to get him to do things that he wasn’t willing to do. And then it wasn’t, it wasn’t about me. Right. It wasn’t about his. You know, I oftentimes, people will say, if they loved you enough, they’d stop.

And that is the biggest bunch of bull that is out there. Yeah. They have to love themselves enough. They have to decide that they, they’re sick and tired of themselves to get help. It doesn’t matter. You know, their love for you has nothing to do with their sobriety or their willingness to take away the drug or whatever it is that they’re doing that’s not great for them.

And that was a really hard lesson. That’s when I started to realize I wasn’t the center of the universe. Right. I wasn’t the cause and effect of my father’s drinking. And that was when I took that to heart and realized, you know, you know, to a degree I realized this and I didn’t realize it till much later.

My dad was doing the best he could. He really was. He was doing [00:53:00] the best he could with the tools that he had, with the upbringing that he had. And honestly, it was pretty damn good. , you know? Mm-hmm. . He provided a lifestyle for my sisters and I that most people don’t have access to, and so he did a really good job and really coming to terms with that was a great thing because he was involved.

I did do my first dance with my father. Oh, you know, so it did. And he wanted to do, we did swing dancing. He like flipped me up on one side and flipped me up on the other side. We had a great time, so I’m really grateful that I got to a place where I got to see, you know, my dad tried. He really, really tried, and that’s what I need to look at.

Not all the times that he failed. Yeah. I think that’s good advice and it hits home. Again, you’re not making excuses for your father, but you’re being real about his life and your life. You have the blessing to be tied together by. [00:54:00] But then you can’t be trying to control the other person. It, it’s, it’s, there’s a fine line.

He has the responsibility to guide you in it when you’re little, to control you, but as an adult, you, you just love each other and trying to help each other grow. So I think that’s great. Exactly. Great advice once again, Kim. All right, so now you’re getting married. The relationship with your dad’s, restoring obviously the relationship with your mom’s, restoring to, where does your life go from there to.

Ah, well, you know, I had three kids. My husband died, and then I’m running this business there. You got it. Okay. Well that’s, that’s for the speed listener.

you just got the audiobook on speed, 25,000. Exactly, exactly. All right. So my husband is a teacher in private school. He wants to move up, and the way you do that is you take administrative positions. We started out living in Connecticut. We, where I had my first child, I decide he decides that he’s gonna take [00:55:00] a job in Las Vegas.

And this is the funny thing, my sister calls me, one of my, my middle sister calls me and said, so I, I was telling her she’s, yeah, art, you know, got this job in Las Vegas. And she said, oh, and you’re going? And I said, yes. And she said, does Dad and do Dad and Marcy Marcy’s my grandmother. Do Dad and Marcy know that you’re moving?

I said yes. And she goes, and they’re gonna allow you to take Langston, who is my youngest son. So Langston was my oldest son, so Langston was the first born it. My father always wanted a boy. He got a grandson. My moth, my grandmother was in love with this child. And the idea that I would up and move, you know, 2000, almost 3000 miles away was like my sister was right.

Like we were gonna have to leave under the cover of Night to get away . So we moved to Las Vegas and it was a really interesting experience. You know, we hear about, I didn’t know anything about Las Vegas. I didn’t know that there was a life outside the strip. I didn’t know that. Oh, it’s a whole city.

Yeah, [00:56:00] it’s a whole city. And that is where we started to build our very first community. We lived in this kind of starter neighborhood. You know, I was paying nine, we were paying, we bought a house and we were paying $932 a month for mortgage. And I remember going into, Sobbing hysterically after we bought the house.

Like, I dunno if we could afford this. I ended up landing a job at Wild Oats. I, I remember my husband coming home. I had had this five month old. I was really kind of going outta my mind. I really didn’t feel like being home with him all day was the best use of my sanity and was making me a good mother.

So I ended up getting this job at a company called Wild Oats, which was eventually bought by Whole Foods. And I started out working in the grocery department and just working nights. And they came to me one day and said, Hey, we’ve got this part-time position as an HR person. Do you want it? We thought, we thought you’d be good at it because you know everybody.

That was the prerequisite. So I took the job and then it quickly [00:57:00] became full-time, and then it became full-time in charge of several different stores on, on the, in the Southwest. . So I was a full-time working mom and we had this baby and we had this incredible community. It was the, like, it was a bunch of, you know, p people who were just all starting their kids, all starting their families.

Some working, some working moms, some not working moms, but a really close community. And it was just fun. We had a pool in our area. We’d go down and hang out. We’d hang out in each other’s homes. We, although mothers would get together and play a game called Bunko, if you don’t know what bunko is, it’s a lot of fun.

If you do know Bunko is, I’m sure you’re going, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a lot of fun. I’m not gonna explain it, but it was great. We had a bunko group that lasted for about two years. . So fantastic. And then my husband wants to, you know, again, move so he can, he wants a better administrative position.

There’s no space at where he is. So we move to [00:58:00] North Carolina. Before we move there. I do have my second child. It was my daughter, my only girl, and we do make the decision at that point that we’re gonna have her at home. We had thought about having my, my oldest son at home, but decided that we were gonna do a birthing center.

And the birthing center is right next to the hospital. Ended up in the hospital with him, but wanted to try again. And the reason, and I’m not advocating this for anybody else, but for me, one of the things I realized is birthing a child as a rite of passage. and there’s all this fear about the pain of it, the discomfort of it.

And when you look at the stats of how well we do with babies being birthed at home compared to all the other countries, a lot, even some third world countries, we don’t do it very well in this country. We think we do, but our, the, the death rates of children are not, are, are higher than I think, than almost every other country except for like Burma, which is no longer [00:59:00] Burma and a couple other like, you know, third world countries.

Like we don’t do very well here. And so my husband backed me and so we decided that we were gonna have our kids at home. So we had this incredible birth. My, my parents were there. My, my dad actually saw my oldest son born and my daughter born. And I know for dads it’s like, oh my God. But it, it’s a whole different, as a, as a daughter, I thought, oh my, no, no way.

But trust me, when you’re birthing, you don’t care who sees, as long as this baby comes out of you . And, and it was something that, you know, my father really wanted to be a part of and I didn’t, you know, I was comfortable with it. And so he got to see my oldest and my, my middle child being born. We did it with midwives, incredible experience with my daughter.

Really, really incredible. I just remember feeling completely at one with my husband at the time. He was the one who really helped me through all of the, the labor pains. He was right there by my side. He is not a cord [01:00:00] cutter, will not do it faints at the side of blood. So he was always up on my head. And it was just a beautiful, beautiful experience.

So we have her, he decides that we need to move because the job isn’t doing what he wants to do. And so we moved to North Carolina. I get pregnant along the way on our trip to North Carolina, and then the third baby is born there. We leave North Carolina to California. And I make the joke to him, and we made it before I said, you know, baby, no, we’re not doing one.

We’re not moving every state and we’re not having a baby in every state. Like kind of done. And he w he agreed. So we got to California and he landed this incredible job at this incredible school out here called Winward School. And he loved it there. They were challenging him. He was growing. He worked really well with his boss.

He worked really well with the parents and the administrative staff. We get there and [01:01:00] in July he’s complaining, not feeling well. Turns out he had appendicitis. Oh, so before, so he’s, you know, he’s starting this brand new job and he’s got appendicitis and he’s out for a week. He then goes back to work, you know, feeling great.

Some parents show up at our, at our house, you know, with meals who parents are, I don’t know, but they show up with meals, which is really grateful. And then a couple years into it he goes out for a run and he, well, he goes to the doctor. He’s just sort of complaining about his joints hurt. And when we were in Vegas, it turned out that his joints hurt and he had Lyme disease, but it, he round of couple rounds of bi, you know, antibiotics seemed to have gone away.

So he is complaining about his joints hurt. He goes to see, you know, we’re an hmo, so his doctor tells him to go see to go see a specialist, the specialist, infectious disease guy, and he says, you know, it’s prob, you probably caught something from your kids and sometimes they just manifest differently in adults.

We’re like, [01:02:00] okay. My, my mom, my father has since died. My mother is remarried and she comes out with her new husband and we go on vacation up in Santa Barbara and my husband keeps running these small fevers, you know, they get up to a hundred, 101. We pop in some ibuprofen, they go right back down and then he starts to cough and it’s just kinda this nagging cough.

Give him some dolphin cough. Syrups seems to go. He comes back from vacation, he goes out for a six mile run and he comes back and he like in like two miles. And I’m like, either you’re getting really fast or something else. He’s like, I just don’t feel like I can breathe. So I do what every good wife does and I say, here, takes it on my asthma medicine, right?

So he takes the asthma medicine and he starts to feel a little better, but then it just gets worse and worse. So we decide to go back to the doctor and something in both of us. I offer to come with him before he can. He says, oh my God, I was gonna ask you to come with me. We know something’s wrong. We just don’t know what it is.

And we both felt it. . So we [01:03:00] go to the doctor, the doctor says, have you had any x-rays? And we say, well, our other doctor said to get x-rays. We just haven’t gotten around to it yet because we don’t wanna tax the system. We just feel like maybe it’s not necessary. We don’t, you know, we don’t wanna make a big deal of this.

And that’s definitely from our, you know, our puritanical upbringing. You know, he comes from main stock where you keep doing what you’re doing. Like if you can’t chop with your right arm because your right arm’s chopped off, you figure out a way to chop your left arm. Like it’s that kind of toughness. And, and my parents come from a long line of not being, they’re not sick people, they just don’t get sick.

So we end up going there. The guy does the x-rays and he, it’s basically out of a lifetime movie. He sits across the exam table from us. He weaves his fingers together and he sits there and he. , I think it’s cancer. And he shows us the x-ray. And the reason my husband can’t breathe is because he has these spots all over his chest [01:04:00] and they’re, they, he believes they’re cancer spots.

He can’t confirm it because they need to do a biopsy. So we, but he says it’s serious enough that he sends us over to another doctor immediately. That doctor doesn’t think it’s as serious. But on Monday, my husband’s really struggling for breath, and we, by, through our connections through this school, we land an appointment with the doctor who is really good at treating the kind of cancer my husband end up having.

He sees us. So was it lung cancer? Was it? No, it was large B-cell lymphoma that had metastasized. So it was, you know, metastasized means that it’s gone to other areas of the. . So he so we see this doctor and he sets the alarm bells off. You know, my husband’s sitting in the chair and they do an oxygen saturation level.

You know the thing that tick on your finger? Yeah. To test how much, so they did his, and his was at, i i, I can’t believe this is right. And [01:05:00] I say it all the time, but I have the medical records. His was at 86%. Yours and mine on a normal day is at 99. 198. Yeah. Someone was having a little bit of trouble breathing.

It’s at 94, 92. So 86 was bad. And he said you need to call that doctor back cuz he wasn’t our doctor yet. So he couldn’t place the orders. He said, you need to call that doctor bat. You need to get an oxygen mask right now. Like, this is serious. And so again, we call the doctor, the doc, the, our d regular doc, our doctor back.

This doctor doesn’t think it’s that serious. He’s like, we’ll see you in the office on Wednesday. And I’m like, I don’t know that he’s gonna make it to Wednesday. So we end up kind of finagling with the insurance company. I don’t care how much it’s gonna cost him. We get another doctor. The doctor immediately puts him on oxygen and then calls this other doctor back and says, this is serious.

You need to operate on him this week. Like, you, you can’t do this, John. So through, through, through, through another doctor, he hears this is bad. And [01:06:00] then he has surgery. We start chemo this Sunday. That Sunday it was so bad that it was trying to kill him. He would’ve been dead in a couple of weeks. And this is where my story starts really about what I do and, and why I do it.

So we were part of an incredible community, and I think that people don’t know how much the community can support them until they say, till they share what’s happening in their lives. And people started offering all sorts of help. People started saying things a lot. If you need anything, let me know. And that’s actually the least helpful thing you can say.

And I’ll share why in a little bit. But people helped, you know, our, our kids were in schools where the parents like, oh my gosh, we, what can we do? And my husband was teaching, you know, was, was an administrator at a school where the parents and the teachers were like, what can we do? And you know, we had friends, we had made friends from across the country and all the different places we had lived and everyone was like, okay, what can we do?

And [01:07:00] that was, I will, there’s no, and I was really grateful for that. I didn’t realize how much that community would matter until we moved further down his journey. So he has cancer and people are coming in from all over the country to help us. People are driving my husband back and forth to the cancer treatment center.

They’re driving my kids to school. They’re paying for the housekeeper. They’re coming in and, you know, getting lights fixed and there’s, there’s a light in my kids’ bedroom that needed to be fixed. And, you know, they paid for the electrician to come in and fix it. They’re bringing meals. It’s just, it’s incredible.

I’ve never felt so much love. My husband manages to beat the cancer, or, I, I like to say disentangles himself from the cancer, cuz it’s an entanglement that involves more than just the family or the person with cancer. It involves the whole community and we start to rebuild our lives. And at that point it was really difficult.

My husband was, [01:08:00] He was the firm Parenter in our relationship. I was the one who was like, oh, it’s no big deal. And he was like, no, it is a big deal. He was the one who kind of kept the kids in line. And so when he got sick, he sort of relinquished that role to me, and I didn’t do such a great job of that. I was like, you know what?

I’m too tired to make you guys go to bed. You guys just need to go to bed whenever you’re tired. Like, that was my parenting style. And that’s what I meant by the yin and yang. We really, we really worked well together. I saw that his parenting style was really good for the kids, and, and so I tried my best to do it.

But after this, you know, a, an illness like this brings out the best in your marriage and the worst in your marriage. So there’s this sort of, we have to kind of figure out, do we even really wanna stay married? Right? Is this really what we want? He’s dealing with the shame of, you know, he was very much the man and the masculine.

Role model in our house, and he has to deal and grapple with the shame of having me having to take care of him. You know, and, and, and what [01:09:00] it meant to accept help. What it meant to have people see him in his weakest state. Mm-hmm. , you know, so he’s kind of dealing with that piece of it. I’m dealing with, oh, like.

Pissed. How dare you get sick on my watch? . Like, not okay. How dare you almost die. Like, dealing with all those emotions that are there, dealing with, you know, that one thing that I really didn’t like about you. Well, that got amplified during your cancer treatment and now I really hate that thing about you.

Okay. And he’s thinking the same thing about me. So just trying to navigate what that means. We both were expecting that, oh my gosh, we’re cancer free. We’re gonna have a new take on life. And that’s not what happened with us. And I, I have yet to meet a, a person with cancer where they’re like, yes, I’ve got a new take on life.

Immediately it comes. Slowly afterwards. So we’re putting our lives back together. We decide that we do wanna remain married. We’re kind of, we start to kind of be excited about what’s ahead of us. He’s back at school. The school’s done amazing [01:10:00] things to help him get through one of ’em as which they covered his salary while he was sick.

So they paid him his full salary. We ended up giving them our state disability checks, but they were still out 45% of his pay, and they covered that throughout the year. So, you know, he does, he does his first triathlon. He’s always wanted to do tra. I was the person who did triathlons. He was the runner.

He was actually the cyclist metal runner. So he did his first triathlon, really excited about it. And then the cancer comes back. He just starts to not feel well around November. In the meantime, my mother is selling our, my childhood home. She has met this man. She has decided she’s gonna marry him and move in with him.

And the reason that this is so big is the home is big enough for us all to stay there. And they have an apartment below. This is before A and b and Airbnb take took place. But my dad had outfitted this apartment below, so it was a one bedroom apartment, fully full on apartment. [01:11:00] And my mother told me later if he, if I had just gotten sick sooner, my mother was gonna suggest that they move out, that we move out back to Connecticut, and that my mother could help take care of him and she could live in that apartment.

So it wouldn’t have worked anyway, because the cancer comes back less than two years later and it comes back in full force. And he, we end up going to the hospital because he is struggling to breathe again. And it turns out he’s got a blood clot because he’s been sitting so much during Christmas. and when they find the blood clot, they see again this, this picture and they’re not sure whether it’s old cancer, cuz sometimes the cancer just dies.

It doesn’t necessarily leave your body or new cancer. So they do another biopsy and it’s new cancer and they do found old cancer, but it’s new cancer. And then less than four months later he died. He’s just, he’s just tired, you know? He just doesn’t have it in him to fight, to do that, to do [01:12:00] that, that entanglement, again, it, you know, this time it, I guess is no one, you know, it just kind of grabs him by the throat.

So I end up a widow, he’s 44 when he dies. Our kids are 12, nine and seven and that is where everything falls. I mean as, as I’m sure everyone can imagine, it’s just horrific. It’s not what you expect it is. You know, some friends were really great and came forward. Other friends. Other friends who I think this is a true, this has been true for every person I’ve talked to who’s ever gone through anything difficult in their lives.

Yeah. Some of your friends come through to you like, or people you don’t even know are friends. Yes. People you don’t even people on the outskirts step in to be these incredible friends and people who are closest to you take a step back. Yeah. It’s too hard for them. Yeah. I’m sorry. I have some bitterness in my life.

I’m not gonna lie. No, I need to get that right with God. I have people who are so closer and I’ve [01:13:00] been over backwards for ’em just like you probably. And they pop smoke on the first side of trouble. They were Fairweather friends. Yes. And then you got other people you were acquaintances with. But no, it was a lot deeper for them.

And they had your back. Yes. So that’s what you saw when your husband passed. Exactly. Exactly. And it’s fascinating and it’s more fascinating, 13 years out, but in the middle of it, I’m pissed. I’m just like, you, I am pissed. And I’m like, how dare you? You know, my husband died and you are thinking about how uncomfortable it is for you to talk to me, try living in my shoes for just, you know, a couple hours.

Yeah. , right? I’m really angry, I’m really resentful. But thankfully for thank God for all those people, and I really do mean, I don’t mean that in a, in a, in a flippant way. Thank God for all those people who showed up. This is where the you matter piece comes from. It is, I cannot tell you, I’m not here because I’m [01:14:00] super strong or courageous or everything else.

I am here because of all the little things that people did that helped myself, my husband, when he was sick and helped my kids. They kept showing up and doing all those things, and every single time they did one of ’em, it was a, we love you, you matter, and it was gonna be, you’re gonna be okay. Like, here’s a lasagna, I you’re gonna be okay.

You know, we’re gonna take your cars to get washed. You’re gonna be okay. We’re gonna take the kids to Disneyland, you’re gonna be okay. And it was that, that, like, I almost felt sometimes I had to keep living because those people needed me need, like, I couldn’t disappoint those people. So I’ve talked a lot.

I’m gonna take a break for a second. I’m sure you have questions, . No, no. It’s just, that’s a heavy moment and there’s a lot to consider. And I’m sure those listeners, they can connect [01:15:00] with what you’re saying. So how were the kids? Because the first time it happened, I’m assuming, , you know, there’s shock, there’s fear, but then the second time it happens, you almost get this false sense of security.

Like, oh, DGA threw it once, we’ll get through it again. And then I’m guessing he, you know, when he passed away it was almost like shock. So how did your kids, you’re shaking your head for those listening. You’re not seeing kids. I’m nodding yet. Shaking. I’m nodding. Yet I’m not a prophet. It’s just human nature.

It’s just how we’re built. Yeah. So how were your kids? So if you were talking right now to parents and they’re going through a crappy divorce or they just lost their spouse or the, you know, some other tragedy, what kind of advice do you have to parents to help the kids get through it? Don’t assume, and I know that sounds so easy, when we told the kids that art had cancer the first time they were nine, seven, and.

And we [01:16:00] sat them down and my husband said, you need to tell them because I’m gonna start to cry. And so I s we sat them down and only my daughter was wedged between my husband and I. My youngest son was sitting on the other side of my husband. My oldest son had turned this big. We had this big, huge kind of stuffed chair.

He had turned it around and was sitting with kind of his hands leaning on his, you know, his in his chin on his hands. And we said, we have something to tell you. Daddy has cancer. And art starts to cry. And then I start to cry, and then all the kids start to cry. And so we’re crying. And then my oldest son, he stops crying.

He gets this questioning, look on his face is, eyes get really big. And he goes, but what’s cancer? Right? , . So we, we had made the assumption, because cancer’s an adult thing, right? We, we had made this assumption that they knew what cancer was and that they knew that their father could possibly die. They had no idea.

And so we never told them that he could die. We never, if [01:17:00] they asked, our, our general rule of thumb had always been with our children. If they ask, we will tell them up to the level of which we believe that they want to know. Right? And or that they can handle. And so that means that you have to really pay close attention to them.

So they never asked if they, if they would die, and none of their friends ever asked them if their dad was gonna die, or if they did, it was kind of off. They’re like, no, they’re not gonna die. So that conversation didn’t come up at all after my husband got better the first time. I’ll never forget, our oldest came into the room and he said, I have, he was very bothered by this question, you know, kind of agitated.

And he said, I have, I have a question. And we’re like, okay. What? He says, will the cancer come back? And we didn’t lie. We just said, we hope not. We hope that we got it all, you know, and if it comes back, we’ll do our best to fight it. and he was totally satisfied with that answer. He was like, oh, oh. Like he could tell [01:18:00] his agitation level went from really agitated to no agitation.

He’s like, oh, okay. Goodnight, . It was the end of it. So when I did art went into a coma, basically he started having seizures in his brain, which didn’t allow him to really function. And so the doctor told me, well, I, the way I found out that he wasn’t going to live was this other doctor came in. It was doctor who was kind of walking the floors.

And he said to me, what’s his code? And I was like, what are you talking about? And I said, he said, what’s his code? And I said, I don’t un like speak to me in English. I don’t understand what you’re talking about. And he said, what do you wanna do if his heart stops? And that’s when I realized like, this is four days, five days before my husband actually dies.

oh shit. Like he’s gonna die. And I don’t know where this came from. I said, no matter what, you have to keep him alive so my kids could say goodbye. And so that was something that was really important to me, that they had the opportunity to say goodbye. I would give them each the [01:19:00] choice to go into that room and say goodbye.

And so I called up my friends, and this is where the good friends come in handy. I call up my friends and I called up the schools, it was Monday. And I said, art’s dying, we’re not gonna bring him home. And I please don’t tell the kids, but the kids need to come to the hospital and so and so is gonna come pick ’em up.

So my friends came, picked up the kids, and each kid arrived at the hospital and my oldest was the first one. And I pulled him into the room with my husband’s brother and I said, dad’s really tired. You know, he can’t keep going. The chemo isn’t doing the job that we thought. So your dad’s gonna die and he’s gonna die this week.

Would you like to go in and see him? And he said, yes. And I said, okay, you need to know. He can hear you, so talk to him as much as you want, but he’s not gonna be able to respond. And he’s like, [01:20:00] okay. So bought the oldest in and I said, do you want me to stay with you? He said, no. So I left and just stood out the room and lost my shit.

The other two come, I tell them same story and daughter comes in, wants to say goodbye. And I always, I haven’t told the story in a long time. The sound of a child calling for a parent that you know, she knows is not gonna be able to respond is heart wrenching. There was a nurse in the room. and the nurse was sobbing and she had to leave.

Just hearing the way that she just kept saying Daddy, daddy over and over again was just heartbreaking. But I’m really glad that I did it. So, you know, [01:21:00] you can talk to daddy, you can crawl into bed with daddy. He can still hear you. So that’s exactly what she did. And then my youngest, who was seven, he had just turned seven two weeks prior or three weeks prior.

Just, you know, I knew that kids at this age don’t necessarily don’t always have the idea of per death as permanence, so that’s why you’ll have a three-year-old asking, is Daddy still dead? Because they don’t understand that death lasts forever. . So my youngest, you know, I said, do you wanna talk to him? Do you want No, I’m, I don’t, you know, I don’t wanna talk to him.

And then we used to do this thing with him where I, he would, he would talk th I would talk to art through him because he just didn’t feel comfortable talking directly to him. So I would hold art’s hand and I would hold my youngest hand and say, okay, what do you wanna say to daddy? And I said, I don’t wanna tell daddy that I’m really sad that he’s, that he can’t come to this thing that I want him to come to school for.

Okay. Okay. So art, he’s really sad. And that art would tell me. And then, [01:22:00] you know, it was just, we would just kind of, it just helped him deal with his emotions that way. So I did the same thing with him. I held his hand, I held art’s hand. I said, do you wanna tell daddy anything? And he is like, you know, no, I just am really, I’m really, really mad.

You know, I’m really, really mad and I don’t want him to die. And I said, I would tell art that, and then. . So that’s how we did it. So that’s how the three kids said goodbye. And then I stayed with art and we had friends come in and say goodbye to him, but I stayed with him until his last breath. And I’m so grateful that I did that, that I was able to witness that because I don’t think that I would’ve believed that he was dead if I hadn’t been able to actually see him die.

Mm-hmm. So with the kids, you know, it was really important to me that they get to say goodbye to him. And I knew that they may not understand it, and maybe it was gonna cause them a lot of years of therapy. I don’t know. But I wanted them to. I [01:23:00] didn’t want them coming to me 20 years later saying, I’m still pissed.

You didn’t gimme a chance to say. like he was alive and you denied me because you thought I couldn’t handle it. And that’s usually what most parents do. Most parents take their own fear and put it on their children and say, my child can’t handle seeing their loved one in that. And that’s not true. It’s you that can’t handle it.

Kids can handle a lot if you give them the space to handle it. So as far as advice for parents who are dealing with loss, as I always think, just tell them the truth, you know? They saw me, it was very hard to allow myself to allow them to see me grieving, but I knew that there was gonna be a day where I wasn’t grieving and I knew that they would learn from me what it, what resilience looks.

Right kids, don’t. I, the one wish we always had for our [01:24:00] children is not that they’re happy, cuz happiness is fleeting and you can’t, you can’t be in a happy state all the time. But the one thing we both wanted for our kids is they learned how to be resilient because they’re gonna get knocked down.

They’re gonna feel like the world is ending. They’re gonna feel like it’s just crap. And I really, we really wanted them to know what resilience means. That you can get back up and I, you may not bounce back up right away, but you can get back up. And so allowing myself to grieve in front of my kids was really hard.

Cuz I, my, I, but I knew in the end that they’d see that you can get back up. And that was what was the big purpose of the grieving in front of them and being honest, you know, today I’m having a really bad day. I really miss Daddy a lot. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. This is r. Very hard to talk about. So thank you for sharing this with us, Ken.

And I know it’s gonna help a lot of people because [01:25:00] there are books written on every topic in the world, but you don’t read ’em until it’s time. Yeah. So hopefully they’re hearing the rest of your story. And this is, you know, we don’t want this to happen to anybody, but it’s life. It happens. Yep. So, and, and I, firsthand, I remember when my grandma was dying from a child’s point of view, I believe he made a hundred percent the right decision.

I remember my grandma dying from cancer and I was four, like just four. Wow. And they wouldn’t let me see her. And we were, yeah. So close. And then finally I’m like, will you, like I just kept be. and I remember them saying stupid shit, forgive me, but like, we don’t want you to remember her that way. And, and I get it all.

Yes. I, I, I get it. Sounds all good for TV movie, but that’s not reality. And I remember at four years old, like, I want to see grandma. And she was in a coma too from the cancer. And I remember going in, and this was a [01:26:00] miracle. It doesn’t happen this way for everybody, but she woke up, total clarity, told me she loved me.

She’d see me in heaven. So it’s like I got that closure. You know, your kids get the closure, you get that closure. Forget the Betty Crocker TV, movies and Hallmark channel. Like let’s live in real life. Say goodbye cuz you’re looking at their soul, not a vessel. Yeah. So, and, and I think you know what you just said, I mean, you were four and that still touches you, you know, like those defining moments.

And I think parents meaning well, Try to protect our kids, but those defining moments are so important. Yeah. Like when you are on your deathbed, you have this feeling and this notion that, oh, I get to go see her again. Right. There’s that joy that brings, that makes death not so scary. Yeah. And that’s what a gift.

Thank God your parents let you [01:27:00] in. I’m so, I’m so grateful. Yeah. I think I was annoying. I just wouldn’t stop . Cause Yeah. I was just like, I wanted to see grandma. Yeah. Yeah. But all right, so now your husband passes away, you’re recovering, your kids are recovering. Where does life go from there to today?

It goes kind of downhill. It, it starts to go up, up and up, and then it starts to go downhill. And it goes downhill in that I still have a, an i, I have an addictive personality and I start drinking. To cover up. Cause I am not equipped or I don’t, you know, none of us are equipped to deal with the kind of pain, but mm-hmm.

I am equipped with knowing how not to deal with the kind of pain and, you know, what greater lesson did I have in my father? And not that, you know, I wanted to be anything like him, but I started using alcohol and I started using food. So I was the typical weight underweight widow, you know, [01:28:00] young and underweight.

And people were like, oh my God, you need to gain weight, you know. But then after about the first year, I started putting that weight back on and I started putting it on with a vengeance. You know, there was no, there was no such thing as one slice of cake. There was no such thing as only one. Right. I wasn’t good at only one.

I was good at only one. Like chips. Chips weren’t my thing and they still aren’t, but man, red velvet cake. Woohoo. I could eat the whole thing in a sitting. So, started gaining weight and I, and started having suicidal thoughts. and this time I was like, well, if I’m gonna commit suicide, I probably need to kill my kids because I can’t leave them orphans.

Somehow in my twisted brain I was like, well, I’ll just take everyone out because if I leave the orphans, like I, you know, sometimes I’m too smart for my own good. I knew the stats, if you, if a parent commits suicide, your children are like 50% more likely to commit suicide. So I was like, well, I can’t leave them.

That’s not fair. Right? [01:29:00] Can’t leave them orphans. That’s not fair. So let me take them with me. And I started to develop a plan. And that’s where, thank God, I think it’s a God voice or my little inner voice or the angel or someone on my shoulder said, do you see how crazy this is? On top of it all, there were financial issues.

My husband didn’t renew his finan, his his insurance. And so we went from having a policy that would’ve taken care of all of us to not having a policy at all. And you know, we didn’t have a ton of savings in our bank account, so, . So there’s this financial thing. I haven’t worked in 12 years, so I don’t have a job to fall back on.

I am feeling like I’m a second wheel to a lot of people. Like, you know, when you become a widow, it’s very interesting how a lot of couples stop inviting you places because you become the only one and it feels uncomfortable for everybody. [01:30:00] So there’s all this stuff happening and I’m just miserable.

And I start to think about that. And that’s the little voice just said, do you realize how crazy that is? Like that’s not, that’s not quality thinking, Kim. Like, that’s not okay. This isn’t okay. This is not okay. This isn’t okay. Exactly, exactly. This is not okay. And that’s where I got help. I finally got help.

I went and I, my friend of mine. Runs an organization that helps compulsive overeaters and she always talks to me about how she goes deeper than anything else. It’s not about diet at all. So I called her up and I said, I think I need to work. She and her husband were doing this together at the time. I said, I think I need to work with your husband.

And she said, okay. And I, I tell the story hesitantly, but I had $150,000 in the bank and I plopped down one third of that to work with this man on a one-on-one basis. It was the best $50,000 I have ever spent in my [01:31:00] whole entire life. Now it’s not that much to work with him now, but it was then and we started doing some really hard work, really, really hard work.

And this is where I got to really forgive my father. So there was that. Remember we talked earlier, there was the beginning of the forgiveness and understanding. He was doing the best he could do, but through the work I did with them, . I really began to forgive my father and I really forgave him. You know, I love him and I’m so grateful for him.

And the biggest disappointment I have right now is that he’s not alive. For me to actually full on, forgive him face-to-face, you know? And to accept him and not, not to forgive him, cuz it’s not, it’s not like I’m giving him a gift in my forgiveness. That’s not really what I mean. But to make amends to him for how I was, because I was always looking at it from my point of view.

But I was not an easy person to live with. I was a pain in the ass. , oh, 100% pain in the ass. I was [01:32:00] fresh. I talked back, I was disrespectful. Like I could never have seen any of that, you know? , I was grateful my dad didn’t kick me out cause honestly, he probably should have. Mm-hmm. , I was such a difficult child.

And so when I look at it from that point of through, through this program, I got to see how difficult I was. So then I got to make amends for how, so then I got to forgive him, right? Which is just this freeing feeling of like, oh, you were doing the best you could. I didn’t see that Then, then I got to make amends, which is just like, I’m so sorry.

I was such an a jerk for all these years. And you know, I wasn’t, I wasn’t a great five-year-old either. I mean, you know, you can, you can forgive the five-year-old, but I was not an easy five-year-old either. And ha I was, I was the hellacious teenage girl. And then, and then I got to forgive myself. And so through doing that, [01:33:00] I have a whole new life.

So after my husband died, one of the things I realized is all those people who didn’t help, who wanted to help and didn’t know what to do, what to say, it’s cuz no one told them. . We don’t, no one, there’s not a class that we learned that we take, that we missed. We must skipped in high school or didn’t get because we didn’t go to college.

Yeah. There’s no class out there that shows you how to show up for somebody. So that’s where I decided I was gonna write the book. So I wrote the book, 100 X of Love, A Girlfriend’s Guide to Loving Your Friend Through Cancer or Loss. And I wrote it be for all those people who wanted to show up who didn’t know how.

And I wanted to show them too, like before my husband got sick, I used to think helping meant making meals every single day for the next month. Like I thought you had to like jump in and commit. Right? And I was like, I just don’t have the time. But what I discovered when art was sick was it’s not about the [01:34:00] time.

You don’t have to do these gigantic things. It’s about I’m here because of all those little simple things that people did and said. And that’s what the beauty is, is that I wanted people to know that just offering to fill the car with gas is a huge help and offering more than once. You know, I heard friend of mine had cancer and he bought my book and he then gave it to his friend who has a friend, young brain tumor wife, has a two-year-old.

And he went over there and he said to her, I’m gonna be your gas filler. Like anytime you need the car filled with gas, you call me. And he reported back to this other friend of mine and said he felt so good because she said to him, oh my god, so many people have offered just, you know, if you need anything, let me know.

And it’s so not helpful and your specific help is so helpful. Like she was just excited that he [01:35:00] offered this one thing. I don’t even know if he ever got to do it for her. . But being able to be there for someone and to offer that support in that simple, easy way is what I wanted people to know about and how powerful that is.

So I wrote the book, and the very first chapter in the book is, if you need, don’t Say, if you need anything, let me know. So if it’s okay, I’d like to tell people why that’s not helpful. Yeah, a hundred percent. Okay. Okay. That’s why we’re here. We’re here to learn from you. From the good experiences, the bad experiences, you know, those are in quotes and everything in between.

So this is your show and your time. And the only purpose of this is to help people and glorify God. So you run with it, Kim. Done. I can do both. Yeah. This, you know, I, that’s saying, I say this Bible first to myself every day. You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do you light a lamp and put it under a bowl.

Instead, you put it on a stand where it gives light to [01:36:00] everyone or shines light on everyone. And that is something that I take to heart. Like when I tell people that you matter, you have a light and you may not know exactly what it is yet. And you don’t even have to have like this big purpose light. But you have a light and you are being kind to, someone may keep them from committing suicide that.

right? You just never, ever, ever, ever, ever know. So I wrote this book so that people could be the light for somebody else. Now, back to that phrase, there’s four reasons it’s not helpful, and I always start with this story. Imagine that you just, like, you bought a house, something great has just happened.

You just got married, you bought a house, you finally broke up with the, the guy or the partner you’re not supposed to be with anymore. Whatever it is, something incredible, fantastic has happened to you. And you go to lunch with six people all who know that incredible thing has happened to you. And throughout this two hour lunch, nobody [01:37:00] says anything to you.

you don’t feel so great. You feel like, like this great thing happened and no one said, no one acknowledged it. No one, no one said anything. Well, the same thing is true. When there’s a tragedy in someone’s life, they really just wanna be witnessed. That’s the first and foremost thing. They want to, they want someone to say to them, holy hell, that sucks.

Like, or, I’m so sorry this is happening to you. I just, you know, one of the most powerful things that people used to say to me, which I love, is I don’t know what to say. Right? It, it happens in a way that takes their breath away too. So when you say, if you need anything, let me know. That is not acknowledging that it’s moving directly into action.

And action is good and action is necessary, but before you do the action, you wanna settle in and you just wanna look them in the eye and go, I’m so sorry. [01:38:00] You just wanna acknowledge it. So that phrase doesn’t do that. The second reason it’s not helpful is what is anything like? Yeah, I mean, David, you and I just met, now you have kids, so I probably could have said to you, can you please go pick up my vomiting toddler at preschool and pick ’em up?

And you’d be like, got it. Because you have wipes in the car, you know, to bring towels. Like you got, you gotta run, you got a plastic bag or some plastic bags, like you got it because you’re a parent, but anything is too big. Under normal circumstances like David, were you willing to like run out and get me tampons?

Is that something that was on your anything list? , so, so when we say anything, it’s too big. The third reason it’s not helpful is you were now asking the person in crisis to break down their day to find one small thing that you might be willing to do. And y’all, I can’t remember what I had for dinner last night.

You know, like we can’t, you know, and we go about our days in such [01:39:00] routine and monotonous ways that it’s hard for us to break it down. I didn’t realize I was outta toothpaste until I was outta toothpaste. I didn’t realize I was outta spaghetti until the water’s boiling and I go to the cabinet and there’s no spaghetti.

Mm-hmm. . So you know, you’re asking someone to break part their day, which is impossible for us on a normal. And then the last reason it’s not helpful is, I don’t know about you, but I’m not particularly good at asking for help. I’ve gotten really good at it because I understand the importance of it, but I’m not really good at admitting my vulnerability and asking somebody for help.

So now you’ve got this person who’s in this situation who we, you know, and this comes from. Americans like, we don’t be, we don’t believe. We believe. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps. We believe that people are self-made. We like to believe that you get to take care of yourself in the best way you possibly can.

That if you’re in a bad situation, it’s your fault and you need to get out of it. We believe in that power. That’s what we’re made of in this country. We don’t believe in [01:40:00] vulnerability. We’re not really good at that. And so how do you, you, you are asking someone who is an extremely vulnerable situation to come up with something that you may or may not want to do to get, to feel extremely uncomfortable and ask you to do it, to risk you going, oh, hey, yeah, not that great with kids.

So probably picking up your preschooler, not a great idea. But if you mean, you know, I can drop off a bottle of wine, so. So that’s where the difficulty is. That’s why that phrase is not a great phrase. What I tell people is acknowledge what they’re going through and then offer something specific and offer more than once.

So something specific. Hey, how much gas do you have in your car right now? Are you at half a tank? Tell you what, let me swing by tomorrow. I’ll pick up the car. I’ll go fill it up for you. You know, Hey, when’s the last time the [01:41:00] kids got outta the house? You know what? I’d like to take them to the movies. Can I take ’em to dinner and the movies?

So, and matter of fact, let me pick ’em up from school. I’ll feed them. I’ll take them to a movie. I’ll bring ’em back to you after the movie. Like 9 30, 10. Is that okay? Yep. Hey, that agenda that you always do at work, I know you’re under a lot of pressure right now. How about you just tell me what to put on the agenda and I’ll do it and I’ll do all the research behind it.

Does that work for you? Right. So offering those specific things, ways that you’re gonna help, we all have helping superpowers. You know, mine, I, I don’t like grocer. I don’t like cooking. I don’t like cooking in general, so please don’t ask me to bring, like, even just thinking about bringing a meal, like picking up chicken, other foods from like Costco, like I like, like my heart’s palpating right now.

Like, it just makes me so uncomfortable. But I am the world’s best grocery shopper and if you tell me exactly what item you need, I will find out when it’s being delivered and I will be at that grocery store when that truck pulls in, bugging that guy to go get me that one thing that you need. Like, I love doing that kind of.[01:42:00]

you know? Yeah, I’m good with kids. I can take your kids for a couple hours. Don’t ask me for a whole day. Not doing a whole day , but I’m a good, I’m, I can kick them for four hours. I can entertain children for four hours. I can entertain teenagers. That’s what I’m good at. Please don’t ask me to come clean your kitchen.

Not really my favorite thing to do. So we all have our helping superpowers, and that’s, this is an opportunity for you to find yours. What is yours? What do you like doing on a normal basis? Maybe you like working on cars. So you’ll take their car to make sure it’s maintained. Maybe you’ll get it. Maybe you like, like order.

So maybe you’re the person who can help make sure all their bills are paid or that their car is registered on time and that the homeowner’s insurance is paid, right? So we all have these ability to, to step into people’s lives and to be really helpful and, and doesn’t matter what it is. My book is dedicated to a gentleman named Kenny.

and Kenny works at the Farmer’s Market in Venice, Venice Farmer’s Market on Fridays. And when he, when I told him my husband was [01:43:00] sick, Kenny said, if you need anything big moved, let me know. And y’all, I thought that was the weirdest offer. Like, I don’t need anything heavy. Like big. What? Like a couch. Like I, I, you know, well, my husband dies.

We’ve got a grand piano and I am in this space where I’m like, I need to organize the house. Like I just need to redecorate. And And that’s a natural response to take back control in your life psychologically. It absolutely is. It absolutely Is it? Yes. 100%. And, and it’s a response. People often wanna tell someone when they should do it.

Mm-hmm. like, you should get rid of his clothes now you should do this. No. When it’s time to get rid of the clothes, the person will know exactly when it’s time to get rid of the clothes. And that’s when it’s time to get rid of the clothes. So I was in this space where I needed to excise my husband from the living room for whatever reason.

And I was like, we need, I need to reorganize it. And who do you think I thought of Kenny, who had made that offer five years? . [01:44:00] So the more specific you are, Kenny, that was Kenny’s sweet spot. He knew, he knew he could get five or six guys to come over and move that piano for me and move it where I wanted and then move it around again.

And then, you know, yeah. So he knew he could do it. It was his specialty, and that was the perfect offer that he could make. So what There’s no, there’s no weird offer. When you offer, specifically, you’re doing the person a favor. The one thing you’re doing is you’re letting them know that you are willing to help, right?

And two, you’re giving them permission to ask you for that one thing so they don’t have to worry about you rejecting them. And the third thing is what oftentimes, especially if you offer more than once, they may ask you to do something else that they’re afraid to ask somebody else to do. But because you’ve offered, they now trust.

To do it. So you are giving them, it’s such a huge gift when you’re specific with what you can do. So that’s why that phrase, if you need anything, let me know, is the least helpful. It’s hard not to say it. I I to [01:45:00] catch myself all the time, 13 years later, but it is one of those phrases, the only phrase, the only time I could think of it’s a good time to ask, is when it’s the bestest friend in the whole wide world where she’ll be like, Hey, I’m getting sick.

Can you come over and hold my hair? Hey, you know, I just, I, I just did something in my pants. I need brand new pants. You know, where to find them, you know, your best friend type of thing. But anyone else, it’s, it’s a really not helpful phrase. Yeah, it’s a great point. I couldn’t agree more. I mean, it, it’s too vague.

And then sometimes you get asked to do things like, I’m allergic to, I’m allergic to outdoor grass. Really bad. Well, if somebody needs their lawn owed, now what do I do? Right, exactly. Because even if you hire somebody to mow their LA yard, you look like an ass. So it’s like you’re, you’re mowing the yard. So I never thought about it to the depth, but you’ve just solved a lot of problems in my life.

So thank you , because I wanna help everybody. But the fact is like I bought a [01:46:00] condo on the beach cuz I’m tired of, if I mow the yard, I can’t breathe for two or three days. Exactly. So now you’re being very specific and you can say, you know, I’ll do anything for you, but these are the things I’m good at.

And I think, you know, low hanging fruit we can do here. Exactly. But exactly groceries. Let me know. I don’t want to clean your toilet, but I’ll do it. Yeah. No, that’s a great point. Yes. You know, grocer’s great. If you’re really desperate to have your toilet clean, you can call me, but try other people first, right?

Yeah. , I’ll buy you dinner three nights a week, but I don’t wanna cook it. Exactly. You don’t want me to cook it. Exactly. So, alright. This has been a great, great time. Is there anything between your birth and today that we missed before we transac transition into where you are today and where you’re heading?

Any other like, final thoughts you wanna share with people or anything that we missed or skipped? I [01:47:00] don’t think so. I think we got pretty much everything I. , you know, I got to, I, I do wanna touch a little bit about my addictions. You know, I’m no longer from working with this gentleman. I no longer have the urge to drink.

It’s not a willpower. And I no longer have the urge to eat sugar, which is, again, not willpower. Because I’m completely powerless. And I think that that freedom has given me, you know, dealing with the underlying issues that caused those addictions has given me the freedom to do what I do now. Right. It gave me the freedom to write the book.

It gave me the freedom to move forward in hr. And we’ll talk a little bit about my career in just a minute. I mean, it’s, it’s really, and it, and it connected me with spirit, which is something that I grew up not, I grew up hating God because God didn’t answer my prayers. You know, like I asked God to make my dad stop drinking and God didn’t.

And so I, you know, why, why on earth would I like, like, give over my life to, to God when he didn’t answer me? [01:48:00] And what I learned about God is that God will give you just enough pain to bring you to your knees so you can be with him, right? So you can trust him and let him take over your life. Mm-hmm. and you know, God, God doesn’t make people hurt.

We make people hurt. We make people hurt when we’re out of alignment with spirit. And so I discovered this really kind, loving, amazingly giving God who’s always got my back. And it wasn’t God’s job to stop my father from drinking. That wasn’t his job. You know, God’s job was to give my father, you know, God’s job was to get my dad to his knees and to hopefully get him to a point where he could understand that he was perilous and he never got there.

But that’s okay. . God still loved my dad and he still loved me and he still, he was able, he enabled me to really admire and, and that position and, and I mean, you know, my, my, my, my, my led me to [01:49:00] admire my father. And so I think that that’s the one of the biggest lessons that I took away that I want people to know about how powerful it is to have this relationship with spirit in a way that has just blown my life.

You know, wide open, just wide open. Yes. Again, and to clarify that to the next level, God loves us and he doesn’t do anything to harm us or malicious. If you close your eyes and you’re listening to Kim and you have this venal, angry God image in your head, That’s not the right image. And I can almost bet big money that that’s cuz that’s what your real father was like.

And Yes, what happens is a lot of times our relationship with our earthly father reflects because we don’t understand God’s love and who he really is. So if our father was distant [01:50:00] and he has the ability to come see you, but your whole childhood, he didn’t care. You just naturally assume that’s with God.

Yeah, well God, yeah, he loves me. Maybe, you know? Right. Yeah. He could help me, but he’s choosing not to. I’m unlovable and, and same thing. So if you have a good relationship with your three dad, it’s easy to have a good relationship with your father. So when you’re talking about all this and realizing that God, Loves you, and he never causes hardship, but he only allows things to bring you to your knees.

As Kim said, that’s not in a vindictive, negative way. That’s when you’re gonna experience the most fulfillment and joy and peace, and it’s gonna be amazing. So it’s if you have an image in your head and you’re not understanding, you know, reach out to Kim reach out to me. Amen. Reach out to someone who’s preaching what’s in the Bible, not making crack up out of their, their opinion.

You know, two plus two is four. Truth is truth. [01:51:00] Don’t, don’t, I don’t need anybody’s opinion. I don’t need gray. I want black and white. So Go. And, and, and I think the other thing too is, you know, like I said, I was praying for God to, I was outlining what I wanted God to do. And you can’t tell God. Yeah.

You’re like rubbing the gene in the ball. You’re like, exactly. Like, okay God. So I want you to get him sober. And then once he’s sober, these things will happen in my life and I’ll have a really good life. And I think that comes true, like I outline sometimes with jobs, right? And I’m, I’m thinking, okay, God, this is the kind of job I want.

And like, first of all, God already knows that. And second of all, when I start to outline and tell God specifically what I want, I often miss what God has already given me. Like what’s coming down the pipe, right? Because I’m so clear, I think I’m so clear on this that God like it’s like, it’s like I think I wanna square and God’s like, well I gotta rectangle for you.

But you have to like see that it’s a rectangle. No, I definitely need a square. I’m positive. I’m a square person. I got a rect rectangle right [01:52:00] here that’s even longer and better than the square . No, I need the square. So I think that’s the other thing too, is that I have to really learn that my job is to ask God for what I want and to take those steps in the, in that direction and then always listen to where God’s directing me further.

So I think that’s the other piece of it is I’ve got, my job is not to tell God exactly what I want and not to outline it specifically because when I outline it is when I often miss the steps to getting where I really wanna be or what God wants me to be. What’s that? I’m gonna screw this phrase up. But there was that saying that we heard his kids over and over again.

You know, be careful what you asked for. Cause you may just get it. Yes. Yes. You know, there’s, there’s been things God’s delivered. He’s like our, it’s like a dad. It’s like, dad, I wanna eat ice cream. Dad, I wanna eat ice cream. Dad, I wanna eat ice cream. The kids lactose and intolerant. It’s like, all right, eat ice cream,

There you later. They’re not leaving the bathroom. It’s like you asked for it, I gave it to you. Exactly. God loves us and wants what’s best for us. We’re just stupid [01:53:00] and sinful. So, but God forgives us and we can be holy. So, okay, so where is Kim today? And where are you heading? Well, this is very exciting cuz I just did my goals for 2023.

Nice. Because this is where I’d like to be and hopefully God agrees, and we’ll get there together. . Actually, you know what’s really exciting is that I know that what I put down on paper is not exactly what’s going to happen and that’s what’s really exciting for me. So what I’ve done is I took my book, I, after my husband died, I actually went back to work in HR and what my very first job was working for a company where the president’s wife had cancer and she died.

And I thought that that company would do what my husband’s company did. Like they fell over themselves to support us and to help us and they. And I sort of scrambled like, well, you know, [01:54:00] so they’re dealing with a grieving president, which is, you know, if you’ve ever worked with someone who’s grieving, it’s sort of like working with someone who’s schizophrenic some days or some moments, they’re perfectly fine.

The next moment they’re at their desk sobbing, and then after that they’re yelling, right? Because that grief messes with your brain on so many different levels. So we’re dealing with this guy who’s running the North America sales for this court, for this company, and he’s like, I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine.

Oh my God, I hate you all. Oh my God, I can’t believe she’s done. This is his daily kind of thing. And no one knows how to work with him. . And so I’m trying to help and scramble. I mean, I’ll never forget the first thing they said was, oh, we should go over, we should definitely go over there cause we’re going to go grab at the house

We should bring him, we should bring him cold cuts. And I was like, no food. It was just him and his son and they had a hard time understanding no food. I was like, everyone else is bringing food. You, we do not need to bring food. Like I, trust me, we get there and the counters are filled with food and this gentleman is trying to pawn [01:55:00] food off on people cuz he doesn’t have room in his refrigerator.

And cuz he knows it’s gonna go bad. So so I try to help as best I can and that’s where I start to see something. I start to think maybe there’s something here. And then I get my next HR position and my next one and my next one. And it happens over and over and over again. An employee has cancer, no one knows what to say.

An employee’s child dies. No one knows what to say. An employee is, an employee is is is Whatever. Just you, you can get the, you get the picture. Yeah. So I start to think, well, managers are always in this tough positions because the employee comes to ’em and say, have they have cancer? And manager’s first thought is not like, oh, one of love.

It’s usually like, crap, what am I gonna do? This project is due and now this person isn’t gonna be yelled to work. Right? And then they feel guilty for having that thought and then they kind of think, okay, well maybe we can, you know, [01:56:00] they, they kind of backpedal. So I realized that there’s a place for compassion at work as well as productivity.

There’s an opportunity for a manager to work with an employee who’s dealing with cancer loss or depression and the team, cuz the whole team’s affected by it and. Be compassionate and caring and understanding and still be productive. And that’s what I, that’s how I now work with organizations. I have a North Star strategy, which helps companies work through all those stages.

Some of them are personal. In other words, you need to kind of write out what you think and feel about somebody with cancer. What’s your own pastor pass? You know, will you excuse, I’m so sorry. I ha you’re gonna this, we’re gonna have to cut off for just one.

All right, go ahead and I’ll have my intern edit. Edit. Perfect. So now I work with [01:57:00] managers, helping them to work with their teams when they’re dealing with cancer loss or, or depression. It’s something that a lot of managers, it’s, it’s a tool that managers don’t have, you know? And really what started me on this, when I realized that statistically speaking, 46% of those who get cancer are between the ages of 25 and 64, which are prime working years.

And yet our managers and the HR teams are so ill-equipped to manage an employee who’s dealing with cancer on top of it. , a lot of more employees who, who have cancer are working. And so there’s assumption that, oh, if you have cancer, you’re gonna leave the workplace and then come back. Well, that’s actually proving less and less true.

People can’t afford it. People can’t afford it. You know, you have grief in the workplace. Just be, you know, we, we’ve learned from my own personal experience, you know, just because you’re young doesn’t mean you can’t lose a spouse or partner. So, you know, children die, adults die, you know, parents die. And knowing how to manage that at [01:58:00] work is so very important for the managers cuz they’re the front line.

They’re the ones who are building these teams and getting the work done. And so that’s what I do right now as I support managers and HR teams understanding, specifically offering them specific tools on how to navigate. And what’s the best way for an organization to reach you, Kim? So if someone’s listening, they’re connecting, whether it’s personal coaching or corporate training, what’s the best way to reach you?

There’s two great ways. One, I’m on LinkedIn, so please go ahead and DM me on LinkedIn. And the other thing is they can reach, reach out to me at info 100 acts of love.com and that’s the number 100. So info, 100 acts of love dot. Beautiful. Beautiful. Well, I have truly enjoyed this episode. I’ve personally learned a ton.

I know our listeners around the world are going to be able to glean and apply this to their life. Like our slogan says, we don’t just want people to listen to great content, but we want them to do what they’re hearing you say, repeat the good [01:59:00] stuff each day consistently so they can have a great life in this world, and an eternity to come.

So at this time, Kim, before we wrap it up, anything else we missed? Any final thoughts you want to share, or are we just gonna say a due tip for this moment? I, I just have two things. One I know I spoke briefly about what not to say, and there are five, four other things that I give away for free on my website.

Four phrases never to say to anyone dealing with cancer loss or depression and what to say instead. Cuz that’s equally as important and anyone who wants to download that for free can find it at 100 acts of love.com/what Not to say So all one word. No, no uppercase. Just all one word together. And then I go back to what we talked about in the, in the beginning, and that is, I really want you to know, listener, how important you are, how you show up every day really, [02:00:00] really, really matters.

There’s no such thing as. Not being, you know, I think the thing that remembers you’re irreplaceable. You know, you’re absolutely irreplaceable. So I just really want people to know that and understand that I’m here because of all those people who believed that I was irreplaceable and kept showing up during my darkest, darkest hours and my children’s darkest hours.

I appreciate you being so transparent and real. Oh, thank, thank you. I am thankful that you’re here and hope we continue the friendship. Tell my son to come by and make sure to take care of you, . If you need anything. He’ll be specific, what he can do, . And other than that, ladies and gentlemen, we love you.

Check out the show notes for the links. Please share this with your family and friends and people you know that need it, not just so we can have a bigger podcast with listenership, but so we can help more [02:01:00] people. This is, this whole show is about helping people, loving people, and glorifying God. So don’t be afraid to share this with somebody, and we know it’s a long format podcast, but I’m sure you’ve just heard, you know, we’re here with Kim.

She’s got not only a great story and entertaining story, but there’s so much good truth that we can apply to our lives from it. So Kim, thank you again. We appreciate you very much. David, thank you, and I really appreciate you. I really do. Anytime, anytime. Ladies and gentlemen, we love you. Have a great day, and we’ll see you in the next episode.

Ciao.

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