Podcast appearances and mentions of Mary Young

In this episode of 'Speak the Truth,' listeners are invited to register for the upcoming ABC Call to Council conference. Mike is joined with Justin Greene and Mary Young, both cancer survivors, discuss their newly launched Cancer Care Ministry at Salem Heights Church. They share their personal journeys with cancer, the unique challenges faced by cancer patients, and how the new ministry aims to provide practical support, emotional comfort, and spiritual guidance. Key topics include the importance of humor, sharing stories, and maintaining hope amid suffering. Additionally, they emphasize the necessity for other churches to consider establishing similar support groups and provide resources for starting such initiatives. 00:00 Introduction and Conference Announcement01:39 Welcome to Speak the Truth Podcast02:13 Introducing Justin Green and Mary Young02:37 Justin's Cancer Journey04:48 Mary's Cancer Journey06:15 Launching the Cancer Care Ministry16:33 The Oasis Cancer Support Groups27:39 Encouragement and Resources for Churches30:17 Conclusion and Contact InformationEpisode MentionsOur Journey of Hope - Cancer Resources 

What does it take to build an industry-leading company that transforms lives? Today, we’re diving into the incredible journey of Mary Young, a woman whose passion, wisdom, and leadership have helped shape the essential oils industry. You may recognise the name Young Living, a company known globally for its commitment to purity and sustainability. Founded by her late husband, Gary Young, Mary’s has played a pivotal role in its growth, guiding it with vision and purpose. Unlike our usual virtual interviews, I had the privilege of travelling to Utah to sit down with Mary in Young Living’s own podcast studio. I went in with a list of questions, eager to hear her insights, but what unfolded was so much more than I anticipated. Mary shared her personal experiences, the challenges she’s overcome, and the lessons that have shaped her leadership. As I listened, I was completely captivated by her story, her unwavering dedication, her deep belief in the mission of Young Living, and the way she inspires those around her. It was an unforgettable conversation, and I know you’ll feel the same. So, as you listen, I encourage you to reflect: What can you take from Mary’s journey and apply to your own business and life? Let’s dive into this remarkable interview with the one and only Mary Young. We’ll be talking about: ➡ [0:00] Introduction ➡ [3:57] Mary Young’s personal history ➡ [5:58] Following maps ➡ [9:42] Time to go home ➡ [13:30] Introduction to network marketing ➡ [21:32] Paying off debt through direct selling income ➡ [23:03] Something you love and making things simple ➡ [26:30] A trade secret in making money in direct selling ➡ [29:52] Introduction to essential oils and meeting Gary Young ➡ [36:24] It’s called fate ➡ [38:09] It’s like I’ve known Gary for a long time ➡ [40:08] “I Can’t put money on a shrinking ship, let’s start a company together” ➡ [45:47] What influenced Mary in building and growing a company ➡ [47:21] Kitchen table philosophy ➡ [51:28] Critical to introducing products ➡ [53:10] Making your presentation simple ➡ [56:22] Everyone is important ➡ [1:04:33] Mary Young’s recommended book ➡ [1:05:18] Mary Young’s favourite quote ➡ [1:06:15] Mary Young’s dream superpower ➡ [1:06:34] Mary Young’s advice to her past self ➡ [1:07:10] Mary’s final thoughts Resources Book Recommendations: ➡ The One Gift by Garry Young: https://bit.ly/3FerEqd Quote: ➡ “It’s never eaten as hot as it’s cooked ” by Gary Young About our guest: Since Young Living’s inception, Mary Young has combined her expansive knowledge and experience in the direct-selling industry with her hands-on approach to help Young Living grow—and remain—the world’s leader in essential oils. She first discovered the direct-selling industry in 1985. Within two years, she had built a successful multimillion-dollar organization. Mary maintains an active role in Young Living’s day-to-day activities, providing direction to the executive team and employees, mentoring members, and leading global philanthropic outreach through The D. Gary Young, Young Living Foundation. She embodies Young Living’s commitment to empowering individuals and communities as they strive to live healthy lifestyles. Mary also provides her two sons, Jacob and Josef Young, with support and insight into the Young Living business as they take on integral roles on the corporate team and make more of an impact on company decisions.  Connect with Young Living: ➡ Young Living’s website: ​https://www.youngliving.com/ ➡ Young Living’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YoungLiving/ ➡ Young Living’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/young-living-essential-oils/posts/?feedView=all ➡ Young Living’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/youngliving/?hl=en ➡ Young Living’s Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/YoungLivingEssentialOils ➡ Young Living’s Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@theyldrop3589 ➡ Young Living’s X: https://x.com › youngliving Connect with Direct Selling Accelerator: ➡ Visit our website: https://www.auxano.global/ ➡ Subscribe to Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DirectSellingAccelerator ➡ Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/auxanomarketing/ ➡ Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/auxanomarketing/ ➡ Email us at communnity_manager@auxano.global If you have any podcast suggestions or things you’d like to learn about specifically, please send us an email at the address above. And if you liked this episode, please don’t forget to subscribe, tune in, and share this podcast. Are you ready to join the Auxano Family to get live weekly training, support and the latest proven posting strategies to get leads and sales right now - find out more here https://go.auxano.globalSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Being in community with other Believers is a wonderful thing. However, we can easily hurt each other and even sin against each other, can't we? In those times, we need to know how to have the necessary hard conversations to protect and unify our relationships. In this message, we'll talk about what that looks like and role-play some common scenarios you might encounter. The Rock Women Ladies' Night Biblical Womanhood “Biblical Correction” (Having Those Hard Conversations) Mary Young March 10, 2025 Draper

We spoke with Mary Young, Program Director and Treasurer of the Upper Albany Neighborhood Collaborative, about the organization's mission to empower the residents of Upper Albany through the establishment of block clubs, job initiatives, educational programs, youth council and initiatives and economic development.

In this new Daze In Court episode, Rohan and Harriet engage in an in-depth discussion onthe principles of the Harman Undertaking and provide insights into best practices for briefing barristers, alongside a brief update on recent developments in the family law community.  Paper referenced, 'Can I use documents received in my family law matter for other purposes?', by Mary Young [link to paper here]  

Join Rashel Hariri in this empowering episode of She's Interesting as she speaks with Mary Young Ofori-Attah, the visionary CEO and Designer behind the intimate apparel brand MARY YOUNG. Since its launch in 2014, Mary Young has been a pioneer in promoting self-love and sustainability through her unique designs, impactful initiatives, and ethical manufacturing. Dive into Mary's journey of building a brand that challenges industry norms and celebrates individuality. Mary shares her insights on sustainable fashion, genuine marketing, and community growth in the digital age. Don't miss this inspiring conversation with Mary Young on She's Interesting! Subscribe, rate, and review for more empowering content! In this episode, we cover: (02:18) The inception of the Mary Young brand from a university project to a 10-year 7-figure brand (06:14) Early lessons in finding the right manufacturers and production houses for ethical apparel brands (09:11) Kickstarting the business with an $18,000 personal investment and government grants (10:33) Navigating gaslighting by manufacturers and committing to ethically made garments (14:51) The influence of strong women in Mary's life and applying their lessons to her business (17:37) How to identify ethical brands and the power of consumer buying decisions (22:27) The true meaning of self-love and self-care (26:05) Walking away from investors and resisting the pressure to scale unsustainably (33:52) Overcoming a scarcity mindset as a CEO and female entrepreneur (38:39) Managing the impact of a sports injury and concussion on cognitive skills and chronic pain Let's Keep In Touch: Newsletter:⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://shesinteresting-newsletter.beehiiv.com/ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠@shesinterestingpodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠⁠@shesinterestingpodcast⁠ ⁠Website:⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠shesinteresting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/shes-interesting-podcast Links and resources mentioned in this episode: Explore the MARY YOUNG brand: ⁠https://www.maryyoung.com/⁠ Learn more about the Self Love Club: ⁠https://www.maryyoung.com/pages/self-love-club⁠ Here's how to keep in touch with Mary: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsmaryyoung/ Resources and links to help you learn about a brand's ethics rating: https://goodonyou.eco/ https://ethicalbranddirectory.com/brand/ Music Credits Intro music: Lifeline by Kaleido

This episode of Direct Approach takes a look at Young Living's origin story with Mary Young, the company's inspirational Co-Founder & CEO. Mary recounts how the company started and the lessons they've learned about building belief, staying true to your roots and the importance of believing in your products and their potential. You're sure to be inspired and encouraged by Mary's story of this successful company built with passion and purpose. 

Mary Young, a trailblazer in the fashion industry and an advocate for ethical and sustainable business practices is my special guest today on the Bombshell Business Podcast. Join us as we explore Mary's entrepreneurial journey while discussing the resiliency she developed, the values she upholds, and the wisdom she shares with fellow Bombshells. Key Takeaways Starting Young, Striving Strong: Mary started her business at just 23, facing initial skepticism due to her age and gender; however, she used this as fuel to succeed and connect deeply with her customer base. Ethical and Sustainable: Mary Young Lingerie stands out for its commitment to ethical and sustainable practices. From empowering garment workers with living wages to promoting mindful consumption, Mary's brand ethos reflects her values. Defining Success on Your Terms: Success isn't just about financial gains but about making a positive impact while staying true to your values. Mary encourages fellow entrepreneurs to define success on their terms and not be swayed by external pressures. Embracing Failure as Fuel: Mary's journey teaches us the power of resilience. She emphasizes that failures are inevitable but serve as stepping stones to growth. Embracing failure and learning from it is key to moving forward. Remember, success is not just about climbing the ladder but creating a life and business that aligns with your values and fulfills you. Want to hear more of Young Mary's wisdom? (You see what I did there

A finales de la primavera de 1974, un coche explotó en Boulder. Pronto siguió otro. Seis jóvenes fueron asesinados; un séptimo resultó gravemente herido. Llegaron a ser conocidos como Los Seis de Boulder. Este mes, Manuela Sifuentes y Jhocelyn Avendaño entrevistan a Mary Young, ex concejala de la Ciudad de Boulder para aprender más sobre esta historia.   BUENO Center for Multicultural Education   Memorial Scholarship Fund   Próximos Eventos: - martes, 21 de mayo de 2024 Redescubriendo la historia: explore los archivos de Los Seis y el movimiento chicano con la directora de colecciones de las Bibliotecas CU, Megan Friedel, y la directora ejecutiva del Centro SOE Bueno, Tania Hogan, en la Sala de Estudios Británicos e Irlandeses de la Biblioteca Norlin, de 11 a. m. a 5 p. m. - lunes, 27 de mayo de 2024 Evento conmemorativo del 50 aniversario de Los Seis en CU Boulder frente al Edificio Temporal 1. La marcha desde los sitios de explosión comienza al mediodía y el programa comienza en el campus a la 1:30 p.m. - martes, 28 de mayo de 2024 Dedicación de la escultura Los Seis, 18 y Pearl, 6 p.m.     Página de Facebook en español del Gobierno de la ciudad de Boulder 

Join us as we chat about our awesome year at Young Living. We had many personal and professional wins in 2023, and we bet you did too. So, let's welcome in the new year with the whole Young Living family. Tune in to hear stories from Jacob, Kait, Josef, and of course Mary Young. Here's to another eventful year!

As a foundation of understanding Biblical Womanhood, it's critical we grasp the true identity we have in Jesus Christ. If we don't, we'll look to temporal things the world has to offer such as: our physical appearance, our own abilities or even other people. It's only in Jesus that we find our true (and permanent) identity. Join us as we talk about this in-depth and also practical areas where you can walk it out. The Rock Women Ladies' Night Biblical Womanhood: Identity Mary Young November 13, 2023 Draper

The US government has spent an estimated $1 trillion on their 'war on drugs.' But, over more than 50 years, the cross-border flows of illegal drugs, arms and money have increased. It's a mess. And it didn't need to be this way. We look at the failed so-called 'war on drugs' and how to stop wasting precious lives. In part one of a two part series, we start with the supposed 'goodies' and the 'baddies.' Featuring: Criminology lecturer Karina Garcia-Reyes of the University of the West of England, author of Morir Es Un Alivio (Dying is a Relief) Las Reveladoras Historias De 12 Ex-narcos Que Lograron Escapar Del Crimen Organizado. Available in Spanish here  https://www.amazon.co.uk/Morir-alivio-Dying-Relief-Reveladoras/dp/6070777298/ref=sr_1_1?crid=SC60TMBCGZVM&keywords=morir+es+un+alivio&qid=1674560099&sprefix=morir+es+un+alivio%2Caps%2C64&sr=8-1  Eric Gutierrez, of the International Centre of Human Rights and Drug Policy https://www.hr-dp.org/contents/1620  Associate Professor of International and Organised Crime at Bristol Law School, Dr Mary Young https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mary-Young-13 Further Reading: Inside Mexico's war on drugs: Conversations with ‘el narco' https://theconversation.com/inside-mexicos-war-on-drugs-conversations-with-el-narco-129865 Poverty, gender and violence in the narratives of former narcos: accounting for drug trafficking violence in Mexico (Karina Garcia-Reyes) https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/193726176/Final_Copy_2018_11_06_Garcia_K_G_PhD_Redacted.pdf  Debunking the Narco Myth https://www.mexicoviolence.org/post/debunking-the-narco-myth A world fit for money laundering: The Atlantic alliance's undermining of organised crime control: Young, Mary Alice; Woodiwiss, Michael https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/5935899  Organised crime and security threats in Caribbean Small Island Developing States: A Critical analysis of US assumptions and policies: Young, Mary; Woodiwiss, Michael https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/849208  More podcasts are available on our website https://www.thetaxcast.com where you can also subscribe.  

Just what does it mean to be a biblical woman in 2023? The world calls for us to be independent. The Lord calls us to dependency on Him, through prayer and His Word. There is unbelievable fruit from doing things His way. We'll spend our LN's this upcoming year looking at several, practical ways we can glorify Him by the way we live our lives. The Rock Women Ladies' Night — Kickoff "Biblical Womanhood” Mary Young September 11, 2023 Draper

In February of 1959, Albert Lepard brutally murdered his seventy-four-year-old great-aunt Mary Young and was tried, convicted and given a life sentence at Mississippi's Parchman Penitentiary. Lepard would escape six times over fourteen years. In 1968, my guest Lovejoy Boteler, then eighteen years old, was kidnapped by Lepard during his fifth escape. He shares details about the research he has done over the years on the notorious Lepard, and tells the story of his own abduction. Lovejoy Boteler is the author of "Crooked Snake: The Life and Crimes of Albert Lepard." The book is available through Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Crooked-Snake-Crimes-Albert-Lepard-ebook/dp/B07PNRCP84. You can listen to the audio version on Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/Crooked-Snake-Audiobook/1494548844 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Mary Young Leckie had one of her infamous lightbulb moments, which inspired her to produce such amazing shows as M.V.P and the brilliant and award- winning film Maudie. With an immense passion for telling Canadian stories and steadfast activism throughout her career, Mary reveals she has an unwavering belief in all of the stories she tells. She also details the determination she has found to push through the sometimes-long journeys to produce her work. She shares how reaching out within the artistic community can fuel you, why we should always forgive those who have wronged us and how often the best way to wind down is to belt it out with a rock ‘n roll choir at Carnegie Hall.

In this episode of Sinister Dynasty, Andi and Ayla go back to the past of the 1800s to talk about a vaguely documented/known case involving racism, possibly wrongly convicted men and unjust treatment by the system for the murder of the 60-year-old woman: Mary Young!  Support the showListener discretion is advised, our content will not be for everyone.Music by Kyle Hsieh

We're on this earth for a short period of time. Our relationships need to be lived for Jesus — intentional in every season of our lives. What does that practically look like? In this message, we'll take a closer look at what matters in our relationships (and what doesn't). Ladies Night “What Matters” Mary Young April 10, 2023 Draper

Anna “Ann” Dimmitt, 86, passed away at St. Mary's Hospital on Monday, January 9, 2023. She suffered a stroke late on New Year's Eve and responded very little during her nine days in the hospital. Ann was born in Monticello, IN, on December 10, 1936. She was the daughter of the late Robert G. Williams and the late Mary Young. She graduated from Roosevelt High School on May 27, 1955. On May 27, 1956, in Monticello, she married her husband of 66 years, Harold Dimmitt. Ann was a devoted housewife, not working out of the home until their youngest child...Article LinkSupport the show

God give us His Armor to protect us from the spiritual warfare raging around us. The Shield of Faith deflects the flaming arrows (lies) of the evil one, when used properly. We need to know what the shield is, how to use it, and how to grow closer to God in the process. We need to ask for help from other believers and join together to be battle strong. Armor of God Shield of Faith Mary Young November 14, 2022 Draper

Bishop On Air talks with Mary Young, executive producer for Springfield Theatre Centre about "Fun Home" being performed this and next weekend.

Creator of her namesake intimates brand, Mary Young knew from a young age that fashion was her calling. Sure of her deep values of self-love and sustainability, Mary worked to build a brand that would stay true to these values even as it grew. For episode 57, we sat down with Mary to talk everything MARY YOUNG. We explore her business' growth, how she engages with her community (even as platforms have evolved) and if she ever envisioned what MARY YOUNG what the brand would become. We also talk about the Self-Love Club and what it means to be a truly sustainable brand. Finally, we discuss how business owners can overcome their imposter syndrome to build powerful content platforms that engage their communities. Shop Waves Social merch: https://www.wavessocialpodcast.com/merch Show Notes:Introducing today's guests, Mary Young. Entrepreneur, speaker and self-love advocate. What sparked Mary's interest in the intimates market?What Mary noticed was missing in the fashion world as far as accessibility for intimates. How Mary got involved in the fashion industry young, starting her first company at age 14 and MARY YOUNG at 23. Did Mary envision her business becoming what it is today?As MARY YOUNG grew, how did Mary keep the company values central to the business?Is sustainability being treated like a trend?What is the Self-Love Club and who can join?Stumbling upon organic stepping stones for your brand.What major steps helped MARY YOUNG grow over the years?The problems with glamorizing fast growth. What inspired The Muses project?We go back to the “Golden Days” of Instagram and talk about dealing with platform evolution. How to overcome imposter syndrome when trying out new platforms. Balancing a namesake brand and a personal life. Where does Mary set boundaries?What's a side of Mary that we don't see in the brand?If Mary could do it all over again, what would she change?Do all business owners, and entrepreneurs, need to be content creators?What's one piece of advice that's stuck with Mary. Who is Mary seeing make waves and why?Discussed in this episode:MARY YOUNG: https://maryyoung.comMARY YOUNG on Instagram & TikTok: @itsmaryyoungMary Young on Instagram: @yungbiscottiPia Baroncini: @piabaronciniWaves Social with Mike (@mmmiiike) and Mitzi (@mmmitzi). For more from Arcade, follow us on Instagram and TikTok @helloarcade. https://www.arcadearcade.ca/

International Essential Oils Day is right around the corner. This year we're celebrating the 30-year anniversary of our St. Maries Lavender Farm and Distillery—the place where it all began! Mary Young will be on site to give an address and lead the festivities. Learn more about the event and where some of your favorite products are grown in this episode featuring Brett Packer, Young Living's Executive Director of Farms.

To the Memory of Mary Youngby Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)    God has his plans, and what if we    With our sight be too blind to see    Their full fruition; cannot he,    Who made it, solve the mystery?    One whom we loved has fall'n asleep,    Not died; although her calm be deep,    Some new, unknown, and strange surprise    In Heaven holds enrapt her eyes.    And can you blame her that her gaze    Is turned away from earthly ways,    When to her eyes God's light and love    Have giv'n the view of things above?    A gentle spirit sweetly good,    The pearl of precious womanhood;    Who heard the voice of duty clear,    And found her mission soon and near.    She loved all nature, flowers fair,    The warmth of sun, the kiss of air,    The birds that filled the sky with song,    The stream that laughed its way along.    Her home to her was shrine and throne,    But one love held her not alone;    She sought out poverty and grief,    Who touched her robe and found relief.    So sped she in her Master's work,    Too busy and too brave to shirk,    When through the silence, dusk and dim,    God called her and she fled to him.    We wonder at the early call,    And tears of sorrow can but fall    For her o'er whom we spread the pall;    But faith, sweet faith, is over all.    The house is dust, the voice is dumb,    But through undying years to come,    The spark that glowed within her soul    Shall light our footsteps to the goal.    She went her way; but oh, she trod    The path that led her straight to God.    Such lives as this put death to scorn;    They lose our day to find God's morn. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit iwillreadtoyou.substack.com/subscribe

Episode 33: Mary Young is the founder of her namesake lingerie and swimwear brand with a mission to empower women of all sizes. Founded in 2014, Mary Young is based in Montreal, Canada, and is committed to creating ethically made garments with quality, environmentally safe materials. In this episode we discuss: How Mary started her lingerie company after graduating from college The making of ethically-made slow-fashion garments Mary Young's initiatives to promote self-love and inclusivity  Mary's advice for young entrepreneurs If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe/follow the show and leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Thank you!

Today on the podcast, we're joined by Kelly Case, Young Living's chief of staff, who has been working with Gary and Mary Young for 22 years. She's been around to see the company grow from a few farms to a global enterprise with members in more than 155 countries. Tune in to hear her thoughts […] The post Episode 25: Stories From a Dedicated Career ft. Kelly Case first appeared on Young Living Essential Oils | The YL Drop.

Kelly Case is Young Living's Chief of Staff and has been working with Gary and Mary Young for 22 years. That spans multiple buildings, many trips, and so many essential products. She's also been around to see the raising of two great young men, one of whom is wearing many hats in the company including podcast host. Today Kelly shares some insight and what is it about a company in this modern world that can keep someone around for over two decades.

SHOW NOTESIn this podcast, speech therapist, online business owner, and mom Mary Young teaches us how to have the courage to "show up" in our lives. "Confidence is not something you have, it's something you practice." She teaches how to adjust your mindset to give yourself permission to pursue your dreams. "Life is not pass or fail." Welcome to Habits for Humans, the show that explores how to program your brain to maximize your potential. The goal of this podcast is to teach you how to instill systems and habits to live a healthy, sustainable, deeply satisfying way of life.LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCASTApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/habits-for-humans/id1608255992Pandora: https://www.pandora.com/podcast/habits-for-humans/PC:78911Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/habits-for-humansGoogle: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5idXp6c3Byb3V0LmNvbS8xODUzMTE5LnJzcw?sa=X&ved=0CAMQ4aUDahcKEwjgg_zbwsXzAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQNQSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3wdU3gjrkvdAXEbYMY3Z7QiHeart radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-habits-for-humans-87797161/SPONSORED BY CARD SALAD✩ Eat Well Meal Planning System: https://cardsalad.com/eatwell✩ Website - https://www.cardsalad.com✩ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cardsalad✩ Twitter - https://twitter.com/cardsalad✩ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/cardsalad✩ Youtube - https://bit.ly/habitsforhumansOUR GUESTMary Young is a certified Speech-Language-Pathologist, online business owner, wife and mom of 4 littles. She is always looking for the next adventure, and the next snack.Talking Toddler is an excellent online course for parents of young children (0-3 yrs). Mary has rolled together all of her knowledge gained from a decade as an SLP, and experience as a mom of 4, and organized it into small, easy lessons. Parents can learn at their own pace and apply the strategies with their child immediately. Better communication = better connection.OUR HOSTPamela Henrie is the owner of The Success Choice, and the creator of the award-winning Success Choice Planner, Choosing Joy in the Journey Journals, and the Success Choice Challenge workshop. She regularly writes for the Daily Herald in her column “Choosing Success.” Pamela is passionate about inspiring herself and others to improve themselves and their worlds and to choose joy in their journey. Her planners, journals and workshops help you filter through the noise of life and establish positive routines to find balance, order, and joy in the journey.https://www.thesuccesschoice.comhttps://www.facebook.com/thesuccesschoiceInstagram:@thesuccesschoice @joyinjourneytodayTwitter: @successchoicehttps://www.pinterest.com/successchoicehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/thesuccesschoiceDo you have expertise and a unique solution t

Welcome to This Could Work — a podcast where we not only tout self-love, we attempt to put it into action. Join us, Mary Young and Mallika Viegas, as we explore the ever trending and sometimes monetized world of self-care. We are honest, open and above all, human. We aim to explore whether self-care practises are all they're cracked up to be — or if they're just another passing trend. Through meeting with different experts (scientists, therapists, friends and professionals), we explore and uncover whether these additions to our routine could have profound life long impacts.   Look, the last thing any of us want right now is another person telling us we NEED to be incorporating another thing into our busy lives; but with the right incentive and result based research we are committed to presenting self-care in a way that's accessible. We are all about learning alongside you as we go because — growth, baby! Join us for new episodes every Tuesday.

When you build a business on values and principals that aren't common in the marketplace, you can almost guarantee that it will be hard to find exactly what you need as you scale. In this episode, Mary takes us through her unrelenting pursuit of finding diverse models for her social and product photography. In a world that catered to white, skinny, tall models, it was nearly impossible to find the talent she needed to execute her vision. Then, she created a business to fill that need. Press play to hear Mary tell us all about it! Watch this episode on YouTube! Listen to us on Apple Podcasts They Get It Instagram Mary Young Instagram Mary Young Website Brand we're loving this week: Midday Squares Use this EMMAC15 for 15% off at checkout

Before you read through this episode's show notes, go to our blog and find our 12 Steps to Branding blog post. As you read through that, listen to Mary's thoughts on manufacturing in Canada and you'll see a perfect example of someone who is driven by their brand values. In this episode, Mary acknowledges some of the hurdles local manufacturing presents and gives advice to founders on how best to go about having products produced without compromising. This is a super tactical conversation with Mary- press play to hear her take us through it! Watch this episode on YouTube! Listen to us on Apple Podcasts They Get It Instagram Mary Young Instagram Mary Young Website Brand we're loving this week: Midday Squares Use this EMMAC15 for 15% off at checkout

Mary Young founded Mary Young while in fashion and design school at Ryerson University. She talks about falling into the lingerie opportunity and beginning to focus on the businesses without much intention of taking it long term. This is such a great episode for anyone testing an idea right now and getting some early validation. Learn from Mary's advice and experiences help you make the most of your journey. Press play to hear Mary tell you all about it! Watch this episode on YouTube! Listen to us on Apple Podcasts They Get It Instagram Mary Young Instagram Mary Young Website Brand we're loving this week: Midday Squares Use this EMMAC15 for 15% off at checkout

Tom Riello talked about the identity crisis at Notre Dame. Mary Young shared about the mission of COPE Pregnancy Center in Montgomery. Peter Jesserer Smith discussed his article about the upcoming Synod. 

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Young Living's story is Gary Young's story. Young Living recently unveiled a statue of it's founder and the father of the modern day essential oils movement at its global headquarters in Lehi, Utah. This episode will play a portion of the CEO and Co-Founder of Young Living, Mary Young, speech at that statue unveiling. She begins with that primal connection between a man and nature. A primal connection between a man and his horse. 

Young Living's story is Gary Young's story. Young Living recently unveiled a statue of its founder and the father of the modern-day essential oils movement at its Global Headquarters in Lehi, Utah. This episode will play a portion of the speech given at the statue unveiling. Listen as YL CEO and Co-Founder Mary Young reflects […] The post Episode 7: A Man and His Horse—featuring Mary Young first appeared on Young Living Essential Oils | The YL Drop.

Great and Unique Podcast Interview w Mary Young President of Narraguagus ATV Club

Welcome to Montrose Fresh, from The Montrose Daily Press. It's FridayJune 11th and we're here with local news, events, announcements, jobs, and more that matter to us here in Western Colorado.    Today - A freshly signed anti-bullying law honoring the memory of a Montrose teenager who died by suicide in 2015 is a building block for ending bullying.   Today's episode is brought to you by Elevate Internet. Whether it's for your home or your business they offer the best speeds at the best price. Right now, if you refer a friend you can get $25 off! Give them a call for more information at 844-386-8744 or visit them at www.elevateinternet.com.   Now, our feature story…   A freshly signed anti-bullying law honoring the memory of a Montrose teenager who died by suicide in 2015 is a building block for ending bullying.   Maya Haynes of Montrose and her husband, Todd, were in Denver Monday to witness Gov. Jared Polis sign House Bill 1221.    Its official title is Bullying and Prevention in Schools — but it is more poignantly known as Jack and Cait's Law. It's named for the Haynes' late daughter, Caitlyn, and Jack Padilla, a Cherry Creek teenager who also died by suicide.   When Haynes refers to kids, she does not only mean her daughter. She means both other victims of bullying — and those who bully.   Jack and Cait's law requires the Colorado Department of Education to use a certain process for bullying prevention. The process has to include parents of students who were subjected to bullying. This policy has to make clear the difference between a conflict and bullying.   Current law already requires specific policy for preventing bullying. But this  bill requires that incidents of bullying be listed as a separate type of violation.   Under the final version of Jack and Cait's Law bullying as grounds for suspension or expulsion was stricken.   Why? According to Haynes, that's  not  a long-term solution.   After Cait's death in 2015, Haynes established the nonprofit PEER Kindness, an anti-bullying and support foundation.   Then, Haynes and Todd met with Padilla's family and Senator Don Coram, as well as House Sponsors Lisa Cutter, and Mary Young. Together, they crafted a bill they felt comfortable lending their daughter's name to.   In order for Cait's name to be on the bill, the family wanted the suspension and expulsion language removed.    Conflict between students is not always the same thing as bullying. She says the more support, the more lives we are going to be able to save.   Coram said he was proud to sponsor the bill in the Senate.   The Haynes family advocated for the bill and also have maintained PEER Kindness. Padilla's parents, Rick and Jeanine also began advocacy work after the devastating loss of Jack, who was 15 when he died in 2019.   The bill's provisions direct education toward those who bully, rather than only addressing their victims.   To learn more visit us at montrosepress.com.   -   Now, some local history. This week's local history is brought to you by England Fence. England Fence is family owned and operated, and they're ready to help you build your dream fence, archway, gate, or deck. Give them a call at 970-249-4430, or head over to their website englandfence.com. Richard E. Fike founded the Museum of theMountain West in 1997. He is a retired historical archaeologist having served as state archaeologist for the Bureau of Land Management in both Utah and Colorado.    Fike served on committees in both Utah and Colorado for the Federal & State Register of Historic Places and is an expert in historical restoration. He began collecting western memorabilia when he was just 4 years old. He had his first museum in his parent's guest room at the age of 8.    By age 12, he had begun his card catalog of artifacts. This Museum is the result of Fike's lifetime dedication to preserving the history of the west.   The Museum was incorporated in 2005. The artifacts, buildings, and grounds have been being donated by the Fikes for the education and enjoyment of visitors for generations to come.   -   And finally, before we go we'd like to remember the life of    Ralph Lowery of Ridgway. He was born in 1962 in Montrose. As a boy, he could be found playing in the dirt with his trucks and GI Joes. He had a love of adventure and adrenaline through his overnight horseback rides and motorcycle escapades.    He attended Ridgway High School where he participated in photography, basketball, baseball, skiing, and cruising in his beloved Mustang.    After graduating in 1980, Ralph continued his education, and got a certificate in automotive technology. Ralph then returned to Ridgway and Dallas Creek Ranch where he joined his father as an operator for Lowery Excavating.   Ralph married Shawna Brickey in 1981. Together they had 2 daughters. One of Ralph's greatest joys was being a father and passing on his love of camping, riding horses, and muscle cars.   In 1990, Ralph met and married Storme Lea Zanett. Together they created many friendships and memories while enjoying country drives, supporting the community, and entertaining friends and family.   Ralph was happiest behind the handlebars of his Harley Davidson. He enjoyed nothing more than spending time with those he loved, telling stories, and creating laughter and memories. Ralph cherished visits from his daughters and grandchildren, his nieces and nephews, and dearest friends. He loved fiercely and prided himself on teaching and helping others. His laughter and hugs will be greatly missed.   Thank you for taking the time to remember and celebrate Ralph's life.   That's all for today, thank you for listening! For more information on any of these stories visit us at montrosepress.com.   And don't forget to check out our sponsor, Elevate Internet. Visit them at elevateinternet.com to learn more.   For more than 137 years, The Montrose Daily Press has been dedicated to shining a light on all the issues that matter to our community. Go to montrosepress.com to subscribe for just $1.99 per week for our digital edition. You'll get unlimited access to every story, feature, and special section. Thank you and remember to tune in again next time on montrosepress.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Support the show: https://www.montrosepress.com/site/forms/subscription_services/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Join our host, Jacob Young, as he talks with co-founder and CEO, Mary Young, on Young Living's humble and extraordinary beginning. Mary Young shares her stories on growing up, traveling Europe, and meeting an interesting cowboy with a rather intriguing passion for essential oils. 

Meditation Brings Back a Flood of Memories   My fiancee, Howie Baskin and I were on a flight from our home in Tampa, Florida to Los Angeles, California and I was taking advantage of the rare opportunity to indulge in the pleasure of reading a book.  This one was called “Corporate Nirvana” by Judith Anderson.  We were somewhere over the desert and I was getting tired.  The author was detailing her intuitive encounter with a group of business people in which she suggested that they close their eyes and imagine that they were all alone, on a deserted island.  There was no work to do.  No deadlines.  No responsibilities.  No demand on their time.  There was only the island, the sand crunching between their toes and the birds over head.  Their attention was diverted to a beautifully ornate, bejeweled treasure chest in the sand.  As they approach they can see that it is unlocked and they know that inside is their gift.  This gift will be the answer to the question that is plaguing them now.  They will know when they see this gift exactly what it means to them and therein is their answer.   I haven't meditated in the deep relaxed manner that I had been practicing in over a year.  I have been too busy.  Things have been going too well for me to value the need for it.  This seemed like a perfect opportunity to shut the book and try her visualization.  I asked myself, “Why am I always taking on tougher and tougher problems?  Why can't I just say, “enough is enough” and be happy with what I've done?”  Holding that thought, in my sleepy half conscious state, I began the walk down the beach in the deserted island in my head.   Seagulls overhead, palm trees swaying in the tropic breeze, the warmth of the sun on my face and the sand crunching between my toes.  So far, so good.  Ah, there is the treasure chest…going over to admire it…it really is beautiful…I wonder what is inside, but I hesitate.  Do I want to know?  What if I don't find an answer?  What if I do and don't like it?  I stall and ponder the gravity of the moment.  In this box that I made up, in a place that I made up, lays the answer to the one problem that has driven me since childhood.  Here at 30,000 feet, while I look to all the world that I am asleep, I am about to discover the meaning of life…the meaning of my life anyway.   I begin to slowly lift the lid.  There is an aura of purple light escaping from the treasure chest.  “Nice special effects” I compliment to my imaginative self. “I wasn't expecting that.”  I am opening the lid so slowly as if I am expecting some dragon to consume me with its fire breathing anger.  Come on Carole…open the box…its just a box…go on now open it!   Leaping backward from the box as the top swings open I can only see what looks like a purple, fuzzy blanket in the bottom of the box.  Tentatively, I lean forward thinking there must be something under the cloth.  It isn't moving and there doesn't appear to be any real shape to it.  I am disappointed with myself.   “That's it!  That's the best you could do?  You have the opportunity to solve all of your life's struggles in one vision and all you can think of is a blanket!  I must be cold.  That must be what is behind this first thought and my REAL revelation must still be in the box.”  I try hard to see something else in the chest and after a while I resign myself to just being totally unimaginative.   OK then, let's have a look at the fuzzy purple blanket and what ever that could possibly mean to me.  As I am muttering, “purple blanket” to myself I lift it up out of the dark box and hold it full length.  “Well, how about that?” I say to myself as the living material, with a light that gave it the fuzzy appearance, unfolds to the sand.  “It's not a blanket at all.  It's a cloak, shimmering with a life all its own.  It is breathtakingly beautiful!  It is too precious to wear.  No king ever wore a cape as magnificent as this!  I wonder briefly if I am worthy to wear this aura of lavender light?   “Of course I am,” I chide. “I made the thing up.  I can wear it.”  I put it on.  Wow!  I am cloaked in spirituality.  What does that mean to me?  It means that I have remembered who I really am.   I am safe.  I am at peace.  I am at one with God.   Everything I have ever done was leading to this moment.  Every challenge that I ever set myself up for has culminated in this moment of awakening.  All I have ever been trying to do was to reach this moment of spiritual enlightenment.   My driven self said, “OK.  Nice lesson.  Now get back to reading and learn something.”  My spiritual self said, “I am learning now.  I am learning that my drive has come from the need to prove myself worthy, but my spirit has always known that I am and that every lesson in life is about reaching a higher level of Nirvana.”   As if the flood gates had been instantly opened every challenge that had beset me along the way raced through my mind.  I was seeing what was common in every situation:  Every time a challenge presented itself, it was a much more difficult one than the one before.  Every time I succeeded in reaching the goal there were people who I felt were betraying me.  In each case, as the stakes were higher, those people were stronger or greater in numbers than the time before.  It wasn't the tasks or the challenges themselves that were my lessons to learn, but rather, how I would deal with the people who would disappoint me so profoundly.   How I would deal with having betrayed myself.  Nothing on this earthly plane; wealth, fame or fortune means anything.  It is all about reconnecting with God and that is done by reconnecting with ALL of His creation.  Yes, Carole, the people too.  Perhaps the people especially.  It is about remembering who you are and how we are all One.   The author, Judith Anderson  suggests the Piper Principle:   1. What troubles a person most about a situation actually reveals an aspect of themselves (an underlying fear or concern) they don't yet see;  a blind spot. 2. Underlying fears and concerns of leaders, and the unconscious way in which they protect themselves from them, show up in parable form as organizational barriers or blocks to achieving whatever goals are set. 3. When aggravation or blocks show up, a person can pay the piper, investigate the blind spot, and resolve the fear and concern or blame others.  Unproductive patterns reappear until you pay the piper.   I don't think I have ever considered a more truthful thought than that.   Some lessons I just go through over and over and over until I get it.  Once I get it then the next lesson is harder and will keep repeating over and over until I finally get that one too.  Until yesterday I didn't see this pattern of escalation.  I wonder, if I had, would I have had the courage to take on each new challenge, knowing that success ultimately meant a tougher lesson to follow?   Ignorance is bliss, but it is highly ineffective when we know our days are numbered and we have so much to learn in this lifetime.  I am increasingly convinced that we live forever and are doomed to repeat lives of frustration and striving until we each experience our own moment of looking into the treasure chest and discover ourselves and our connection to All that Is.   The rest of this is not meant to read like a resume of accomplishments, but rather as an example of how each of us is presented with unique challenges that we meet to the very best of our ability each time.  Many times challenges have been presented to me that I was incapable of overcoming.  Connecting with people has been the hardest for me.  Sometimes we may look back and think we could have done better, but I don't think so.  I think we are all doing the best we can for the skills we have now and that the only way we will ever “do better” is by learning from each lesson.   My family were fundamental Christians and raised me to believe that we are to strive for perfection, but being human, will always fall short.  The only good news in that was that  God is Love and is capable of loving us even though we are never really good enough or deserving.  This belief was the canvas on which I would paint my life.   I was five years old, naked as a jaybird, cleaning my canary's cage in the front yard with a hose and wondering how a caged bird could sing?  Free birds had something to sing about, but why do caged birds sing?  Caught up in my own reverie and enjoying the summer sun on my skin and the sand between my toes I was quite taken aback by my mother throwing a blanket over me and dragging me into the house, all the while telling me that “little girls don't go out side naked.”  I wondered, “why not?”  I felt so connected to the earth, the sky, the water from the hose, the soft summer breeze in my hair...  “What is this obsession people have with hiding who they are? Cloaking who they are?”   I was a big kid; always head and shoulders taller than my peers, with a shock of short white hair and big blue eyes.  Butterflies would light on me in the playground and every stray followed me home.  I had the same entourage of broken down, unwanted people throughout my life.  All of the kids that were disabled or slow or who just didn't fit in with the “in” crowd flocked around me.  I always tried to help them see what was special about them that no one else had to offer.  It wasn't that I was so understanding and wonderful.  It was because if I could heal them enough to feel that they belonged they would start to fit in with others and would leave me alone.   I preferred the company of the animals and my spirit guides, the two leopard size, glowing white cats who were with me always, but who I wasn't supposed to talk about unless I wanted to merely call them my “imaginary” friends.  It's one of those things that a kid just keeps to themselves when they realize that adults are too scared to talk about invisible, panther like creatures who sound like God when they speak in that still small voice, that carries all of the majesty and power of thunder.   Three years later I am eight and my father is the personal pilot to the governor of West Virginia, Arch Moore.  We live in a trailer park, in a single wide tin can that is always freezing inside.  Our lot looks like the terrain from a hostile planet with its caked, dry and broken clay surface.   Until I was six I was raised by my mother's mother during the day while my parents worked.  At night my parents would pick me up and take me home to sleep and then the next morning I'd wake up back at my grandparent's home.  My grandparents have stayed in Florida and I am still hating this separation from my other parents and the warmth of Florida.  Both of my parents work full time and I have become responsible for taking care of my brother who is six years younger.  There is a seething anger at my situation that seems impossible to me to resolve, and the only respite from it comes from the animals that I rescue.  Taking care of them, takes my mind off what I cannot change.   One day a cat with a couple of bullet holes in her finds her way to my door.  I discover that the man across the street had shot the cat because it was near his trash can.  This man is big (compared to me), has a history of beating his wife and children (Ada), and is ugly to boot.  His face is deeply scarred with pockmarks that indicate a hormonally challenged youth, and maybe one bar brawl too many,  and he is now in his late twenties or early thirties.  He drinks, he swears and he is just about as vile a human as any I have ever encountered.  Until this moment, I have made a point to stay clear of him, even though his daughter and his younger son, have found me to be a safe haven in a life that heretofore was unbearable to them.  It is his children who have come to me and told me that their father shot the cat and was threatening to kill any cat he saw come near his trailer.   Trembling, but fully resolved to make myself clear, I march up to this man and tell him that if he decides to take another shot at a cat, or if I hear a shot being fired and even think it is him, then that gun shot will be the last sound he ever hears.  He just stands there looking down at me, but as scared as I am, I feel like I am in charge of this moment.  I am offering up a challenge, that I have no idea how I will be able to carry out, but I can't let him know that.  After what seems an eternity of staring down this man, through my tear streaming eyes, he turns and goes inside his trailer.  He blinked.  He turned.  He ran from me.  I won!   I never heard another shot being fired.  The word of that confrontation, spread by his own children, earned me a tremendous following in that poor little back woods trailer park.  Now the kids who gathered around me were high school age and I felt like I had the moral support of every kid in the neighborhood.  I used to lead them in money making schemes from selling popcorn and Kool-Aid, to mowing lawns, washing trailers, and making pot holders and such to sell door to door.  Rock bands were making it big and I tried to assemble one, but I couldn't sing and we just didn't have what it took.  I felt like learning to make a living was important and learning to manage others was going to be a crucial part of that.  It felt necessary although I didn't know where it was leading.   I felt like I was in some sort of intensive training for something important.  I didn't know what it was about, but as a child you trust your instincts more.  At school I was quiet and respectful but felt like the public school system was not meeting my educational needs.  There was something important to learn about this thing called life and it wasn't in memorizing multiplication tables.  There were machines that could do that far better than I ever could, so what was the purpose in all of this useless knowledge?  Teach me how to succeed.  Teach me why the caged bird sings…   I wouldn't wear shoes.  You can't be connected to the earth and all of the glorious power that is available to you with shoes on.  It was fortunate for me that we lived in a West Virginian “holler” where going to school barefoot wasn't considered too weird.  After school I went into the forests.  It wasn't your typical kid-playing-in-the-woods so much as going to learn what it was like to be the woods, to be the brook, to be the animals and the wind.  I would climb up as high as I could get in the trees to get a better vantage point on observing everything around me.  I wanted to know how everything worked, how it was all connected.   The teachers would send home piles of homework.  My attitude was that it was a ploy designed to keep bad kids off the street.  If they had to turn in a lot of work the next day they didn't have time to be in trouble.  I wasn't being bad.  I was learning something that I thought was a lot more important and I wasn't going to do class room “busy” work outside of the classroom.  This got me into a considerable amount of trouble with my teachers, but I aced every test and my grades were still As and Bs despite all of the bad marks for refusing to turn in homework.   By the time I was 12 we were back in Florida and I was attending a little private school called Florida College Academy.  There were grades 1 thru 9 there, with one class for each grade level that had 12-24 students.  My great aunt, Mari, was the principal which as her son, my cousin Scott, and I knew was the worst set up possible for a kid.  You were perceived as having special privileges by your peers, and yet the reality was that you were held to a much higher standard because of the fact that relatives see you as a reflection on themselves and they want to be seen as perfect.   It was 1971 and women were burning their bras in the streets a decade before, but our school had held to very antiquated beliefs, that said little girls were to be modest and wear long dresses and never speak out against authority.  I actually bought into most of that but a lot of the girls were not from religious homes and even those that were frequently dressed in pants at home.  They wanted to be able to wear pants to school so that they could play more freely on the playground.  Even though I didn't even own a pair of pants, everyone turned to me to do something about it.  I thought their reasons were sound.  Wearing a dress on the playground was certainly less modest than wearing long pants and so I decided to take the suggestion to the principal.   Not only was my Aunt Mari an authority figure within the family and the school, but she was someone I had observed carefully since I was a toddler in the way in which she dealt with my cousin.  Scott and I were born the same year and day and look like twins.  We have often wondered if we were and just were separated at birth to be raised by two different families because neither one could afford both of us.  My cousin has grown up to be a maintenance man in an apartment building.  I watched his mother tell him he was stupid and that he would never amount to anything his whole life.  By contrast I was always told I could do anything I set my mind to do.  Both of us lived up to our parents' expectations.   I went to my aunt and presented our case and was promptly dismissed as being “un-Christian like”.  I went back to my classmates and suggested that the only way to effect a change in the dress code was to lead an organized uprising against the status quo.  I busily engaged both sexes in my plan and drew up posters and hung them in the halls, held rallies and basically just wouldn't shut up until I got what I was asking for.  I fully expected to be burned at the stake.  Much to my amazement we won.   I went out and bought my first  pair of pants.  (They were plaid and hideous.  It was the 70's after all.)   I kept them for twenty years as a reminder of that success.   Two years later, at the age of 14 I was trapped and raped by three men (Steve & Jim? Crabtree and George Minogue).  They cut my throat and for years I carried a scar that I hid with scarves.  I didn't tell anyone because I fully believed that I was to blame.  If I had not been in a place where I shouldn't have been this would not have happened to me and thus I felt that not only was it my fault, but that it proved I was not worthy as a human being.  I was no longer a virgin and could no longer expect that I would grow up and marry a decent man and live happily ever after.  Within a year I had let this event colour every aspect of my self esteem.  The deeper emotional scarring of this event however came from the betrayal of my best friend.   Cindy Clark Brown and I had been friends since we were nine or ten years old.  I was the innocent; the perfect daughter, cooking and cleaning for my family and joining in working the landscaping business after school.  Cindy was about as wild as they came.  She was a year older than I and was smoking, drinking and experimenting with drugs.  She was always in trouble and would often come stay with me until her family could brace themselves to deal with her again.  She made fun of me for being a goody two shoes and was jealous of my beauty and sense of grace.  People always commented on my air of confidence.  The fact was that my grandmother had always made me walk around the house with books on my head and the result was a walk that had an unintentional  haughtiness to it.   Cindy and I had been out for a walk earlier and she was flirting with three men from the race track.  We went to their house and played cards, while they had both the radio and the T.V. on full blast.  They were all stoned and I watched the scene in amazement.  I had never been exposed to this sort of activity, and although the only part I participated in was the card playing, I was very curious about this sort of approach to life. Cindy was sitting in their laps, giggling and whispering in their ears.  I wondered if they knew how stupid they looked and sounded?   That night, when Cindy and I were supposed to be in bed, she wanted to slip out my bedroom window and go back to their house.  I reluctantly agreed and as we cleared the yard, Cindy said she needed to go back to my room to make a call, and that I should go on ahead of her.  I did as instructed.   They were waiting for me.  What I didn't know, until many years later when Cindy felt compelled to clear her conscience, was that she had told them I was a virgin and had sold me to them for drugs.  The call she made was to let them know I was on the way.   A year later, back in W.Va. I had turned 15.  My mother, who had always been my most trusted friend, and I got into the first fight we had ever had.  She had accused me of having sex with a nice boy I knew and I had not.  I was defending his honour more than my own, because I was so convinced of my own guilt from the rape.  As she was storming off to work she said, “When I get home, I don't want to see your face!”     This was the last family photo before I left home, and yes, I am only 14 in that photo, which explains how I was able to wait tables in bars without being discovered.   I thought she meant that she never wanted to see me again and as fate would have it, I was ready for the next challenge.  A young man named Jim Jones, who I barely knew from Florida, was in boot camp near Washington, D.C.  He had gone AWOL from the army and was driving back to Florida and asked if he could drop by.  I told him I couldn't live here any more and asked if he would take me with him back to Florida.  I packed my cat, my radio and two paper grocery bags of clothes and waited for his arrival.  As we drove away I watched my 9 year old brother playing in the yard and wondered if I would ever see him again?  Taking care of him had always been my responsibility and as much as I hated being saddled with that, I felt guilty leaving him there.   I had known Jim from the skating rink where kids from my church were all taken to be with others of “our own kind”, but Jim worked there and intrigued me.  He was 6 ‘ 4 “ weighed 230 pounds of solid muscle and had long golden hair down to his waist.  He was a genius on skates, if not intellectually.  Running from the U.S. army should have been my first clue that he was never going to be a brain surgeon.  I only knew Jim from the rink and had invited him to one church picnic.  Now I was on the run with him.   I worked bars and restaurants and sometimes held three jobs at once because Jim wouldn't work.   Turned out he couldn't even pass a driver's license test.  He had a bad drug habit and a nasty temper and whenever the two mixed I was caught in the cross fire.  I was always on guard to dodge a swing from a punch that would knock the wind out of me.  He beat me with a bed rail one time so severely that I couldn't go back to work for weeks because I was so badly bruised.  As he swung the rail and hit the concrete walls of the garage we lived in he had knocked huge gaping holes in the concrete as a constant reminder to me of how much it hurt to be on his bad side.  As scary as it was to be with him I believed it was better than the alternative.  I had seen the brutality men could use to crush someone as innocent as I had been and at least there was only one of Jim to deal with.  Jim was the constant validation of my belief that I was unworthy.   Jim decided he wanted to go home and I was driving us there through San Antonio, Florida.  He was drunk and was all over the steering wheel and blocking my vision.  With one arm I was trying to push him back into his seat so that I could see, as I ran a stop sign and was hit broadside in the little Toyota we were driving.  The Mercury Cougar that hit us was later reported to have been traveling in excess of 60 miles per hour.  Drunks seem to never be the victims in auto accidents and Jim was no exception. He walked away without a scratch, once he woke up from the stupor.  I went through the windshield and broke my neck.  I remember getting up and dragging the front bumper of the Cougar out of the road as I went around first to the passenger side and made sure the little old lady was okay and then around to the driver's side to check on the little old man.  He had hit the steering wheel pretty hard, but was able to speak.   What happened next was like the opening scene from the movie, The Gladiator.  When I saw that movie I was awestruck at how it looked exactly as I had seen it all those years ago.  I walked out into a field of tall grass.  The sun was shining.  The wind was blowing softly through my hair, as I reached out with both hands to lightly touch the tops of the waving strands of grass.  Everything was silent and then it went white.   I woke up in a hospital, unable to move.  I was paralyzed and Jim was telling me that he didn't want the doctors to know who I was because he was still on the run from the army.  I remember two doctors standing over me, x-rays in hand, telling me I would never walk again because my neck was broken in three places.  The only hope I would have of even sitting up in a wheel chair was if they fused a steel rod up through my spine.  They obviously didn't know that I was just a child.  I had gotten my first marriage proposal at the age of 12 and had always looked a lot older.   I laid there thinking, “This cannot be my life.  I can't be paralyzed.  This can't be happening to me.”  I suspect most people go through that denial, but I just wouldn't give in to the “reality”.  I had learned from previous efforts that you can't give up.  No matter how big and bad the odds are stacked against you, you just absolutely cannot give up.  Being young and ignorant, I didn't know what these doctors could legally do to me, but I wasn't going to take my chances of waking up and finding that some surgery had left me incapable of ever getting past this paralysis.  I believed I could heal myself, but not if I had a metal rod installed through my spine.   Jim and his friends from the band (Jim said the band's name was Credence Clearwater Revival, but I find that hard to believe in retrospect) came and whisked me out in a wheel chair without telling anyone.  I spent what seemed an eternity at his parent's home unable to walk and only able to drag myself across the room, but I dragged myself a lot.  I wouldn't call my family.  I didn't think I was welcome there anymore.  Jim's parents didn't want to be held responsible for what their son's actions had caused and didn't want the army to find their son, so they were happy to hide me and my affliction.  My grandfather, Floyd Norris, through a miraculous chain of events, somehow found out where I was and got me to a chiropractor who soon had me walking again.   Because I wasn't even old enough to be in a bar, I couldn't work anywhere for very long because I couldn't show the management my driver's license for the employment forms.  After the paralysis I often collapsed and doing that just once with a tray of flaming cherries jubilee was enough for me to think that I needed to find some other sort of work.  I didn't have a high school diploma and was underage but had heard you could get a worker's permit.  Arch Moore was replaced by Governor Rockefeller who decided to replace all of the state's planes with helicopters, but none of the state's pilots, including my father could fly helicopters so my father was without a job.   More as an effort to avenge my father's dismissal from the aviation team I applied for an opening in the state's Department of Business and Economic Community Development and got it.  I quickly advanced through the ranks and became Governor Rockefeller's secretary's secretary.  My job was to investigate officials that Jay would be dealing with and put together photos and bios so that he would look good.  What didn't look good, when the word got out in the press, was the fact that a 15 year old high school drop out had risen through the ranks of the W.Va. government to governor's aide when there were far more “qualified” men and women vying for the position.   1977 was the first time I was in the newspaper as an adult.  Being born the fifth living generation had gotten the family into the newspaper in 1961.     The press made a big fuss of the fact that I moonlighted at a Greek restaurant and insinuated that I might be the veiled belly dancer, Little Egypt.  My boss told me to dress as frumpy as possible that day and wear glasses so that people wouldn't think I was hired for my looks.   Had I known that I was on this learning quest to deal with people issues I think I might have stuck it out and played that hand to the end, but at the time, I thought these challenges were about accomplishments and proving worthiness.  I had proven that I could step out of a wheel chair, out of the smoke filled bars and into the governor's office (and not just any governor, but a Rockefeller) and rise to the top.  I wasn't old enough to run for election.  That would have to wait.   Riding high on this wave of worthiness I drove Jim to his mother's home in Tampa and dropped him and his trailer full of belongings off in the front yard.  I didn't have enough money to get back to my job in W.Va. so I looked through the want ads to find waitress work that would get me enough gas to get back to the job that I was told would still be mine upon my return, despite the media craze that had erupted.   What happened next was one of those near misses.  It is a juncture in your life that is probably meant to happen, but gets thwarted.  I walked into “Our Place” bar on Ben T. Davis beach and was hired on the spot.  20 years later I would discover that my daughter's fiancée (Daniel Capiro) was being raised by the waitresses in that bar and I would have been raising him had I shown up for work, but I didn't.   I had come so far and I just wasn't willing to go back to even a short term job where my ass was constantly being patted and pinched.  Instead, I drove across town to a luncheon spot and was, again, hired on the spot, but I had to have frumpy shoes for the job.  All my feet could ever stand were sandals if I had to wear shoes at all.  I walked across the street to the Zayre's store and overheard a man saying that he needed to hire a clerk to run the automotive department.  That sounded like a new challenge and didn't require stifling shoes, so I asked for and was given the job.  I would work for a couple of weeks, collect my checks and then head back to West Virginia to see where that road would take me.  I never went back to West Virginia.   I was living in a Datsun Pickup truck with a camper on the back.  My cat, Pearlie Mae, who I had had since I was 8, lived with me so I had to park where it was cool for her during the day, but the days were getting hotter and she was going to die in that truck if I didn't find somewhere for her to live.  My manager's name was Michael Eugene Murdock and I spent more time dodging his advances than I did stocking shelves.  He was leaving his wife and moving into an apartment.  I asked if my cat could stay there during the day and I would pick her up at night.  He was happy to trade sexual favours for the cat's room and board.  I hated him.  At night I would pick up my cat, do what I had to do to cover her “rent” and then she and I would back the truck up against a building somewhere so that no one could surprise us by opening the back hatch.   I would wash my hair in the bathroom of the nearest gas station at night after they had closed for the evening.  I tried to maintain my independence for as long as possible, but finally gave in to the pressures of needing a roof over my head as well as the cat's  and moved in with him.   Despite hating Mike, I married him at the age of 17 and gave birth to our daughter at the age of 19.   My mother knew that I was living with a man who was not my husband.  She had just enough psychology in college to believe that if she suggested I marry the man, I would rebel and leave him, which was the result she was really hoping to get.     I thought it was really what she wanted me to do.   I had felt such a loss in the trust that our former friendship had enjoyed and I believed that if I married him, as she suggested I should, then I could be worthy of her love again.  I would do this to please her.  She had no idea how I felt about him.  I stayed with him for eight years, because I was raised to believe that marriage is for life.  When I couldn't take it any more and divorced him, my mother finally revealed that she never liked him and never wanted me to marry him, but had thought that by suggesting it I would run.   Mike was very physically abusive, but clever enough to hurt me in ways that were not visible to the casual observer.  It was again, my sick way of validating my belief that I was not worthy.  Meanwhile my growing and learning self decided to apply for a job at the Tampa Boat Mart in 1984.  The job paid better money than I had made elsewhere and required an interview and an IQ test.  I was fascinated by the opportunity to have my intelligence measured and probably applied based on that aspect more than any other.   The owner's wife did the interview and test and said that I had registered as a genius.  Bolstered by this, I told her I would take the job, but wanted 50% more than the job had offered.  She balked but I could tell that she wanted me for the position, so I made a deal with her.  I would work for the first 6 months at the price in the paper, but at the end of six months she would advance me to the salary that I requested, because I explained that I would be so irreplaceable to her, or else let me go.  She agreed.   I asked her to lay out everything that she could possibly think of as my job description.  When she did, since I was salaried, I asked if it mattered how long I worked to get it all done.  She said if I could do it in four hours that was fine and if it took me ten, that was fine too, but I wasn't getting overtime.  In no time I had automated the process so that I could do it in just a couple hours a day.  This freed up my time to work on a business that I believed was going to be my key to financial freedom.  I left the Tampa Boat Mart in 1985.     This was me working at the Neptune and S. Dale Mabry Hwy Radiant Oil gas station owned by Joe Capitano in 1982.  He had offered me my own station out on Gunn Hwy, but I got the Boat Mart job instead.           At the age of 19 I met and began dating Jack Donald Lewis.  Everyone said he had made his money in illegal drugs, but he told me it was from cutting the axels off trailers for re use by the company and selling the boxes.  While at the bank one day a loan officer told him she had a $20,000.00 mortgage that was in default that she would sell for $2000.00 if someone would just take it off her hands.  Don couldn't read or write above a first grade level, but he could understand getting something for ten cents on the dollar.  He asked her to make a copy of the documents and he brought them to me with the story.  Thinking there must be a catch, he asked me to find out what it was.  I couldn't find one.  If we bought the mortgage for 2000.00 and the people started paying us on the 20,000.00 balance we would be getting a great return on our money.  If they didn't pay and we foreclosed, we would get 20,000.00 at the foreclosure sale or we might even get the house and be able to sell it for more.   We did it and we made more than 20,000.00.  I knew that this was my next big challenge and even then knew that it was just a stepping stone to allowing me to do something far more important than make money, but I didn't know what that was and didn't waste much time thinking about it.  Instead I was calling every bank and loan office in a 5 county area asked to see their bad loans.  They thought I was crazy and I got a lot of resistance at first, but they soon learned that I wouldn't betray their confidence and I would quickly and easily turn their bad loans back into cash for reinvestment.  The Boat Mart gave me the regular paycheck I needed to grow the real estate business so that I never had to take money out of this exponentially growing pot of gold.   I worked crazy hours.  I worked every waking hour.  I divorced the man I hated and lived in a huge house on Lemon Street with lots of rooms that I rented out so that I didn't have to touch my investments for living expenses.  The business had grown to well over a one million dollar value.   I drove an old Impala that I had paid 100.00 for, bought all my clothes at Goodwill and had taken on some investors who were happy to get 12% return on their cash and let me make the difference for growing my portfolio.  It was a man's world but I knew how to play the game.  I started a business called C.Stairs, Investments and told people that I was Mr. Stairs' secretary.  They wanted to deal with a man.  I made one up for them.  I was so convincing that for years after Don Lewis and I married people called him Mr. Stairs because they just assumed I had married my boss.  I had bought into the belief that as a woman I was unworthy of being treated the same as a man.   I am a little hazy on the year, but I was about 27 (1988) when I was driving a drunk, named Bill Benjamin, home from a bar.  My car had stalled and he got out to push it out of the road as I steered.  It was in the early morning hours and a woman who had fallen asleep at the wheel careened into the back of my 1983 Blood Red Volkswagen Rabbit and pinned the drunk to my bumper, while hitting with enough force to give me a concussion and to bend the door frame where my head hit it.   I woke up in the hospital again, but this time with a Viet Nam vet suffering from post traumatic stress who was screaming bloody murder if I tried to leave the room.  I stayed by his side constantly, even though I only knew him as someone I had bought a rug from a few days before.  Both of his legs had been crushed and he was in a lot of pain.  I felt guilty because it was my car he was pushing out of the road.  I had to do something to feel guilty.  It wasn't in my paradigm to go without that cloud of unworthiness hanging over my head.  I was so caught up in Bill Benjamin's drama, that I didn't realize that I didn't know who or where I was.   My secretary (Anne McQueen) found me in the hospital.  I had been missing for days so she had done the obvious and called everywhere until she located a Jane Doe.  Was my name Jane?  When she gets me on the phone she asks where my daughter is.  I have a daughter?  A baby?  “Oh my God, where's the baby?” my mind screams.  Sensing my fear she tells me that maybe my daughter had been living with my husband.  I have a husband?  Then who is this man?  All of a sudden I am aware that I don't know anything about whom or where I am.  I just can't describe that.  I have seen some films since then that try to address what amnesia is like, and nothing really conveys what that fear is like.   She takes me home and there are people living there who say that I own the house.  I walk into an office full of file cabinets, papers and ringing phones and I do not recognize any of it.  I answer the phone and people are asking me questions and giving me information that means absolutely nothing to me.  I spend hours reading every file, looking at photos, meeting my daughter, for what seems like the first time, talking to my secretary and one of the women who lives in my house (Mary Young) to try and reconstruct my life.   Over the next weeks and months I get a handle on it and things start coming back to me, but I never know that something is forgotten until I try to fill in a blank spot or until some revelation comes to me as a memory and I sit there wondering, “Was that in this life?”  At the time I thought it was a very unfortunate setback, but in retrospect it just seems to be another challenge that I posed to myself to see if I could rise to above it.   This time I was betrayed by my own memory.   I discover that when I touch people I see their lives, or what I imagine to be their lives.  I am always confused, still, when I get a rush of feeling, if it is theirs, or if it was mine from long ago, just now surfacing.  One of the most dramatic instances of this happened years later when a volunteer (Crazy Gary) introduced me to his room mate.  I shook the smiling man's hand and immediately fell to my knees sobbing.  The despair was overwhelming.  I was embarrassed by the incident and brushed it off to both of them as just being over worked, but the next day the room mate put the barrel of a shotgun in his mouth and blew his brains all over the ceiling.  Crazy Gary told me he knew that his room mate was sad, but had no idea of the depth of his despair.  I knew.   Don and I married on October 10, 1991 at ten minutes after 10 am.  We lost one million dollars in our assets to settling with his wife and one and a half million in assets to settle with his girlfriend, Pam, who was trying to have him brought down on Racketeering charges so that she could keep our 3 million that was in her name.  I had always allowed Don to hold our money because I believed he would give me what was owed if I were ever to ask for it.  There were a lot of real estate transactions for Pam and her trust in 1991-1996, but they began to taper off and 2004 was the last entry I found for her doing business in Hillsborough County.  She had satisfied a mortgage made by our ex secretary Luba Myck.  I knew Richard Dery was in Camp Pam, but didn't know Luba was.  1995 appears to be her last actions in Pasco County, with one suspicious document between her and Jack Martin.     Since Don could barely read or write he didn't know that she had put the properties in her name, or so he said.  What had been 5 million dollars worth of my work was now reduced to half that, but I could rebuild it and did.  I had learned how to negotiate the best deals and had learned how to do all of our foreclosures, tenant evictions and get people out of the bankruptcy courts when they ran there for protection.   I learned by going to the court house and reading every file I could lay my hands on, copying the language and forms the attorney's used and then setting up charts that showed me what the appropriate times between filings were.  I spent  hours in the law library reading cases and making copies of those that were particularly pertinent to my cases.  I sat in on every hearing that the judges would let me sit in on.  I befriended several of the judges who would afterwards give me their summary of what had just happened.  A lot of the judges did not like that I represented myself pro se and would  hold me to a much tougher standard than the attorney's were being held to, but none could make me give up.   When attorneys were hired to combat me they usually fell into the trap of underestimating my preparedness.  In all these years I only ever lost one case, and I won it on appeal.  Even the judges who had initially tried to run me off ended up being very supportive and would often compliment my ability over that of my licensed peers, which didn't make me very popular among members of that profession.   I was a 30 year old multi millionaire real estate tycoon by anyone's definition, and undefeated in the legal arena.  Everything I touched turned to gold, but I still felt unworthy.  What was next, a billionaire?  Would that make me feel better?   This wasn't working.  Maybe if I could change the world.  Maybe then I would be worthy.  Maybe then I would say, I'm OK.  I belong.  I can be at peace.   Consciously I began looking for a way to give back to God all that He had given to me.  Unconsciously I was setting myself up to fail and validate that long held belief that I was unworthy... or win and prove once and for all that I was worthy.   All you have to do is wave the wand of intention to bring it into your life.  Before I knew what happened we were rescuing cats from fur farms, drug lords, circuses and unprepared pet owners.  I was writing books on exotic cat care and my articles were being published in magazines and newsletters all over the country.  There were more than 200 animals depending on me for support and the IRS said I couldn't call it an expense, despite the fact that it was costing me about 300,000.00 a year, so I called it a non profit in 1995.   Two years later, my husband has disappeared off the face of the earth leaving me as the accused of an unknown crime, and all of my assets are seized by the courts upon a petition by the children of his former wife, and my secretary, my only girlfriend for the past 17 years, who I discover has put nearly 600,000.00 worth of my assets in her maiden name and changed my husband's insurance policy to make her the owner of a one million dollar life insurance policy, just four months before his disappearance.  She tells his children that Don and I were having marital trouble and suggests that they appoint her as conservator of his estate.     His estate!  I don't think anyone knew better than Anne that Don spent all of his time in dumpsters and cruising neighborhoods after yard sales to bring home van load after van load of trash.  I had been trying to get him to an Alzheimer's specialist but Don said Anne was telling him that I was trying to have him committed.  This can't be happening.  This can't be my life.  Sound familiar?   The courts only allow me to use 125,000.00 of my income each year, for the next 5 years, to support the cats, because the courts are “preserving the estate” in case my husband wanders back into town.  In the first years after his disappearance I discover, through the private detective I hire to find him, that my husband, the man I have adored since I was 19 has had a string of girlfriends, mistresses and even prostitutes.  Women come out of the wood work claiming that Don told them he would leave everything to them or their illegitimate children by him.  I discover that the love we shared was a lie.  I was betrayed.   Our expenses are far more than double what the courts will allow me to touch and there is no where for the animals to go.  I get to learn a whole new set of skills in running a non profit, but I haven't chosen just any charity.  No.  I chose the one type of charity that sees less than 1% of all donated dollars.  I had to pick an animal charity.  People give more money to art than to animals.  In retrospect, this would only be a good test of my worthiness if I could overcome insurmountable odds, right?   The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, PeTA, brought me a video clip of a lion being beaten senseless with a baseball bat while restrained within the confines of a small transport cage.  They explained that this abuse had been video taped undercover and sent as evidence to USDA, but that when the perpetrator had told his USDA inspector that this was considered a standard training method for big cats nothing had been done to stop him.  The question was posed to me asking if this was, in fact, a routinely accepted practice.  In front of all three major television stations I said that the sad fact is that this sort of brutality is frequently visited upon these innocent animals by people who have USDA's stamp of approval, but that it was inhumane and USDA was negligent in their unwillingness to enforce the animal welfare act that my tax dollars were paying them to implement.   A few weeks later I was served with a summons.  In disbelief I read the case style:   The United States of America versus Carole Lewis.  Being bludgeoned into unconsciousness with a bed rail all those years ago did not take my breath away like reading these few words.  My country.  The one I had pledged allegiance to along with Captain Kangaroo each morning of my earliest remembered years.  The country I sang songs about, even when I wasn't in school.  The one that bore the flag; the mere sight of which could raise goose flesh on my skin with pride and adoration.  My country had not only abandoned me, it was attacking me, and it was doing so because I spoke out against cruelty.   Some pencil pushing bureaucrat was going to show me to keep my opinions about her doing her job to myself and she was in a position to levy the entire nation against me…or so it seemed.  Maybe America did have tanks and jet fighters and nuclear weapons, but I had the truth on my side and was not going to take this lying down.  Our supporter list had grown to about 3000 people and I sent out a newsletter detailing what the charges against me were and why I felt the USDA had taken this action.  More than 2000 people wrote in on my behalf and for a long time I didn't hear from the USDA.   Then I found out how they work.  If they don't have a legitimate claim then they make an accusation and never follow through on it.  This way they can always point to the accusation and say that they cannot comment on pending litigation.  They never have to prove their case.  I would never be able to clear my name of the ridiculous and unfounded charges unless I took control.  So I did.  I learned all I could about how to represent myself in a Federal lawsuit and I called for a final hearing.  I was stalled several times and when the day my “day in court” arrived, I got a call from the Federal judge who said that the USDA had decided to dismiss their suit against me.  Then he asked if I would please let my supporters know to quit sending him mail and calling his office.  With such a victory you would have thought I would have felt vindicated, but all I felt was betrayed.   Over the next five years the court appointed co conservator and attorneys ate away at my estate, in the name of preserving it, until there was only a fraction of it left.  Then they declare my husband dead, when there is nothing left under the court's control to take, and tell me to have a nice life.  Meanwhile the cats are costing nearly half a million dollars a year to care for and the nation is in a recession following the stock market crash that sends everyone scrambling into real estate as the only safe investment.  Having that much money diverted into real estate by people who know nothing of the business drives the price of property through the ceiling.  The government steps in to try and pull the economy back up onto its feet by lowering the interest rates and giving loans to anyone who will take them at rates lower than they have been in my lifetime, makes my niche a little difficult.  I loan at 18% and buy distressed properties at a fraction of the cost and then resell them.  With all of the stock money now in real estate there are no deals and almost no one has to borrow at 18%.   Stress has made me fat and irritable and I drive to the Keys every two years to spend the weekend crying in a hammock on suicide watch until it's time to get back to business Monday morning.  I learn how to raise money by begging; something I wouldn't do when I was living out of garbage cans as a 15 year old run away, but I have to do it now for the cats.  I learn how to manage people and put together a team of volunteers that become world renown for their ability to work together.  I run through a string of low life boyfriends that continue to validate my belief that I am not worthy of the love of a good man.  I lose 70 pounds so that I can be more effective at getting out the message that exotic cats don't make good pets.   The last 20 of those pounds were the hardest and after exhausting every diet known to man, I tried hypnotherapy.  I was just starting to read about spirituality, healing, past lives and was willing to try anything.  I remember that first session like it was yesterday.  In the meditation the therapist asks me to walk down the beach and notice a little girl sitting by the shore.  He tells me to go up to her.  I don't want to.  He urges me on.  I don't want to.  I finally give in and of course, she is me, about 5 years old, full of innocence, big blue eyes and white hair.  He tells me to hold her and to tell her that I will never betray her again.  I will protect her from anything and anyone else who tries to hurt her.  I made a pact.   My life changed again.  Suddenly I find myself asking, “Is this my life? Can this really be my life?  I didn't think I deserved a life this good.”  Enter, Howie Baskin.  He's a brilliant 52 year old bachelor who makes my heart skip a beat.  He is the kindest, most loving, genuinely wonderful spirit I have ever encountered on the planet.  He personifies integrity.  He is way out of my league which, of course, just adds to my desire to have his love.  To Bask-In his love.  (I just couldn't have made this up!) But he is more than just the next level higher of a challenge.  He is both my reward for reaching this level of understanding and my partner in learning to love mankind.  Becoming one with him is my first step in becoming One with all humanity.   I am reminded of a Bible principle that says man's greatest love for God is expressed in being a living sacrifice.  Nothing defines a living sacrifice better than Howie.  His friends all tell me that he is the most wonderful, loving person in their life.  He lives for others.  Watching him, marveling in who he is and how he is, causes me to look inwardly and challenges me daily to be more understanding and more loving.  He says his goal in life is to help me love people the way I love animals.  I thought I took on big scary goals, but this man knows no fear!   Now things are looking better than they ever have before.  I have finally paid the piper in this lesson of betrayal.  I had betrayed myself when I accepted the notion that I was not worthy and the even more erroneous notion that I could achieve worthiness if I overcame the obstacles that I invited into my own path.  I was going to deal with being betrayed by the people I trusted, and loved the most, until I understood. My fortune cookie tonight even confirmed the presence of God in the statement, “You never hesitate to take on the toughest challenges.”  It was as if He said, “I am here with you and this is just my humorous way of letting you know that I am as real as the piece of paper in your hand.”   The real estate business is recovering.  The sanctuary managed to break even on operating expenses, if not capital expenses, for the first time ever last year (2003).  I have been elected as the Vice President of the Association of Sanctuaries and am serving on its Board of Directors.  (From the future: I don't remember I have the opportunity to influence legislation that will protect wild animals and the physical and moral support of a team of family, volunteers and the man I admire most in the world to help me achieve those goals.   What I notice about each of these hurdles is that I was focused on the subject matter. While I may have been successful in dealing with that aspect, what I failed, almost universally, to do was to learn from the interaction with the people.  In most cases I saw the people as the problem and bulldozing them aside was my methodology.  It seems abundantly clear that I will continue being presented with challenges that are stressful and painful until I pay the piper on this issue of loving people other than those in my innermost circle.   I wonder how I could go about this learning in a less painful and ineffective manner?  Maybe it's time to put on the fuzzy purple blanket (to give myself the warm fuzzy I have longed for), the cloak of spirituality, and take a look at reality from a different, non judgmental, perspective.   I've been writing my story since I was able to write, but when the media goes to share it, they only choose the parts that fit their idea of what will generate views.  If I'm going to share my story, it should be the whole story.  The titles are the dates things happened. If you have any interest in who I really am please start at the beginning of this playlist: http://savethecats.org/   I know there will be people who take things out of context and try to use them to validate their own misconception, but you have access to the whole story.  My hope is that others will recognize themselves in my words and have the strength to do what is right for themselves and our shared planet.     You can help feed the cats at no cost to you using Amazon Smile! Visit BigCatRescue.org/Amazon-smile   You can see photos, videos and more, updated daily at BigCatRescue.org   Check out our main channel at YouTube.com/BigCatRescue   Music (if any) from Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com) This video is for entertainment purposes only and is my opinion.

Creating a Culture of Consent Through Intimacy Direction in Theater is the title of Mary Young's masterclass. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

While many people might be thinking about the importance of physical health in the New Year, many might forget about the importance of one's mental health. In a time where mental health struggles, especially in the workplace, are at an all-time high, episode 35 of FountainCast is the perfect place to get your mind on track for the rest of 2021. Paige got to talk with two mental health professionals, Mary Young and Suzu Solkin-Henderson, from FH Chamber member, SonderMind. The trio discussed ways you can prioritize mental health this year, and how employers can assist their staff during a difficult time at work due to COVID-19. Take a listen today!

Good Morning, Colorado, you’re listening to the Daily Sun-Up. It’s Thursday December 3rd, and we’re feeling lucky to start the day with you.   Today, we’re focused on lawmakers who are devoting $20 million to help improve internet connectivity for students, and how education leaders are grateful, but say the money won’t solve the root of the issue.   We’ve also released another bonus episode, featuring insight from one of our readers on what they’ve learned while living through a global pandemic in Colorado.    But before we begin, let’s go back in time with some Colorado history adapted from historian Derek R Everett’s book “Colorado Day by Day”:   Today, we’re going back to December 3rd 2011 when Virgil Harms, an octogenarian farmer and square dance aficionado celebrated his 50 years of service as the mayor of Paoli, This is a record unmatched in Colorado History.   Now, our feature story.    On Wednesday State lawmakers passed a bill that could help get more students connected to the internet, providing $20 million in grants for districts to broaden access to their students at a time when the internet has become the main mode of learning.    But the dollars, which are part of a state stimulus package at the center of a special legislative session this week, won’t ensure every young Coloradan has a reliable internet connection.   The investment is widely viewed -- by lawmakers, educators and education advocates -- as a short-term fix. It’s nowhere near enough money to address the root of the access problem: a lack of adequate infrastructure to sustain a quality internet connection for every Colorado family.   Instead, the $20 million in House Bill 1001 is focused on “giving access and infrastructure in as quick a way as possible,” according to state Rep. Mary Young, a Greeley Democrat and one of the bill’s prime sponsors,    Colorado Sun reporter Erica Breunlin is joining us today to talk more about what this means for students. Erica, thank you for joining us. Can you start by giving an overview of the bill? So, how exactly will districts be able to use the grant dollars to improve internet connections for their students?  And can you talk more about why lawmakers included this in the stimulus package? Grants will be distributed through an application process administered by the Colorado Department of Education. Districts with a high percentage of kids who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch -- a federal indicator of poverty -- and whose communities have significant gaps in internet access - will get priority.   A main goal of the legislation is to fund internet connections robust enough for all the members of a household to be engaged in their coursework at the same time.    And as Erica said, for some districts, that might mean investing in more hotspots. Others may want to purchase a subscription to an internet service provider or even build their own antenna system.   Finally, here are a few stories you should know about today:   Colorado’s three-day special legislative session finished on Wednesday with lawmakers watering down one of the most contentious parts of their $200 million-plus package aimed at providing economic relief during the coronavirus crisis.  - The ACLU of Colorado on Wednesday asked a judge to issue an emergency order reducing Colorado’s prison population in the wake of four inmate deaths over two days linked to coronavirus.  - Federal prosecutors said Wednesday they will not seek the death penalty against a man accused of killing three people and injuring nine others at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado in 2015. - Beacon Guidebooks’ upcoming guide to Buffalo Pass will not include names of runs and locations created by Steamboat Powdercats, which argued the titles were “trade secrets.”   For more information on all of these stories, visit our website, www.coloradosun.com.    The Colorado Sun is non-partisan and completely independent. We're always dedicated to telling the in-depth stories we need today more than ever. And The Sun is supported by readers and listeners like you.   Right now, you can head to ColoradoSun.com and become a member. Starting at $5 per month for a basic membership and if you bump it up to $20 per month, you’ll get access to our exclusive politics and outdoors newsletters. Thanks for starting your morning with us and don’t forget to tune in again tomorrow.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We've arrived at our destination - the end of Season 1. Along the way you've heard authentic stories and voices. This episode is no different. We hear Mary's story alongside another story of a young willing heart and pray for leaders of all. Thanks for driving Down Camp Road.

Mary Young is the founder of her namesake lingerie brand, Mary Young. In her fourth-year fashion design thesis, Mary created modern lingerie that championed every woman and lifestyle, not just the dated pinup archetype of lingerie. This idea was so well received Mary knew she needed to really bring her thesis into the world, with Mary Young.  In doing so, Mary has not only created beautiful intimates to be enjoyed by all shapes and sizes, but she has created a community known as the 'Self Love Club', building conversation around body image, self-love and acceptance. Mary Young also donates $1 from every item sold to a new women-focused organization each year. In this episode, we talk about the universality of body image issues and how Mary Young is addressing them, the psychology of having a namesake brand, how to network and share your "thing" the right way, and how Canadian and US shoppers differ.  I hope you enjoy!  www.maryyoung.com @itsmaryyoung @pickherbrainpodcast

In this month's Halloween special we are talking with Charli Carver the Business Development & Cemetery Services Manager for Brompton Cemetery, one of the fantastic green spaces we maintain. Charli tell us about what it’s like to work in the amazing cemetery, the history of this beautiful space, the stories of the people buried there and some strange encounters she’s had. Come and explore Brompton Cemetery with us, a space for both the living and the dead.Support the show (https://www.royalparks.org.uk/support-the-parks)

Malcolm Macdonald spoke to nutritionists Karen Stewart and Mary Young along with beef specialist Robert Ramsay about planning feed supplies for the winter. Karen, Mary and Robert give us a run down of what farmers need to be thinking about as cows come in for the winter and start to be fed.  How to produce a feed budget, what the options are if you are short of fodder, how to manage cow condition, how to use poor forage, these and other tips and insights are covered in the podcast.

In this podcast Malcolm Macdonald talked to SAC Nutritionist Mary Young and Norvite Technical Director David McClelland about minerals in ruminant rations. This included an overview of the major minerals which are supplemented in ruminant rations and these benefit anima health. David then outlines how minerals and vitamins are defined and can be used in an organic context. Mary and David both outline case studies on specific deficiencies and how they were rectified.

Today's guest is hands down one of the most inspiring people I have ever met. Her journey began in a small-town, or shall I say village, 5 hours outside of Toronto, where she encountered wild animals more often than human beings. Needless to say, when she made her move to the big city to pursue her fashion dreams, the transition wasn't easy. Not only was she faced with an overwhelming culture shock, but she also battled lingering health issues related to a concussion she received back in high school, which threatened her ability to pursue her dreams. Faced with the possibility of quitting fashion school to focus on her health, she ignored the advice of her doctors and discovered her own method of healing focused primarily on self-love and mindset. This fashion entrepreneur truly embodies the essence of both resilience and authenticity which cascades right into her brand where she inspires and empowers women of all shapes and sizes through self-love and acceptance. My guest today is lingerie designer Mary Young. She stopped by to discuss some of the key challenges she faced in her life so far and how she's used those experiences to become a great entrepreneur, build her brand, and champion a movement that is beyond selling underwear.

Mary Lynn Young delivers an inspiring, motivational, and informative conversation for the first episode of Season 2 of the Level Up Your Life Podcast with Jackie Capers-Brown.Mary is a pastor at the Perpetual Praise Ministries located in Columbia, SC. She ministers with her husband Roy Young. Mary is a registered nurse and the business owner of an in-home health care service. She is a nurturer and builder of people with purpose, power and praise. She cheers on the underdog.In our conversation, she opens up to reveal how fear caused her to compare herself to others and she acknowledges feeling insecure in her new roles and how she manages feelings of insecurity.She speaks her truth to power in a way that will encourage the minds and hearts of listeners to believe in themselves even if they are experiencing fear and wrestling with insecurity.She encourages us to nurture faith and hope in our heart even more so during the challenging times we are facing with the reality of COVID-19.Mary eagerly embraces her vision, voice, and value as a wife, pastor and business owner. Some Questions I Asked What is it about journaling that appeals to you and how does it benefit you? What fuels your passion for leveling up your faith and ministry? What does living fearlessly mean to you? What rituals or practices do you engage in on a regular basis to help you stay grounded in your personal power and faith? What is the one thing you’ve learned about yourself and the power of faith during the COVID-19 pandemic? What are a few things that listeners can do to nurture hope and faith in their heart? and many more Some Lessons You’ll Learn How having passion for the underdog can accelerate the development of your faith The importance of the process of “becoming” to “being”The mindset necessary to overcome the fear of what other people think The importance of maintaining a morning ritual to start your day What you should do to prepare and position yourself for future promotions Why watering down the truth of our reality only diminishes our personal power The benefits of being a forward thinker as a leader …and much more Contact Mary YoungFacebook Contact Jackie Capers-Brown WebsiteFacebookLinkedinAmazon BooksJackie's CoursesMusic Credit:Purple Planet Positive Motivation Subscribe to Podcast: Apple Itunes | Spotify | Amazon TuneIn | iHeartRadio Support the show (https://paypal.me/jackiecapersbrown?locale.x=en_US)

Episode 2.7 - Listen to Some ScientistsThis week, the gang talks about the lastest scandal concerning the Weld County Commissioners, local Covid testing updates, and Mary Young's opponent (or not?). Follow us on Twitter @WeldActuallyThis podcast is powered by Pinecast.

At 16 years old, this week’s guest suffered a serious concussion playing rugby that left her unable to live the life she wanted for 7 years. Doctors were pushing medication on her and advised her to avoid all physical activity or any activity that might raise her heart rate. Eventually, she started consulting a different doctor and decided she was going to try a different route, at 23 years old she got her life back and experienced the incredible power of the mind, positive thinking and movement. This shift was right around the time she was working on her thesis at Ryerson University in 2014. Mary decided to focus her project on creating a brand of women’s intimates that challenged the narrative of what society deems beautiful. 5 years later, that school project has grown into a successful business impacting the lives of women around North America. Rather than reshaping, her garments are all about embracing our natural shapes and being confident with who we are. More than garments, the Mary Young brand is a feeling, a movement, and a community. Www.maryyoung.ca IG: @itsmaryyoung

Episode 20 - Run For OfficeRun for office, volunteer, don't commit felonies - this great advice and much more on episode 20! Special guest-host Elyse Casey joins us for a report on the swearing in of new HD50 Rep. Dr. Mary Young and we give a rundown of the busy 4th of July week!Subscribe, like, rate, and review.Follow us on Twitter @WeldActuallyNotes and References This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Episode 18 - Return of the 'CastFor our triumphant return, Trisha and Rob are joined by producer Casey (filling in for future city councilman Tommy). We dive right back into spill reports and talk long-term effects of unregulated oil, go over the changes that will be coming to Weld Actually (send feedback please!), and discuss the process of electing Dr. Mary Young to fill the HD50 vacancy.Subscribe, like, rate, and review.Follow us on Twitter @WeldActuallyNotes and References This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Transcript Thanks for joining us again on Like Driving in Fog, an emotional healing podcast. I’m Mary Young, and today’s episode is about shame. That’s a hard one for me. I was thinking the other day about shame, because I was sharing what has been - in my opinion - my deepest secret with a friend of mine whose opinion I really respect. And I was afraid that the secret would change my friend’s opinion of me. The truth of the matter is in the 30 years that I’ve known this woman, I have never seen her be judgmental, but she’s from an older generation and I was afraid that she would judge me. probably because she’s from my parents’ generation, and my mom would have judged me in a heartbeat if I had shared this, and at the same time she would’ve been telling everybody how she wasn’t judging me at all. The thing is, I needed to face my fear that this woman might judge me. I needed to face my fear of sharing the truth about my past. I mentioned this briefly in my episode about acceptance, and how sometimes you have to accept things you don’t want to accept -- things you wish weren’t true. I wish that I had never been seduced by the woman in my past. I wish that I had not been so vulnerable and so needy, and that she had not been such a predator, but I can’t change my past. I can wish that Jack France had not been so happy to be around little girls, but again, I can’t change that past so I had to learn to accept it. And I also had to learn, in both cases, that the shame I was carrying didn’t belong to me. That one was hard. It took a long time to get that about Jack France, and it took a long time to get that about Sally. If you have been abused, or molested, or raped, or otherwise traumatized, you may also be struggling with shame. And I just want you to hear this, if you don’t hear anything else in this episode... You do not need to be ashamed. You have done nothing to be ashamed of. The shame belongs on the perpetrator, on the violator. And one of the great tragedies of sexual abuse - especially incest - is that the violators have managed to twist things around so that the person who was violated carries the shame. That. Is. Wrong. Very, very wrong. And it can take you some time to come to grips with that, and to believe that about yourself, and to accept that about yourself. You can come back and listen to this podcast as many times as you need to while you are working on reinforcing that belief in your own mind. How did I stop carrying that shame?  Therapy.   You know by now that therapy is my number one answer to almost every question. How did you do this, Mary? Therapy. How did you to come to grips with that, Mary? Therapy. But it’s not just going to therapy. People go to therapy for years and don’t get better. What it takes to get better is doing the work. Whatever homework the therapist gives you, whatever journaling you need to do... doing the work is how you get better. Doing the work is how you become emotionally healthy. Yes, I can say therapy as a generic answer, but the reason therapy worked for me is because I had a counselor who said you need to do this, and I was able to talk to the counselor and share with the counselor these experiences that I would have been ashamed to say to anybody.  And my counselor listened, and accepted me. And instead of saying shame on you she said I’m sorry you had to go through that. Both of my counselors stated this -- Tricia in Texas, Tracy here in Georgia -- they listened without judging. They listened with understanding, and they affirmed that there was no shame to me, no reason for shame. And if you hear that enough, then you start to internalize it. But here’s the other part of that. Telling your counselor -- hey, that’s as safe as you can hope to get. If you have a good, ethical, responsible counselor, you’re going to get the same kind of responses I got. No judgment, no shaming, simply acceptance and maybe some sadness about what you’ve gone through. But you can’t spend the rest of your life in your counselor’s office (tempting as that may be sometimes). You will not get past the shame monster until you have faced it down, and defeated it in your own mind. And for me, the only way to do that was to share what I was ashamed of with other people. And yes, I can picture the look on your face, and I can hear your thoughts going what?! What?! What are you thinking Mary, there is no way. If people really knew me, they would reject me. If people really knew me, they would run screaming the other way. Folks, don’t sell your friends short. My closest friends are devout Christians, and the secrets I was most ashamed of are things that devout Christians are supposed to go: oh my gosh, no! I can’t know you anymore, because that’s so terrible, and that’s the reaction I was expecting, even though I knew my friends. And I knew my friends well enough to know they wouldn’t be that way, but that is still the reaction I was afraid I would get. So I used to wait until I knew somebody really well, and I would give them just a snippet. And then I would wait until I knew somebody else really well and I would give them just a snippet. And to really know what had gone on in my adult past, you had to be like a best friend. And certainly not family. there were only a couple family members I trusted enough to tell about Sally, and that was back what was going on before even recognized that it she was predatory and abusive. But I’ve never shared with the rest of the family, because my family lives to judge. That’s what it feels like anyway.  But my friends...the friends that I have in my life. They live to love, not to judge. And it reached the point, as I was getting more emotionally healthy, that I didn’t want to hide anymore. If you keep hiding your shame, then you always feel like you have a reason to be ashamed, and we don’t. We really don’t. It’s not our shame to carry. A couple years ago, I finally got brave enough to talk to Tracy - my current counselor -about Sally, and about the whole experience. I’d never talked in detail about it. I had mentioned it in passing, and I had realized at some point that she had been emotionally abusive, but I had never really sat down and looked at it with my counselor the way I’ve looked at so many other things in my life until a couple years ago, because I was ashamed. Tracy and I looked at it. We talked about it. She listened to me, I listened to her, and she helped me see similarities between what happened to me when I was four and what happened to me when I was 24. And after talking to her, I found the courage to email my close Christian friends and tell them about my experience with Sally. And you know what? Not one of those people judged me. Not one of those people said oh my gosh! That is so terrible! I just can’t be your friend anymore! No! They all responded with love, and with caring and concern, and that helps dissipate shame. Shame can’t thrive in a loving environment. Shame can only grow in darkness and judgment. Bring it out into the light. Shower it with love and acceptance, and shame goes away. Does that mean it’s easy to talk about? No. I am still dealing with the fact that I was emotionally abused. I am still dealing with the fact that I was gullible, and taken advantage of, that I was naïve and taken advantage of. But that’s not on me, that’s on the predator. I want you to remember:  it is not your shame. You were not the predator; you were the prey. It’s the person who perpetrates the shameful act; the person who betrays the trust; not the person who was hurt, that should be ashamed. Don’t be ashamed because somebody took advantage of your youth. Don’t be ashamed because somebody stole your innocence. Don’t be ashamed of the fact that you trusted somebody who should’ve been trustworthy. It’s not on you. It’s on the person that betrayed you, the person that hurt you. You have nothing to be judged for, and you don’t need to be judging yourself either. I know you’re not going to absorb all that in one podcast episode. You will probably hear me say this again in future episodes. You’ll probably read it in my book when I get my book done, but I’ll say it one more time before I call it a day: It is not our shame. All we did was trust people who were supposed to be trustworthy. There is nothing shameful in that. Keep telling yourself that, because it’s true. And because part of how you heal Is by giving up that shame, and realizing that you are not the violator. You are the one who was violated. You’re the one that was hurt, but you can heal. Really, you can heal.   Thanks for listening to Like Driving in Fog.   Until next time go make it a great week.

Links referenced in this podcast: Lauren Herschel's Twitter Feed Karen Lanser's blog post about Lauren's Twitter Feed----more---- Transcript: Thanks for joining us, and welcome once again to Like Driving in Fog, an Emotional Healing podcast. I’m Mary Young. When I was in high school, we had a college student come and speak to our English class. She had published a book of poetry called Clouds of April or something like that (that’s 40 years ago -- I’m lucky to remember this at all).  The premise behind the book - the premise behind the title was that spring is a time of growth, and renewing, and renewed optimism, and that 40 years ago April was the month with the most amount of suicides statistically. And you wonder why am bringing that up. I’m not here to talk about suicide today. I talked about that in my Christmas episodes sometimes there are no words and there’s always hope. I do want to talk about grief. Grief is one of those things that will hit you really hard right at the get-go, and you think it’s going to crush your soul. And then time passes, and you get accustomed to the new normal, and the grief isn’t as rough. And then someday just out of the blue, it’ll be as painful as if whatever the incident was had just happened. And it drives people crazy- it drives me crazy - when it’s like that. And it’s easy to think that we’re doing it wrong. If we were grieving “properly,” we would be past this. If we were more emotionally healthy, this wouldn’t bother us. Yeah. That’s not true, you guys. First, let’s go back to my definition of emotional health: feeling your emotions and being able to express them appropriately. Stuffing something down, compartmentalizing, is not feeling your emotions. So when grief rears its head, you need to just go with it. Now, I know that that’s not always an option, okay. Sometimes you have to stuff it down just to be able to function at that particular moment in time.  Let me give you an example. About a month ago, on a Friday lunchtime... I was about to get on a conference call. In my day job, I do computer training over the Internet. I was about to get into a classroom that would’ve lasted 90 minutes to two hours. I was the instructor. It’d been a busy day, and my cell phone is usually on mute while I’m teaching, and I was teaching several classes that day. So I had not even looked at my cell all morning, and I had five minutes to spare, so I grabbed my phone and started looking at messages. There was a message from an unknown number, asking me to call them. It wasn’t totally unknown - it was a number I’d dealt with before. It’s actually friends of mine, but I didn’t have every family person’s number recorded in my phone. So I knew which family it was, but I didn’t know which family member it was. I called them, and she told me that a good friend had passed away the night before. And no sooner had I hung up the phone from that conversation than my student showed up in my classroom, and I had to go from being shocked and stunned and sad, to being a professional facilitator and leading this class.  So I took those feelings, and I stuffed them, because I had to bury them for at least the next two hours. Here’s the problem with stuffing or with burying. It’s really hard to tell your emotions: okay guys, I’m going to bury the sadness and the shock and this grief for two hours, and then it will be okay to feel it.  No, it doesn’t work that way. You bury that grief, that emotion, and it stays buried for a while. My previous experience has always been that it comes back at the most inopportune time.  It’s one of the reasons that I work on feeling the emotions at the time that they’re happening, but sometimes you have to stuff them, like I did last month. I am still coming to terms with John’s loss. I can tell myself he’s not in pain anymore. I can tell myself he’s reunited with his wife (she passed away last July). I can tell myself he lived a full happy life (and oh man, did he!), but that doesn’t erase the hole that’s in my life now. That doesn’t erase the changes that I’m going to have to make because he and I traded dog sitting for one, and now have to find a new dog sitter. Interestingly enough, the week before I got the news about John, I had followed a link on Facebook and somebody had written a blog post about something they had heard somebody else say about grief.  I have been sharing this far and wide in the last month, because it is the best description or illustration of grief that I’ve ever heard, and so I’d like to share that with you here today. I will put the link in the transcript but I want to go ahead and just give you the basic gist of it. There is a woman named @LaurenHerschel and she did a series of tweets about grief. Somebody else took her metaphor and turned it into a blog post (with her permission).  It’s been shared on Facebook -- it’s pretty much gone viral. And everybody I’ve shared it with has said: oh my gosh that is exactly how it feels, and it certainly fits my own experience as well.  When I talked to my therapist about it, we were like: this could just as easily be describing trauma. Imagine there is a box. If you need a visual, just draw a square on a piece of paper, and then draw circle inside that square. Have it almost as big as the square - that’s the ball that’s inside the box. On one side of the box is a button, so draw a button on one side, and that button is what we call the pain button. As that ball moves around inside that box, the ball is so big that it can’t help but hit that pain button, over and over and over and over.  And that is your early stages of grief, when it’s fresh, and raw, and feels like it’s going to rip your heart out because that ball in the box keeps hitting the pain button. Over time, the ball gets smaller, and when it’s smaller it doesn’t hit the pain button as much.  So it only occasionally hits the pain button. But every time it does it’s just as fresh, just as raw, just as painful as when it was brand-new. For some people the ball never ever goes away. It just shrinks down to a manageable size, and you’re able to function 90% of the time, until that ball hits the pain button. Sometimes there will be a new incident that is similar, and that hits the pain button again. When my friend Dee passed away in July that was painful, but it had been seven months. We’d gotten through Thanksgiving. We’d gotten through Christmas. We were about to get through her birthday, and it was manageable. The ball was smaller; it didn’t hit the pain button as often. Then her husband passed away, and it was like losing Dee all over again. He’s not my last connection to Dee -- I’m friends with the family. I do Thanksgiving and Christmas with some of the family, but this coming...this coming Thanksgiving will be the first time that people my age will be the oldest people at the dinner table.  We’ve always had somebody from the parents’ generation. John, Dee, Taylor...they’re all gone now, and we are now the older people at the table, and that’s going to be different. Today, that ball in the box is pretty well giant-sized. In the future, I know it will shrink, and then there will be days like the Fourth of July family reunion, Thanksgiving, Christmas, their anniversary -- all of those first special days after loss.   And the ball will grow big again on those days, but it’s okay, because part of being emotionally healthy is feeling your emotions even when they’re painful.   Thanks for listening to Like Driving in Fog. Until next time, go make it a great week.

Mary Young, Principal Researcher, Human Capital Linda Leonard, Global Diversity and Inclusion Leader, Bristol Myers Squibb Mary Young interviews Linda Leonard about overcoming the fuzziness of inclusion with hard evidence and driving more inclusive behaviors at all levels of the organization. Defining and Measuring Inclusion, The Conference Board, 2018  Webcast: More Than a Feeling: Defining and Measuring Inclusion, February 20, 2019

TranscriptHave you ever been facing something that you just wish wasn’t true? If there is a way you could change history, that’s the history that you would change? That actually is an important milestone in the emotional healing journey. Hi, I’m Mary Young. Thanks for joining us on like driving in fog, an emotional healing podcast. In today’s episode, we are talking about acceptance. For me, accepting my past was one of the hardest things to deal with on my emotional healing journey. And this comes in a couple different directions, just to make life more interesting (that was sarcasm). First off, when I started having flashbacks and body memories about what it happened to me before kindergarten, I didn’t want to believe it was true. I did not want to accept that reality. it was too shameful it was too ugly it was too bad it made me a bad person (no, it didn’t) It was my fault (no, it wasn’t). But no matter how much I didn’t want it to be true, it was true. Now honestly, between me and you, I can’t prove that anything happened. The perpetrator is dead. My parents are dead. My siblings wouldn’t remember because we were all very young, and I’m certain that the family would’ve covered it up. but my first therapist, Tricia in Texas...when we were talking about whether or not these memories were real, gave me the best wisdom for my entire healing journey I think. She told me I could spend every dime I had to hire a private investigator who could go explore, and again because we were looking at something 40 years previously, that private investigator may never be able to get an answer. Or we could look at the reality that I exhibited classic textbook signs of a person who had been molested as a child, and I could focus on healing. I chose the second option, and it has worked out really well for me. But part of that process included accepting the reality that I did not want to admit. The reality that yes, I had been molested as a child by the alcoholic babysitter in the basement that I thought was my best friend and my buddy. That was hard to accept. I don’t have words to describe how hard that was. I had to accept that my parents did not protect me, even though it’s a parent’s job to protect their children. I had to accept along the way that my parents were emotionally absent when I was growing up. They took care of our physical needs, but emotionally -- not so much. Which makes perfect sense for who they were and when they grew up, and I totally understand that. But it does not negate the reality that emotionally they did not give me what I needed. So part of the emotional healing journey is you have to accept what happened to you, whether you want to or not. You don’t have to stay rooted in the past. You don’t have to cling to it and be a victim for the rest of your life. I don’t call myself a victim of childhood abuse. I call myself a survivor. So are you. You survived whatever the trauma was. You are still here. They tried to victimize you, but you are not a victim. You are a survivor. So I came to terms with the reality of my early childhood.  Another part of my emotional healing journey was I had to accept the fact that I had made very bad decisions in the romance department. In retrospect, accepting the reality of what happened to me in my very early childhood was easy compared to the other accepting I had to do. It was easier to accept that I had been molested by the alcoholic babysitter in the basement, because that wasn’t my fault. There was no decision I made, that made that jerk want to go after a little girl. I had no complicity in that at all. But decisions I’ve made as an adult? I want so much to bring up a list of excuses for why those decisions were not my fault. I can tell you that every relationship decision I made as a young adult was directly impacted by the unknown memories of what happened to me as a child, the unknown trauma that I had gone through. And even knowing that, it was still hard for me to accept that I had made bad choices romantically. It was hard for me to accept that I had gone against everything that I believed, and chosen something else just because somebody said they loved me. It was hard for me to accept that I had let a woman seduce me and then emotionally abuse me, and it was a pattern that I repeated more than once. And it’s hard to say that out loud to the public, because again, I’m afraid that somebody will listen to this podcast and have a different opinion of me. A negative opinion of me, because of the mistakes that I’ve made in my past - the choices that I’ve made in my past. It was 30 years after the relationship ended, before I was able to share with my therapist all the nuances of that emotionally abusive lesbian relationship that I was in. It was 30 years after that relationship ended, before I was able to tell more than a couple close friends that I had been a victim of date rape, and didn’t even know that I was on a date because I was out with a girl - we were just going out to the bars. It was 30 years before I could admit how ashamed I was because of that interlude in my life. not because it was a same-sex relationship, but because I had been betrayed and deceived, and had been gullible, and fallen for the betrayal and the deceit, and had allowed myself to be emotionally abused and sexually abused. I felt like I should’ve known better, but there’s no way I could’ve. But here’s the amazing thing. Just like when I accepted the reality of what Jack France did to me when I was less than four years old, when I talked openly with my therapist and accepted the reality of my young adult history, it no longer had any power over me. That’s the power of acceptance. As long as you’re fighting it, it’s never going to get better. Accept it, learn from it, and move on. Don’t let it have power over you anymore. Don’t try to hide the dark side. We all have a dark side. We all have things we wish we had not done. We all have things we wish had not happened to us, but it’s in the past.  We are powerless to change it. All we can change is our attitudes toward it, and that’s where the power lies. And we are more powerful than we will ever, ever realize. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, go make it a great day.

TRANSCRIPT   Thanks for joining us again on Like Driving in Fog: an emotional healing podcast I’m Mary Young, and the topic for this episode is “check your motivation.” You know, we all have reasons for everything we do, but we don’t always know what those reasons are. And sometimes, even though we don’t know it, reasons are buried in our past. So we need to check our motivation. We need to ask ourselves why. Why could be the second most important question you ask yourself. I said in an earlier episode that the most important question is “what does a healthier me look like?” the second most important question is why? Why am I doing this? Why am I feeling this? Why am I acting this way?----more---- Check your motivation. This has been my mantra for my entire healing journey. Why am I behaving the way I am? Why am I reacting the way I am? This ties in perfectly with the last episode when we talked about the chameleon effect. If you remember, the chameleon effect is when you bury yourself and try to be what somebody else wants you to be, so that you can be liked or loved or fit in or whatever. I was talking to somebody this past week and they said that chameleon thing is so confusing, because sometimes you just go along with people because you’re being polite. That’s true. I personally am not a big fan of the TV show Survivor, but I used to watch it with a friend of mine because she liked it and I was being friendly. But the motivation is the important part.  Why was I watching Survivor? To be friendly. On the other hand, why did I say Nicholas Sparks and Pat Conroy were my favorite authors when they really weren’t?  That was the chameleon effect. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be liked by this other person. If you are staying true to yourself, then you can’t possibly be a chameleon. But if you are surrendering your own identity, then something is wrong. So check your motivation. Now, I’m not saying go be an asshole. I will still go to somebody else’s choice for a dinner restaurant. You know, I’ll offer my suggestions, but if they want someplace else and it’s a place where I like the food, I’ll go. That’s not being a chameleon. That’s being polite. On the other hand, if I started saying “oh no, I hate this restaurant because this other person hated the restaurant, or if I started treating my friends differently because the other person didn’t like my friends, that could be being a chameleon. That’s what you want to watch out for, and that’s why it’s so important to check your motivation. Checking your motivation is so much more than just “are you being a chameleon,” or “are you being polite.” My therapist and I have this particular conversation on a regular basis. She’ll say: “Mary, why are you reacting so strongly to that? Because honestly, it doesn’t warrant the reaction you’re giving it.” And I’m all “but...yeah...yeah, it does!” And she’s like “no, really, it doesn’t.” We have that conversation because there are still times when I will react strongly to something happening right now, that’s actually triggering feelings from my childhood. And so my therapist has taught me to check my motivation. To ask myself why.  When I am reacting really strongly to something, and Tracy doesn’t think it even deserves a reaction, that will be her question. What’s really going on with this? What is it linked to in your childhood or your past? And usually if I take the time to sit down and ponder, I will find a linkage. it hit my hot button of feeling ignored it hit my hot button of you can’t do that because you’re a woman it hit my hot button of we changed the rules midstream it hit my hot button of I never fit in, Or nobody ever listened to anything I had to say. But the only way you will ever be able to find out any of that kind of stuff is if you take the time to know yourself. And I’ve got to tell you...as survivors, it is so much easier not to do that. I was talking to my grandma one time after my grandpa died. I actually asked her: “how do you get through something like this? You guys were married 50 years.” Her answer was: “you just keep busy. You keep busy, and you don’t give yourself time to think about it”. Well folks, that is a very good description of how to cope, but it is not how you heal. You heal because you deal. You heal because you process. You heal because you don’t just bury it under a rock. Even though it’s easier to bury it under the rug, and hope it never comes back. So check your motivation. Check your motivation for being in a relationship. Check your motivation for leaving that relationship. Check your motivation for taking a job, or for leaving a job. For building a friendship, and leaving a friendship. Why are you reacting to something the way you are? Why do you get angry over something that somebody says? What was it about that comment that made you angry? What is it about this particular person that makes you want to spend all your time with them? What’s going on that makes that pint of ice cream seems so desirable right now? If you take the time to look, you’re gonna find a reason. And the reason may not be what you expected. It’s amazing how powerful our motivation is, and a lot of times we’re not even aware of it. I had a situation last week. I overreacted to something and my therapist said: “Mary, what’s going on? What’s really underneath that?” And I was like “I don’t know.” Well, five days later, while I was soaking in the tub, it finally worked its way up through my subconscious. It had felt like somebody changed the rules in the middle of the game. And that goes right back to growing up in an alcoholic family, where you’re doing what somebody told you to do, and suddenly that’s not the right thing. And I was like oh! And when I could take that out of the picture, that emotional, that trigger, then I could go back and look at the incident and say: you know what? Tracy was right. I totally overreacted to that, and now I know why. It is really amazing how powerful our motivation is, and how so many times we’re not even aware of it.  But part of being self-aware is understanding why you’re doing something. Part of healing is understanding why you’re doing something. Because if you’re doing it for unhealthy reasons, guess what? You are not getting healthier. But if you’re doing it for healthy reasons, then you will get healthier. And as you start understanding your motivation, as you start understanding yourself, then it becomes easier to see the less healthy habits, and it becomes easier to address them. I am not just talking about habits like emotional eating, or drinking. I’m talking about the less healthy habits of being a chameleon, of letting other people be in control of my happiness. You know what? Nobody else should ever be in control of my happiness but me, so why would I let somebody else do that? Another less healthy habit could be isolating. Choosing to stay in your own house, in your own room, in your own apartment, instead of going out into the world, going out with friends, going out and doing something. Those are the kind of things you want think about when you’re checking motivation. It’s challenging at first. It could even be painful at first, but if you do it enough you’re going to do it without even noticing. It’s just going to become part of you. And I don’t think I even have the words to express how important it is, especially if you’re a chameleon who doesn’t want to be one anymore.   Thanks so much for listening. We’ll see you next time on Like Driving in Fog: an emotional healing podcast. Until then, go make it a great week.

TRANSCRIPTI still remember a time in college when I told a friend that I was sad or depressed, and her answer was “I’m sorry,” or “I wish you weren’t sad or depressed.” to which I responded “I’m sorry. how do you want me to be?”Her reply was: "I just want you to feel what you’re really feeling, or be who you really are.” And I had absolutely no idea how to do that, because all I knew how to do was be a chameleon. I’m Mary Young. Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Like Driving in Fog podcast. Today’s episode is talking about what I like to call the Chameleon Effect. So what is the chameleon effect, and what does that have to do with emotional healing or emotional health? Well, the  chameleon effect is the tendency that some of us have to be whatever the people around us want us to be; to feel whatever the people around us, or however the people around us want us to feel, instead of acknowledging our own feelings. We paste on a smile, or instead of being happy we pretend to be sad. Whatever we have to do to fit in with the people that we’re with. To be loved by the people that we want to be loved by; to be accepted by the people from whom we need acceptance. It could be feelings or it could be behavior. Either way. But any time that you are not being your own authentic, true self, then you’re being a chameleon. That explains what a chameleon is, but why are we chameleons? What brought us to this point of wanting to be anything other than who we truly are? There are probably as many answers as there are people listening to this podcast, because each one of us is unique and therefore each one of us has our own unique reasons for doing things; reasons for behaving certain ways. For me it goes back to childhood. I didn’t know it growing up, but one entire side of my family was alcoholic. And sometimes when I ponder it, I think that I became a chameleon just trying to survive life with that half of the family. Then again, growing up I never felt like I fit in with the neighborhood kids, with the school kids, with my classmates, so maybe I became a chameleon to try to fit in with them. I remember never feeling like I knew what I was supposed to be doing, or how I was supposed to be behaving, and so I would take my cues from the people around me and act like they did or behave like they did. But along the way, trying so hard to fit in, I lost me. And then we get to that point in college where I’m 20 years old and my friend says “I just want you to be yourself,” and the only answer I had was “I don’t know who that is. I don’t know how to do that.” it’s not something I had ever done before, and saying that makes me sad. There are so many different emotions inside me right now as I’m thinking about that conversation with my friend, and that reality about me as a college student, and it’s just sad. I’m sad for the younger me that had never been encouraged to find out who I was, what I thought, what I believed. Instead I had been encouraged to think like the family did, behave like the family did, do what they told me to do. And I had never been encouraged just to take time to figure out who I was, and what did I really want, or how did I really feel, or what really mattered to me. And I lived my life like that for decades. I don’t want you to do that. I don’t want anybody to be a chameleon because they think they have to fit in order to be loved. I want people to be free to figure out who they are, and what they think, and what they believe, and how they really feel about something, instead of being told by somebody else how they should behave, or what they should think, or how they should feel. And I gotta tell you... sometimes it’s hard figuring that stuff out, but I will take the real me over the chameleon any day the week. I remember back in my freshman year in college, I did a lot of writing back then. That was how I processed things. And a lot of what I wrote was poetry, and I remember writing a free-form poem about self-identity or something like that...self-description maybe. But one of the phrases that I used to describe myself was a “nonconformist desperately trying to fit in,” because as a chameleon I needed to fit in and I needed to change my color to match my surroundings. But as a nonconformist, I couldn’t fit in. I didn’t know how to reconcile those two pieces of my personality, and I didn’t know how not to be a chameleon. I recognized at some point that I was being a chameleon; that I was putting on a costume to match whatever group I was with. How did I stop being a chameleon, because I’m not one today? I have to say I’m not really sure. This is one of the things that changed for me as I was healing in other areas. I was in therapy dealing with repressed memories; dealing with family dynamics from those repressed memories; dealing with codependency; dealing with 40 years of not remembering what happened to me when I was four; and along the way as I healed in those other areas, I found that I was no longer a chameleon. If I were to give advice on how to not be a chameleon, or how to move away from the chameleon effect or counteract the chameleon effect, it would probably be things I’ve already said in different episodes. First and foremost is sit down and have a conversation with yourself. Figure out what matters to you. This comes down to why do things matter. I have friends who got college degrees because their parents pushed them to college, and I have friends who got college degrees because they wanted to get a college degree. It was something that mattered to them. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. It basically comes down to listening to yourself trusting yourself examining yourself examining your beliefsWhy do I think this? Why do I feel this? Why do I feel like I have to wear a mask? What would happen if I didn’t wear that mask? And folks, I gotta tell you. If the friendships that you currently have depend on you wearing a mask, that’s not a good friendship. True friends accept us for who we are. We don’t have to wear a mask with our true friends. you may feel like you need to wear a mask with your family, but you’ll find as I did, that the more you focus on determining who you are/what you care about/what matters to you, the harder it will be to wear that mask around your family. Especially if you’re a survivor of childhood trauma, because it’s easier for families to pretend that never happened, and people will always take the easy way out. And you have to ask yourself what matters most to you. I know some survivors who no longer have relationships with their families. They basically divorced their families of origin. When I was seeing my therapist in Texas and first coming to grip with these memories, I knew I did not want to divorce my family. I took a break from them, but I did not want to divorce them. I just needed a break so that I could figure out what I really believed as opposed to what I’d been taught and told my entire life, and so that I could come back to them in a different dynamic. Instead of always feeling like I was the youngest child, I wanted to cut those apron strings and establish that grown-up relationship. And we were able to do that to a degree. Probably not as much as I wanted with my parents, but certainly more than I ever expected we would be able to do. The chameleon effect is real. It comes from not knowing that you are enough just the way you are. It comes from thinking that somebody else has to define you or accept you. It comes from not being comfortable with yourself, with who you really are. It comes from feeling like you have to fit in, and fear of being shut out. You are enough. You are beautiful. You have value just from the fact that you exist. And if somebody doesn’t think the way you do, or they don’t behave the way you do, that doesn’t make you wrong or bad. It makes you unique, and that’s what we need. We need everybody to be the unique person they were created to be. So promise yourself to not be a chameleon for the rest of your life. Promise yourself to start figuring out who you are, what you believe, what you think, what matters to you and why. And start showing the rest of the world the beautiful creation that you are. There’s enough chameleons, there’s enough copycats out there. Let’s all start showing our uniqueness, and valuing that uniqueness. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time. Go make a great week

TRANSCRIPT Hi and thanks for joining us again on Like Driving in Fog: an Emotional Healing Podcast. I’m Mary Young, and I wanted to talk today about my own emotional healing journey. You know, the tagline on the Facebook page says “the emotional healing journey can feel like you’re driving in fog. But you’re not alone.” and so I wanted to use today to talk about the fact that you’re not alone; that I really do know what this journey is like. To be totally honest, I don’t want to have this conversation at all. This conversation is uncomfortable for me, which is exactly why I’m doing it. Why is it uncomfortable? It’s uncomfortable for a variety of reasons.----more---- One is that I’m a private person, and I do not tend to share this with people anymore. Back when it was brand-new, when I was first going through it, I couldn’t stop talking about it. I would tell anybody and their brother exactly what I was going through. Now? I keep quiet about it for the most part.  But if I keep quiet about it, you won’t know that you’re not alone. I didn’t always know that I needed an emotional healing journey. I didn’t even know that’s what I was on when I was on it. What I did know was that I needed people a lot more than they needed me. I was always looking for somebody to validate me; my existence, my ideas. Somebody to be like. I mentioned being a chameleon in episode 27, and that described me. I still remember the time a friend from college asked me how I was, and I said something like I’m a little sad or I’m a little depressed. Her reply -- very caring, very heartfelt -- was I wish you weren’t depressed or something like that. And my only response to that was I’m sorry how do you want me to be? Because that was the way I lived my life. You tell me how you wanted me to be or who you wanted me to be, and that’s what I would do so that I could be your friend. And I never knew why I was like that. I never knew why I never felt like I fit in. I never knew why I was terrified at the thought of dating. I know that I was quick to anger, and that there was a lot of pent-up anger inside me that I didn’t know where it came from but it wouldn’t take very much for it to kick out. I was passive-aggressive. I lived in fear. I walked in fear. I was always afraid that something was going to happen. I didn’t trust people because they weren’t trustworthy, but I didn’t know why I thought that. I knew how to cope. I knew that I could push stuff away and not think about it, because that’s how I was taught to do. And I learned the hard way that eventually that would come back out and insist that you look at it. But it was years later that I looked at it. Another strong memory from college is we watched a film in a class, and the film showed the life of an alcoholic family from the perspective of the kindergartner. And I sat in this class, and I watched my life on the screen. Memories that I had totally forgotten were being played out in front of the classroom for people to see. When the film was over, I lasted maybe five more minutes in the classroom, clenching my jaw, gritting my teeth, trying to breathe. And then I bolted for the door. Happily, the restroom was right across the hallway. I locked myself in a stall, and I cried uncontrollably. I called my mom that weekend, and said I watched this film in class and it brought back memories. And I told her what the film was about, and her immediate response, in very harsh tones: are you saying we were alcoholic? And being a good little chameleon, I said no, I am saying maybe we might have had some problems with drinking. Because keeping the peace in the family was most important thing. I am here to tell you keeping the peace in the family is not the most important thing. Healing yourself...being healed...being healthy is the most important thing. And if that means that you have to tell the family the truth, then you tell the family the truth. Now, I say that and I sound really passionate when I say that, but there are still things I don’t tell my family because I will get denial as a response. And I’m not always in a place where I can handle that.  I have told my family that when I went to Al-Anon and somebody asked me who my qualifier was, I sat down and made a list, and came up with 13 alcoholics who impacted my life before I graduated from college. That doesn’t count the ones that I worked for or with after that. while I was making that list, I realized that one entire side of my family is alcoholic, even though they never call themselves that, because to my family alcoholic means that you’re a skid row bum. And these were all functioning alcoholics, but alcoholic nonetheless. For most of my life, my earliest coherent memories began with kindergarten. What I didn’t know until I was 38 or 39 was that I had buried a bunch of memories from my very early childhood. When a young child experiences trauma -- actually, when anybody experiences trauma -- one of the reactions to it is to repress the memories because they are too painful to deal with. We had a family friend and alcoholic (that mom and dad were friends with) that lived in our basement. We gave him space in the basement; had a mattress down there that he could sleep on, and he stayed with us cause he didn’t have any place else to be. I was three-ish when he moved in, and four-ish when he moved out. He died when I was too young to understand what death really meant. And...this is still hard to say...some of the memories that I had repressed were about the fact that this man who used to babysit us, who mom said was my buddy, liked little girls a little bit too much. And I was a little girl that he liked. So he wasn’t my buddy; he was grooming me. And we had a secret that we weren’t supposed to ever tell. All of that impacted who I was, and how I behaved, and how I saw the world. And all of that needed to be healed. I could cope with it. I could compartmentalize it. I could turn my brain to something else and not think about it, but I wasn’t healed from it. I hadn’t dealt with it. When it started being too hard functioning every day, I finally went to therapy. That first round of therapy, I was seeing my therapist four days a week because I was only in town one week a month. So I’d see her the four days I was in town, and then email her when I was out of town. It went like that for probably six months before I could take it down to seeing her once a week. I am still healing. I will be healing for the rest of my life, because part of healing for me is just learning to be a better human being; learning to respond differently. To respond, not react. It’s not as foggy as it was back in the day when I was 38/39. There is not nearly as much fog. I have a lot more sunny days now. And I know I’m not alone. I have friends who have similar experiences, and we support each other. If you feel like you’re alone; that nobody else knows what you’re going through or what you’ve been through; you are not alone. It’s epidemic. What you need to remember is that you are not a victim. You are a survivor. And if the healing journey scares you like it scared me. If you think: I can’t talk about this to my therapist! I can’t remember this -- it hurts too much. If you’re having those thoughts, remind yourself of this. You survived the original trauma. If you can survive that, you can survive anything. Emotional healing journey -- it’s hard, but it’s worth it. And you owe it to yourself to let yourself heal. And you are not alone. Thanks for listening. Go make it a great week.

TRANSCRIPT   Thanks for joining us today on Like Driving in Fog: an emotional healing podcast. I’m Mary Young, and today were talking about who are you really. Or as I was thinking this morning, going back to an old, old quiz show from the 50s and early 60s: will the real you please stand up? We are born with a personality. You can ask any parent of babies or small children, and they will tell: you this baby was different from that baby from the get-go. That essence of who we are stays with us for entire life, but life circumstances, family upbringing, other people’s expectations can impact how much of that inner essence we actually share. This feels really complicated the way that I’m saying it, but it’s really not. I’m just not finding the right words so let me try a different way. There’s a Facebook meme going around that has a picture of a coffee cup, and the meme talks about if you’re holding a cup of coffee and somebody bumps into you and you spill it, what do you spill? Well, you spill coffee because that’s what’s in the cup. So turning that into human beings instead of cups of coffee...when something happens to you and you react, you react based on what you have inside you. And the reason I’m thinking about all this today is because yesterday I went to a service described as a Celebration of Life for a 15-year-old young man who lost his life right before Christmas. I talked about that in my Christmas episodes actually: Sometimes There Are No Answers, and There’s Always Hope. At the same time that I was preparing to go to Reed’s Celebration of Life, my Facebook memories popped up a meme from a couple years ago with a quote from Buddha. And the quote said the trouble is we think we have time. We don’t have time. We are not promised anything other than the moment that we are currently living in. we don’t know that we will be here tomorrow, or an hour from now. And yet, we spend a large part of our life trying to be what somebody else wants us to be, or what somebody else has dictated we should be. This works in a lot of different areas...think about people who go to college. Mom and dad are paying for the education, so they get a degree that mom and dad want them to have, even if it’s not what they want to do with their life. We need to stop letting other people define us. We need to define ourselves. It’s not easy, because we have been conditioned to let other people define us. We have been conditioned to believe that that’s who we are. I’m the youngest. I’m scatterbrained. I’m lazy. I suck at math. I don’t have street smarts, I only have book smarts. Most of what I just said to you is stuff that has been said to me over the course of my life, especially over my childhood. Some of this is not a big deal, but some of this is huge. My question for you is who are you really? Will the real you please stand up? What does the real you look like? Who are you? What matters to you? What are your likes and dislikes? What are your strengths and weaknesses? How much of your current description of yourself was given to you by somebody else? Does it actually fit your reality today? Part of the reason that this is on my mind is because at Reed’s service yesterday, his family was sharing memories. And for only being 15 years old, they had a lot of memories to share. But what came through over and over and over again was his absolute zest for life; his joy in living; his bigger than his face smile. And I couldn’t help thinking what a wonderful way to be remembered. When his family thinks about him for the next 30 years, they’re going to remember that he was always smiling, he was always helping, he was always joyful, that he loved life and he loved people, and he loved making a difference in people’s lives. Guys, this is a great way to be remembered, I don’t care how old you are. years ago, I asked myself how do I want to be remembered, and once I had that answer, then the next question was what do I have to do to make sure that that’s how I’m remembered? And it comes back to: who are you really? If you’re holding a cup of coffee and somebody bumps into you, what gets spilled out? I want to be remembered as somebody who lives love. As somebody who cares about other people. As somebody who does not put people down, but instead builds people up. But I can tell you truly: 20 years ago I don’t think that’s how I would’ve been remembered. I am a work in progress. We are all works in progress. So I’m challenging you:  who are you really? And are you letting that shine, or are you burying that under the layers of everything that people have put on you over the years? When I first went to therapy 20 years ago, one of the things that Tricia, my Texas therapist, had me do was make a list of everything that defined me. So that was my homework one week. I went away and I worked on it, and I came back to her with three or four pages of how do I define myself. And it was things like: I’m lazy I read too much I don’t do housework I’m scatterbrained I’m too technical And those were all messages that I had been given when I was growing up. Tricia had me read that list out loud to her, and then we went back and looked at each item one at a time, and I had to decide or identify where did that come from. Was that something I say about myself, or was that something that somebody else said about me? 75%, maybe 85% of that list was things that other people -- specifically my family -- had said about me. Once we had identified that. Then Tricia said okay, now let’s take each one of those and let’s find what’s really true about them. I’m lazy is my favorite one, because I still fight that in my brain, because I am not constantly doing things all day long. I will sit and play on my computer. I will sit and read a book, and to my family of origin that meant that I was lazy because I wasn’t cleaning house, when the house needed cleaned, I was reading a book. Working with Tricia, I changed that phrase from I’m lazy to I choose to do other things with my time. For people who have different priorities, they don’t always know how to describe that and so they say well obviously you’re lazy. Because you’re not doing what I think is important. Well, no! Because I’m not you. I’m doing what’s important to me. last week, I challenged you to spend some time taking an inventory of yourself, to do  an annual am I going where I want to go, am I being who I want to be. This could be part of that. Just sit down and think about how you describe yourself, and decide how much of that is your own description of you, and how much of that was dictated to you by other people. Or how much of that was you becoming a chameleon so that you could fit in, or so that you would be loved. You don’t have to be a chameleon to fit in or to be loved, and it took me 40 years to internalize that. I was a fantastic chameleon. Now I’m just me. And if people like me, that’s wonderful. And if they don’t, that’s not on me. That’s on them. But I am who I am, and I’m not going to change that for anybody. But I started that, by first identifying who I really am. Not who somebody else thinks I am. That’s the first step. Let the real you stand up. Figure out who you really are, and let that person shine. Because I promise you:  the real you is way better than any disguise you’ve been wearing trying to fit in. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week, and until then -- make it a great week.

TRANSCRIPT Happy New Year, and thanks for joining us on the very first-ever episode of Like Driving in Fog. This is an emotional healing podcast, related to all things dealing with emotional healing, and the emotional healing journey that you might be on. my name’s Mary Young and I am so glad you came to listen today, while this is episode number one of Like Driving in Fog, it is actually episode number 26 of my podcast. The podcast has been around since last August, originally called Lessons from Life.----more----  I figured the new year was a great time to have a new name since, I had decided to change the name. And I wanted to take this off cycle episode to talk a little bit about why I was changing the name; what you can expect from this podcast; and why you might be interested in listening to this podcast. It seemed to me that the best way to do that would be to simply bring up what I thought were the pertinent questions that other people might have, and tackle those questions. So we’ll start with the obvious one: why change the name? What was wrong with Lessons from Life? To begin with, the purpose of the podcast has changed since I started it last August. When I started Lessons from Life podcast, it was to be just a hodgepodge of topics; things that I’ve experienced over the years, lessons I’ve learned from that. but as I worked on it, and as I created episodes, I found the episodes that I cared most about -- the episodes where I had the most passion, were the ones where I talked about things I had learned on my emotional healing journey. So roundabout October, I repurposed the podcast to be an emotional healing podcast, and let that be the primary focus rather than just a hodgepodge. Once I had done that, and as I started looking at other podcast names out there, Lessons from Life was too hard for people to find. There are so many other podcasts and blogs and Facebook pages out there that have life and lessons in the name. On top of which, I have said for years that the best description for me, the best allegory of an emotional healing journey, is driving in fog. You can’t see where you’re going, you’re not sure where the road’s going, if you’re even on the road. You don’t even know if anybody else is on the road with you. No choice looks good. I can choose to stop, but I might get hit by somebody else who’s driving in fog. I can choose to continue; it’s not gonna be a very fun trip, but I gotta make some kind of choice. I can just sit there behind the wheel going I don’t know what to do. So to me, the emotional healing journey is a lot Like Driving in Fog. when I was running podcast names by other friends, trying to decide should I change the name, and what should I change the name to, somebody said: why don’t you just call it the emotional healing podcast, since that’s what it’s about. And I thought about it. There’s pros and cons to both names. Logically speaking, the emotional healing podcast makes all kinds of sense, because people will immediately know what I’m talking about when they’re searching. Even if they don’t know exactly what kind of podcast it is, they can find it with no problem. But emotionally speaking, that name does nothing for me. Whereas Like Driving in Fog puts a picture in my brain as soon as I hear it, and reminds me of all the times I’ve driven on foggy roads. You know, sometimes the fog was light just a bare haze. Other times, it was so dense that I wasn’t even sure I was on the road. That then reminded me of the immense relief that I felt when I got out of the fog, or when the fog lifted. On top of that, I love the concept of fog as a metaphor or an allegory. Because when you are on an emotional healing journey, as I’ve been on for over 20 years now, it is so easy to beat yourself up. Oh my gosh! I just did something codependent again. I thought I was done being codependent. Oh my gosh! I just made another bad decision. Oh darn, that bad decision I made five years ago is still having consequences. And we beat ourselves up about that instead of celebrating our victories. But here’s the thing. When you’re out driving, when you’re going somewhere and you run into a foggy patch, you don’t beat yourself up for running into a foggy patch. You don’t go oh my God, it’s foggy! I must’ve done something wrong! You know you can’t control the fog -- it just is. All you can do is figure out the best way to get through the fog, and that precisely... precisely illustrates the process of emotional healing. When you are on that emotional healing journey, the best thing you can do... the only thing you can do, is figure out what is the best way to get through that emotional healing journey. What is the best way to handle this incident, this emotional trigger, this memory, this setback. Don’t beat yourself up about it, just figure out what’s the best way to get through it. Just like when you’re driving and hit a fog bank. So that’s the biggest reason that I changed the name. interestingly enough, I was talking to a friend of mine recently comparing the two names, and she said if she was on an emotional healing journey (which is on her plans for 2019) and she was looking for a podcast to listen to, she would take the one called Like Driving in Fog because with a name like that you know that the podcaster knows what you’re talking about - what you’ve been through. And folks, I am here to tell you: I do know. Which leads right into the next question that I had written down that people would probably wonder about, which is: why am I the person to be doing this podcast? Why should anybody listen to this podcast, or listen to me? And I will start by saying that I am not the same person I was 20 years ago. In fact on December 31, 1998, I went out driving at 10 o’clock at night, 930/10 o’clock at night. New Year’s Eve out on the back roads around San Antonio, thinking and trying to deal with everything that was going on in my life that I didn’t feel like I could deal with. And yelling at God, trying to figure out what the heck was going on. And there was a point, as I was driving around thinking on those back roads, that I started toying with the idea of failing to negotiate a curve. Well, I have a very strong survival instinct, so when I hit that point I turned around and came home. I got home maybe about 1130/12 o’clock at night. I don’t know what time it was, maybe 1130. I was renting a room from friends at the time, but they had gone to bed. And I went into the shower and got into the shower, turned the water on because when you cry in the shower nobody can hear it, because the water, the cascading water keeps people from hearing it. And folks I cried in that shower until the hot water ran cold, until my arms, fingers, feet, legs were cramping. Somebody told me once that has to do with some chemical reaction when you’ve cried that many tears. Somebody said recently: oh, so you cried until you were cried out, and I was like no, I couldn’t stop crying even after I started cramping. And I turned the water off because it was cold, and I gave it time to get warm, for the hot water heater to work, and then I cried in the shower some more. And I promised myself that whatever the heck was going on, I was not going to carry it into the new millennium. And the day after New Year’s I started calling therapists and I found the perfect therapist for me down there in San Antonio. We had a very productive relationship until I moved out of Texas. I moved out of Texas in 2001, and in 2011, after 10 years of absolute peace, I started seeing some of those old behaviors again. And feeling some of those old feelings again like things are going to spiral out of control, so I found a therapist in Georgia, and we continued the work that my Texas therapist and I had started. I am not the same person today that I was 20 years ago. I would not have started a podcast 20 years ago. I would not have thought that I had anything to offer. Back in 2011, when I started seeing Tracy, my Georgia therapist, she asked me why was I there and I said I want to be a better me. I want to be a healthier me. And she said okay, what does that look like? I was like: I don’t know. I’ve never been a healthier me. I don’t know what it looks like. And so I pondered that. I thought about it for a week or so. I made a list, and I took that list with me to my next Tracy appointment, read it to her she’s like: okay, and we talked about it. I came home and threw it on a pile of paper and forgot all about it. I was cleaning out the office in 2014, and stumbled across that list .I had written down 18 things that I thought would describe a healthier me, and I could check 16 of those things off on that list. I was working on the other two. So why am I the person to do this? Because I’ve done it. I know how hard it is. I know how painful it is. And I know how important it is. And I also know how easy it is to feel like you’re the only person in the world going through it, and I want you to know you are not alone. Even when the fog is all around you, and you cannot see another car on the road, you’re not alone. So that’s why am doing a podcast, and that’s why the podcast is called Like Driving in Fog.  That’s what we want to talk about, and you can get a feel for that if you look at the last 20 episodes. Start in like October, or definitely by November, I had converted to focusing on emotional healing. So I do an episode every week. They’ll be released on Monday mornings at 6 AM Eastern. It’s just me talking, and it’s usually 10 minutes or less. Sometimes it may be 12 or 13 but is usually 10 minutes or less, you can find the podcast by going to my Facebook page. Go to Facebook and search for Like Driving in Fog podcast. It will have a link to the podcast. We will be on iTunes. when that happens depends on when iTunes makes it happen, but we’ve done what we need to do on our end to make it happen, so it’s just a matter of waiting on them to approve the submission. I will make an announcement at the beginning of an episode when the iTunes approval has come through, to let you know that you can find us on iTunes. That’s pretty much it. I can promise you truth, candor, vulnerability, authenticity, honesty, caring, compassion... every episode has a transcript.  And I think that’s it. I’ll see you again on Monday the seventh for the next episode of Like Driving in Fog. Until then, thanks for listening.  Go make it a great week.

TRANSCRIPT   It’s New Year’s Eve here on the Lessons From Life podcast, which means this is the absolute last episode of the Lessons From Life podcast. I’m Mary Young. Thanks for joining us. as we move from the old year to the new year, from the end of one month to a new month, I’m thinking about transitions, and I’m thinking about change, and I’m thinking about how many times I’ve reinvented myself in my life. I’m also thinking about how this podcast has been reinvented. When I started this in late August, I was just going to be talking about whatever came to mind, but as I worked on it I found that the episodes where I had the most passion were the episodes where I talked about emotional healing and my personal healing journey. That is why effective tomorrow, January 1, the name is changing to Like Driving in Fog: an Emotional Healing Podcast. Some people would say “Mary, you should’ve thought of that before you started creating the podcast. Now you’re changing the name four months into it.”  I say that just proves that we can change any time. I started on what I thought was the right road. It was the right road for me at the time. I made the best decision I could at the time, with the information that I had. As I travel down that road in this case, the podcasting road, I realized that I wanted to go a different direction. And that’s okay. I think back to when I started college. I went to college in 1978 to become an English teacher and eventually a guidance counselor, and by my second year in college I realized I did not want to be an English teacher. I still wanted to be involved in counseling somehow, but I did not want to be an English teacher and so I dropped that major. I’ve lost track of how many majors I had while I was in college...there were 4 or 5, and the thing is there’s nothing wrong with that. We do not have to pick one path when we are 18 and stay there for the rest of our life. We just don’t have to do that. We live in a world of possibilities, and we can take advantage of all those possibilities. We do not have to stay in the same town that we grew up in. we do not have to stay in our parents’ house our entire lives. We are not trapped by our present or past. One of the best quotes I ever came across during my healing journey says you may not be able to change your past but you can always change your future. What’s gone behind us is behind us. Some people never look back. I look back periodically just so I can see how far I’ve come. You can reinvent yourself. You can evolve. You can change. You can change your hairstyle, you can change your college major, you can change your career choice, your location... most importantly you can change your attitude. This is big stuff you guys, and we don’t realize sometimes how important that freedom to change really is, and what a difference it can make in our lives. I would encourage everybody to spend time this holiday season just sitting and thinking about who you are, where you are, what you’re doing with your life. Is this really what you want to do? Do you like the person that you are? If you don’t, what would it take for you to become a person that you like? And this is not just a one-time thing you guys. I had this conversation with myself... I tend to do it every year, but I’m trying to think back. Probably the first one for me was when I had just gotten out of the military, so I was 30-ish and had no job. One of my college friends had just been named woman of the year for her community. I looked at her accomplishment and I looked at my not having a job and I had a choice. I could sit there and cry, or I could sit there and figure out what being successful meant to me. And I decided that I didn’t care if I was ever named woman of the year. That was not my personal definition of success. My definition of success is the people around me -- how I interact with the people around me, being able to look myself in the mirror and like who I am, being able to sleep peacefully at night, not tormented by anything. And I have spent my life pursuing that definition of success. It has nothing to do with money, fame, possessions...it has to do with being a better version of me. we all have the opportunity to redefine success so that it’s not tied into money, fame, fortune...stuff that we don’t necessarily have control over. We all have the ability to choose to be better human beings, to compete against ourselves each day to be better than we were the day before. I still do a double take sometimes when somebody will give me a compliment about some aspect of myself that I have changed over the years. The most current one is “you are so organized,” and I’m going “No, I’m scatterbrained. I’ve been scatterbrained for my entire life. Just ask my mother.” And I hadn’t ever realized that I had become organized over the years, because we are able to change. I look at the me when I was 20, 25 even 30, and compare that to the me when I’m 57/58, and I’m like wow. You would think they were two different people. I’m looking specifically at my work habits, at some of my behavior patterns, and it is amazing to me the changes that I have made over the years. Or to put it another way the ways that I have reinvented myself over the years. So I’m thinking about transitions today, and re-inventions and things like that because of changing the podcast name, but it really applies to so much more than just the podcast name. Each one of us has the opportunity at any time to stop and say I don’t like the way this is going, and change it. And I hope, I really hope that you find the time this holiday season to have a conversation with yourself, and make sure that you do like the way things are going, that it is the way you want things to be going. And if it’s not, just like I can change the name of the podcast, you can change the direction that you’re taking. You can change your thoughts, you can change your attitude, you can change your careers, whatever it is that you need to do to be a better version of you.   Thanks for listening and will see you on New Year’s Day for a special New Year’s episode of Like Driving in Fog: an Emotional Healing podcast.

Dedicated to Jeff, JP, Bill & Reed, and to everyone else who's just trying to hang on a little bit longer.   TRANSCRIPT Hi, and welcome to another episode of lessons from life. Remember, on January 1st we are changing our name to Like Driving in Fog: an Emotional Healing Podcast. I’m Mary Young, and I’m so glad you’re listening to us today. Yesterday, 22 December, we talked about how sometimes there are no answers. And I went to bed last night still thinking about that, and thinking I can’t just leave it at that. It’s true that sometimes there are no answers, but even when we don’t have answers, we have hope. There is always hope. You can’t always see it. Sometimes it’s hard to believe in it. But just like no matter how dark the night is the sun comes up again the next morning; just like an eclipse has to end and the sun comes back out from whatever was hiding it; hope is the same way. You can’t always see it, but it’s always there. And if you can wrap your head around that, if you can wrap your heart around that, it helps you hang on. And you guys, I’m not just blowing smoke. I would not stand here in front of this microphone and say stuff just because it sounds good, because that’s not me. I’ve had people say stuff to me just because it sounds good. It didn’t help. What I am sharing is what I have learned from my own emotional healing journey. I said it yesterday; I’ll say it again. I have never been depressed to the point of being actively suicidal, but I have been hopeless. I have been through emotional healing that I didn’t think was ever to happen. I have had nights where I curled up in my bed and cried, or went to the shower and cried until the hot water was gone, and my arms and legs were cramping because I had cried so much. There were times when I didn’t think it would ever get any better, and I would just be trapped, and I would just always be miserable. But I was wrong. It did get better. I’m not trapped, and I’m not miserable. I kept holding on to hope. I kept looking to other people who had been through the same process, who were going through the same process, who were experiencing the same shit. And I went to them for wisdom and advice. I had friends who could help me see the stars when all I could see was a black night. I had friends who could rekindle that spark in me when the world around that had blown it out. I had friends who weren’t afraid to sit with me in the dark instead of trying to tell me where the light switch was. And I had two very good therapists. healing partners are essential. Whether that healing partner is a friend, a talk therapist, a massage therapist...you need somebody. We all need somebody, Not just to listen to us. We all need somebody. We can’t do this alone. if you go back to the concept of driving in fog, and that first foggy trip that I took when I was 21, driving home from the movie theater in northern Indiana. if I had not had a friend making that trip with me, I don’t know what the outcome might’ve been. I might’ve decided to stop and sleep by the side of the road. But I had somebody in the car with me to encourage me, to help me find the road, to help me stay on the road, once we found it. It made a difference. This healing journey that I’ve been on has had a lot of foggy days. There’s been a lot of times when I just didn’t know what I was supposed to do next. Didn’t know what I was seeing. didn’t know if anything was ever going to change, if I would ever stop crying, if I would ever be somebody that I can like, if the flashbacks or whatever stop, if I would ever stop having panic attacks. But I had healing partners, and I had friends, and between them, they helped me remember that hope is always there. I said it yesterday, I’ll say it again. Sometimes the only thing you can do is stubbornly hang on. Hang on to this too shall pass. Hang on to there is always hope. I don’t feel it right now, but it’s there. And when you can’t hang on anymore, I hope you have a friend that you can go to and say hey, I’m having a hard time hanging on to hope. Can you help me? It’s hard. It’s hard to reach out to a friend and say I need help. It’s hard to reach out to a friend and say this is more than I can handle. It was hard to admit that I needed to see a therapist, and then oh my God, it was hard to go. And nobody tells you how hard it is to go to the therapist. Nobody tells you how hard it is to keep going back, and to look at things that are painful. But I will tell you this. If I had not kept going back, if I had not looked at the stuff that hurt and started processing it, I would not be the person I am today. And I really like the person I am today. I like the stability I have. I like the resilience I have. I like the fact that I’m more interested in encouraging other people. I like the fact that I’m brave enough to do a podcast. none of that would have happened if I had not been stubborn 25 years ago, and stubbornly kept insisting: the only way out is through; I can do this; there’s always hope. Personally, I had a three-part mantra for those nights when I was afraid to close my eyes because I didn’t know what kind of nightmare I would have, and I didn’t want to wake up scared so I thought I would just try to stay awake all night. I had three things that I clung to. Yours will be different because we’re not the same people. For me, it was:  God is good. God loves me. Somebody is praying for me. And every time I would do that, I would replace the word somebody with a particular name. Katie is praying for me. Barb is praying for me. Karen is praying for me. Rachel is praying for me. Alice is praying for me. Because I know my friends, and I knew, I knew, that they were praying for me. You can have a different mantra, but one of the best things you can put in that mantra: There is always hope. This too shall pass. You have to get miserable before you can get better. I hate the fact that that’s a reality, but the bottom line is you will not change until being who you are is too uncomfortable. I didn’t change until it reached the point where I was depressed all the time, until it reached the point where I was having nightmares and panic attacks, and it was starting to interfere with my ability to function in my daytime world. And to do what I needed to do for my jobs, I knew something had to change. And that something had to be me. I want to wave a magic wand and make everything all better. I don’t want there to ever be another Reed or another Bill or another Jeff or another JP, but I don’t have that power. All I have is my story, to let you know this is what I went through, and this is how I got through it. I got through it by being stubborn. I got through it by reminding myself over and over and over, it’s not always going to be this way. and you feel like your lyin’ when you say that, because really it’s the only way it’s been for what feels like my entire life, how can it not always be this way. I’ve proven it to myself. I am not the person I was 30 years ago. I don’t have the flashbacks and the panic attacks, the nightmares. I don’t have those depressions. I don’t have those trigger incidents like I used to. My resilience is not something that I occasionally notice. It’s part of who I am, because I was able to hang on. And I’ve gotta be honest with you. As I say this stuff, I feel like I am shortchanging, or judging or criticizing those people who were not able to hang on, and that is not my intent. JP, Jeff, Bill, Reed...they did the absolute best they knew how to do. They held on for as long as they could, and there comes a time when you just can’t. And if there’s nobody around to catch you when you fall, then you fall. I hope we all have somebody to catch us when we fall. I would not still be here if people had not caught me when I fell.   Like I said last night, I don’t have any answers for this, and I’m out of words.  But I care, and I wish I could wave a magic wand to help you hang on, because others care too. About you. Because you are worth caring about. And you are worth healing.  So please hang in there, just a little longer.  Everything changes, and hope is always there, even when we can’t see it.

Dedicated to Jeff, JP, Bill, Reed, and all the others who couldn't find the answers they needed.  And to all those who  are still searching for answers.   TRANSCRIPT   Hi, it’s Mary Young, and currently the Lessons from Life podcast. In another 10 days, the name is changing to Like Driving in Fog: an Emotional Healing Podcast. It’s December 22 as I record this podcast. I just came back from serving at my church’s Christmas services. I had planned that this week’s podcast would be continuing along those lines of having boundaries, or Christmas -- not going home for Christmas, taking care of you for Christmas, and then life intruded. One of the people that came tonight is a friend who lives far enough away that she does not usually attend my church. She has her own home church closer to home, but her family was there tonight. Because her family goes to this church, because they live over this way. And they were there because...tragedy. And the holiday seasons are full of tragedy, and we don’t think about it unless it happens to us. That may not be true for everybody, but it’s true for a lot of people. All holidays are happy happy joy joy, and it doesn’t occur to us that for other people the holidays can be sad. Lonely. Bittersweet. I still remember 15 years ago, having Christmas with my family two weeks after my mother passed away, one week after her funeral. It was not a Merry Christmas that year. And this friend that I saw tonight, this family that came tonight, will be having Christmas less than a week after losing a very young family member. And there is nothing merry about that. I had another friend who told me one time she woke up in the hospital, in the recovery room after her miscarriage, and the room was decorated for Christmas. And she just looked at the decorations on the wall and thought how can I be happy. So I’m asking you: please think about other people this Christmas season. Bear in mind that not everybody sees this as a season of joy. For a lot of people it is bittersweet. You may be that person for whom it is bittersweet, or just flat out sad, or it just flat-out sucks. And I just want you to know: it’s okay to be sad at Christmas time. Don’t feel like you have to put on a mask for the rest of us. Own your feelings. Let yourself feel. If Christmas is a time of grief for you, then let yourself grieve. Grief doesn’t go away if you bury it. It only goes away, or becomes manageable, if you feel it. If you let yourself acknowledge it, and experience it. That’s true of most emotions actually. So this Christmas, if a friend of your says yeah I’m just not really in the Christmas spirit, don’t try to jolly them into it. Respect where they are. Let them be where they are, and just sit with them. One of the best things a friend ever said to me was: sometimes when you’re sitting alone in the dark; you don’t want people to tell you where the light switch is. You know where the light switch is; you just want somebody to sit with you in t9he dark for a while. If you have a friend that just needs somebody to sit with them, not trying to fix them, not trying to jolly them out of anything, not pointing out where the light switch is so you can bring some light into the room, be that person. And sit with them in the dark, so they know they’re not alone. If you are that person wishing somebody could sit there with you in the darkness, don’t give up. I know sometimes things look like they will never get better. Things look like they will never change. Everything changes. It’s the one great law of life. Everything changes. This too shall pass. If you can just hold on, and I know sometimes you can’t hold on... I know that. And I don’t have an answer for that. Everything that’s in my mind wants to come around and tell people just hold a little tighter. Just reach out and call somebody. But if you are in the throes of depression, that’s the hardest thing in the world for you to do. And maybe the answer is to just keep repeating to yourself this too shall pass. I’m not alone. There is a way out. I don’t know. I have never been depressed to the point of being actively suicidal, so I don’t know what that feels like. I do know what it feels like for the people that are left behind. I know the confusion, and the anger, and the sorrow in the decades of loss though. Every year thinking: this year he would’ve been X years old. Every year thinking: this was the day that I lost him. I know that stuff, and I know that for people who are deeply depressed, it’s not even registering on their radar. You know, I usually try in these podcasts to have some kind of uplifting, encouraging something, and tonight all I have is sadness and sorrow because a friend’s family is hurting. Because they lost a loved one way too young, way too soon, and it reminds me of all the other loved ones who’ve been gone too soon. Whether through miscarriage, through childhood leukemia, through crib death, or through suicide, there’s a lot of pain in the world. I don’t want to make light of that. And healing through that pain is hard. It’s possible, but it’s hard. But please remember: you are not alone. I know it feels like you are, but you’re not. And even people that are not in the same room, not in the same state, not in the same country, can still be there for you. Over the Internet. Over the telephone, especially now with Skype and FaceTime, things like that. But even over the Internet. That’s all that kept me going back in the 90s. there were nights where I would spend hours with online chat, talking to somebody because the memories were killing me, and the flashbacks were killing me, and I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t know who I could talk to, and everybody in my time zone was asleep and wouldn’t understand. anyway there are people who understand, and I realize that when you’re in the deep throes of depression reaching out to somebody takes way more energy than you have, and that’s one of those things I don’t have an answer for. I just have a hope, and a prayer, that nobody has to sit in the darkness alone, and that everybody can find the strength to reach out and ask for help.  I don’t have any more words tonight. Thank you for listening.

TRANSCRIPT As a reminder: on January 1, we are changing the name of the podcast to Like Driving in Fog -- an Emotional Healing Podcast. I’m Mary Young, and I’m so glad you joined us again today. If you listened to last week’s podcast, we were talking about not going home for the holidays. You know, everybody makes a big deal -- it’s the happiest time of the year! Home is the only place to be! But for a lot of people home is toxic, and they feel guilty about not going home, or not wanting to go home. So I talked last week about it’s okay to not go home for the holidays, and maybe you need to build some new holiday traditions. However I also said if you do go home, wrap yourself in boundaries and so I wanted to touch on that this week. What are boundaries? Are you sure I’m allowed to have them? And how the heck do I have boundaries around my family, and how do I honor those boundaries? I gotta be honest with you -- I was 38, maybe 40, before I ever realized that it was okay for me to have boundaries.  We don’t have boundaries in my family. In fact, one of my mom’s favorite sayings was what’s yours is mine and what’s mine’s my own. If it belonged to anybody in the family, it belonged all of us. That concept of private ownership among family members just didn’t really exist. If you had something and another family member needed it, you were supposed to share. Or maybe even to give. If that’s the kind of family you come, from then going home for the holidays just means going back into that situation.  I used to tell people: you know, it doesn’t matter how old I am; it doesn’t matter how successful I am in my life. When I go home I am 12 years old again. That’s how they all see me and that’s how they’ll treat me. And I just gotta tell you, that is not comfortable. That is not how I want to be seen or treated. I want to be seen or treated as the successful woman that I am; as the age that I am; as the adult that I am. And that’s the kinda stuff that kept me from going home. I would go home once every four or five years. I understand if you have less-than-perfect families. And face it - most people in the world have less-than-perfect families. That’s just how it is. part of growing up, part of becoming emotionally healthy, part of maturity, is learning to let those people be who they are without letting them dictate who you are or how you behave. So if you’re gonna go home -- and sometimes we don’t feel like we have a choice -- you need to wrap yourself in boundaries. You need to protect yourself. How do we do that? The first step to boundaries is very simple:  believe you deserve them. Believe you are allowed to have them. A corollary to that would be believe that you need them. We all need boundaries. We don’t all realize that, but we all need boundaries. And those boundaries go both ways. There is behavior that I will not accept from other people, but there is also behavior that other people should not expect from me.   So part one: believe that you deserve boundaries. Part two: decide what those boundaries are. What is acceptable behavior to you? At what point will you disengage and walk away? For me, I started staying away from the family home. I would not sleep at the family home. It did not mean I didn’t love my parents, it meant that I love myself and I was going to take care of myself. So figure out what your breaking point is, and make sure you have a plan to not reach that breaking point.  That’s what the boundary does. Think of it like a guardrail. That boundary allowed me to say: this is getting close to where I would break. Let me get out of here before I do. Step number three is the hardest part.  You’ve realized or accepted that you deserve boundaries, that you’re allowed to have boundaries. You have established for yourself what those boundaries are, what behavior or words you will not tolerate and what action you will take if something comes up that you won’t tolerate. If they do this, I will do that. If they start a shouting match, I will leave. If they all get drunk, I will leave. It’s not fun to hang around a bunch of drunks. The hard part is enforcing the boundaries. And let me tell you straight up -- they are not going to support you enforcing your boundaries. They don’t want you to have boundaries. You’ve never had boundaries before. They’ve always been able to control you. They’ve always been able to suck you into their drama, or whatever the case may be. It’s no good having boundaries if you’re not going to enforce them. So again, decide that you deserve boundaries. Figure out what those boundaries are and enforce those boundaries. And I make it sound so simple. Just 1 2 3. I know it’s not simple, especially at the holidays.  These are the most challenging times of the year. But I also know that you can do it, because I went from 40 years of not having boundaries, to having and honoring my own boundaries. And if you have a hard time, and I did have a hard time at first.  But if you have a hard time, and start thinking Oh, I could just let that go. They don’t mean to be that way. This is just who they are...what would you do if they were treating your kid that way? Would you ask your child to stay, or would you find a way to get your child out of that situation? You have a responsibility to yourself. I have a responsibility to myself, to nurture me the way that I would nurture a child. It’s part of self-care -- taking care of yourself. And if the only way that you can take care of yourself is to think what would I do if it was a small child, then use that use that, until you have learned how to nurture yourself. There is unacceptable behavior in the world. Some of it comes from family members. You are not required to suffer through unacceptable behavior. Eleanor Roosevelt said nobody can make us feel inferior without our consent.  My therapist says we teach people how to treat us. What we accept, is what they know they can do. They may have spent the last 20, 30, 40, 60 years treating you like you have no value, but that does not have to go on. We teach people how to treat us by what we accept.   Having boundaries helps teach them to treat us with respect. Having boundaries helps teach them to treat us like human beings. You deserve boundaries. You are allowed to have boundaries. You have a right to boundaries. Internalize that. Paste it on your mirror so you see it every day if that’s what you need, but get that inside you, so that it’s inside your brain. Inside your heart. Inside your soul. It’s okay to have boundaries. You are allowed to have boundaries. All healthy people have boundaries. It’s okay to say stop kicking me.  It’s okay to say that is unacceptable behavior.  It’s okay to say I’m going to leave now, and then walk away. It’s okay to say I’m going to hang up now, and then hang up. Boundaries.  They are critical to emotional health.  They are critical to you being emotionally healthy, to me being emotionally healthy. Find your boundaries. Identify them. Identify what behavior is unacceptable. Identify what you will do when faced with unacceptable behavior, and then do it. And if you need somebody to support you, come back to my Facebook page and say hey, I just did that boundary thing and I’m just not sure, because it’s hard. And I will celebrate with you for doing the boundary thing. And I will understand that it’s hard. And I will encourage you to keep setting those boundaries, and keep enforcing those boundaries. And you will find that life gets better with boundaries, especially when you’re around people who don’t have any. Thank you so much for listening. Go make it a great week.

TRANSCRIPT   Hello again, and welcome to the Lessons from Life podcast. I should tell you there’s only about three more weeks that it’s going to be called the Lessons from Life podcast. January 1, we are changing the name of the podcast to Like Driving in Fog: an Emotional Healing podcast. I’m Mary Young, and today we are talking about the holiday season and how absolutely wonderful that can be for people. And yes, if you weren’t sure, that was sarcasm.----more---- We all have grown up watching the holidays be romanticized. All of the movies are about being home for the holidays; all of the songs are about being home for the holidays. Home is the best place you can be during the holidays, with your friends and family. And family is supposedly the absolute best thing in the entire world for you, and you know what? It’s not always true. Some people have toxic families. The truth is, probably every family since Adam and Eve is a dysfunctional family. Just different families have different dysfunctions. If you are from a toxic family, or if you have family trauma in your past, then the thought of going home for the holidays is not a happy thought. And if we keep with the concept of fogginess, driving in fog, being in dense fog banks, that kind of thing, then the holidays could be the densest fog bank of all. Because on the one hand you have societal expectations, familial expectations... hey it’s the holidays! Let’s all get together and show how much we love each other, and on the other hand you have your gut, your emotions, your memories saying no.  NO, I don’t want to. I don’t want to go. I don’t have fun; it’s not a good time. This is your permission: DON’T GO. If your family is toxic, if your holidays bring you more stress than joy, then let this be the year that you make a change. Let this be the year that you stand up and you say no more, and you take care of yourself. It really is okay to do that. I’m not saying it’s easy, I’m saying it’s okay. Some families are toxic. Some family members are fine individually, but you get them in a group and the group becomes toxic. You are under no requirement to keep putting yourself in toxic situations. Or as a friend of mine said, it’s okay to tell people stop kicking me. Sometimes we don’t even realize we’re being kicked. It just is what it is. This is the way our family has always been. This is the way our holidays have always been. I’m just saying take care of you. It’s okay to not go home for the holidays. It’s okay to keep toxic people at arm’s length. It’s okay to have boundaries. If you do go home, then wrap yourself in boundaries. Set some lines that can’t be crossed: if this happens, I will...whatever. If this happens, I will leave. This year instead of staying in the family home, I’m going to stay in a hotel. I’m going to stay with friends. I’ve going to stay with other relatives that are not toxic. That is totally and completely 0K. Holidays are big family times. Yeah I know, you already knew that. But it’s the big family times that can be the most triggering. If you have family trauma, it’s the big family times, where you get together with all the toxic people, not just one or two of them at a time. And if your family trauma is abuse -- physical, sexual, mental, emotional -- maybe that abuse has stopped because you’re an adult, but I will bet you that nobody in your family has ever acknowledged the fact that you were abused. Instead they act like it was no big deal, or they act like it never happened. Incest: they act like it never happened. Violence: that’s a little bit harder, but they may act like it’s no big deal, or just pretend it never happened, gloss over it. Mental abuse, emotional abuse: that’s where they look at you like you’re crazy because of the way that you took it all. I didn’t mean it that way, that’s just the way that you took it. I was just teasing. You just can’t take a joke. People, none of that is true. They were mentally or emotionally abusive, and it affected you, and it makes you not want to go home. So don’t go. Now, let’s bring in some reality. If you don’t go home, you’re going to hear about it. He thinks he’s too good for us. She’s too busy; she just doesn’t prioritize her family. That’s just another way of trying to control, and part of being emotionally healthy is not letting other people control you. It may be hard the first time, but it’s one of the best gifts you can give yourself. To not put yourself in a toxic situation, to not put yourself in the line of fire. Like I said, it’s not easy, especially the first time. There’s a phrase you will hear over and over and over, or read over and over and over. I’ve seen it more times than I can count in the last several years: speak your truth, even if your voice shakes. Let that be your phrase for this holiday season. Speak your truth, even if your voice shakes. My truth is, I don’t have a good time when I go home for Christmas, so I would rather not, and I’m not going to. I don’t have to give a reason. Just no, I can’t make it. No is a complete sentence. As soon as you start giving reasons, they start arguing against those reasons. I can’t afford it: we’ll buy you a ticket. I can’t afford a hotel: you can stay here. If you’re not going, just say no I’m not coming. No explanations are necessary. Even if they ask, just keep repeating: I’m sorry I can’t make it. I hope that you have friends near you that support you and encourage you. Maybe you can start new holiday traditions with them. Another option is to say: you know, Christmas is such a busy time. It’s just too hard to do it Christmas, but I’ll be happy to get together with you in mid-January. Take it at a time when it is not wrapped up in the holidays and the holiday expectations, and it may not be quite as toxic. If you are having a hard time with the holidays and you just wish there was somebody that understood, there are lots of people that understand. If you’re on Facebook, look up the page Talking Trees. It’s a page that’s owned by Dr. Rosenna Bakari. She is a child sexual abuse survivor and a psychologist. Every day there will be a post on Talking Trees that is encouraging, uplifting, insightful. Even if you are not a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, if your childhood trauma was in some other category, you can benefit by what Dr. Bakari puts on her page. And right now she’s talking about toxic families and getting through the holidays, so you could go to the Talking Trees page and find some good insight in the posts. And find people in the comments who are experiencing the same thing you are, and that way you will be reminded that you’re not alone. Holidays are hard. Don’t make them harder on yourself if you don’t have to. Thanks for joining us today. We’ll see you next time. Until then go make it a great week.

TRANSCRIPT Hi everybody, and thanks again for joining me on Lessons from Life. I’m Mary Young. If you remember, last week we talked about how the emotional healing journey might be confusing, maybe even nerve-wracking. I compared it to driving in fog, and that’s probably nobody’s favorite travel experience. I don’t want to scare you away from the healing journey by describing it as a foggy drive, but one of the reasons I like that analogy is because even when you’re on a foggy drive it’s not always foggy.----more---- Fog comes in many forms. It can be a light haze. It can be so dense that you can’t see your nose in front of your face, but even if it’s dense fog it’s not permanent. The sun comes out and burns the fog away, or as you’re progressing, you move away from the low ground to the higher ground and the fog lifts accordingly. It’s the same way when you’re healing. You can be in the middle of a craptastic fog bank - and that could be literal or metaphorical - but the sun is going to shine again. one of the reasons I picked the picture for today’s podcast is that even though it’s a foggy picture, you can see the sun rays slanting through if you look at it very closely. And here’s the thing to remember -- not every day is foggy. It’s easy to forget that when you’re in the middle of some hard days or some hard memories, but they won’t last forever. I shared last week about the flashbacks and panic attacks that I had, and there are not enough words to describe how hard they were to experience. But they were not 24/7/365. They were interspersed with days of stability, and as I healed, those days of stability lasted longer. And I had more emotional energy, more coping techniques, more resources for dealing with the flashbacks and the panic attacks when they came. The challenge for me in this podcast is being open and honest, authentic, vulnerable, and at the same time not scaring you away.  I want you to go on that healing journey. The healing journey is the best gift you can give yourself for emotional healing for emotional health, but I want you to go into it with your eyes open. It is a lifetime journey. It is not something that you can waltz through in three months and say: okay we’re good now. If you know people who have done that, then they have chosen to short-circuit themselves. They have chosen to stop the healing process. Let me I’ll tell you how I know this. It was January 1999 when I walked into Tricia’s office. So next month will be 20 years. last night December 1, 2018, almost 20 years after walking into Tricia’s office...twenty years after being on a healing journey and watching the fog lift and having more sunny days than foggy days. And last night at 10 o’clock at night, I was curled up in a fetal position on my bed, holding onto my dogs and crying my eyes out because I was in the middle of a full-blown panic attack, and Ativan wasn’t touching it. I can give you reasons for why that panic attack happened, but that’s not the point. The point is it happened. 20 years on the healing journey, and I still get panic attacks. The difference is they’re not debilitating. I took an Ativan. I let myself cry. I snuggled with my dogs. I tried to relax. I tried to let myself fall asleep. I was not being successful, so I got up and grabbed my laptop, and reached out to an online support group that I have, and was able to share with them that I was having a panic attack. I think I know what caused it, but in the meantime I just had to get it out of my brain, and I needed somebody to hear me. Within 20 minutes somebody had responded on the Facebook page, and once I knew I was heard then I could quiet my brain down. But at 10 o’clock/1030 last night, I was using every coping mechanism that I’ve learned over my healing journey. Grounding myself...I felt like a very tiny little kid, so I spoke out loud and reminded myself that I’m 57 years old almost 58. I reminded myself that I was in my bedroom, in my bed, with my dogs, that the year was 2018, that there was nothing out there that was trying to get me. There was no monster in the house. I let myself cry:  I screamed into my pillow because I didn’t want to scare the dogs. I reached out for help when my own coping techniques or mechanisms weren’t doing the job. I did not reach out to my therapist - it is totally inappropriate to text your therapist at 1030 at night on a Saturday. There was a time earlier in my healing journey where I would not have been aware of that, and if I did know I would not have cared. but I am healed enough that I was able to say you know what, I can tell her about this when I see her on Monday, and I know that I’ll be okay. I just need to get myself to where I can go to sleep. That’s what the healing journey can do for you. Even when the fog comes, you just slow down, use proper driving techniques, and you keep going. That’s why I like the metaphor of driving in fog, because here’s the other thing... if you have been on a healing journey; if you have been trying to change your mindset; tried losing weight; tried changing habits; tried starting an exercise program... I’ll guarantee you that at some point you didn’t succeed. At some point, you fell off the wagon. And if you are like most human beings, when you did that, you started yelling at yourself: I knew I couldn’t do this! I knew sooner or later something would come up. I knew something was going to happen. Last night, I could have sat there curled up in a ball and called myself names. I could have lain there in a fetal position and yelled at myself for having a panic attack, when the fact is that it was my body and my brain telling me that I was currently overwhelmed, and they didn’t know how to handle the overwhelming issue. When you are driving and you come across fog, or when you are out driving in rain and the rain goes from being a little mist to maybe a drizzle to pouring down so hard that you have to put the wipers on super-speed, do you blame yourself for the weather? Oh my God it’s foggy - I am such a terrible person because it’s foggy! Oh shit, it’s raining! What did I do to make it rain so hard? NO. We don’t do that, because we know the weather is outside of us. We don’t control the weather. We can’t control the weather. Your brain, your heart, your emotions, want to heal. Nobody wants to walk around not healed, but we sabotage ourselves during the healing process by blaming ourselves for the fact that we need to heal. It is not my fault that the jerk in the basement liked little girls. That is not my fault. And yes, I want to heal from that. I have healed from that. But first I had to stop blaming myself for his weakness. There are too many examples for that because we all do it. We blame ourselves because something happened, and it’s not our fault. Especially, and let me say this out loud, slowly and clearly... if somebody hurt you when you were a child -- physical abuse, mental abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse --  that was not your fault. If somebody raped you, that was not your fault. If somebody beat you, that was not your fault. It is so important to stop blaming yourself. I had to stop blaming myself. We all do it, and we all need to stop. I don’t blame myself when I drive into a fog bank. I don’t blame myself when the heavens open up and the rain pelts the car so hard that I have to slow down. All I do is slow down, and I make sure that I’m taking proper driving precautions. But I don’t kick myself and go oh my gosh it’s raining. I’m such a terrible person! Oh my gosh it’s foggy. I am such a terrible person! NO!  NO!  NO! What happened to you when you were a child has nothing to do with you. It has to do with the predator that attacked you. And healing from that predation is going to go on the rest of your life, because of things that we learned; things that we were taught, ways that we were taught to behave that are not healthy coping mechanisms. But that doesn’t make you bad. It doesn’t make me bad. It doesn’t make me a failure as a human being, because for a large part of my life I did not know how to deal with authority. That doesn’t make me a failure as a human being. It means I had something I needed to learn. I am not a failure as a human being because for a large part of my life, I did not live up to my potential. The more emotionally healthy I get, the more I find myself living up to my potential. As you travel on this healing journey, pay attention to the victories. Sometimes you may not even notice them because they’re so small. So start a notebook -- call it Proof of Healing, and every time you find yourself behaving differently than you used to, write it down. Proof of Healing: I started a podcast. Proof of Healing: I applied for a promotion at work. Proof of Healing: I did not reach out to my therapist at 1030 on a Saturday night while I was having a panic attack, because I have past experience that tells me I can get through that, and I can reach out to her on Monday when I have an appointment scheduled with her. Proof of Healing: my credit card bills are going down instead of up. Find those victories. Even if they look really tiny to you, find them. Recognize them. Celebrate them, because what happens is you will build on those. I think you’ll be surprised when you start writing them down, how many little victories there are. I used to celebrate if I would have stability for two days. That was a big whoo hoo! for me. Then I had stability for a week --oh my gosh 5 to 7 days where I felt stable instead of crazy! It’s been years, literally years that I have been stable and that’s why the panic last night did not derail me. Because I know, because my experience has shown, that I’ll have panic attacks. Yes I need to recognize what I’m feeling; I need to examine what I’m feeling. What was it that had me so scared and why, what was so overwhelming? And then I can go on. Total honesty...it was not like that 20 years ago. If you remember, 20 years ago panic attacks could have me hiding in the closet.  But that was 20 years ago, at the beginning of the healing journey.  I’ve made progress. You will make progress. Recognize that progress. Celebrate that progress. It builds on itself and you will find that it is not always foggy. The fog will lift, and you will have sunny days. That’s the way it’s been for me, so I know that’s the way it can be for you. Thanks again for listening today. We’ll see you next time. Until then go make it a great week.  

TRANSCRIPT I’ve spent this entire week thinking about how to follow up last week’s podcast. If you remember, last week we talked about the difference that can be made when you go through an emotional healing journey. And the next thought that came to mind was what does that journey look like. I’ve said in the past that emotional healing is how we get to emotional health, and that that journey or that process is unique to each individual. What I mean by that is we each do things differently. My emotional healing journey is different from your emotional healing journey. There are similarities. There are things that are universal, but we are each unique individuals and therefore our actual journey, our actual process, is unique to ourselves. You can learn from what I’ve gone through. I can learn from what you’ve gone through, but the specific steps that I took may not be the right steps for you, because we are different people. With that in mind, I was trying really hard to figure out how to describe the journey...what metaphor, what analogy, could I find for the journey. And I have one that I think is perfect.----more---- Thanks for joining us today on the Lessons from Life podcast. I’m Mary Young, and we are talking about what it looks like while you are actually going through your healing journey or your emotional healing process. And what does it really look like? Confusion...Uncertainty...Apprehension...Nervousness...all that. And when I look for a simple metaphor or a simple allegory, fog is the word that comes to mind. Have you ever driven in fog, or been out on the lake or the ocean and been enveloped by a fog bank, or maybe gone walking on a foggy day? It changes how everything looks. In fact it may hide everything so you can’t even see anything. Sometimes you can see a little bit of the way.  Sometimes you can see a lot, because it’s just a light fog which makes everything hazy, and makes it look not quite the same as you’re used to seeing it. But sometimes, it’s like this morning when I was out. Fog hid everything that was more than a 10th of a mile in front of me.  If I tried to look ahead, I couldn’t see anything except the road ending in a bank of fog. That’s what it feels like sometimes when you’re on that healing journey. As I was thinking about that, I remembered a time when I was 21 – I was a senior in college. My friend and I had gone to another town to watch the movie on Golden Pond because it wasn’t showing in our small Indiana town. This was in northwestern Indiana, maybe 10 miles south of Lake Michigan, and it was winter time.  You get foggy roads in the wintertime when you’re close to Lake Michigan. We went to the 730 showing of the movie, so it got out about nine, and we headed back to our college town. It’s normally a 45 minute - maybe an hour - drive. We got home at midnight, because the fog had settled in and it was dense. And when I say dense, I mean cut it with a knife dense. We’re on this back road - it’s a state road but it’s a back road - to go back to our town. We are maybe 10 miles south of the lake so we have all that lake fog, and I couldn’t see the road I was driving on. In fact Colleen and I both had our windows rolled down, and while I was focusing on keeping the car going straight, she was looking out her window to make sure that I was in the right lane. She was looking for the stripe on the side of the road, and I still remember when she stopped and said “Mary I am seeing double yellow stripes on my side of the car,” which meant I was totally in the wrong lane. So I eased back over to her side of the road until she told me that she could see a white stripe. And no sooner was I fully in the correct lane, then we came up to an intersection and I saw headlights coming towards us. So if we had not made that lane correction, we could very possibly have been in an accident. There’s a lot of parallels there to emotional healing: not being able to see where you are not sure where you’re going not sure where the road is suddenly realizing you’re not in the right position on the road making a lane change narrowly avoiding a collision. All of this is a really, really good metaphor or allegory for emotional healing. So let’s look at that a little bit deeper. When I first saw my therapist back in 1998, I had never been through therapy before. I had a degree in counseling; I had done some internships when I was in college, but it had been 20 years at least since I had graduated college. Maybe 25, and I had never actually worked in the counseling field, so my experience with therapy was very limited. I had done a couple counseling sessions in college, but again it had been 25 years ago probably. And I remember telling a friend of mine “I can’t go to therapy that means I’m crazy.” And she’s like: “you know better than that.” So I started seeing Tricia. I had no idea how to talk about this stuff, because I had never talked about it. I had no idea what I needed to work on, because I didn’t know what I didn’t know. It was all foggy, and I had a choice.  I could stop and go home; say I’m not coming back, or I could keep going. We always have a choice. In going back to the driving in fog allegory, or the traveling through fog bank allegory, you have a lot of different choices. Choice number one is I could just stop. When Colleen and I were driving home from that movie, I could’ve just stopped and said: “hey I can’t see where I’m going we’re just gonna stop.” There’s a couple different problems with that, not the least of which is I’ll never get anywhere if I’m not moving.  If you’re just standing still, you are not making any progress. You are just standing there.  And sometimes that’s the right move - don’t get me wrong. But not when you’re on a foggy road, because there may be other cars on the road, and if you’re just sitting there, there could be a collision. Standing still was not an option for me on my healing journey. I had to keep moving, even if I was moving at the speed of a snail. Even if I felt like I was crawling on hands and knees over broken glass, I had to keep going forward. The only way to get out of a fog bank is to go through it. So choice one: you could stop. You could stop your car in the middle of the road in the fog because you can’t see.  And that’s a dangerous choice because you’re not gonna make any progress, and you might wind up in a collision. Choice number two: I can change my direction. I could turn around and go back where it wasn’t foggy. I have a hard time choosing to retrace my steps in a healing journey.  I don’t want to go back. I want to go forward. I want to heal. So I did not choose to go back. I chose to go forward. You can go really slowly, and put your flashers on to make it easier for other cars to see you. That’s what I felt like I did. There were days in that 45 minute therapy session where we spent 30 to 40 minutes talking about all kinds of other stuff, and I would bring up the hard stuff in the last five minutes. You don’t make a lot of progress that way, but you do make progress. Go as slowly as you need to go, but don’t stop. Stopping is not progressing. Stopping is not moving forward. Here’s the thing -- fog will lift eventually. It always does. And when it does, you’ll be amazed at how far you’ve come when you look back, as long as you don’t stop. So yes, the healing journey can be a very foggy, very disorienting journey. But it’s worth the trip. It’s worth the time and the effort that you put into it, and you just have to keep moving. Even if you move slowly. Even if it takes you forever be able to share with your therapist about the stuff that really, really matters, you’ll get there. And that fog will lift, and you’ll be able to see the road ahead of you again, instead of it just being some giant cloud bank. That’s how it’s been for me. I’m confident it will be that way for you as well. Thanks so much for listening. Go make it a great week

      Gratitude and wellness go hand in hand: Being thankful can improve our lives and the lives of others in many ways. In this episode of Drop of Inspiration, special guests Young Living CEO Mary Young, President and COO Jared Turner, and Executive Director of the D. Gary Young, Young Living Foundation Greg Larsen […]

TRANSCRIPT I was working on a time-sensitive project at work, and in the room on the other side of the wall, the company owner and general manager were having a shouting match.  It was all I could do to concentrate on my project.  Their angry voices kept interrupting my concentration, and my “fight or flight” response was kicking in as I waited for the shouting match to escalate to violence.  It never did, but it was all I could do to not run and hide as I listened to them.  I didn’t feel like I was 32 years old. I felt like a little kid listening to her parents fight. I huddled in the back corner of the closet, all lights off, hoping the clothes hanging above me and the laundry basket in front of me would keep me from being seen.  It was the closest thing to a “safe room” that existed in my house.  I pulled a blanket over my head hoping it would make me a shapeless lump, and not as easily recognizable as a human being.  My stomach did flip flops, and in my mind I repeated endlessly “Don’t let them find me. Don’t let them find me.”  I was 38 years old, but I felt like I was only 3 or 4, and that a monster was looking for me. ----more---- Thanks for joining us on Lessons from Life. I’m Mary Young. Last week, we talked about definitions of emotional health and emotional healing.  This week, I want to show you the difference emotional healing can make by sharing a little from my own life.  When I was very young, my folks let a family friend live in our basement.  He was an alcoholic, but so was everyone they knew, so that wasn’t a problem for them.  His name was Jack France, and he was my buddy.  I still have a toy poodle he gave me for my 3rd birthday. It’s the only childhood toy I still have.  I treasured it, because he gave it to me. Everything I knew about Jack France when I was growing up, I learned from Mom.  She told me he was my special friend. That he always had time for me.  I liked having a special friend -- as the youngest, it always felt like no one had time for me, but he always did. In all the times Mom would tell me about Jack France, she never once told me what he did to me. I don’t even know if she knew. I didn’t know, because I had repressed all the memories as a coping mechanism. But here’s the thing about repressed memories - they don’t stay buried forever.  They will eventually surface, and the average age for that is around 38.  I was 37 when my memories started surfacing as nightmares and flashbacks. And I reacted to them the same way I reacted when I was a child. As we grow up, we learn the skills we will use as adults.  Not just reading, writing, and arithmetic, but how to handle emotions and how to respond to what happens around us.  My family didn’t process emotions - we buried them.  Keep busy, don’t think about them was the message I learned from several adult family members.  If something was unpleasant, just deny it. It didn’t really happen.  The only emotion I remember seeing in childhood was anger. I’m sure there was also love, but what I remember most are the times the adults were angry. Those are the skills I carried into adulthood - bury your emotions, but it’s ok to express anger. I walked in anger, convinced that I was a victim and the world was stacked against me, although I wouldn’t have said it that clearly back then.  So I grew up, went to college, joined the military, moved away from home, and never understood why I was so hesitant to return home.  Until I was in my early 30s, which brings us back to the opening lines of today’s podcast. Growing up, my bedroom was on the other side of the wall from Mom & Dad’s. There was one time when I was very young - probably no more than 5 - and they were having an argument.  I remember hearing thuds.  When I was 32 and the company owner was arguing with the manager, they were on the other side of the wall from me, and it took me back to that time my parents were fighting.  That’s what PTSD does, if you don’t deal with the trauma. That other incident I shared at the beginning, about hiding in the closet...yes, I really did that during a flashback.  I also crawled under the desk in my home-office, trying to hide but still be able to talk on the phone with a friend who was virtually holding my hand while I was having a different flashback. The thing about flashbacks -- no matter where you are or how old you are, you FEEL like you are the age and location where the trauma occurred, and experiencing the trauma again.  That’s why one of the coping techniques for flashbacks is to “ground” yourself in the present. But that’s just a coping technique.  It gets you through the flashback, which is really, really important.  To truly heal, you have to deal with the underlying trauma. My childhood experiences -- being molested by Jack France, having emotionally absent parents, having a narcissistic parent, having a family tree full of active alcoholics -- taught me how to behave as an adult. But the behaviors I learned weren’t healthy, functional behaviors.  Bury your emotions. Be a victim. Be passive-aggressive. Be a chameleon - do whatever it takes to be liked. Wait for people to figure out what you want/need instead of asking for it.  Never take responsibility - it’s always someone else’s fault. Or take too much responsibility - it’s all my fault. This is how I lived my life until I was in my late 30s.  I was co-dependent when I didn’t even know what that was. I wasn’t happy. I didn’t like myself. I kept trying to be like other people who seemed happy, but it never worked for me.  A friend said “Just be you!” and I had no idea how to do that. But I never knew anything was wrong. This was my normal. As crazy as it sounds to say this: Thank goodness for the nightmares and the flashbacks. The nightmares were part of what drove me to find a therapist. The flashbacks started after I began therapy, because I finally had a safe place to talk about them and deal with them. And a large part of my healing was processing the emotions. Somebody told me one time:  “you have to feel to heal.”  Take it from me - that’s not always easy. It was actually one of the most challenging parts of my healing journey.  But burying the painful emotions also buries the happy ones. You can’t numb just part of your emotions - you wind up numbing all of them. It’s been 20 years since I first walked into a therapist’s office (and no, I have not spent all of the last 20 years in therapy), and my life is radically different than it was then. It may not look any different on the outside, other than I moved from Texas to Georgia.  But the inside is where it matters.  And the inside is what’s changed. I’m not co-dependent. I’m not a victim. I’m not defined by what happened to me - it’s just part of my history. I know how to nurture myself instead of needing others to do so. I very rarely feel like I’m 3 or 4 years old - even when something happens that used to make me feel that way. I recognize and admit my emotions when I feel them, and give myself permission to feel them, and time to process them. I take responsibility for my own happiness, and my own needs. I even ask for help without feeling like it’s an admission of weakness. I don’t blame myself for someone else’s bad behavior -- it’s not my fault that Jack France liked little girls.  I don’t eat or drink my emotions away, or do “retail therapy.” There is always more work to do on the healing journey. As I said last week, emotional health is not an either/or situation, where you’re either healthy or you’re not. It’s a continuum, and no matter how emotionally healthy I am, I can always improve. And I’m OK with that, because I know I *will* improve, because I *have* improved.  And I want this podcast to give you hope that you can, too. I remember thinking nothing would ever change; no one would ever understand; everything was hopeless; and I was just doomed to be the way I was. But I was WRONG.  Emotional health isn’t just for other people, for the lucky ones. It’s for everyone. If I can heal, so can you.  If my podcasts don’t do anything but give you hope, they’ve done enough.  You are not alone. You are not hopeless. You can heal.  But you have to choose to deal with whatever it is. You have to choose to feel. You have to choose to heal.  Not just once, but every day, maybe even every minute. Choose to heal, and watch your life change.   Until next time, thanks for listening, and go make it a great week.

TRANSCRIPT   Last week, I was telling a friend of mine about the fact that I’m doing a podcast and that the podcast is about emotional healing. When I said that, my friend asked me a question that I don’t remember anybody ever asking me before. She said “what do you mean when you say emotional healing?” I didn’t have an answer, because every time I have said to somebody “I’m on an emotional healing journey,” or “I’m doing a podcast on emotional healing,” or “my next book is about emotional healing,” people just smile and nod, like they automatically know what I’m talking about. Nobody has ever asked me before what do I mean when I say emotional healing, so I didn’t have an answer. And it’s actually kind of embarrassing. So I pondered it, and didn’t have an answer. I reached out to some friends of mine who have been on the same type of emotional healing journey that I’ve been on, recovering from childhood trauma, and I asked them “what does emotional healing mean to you?” They gave me some answers, and they gave me permission to share their answers, and that’s what we’re going to be talking about today.  Thanks ever so much for joining us on the Lessons from Life podcast. I’m Mary Young, and today were talking about what is emotional healing; what is emotional health; what does it mean; what does it look like. When I asked my friends what do they think of when they think of emotional healing or what does it mean to them, all of the answers I got were in writing, so I’m just going to read you what they said. one friend said: “I think emotional healing happens when we come to terms with what has happened to us and then we allow ourselves to grow emotionally. . ie: I feel as though I have accepted what has happened to me and it no longer controls my thoughts and my life and I have become stronger when I am faced with situations that bring back my experiences. This is emotional healing. I may never be completely healed emotionally but it's a constant work in progress as I am a work in progress.”   Another friend said: I haven’t really processed that question fully but I can say that part of it is:  My night terrors disappeared years ago. There is less emotional knee-jerk reactions to things said or seen. I process a little differently now. But I still have times when I'll relive something. Whether it’s a 37yr old bad choice or reliving a horrible moment again. To me, emotional healing is a process that I'm constantly refining (in or for) my brain. It isn't so easy to trigger me anymore, but it’s not impossible. and then my third friend that shared said:  This is hard. I’ve started to type a response and stopped three times. I keep wanting to compare it to a loss of someone or something and the stages that a person goes through. The death of a loved one or pet, surviving an accident, a war, losing your home or community. Some ppl get “stuck” in a phase, denial, anger, etc. Emotional healing is when you have allowed yourself to go through all of the emotional phases and come through on the other side intact. Not the same but healing. Things still trigger but not as often or are as painful hopefully. So those are three answers from three survivors of childhood trauma, and they say basically the same thing that I was thinking. So I put all of that into my brain and let it percolate around, and came up with the following when I talk about emotional health or emotional healing, this is what I’m talking about. Emotional health is being able to feel your emotions without being controlled by or ashamed of them, and being able to express those emotions appropriately. Emotional healing is the process of getting there, and that process is unique to each individual. I took that definition back to my friends and all three of them agreed that it sounded like what they meant. Being able to feel your emotions -- allowing yourself to feel your emotions -- without being controlled by or ashamed of them, and being able to express those emotions appropriately, and healing is the process of getting there. Again, that process is unique to everyone. The healing journey that I was, on the steps that I took -- yours will be different. There may be similarities, but we are not the same people, so there will be differences, and each one of us is unique, so our healing journey will be unique.  So that’s my definition of emotional health and the emotional healing journey. We’re going to be talking about that in more detail over the next few weeks, because how can you go on a healing journey if you don’t know what it looks like, or what you’re trying to accomplish? I will tell you this much, and I said it to my friend when she said “I still have healing to do, I will probably always be healing.” I told her that we think of healing the way we think of a broken bone or a cut. The cut scabs over; the scab falls off; you might have a scar depending, you might’ve had to get stitches depending, but you’re healed. The cut is no longer there. The bone mends, it knits back together, and you no longer have a broken bone. You are healthy again.  Emotional healing is not either/or.  Either I’m emotionally healthy or I’m not. Emotional healing/emotional health is a continuum, and all along that continuum you need more healing. I needed more healing when I was 21. I needed more healing when I was 38 and went to therapy. I needed more healing when I was 40 and out of therapy. I needed more healing when I was 51 and went back to therapy. I needed more healing when I was 55 and thought I had crossed that bridge from the unhealthy to the healthy, before I realized it was a continuum. There will always be areas where I need to heal emotionally, and that’s just part of becoming a better version of me.  The difference is in 1998 and in 2011, the areas where I needed to heal were debilitating. They were keeping me from being able to function to my full capacity. Now, the areas where I need to heal are... I want to say normal and I know that’s not right, and I’m not trying to minimize, it but it’s more of an understanding myself. Why did I overreact to that statement, that kind of thing. I like the person that I have worked hard to become. I am a better version of me than I was before I started this healing journey. You can be a better version of you. You can find the you that you were meant to be, and that’s all I want.  I want me to be the best me that I can be. I want you to be the best you that you can be. And if understanding emotional healing and emotional health helps you get there, then please keep listening. Please keep reading the transcripts, because I’m gonna share what has worked for me, what my journey has looked like. And maybe you’ll find some value in that. If nothing else, you’ll know that you’re not alone. And that may be the most important thing to know. Because we always feel like we are the only person going through it.  You are not alone. I am not alone.  Thanks for listening. I hope to see you again, and don’t forget to go make it a great week.

TRANSCRIPT I’ve got a question for you. When you’re going someplace, especially someplace you’ve never been before, how do you find it? Did somebody give you directions? Maybe somebody texted or emailed you directions turn by turn. Back in the day, did you pull out a map or map book and plot your directions? I remember back in 1969, our family took a vacation from Ohio to St. Louis. My mom contacted AAA and got two or three -- I think they’re called trip books -- and she used those to plan the trip. They had information about every state that we were going be going through. Things that we could stop and see along the way, campsites, all kinds of stuff. We knew that we wanted to visit family in Illinois. Everything after that was up for grabs. She used those trip books, and she planned our trip to get from Ohio to Illinois to St. Louis, and all the way back home. And it worked, because she researched, and because she planned. Today I’m sure you can still contact AAA and get trip books, but I don’t know anybody who would, because we have the Internet. And we have cell phones and smart phones, and every smart phone has a GPS app so we’re good to go. All you have to do is program in the address you want to go to, or the location you want to go to, and it gives you turn by turn directions. You can’t get lost. And that’s great, if all you’re worried about is going from point A to point B in some geographic location. What if you’re talking about your career? “What do you want to be when you grow up” is a question that we’re always asked.----more---- Looking at it a different way -- what is it that you want to do with your life? What kind of job do you want? How do you get that job? What do I need to know to be able to get that job? What do I need to be qualified to get that job? And again, you can do some research, and you can do some planning, and you can just follow that plan and know exactly what you need to do. When people talk about having five-year plans, it’s the same kind of thing. They are planning out where I want to be in five years, what I want to be doing. All of that stuff is wonderful for things like careers, or family trips. But what about life? And I draw your attention again to the graphic at the top of the page. That start line and that finish line, and how it’s not a nice straight progression from start to finish, but full of twists and turns, and double backs and loop arounds, because that’s what life does. Life has twists and turns, ups and downs, plateaus, mountains, valleys, cliffs, caves, lakes, oceans, ponds, gravel roads, paved roads, dirt roads, and very, very few road signs. There’s not a lot out there saying hey, go this way and you’ll be happy. Go this way and you’ll be healthy. No, it’s hey, welcome to life! Have fun! Figure it out as you go along. Good luck with that. So now what do we do? We try, and we figure it out as we go along. So, road trips and careers, you can plan and research and have a chart laid out, and kind of follow a path. Life? Yeah, you can have ideas, and sometimes you get there and sometimes it throws you a whopper. Here’s the whopper that I dealt with. It wasn’t really life per se, although it’s part of life. It was my emotional healing journey. Thanks for joining us today on the lessons from life podcast. I’m Mary Young, and we’re going to be talking about what in hindsight is probably the most important question -- I could even call it a life-changing question  --  that I’ve ever been asked. So in an emotional healing journey, how do you know when you’re healed? When I broke my leg last year, it was easy to know when it was healed, because they took x-rays. They took x-rays at the beginning, and said oh look! Those bones aren’t together, and they took x-rays at the end and said oh look! You’re good now. If you have a cut or a scratch on your arm or your leg or your hand, you know it’s healed because it’s no longer there. Sometimes there will be a scar - sometimes not, but the cut or the scratch is no longer there, so you know you’re healed. When you have the flu, you know you’re over the flu because you no longer have flu symptoms.  But emotional healing - that’s all inside. There are not physical symptoms like it is with the flu or a broken bone, or a cut or scratch, or poison ivy. So how do you know when you are emotionally healthy? How do you know how to get there? Where’s the road signs? Where’s the trip books that I can use that will say follow these steps and you’ll be good? Oh my gosh, I would love to give you a one-size-fits-all answer. The longer I live life, the more convinced I am that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all answer. Yes, we may have commonalities, but we are also unique, and we each deal with our issues individually, uniquely. And what works for me may not work for you, and vice versa. I will say this though. Counseling helps. It’s worth every penny that I’ve spent, and every hour that I’ve spent in a counselor’s office. What makes me say that? My personal experience. But here’s where I’m going with this. When I first started seeing Tracy, the counselor that I see now, in the very first or second session that I had with her, we were talking about why I was in therapy, what I wanted to get out of the therapy. And I said I want my past to stop kicking my butt. I want to be stable. I want to be able to function. I want to be healthier than I am now. I just want to be a healthier me.  And that’s when Tracy asked me the question that honestly has changed my life. And it’s actually a two-part question: what does a healthy you look like? That’s part one. I said I want to be a healthier me, and she said great! What does that look like? So I walked out of her office, and I pondered. I pondered, and I pondered some more, and I continued pondering. And as I pondered I would write, because that’s how I process things is by writing.  So I did some therapeutic writing and some journaling, whatever you want to call it, and by the time all was said and done, I sat down one day and just started a piece of paper. Up at the top I wrote what does a healthier me look like, and I started writing down bullet points. And I took that list into my next Tracy appointment, and shared it with Tracy, and when I got home I threw it on stack of paper in the office and forgot all about it. Yes, really, I did. But I said it’s a two-part question. Part one - what does a healthier me look like? That was my list. This is what I want to be. This this is what I think a healthy me would look like. Part two is the kicker. What does it take to get there, and are you willing to do that work? For me, getting there meant spending a lot of time in Tracy’s office. And these were not just casual sit down and talk about the weather conversations, these were if I could’ve hidden behind the couch while I talked to her I would’ve because the stuff that I was sharing was so terrifying to me. So I spent a lot of time in my counselor’s office. I spent a lot of time journaling and doing therapeutic writing. I did a lot of retraining my brain, facing things that were hard to face, looking at memories that I had repressed, facing things about myself that I didn’t like or that were hard to face about myself. Turns out I’m not the nicest person in the world, even though I always thought I was growing up. But here’s the thing... I said a minute ago that when I came back from that Tracy appointment where I had read her that list, I took that piece of paper and I threw it in a stack of paper in the office and forgot about it. That is literally true. I did not go into Tracy’s office each week going okay! Today let’s talk about number six on that list. I’m not that kind person. There are people who are meticulous like that, but that’s not me. I go into to Tracy’s office and say here’s what’s driving me crazy today, and that’s what we talk about. And three or four years after I first started seeing Tracy, I was deep cleaning my office so I could paint it. And so I’m going through the stacks of paper, and I ran across this list. By then I had totally forgotten I had ever made that list of what does a healthier me look like. And I stopped what I was doing, and I read that sheet of paper, and I started to cry. Not ugly tears. Happy tears. And I’m kind of blinking back tears right now as I share this, because it was so powerful. There were 18 items on that list, and as I worked my way down through that list, I went check...check...check. All but two of those 18 items, I could check off and say hey, I’ve got that. And the two that I could not check off, I was actively working on. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather. I had forgotten that I ever made that list, and I’d certainly forgotten what was on it. And I didn’t realize it, but all those times that I went to Tracy’s office and dealt with whatever was driving me crazy, it was actually working its way through the items on the list, bringing me to the point where I could say oh my gosh, I’m emotionally healthy! And because I had succeeded in the first 16 items, the fact that I was still working on the last two items didn’t bother me, because I knew that I would get there, because I had already gotten there with the other items. And there’s power in that. There is power in knowing what you want to achieve There’s power in writing it down. There is power in having an accountability partner. In my case, the accountability partner was my counselor. For you, it could be somebody else. But the somebody, whoever it is, has to be somebody that will encourage you to be a better version of you. Somebody who will celebrate with you all these little victories that you’ll have along the way. And I’m telling you...when I say little victories; they could be TINY, almost too small to see. And it is so critically important that you notice those, and you recognize those, and you celebrate those. And you honor those, because that is how we change. Incrementally. By baby steps. And you need that accountability partner, that celebration partner. Maybe you don’t have anybody like that in your life, and I’m really really sorry if that’s the case. I hope you have an accountability partner, a celebration partner. But you know what? If you don’t have that in your life right now, I have a Facebook page.  Go to Facebook, and look up the lessons from life podcast. Find that Facebook page, and you leave me a comment, and I will celebrate your victories with you. Because your victories deserve to be celebrated. Because you are becoming a better you, and that is one of the best things that you can do for yourself. So remember the question: what would a healthier you look like? And the corollary: what will it take to make that happen, and are you willing to do the work? Ponder that, and remember: You are worth healing. You are worth being emotionally healthy. You deserve to be healthy. You deserve so much more than what you’re letting yourself have right now.   So please. Be good to yourself, and be gentle with yourself. Thank you so much for listening today.  Go out and make it a great week

In this episode I chat with Mary Young about what it takes to build a thriving business while keeping up with her health and overcoming a chronic disorder. Mary is the founder of the Mary Young lifestyle lingerie brand, creator of the Self Love Club, and regular keynote speaker on entrepreneurship, social media and mental health.   Episode Highlights [02:00] Building a mission-driven business [07:20] Building life systems as an entrepreneur [12:50] Optimizing energy for self-care [21:45] Upgrading her mindset to change her life [34:00] Creating space to share your story   Resources Books & Media: Phil Knight: Shoe Dog - A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (https://amzn.to/2F2lM3I) TEDx Mary Young: How changing your mindset can change your future (https://bit.ly/2EzFNyB) Guest - Mary Young: Website: http://www.maryyoung.ca Facebook: @itsmaryyoung (https://www.facebook.com/itsmaryyoung) Instagram: @itsmaryyoung (https://www.instagram.com/itsmaryyoung/) Twitter: @itsmaryyoung (https://twitter.com/itsmaryyoung) YouTube: Mary Young (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1Sv3Zv5Mck1fWPk9-Nah4w)

TRANSCRIPT   I'm watching the movie the King's speech. I remember liking it the first time I saw it a few years ago, but I am seeing so much more in it now than I did then. And at this one point, I had to stop the movie. And I ran for the microphone because what's in my brain, in my feelings, in my heart, I just wanted to share.  The elocutionist- the elocution trainer that the King visits, who's not a doctor although he does have an office on Harley Street, is always after the King to talk about his personal life. What it was like as a child. When did he start stammering. Why did he start stammering. And it all started when he was about five, which is apparently common for stammer errors. And as the king starts sharing some of what his early family life was like - no wonder he stammers.  David has abdicated, and Albert is now King George the sixth. They’re getting ready for the coronation, and the King has found out that this person who’s been helping him is not a doctor. Now, Loke never claimed to be a doctor, he did not do anything fraudulent. Everybody just assumed he was a doctor. So when the Archbishop started investigating and found out Loke was not a doctor, the king felt betrayed, because he thought he was going to see a doctor this whole time.  And so Loke was explaining to him how he got started with this, cause he's just a failed actor. He wasn't anybody. But after the Great War (that would be the first world war, for those of us who don't know it by the other name) a lot of the Australians, when they came home, they were shell-shocked. Today we call it PTSD. And they had lost their voice. They had lost their ability to share, to speak, because they had screamed for help for so long and nobody had heard.  And what this man said was: “my job is to give you back your voice. To let you know that somebody is listening.” And the king takes exception with this because he's feeling betrayed. So they get into an argument. The King's like: “you know, I didn't even want to be king but you made me think I could blah blah. But you're not even a doctor blah blah.”  And he turns around and Loke is sitting in the chair that George will sit in when he's crowned king, or after he's crowned King, and he's like get out of that chair.  Loke:  Why? King:  I'm telling you to. Loke: Who are you to tell me what to do? King: I'm your King. Loke:  You said you don’t even want to be king.   And this goes on and on until finally George is shouting “I have a voice and I will be listened to!”  And I paused Netflix and ran for the microphone.   Thanks for joining us on this episode of Lessons from Life. I’m Mary Young, and we are talking about having a voice.   I ran for the microphone because of that scene in the movie, that conversation in the movie. It brought back a memory of a conversation that my current counselor Tracy and I had probably three years ago now, maybe four years ago. We had been talking about my childhood, because we did a lot of talking about my childhood in therapy. and at some point I looked at her and with a tremble in my voice like I have now, and with tears in my eyes like I have now, I shared the realization that I had been stifled as a child. Children should be seen and not heard, okay? Some of us grew up with that. That’s kind of stifling, but there was all kinds of other stuff because I was the youngest, and I just wasn't important. Nobody needed to listen to me. I didn't have anything of value to share.   And I looked at Tracy, and I said “oh my God they stifled me” and she's like “yeah.” and I said “I'm not stifled anymore. I'm allowed to talk about this stuff.” and she's like “yeah.” I was driving home from that session, and I just remember I kept pondering and pondering. You know, I just kept running in my brain “they had stifled me.” “I'm not stifled anymore.” and I found myself suddenly just gripping the steering wheel with both hands, and screaming at the top of my lungs “I'm not stifled! I'm not stifled anymore!” which is what the king was saying in the movie. I have a voice and its worth listening to. It deserves to be listened to.   My question for you today is “who is stifling you? What is stifling you? What is keeping your voice silent, and what will it take to break that silence? What is keeping you stomped down from achieving your potential, and what will it take for you to stand up and say: I am no longer stifled. I deserve to be listened to. I have a voice, I have a dream, and by God I am going to make that dream come true.   Find what's holding you back. Find what is stifling you. If you have to go to therapy to do it, go to therapy. Therapy can work wonders. If you can figure it out on your own with a trusted friend, if you have a life coach, whatever. But figure out where your stifling is coming from. Figure out where your self-doubts are coming from, and deal with them. Because I gotta tell you, the Mary that I was when I was stifled, and the Mary that I am today are not the same person.   Yeah, we’re in the same body. We have the same brain and the same voice, but I am not the person that I was when I was stifled. I am doing things that I honestly never thought I would. A podcast for crying out loud! I would never thought that I could do a podcast, and anybody would want to listen to me. I am no longer stifled. I have a voice, and it's worth listening to. You have a voice, and it's worth listening to.   Don’t let people stifle you.   Just don't.   Figure out what is holding you down, what is keeping you down, what is holding you back. Figure out where you are being stifled, and stand up for yourself.  The first time you speak your truth, your voice may shake, and your knees may knock, and you may feel like you're gonna be sick to your stomach.   And that's okay. That’s normal.   It’s not fun, but it's normal.   But you know what? The next time you do it, it gets a little bit easier, and the time after that it gets a little bit easier. And if you have a good support system, if you have healing partners and friends who love you and support you, and you get the toxic people out of your life... Katie bar the door!     You will be amazed, utterly and completely amazed at how things can change. And I know that, and I know it's possible, because I've seen it with myself. Because I can look back four years and say “WOW!” The stuff I'm doing today, I would never have dreamed of doing four years ago.   I have friends who are working through emotional healing, and they are seeing the same thing that I saw. When they stop letting themselves be stifled, when they start believing in themselves, and believing in their voice, and sharing their voice, the world changes.   Your life changes.   Their life changed.   My life changed.   Everything this podcast is about, is about having a better life. About liking yourself. About loving yourself. More accurately, everything I’m sharing here is stuff that I've learned along the way.   This one this is a biggie.  Not being stifled, expressing your voice.   That is right up there with loving yourself, in terms of what is life-changing. And I want your life to change. I want you to see how your life can be when you're no longer being pushed down. When you're no longer being stifled. When you're expressing your voice, both to yourself with self talk and self-love, and to the world around you.   Don’t stifle yourself.   And don't let anybody else stifle you.   You have a voice.   You deserve to be heard.   Thank you for listening today.   Go out and make it a great week.

TRANSCRIPT Yesterday on Facebook, one of my friends posted that there are only 100 days left to this year.  They posted that as a “if there was something you’re going to do this year, you’re running out of time” kind of reminder, and here’s where my brain went. My brain jumped ahead to New Year’s resolutions, because of what I’ve been thinking about for this week’s podcast. Whether you do resolutions or not, you’ve heard people talk about them. You might’ve done them earlier in your life, I don’t know. But think back think about all the times you’ve heard somebody talk about “this year I’m going to… what”?  It’s always I’m going to do something different. This something different is usually something that I don’t like about myself that I’m going to try to fix.----more---- This year I’m going to lose weight. I’m going to quit smoking. I’m going to eat better. I’m going to exercise more. Have you ever, ever, and seriously -think hard. Think of all the resolutions you’ve ever heard anybody say, including yourself. In all of that, have you ever heard somebody say “this year I’m going to get more massages.” This year I’m going to make sure I get a mani-pedi at least once a month. This year I’m going to pamper myself. Think about it. Have you ever heard or made a resolution like that?  I couldn’t remember ever hearing anything like that, so just out of curiosity I went out to the Internet. My search for common New Year’s resolutions came up with a couple different charts. In the United States, there might be 25% of the people who make New Year’s resolutions, who will resolve that they are going to do better at self-care, whatever that means to them. In the UK it was only 12%. So we’re talking anybody from an eighth to a fourth of the population are the only ones that are saying I’m gonna do better at self-care. And why is that?  Try something with me. I’d like you to repeat two sentences. Don’t worry about whether or not their true -that’s really not my concern.  Are you ready? Number one: I’m working on self-care. Number two: I’m working on pampering myself.  My question is: did you feel any different when you spoke those two sentences? Also, think about how you, your family, and others might react to hearing you say it. Do you think they would react the same way to both sentences, or would there be different reactions?  I can only speak for me, but I gotta tell you straight up the inner critics in my head - 0MG. they went ballistic when I used the word pampering. Why is that such a bad word? Because we were taught that it means we’re selfish. We were taught that it means we don’t care about other people. Folks, I am here to tell you: we were taught wrong. Hi, I’m Mary Young. Thanks for joining us again on lessons from life. Today we’re talking about another facet of being gentle with yourself:  self-care. Or as I like to think of it, pampering ourselves.  So just out of curiosity, when was the last time you had a massage? Or spa day? Picnic in the park?  Night out on the town?  Watch your favorite sports team…IN the stadium?  When was the last time you told somebody no?  When was the last time you had a quiet drive in the country, or took a long weekend, or spent time just doing what you wanted to do and not doing anything you didn’t want to do? How about reading a book, or relaxing? Soaking in a bubble bath?  How long has it been?  If you’re like most of us, it has been way too long. Why?  Why is that?  Do you have cell phone (I promise I’m going somewhere with this)?  My cell phone has a low battery indicator that lets me know when it’s running out of steam. It actually tells me when it gets dangerously low, and it tells me it’s gonna shut itself down if I don’t plug it in and recharge it. My laptop does the same thing.  So why don’t we do that for ourselves? It just seems like one of the constants in today’s world, especially in the US, is that people are always tired. Or let’s be really, really honest here, overtired. Sleep deprivation is a real thing, and it’s not just going without sleep for 24 hours. It’s not getting enough sleep because you’re up too late, and have to get up too early, just to try and get everything done.  I really wish that we could look at ourselves in the mirror, and see a battery indicator on our forehead like we do on our phones. It would be bright green when it’s full, and it would be going down to a vivid red when it gets into the danger levels. Maybe that would remind us you have to take care of yourself before you can take care of anybody else.  You have to. And I know, I know every one of you is going: but Mary, wait!  Mary, you don’t understand.  You don’t have to say anything. I know. I really do! I know why you can’t: My parents have reached the point where I have to take care their business as well as my own. nobody else can do it I have three kids under the age of four I have a job that expects me to work, not just the eight or nine hours at my office, but to be on call in the evenings and on weekends and on vacation, because  I’ve got all this technology that lets them reach me at any time of the day or night, and that’s before we bring in that two hour commute each way I gotta pay for my house I gotta pay for my car I gotta pay for my kids college I’m going to night school in addition to working full time, so sleep is a luxury I have to work three jobs just to make ends meet and don’t forget all that afterschool stuff my kids are involved in, And that’s all before we start talking about… I gotta clean house and cook meals I gotta go grocery shopping gotta keep the yard looking presentable  If we’re doing all that, how in the world are we ever going to find time for self-care? It’s just not possible. And yet…if you don’t make the time for the self-care, none of the rest of this is ever going to get done.  So let’s talk about what keeps it from happening. Remember those two sentences that we read out loud? I’m working on self-care.  I’m working on pampering myself. Why did my inner critics go ballistic when I said pampering, even though they didn’t have any problem at all when I said self-care? Here’s .my thought.  Americans don’t value self-care as a virtue. Self-care sounds like luxury, especially if you’re working three jobs to make ends meet. It sounds like pampering, and pampering is selfish, and it’s wrong to be selfish.  But self-care is critical to maintaining physical and emotional health. You can’t do it without it. So why is it that so many of us buy into that myth that self-care is luxury, that it’s wrong? Is it because we’ve never known anything else? We’re just doing what our parents did? We just want to be liked and accepted and admired? Could it be that we just think this is how you adult, and that part of adulting is being tired until the kids are 25?  Or until you find yourself in an early grave?  I don’t know. I don’t know why, but I have some thoughts. First off, if you’ve ever flown on an airplane, and if you actually listened to the safety briefing that the flight attendant gives, they say “if there is a sudden drop in pressure the oxygen masks are going to appear. put your own mask on first before helping anybody around you.” what they are really saying right there is that if you’re not getting enough oxygen you’re not gonna be able to help anybody else. Loss of oxygen or lack of oxygen will kill you. Think about the spider plant. Now, if you know the spider plant, you’re seeing it in your mind right now. It’s pretty cool. I love spider plants. They’ve got all these nice little leaves hanging out, and then the way that the plant decides to make more plants is it sends out a little shoot, and so you have this not-quite-stick coming out of the pot, and at the end of that shoot, that very flexible shoot, is a teeny tiny new plant. And most times when you see spider plants, they’re being displayed as hanging plants in the house and all the little shoots dangle below the pot with the little babies hanging off of them. Here’s the thing. The important thing to remember about spider plants is that if the soil is dry in the parent pot, you don’t water the baby that’s hanging below it. You water the parent pot where the mom is. That new little plant that lives at the end of the shoot?. It gets all of its nutrients through that shoot from the parent plant. If the parent plant is dying because it’s not getting watered, the babies aren’t gonna live either. So flight attendants tell you to take care of yourself first. You can’t help anybody else if you are suffering from hypoxia because you didn’t put your oxygen mask on. And there will always be people who argue with that.  You are the only person on this planet who can take care of you. You are the only person on this planet who is like you, and you may not think you’re all that much because we all have issues with confidence, but trust me on this one. You are. And so am I, even when I don’t feel like it.  When I was growing up there was a hair coloring product with the tagline because I’m worth it. Can we steal that and use it for ourselves, for self-care? Because I’m worth it. Pampering:  because I’m worth it. I cannot pour from an empty pitcher, and that means I have to care for my needs. I have to pay attention to my needs, and I have to give my needs the same respect I give my boss’s needs. Or my child’s needs, or my parents needs, or my best friends needs, or my spouse’s needs. I am worth it. You are too.  You are worth treasuring.  You are worth pampering.  You are worth so much more than you realize,  And so much more than you believe.  And probably so much more than other people will ever tell you, so I’m telling you now.  you are worth it. You are worth the massage. You are worth the sports game. You are worth the occasional treat. Maybe you can’t afford to go to a pro sports game every week - can you save up and go once a year? Maybe you can’t afford to go on a big vacation. That’s okay. If there’s one good thing I learned in the military, it’s that whenever possible, your vacation time should be spread out over the year, not taken all at one time. Now I know this depends on how much vacation time you actually get, but I also know that your body/mind/emotions would appreciate a long weekend every couple months more than it would appreciate 50 weeks of nonstop stress followed by a break.  And if you won’t do that for yourself, can you do it for the people who love you? Here comes that other voice again… but Mary, they’re the reason I have to do all this other stuff!  What would happen if you explained to them that you are working on self-care  -- or hey go whole hog and tell them you’re working on pampering yourself?  They’re either going to understand, or they’re going to think you’re selfish.  If people really care about you, they’re going to rejoice when you’re doing something that takes care of you. No, really.  They will. If they care more about themselves, then they’ll try to make you feel bad for taking care of yourself (and that’s a whole different podcast).  You are worth taking care of. You are worth pampering.  If massage is what recharges your batteries, then schedule one as often as you can afford it. If hiking up to a waterfall is what does it, then give yourself time and permission to do that.  The big thing is: give your self time and permission to do whatever recharges, relaxes, refreshes, and refills you, because if you let yourself go empty you can’t help anybody else. Part of taking care of yourself is learning what you need, and making sure you get it. I don’t care what you call it. You can call it self-care. You can call it pampering. You can call it something else. What I care about is that you do it.  And if somebody says you don’t need that or you’re not worth that, you look them right in the eye and tell them they are wrong, because Mary says I do need it and I am worth it.  I promise, you do need it and you are worth it.  So go pamper yourself. Work on your self-care. Find what you need, and give it to yourself, and watch your life change.  Thanks so much for listening.  Remember, as you go make it a great week, be gentle with yourself and take care of you

TRANSCRIPT “...What I want to say to young girls is forget about likability. If you start thinking about being likable you are not going to tell your story honestly, because you are going to be so concerned with not offending, and that's going to ruin your story...”                                                                                                 -- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie   I haven’t been a young girl for a few decades now, but when I read this on the Facebook page “A Mighty Girl” today, it spoke to me.  If this were a blog instead of a podcast, I’d bold print this part:  ...you are not going to tell your story honestly, because you are going to be so concerned with not offending, and that’s going to ruin your story.   I struggle with this one a lot, both as I work on ideas for podcast episodes, and as I work on convincing myself to complete my current book project, which I haven’t really touched in the last year.----more---- Hi, I’m Mary Young. Thanks for joining us on the Lessons from Life Podcast. Today’s topic is  “Who am I afraid of offending?” So who am I concerned about offending?  It’s a combination of traditional, conservative Christians, friends who don’t share my beliefs, and my family members. So let’s take those one at a time. Traditional, conservative Christians --  I will tell people I “suck as a Christian,” because I don’t typically act the way all those church-people did in my childhood, adolescence, & young adulthood.  Or how they told me I should act.   In fact, I told my al-anon group one time that “the God of my understanding is not the God of my childhood.”  That doesn’t mean I don’t believe in God, or don’t have a relationship with him, but I find myself hesitant to publicly share what I really think or believe because I can imagine a slew of comments telling me how wrong I am, with the commenters cherry-picking Bible verses to prove it.  And then I would need to respond to those comments, either defending my own beliefs, or capitulating to theirs.  I don’t want to have those conversations, so I censor myself.  I need to stop doing that.  My beliefs and value system are mine, not anyone else’s, and God and I have had long talks about them over the years while I was developing them.  He lets me know when I’m out in left field, and his opinion really is the only one I care about, in that area   On top of that, I know many people today who seem to hold the same beliefs and values I do, so why do I still feel like I’m the odd one out?  For that matter, why do I still feel like I need someone else’s approval or agreement of my own thoughts, ideas and feelings, anyway?  That’s something to ponder with my therapist, I think.  Meanwhile, I’ll work on not censoring myself in my podcast and book. I have to admit though, I have another “likeability” fear when it comes to God - but it’s in the other direction. I have a lot of friends who either don’t believe in the same God I do, or don’t believe in any god at all.  I’m concerned about alienating or offending them.  My friends who don’t believe in the Judeo-Christian God have very valid reasons for their beliefs, just as I do for mine.  And while I want to be free to talk about my beliefs, as a natural part of conversation, I don’t ever want them to think I’m trying to push my beliefs on them, or to use a more traditional term: trying to “save their souls.”  That’s not my job.  Which is a good thing, because I suck at that kind of thing worse than I suck at being a Christian. J  But it’s a hundred times easier to stop worrying about offending people with my faith journey than it is to stop worrying about offending my family.   Family goes to the core of our identities - to the core of MY identity. I am a Young, and a Smith; youngest daughter of a truck-driver and stay-at-home mom; and grand-daughter of Appalachian coal-miners, all of whom brought me up to believe that family is the most important thing there is, and we should all stick together.  And yet I have lived my entire adult life away from my family, and once I was out of college, trips home were only once or twice a decade.  The majority of my emotional healing journey was based on coming to grips with childhood events; recognizing and admitting truths about my nuclear and extended family; and seeing how all of that impacted how I became the person I am today, and why I still react to some things the way I do. But I find myself hesitant to speak that truth out loud in public, in case family is watching or listening, and takes offense at what I say. But without truth there is no freedom, and no healing.  So I live away from family, and speak my truth to trusted friends, hoping family will never hear me say it. And when I do that, I’m cheating both myself and my siblings.  For all I know, instead of living in denial, they could be going through their own emotional healing journey, and it could be comforting for them to know that someone else thinks Dad’s entire family was alcoholic.  Or they might also be feeling like they’re the world’s worst child for thinking that while Mom did a lot of really cool things for us when we were growing up, she wasn’t really as supportive as she sounded, and actually fits a lot of the character traits of a narcissistic personality. Then again, if I say all that out loud, and they hear it, and they’re NOT thinking that way, I could find myself effectively disowned.  And that’s a scary thought. So I do worry about offending them, and as Adiechie says in that bit I quoted at the beginning, it ruins my story, because it keeps me from being honest. I think it’s interesting that as I was driving the 500 miles home for my mother’s funeral, 15 years ago, one of the thoughts that crossed my mind was “Now I can write my  book.”  My subconscious has known, far longer than I have, that I’m afraid of offending my family.  That I’m afraid that somehow sharing my truth, my reality, my memories, my fears and my nightmares will be seen as unjustified criticism and result in banishment. Ya know that relationship with God that I mentioned about 500 words ago?  It used to be a lot like my childhood family relationship. I was afraid of being honest with God - afraid of offending him, afraid that my questions and doubts were proof that I didn’t really believe in him. I was afraid that one day he would decide he’d had enough, and stop loving me.  And it would be my own fault, for not being a good enough Christian - not trusting him enough, not doing enough for him, not loving him enough, and most of all, not being like the church-people told me to be.  That emotional healing journey I’ve been on for the last 20+ years was also a spiritual healing journey , and it’s probably been 5years since I was afraid of making God so mad he wouldn’t love me anymore.  For me, that’s been one of the biggest benefits of my spiritual healing journey....the realization of how very much God loves me, and what that means for me in my life.  But that’s a topic for another podcast, maybe. For this one, if I’m gonna be authentic and vulnerable, whether it’s in this podcast or in my  current book project, I have to be honest and open, both about my family (without worrying about offending them), and about my faith.  Because I can’t speak for other people, but for me, I wouldn’t still be here if it wasn’t for my faith, and for my relationship with the God of my understanding. And I can’t keep that out of the story of my healing journey, no matter who it offends. So that’s my take-away for this quotation I stumbled across on Facebook today.  My question for YOU would be who are you afraid of offending? What’s keeping you from telling your story honestly, or maybe the question is who’s keeping you from telling your story honestly? You can certainly just listen to me pondering about this, and walk away and go “man...she’s talkative. I would never share all that.”  And that’s OK. You don’t have to. I just want to be the best me I’m capable of being, and that means being authentic and vulnerable.  And that means facing up to who I’m afraid of offending, and not letting that stop me from being honest with my story. Until next time, thanks so much for listening. Now, go make it a great week.

TRANSCRIPT When I was young, I thought life progressed in a straight line...you’re born, you grow up, you get married, have kids, have a job, then the kids grow up and you grow older, and eventually you die.  A simple, straight-forward, linear progression. I don’t consider myself young any more, and I’ve learned over the decades that there is very little about life that is simple or straight-forward.  As to that linear progression, I’m thinking it might only apply to my calendar age.  ----more---- Hi, I’m Mary Young. Welcome to the Lessons from Life podcast.  I’m calling today’s episode “Who am I, and why should you listen to this podcast?”  Seriously, why should you take 5-20 minutes out of your busy life and listen to an invisible stranger? I feel like I should have a compelling answer to that question, and I really don’t. But let’s start with introductions.  I’m Mary Young, and I like to call myself a “rolling stone now happily gathering moss.”   By that, I mean I used to change jobs every 2-3 years, and change housing locations every 6-18 months, but am now finishing up.11 years in the same house, and 13 years in the same job. I grew up in the mid-west during the 1960s, and still have very strong memories of being told I couldn’t do things I wanted to do because “girls don’t do that.”  I’m old enough to remember when it was mandatory for girls to wear dresses to school, and we couldn’t wear long pants to school unless it was below freezing, and then they were worn *under* our dresses, and we had to take them off when we arrived, and put them in the cloakroom with our coats.  I watched the original Adam West Batman on TV, and remember when the Brady Bunch and the Partridge Family were brand new shows.  I saw the original Star Wars movies in the theaters, when what is now episode 4 was the only movie.  I’ve lived through bell bottoms, pet rocks, lawn darts, no seatbelt laws and riding bikes with no helmets.  I still remember Mom telling us to come inside on a hot summer day, and making us watch TV. We could never do that in the middle of the day in the summer time. We were supposed to be outside playing. But Mom said it was history being made, and we needed to see it.  I was  8 years old, and never paid attention to the news, so I didn’t really understand how incredible it was, as Walter Cronkite told us what was happening, and we heard “...3...2...1...Lift Off.”    A few nights later, my grandma stayed up with us (mom always went to bed early), and we watched more history being made as Neil Armstrong took that last step off the ladder of the Lunar Landing Module and walked on the moon. Again, at 8 years old, I was just happy to be allowed to stay up late and play cards with Grandma. But as I write these memories today, I’m choking back tears.  I saw history being made.  But you know what? We see history being made every day - we just don’t realize it.  It’s not always something big and flashy like the moon launch...it just is. Who else am I?  I’m a daughter, but have never been a wife or a mother. Well, not a mother to humans.  I’ve shared my heart and my home with some wonderful dogs over the last 15 years, once I stopped being a rolling stone.  I have spent most of my life in male-dominated career fields, and it wasn’t until writing this episode that I realized it might have been because of all those “girls don’t do that” messages in my youth.    So that answers the “who am I?” part of the question.  The other part of the question is “Why should you listen to this podcast?”.  Ummm....So I’m not talking to myself?  :)     No, seriously...I would love to give you a compelling answer to that, but I’m not sure I have one.  I can tell you why I’m doing a podcast, and that might be a roundabout way of answering the why should you listen question. I mentioned at the beginning that as a little girl, I thought life had a very linear progression.  If I’ve learned anything over the last 5 decades, it’s how mistaken I was in that thought.  As an example, I got my associate’s degree AFTER I got my bachelor’s. If life were truly linear, I’d have done it the other way around.  John Lennon said: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”  Truer words were never spoken.  My last semester in college, I didn’t even show up to take the final exam for my “introduction to computers” class, because I knew I was never going to work with computers.  I was going to be an author, and an IBM Selectric typewriter was the highest technology I was ever going to use.  Today, those typewriters are museum pieces, and I teach people how to use my company’s computer system to run their business.  I’ve been working in the computer industry one way or another ever since I left the Air Force over 25 years ago, even though it was never what I had planned.  I don’t know if you’ve noticed the graphic that goes with the header of this podcast -- it’s a very wiggly line that works its way from start to finish.  That line represents life, and how it really works out for us.   There are set-backs and plateaus, mountains and valleys, roundabouts that make you feel like you’re spinning your wheels, but eventually you make it to the finish line.  My plans for this podcast are to just reflect on that wiggly line, as I’ve seen it in the last 50+ years.  I call it “Lessons from Life,” even though that sounds pretentious to me, because everything that happens to us, everything we experience, is a lesson, if we let it be one.  So in my episodes, I’m going to share whatever I’m thinking about, and it may be something that interests you, or it might not.  Sometimes it might be a trip down memory lane. Other times, it may sound like a self-help episode.  But whatever it is, it will be authentic and vulnerable.  And just because one episode doesn’t speak to you doesn’t mean the next one won’t, so please keep listening.  The topics will change from week to week, but the authenticity won’t.    Thanks for listening, and I hope you come back.  Until next time, go make it a great day.

TRANSCRIPT We are bombarded daily by truly bad news -- wars, rumors of wars, accidents, murders, and on and on. Couple that with the challenges that each human being faces, and it's no wonder that most of us are in need of inspiration. The problem is that the most inspirational people in our midst rarely share their life story. They simply work their way through each day, doing what they do best - facing life head-on with determination, endurance, and courage. We need those people to share their stories so we can draw inspiration from them for the living of our lives. - Chaplain Murray. When I read these words, they really hit home for me. We all have stories.  But most people you run into on any given day have no idea that their story needs to be shared. They have no idea that their story can help change someone else’s life. They have no idea that they can be an inspiration; that they ARE an inspiration. ----more---- How many times have you been in a situation and wished you could talk to someone who’s been through it? That’s why we have support groups, but they’re not always the answer.  Some people can talk to their families, but that’s not always the answer either, for a variety of reasons.  Here’s the thing. We all have experiences in our lives that can benefit others. They don’t have to be big, earth-shaking things, but for some reason we always think they should be. That’s actually one of the mistakes, or delusions, that keep us from sharing those experiences. We don’t think we have anything to give. BUT WE DO. Hi, I’m Mary Young and you’re listening to the Lessons from Life Podcast. Thanks for joining us!  Today, we’re talking about sharing our story so we can inspire others. Each of us has a unique life-history, but we also have experience/strength/hope that can or will help others. For some reason, we don’t think that the mundane parts of our life can inspire others. We don’t think there’s value in the mundane. So we ignore or discount it. But we don’t know what others need. And we’re discounting OURSELVES by thinking we have nothing to offer. Especially when we compare ourselves to others (and we usually do). I’m basing this on my own experience, not on any research studies.  Here are examples of why I think that. - I was the first person in my family to go to college. I had no idea what it would be like, or what to expect. It would have been so wonderful to have someone share their experience with me. It didn’t really mean anything to me when my parents told me it would be fine. For one, they were my parents. They HAD to say that J More importantly, as far as I knew, they had no idea either. Neither of them gone to college. I would have loved to know that I wasn’t the only person to be scared about moving away to school, or who wondered whether I would really fit in at college, or if I even belonged there. - When I was joining the military (both times), it would have been great to be able to talk to other female veterans who could help me with the pros and cons for each branch, and job choices, and even just joining up. I talked to my friends, of course, but they were the same age as me, with no military experience. - When I was 15, my dad had a massive stroke. He lived, but he was handicapped and unable to work, and Mom was a stay at home mom. Our income dropped 75% overnight.  Mom did whatever magic she needed to do to keep us afloat. To this day, I don’t know what all she did, because she never talked about it, and she’s no longer around to ask.  Which is a shame, because I could have used her wisdom when I was unemployed for 2 years, and again more recently, as I recovered from my own stroke.  But Mom never thought anything she did was all that special. It was just life. These are just a few examples, but I hope they give you some ideas, and help you see my point. Here’s the thing. We talk about being authentic and vulnerable, and we do our best to live it. We walk through what life throws at us on our journey, gritting our teeth and sticking it out and doing what needs to be done. But we keep it to ourselves, because we're too busy living life and getting through whatever issue it is to spend much time talking about it. And because we think it's no big deal - it's just life. I’m here to tell you that it IS a big deal. Let’s take something mundane, like menopause. Yeah, I know. I say menopause, and your brain says: Wait, what? Menopause? Really? What kind of story can you have about menopause? It’s just part of life. You deal with it. Yes, really. It meant SO MUCH to me when I could talk to other women who have had hot flashes and mood swings. Sometimes we’d just laugh together about how much it sucks, and other times we’d share advice on how to make it more bearable. But I needed to know I wasn't alone.  I wasn’t the only normally-nice person who could go from zero to bitch in a nanosecond, and it didn’t mean there was anything wrong with me or that I was a bad person. It was just menopause. Sharing our stories helps us know we’re not alone, and we’re not crazy or abnormal. That’s the important part. That’s why stories matter. Like I said before, we all have stories.  But most people you run into on any given day have no idea that their story needs to be shared. They have no idea that their story can help change someone else’s life. They have no idea that they can be an inspiration; that they ARE an inspiration. I'm with them - sometimes people will tell me I’m inspirational, and I get embarrassed. I don’t see myself as inspirational. Condi Rice is inspirational, coming from poverty and prejudice to where she is today. That football player from The Blind Side is inspirational, overcoming his childhood to become a great football player. Those are the stories people want to hear. At least, that's what we tell ourselves, every day. My life is just a normal, average, everyday life. Who could be inspired by that? And we sell ourselves short, every day, BECAUSE WE DON'T BELIEVE WE'RE SPECIAL. WE DON'T BELIEVE WE HAVE ANYTHING TO SHARE. WE DON'T BELIEVE WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. WE DON'T BELIEVE WE EVEN HAVE A STORY. We just have a life, and sometimes it's kicking our butts. Or we think we're a failure, because our husband walked out on us, or we're alcoholic, or our child does drugs, or our relative committed suicide, or we had an affair, or we lost our job, or whatever. Each of us has a story. And each of us have people in our lives who need to hear it. We don’t know who those people are, or what portions of our story they need to hear. We don’t know who has circumstances similar to ours, because we all do our best to avoid authenticity and vulnerability, even while we long for it.  Since we avoid those, we don’t know who would benefit from our experience, strength and hope, or who has experience, strength, and hope we could benefit from. And I have to be honest with you. Finding those people can be a little tricky. After all, we can’t just walk around shouting our issues to the world: Menopause!                                     Bankruptcy!                                     Infertility!                                           Cancer!                     Aging!             Unemployment!                                          Sandwich Generation!                  Drugs!                                   Failure!   That wouldn’t work well at all (and it would be *really* noisy). But... If we know ourselves, and if we’re open to sharing ourselves --warts and all-- we’ll find ourselves making connections we never expected to make. We’ll not only learn that we really *do* have a story; we’ll see how sharing that story brings hope and encouragement to someone else. Or we’ll be strengthened and encouraged by hearing their story. Sounds good, doesn’t it? And at the same time, it sounds a lot like pie in the sky. Really? Me? I have a story? I’m not anybody special. I’m just a mom. Just a grandma. Or neither of those, because I’ve never had kids. Just a working man.  Just a student.  Just a husband. Just a wife. Just a daughter, or a son. There’s nothing special about me. I don’t  have any story to share. I *know* some of you are thinking that right now. And I don’t want to stand up here and say “You’re so wrong!” because that’s not positive and encouraging. But you know what? You’re so wrong! :) Actually, it’s not so much that you’re wrong as that you’re human, and that’s a very human response. So let me ask you this. Is there something you wish you could go back and tell your younger self? If there is, you have a story to share. Has there been a time when you thought: “if only I’d known about that before ...”?  If there is, you have a story to share. Have you accomplished or survived something  you never thought you would? You have a story to share. Has there been a time when you thought: “I wish I could talk to someone about this...whatever”?   If there is, you have a story to share, because somewhere out there, someone is wishing they could talk to someone about that exact same thing, but they have no idea who would relate to it. Has life kicked you in the teeth so much and so often that you’re toothless? Then you have a story to share, even as you see another life-kick heading your way, and even if you don’t think you can take anymore. Our human tendency is to think stories have to be BIG! And SPECIAL! And FLASHY!  We don’t realize that sometimes the biggest stories are the quietest. We all remember Thomas Edison, because he invented the lightbulb, among other things. But he had something like 99 failed attempts before he was finally successful. We make a big deal about his successes, but the real story is in how he persevered in the face of all those failures. So don’t sell yourself short. You have a story to share, and someone out there needs to hear it.   Sharing our story gives us two benefits right off the bat. 1) we begin to see the victories we might not have noticed before, and 2) we find out we're not alone. Let’s start, right now, by helping you discover your story.  I’m going to ask you a couple questions. You can write them down, or just answer them in your head. I wish I could go back in time and tell myself ___________. When it feels like life is kicking me in the teeth, I ________________. I am currently experiencing (check all that apply) __menopause                      __pregnancy                        __infertility                __singleness __empty nest                        __divorce                   __money problems  __newly married      __childbirth               __toddlers                 __teenagers __childhood issues   __unemployment               __sandwich generation        __health issues                   __family issues   Your answers to those questions are the beginnings of figuring out your story. But now what? Sitting in your house or car, answering a couple questions from a stranger in a podcast -- how will that change anything?   You know what?  You’re right. I can’t change anything. But  YOU CAN.   Step 1 is figuring out the story you want/need to share, or the story you wish someone would share with you. The questions you just answered can help with that. There are more questions in the podcast transcript. After you figure out your story, you have to tell yourself it’s OK to share it.  When your inner critic says “no one wants to hear this!” remind yourself of the things you wish someone had told you. Someone out there wants to hear YOU, and YOUR story. After you’ve given yourself permission to share, find your audience and start sharing.   We’re all different, so we’ll all have different sharing methods that work best for us.  It could be a facebook post, or a blog. It could be letters to your family, your kids, or your grandkids.  Some people might talk into a tape recorder.  Others could find a support group. You could also share today’s podcast with your friends, and see if their answers to the questions at the end or in the transcript match yours. If they do, maybe you need to share your stories with each other.   You could even look at all of this and say “not today.”  That’s OK, too.    But you have a story, and it wants to be shared.  Take whatever time you need, but don’t cheat yourself, or the rest of us, out of your story.   You could be just the inspiration that someone else needs.    ****************** Thanks for listening to today’s podcast about discovering and sharing your story. I promise we’ll talk about this again.  Until next time, thanks again for listening, and go make it a great week.   See next page for the questions I promised to share.----more---- These questions can start to help you figure out your story.   I am currently experiencing (check all that apply __menopause                      __pregnancy                        __infertility                __singleness __empty nest                        __divorce                   __newly married      __childbirth __toddlers                 __teenagers              __childhood issues   __unemployment __sandwich generation                  __health issues                   __family issues   My biggest success is ____________________________________________________ An area where I feel like a failure is _________________________________________ I wish I could go back and tell my younger self ________________________________ I really wish I knew someone I could talk to about ______________________________ I wish I had known ______________________________________________________ When it feels like life is kicking me in the teeth, I _______________________________ When everything is going right, I ___________________________________________ My biggest challenge right now is __________________________________________. I’m handling it by _______________________________________________________.  

  TRANSCRIPT Like most people, I’ve always been hugely self-critical. I would be the first to point out flaws in something I’d done, and I would beat myself up for something as simple as running late, or forgetting to buy something when shopping.  Hi, I’m Mary Young, and this is the Lessons from Life podcast. I’m glad you joined us!  Today’s episode is “Be Gentle with Yourself,” and we’ll be discussing self-talk. ----more----  “Be gentle with yourself” is a lesson I’ve learned over time, and worked hard to internalize.  That one phrase can encompass many different things. Don’t yell at yourself internally Don’t expect yourself to be superhuman Treat yourself the way you would treat a friend, or a small child. Say nice things about yourself, to yourself. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Take care of yourself. Pamper yourself. Be kind to yourself. Love yourself.  I think that last one really sums it up. LOVE. YOUR. SELF.    Now, it’s possible that you’re listening to this podcast thinking “Love myself? How do I do that?”  If your thoughts sound like that, start working your way through the items I just listed.  And if you’re thinking “I don’t even know where to start!” may I suggest talking to yourself the way you would to a friend, or to a small child.  If a friend came to me and said “I overslept and was late for work today,” I wouldn’t respond with: “You are SO lazy! How do you expect to keep your job if you keep messing up?”  But I used to say exactly that, or something similar, to myself when I overslept.    Think about some habit or behavior you’re working to change. For me, it’s weight loss and exercise.  Since menopause, it seems like just looking at a pint of ice cream will add five pounds.   I know that the surest way to lose weight and keep it off is to spend more calories than I take in.  I actually have a watch that tracks my steps, and an app on my phone to track my exercise and my calories. That’s been true for a couple years now, and in those same 2-3 years, I have watched my weight steadily creep upwards.  Or to say it the way I saw it on Facebook one time:  The doctor told me I need to lose ten pounds. I only have 30 more to go.    Obviously, if my weight is increasing instead of decreasing, I’m not making much progress towards my goal.  And I just re-wrote that sentence 3 times in my head, looking for the kindest way to say it.  I could have said: obviously, I’m doing something wrong.  Or obviously, I’m not very good at it.  I could even have said proof that I’m lazy, or I really suck at this weight-loss thing.    Why does it matter how I say it, if I’m just talking to myself?    Think about all the times in your life someone has tried to persuade or motivate you to do something.    Now, think about the times they were successful. Did shaming you, or calling you stupid, lazy, incompetent, etc. persuade or motivate you?   If the answer is no, then why do we think those techniques will work when we use them on ourselves?    I can call myself all kinds of names when I think about my sporadic attempts at fitness and weight loss over the last couple of years.  I can tell myself the extra weight makes me an ugly cow and proves I never finish what I start.  Honestly, doing any of that would not help me get back on the fitness bandwagon. In fact, since I’m an emotional eater, it would probably have the opposite effect and drive me deeper into a tub of my favorite ice cream.    The question is: what would I do if one of my friends was sharing her weight loss/fitness struggle with me?  I would be gentle with her.  While not downplaying the importance of weight loss and fitness, I wouldn’t try to shame her or make her feel bad.  I would look for ways to encourage her, and victories to celebrate with her, even if they were tiny.   We would celebrate her first time choosing fruit over ice cream, and the time she rode her exercise bike every day for a week, even if it was only 5 minutes a day.  I would speak compassionately, while still reminding her how important it was.  I might even tell her how much I love having her in my life, and my concerns that if she doesn’t take better care of herself, I might lose her too soon.  If I can do all that for my friend, I want to be able to do it for myself as well.  Therapists call it “self-talk,” and it’s an important part of our confidence and emotional well-being.    Maybe you’re listening to these self-talk ideas thinking: “that sounds really good Mary, but when I try it, the positive words get drowned out by my inner critic (or critics).”  I hear you, loud and clear.  My inner critics used to shout at me through a megaphone that was attached to a giant amplifier and a concert-sized speaker.  I lived with those inner critics for over 50 years, and they consistently sabotaged any of my attempts to speak positively or compassionately to myself.  As I became healthier emotionally, I became less willing to have this critical chorus constantly showering me with negative comments.     A few years ago, I decided I’d had enough, and I wrote them an eviction notice.  I won’t’ share all of it here, because it was several pages long and specific to my own reality.  For me, I felt like I had multiple inner critics, all of them angry. I pictured them as a circle of angry people surrounding me like a mob.  As part of the eviction process, I gave this mob a name -- the “circle of fuckheads.”  Using that name helped take away some of the power I had given them over the years.  A key point in my eviction notice was that I told them I’d had enough, that they no longer got to live in my head rent-free. Specifically, I said “You don’t own me, you don’t control me, and I’m not living my life to please you.”    I don’t know who or what your inner critic looks like (mine were angry family members from my early childhood), but I do know that none of us need to sabotage ourselves, and none of us need to spend our lives listening to angry or critical voices in our heads who keep us from believing in ourselves or being gentle with ourselves.  That said, just because I wrote an eviction notice doesn’t mean it’s the right activity for you - everyone’s different.  But dealing with the inner critic is necessary.   It’s been 4 years since I evicted that ‘circle of fuckheads’ and replaced them with a ‘circle of love’ -- words of encouragement from people who support me.  While I still hear them occasionally, it’s nothing like it was before the eviction notice, and it’s easier to silence the criticism and doubt, replacing it with encouragement and positivity.  To be honest, I’d probably never have reached the eviction point if I hadn’t worked with a couple of very good counselors over the years.  Working with them helped me improve my emotional health to the point where I no longer tolerated the ‘circle of fuckheads’ and their constant critiques.   Being gentle with myself is a learned behavior.  It’s something I have to practice on a daily basis, sometimes even every minute.   I’ve actually been practicing it for over 20 years now, and while I’m much better than I was when I started, I’m still not as good at it as I will be.  But I’m better at it today than I was yesterday, and I’ll be better at it tomorrow than I am today.  Because I value myself enough to be gentle with myself, even when I’m not 100% successful at something.   Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go write myself an encouraging letter about how important it is for me to succeed with my weight loss and fitness goals, and figure out a way to reward myself for the milestones (of any size) I achieve along the way.   And I’ll continue finding new ways to be gentle with myself, even on days when I’m tempted to bully myself instead. I hope you’ll do the same.   Thanks for listening.  Now, go make it a great day.

Sara chats with Mary about her biggest lesson in love (00:58), the Self Love Club (2:27), loving yourself through loss (4:30), Mary’s TED talk and being vulnerable in sharing tough experiences (7:00), physical vs emotional lessons (8:12), the legacy she wants to leave behind (10:20), Mary’s dating life and how she’s created space to fall in love (12:25), misconceptions and things people may not realize about Mary (18:30), what love means to her (19:54), combatting negative self talk (21:16), what’s next for Mary (23:39). Find Mary @itsmaryyoung and check out her website https://maryyoung.ca/

Quinn Mecham of BYU will highlight three events around the world worth paying attention to. BYU's Mary Young shares how to lose an accent. Julianne Holt-Lunstad of BYU says loneliness kills. Christopher Peterson from the Univ of Utah talks about the Equifax hack. Caroline Wagner of The Ohio State Univ discusses the fairness of Nobel Prizes. Conservative Muslim Forum's Mohammed Amin has a message of hope for young Muslims.

In this week's podzine, our sportsing Jen met up with Paula McGuire, a properly inspiring woman who's about to embark on an incredible swimming challenge. Mickey's been shaken but not stirred (or maybe a bit stirred) by some Bond anniversaries and Hannah's looking at the best performances by women on TV this year so far.  Our Sarah is all about the etiquette in this week’s SMQT and joins us for Dunleavy Does Disney, where we take a look at Lady and the Tramp. Woof.  THE TEAM: Mickey Noonan, Hannah Dunleavy, Jen Offord and Sarah Millican. THE ADMIN: Our music was composed and recorded by Barry Hilton, all rights reserved. Thanks to David Young, Mary Young and John Clare for their help with the stings. We have an archive full of excellent articles at www.standardissuemagazine.com. You can write to us at mailbag@standardissuemagazine.com, follow us on Twitter at @StandardIssueUK or find us on Facebook and Instagram. All of our podcasts are available on iTunes and Podomatic. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Howdy partners! In this week's podzine, Taylor Glenn looks at the pros and cons of 'sharenting', Andrea Hubert talks about anti-semitism in the media, Lucy Nichol shares her top tips on dealing with anxiety and Lou Conran celebrates the 70th anniversary of the Edinburgh Fringe. Also, it turns out The Mooch is out, boobs are back and bed-wetting 1990s bands might yet have a gig. Our Sarah's watching Christmas movies and The Rock, Jen's talking football and money and we get to imagine a tiny Hannah in earphones in Dunleavy Does Disney, which this week tackles Pinocchio. THE TEAM: Mickey Noonan, Hannah Dunleavy, Jen Offord and Sarah Millican. THE ADMIN: Our music was composed and recorded by Barry Hilton, all rights reserved. Thanks to David Young, Mary Young and John Clare for their help with the stings. We have an archive full of excellent articles at www.standardissuemagazine.com. You can write to us at mailbag@standardissuemagazine.com, follow us on Twitter at @StandardIssueUK or find us on Facebook and Instagram. All of our podcasts are available on iTunes and Podomatic. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this week’s podzine, Edinburgh Fringe expert Hazel Davis is sharing her top tips on how to make the most of the festival; our Hannah tells you why you should give a shit about classic sitcom Roseanne; Rosie Wilby is talking breakups, and Sarah Ledger tells us how and why her daughter Jessie had a feminist wedding. Our Sarah is musing pets and pants in this week’s SMQT, Jen gets us up to speed on the women’s Euros and why everyone’s talking about Jodie Taylor and Dunleavy Does Disney’s The Fox and the Hound. THE TEAM: Mickey Noonan, Hannah Dunleavy, Jen Offord and Sarah Millican. The ADMIN: Our music was composed and recorded by Barry Hilton, all rights reserved. Thanks to David Young, Mary Young and John Clare for their help with the stings. We have an archive full of excellent articles at www.standardissuemagazine.com. You can write to us at mailbag@standardissuemagazine.com, follow us on Twitter at @StandardIssueUK or find us on Facebook and Instagram. All of our podcasts are available on iTunes and Podomatic. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode of the podzine, Mickey chats to all-round top broad Jess Phillips MP, Gabby Hutchinson-Crouch talks new Doctor Who, Yosra Osman tells us what's hot in the cinema and Daisy Leverington shares some tips on coping with the summer holidays. There’s a mini gigcast from our stint at Latitude, with Deborah Frances-White and Susie Wokoma, our Sarah gets some more of your life questions answered, Jen gives us the lowdown on cricket, football and lacrosse and Dunleavy Does Disney’s The Rescuers with surprising Dunleavy results. Parts of the podzine were recorded live at Latitude. THE TEAM: Mickey Noonan, Hannah Dunleavy, Jen Offord and Sarah Millican. THE ADMIN: Our music was composed and recorded by Barry Hilton, all rights reserved. Thanks to David Young, Mary Young and John Clare for their help with the stings. We have an archive full of excellent articles at www.standardissuemagazine.com. You can write to us at mailbag@standardissuemagazine.com, follow us on Twitter at @StandardIssueUK or find us on Facebook and Instagram. All of our podcasts are available on iTunes and Podomatic. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode of the podzine, Jen Offord chats to Jane Austen enthusiast and all-round smasher Cariad Lloyd, Aoife Moore talks the DUP, politics in Northern Ireland and what it all means for women and Dotty Winters has some kick-ass tips for Georgey Boy Osborne on how to multi-task like a boss. Our Sarah answers not one, but two very important life questions, Jen gives us the lowdown on Wimbledon and the forthcoming Euros and Dunleavy Does Disney’s Snow White. ADMIN: Our music was composed and recorded by Barry Hilton, all rights reserved. Thanks to David Young, Mary Young and John Clare for their help with the stings. We have an archive full of excellent articles at www.standardissuemagazine.com. You can write to us at mailbag@standardissuemagazine.com, follow us on Twitter at @StandardIssueUK or find us on Facebook and Instagram. All of our podcasts are available on iTunes and Podomatic. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode of the podzine, Jess Fostekew tells us how to do fancy dan outdoor dining, Hannah Dunleavy chats geneaology with Karen Clare from Family Tree Magazine ahead of the new series of Who Do You Think You Are? and Anneka Harry gives us the lowdown on where the UK’s at with LGBTQ+ rights. Our Sarah answers a very important question and Dunleavy Does Disney’s The Little Mermaid. Parts of this episode were recorded at the Harwich Arts Festival. ADMIN: Our music was composed and recorded by Barry Hilton, all rights reserved. Thanks to David Young, Mary Young and John Clare for their help with the stings. We have an archive full of excellent articles at www.standardissuemagazine.com. You can write to us at mailbag@standardissuemagazine.com, follow us on Twitter at @StandardIssueUK or find us on Facebook and Instagram. All of our podcasts are available on iTunes and Podomatic. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It’s episode three of our podcast and it’s a jam-packed, sequin-strewn corker. And yeah, that’s bragging, but seriously: the ridicu-funny Kiri Pritchard-McLean gives us the lowdown on how to rule at doing festivals, Ashley Davies has some tips on the social PDAs best avoided if you’re slightly uptight/a normal human being and our Mickey Noonan chats to comedian, broadcaster and guilty feminist, Deborah Frances-White. Sarah Millican’s back answering another hot question (this one from one of you lovely lot) and the team – Mickey, Jen and Hannah – decide whether Disney’s original Cinderella is bibbidi-bobbidi-boo or bibbidi-boobidi-eww. Go on, hazard a guess. ADMIN: Our music was composed and recorded by Barry Hilton, all rights reserved. Thanks to David Young, Mary Young and John Clare for their help with the stings. We have an archive full of excellent articles at www.standardissuemagazine.com. You can write to us at mailbag@standardissuemagazine.com, follow us on Twitter at @StandardIssueUK or find us on Facebook and Instagram. All of our podcasts are available on iTunes and Podomatic. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode, we share our thoughts on the ongoing political shitblizzard in The Bush Telegraph, Dunleavy 'doing' The Lion King, Sarah Millican's Question Time, a roundup of what to watch on the box this summer, a chat with a genuine American about poisonous hairball Donald Trump and a surprise guest spot from a furry pal. ADMIN: Our music was composed and recorded by Barry Hilton, all rights reserved. Thanks to David Young, Mary Young and John Clare for their help with the stings. We have an archive full of excellent articles at www.standardissuemagazine.com. You can write to us at mailbag@standardissuemagazine.com, follow us on Twitter at @StandardIssueUK or find us on Facebook and Instagram. All of our podcasts are available on iTunes and Podomatic. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In our first episode, we chat to founder Sarah Millican, Jen Brister tells us about being 'the other mother', film buffs Yosra Osman and Day Moibi talk black cinema in 2017 and the team – Mickey Noonan, Hannah Dunleavy and Jen Offord – chat about women's issues in GE2017 and kick off Dunleavy Does Disney. Nope, not the weirdest porn film you've never seen, but rather our brilliant dep ed tackling Disney films with logic, feminism and funnies to see how they fare. This week, Beauty and the Beast. ADMIN: Our music was composed and recorded by Barry Hilton, all rights reserved. Thanks to David Young, Mary Young and John Clare for their help with the stings. We have an archive full of excellent articles at www.standardissuemagazine.com. You can write to us at mailbag@standardissuemagazine.com, follow us on Twitter at @StandardIssueUK or find us on Facebook and Instagram. All of our podcasts are available on iTunes and Podomatic. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Bianca and Mary sit down and chat career, family upbringing and much more. @iambiancaharris @itsmaryyoung @WIPPTORONTO

Mary was always interested in fashion. She was often looked at as a bit of an outsider growing up, because when everyone was interested in sports or playing outside, Mary was designing her own clothes and interested in everything having to do with fashion. Fast forward a few years, and Mary now has her own signature line of lingerie and loungewear for women under her own brand - Mary Young. She's fairly new on the fashion scene, having only been around for three years now; but she is definitely one of Canada's up and coming designers to watch. Her whole focus is to create fashionable, yet functional clothing. And she is all about creating lingerie that empowers women to embrace their individuality and refuse contortion into industry definitions of sexy. She believes women should love themselves, no matter what size and shape. We talk about breaking into the fashion industry; how she's been able to build her own brand so fast; what the most challenging parts have been as a solo-preneur; what keeps her up at night and where she hopes to take the brand in the next five years. 

Message from Mary Young on December 31, 2016

Executive Vice President, wife, mother, musician, gardener, health enthusiast, and world traveler Mary Young shares intimate details of her daily life as a high demand woman. She gives her skin care regimen, how she manages her schedule, and keeping the boys healthy with a busy life. On this call we also had a surprise special guest pop in … Mary’s husband and founder of Young Living … the one and only Gary Young. Gary and Mary were delightful to listen to as they played off each other as they discussed various topics. Gary let us in on his fall schedule, what’s going on with the harvests, and some ideas of what we may see in the Christmas catalog. During the wrap up, Gary & Mary give you simple tips & strategies on building a Young Living business. You get almost 2 hours of entertaining and personal insight to what the life is like for the Young(s). Be sure to get notifications of future calls by joining the Monday Night email notification list: http://oursimpletraining.com/resources/monday-night-calls/ Join us for the Monday Night Calls! Every week we have guests that are industry experts, successful entrepreneurs, and Corporate staff. This Young Living Business Training is free to anyone who is looking to build a business, please share with your teams. To get more training, visit http://oursimpletraining.com.

This third episode of American History Too! is all about one man – the seventh President of the United States, Andrew Jackson (1829-1837).  In particular, we debate Jackson’s role in the removal of Native Americans from their ancestral homes in the East to newly allotted land west of the Mississippi in the 1830s. Before jumping into the Indian controversy, we bring you up to speed with what’s being happening the US since our last podcast on the Constitution – all in two minutes!  We then dive straight into work of historian Francis Prucha and explain – with the help of other historians such Mary Young and Jon Meacham – why his attempt to rehabilitate Jackson’s image is greatly flawed.   We also debate Jackson’s legacy with regards to the Native Americans – is Jackson a game changer or merely a colourful character? In addition, Richard Nixon is mentioned an obscene amount of times for a nineteenth century podcast, Malcolm misguidedly attempts to rank Jimmy Carter in the higher echelons of American presidencies, and we most definitely do not discuss the tariff.  Finally, we answer our listener Francesca’s question on whether – as suggested in The West Wing – Andrew Jackson really did have a big block of cheese in the White House. We hope you enjoy this third episode (which also features improved audio quality from our first two efforts) and please let us know if you have any comments, questions, or suggestions. Cheers, Mark & Malcolm (Contact us on Twitter at @ahtoopodcast or by email at ahtoo@outlook.com) Reading List:          Francis Paul Prucha, ‘Andrew Jackson’s Indian Policy: A Reassessment’, Journal of American History  56 (1969), pp.527-539 (available on JSTOR).          Mary Young, ‘The Cherokee Nation: Mirror of the Republic’, American Quarterly, 33 (1981), pp.502-24.          Ronald N Satz, "Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era," in Leonard Dinnerstein and Kenneth T. Jackson (eds.),  American Vistas 1607-1877 (New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995), 211-227.           Jon Meacham, American lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House (New York : Random House, 2008) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Grade 6