POPULARITY
Dr. Kathryn Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space and a veteran of three shuttle missions, talks with Beth about her experience as part of the team that launched, rescued, repaired, and maintained the Hubble Space Telescope on this week’s episode of the Casual Space Podcast. The Hubble Space Telescope has revolutionized our understanding of the universe. It has, among many other achievements, revealed thousands of galaxies in what seemed to be empty patches of sky; transformed our knowledge of black holes; found dwarf planets with moons orbiting other stars; and measured precisely how fast the universe is expanding. In Handprints on Hubble, retired NASA astronaut Kathryn Sullivan describes her work on the NASA team that made all of this possible. This week, Dr. Sullivan joins Beth to describe how she and other astronauts, engineers, and scientists launched, rescued, repaired, and maintained Hubble, the most productive observatory ever built! A moment from the show: Beth: What invited you to write your book, “Handprints on Hubble” and share your story? Dr. Sullivan: I, like countless engineers on the ground and at mission control, am really proud of everything Hubble has done, and I feel like I have a fingerprint, I have a contribution on everything Hubble has done. The idea of (sharing this) percolated for a long time until a friend at the Smithsonian was trying to get me to consider writing a memoir, and that’s when the penny dropped- If my story could be the vehicle for telling an overlooked chapter of the Hubble history, and bringing the people who really are the hidden figures of the Hubble story into the foreground so the important work they did got its due. All of the creativity, the engineering, the design work, the imagining in the mid-60’s a school-bus size telescope and that the astronauts would take care of it! It was astonishing! People don’t often think of engineers of being imaginative, but Hubble is a really brilliant example of the kind of vision and imagination that describes most of engineering, so if I could use my story to help people understand the importance of this early history of Hubble, that would be worth writing. -Kathy Sullivan from the Casual Space Podcast Learn more about Dr. Sullivan at http://kathysullivanastronaut.com/ Get your copy of Handprints on Hubble at: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/handprints-hubble
On today’s episode, you’ll hear: What triggered performance-driven behavior for Beth What perfectionism disguised itself as in Court’s life How Beth broke and what lessons she learned in “pushing through” The toxic outcome of praising performance as a society Ways we each began working our way out of perfectionistic tendencies How playing “worst case scenario” often helps bring perspective to our perfectionistic compulsions This episode goes deep today but we’re committed to talking about what others don’t so our promise to you is to always stay real, stay raw and stay kind.
Beth is an independent producer, director and writer, whose fervor for American history, music and culture has led to a series of award-winning and critically acclaimed films. In fact a few weeks after we recorded this interview, Beth won an Emmy for her film Fort Vancouver that she made for Oregon Public Broadcasting. Her latest project, her first scripted web series, called The Musicianer tells the tale of Yodelin' Vern Lockhart — a hillbilly singer with a problem. Read more about Beth. Read more about The Passionistas Project. Listen to these BONUS CLIPS from Beth's interview: BONUS: Beth Harrington on her definition of success BONUS: Beth Harrington on her biggest professional challenge BONUS: Beth Harrington on her plans for The Musicianer BONUS: Beth Harrington on singing with Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers BONUS: Beth Harrington on her most courageous decision BONUS: Beth Harrington on opportunities for female filmmakers at festivals and markets BONUS: Beth Harrington on her mantra BONUS: Beth Harrington on her advice to an aspiring female filmmaker BONUS: Beth Harrington on her mentors BONUS: Beth Harrington on her pop culture icon FULL TRANSCRIPT Passionistas: Hi and welcome to the Passionistas Project Podcast. We're Amy and Nancy Harrington. Today we're talking to a very special guest, our sister Beth Harrington. Beth is an independent producer, writer, and director whose fervor for American history, music, and culture has led to a series of award winning and critically acclaimed films. In fact, a few weeks after we recorded this interview, she won an Emmy for a film she made for Oregon Public Broadcasting about Fort Vancouver. Her latest project, a scripted web series called "The Musicianer," or tells the tale of yodelin' Verne Lockhart, a hillbilly singer with a problem. So please welcome to the show, Beth Harrington. Beth what's the one thing you're most passionate about? Beth: I mean, the obvious answer is filmmaking. With the close second being music. Those things are just so intertwined for me, more, especially more and more lately, that's all I really want to do and talk about and think about. But in of course in that is storytelling. You know, I love a good story and I love telling those stories. And lately I've just been feeling like a lot of it's about just being as creative as you can be for as much of the day as you can be creative. And I have some inspiration for that lately from people I've been working with and it's like, oh yeah, let's just be creative all day long. Let's cut out things out of construction paper and make little things out of clay. So I don't know, that's, I've been really excited about just being creative more and more. Passionistas: So how does that translate into what you do for a living? Beth: For a living large, actually I work for public television and I've been making films for Oregon Public Broadcasting in the northwest and before that in Boston at WGBH for a number of years. And that's been my sort of bread and butter. But what's great about that is I'm still filmmaking and it's never a thing that I feel anything but great about, you know, I, I love working in public television. That's been great. So there's that. But on my, as far as my own stuff goes, that preoccupies even more of my brain. And I've just always, I'm just kind of always thinking about that stuff. And I'm, I've been lately, you know, the last few years I've been trying to figure out how I can make music and film be so much a part of what I do, that I will live out my days doing those things. I think I spend every part of everyday thinking about how to advance the film and music related film stuff that I do, um, in whatever shape or form I can do that. And sometimes, unfortunately that takes the form of just doing boring things like applying for grants. And some of it is really fun. I just came back from a month where a big part of the month I was just away shooting stuff. And then last night I got home from a few days of premiering that new pilot for my, my film project, "The Musicianer" in Canada to the audience that loves this, the star of it the most. Um, those are the things that I want my day to be full of and I'm working actively working to fill my day with those things. Passionistas: Tell us a little bit about your path to becoming a documentary filmmaker. Beth: I guess I should preface all this by saying that when I went to college and there weren't a lot of people actually making documentaries, and there certainly weren't that many women making documentaries, largely because independent film where a lot of documentary resides just didn't exist the way we know it now. You didn't go to college to become an independent filmmaker. I mean, you barely went to college to become a filmmaker unless you're going to UCLA or someplace like USC or someplace like that. So when I went, I was, I went with the intention of trying to tell stories in media somehow, but it hadn't fully formed as documentary. But the more I did work on the radio station and in this cable thing called Synapse, that was up in Syracuse where I went, the more I realized that the thing I most wanted to do was deal with these realities. And it was super fun to tell real stories because truth is stranger than fiction as it turns out. So when I got out of school, I wanted to keep doing that, but I had no clue how to pursue that. But fortunately for me, over time I chipped away at just working in media period. And then several years out of school I finally realized I started working with other women filmmakers through Women in Film. And that organization really helped me a lot to connect with other women and a lot of those women worked at WGBH in Boston. And then I was like, oh, that's where it's all happening. That's really where I should be focusing my energy right now. And knowing those women, I realized that a lot of them did their own projects on the side as well as doing the things for series like "Nova" and "Frontline" and those kinds of shows. So it gave me a little confidence to go out and start working on my own projects. And so my initial foray into filmmaking making documentaries was that way. And then over time I got a gig working with WGBH and that further underscored all the things I was trying to do. Passionistas: So the early films that you made on your own were inspired by the North End of Boston where you were living at the time. Tell us about what you found so inspiring about that neighborhood and what drew you to want to cover those things in film. Beth: I had moved into the North End in 1977 and it was still very much an all Italian American enclave. There are hardly any people that became known as outsiders when I moved in. So, okay. One or two outsiders is okay. So I was, I was part of the very first wave of, in truth, gentrification in the neighborhood. You know, it had been largely an immigrant neighborhood at that point for over a hundred years. So I kind of thought there were great stories there and I was interested in figuring out what they were because as you know, our family has an immigrant history in Italian history. And so I thought, oh, this would be kind of cool to explore that part of what I know about our own family, what I know about the neighborhood when I know about Italian American history. And so I started filming these religious feasts because they were so damn colorful and there were 12 of them. And so every weekend in the summertime I could go to one of these feasts. And I was like, Jesus, a crazy, they're so cool. People carry and saints and pinning money on the saint and all kinds of sausages and little neck clams and Italian memorabilia. And I just thought that was the coolest thing around. And I wanted to document that. And then it turned out to be one feast in particular that had a really cool climax, which was the angel ceremony, which was this little girl. They take a little, a little like eight-year-old girl, put her on a block and tackle pulley system and fly her out a window over the crowd. And she's dressed as an angel. And it was just nuts. And I thought, you know, this doesn't happen just anywhere in the world. And it's happening in my own backyard. I should start filming this stuff. So that was really the impetus when I saw that ceremony, and I happen to be with friends of mine who were from Spain when I saw it, and they were like, what the heck? And I said, I know, isn't that amazing? They were like, this stuff doesn't even happen in Europe anymore like this. And I said, you're right. I should be documenting it. So that was the beginning of like what ended up being three films about Italian American religious ritual and this sort of anthropological approach that I took to it. But that didn't last for very long because then I get sucked into it and became the subject of my own film. Passionistas: So that film was "The Blinking Madonna." So tell us about the genesis of that film. Beth: I had made two documentaries about this one religious society. The Fisherman's Feast is what the common name for it was, but it was about the Virgin Mary. It was about the Madonna del Soccorso. And she was Our Lady of Perpetual Help. And so I'd gone and filmed a little angel ceremony and then I went to Sicily with some of the participants and filmed the connective feast that happened there. And I kind of came home from that thinking, okay, I've done all the work I need to do on Italian American religious feasts. And this one summer I had been laid off from my job. There was no more work at the Documentary Guild. I had broken up with the guy I lived with for a really long time. So I was not only on my own for the first time, but all of a sudden all my bills had just doubled. And I had no job. And I was kind of freaking out and really, really depressed. And my friends from the feast called me and said, you come into the feast, it's next weekend. And I was like, ah, I don't think so. But they insisted and I brought my camera and I went to see them and I filmed the feast one more time with my own camera. And when they get back to their headquarters, they looked at the videotape. I just gave them the videotape and it was a videotape and they said, oh my God, there's a miracle on this tape. And the miracle that they saw was that the statue of the Virgin Mary appeared to be blinking her eyes. And they told me this on the phone and I was like, yeah, let me come down and take a look at it. And when I went down to look at it, sure enough, it looked like the statue of the Virgin Mary was blinking her eyes. And this is a plaster of Paris statue with no moving parts. I thought, you know, this doesn't happen every day. And I could explain what happened, but the neighborhood being what it was and people's devotion being what it was that even though I dutifully told them, I think it's the auto focus on the camera, they wanted to believe otherwise. And so one thing led to another, and by the two days later there were busloads of people coming into the neighborhood to view the video tape to see the statue of the Virgin Mary and ended up on the front page of the Boston Herald. On all the TV stations that night and all of a sudden this fallen away Catholic that I am. And this media person, uh, became the agent of a miracle and in the middle of a media event of her own making, albeit inadvertently, it was a crazy time. And a good friend of mine, Deborah Granik, who's a pretty well-known filmmaker now, she encouraged me to try to make a film about it. And I at first couldn't see my way through it. I couldn't, I couldn't imagine what it was. I, you know, I said, it exists already. It's the story that's on the news. And she said, no, it's about you. And I was like, really developed me. You sure? And she was like, yeah, you gotta be in this. It's about you. So with her encouragement and some real prompting, you know, she really pushed me. I started working on the film and finished it the fall and a couple of years later, and it's still my favorite film that I've ever made. That's still like, it says everything I want to say about community and my background and family and all those things. Passionistas: What's the most important thing you learned about yourself by being the subject of your own film? Beth: That you can run but you can't hide. You think you put these things in your bed, in your rear view mirror. I'm not a practicing Catholic. I'm not somebody who's, I haven't been to church routinely since I was a teenager and that even then it was largely to satisfy our mother and I kind of thought I didn't care about it, but clearly I did. If I'm making films about it, I don't know who I was kidding except myself. I was clearly exploring stuff that I thought I didn't want any part of. And so when this thing happened I was like, Huh, this is it knocking on the door. It's me going and I'm still here. You know, are you going to pay attention or not? So it's not like I had a religious conversion because of it, but it did make me realize that there were components of my upbringing and my education Catholic school that I really cherish. And there were things about it that I want no part of and we could do a whole show on that. But really that the stuff that I, I cared about that was embedded in it was very meaningful to me and made me who I am. And that's something you just, you can't get away from. It's there. Passionistas: And now with time, even though you have a technical explanation for it, do you think it was assigned that the statute blinked at you? Beth: Sure. Cause right at that time, a week prior to this or two weeks prior to this, a handsome French man moved in downstairs from me and shortly after I got my job back and I was told I was going to take this cool trip to the Philippines to do a film about volcanoes and I stopped feeling bad and obviously the sign was, I was ready to move on. I embraced the whole episode as being kind of fun and crazy. Like it was lovely. People in my community thought that I was the agent of a miracle, right? They thought I was capable of being the Saint Bernadette of the North End. And that made me feel really great. Not because I believe that, but I believed that it was so nice of them to think that of me, that that changed how I felt even I already loved the neighborhood, but I loved him even more after that. So it just kinda cracked me open or made me realize that I was already cracked open and I was ready to make the next step. So that was the sign. The sign was, you're ready, move on. And as an, as a scholar, I know my friend Bob Orci, who's an Italian American religious scholar, pointed out the Virgin Mary when she appears to people, right. And that this, the body of literature about this, when she appears to people, she doesn't appear to people who are in good shape. You'd never, you know, she appears to poor people. She pours them, appears to people in crisis. That's her M.O. And he said, Beth, you were perfect. You were such a mess. You know, this is perfect. And I was like, you're right, I was perfect. Passionistas: So then talk about getting into making your music documentaries. What inspired you to start making them? Beth: Well, I really, I really wanted to almost from-the-get-go, you know, like I especially back when I finally started working in film, I thought, God, there's so many great stories. Why isn't anybody telling them? And one of the reasons nobody was telling them was that we're an outlets for them at the time. The other reason people weren't telling those cause they're expensive to make. And I figured that out fairly, fairly fast. I had friends who were making a documentary about women in the blues and they were in rights hell for a number of years trying to pay the music for those, for that documentary. So I was aware from the beginning that it was an expensive proposition. And as a young filmmaker, I thought, well, there's no way. Back in those days there was no way I could command the kind of money as an inexperienced person. I couldn't raise that money to do the kind of film I wanted to do. So I would have to wait until I became a more experienced filmmaker. So really took me many years, both refining what I knew about just making films and then getting the confidence and the skillset to raise money. All of those things had to reach a point where I felt I was ready to do it. But you know, right around the time I moved away from Boston and moved to the Pacific northwest, I really had always wanted to do this documentary about the early rockabilly women and the rock and roll scene, the peers of Elvis's and Jerry Lee Lewis, his and Johnny caches who were women. And that story was dates back to when I was in the modern lovers. I had thought about that as a possibility in like 1979 but I didn't get to make that film until the late 1990s it was just wasn't possible, but I did get to do it and it was really, it was the right time and it went really well and the film did really well and I still feel good about it because I think I gave a window into these, the lives of these women that a lot of people would know about. If the film hadn't existed and apparently according to some of the women in the film, it boosted their careers. Most notably Wanda Jackson's. She went from being marginally known to ending up in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I felt like, oh good, my work is done. I helped do that. Passionistas: And then your follow up film, "The Winding Stream" was also a very female centric topic. Talk about that film and also just why telling the story of women in music so specifically is important to you. Beth: "Winding Stream" as a follow-up to that, it really organically came out of it because a lot of the women I talked to on the rockabilly film noted that a huge influence on them in the 1950s where these women from the 1920s Maybelle and Sarah Carter who had been arguably, they're the first famous women in country music and really first famous women in American music at that time. This is at a time when radio is it coming in and the recording industry is coming in. So these people that would probably only have been regionally known are suddenly famous. Not only all over the country, but all over the world. Maybelle Carter and Sarah Carter, are two of the seminal women in American music. So I was really excited about telling that story. Sarah's husband AP was this sort of Impresario of the group, but the real musical engine of that group were the two women. And once I realized that, I was like, well, this is a no brainer. Why isn't anyone telling this story? And I also had the added impetus of knowing that Johnny Cash was a huge part of the promotion of the story because Johnny Cash married into that family. June Carter cash is the descendant of these women. And so I had made my rockabilly film, had Roseanne cash in it as a narrator. So I had this connection to Rosanne and I was about to reach out to her when she reached out to me and said, you know, you should think about making a film about the Carters. I was like, well, it's funny you should mention it. I would love to do that. So she opened the door for several of the really important interviews, most notably the interview with her father in both cases. In the case of "Welcome to the Club, the Women of Rockabilly" and in "Winding Stream," like a lot of history, it isn't that people aren't there, it's just that they're not getting singled out. There are women in all these stories. There are people of color in all these stories. They're, they're there and they're not even on the sidelines, they're there. We just kind of have this way of until very recently just focusing on the white guys. So I'm really excited that these films came out when they came out. I feel like they were in some ways a little bit ahead of their time. Then now I think it's, it's a little bit of a no brainer that we can now look back and say, Oh yeah, there are the women there. They're right there. But they weren't obvious in terms of how, how they were depicted in the media. I'm really proud of that. I'm proud to have helped contribute to some of that. Passionistas: So besides musical talent, was there a common thread that you found with the women that were featured in both of those films that sort of contributed to their success? Beth: Especially in the rockabilly film, but even to a certain extent in the Carter story, there were other strong women in the wings that made it possible. All of the rockabilly women had mothers that really wanted them to do what they were doing. Wanda's mother sewed her stage clothes. Laurie Collins, his mother couldn't have been prouder, drove them all over the place to gigs, get them on TV shows, insisted that they moved to LA so that the kids could be on TV. Janice Martin's mother pretty much almost like fell in love with Elvis during the whole process. Like took her to meet Elvis and took her to meet Chet Atkins. And then it wasn't just being stage mothers, although there was a certain amount of that. And in Brenda Lee's case, she was the support of the family. So her mother was like, you're doing this because we need the money. But they were all super proud of their daughters and they worked hard to make it happen. And even in the Carter family story at a time when women really weren't doing that, you know, they weren't out there touring, they weren't out making records. It was just a weird thing. The community around them seemed to be fine with it and they got help with their while they were away because other people, some other when women supported them. So I think that's the most striking thing that there was that support from other women. Passionistas: So you recently completed the pilot episode of your first scripted project, "The Musicianer." So what made you decide to move into a scripted format? Beth: I love documentaries, but you know, you're waiting for people to say the right thing or to say the thing that you think will help tell the story. And I thought, gee, we'll be so liberating to do something where I put words in somebody's mouth and they send them. Wouldn't that be great? And I had done, you know, little attempts at narrative stuff before, but I had never really given myself the freedom to do that. And I started to think if not now, when, and there were a bunch of other forces that came together. One was that there was all this extra information from the research I did from "Winding Stream" that never shows up in the film. It has no place to go. It's important but not relevant to the story. So I knew all this extra stuff about the recording business and the movie business and the 1920s and so I liked quote, you know, living there. And I thought that was kind of fun. And at the same time I had been going to these academic conferences and meeting all these academics that cared about all that stuff too. And I got an immersed in that world of what they talk about and the way they talk about it. And then the third big thing, and probably the most important thing was as I finished "Winding Stream," I was introduced to this musician whose name his stage name is Petunia. And Petunia is, in my opinion, one of the most exciting performers I've seen in a long time. He's just a force of nature and he's a kind of mysterious guy with a vague personal backstory. And he's somebody who I recognize had enormous charisma and I thought he'd be really great in a film. And right around the time I was sort of thinking this, he said to me, you know, if you ever needed somebody to play Jimmy Rogers in a film, I'm your guy and I thought you are. You are the guy. So I kind of tucked all that away and started thinking about it. I would see him periodically when he come through town and I kept saying, I haven't forgotten about that thing we talked about. So finally I, it all kind of came together in my head that it would be fun to do something that was vaguely supernatural that involved a story about the 1920s but also had a present storyline that involved musicologists in contemporary academia. And let me use all this extra background information that I had in a way that didn't fit into a documentary. So I wrote this thing called 'The Musicianer" and he's the star of it and he's really good. He did a really good job and it lets him use his music talents. It lets me play in the world of music still, but it also lets me make use of all this extra stuff that took me 10 years to put together Passionistas: We're Amy and Nancy Harrington. And you're listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Emmy-winning filmmaker, and our sister, Beth Harrington. Visit her website, BethHarrington.com to learn more about all of Beth's films and her new web series, "The Musicianer." Now here's more of our interview with Beth. As an independent producer director who's had to keep the momentum going for herself for a very long time. Do you ever feel unmotivated and if you do, how do you push past it? Beth: That I used to be more problematic than it is now cause I now I recognize that you've got to have those periods of feeling unmotivated. It's like it's like recovery. I'm pretty driven. So if I find myself in a place where I'm like I can't, I can't, I just can't. I can't even then that's me telling myself you need to take this time. You know, right after I got off the road with winding stream, I think I sat on the couch for about two or three months, pretty much didn't, you know, I, I was just, I was just done and I didn't have an idea and I didn't know what I was gonna do next. And that was really unusual. And, and it, it was a little alarming for lit a little bit. And I did wonder and gave myself time to say, are you done with filmmaking? Maybe this is the high note you go out on and it's good and it's over. But then I thought, okay, but what is it I'm going to do if I don't do that? I didn't have an answer that satisfied me cause there's nothing I like better. I've taught a little bit and I've done other kinds of writing and there's nothing that I like more than making films. And when it's going well, it's the best Gig in the world. So I allowed myself to really think about it and to feel it and to mourn it and to, and then it was like, Nah, I'm doing it again. So it's a little bit like a drug addiction. So there's that. But um, yeah, I'm happy I'm still doing it. Passionistas: What do you think is the one biggest lesson you've learned during your journey as a filmmaker that sticks with you? Beth: I think the biggest thing that I know about anything creative is perseverance. I have come to realize it's more important than talent. It's more important than intelligence. That's who wins the game. You're, you have to persevere. And filmmaking is one of the big tests of that because there's so many parts that are hard before you get to do the fun part, that you better be willing to hang in there and the hard work because you might never get to the fun part. So I have always, you know, the Woody Allen thing showing up. You just show up and you, you do it, you do the hard work and you put one foot in front of the other. That's something I've become really good at, even when I don't even understand what the next step is all the time. It's like, well we got, I gotta take some step, I'll take this step. So I think that's the biggest lesson I've learned from filmmaking is that there is such an obvious set of hurdles. Everybody has hurdles in the work they do. But for filmmaking to even get to be creative, you have to do all this other stuff before you even get the chance to be creative. It isn't like you go out and buy a canvas and then you paint. You have to raise the money to buy the wood to put stretch the canvas on the frame. And you know, it's, he just goes on and on. Passionistas: What's been the most rewarding part of what you do? Beth: The most rewarding part of what I do is having an influence on people's understanding of our culture and history. And sometimes that's very general, like just people come up to me and saying, I never knew that. Thank you for showing me that. And often it's telling untold stories about women and people who don't get represented usually in these things. You know, I, I'm really proud of the fact that with "Winding Stream,” part of the story was the story of Leslie Riddle, who was the African American Blues Man, that AP Carter enlisted to help him collect songs in the south. And AP and Leslie were ostensibly friends, but AP Carter benefited financially from the songs that got collected. And to our knowledge, Leslie Riddle did not. He spent lots of time with the carters. Many historians and people like me, think of Leslie Riddle is very important figure in the Carter family story. Maybe arguably the fourth Carter, you know, if there's a fifth Beatle and George Martin is the fifth Beatle, then Leslie Riddle is the fourth Carter. But he's usually not acknowledged that way. So I was able to tell a little bit of his story and after the film was done, people in North Carolina where he was born, who hadn't spent much time thinking about Leslie Riddle, used some of my research to justify approaching for the fathers of a certain town and getting them to erect a memorial in honor of Leslie Riddle.That was like, my work is done. I, that was, that was such a great feeling to be able to, to have that happen. So those kinds of things make me really, really happy and they don't always happen on that scale, but they do happen in the sense that people become aware of something that they weren't aware of before and maybe see it slightly differently. I also, the fact that when I showed "Winding Stream" to audiences that were kind of demographically mixed, I'd show it in places in the south where they're on one part of the auditorium. They'd be all these kind of hipster Americana appreciators and then there'd be people who were much more conservative, had grown up with the carters almost as part of their religious beliefs. You know, Carter sang a lot of religious songs, so there were these very different camps in the same room and we would have Q and A's afterwards and people would talk about everything from, you know, was Johnny Cash saved to, you know, tell me more about this African American Blues Guy. And so to have those conversations was really, that was really gratifying. And my husband Andy, whom you know, has a phrase that he likes to use about when you get people to think about things they didn't think about or accept ideas that they might not have accepted ordinarily. And he calls it Trojan horsing. So we bring the Trojan horse in and then we climb out and we make people think about things and then we climbed back into the horse. Um, so that's Trojan horsing. Passionistas: What do you think were the lessons that Mama taught us about women's roles in society? Beth: Mama, like a lot of women of her generation. And I also will include my late mother-in-law, Marie in this, you know, you, it's the old, you can't be it if you can't see it. Right. And those women didn't have any range of opportunities. And Mama to her credit went to art school and she became an art teacher. And in conversation with her over the years, I realized there were things she probably would have loved to have done, but she was also somebody with a strong sense of duty. And she already had kids and that there was just like off her radar screen at that point. And she couldn't pursue those things to her way of thinking. And I remember many afternoons sitting with mam watching television. Watching the talk shows, watching Merv Griffin and you know, Gloria Steinem would be on, or Betty Friedan would be on, or you know, any number of radical Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, all these revolutionary figures were on TV. And I sensed a tremendous ambivalence from mom. On one hand she was like, now these people are crazy. You shouldn't, don't do what they're doing, you know. But there was a piece of her that recognized that things were being, some of it was being dismantled in a good way. And I think she wanted that for all of us, that she wanted us to have opportunities that she didn't, have, you know. The fact that she always used to say she wanted to be an archeologist, she would've dug that, no pun intended. She wouldn't, you know, she would've loved that. She would've thought that was the, the greatest, you know, one day we went on a little dig together, the BU had just so she could do it. And I ended up going on a dig for a while in Spain and she thought that was great because it was something that she was so curious about. I mean, I don't mean to make it sound like I only learned stuff from her by what she didn't get to do because she also very much promoted our sense of possibility. She very much wanted us to pursue our, our ambitions and dreams, especially the creative ones. Even at the same time saying, yeah, but you have to support yourself. You have to figure out a way to support yourself. And that was really important because some parents just go no, some parents just say, you can't do that. And they mean really okay if you can support yourself. But most people just say no. Mama had the presence of mind to say, yeah, go ahead and do that. You're going to be in Jonathan Richmond and the Modern Lovers just kind of after you've just finished college? Okay. You know, she never made it seem like that was a bad idea. As long as I could justify how I was going to take care of myself. And at that point they were paying me enough so I could. And she was like, great, then have fun. She was so accepting of people too. She was so incredibly accepting in a society that wasn't that accepting. We had gay friends and friends of color and all these people come into the house over the years that I know other parents would not have been so open. And she was the one that was open. And remarkably so all of those people still comment on it today. That's an extraordinary thing for someone from her time, you know? And what she, what she couldn't do for herself in a way. Passionistas: So what's your proudest career achievement? Beth: I think still "Blinking Madonna" is my proudest career achievement because it was the first big creative risk I ever took and compounded by the fact that I was in it and it was super personal and I had to be really honest in a way that I'd been fairly guarded before that. And people really liked him for, because I was honest. So that I think was my proudest thing. I, you know, that I took a huge creative risk and I, and I sweated that I would go to bed every night going, oh, this is either the best thing I've ever done or the worst thing I've ever done and give on any given night. It could be one or the other. And I was like, oh. And a lot of people challenged me, especially then because I was a woman putting myself in the middle of my own story and making a film about it. And I had people guy say to me, what makes you think you're so special? And I, that wasn't what I was trying to do. I was saying, I don't think I'm so special. I think I have something universal to say, but boy, those kinds of remarks could've just cut me off at the knees and I didn't let it. So I think that's what I'm proud of stuff. Passionistas: What's your secret to our rewarding life? Beth: What's that line from "Spinal Tap"? "Have a good time all the time." Which is the best movie of all time. As long as I'm here talking about films. No, I mean there is something to that. There's, I, I do believe life is too short. Life is too short. And so, you know, we stayed up way too late the last few nights in British Columbia hanging around with people 20 years younger than us going to rock and roll shows four nights in a row. Yay. And um, Andy and I were both exhausted and he said, why are we doing this and this because we can because we can. And it's such, there was just such great memories. I'll sleep when I'm dead. I want to just keep doing the fun stuff. So I try not to turn down opportunities to do fun stuff. I try to be there during the sad stuff as present as I can be for the people that I love. And then the rest of the time the chips fall where they may, but I, I, I feel like I'm going to quote another musical. "We got a lot of living to do." Right? Again, this is stuff to do. So I think that's the key to a rewarding life is not until not sitting back and letting it roll over you. And I know a lot of my friends go, what the heck? And they see my posts on Facebook and like, aren't you tired? And when are you home and why don't you do this and that. And I just think at this, not enough time. Let's just keep going. You know, you can take a few days off and sleep, but go for the Gusto. Passionistas: Thanks for listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Emmy-winning filmmaker, and our sister Beth Harrington. Go to PopCulturePassionistitas.com to see some family photos of us with our big sister Beth. Visit her website, BethHarrington.com to learn more about all the best films and her new web series "The Musicianer." And be sure to subscribe to the Passionistas Project Podcast so you don't miss any of our upcoming inspiring guests.
Adopting a child can be a long process, full of waiting and hoping and so much paperwork. Friends, family, and coworkers can be unaware of the stress and high emotion involved. Beth and Andy Long share the story of bringing Drew from the forest of the Democratic Republic of Congo to Bloomington, Indiana and the hardest six months of their lives. In that story, they reflect on how people supported them well, the dangers of work/home compartmentalization, and the bravery it takes to create change in a workplace culture. Opening Quote: [00:17:54.430] - Beth Long It was extremely chaotic. You've got this little boy, Drew, who's two and a half at this point, who we've we've been preparing for, you know, we've got a room for him. We've been talking about him but really to him we're strangers. Intro Today, we talk about adoption. But the conversation is much broader than adoption, it ranges from the forests of the Congo to the NICU to a car dealership in southern Indiana. Along the way, we will talk about how the stress of work impacts home, learning to say yes to offers of help, and the bravery that it takes to create change in a workplace culture. My guests are Beth and Andy Long, two people that I have had the pleasure of calling friends for more than half of my life. [00:00:00.610] - Andy Long So should we introduce ourselves? What's our format? I'm Andy Long [00:00:01.910] - Beth Long I'm Beth Long. [00:00:08.790] - Liesel Mertes Tell us a little bit about yourselves. Andy, what do you do? [00:00:12.890] - Andy Long So I grew up in Indianapolis and then, after college moved down to Bloomington to join my family's business which is automotive retail we own several dealerships in Bloomington Ind.. So that's what brought us down here [00:00:26.560] - Liesel Mertes Beth, a little bit about you. [00:00:28.900] - Beth Long Well I stay home with our four kids. They're 9 7 5 and 3 at this point and, at this point, I've been in Bloomington eleven years. Beth and Andy met in the halls of Heritage Christian High School, where Beth was my teammate on the soccer team and Andy was my co-lawyer on the mock trial team. [00:00:51.880] - Andy Long I tried to date her in high school, but she was having none of that. I didn't drive a hard top Jeep Wrangler that wasn't several years older than her. So I did make the cut. [00:01:05.380] - Beth Long Yeah. No, what he means by trying to date me was he was trying to date everybody else. Musical interlude Beth always knew that she wanted to adopt. [00:01:42.010] - Beth Long we had always talked about adoption. It was something I knew before we even got married that I had kind of put on Andy's radar. Beth and Andy had two biological children, daughters that had come after complicated pregnancies. They were advised to take some time before conceiving again, and this was when they embarked on the adoption journey. [00:02:26] - Beth Long And so, that's when we drove in to the world of international adoption which is what was really on our radar at the time. And we're not really like super organized chart people but we made this big chart of all the countries in the world that you can adopt from and just sort of the different regulations there were because they're all different in terms of family size and length of stay in country and age of child you can adopt. And so we just made our chart and from there sort of narrowed down to the Democratic Republic of Congo which is where our son Drew is from. One of the reasons that Andy and Beth chose the DRC was because it only required a ten day stay in country [00:03:44] - Andy Long I get two weeks off a year and so that ruled out countries that require like 30 days in country or multiple visits that would be a couple of weeks apiece. So we had ruled those out. So Congo fit with our with my work schedule being off two weeks. So a 10 day stay in country was what they what the program called for. So that fit. And then they had estimated a timeframe from the inception of the program to bringing your child home and about nine months. About nine months, at least that was the hope. But things did not go as planned Music here [00:04:46.030] - Beth Long Well we were matched with Drew, our son, when he was nine days old and that was in August of 2013. And in September of 2013, the country essentially shut down adoptions. There were the adoptions were still proceeding but they were not allowing adopted children to leave once their process was complete. They said you cannot have an exit letter. And they had done some suspensions like this before and they didn't last very long. They said initially it would last up to a year and everybody thought, oh it'll be a month maybe two months...Given the history, it ended up lasting about two and a half years. [00:05:24.580] - Liesel Mertes Wow. So two and a half years. What, what did that look like relationally for you guys to navigate that journey? I assume that it wasn't just calm and, OK, this is another delay, this is the next thing. How is it feeling to you in real time? [00:06:12] - Andy Long We were relatively new to the program and some of the people that had been either, they had adopted previously from the DRC or they had friends or family that had, they had seen some of these suspensions kind of come and go. And so they gave us the expectation of, oh it'll be a few months or maybe a year. So then as it exceeded those timeframes. I think everybody that was in the program we're really confused and nervous about, well maybe this is going to be a permanent suspension of the adoption program or maybe our son will never come home and we certainly had those thoughts as well. There was no timeframe given. So you know after a year or two we thought, you know maybe, maybe that Drew will never come home. Maybe this is just not going to happen. Musical transition here [00:06:57.280] We didn't really know what to do. There wasn't anything we could do on our end in order to speed the process up or to do that. So there was a lot of confusion. I think Beth and I were on the same page which brought us closer together, probably because it kind of felt like us versus them or us versus the world. [00:07:16.720] - Liesel Mertes Was there a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy? [00:07:18.220] - Beth Long Oh, absolutely. Oh yeah so much. [00:07:22.390] - Liesel Mertes And how much time did that take up for you and a given week or month because I picture there's a cost of just your bandwidth of having to do all of this. [00:07:32.740] - Beth Long Yes so I mean every day, and I was sort of reporting back to Andy, but every day I'm online looking at the rumors talking about the chatter of what's going to happen. I heard this, you know the senator said this, I heard this from DRC. You know, everybody was just kind of putting the information together because like Andy said we really had no idea, we're going on rumors and tweets [00:07:57.850] - Andy Long There are different Facebook groups and different message boards that we were a part of that we're trying to get information out. There was a big push to contact your representatives in Congress and let them know, hey this is what's happening over there. We need governmental support to put pressure on the Congolese government to get these kids home. [00:08:18.460] - Liesel Mertes Did you have much... So you're here in southern Indiana. Did you have much in the way of real time community of people who understood what you're going through? Because I imagine that this potentially could feel like very isolating and particular sort of experience as you're dropping your kids off at the local school and going grocery shopping at Kroger and checking about the geopolitical functions of the government in Congo. [00:08:46.960] - Beth Long Yes. So we had a lot of online support as any sort of Facebook groups but I think we had wonderful people in person but you know how it's difficult to follow another person's health journey or you know their court dates. It's hard to keep all that straight. I'm using a whole different language when I'm talking about this adoption world. And so there were definitely times when people were kind of like, oh you're you're still doing that you're still trying to bring that kid home? Yes this is my daily reality. I'm daily still working on this every day is our son and every day we're thinking about it talking about it trying to figure out how I can make this happen. [00:09:22.870] - Andy Long I think that even for close friends and family, after after it went past two years of this indefinite, you know like we're going to try to bring Drew home one day, I think even our friends and family were a little skeptical, maybe nervous for us that it wasn't going to happen and they didn't really know how to feel about that. They didn't, they were nervous that we were going to be really hurt and obviously just crushed if this adoption failed and we weren't able to bring Drew home. I think that they processed that and that manifested itself in the way that they dealt with us and the way that they dealt with our adoption. Maybe it's kind of like a hands off or arm's length that you didn't want to become too invested because they were nervous for us and maybe nervous for their own emotions and that felt isolating or that felt like they weren't invested like we were invested or they weren't sure they were skeptical. Musical interlude 10:40, Andy They were really nervous. And so I felt like they maybe moved to, maybe be wary of the way that they approached it. They kind of didn't want to talk about it or ignored it. In some ways, because it felt like they were really nervous for us and we interpreted that as, they didn't care as much or they were skeptical, which I think they had every right to be because it was an indefinite suspension. They didn't know what was going on, neither did we. But, it felt hurtful in the moment. Musical interlude [00:11:23.370] - Andy Long They had a friend that had tried to adopt from the Soviet Union or a country. I think in the early 90s or the mid 90s and they were close friends with my parents and they had pictures of this little girl and they had spent a lot of money and they had invested over I think over a couple of years and trying to bring her home. And then, at the end of the process, the adoption was scuttled. They didn't have any answers. There was you know, accusations of fraud and maybe that there was never a girl that they were going to adopt. And the family that they were friends with were devastated. And I think that that informed their opinion and they saw maybe that coming back around and they were nervous for us that we were being defrauded or that there was a scheme to bilk us for money and that Drew was never going to come home, which were legitimate concerns because there was no timeframe and very little information. But, that felt really hurtful, because it felt like they were skeptical of the process and they weren't rooting for us to bring Drew home but were maybe rooting for us to have our guard up. [00:12:32.720] - Liesel Mertes Do you feel like, by extension, there was any sort of implication of: you're being foolish in this, you're being taken or had ,that felt offensive in its own way? [00:12:46.330] - Beth Long Yeah. [00:12:46.730] - Andy Long We are both shaking hands before we answered yes. I don't think it was intentional in their mind to make us feel that way. Musical Interlude [00:13:24.750] - Beth Long And I think, just in general just in, sort of in the way that when you're pregnant, like that baby isn't as real to everybody else as it is to you. That's sort of how I felt with Drew. You know, I knew this child. He was ours. I had the pictures. I was invested and it wasn't real to anybody else. They couldn't see him. You know they weren't, they weren't experiencing him and so, I think that was the hard part for me just in real life. Friends seeing, you know I think sometimes they felt so worried for me and concerned that I was really invested in this thing that really wasn't going to happen, maybe. Andy also felt missed in his workplace [00:14:49] - Andy Long Well, I think the people knew; I had been very open that we were adopting. I've got pictures of Drew. This is my son. So I think they're aware of that, but I don't know if they were super supportive. Well, our workplace is very much like you try to leave your problems at the door, you come in when you're in the office you're focused on work. It's not really a community where we would share problems from home or family life, But there was a moment, towards the very end of the process when Drew was coming home and was literally flying home that there was a major hang up and a copy of the visa wasn't the right one and there was a big problem where they were stopped on literally on the way to the airport. He was stopped and detained with his escort. And I remember getting that phone call at work and I literally just took the phone callm found out that that was happening and just left the office and went home. I don't think that I told anyone that I was going they probably thought that there had been a big emergency, which there had been, but that was the one time maybe where I have a really vivid memory of just having to leave work and it was that environment wasn't gonna be suitable for handling or dealing or processing what was happening with our adoption. Although there was a disconnect with family, friends, and work, there was still a community of people that supported Beth and Andy. [00:16:13] - Liesel Mertes Where were the places that you were finding people that came alongside you and supported you well and what did that look like? [00:16:20.850] - Beth Long I would say mostly our family and our church here in Bloomington [00:16:25.110] - Andy Long Our small group a church was extremely supportive throughout the entire process. [00:16:29.190] - Liesel Mertes What were some of the best, tangible things that they along this two year journey with you? [00:16:36.650] - Beth Long Well, I would say, to back it up just a little bit. So Drew did come home as we said in February of 2016 but in December of 2015 we had a baby. So that's a whole other part of this because it led to sort of a six month period for us that was probably the most difficult of our lives. So we had Luke the baby as he will forever be known [00:17:01.610] - Liesel Mertes As babies are. [00:17:04.370] - Beth Long So he was born a month early in here in Bloomington and he spent ten days in the NICU and, unfortunately, I had the same crazy delivery but but worse with him. So he had to spend some extra time sort of getting used to life on the outside and and then Drew came home February. And then Luke, in April, began having seizures. And so, we took an emergency trip up to Riley and a second trip up to Riley the following week. [00:17:36.680] - Liesel Mertes And Riley is in Indianapolis, which is about an hour and a half drive. [00:17:42.470] - Beth Long So that was December to May was really taken up with, I mean it just felt like to us, absolutely more than we could handle. [00:17:52.390] - Liesel Mertes It sounds so chaotic. [00:17:54.430] - Beth Long It was extremely chaotic. You've got this little boy, Drew, who's two and a half at this point, who we've we've been preparing for, you know, we've got a room for him. We've been talking about him but really to him we're strangers. We'd been to visit him for a week. But, the language, the food, the clothes that everything every place that he went, every person he saw was new to him. And so you can imagine, that that was an extremely difficult transition for him. And then we had this baby who had these health problems that of course we were not anticipating. So this was a really difficult time for us. And we just we feel so thankful to the people that are in our life that were really there for us. I mean we had friends that were stopping by too because Andy was still working very long hours at this time too. [00:18:45.550] And I had a friend that came over many nights during bedtime just to help me with bedtime because I've got now four kids to put to bed. I have friends that would say hey, I'm running to the grocery store. What can I get you today? We had so many people bring its meals. People take our older girls, you know for a playdate, so I could just handle the boys. [00:19:06.100] - Andy Long My parents came down, your parents came down to watch the kids and help you around the house. [00:19:11.360] - Liesel Mertes Because Andy, you're still operating on, I have 14 days to use over this year. Did you, did that feel like a pressing concern all through this of I can't be present because I have... [00:19:25.470] - Andy Long Yeah, that was, that was it I'm not proud of the way that I handled that but, I was so ingrained in the culture of my particular workplace which was you don't miss work, that is unacceptable. As a leader, as a manager, you're gonna be at work no matter what. And I had had over 10 years of being in that environment and it seemed so natural and I had blinders on to how unreasonable that would be. But I I had taken time off for Luke's birth and I had been to the hospital and I would go my lunch break to the NICU but I didn't feel like I had enough time or I had already taken off too much time. So, I had my mom pick up Beth from the NICU when they were released to bring them home. So, I didn't even go and pick up my own child when he was released from the NICU to bring him home for the first time because I felt like I didn't have enough time in my day right or I taking off too much time for this for the birth and that that kind of came around when Drew came home I took off one day but then after that worked my normal schedule, which was really close to 8 to 8. So, I was gone all day throughout the week and then Saturdays. [00:20:43.170] - Liesel Mertes That sounds exhausting for both of you on a number of levels when you talk about that culture, Andy, so you're going to the NICU on your lunch break and then coming back and needing convince someone that this is the car for them to buy. Was it difficult for you to re-engage with work? What did you find your capacity for coping or compartmentalization needed to become in the workplace? [00:21:11.430] - Andy Long You know, looking back, I'm not sure how I did that or if I did a very good job. I probably suffered at work and wasn't aware of how distracted that I was. It felt like, maybe I probably was trying to do my best but I would imagine if I look back now was probably very distracted and was underperforming. I think the part that suffered the most was home life because it's more difficult to turn off work and being on stage and you know trying to be pleasant, providing great customer service acting like everything is fine, leaving your problems at the door. I think I became very good at turning that off and when I was at work focusing on work, so that it became more difficult to engage when I came home to pick that back up and then engage with the problems and the difficulties that we had which became a major stress point for Beth and I. Probably the hardest thing that we've been through was my inability to say no to work or to change what I was doing there, which lasted for months and months probably six months. Throughout that time when we had both boys home and Luke was diagnosed as epileptic and we just had tons of reasons to not be at work as much. [00:22:26.960] But I wasn't able to see it that way. And didn't turn that off and was really embarrassed and ashamed of how I dealt with that. Looking back. But in the moment, it felt like that was just the reasonable way that you would handle life's problems would be to check them at the door go to work act like it was normal leave work come home and try to re-engage. [00:22:50.970] - Liesel Mertes Beth what does it feel like even as you listen to that and reflect on that season? [00:22:57.470] - Beth Long Like Andy said, he was so entrenched in, this is just the way we do it. It's not like anyone at work was saying, you better get back here, you know. That was just the expectation. Sort of an unstated expectation but he had been in it for so long that he didn't see what it was doing to our family life as well. And, honestly, during that time I mean I was barely hanging on. I felt like I was barely treading water and I really needed him and he wasn't there. And so thinking back on that time I just it brings back a lot of emotions for me and I'm just trying to navigate all of that and also to help him see, hey this is not the right path for us. [00:23:42.200] Something needs to change about your work life and that's a hard conversation to have. For me it's a family business. It's work that he loves. He loves working for his grandfather. So those are really difficult conversations to have. He wants to be the one who's working the hardest. He wants to be there and I really respect that about him, he's a hard worker. But there are also times in life when that cannot be the focus. [00:24:08.720] - Andy Long We didn't have real clear policies at work about, hey if you have a baby or if your family has a baby, this is what's normal to take off or these many days or this doesn't count against your vacation time or if you've got a medical emergency you know take this amount of time away from the office. We didn't have any of those policies really, really clearly stated at all and so then it was kind of, we were jumbling through it together where there was a lot of weird expectations on my side and I'm sure my co-workers at work needed me there and so they didn't really know how to process that or, you know, they, I'm sure would have liked to have me there more but they also understood it was inappropriate to ask me to come home or to skip some of that family time, so that I made it more difficult that we didn't have any clear policies on how much time I should take or what the procedure was for something like that like a medical emergency or traumatic birth. [00:25:11.440] - Liesel Mertes Do you think back oh let's update the audience though. How is the Luke doing? [00:25:16.800] - Beth Long He's doing very well. So, it took a while to find the right medication for him that would control his seizures. And then once they were controlled, he was on the medication for about two years without any repeat seizures. And so we did another EEG last summer and he was able to wean off the medicine. So he's been doing very well. [00:25:39.850] - Liesel Mertes And Drew's here, he is going to be starting kindergarten not next year but the year... [00:25:44.420] - Beth Long No, this year. So crazy. So yeah he's ready. He's very excited. [00:25:51.310] - Liesel Mertes And Andy and Beth, you guys made some purposeful shifts in some of your work life structuring in the aftermath of this. What decisions did you make for your life balance moving forward based on some of what you experienced? [00:26:07.350] - Beth Long Well I think after the NICU situation and having his mom bring me home and then only taking a day off when Drew came home those two situations and the chaos that was our life at that time, for me was the final straw. Really Weave some music through the drama of the following section… [00:26:27.160] - Andy Long The breaking point [00:26:28.130] - Beth Long Yeah, breaking point, I just said I can't I can't keep up with this anymore. And so when, when we were Riley for the seizures, Andy was there for all of that, he was able to take time off and I think everybody at work was really understanding about it. It was just your own I think expectations to it, you you felt really bad because the nature of his position is that he is the one who does that work. You know it's there isn't it. [00:26:55.780] - Andy Long We a very lean operation. So there wasn't a second person or third person who did my role. I was the president who was in charge of those dealership roles and those tasks. So, if I wasn't there there, I was nervous that those were going to get done and the dealership was going to suffer substantially because we don't have someone else who backed up my role [00:27:18.730] - Beth Long But, that's when we did make some major changes. [00:27:22.860] - Andy Long Yeah it wasn't that Beth had not brought up the work life or work family life balance before, but she said it was a lot more urgency in, I think that the combination of events finally got through to me and I realized, man this is crazy. I'm putting work way before my family. I need to make some big changes. And we did after that. It took about a year to enact all the changes. But there is a shift at work. I requested to be moved from what I was doing to another role, which required some really difficult conversations over a period of about six months with my grandfather, who's the owner of the dealership, and we had some conversations about what that would look like and how that's very different than the way he came up in the business, which was a lot more old school of, you work every hour that the dealership is open. You're at the at the bridge of the ship. You're commanding it. You've got to be there every minute every day. And what that would look like maybe for my schedule, which was going to be more family focused and maybe more new school and millennial where I'm placing a greater, a greater value on being with my family and having time away from the dealership, which was some pretty new territory for him but we were able to work it out. [00:28:41.500] - Beth Long Yeah. It's a difficult conversation as you can imagine to have with your grandfather, because I think it feels a bit to him like an indictment of the way he raised his family. And so, he had five children and they are greatly loved and he showed his love by working super hard for them and providing for them. And so, when Andy says I want to do it this way it feels a bit like, hey you did it the wrong way. And that's a really difficult conversation to have with your grandfather. [00:29:06.940] - Liesel Mertes The complications of what is a culture shift in a lot of ways, and even a translation of a different set of values coming in and being, still furthering the mission of the company, but not the way things have been done before. This been a really helpful conversation on so many levels, as you think back and have snapshot in your mind of yourselves as you're going through that super intense season, what words would you offer back to that to that version of Andy or Beth from where you are now? [00:29:47.410] - Andy Long Well, hindsight is 20 20. And as I look back at the younger Andy of those years he was so wrapped up in the culture of the business that he was in. He was really blinded to the effects that it was having on his family and the tremendous amount of stress it was putting on Beth and his kids. And it seems crazy now that I would have thought, yeah it's totally normal, I should have my Mom pick up my wife and newborn baby from the NICU and bring him home. In the moment, that felt like the appropriate thing to do for work. So, sagely old Andy would tell that young guy,hey there is, that's crazy and you need to try and seek that balance way before you get to a point where you're at your wits end and you're really just treading water and trying to make it through each day. We should have addressed those concerns years previously and tried to figure out, hey what's a, how can we slide gradually into a different schedule or how can we have some backup at work that or some overlapping roles that would allow not just me but other managers to take more time off if something like this happens or to to enjoy a better work life balance? We should have addressed those years ago not just when a crisis comes. [00:31:04.150] - Beth Long Yeah, and I would say, for me, this is something I really had to become more comfortable with. But, in the beginning, did not know what to do when people said, let me know how I can help. You know, alright, let me let me...even when they were specific about it, let me take your kids or you know, in the beginning I felt very uncomfortable taking that kind of help. But pretty quickly realized like nope, I just need to say yes you could take my girls or you could come over you know whatever those things were that were going help, I had to get real about that because I I couldn't do it. I really needed that backup. [00:31:39.750] - Andy Long Beth is really independent. And I do remember us having that conversation about, it was it was unnatural and a little bit against your personality to accept help especially from strangers or people that we didn't know really well. It was different when your best friends like, let me take your girls. But when someone from church was like hey let me bring you a meal or can I bring you some groceries. That felt maybe uncomfortable at the beginning, especially because Beth is very independent, so that was a big change, but it was a good change once we said hey these people are wanting to engage with us wanting to help. This is the way that they're going to show us love. We need to be way more accepting of it. That was huge. [00:32:19.570] - Beth Long And I think, also, one thing I wish that I would have done is just feel more comfortable to be, to tell people, this is how I'm struggling I feel, I actually later in the year started extreme problems sleeping. I started having chest pains and I felt like I was going crazy, which I think if I had just talked to people they would say know that, you're experiencing anxiety and you probably should be based on your life circumstances right now. It took me slowly telling people small parts of that to put that all together, but I wish that I would have been braver with those emotions to say, hey here's what I'm experiencing. What do I do with this? Or even start, as I ended up seeing a counselor starting in the fall. And I wish I would have started much earlier. So that's something I would have told myself like: hey look at your life right now. In fact I remember once in that time in that six month timeframe someone gave me a picture that said something about: in mountains high and valleys low, ttill I am with you. And I was like, why did they give me this? Which is like, I was so unaware of like how chaotic my own life was that I was like, Oh this is a valley low. You know, I didn't even, I wasn't aware enough to know that I needed help beyond groceries, that I needed to see a counselor that I needed to work through the aftermath of watching my son go through seizures that I needed...the traumatic birth, I needed to go through that. You know I need to talk to me about that. So that took me a long time to realize, hey I need to deal with this and my body betrayed me, because I thought I was doing so well. I thought I was holding it together so well. But then I was not sleeping. You know, I started sleeping as you're having chest pains and my body said, Look you're not handling this as well as you think you are Musical Interlude Here are three take-aways from my conversation with Andy and Beth What are the implicit demands that your company makes on employees? Have you stopped to wonder? If not, now is a good time to ask. Go ask a coworker or a direct report about how they think the company views time off. And, call this lesson 1, part b, do you have established policies around time off and leave? Andy and Beth were trailblazers in many ways, creating policies and precedent around NICU stays and adoption. If you don’t have established policies, its time to get some things in writing. As you create these policies, ponder, what kind of a culture do you want to create? If you are going through the stress of an adoption or a prolonged hospital stay or any sort of substantial stress, coax yourself to be able to accept the help that is offered.Taking your other children to play, receiving a delivery of groceries, it is good to be able to accept the help that is offered. Beth talked about the world of adoption policy and news and updates that was “an entirely different language” than what was being spoken around her in southern Indiana.If you are part of a support system for someone that is going through an adoption process, take time to ask them about the policy and the Facebook groups. And then listen. Really listen. Andy and Beth spoke about how it was difficult for them to feel that some people close to them were not “in their corner” and rooting for the adoption to go forward, as you hear about difficulties or obstacles, before rushing to judgment and advice, instead consider offering a statement like, “I’m so sorry for that hassle! That sounds complicated and difficult; I imagine that you just want to be united with your son or daughter as soon as possible.” This sort of statement conveys empathy without pronouncing judgment. Outro
Episode 114 - How do we handle excess skin? BLUF: For 20+ years I neglected my body - I can’t suddenly expect it to look fantastic - but I can feed it properly and ask it to protect me. I expect I’ll develop some battle scars along the way! You can Support the Show for $1/month! Listen on the Free WhysAdvice App! Apple | Android FatDag Accountability: Weight: Visit FatDag.com #OperationFatDag 4000 W. 106th St. Ste 125-347 Carmel, IN 46043 Listener Email: Susan @skinny6010 - 6 months at Goal! Beth - What about excess skin? Sarah - Lost my “oomph” Kelly @andersox9 - Joined out of Envy! Send in your email to OnAir@FatDag.com Connect with the Show: Instagram/Facebook/Twitter - WhysAdvice Website - FatDag.com Email: OnAir@FatDag.com Voicemail: 317-662-4214
Do you ever feel trapped by your busy life? Desperate for a little more freedom? Beth Kempton felt the same way. While pregnant with her second child Beth found herself completely burnt out and feeling trapped by her busy schedule. Beth arranged her affairs as they say, and took a 5-month break to relax. During this time she did a lot of thinking and figured out the 8 keys to finding freedom, which she shares with us in this episode. Beth Kempton is a fierce champion of women living free and happy lives, doing what they love. If you were to read her resume from her early career it would include stints working for the UN and at many of the world's top sports events like the Olympics, hosting her own TV show, and the fact that she speaks Japanese, but the most important thing to know about her life now is that she is on a mission to inspire all of us to fly free. For the past six years she has run a company called Do What You Love which has helped thousands of people to create a life that makes them happy, through online courses and retreats. She is also a wife and mother of two sweet girls, and has recently become a Hay House author. Her first book 'Freedom Seeker: Live more. Worry less. Do what you love.' has just come out. Nuggets of Wisdom from Beth: "What you can do, or dream you can, begin it; boldness has genius, power, and magic in it." ~Goethe "If you can see something in your mind's eye, then you almost already know how to do that thing. And when you really do that you become bold and you take those difficult steps and you start to see magic unfold." "For the first time I could see what cage I was trapped in, what it was that was holding me back from the fuller life I used to know...I was just this shell of myself, feeling guilty all the time, not running my business properly, not being a good mother...I was never where I was supposed to be. So if I was playing on the carpet with my baby my hands would be in the game and my head would be in my inbox." "What I discovered was that the key was taking my mind to somewhere where I could get head space and heart space." "It was almost like I saw a free version of myself out in the world and I asked myself, 'What did she have that I don't have now?' And realized that it was space. She had a vast amount of space, both physical space in the places she was visiting, but also space in her day, space in her mind, quiet... And I had none of those things. I was very heavily pregnant so it wasn't really realistic to get on a plane and go to Siberia. But I thought, 'How can I make some space?' and I started really small with 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there... I would just go outside and stand on the grass and look at the sun or have a cup of tea and read Flow Magazine. And then that would build up, I'd go to a yoga class or spend half a day walking on the beach. And that made a big difference and I felt better." Some of Beth's Favorite Things: Personal habit: "I'm really bad at habits. I have a lot of good intentions. I think my lust for adventure and for wanting things to be fresh and new means I'm very, very bad at habits. But I do know that I'm much better in going through my day when I'm organized, so I do like to sit down and plan my week and have a moment of quiet with a cup of tea." Easy meal: "Miso and rice. I lived in Japan so it's definitely my favorite." Favorite kitchen gadget: "Rice cooker." Emma's Favorite Books: The Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman. Phenomenal by Leigh Ann Henion Best advice received: "Moisturize your neck every day."~Beth's Mom "Keep your eye on the prize. Don't let other people's opinions of how big your idea can be LIMIT your opinion of how big your idea can be."~Lord David Putnam Beth's Happiness Formula: "Love + Adventure + Freedom." "Happiness is something that happens on the side when you aim to feel free." A Challenge from Beth: "Ask yourself today what it is that's making you feel trapped and to take yourself to a place when you've felt free in your life and look at the difference and think what can you do right now, in this moment, to feel more like you did the last time you felt free." Resources Freedom Seeker: Live More. Worry Less. Do What You Love The Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman. Phenomenal by Leigh Ann Henion Quiz: Find Your Freedom Key Vibrant Happy Women Facebook Group Subscribe to Vibrant Happy Women:
© 2020-2025 Ivy Podcast Discovery LLC
