Your Calling is Who You Are (Humanity and All) with Kathy Nickerson

It's The Mama Episode! Let's hear from Kathy Nickerson, mom of four (including your host, Serenity Bohon), emotional/spiritual mom to hundreds more, author, and eternal optimist. Kathy knew from a very young age that she wanted to be a writer, but it took her some time to admit it and go for it. Now, she has five books published in her "granny lit" series, a book for young readers called Jack and the Green Dragon, and a book on its way to readers soon, A Girl Called Something. Kathy and Serenity talk about childhood and how we bring things from it that we might need to learn to overcome. Kathy shares her work history and her mission during the pandemic to tell us all that it would be okay, a mission she hasn't stopped since. This episode is filled with meaningful stories and warm advice from a mama who loves the role and sees it as the calling she brings to everything she does. 

Chapters
7:53 My dad was a farmer
13:09 I always wanted to be a mom (and a writer)
21:29 Bringing the writing dream into the light
28:17 Kathy's day job years
28:17 Kathy's weekly Facebook videos
39:54 Kathy's activities and how they all connect
43:00 Spearheading Regen, a recovery program
48:46 Kathy's "granny lit" book series
57:49 The new book, "A Girl Called Something"
1:04:23 Defining success
1:09:18 Matching our strengths to our activities
1:12:11 Your calling has strengths and weaknesses
1:22:23 Getting Back What's Missing (teamwork)
1:28:40 Parenting advice from a seasoned mama
1:36:20 People are the most important ingredient (It Worked for Me)

Links
Kathy online: https://www.kathynick.com/
Kathy on FB: https://www.facebook.com/KathyNick

A mimeograph! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFIUm0DWA74  

Regeneration (find a program near you): https://www.regenerationrecovery.org/

I Do This For a Living is independently produced. 

@serenitylive

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:02

Welcome to I Do This For a Living, a show that asks how we can spend as much time and energy on the things that matter as we do on the things that pay. Sometimes the things that matter pay, and we'll talk about that too. I want to give a shout out to my daughter-in-law Parker. She recently sent me a picture of her and my son and my granddaughter, a baby who probably was not paying attention, but with um watching my podcast on their big screen in their living room, and she put, she captioned it, doing this for a living. And it meant so much to me because not only are they watching and loving the show, but she totally gets the title. Because what I'm trying to say here is, you know, the things that matter to us, the things that are fun, the things we want in our lives. Let's treat them like this is our living. So thank you, Parker. Loved that. Today's guest, I haven't said I'm Serenity Bohan, your host. I created this podcast so I could have work I love, which is working. I love it. And uh my guest today is someone equally special and in my life, um, my mama. I have wanted to do this episode for a while. I want to do the siblings first so we could talk about her. And then um, I'm bringing my mom on today. You're gonna love it. My mom is an author. She has a new book that's gonna be coming out this summer. So we talk about that, but I kind of build up to it because she has a varied story uh besides the writing life. And there's a lot of good stuff, and there's a mind-blowing aha moment for me. Um, kind of near the end, I would give you the chapter, but I don't know what it is. Um, where I just get a new understanding of the whole calling thing. She has a yet another unique perspective on that that was really helpful for me and really, really cool. So I hope you like it. Let's get to it. Mama, hi. I started a podcast. I begged you to. I know. And I went to video like immediately because of you. I'm not sure. Not because of you. Lots of people asked for it, but I'm like, mom can do it, I can do it. We will get to that later, but you're the video queen. Well, you just have to have no pride whatsoever. Well, I didn't succeed at that. I am vain as can be. I'm nervous all the time. And that's just how it's gonna be. Okay, you speech clothes three times. Oh, oh, um, Michael will tell you I change clothes throughout every day, all day. I'm on too many Zoom meetings. And if anything goes wrong, he says if it just doesn't feel right all of a sudden, I will change. You've been that way your whole life. I know. I know. We love it. It's a weird little quirk. Um, I don't really have enough clothes for that, but I do it anyway. So you've been watching for a minute. You are episode 13, by the way. You don't have any problems with that number, do you?

Speaker 3:02

I absolutely do not.

Speaker 1 3:03

I don't either. It's because of Lee Weber.

Speaker 3:06

Lee Wellstrom. Pilstrom.

Speaker 1 3:08

Yes! Natalie Pilstrom, she was born on Friday the 13th, loved that day, made it fun. Endless possibilities kind of day instead of superstitious. So that's how I feel too. And of course, there is possibly a wedding happening like as we record this.

Speaker 3:24

Taylor Swift. That's true. Do you believe the gossip that they actually secretly got married already and this is just the party? Um, no, I'm going with it.

Speaker 1 3:32

I'm gonna go with it that this is the real deal. We'll see. Maybe we'll find out, maybe we won't. But um, yeah, I actually listened to Taylor Swift before these episodes sometimes because she's just a powerhouse of creative audaciousness, audacity to me, which is what I need to do this podcast. Audacity. I just I'm like, I mean, okay. The Kelsey brothers just had Prince William. They did. And I was thinking, what am I even doing in this space? But I was also thinking, I could get him, right?

unknown 4:09

Right.

Speaker 4:10

And your listeners should know that immediately thereafter, your youngest sister Marco poloed you and told you some questions you should ask because he would be such a fascinating guest. I know! And so we all we all believe.

Speaker 1 4:24

We all believe Charity literally said he would be so interesting for your show because what's it like to grow up not having to ask what you will be? You know you're gonna be the king of England. Yeah. So anytime, Prince William, you should come. So, mom, you've been watching for a while. So I'm gonna ask it to you this way. How would you introduce yourself to the I Do This for a Living audience?

Speaker 4:46

Hi, I'm Serenity's mom. I tell people all the time, um, I'm all about relationships. Your dad and I, relationships is our that's our whole gig. And so really, when I introduce myself, it's all almost always relational. Hi, I'm I'm Lieutenant Nickerson's mom. Hi, I'm Charity's mom, I'm Felicity's mom. Uh, hi, I'm Nola's grandma. And um even in even in writing spaces, recently I had to interview somebody. I was doing a magazine article and I had to introduce someone myself to someone I'd never met before. And instead of saying, hi, I'm a freelance writer for the Papillion magazine, I said, Hi, I'm a friend of Herb Thompson. Because it's all relational for me.

Speaker 1 5:31

Herb's the Herb's the guy in commercials, right? He is. He is gonna have to get him on here sometime.

Speaker 5:36

You oh, you must. He would be wonderful. I hope you hear this herb and you're ready for it.

Speaker 1 5:43

Um, so I want to tell everyone what this conversation's gonna be like, sort of. Okay, you live in Omaha, Nebraska. I live in a small town in Missouri. I'm only not naming the town because the paparazzi would find me immediately is that small of a town. But um you used to live in a small town in Missouri, about 50 minutes away. And we would eat almost every week, right? At Colton's. Yes, outside of the pandemic, yes. Oh gosh, the pandemic. Yeah, that really for a little bit. But um, almost every week. Uh, Tabitha, shout out to our usual waitress, Tabitha, and also Colton's. If you wish to sponsor this episode, no problem. The Hawaiian chicken.

Speaker 6:28

Oh, yes, the Hawaiian chicken with smashed potatoes.

Speaker 1 6:32

Strawberry pecan salads, a fave of mine. Mm-hmm. And you and I never get the onion blossom, but it's a good one too.

Speaker 6:39

No. We should all I thought we should record this. You should go to Colton's. Oh, I should go to my yes. We should have just sat at the time. Colton said that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 6:47

So that's what I'm saying, people, is me having conversations with my mom about all the things we're gonna talk about today is pretty par for the course. So, but I still am convinced we can make it interesting for the people. They haven't heard all those conversations.

Speaker 7:02

No, they have not. And I think the waitresses kind of like haunted our booth sometimes because they wanted to hear what we were saying.

Speaker 1 7:08

Oh, because we're so interesting. We did get deep. I was just thinking today about the time I said to you, seriously, what is the meaning of life? And you told me. I did. Yeah, maybe we'll get to that. Okay. It was from the it was from the from the catechism. Yes.

Speaker 2 7:25

Yes.

Speaker 1 7:26

Okay. Um, so this is fun because I I don't usually name my segments anymore, like out loud, but I still name them for me to kind of know what segment I'm in. And I'm calling this segment when I was a little girl. Because when we were little girls, uh, that's what mom would do is tell us stories that started when I was a little girl. I was a little girl. So this is the segment. Okay.

Speaker 7:48

What are your early memories of work? Of work. I was thinking about this morning. It's very clear to me. My dad was a farmer. They owned a very small farm, raised four children. My mom was a farm wife. They loved that life, we loved that life. And it was a diversified small, it was the kind of thing you know you dream of as a hobby farm. They had, they milked cows, they had pigs, they had sheep and chickens in a garden and a cornfield and a hay field and all those things. But that was not, we hit the point where it wasn't realistic. You couldn't raise a family on that. And I, my parents never talked about money. I never knew we were poor, though we were very poor, but I did not know that. And because all my friends lived the same way I did. But I remember the season where it became apparent we couldn't survive any longer on just the farm. And uh, I think this is a true memory that I remember the day that my dad went to town and paid the last payment on our farm to Mr. Famous McNeely at the Macon Atlanta State Bank. And when he came home, he said that he would never ever owe a man a dollar again. And he never did. But as a result, they couldn't keep that little farm going well enough to provide for us. So I knew my daddy has to go to work somewhere. And he ended up going to work in a factory. It was McGraw-Edison at the time. And honestly, for many years it broke my heart to think about him. He was a man of the land, and he was locked away in that dark factory leading a line full of women who made widgets for toasters. And I would just think how horrible that was. My mom went to work too. She went to work washing dishes at our school without an electronic dishwasher. She did it all by hand for 200 kids. But now in retrospect, I see that my dad brought so much light into that factory for so many people for so many years. And the same with my mom. She's a whole story about how her career was just wonderful for so many of us who were going through school. And the best part of the story is that when they both retired, then they enjoyed their life on the farm again, and they had life together on the farm for way more years than they spent at the factory and the school. Is that true? That's true. We die. Yes, he had more time at home afterwards than he had at the factory. And they gave him a color TV when he retired so he could enjoy the farm. But work, that's how I, although I didn't really understand anything about money, I did know that work and the lack thereof threatened our happy home for a while. Because it was a season. Daddy tried several different ways to get different jobs and they fell through. And I remember that there was tension and some fear in everybody that like the words were spoken, we might have to move away. And that sounded like death to me. We lived within five miles of both sets of grandparents. I'd known all my friends since I was four years old. I couldn't imagine moving away. So the factory saved us from that.

Speaker 1 10:55

So you did understand though, he had to get a job for money.

Speaker 11:00

I did. I didn't know what we did with that money except go to the local grocery store. That's the only thing I knew. We would go to the grocery store, and I mean it was two aisles, and my mom would buy her stuff, and then she would write on the grocery bag how much money she spent. And I'm assuming she went home and like put that in her checkbook or something. I have no idea. And I have we always had everything we wanted. We made our own clothes and grew a lot of our own food, but I didn't ever feel lacking. But in that season, I knew we didn't have enough money for whatever it was you need money for.

Speaker 1 11:32

Oh my gosh. Okay, grandma, she so I've had a terrible relationship with jobs pretty much my whole life. And so I was always looking, kind of always looking, wondering what I should be doing. And grandma would say, try to get a job at the school because you'll have the hours of your kids. And so was there any sense that grandma chose her work for other reasons than money?

Speaker 11:58

Well, I don't think she would have gone to work unless they had to have the money, because Kenny, our youngest brother, was he was little. He was a toddler, I think, when she had to go to work, maybe a little older than that, but he wasn't in school yet. And so I don't think she would have gone to work, except that she needed the money, but she loved it so much that she stayed longer than she had to. We were all out of school. Daddy was retired. They didn't really need her income or insurance or anything, but she stayed a few years more because she loved the people.

Speaker 1 12:27

Yeah.

Speaker 12:28

And I kind of think she fell into that. I don't think that was a job she went looking for. Oh.

Speaker 1 12:34

Luetta got her into it or something? Pro yeah, her friends were already the cooks at the school, and an opening came up. Oh my goodness. My grandparents, by the way, everyone are some of the most beloved were the most beloved people. And um I miss them a lot. So good people. And I love those stories. They really help me. Um it helps me with mom reminds me. Grandpa worked at the factory for 20 I think 20 some years.

Speaker 13:02

I don't have the exact yeah.

Speaker 1 13:04

To to keep the farm. So it's a great for all of us. So um, what were your early glimmerings of what you wanted to be?

Speaker 13:14

Well, I'm very boring about this because I knew from the time, well, they say from the time I could talk that I wanted to be a mom, a wife. Those things were so clear. My first, I don't remember this, of course, but my grandfather says my first sentence, he was carrying me through a department store. I saw a doll, and I said, Grandpa, get doll baby. And he did. But from I always knew, I always knew I being a mom was the one thing I wanted out of life. And then when I was in late junior high school, probably, I added on to that, I want to be also be a writer. But for some reason, that didn't feel like something I could say out loud to anybody. I didn't talk about that out loud for decades. It just felt beyond, and I don't know why in those days it wasn't a career, you know, it wasn't, we don't, we see a lot of people in publishing now, and you didn't in those days. You had to be special and you had to live in New York, and it just seemed unattainable. So I didn't add that in any of my like in high school. I didn't say I want to be a writer, but I knew I wanted to. And I think I was, I think we were married and I had already had all of you kids before I finally could say it out loud. Okay, so I mean I was writing. I was writing all that time. Yeah.

Speaker 1 14:35

I have the question, what did you want to be? And in parentheses, I put, I think she'll say a mom. Correct. I knew that's where it would go. Um where so it was so foreign that you couldn't even say it out loud. So where do you think you got that the idea? Was it was it the call isn't out there at all? It's inside you, Moana. Probably.

Speaker 14:56

That's probably, yeah, that's true. Um I got some accolades. It's in fourth grade. I wrote an essay about my little brother, and my teacher loved it so much, she mimeographed it so that all the family members could have it. And we did some poetry in her class that I felt good about. Hold on. And she wanted it. Yeah, mimeograph. Never even heard of it, have you? Is it like laminating? No, it's like photocopying, only it's a drum. You roll a drum and it has ink. You put the paper on it, you roll the drum, and it comes off and it smells terrible, and the ink's kind of purple. The real truth, though, is and I this uh I'll share this story with my editor of my most recent book. Words. I words were in me from the beginning of time. My mother read to me all the time before I learned to read. And then uh Judy, my dear friend, tells this story that I don't remember, but I believe very clearly that it's true. On our first day of school, we didn't even have kindergarten in our little pedal town. We went to first grade together. Judy and I did already know each other. And uh, her balloon exploded. We all got balloons, hers exploded. And she said, Oh shoot, my balloon busted. And she says that I turned to her and said, No, it didn't. It burst. And I'm sure I did that because words, words were just, and so words have been a thing between Judy and I now forever. And um, this is jumping ahead, but I'm releasing a book this summer, and uh, she reached out to me and said, Have you gotten an editor for your book yet? Because I always I always use a freelance editor. I never try to fully edit my own work. And I said, I haven't gotten somebody. And she said, Well, you know, I would do it for you. I would love to edit your work. And I said, I know. She said, I mean, you remember I did that professionally. That's what I did. My career was I was editing all the time in my career. I said, I know, I know, but I don't think you could be hard enough on me because you know, we love each other so much. And she said, Well, why don't you send me a little snippet and let's give it a try? And she could be hard enough on me. Fantastic. She made it a much better book, which my editors always make it a better book. So, words, probably the idea of using words and reading and books, that was probably in me from childhood too. Do you think there was the Waltons? The Waltons. The Waltons. John Boy Walton wanted to be a writer. He did. He did, right? Yeah. And he had that same thing. He hid it. He hid his big chief tablet under the mattress of his bed because he couldn't admit to anybody wanting to do something so audacious, as you mentioned. So I'm sure that got in my brain.

Speaker 1 17:34

I think the accolades if if someone like I had the glimmerings of writing early too, which part of it was mimicking you, I think, because I remembered you clacking away on your typewriter in the other room, and I would go into my room and try to write things. But um, I think when people tell you you're good at something, yeah, that digs it in kind of deep. It does, yeah. Which makes me just think about how could you know, I don't know. I I I hope I wish everyone had that, I think. I wish everyone had the chance for someone to tell them you're good at something. But we come you and I come from a long line of storytellers. And I knew that. Yeah. Like, did you know about Grandpa Dare's journals and stuff?

Speaker 18:19

Yes. That he kept his daily journal, and he was a big storyteller. He was a very beloved pastor and preacher, and he told because partly because he told a lot of stories. And my dad uh did, he was the MC for the local PTA all the time, and he would do stories and skits and things on stage. So he he was a storyteller, and it runs all the way through us. I mean, we're seeing it now in the next generation and your kids also, that there are just storytellers in us. It's in our line.

Speaker 1 18:48

I have more questions about storytelling coming up too. But um, okay, so okay, did did anyone ever tell you something you should be? Yes.

Speaker 18:59

Uh I don't know why, but nobody ever told us in our I don't my friends, if you're watching, can correct me, but I don't think anyone ever talked to my high school class about going to college. No one ever told us we could or how to do it or why we could do it. I don't and but some people did afterwards, not right away, I don't think. So I don't know why that was, and maybe it was a weird year, but um high school principal, I was engaged. I already got I got engaged my senior year of high school. And uh he was just devastated that I was going to just finish school and then get married and be a wife. And he so he tried to talk to me about this is hilarious, kind of now. He was trying to tell me that I could have a job, have a career, but the only way he knew how to describe it in the 1970s was to tell me that I this secretary he saw at the office one day. I think he was at a bank, this beautiful secretary. And he described what she wore and what her desk looked like and how she handled herself in the room. And he said, I mean, you could totally do something like that. I think you should. And today I'm totally offended by that. I have been a secretary many times in my life, but that that was the pinnacle. He was like our guidance counselor, and that was the pinnacle he could think of for a woman, besides getting married and having babies. Go be a pretty secretary somewhere.

Speaker 1 20:25

It's weird though. I have the exact same experience, except yeah, one of my pastors in life, but it was a huge compliment because what he said was, I see you can write plays, you could be on Broadway, and I I see all that could happen before you ever get married. Now, I was already madly in love with the person I was wanting to marry, and there might have been a little manipulation going on there of maybe you're trying to get married too young. Because I talked to my friend um very shortly after that, and she had just been told the opposite. Like, you really need to get married before you um get to live fully in your in your gifts. But anyway, um, but it's weird that we both had that, that someone said, no, don't get married too young, go do this other thing.

Speaker 2 21:13

Yeah.

Speaker 1 21:13

It's interesting. Um so writing came in early in junior high. So what who I don't know. Um let's talk, I guess since it didn't, you kind of kept it hidden. When did you actually start writing, would you say? You were still hiding the fact that you wanted to be one, but you were doing it.

Speaker 21:35

It was the late 80s, early 90s, 1990s. When you were in at least elementary school, maybe junior high. And the first time, I think the first time you ever admitted it, I um I don't know how I found this. I think I was buying writing magazines now and then, like Writer's Digest, some of those kinds of things. I think that's where I saw this. And we lived near Hannibal, Missouri. And it advertised a writer's conference that summer. And I said, I would like to go to this. Was the first really out loud thing I think that I had ever said. I think that came before I started writing publicly at all. And so I started going to that conference and I went every year for many years. And it really did launch me into the writing world.

unknown 22:20

Every year.

Speaker 22:20

James, Dr. James Hefley, long gone ahead to glory. But and it was, I mean, it was phenomenal because one of the things I wanted to write in those days was a book that you inspired because we were driving to church one day and we passed this big nativity set. And you said, Hey, I wonder what happened to the shepherds after the nativity. And I like could not let go of that thought. And so I created this little 10-year-old boy who would have been with the shepherds at the nativity, and I gave him this whole story. So when I went, uh, I took a class with Dr. Hefley about creative writing, writing to be published. And I told him that's I would like to write this novel. And he said to me, Christian fiction isn't really a thing. And so I don't think there's any market for it. And it wasn't. That was absolutely true. There were no, there were certainly no publishing houses designed for it. And for years, the only thing uh Catherine Marshall published Christie, which was novel slash memoir. And then Jeanette Oki started to publish a little bit. But that was, those were like groundbreaking. There really was not Christian fiction when I started wanting to write it.

Speaker 1 23:26

Oh my gosh, I did not realize that. Yeah. Um so I'm trying to think how to set this one up if I'm gonna tell this story, but I think I will. So there was a time in our lives, I was a grown-up too, and a friend of ours was talking to Felicity about kind of wanting to write and said, I think, I think I don't know how this went down, but do you know where I'm going with this? So the pr the pr um the person said to Phyllis, like, or Felicity said of you, like you you wanted um to kind of do good in the world. You know, you wanted your content to sort of affect lives or and so you didn't care if you ever got rich and famous or something. And the friend said, Oh, is that true for Serenity too? And Phyllis said, Oh no, she wants to be famous. Which I love. Like, yeah, pretty much. Um, I I own it. Um, but so what I want to ask you, because maybe that wasn't even trivial. Uh around those years when you would say to yourself, I want to be a writer, what did you mean?

unknown 24:30

I wanted to.

Speaker 1 24:31

What did you want it to look like?

Speaker 24:33

Yeah, I did. I wanted uh uh the only writers I knew about were people who were did make a beautiful living and were on talk shows and did all this stuff. And that so yeah, that is what I wanted, I thought. Okay. Uh and do you want to go there? I mean, I got I I had opportunities to go that way at one point. I don't think I would ever have gotten rich and famous. But out of the uh writers' conferences, I managed to get an article accepted by uh a wonderful editor named Dean Merrill, who at the time was working for a magazine called uh Christian Herald. It's been out of print for a long, long time. And one of the things they did was uh they would send various articles out to media organizations who were looking for people to come speak. And so I was working at your dad's clinic, working a front desk job, and I got a call from the PTL club, which when that was they had just gone through, yeah, I know, just gone through this massive, horrendous scandal. But it was still on the air. And I had written an article about my personal battle with depression. I'm nobody, but I just wrote a personal experience article. And they asked me if I would fly, I think it was in Charlotte, wouldn't it have been in Charlotte? They were gonna, they were gonna fly me down. Did dad just speak off camera?

Speaker 1 26:03

He did. That has to happen. That's our lives. I don't talk to you without you, your dad says blah, blah, blah. That has to happen.

Speaker 26:12

I looked over to see, was it Charlotte? And he was trying not to answer, but he nodded. It's how we live. We have the greatest life. So they were gonna fly me down, put me on TV, give me 20 minutes, live interview to talk about depression, say anything I want to do. Oh my gosh, mom! And by the time the guy was done talking to me, I was no longer in my chair. I was sitting underneath the front desk at the clinic, kind of laughing, kind of crying, kind of saying, What in the world is this? And um in the end, I didn't do it. There were lots of reasons, some of them no good. But the truth was, I didn't, at that stage of life, oh my goodness, I would have said things that I don't believe anymore. Oh. And I would have misrepresented the kingdom of God big time because of some twisted thinking we had in those days. And um, it would have, I mean, it would have nobody would, it would have disappeared in a blip. I'm not saying I could have destroyed the world with it, but it wouldn't have been healthy for the viewing public or for me.

Speaker 2 27:19

Wow.

Speaker 27:20

But for but for years and years and years, I felt like, did I miss a moment? I mean, I could have had the platform, I could have been out there, I could have had the audiences. And now, 40 some years later, I'm really, really, really grateful God didn't take me that way. I love being a regional writer. I feel like I'm a regional author. I have a nice little following of people who I either know them or I know their friend's friend, and that's how they find my books. And I love that. I don't feel like the books I've written are my main thing, like that they have to be on the New York Times bestseller list. They're just part of my storytelling. They're just part of what I do. And that changes everything. That takes all the pressure off of it. It's just this is part of what I do. And I just partly do it because I love it. It's so much, I'm having so much fun with the current book I'm working on. I know I can't wait to get there.

Speaker 1 28:12

But I mean, I can wait because I'm building towards it. Okay. But so I want to, so now let's just talk about your billable hours, your work story, which I think we've talked about with my siblings. There, and you uh said there were times it was not being paid. But let's just hear what so we we all kind of got the impression, me and my sibs, that you tended to choose work for meaning. Like this is a season when I need I'm gonna help your dad in the clinic. This is a season where I'm gonna run the daycare at church. Is that how you is that accurate? Yeah.

Speaker 28:51

That is completely accurate. Um, the first job, first two jobs I had in my life, I just got for to pay hot pay bills while we were young, newlyweds. I worked in a bank. And I'll just say this about working in a bank, although it looks like kind of a fun job, kind of like, you know, cool. We worked uh 36 hours a week, so we got no benefits, but we had to be there six days. You had to work Saturdays.

Speaker 2 29:14

Yeah.

Speaker 29:15

And I don't know, banking has changed. That was when banks were only open like from nine to three. I don't think that even exists anymore. So banks are probably a good place to work now. But so that wasn't great fun. And then I got a job at Pickler Memorial Library, where uh many of the members of the Bohan family have graduated from Truman State University. And my job was to sit at my little desk, type up, and type up the card catalog cards. And uh it was boring, excruciating work. But I could have done it if the environment had been good. But that particular year, things went very badly in that in that environment among that workforce. There were, well, there was one more than one nervous breakdown in the people above me. And I was newly married, I got pregnant really quick. I had supreme morning sickness that lasted all day for several months. And I went into a spiraling dark, deep depression so bad that literally your dad had to like just pick me up and take me home finally and put me to bed one day. So that was awful. That I let and I left that job terribly. When she hired me, I had all these big visions of um, I she said, I'm looking for someone I can train and will they will really be here. I can count on them. And uh not, she said, I don't want to hire a KCOM student wife who's gonna leave next year. And I said, Oh, well, Wendell has three more years of undergrad, and then he's gonna go to KCO hopes to go to KCOM. So, and we're not gonna have a family until after that happens. And so I well, I believed it in that moment. It was our plan. And he was gonna join the Navy to go through school. So we had a plan. We're gonna six years of us, then the Navy would take us somewhere and we'd have a baby, start having babies. Well, uh, the Navy, everything changed in the in those scholarships at that time. So that didn't happen. And I got pregnant like a month after school, after we got married, and so that didn't happen. And then I left in deep depression. But almost about eight or 10, eight or nine years later, I actually got a chance to see my former boss and apologize to her for how I behaved. And she didn't remember, she said, Well, I just remembered that you were really sick, but I never thought about you being a bad employee. That was precious. So yeah, those two jobs were just jobs. And then after that, I was gonna just stay, just stay. I don't want to say it that way, but I was gonna be a homemaker. That was my thing. I was gonna be a homemaker. But then when needs would come up, well, on our first date, on our first date when I was 17, your dad described to me the kind of country doctor he wanted to be and what he wanted to do and how he was going to do it. And I it was our first date. I literally signed on right then. And I was going to work in his clinic. So once he opened, Oh yeah. Oh yeah, that was our thing. So once he opened the clinic, I did work with him the first, I can't remember how many years I worked with him at the front desk. But it I I didn't have the skill set that you needed really for uh the especially the Medicare and Medicaid side of insurance. So we eventually hired somebody who did have that skill set. And I went back home. And then I went and worked and that helped open the daycare at our church, which I feel like was a valuable ministry. I'm it was hard years, but I do feel like we provided something for the city that they that was really useful. I mean, you know, we I won't name names, but there is a very well-known doctor in Kirksville right now who got his start by being the four-year-old ramrod of the fun factory. Yes, he said he ran the place when he was four years old. He probably did. So we've contributed. That dog contributed a lot. And then um Yeah, so then I was church secretaries in a different couple of places. And eventually, when I turned 50 or 55, 50, I think, we reopened to private practice and I went to work with your dad. And I was his office manager and his front desk lady, and we were we did that job for about 12 years, and really I loved that. I did love that a lot. Especially because he gave me lots of flex time, so I could still go to writers' conferences and go home and write novels and go see the babies when the grandbabies when they were born and help with them. And he was a good boss.

Speaker 1 33:32

He was a good boss. You did um you did some writing for the church too. Oh yeah. Yeah. Um, do you remember our Rollings Reliable conversation?

Speaker 33:44

No, help me.

Speaker 1 33:47

I mean, I was my writing my just dreams in general for having a really big life had started budding. And I knew you were your big I knew you were a writer and had big dreams and that you were w writing, you know, stuff for the church that really wouldn't have your name on it. And so it would just be even books, I think. But anyway, and I remember saying to you, Do you ever feel like you're writing for Rowling's Reliable Baking Powder Company, which is an Anna Green Gables reference?

Speaker 2 34:17

Yes.

Speaker 1 34:18

Um she wrote a story that she just poured her heart and soul into, and Diana Barry put it in a contest to sell baking soda, and she even changed or baking powder, and she even changed the uh like critical scenes to have the baking powder be in the book, and Anne just felt devastated. It was just the end of the world. And I asked you about that. But do you even remember that conversation? You said I what'd I say?

Speaker 34:44

Do you even know?

Speaker 1 34:45

I think you said, yeah, sometimes, but it's okay.

Speaker 34:48

That would be true. That would be true. Because there I do even now, if I was gonna try to come up with a C V as a writer, there's a lot of stuff out there that I'm really proud of that doesn't have my name on it. Yeah. Yeah. That's okay.

Speaker 2 35:02

There's a lot of stuff that does.

Speaker 1 35:04

Well, yeah, that's the thing. I feel like you and I have been talking about is um if you want to be creative in this world, you give a lot of stuff away for free. Right. Right. It's you make the you make the stuff because you want to make it and you put it out there and well, and that whole thing is.

Speaker 35:25

Yeah, that's right.

unknown 35:27

Yeah.

Speaker 35:28

Um and taking the pressure off of the art to pay its way.

Speaker 1 35:33

Okay, Elizabeth Gilbert. I know she tries to tell me that too.

Speaker 35:36

And I really I've read it in several places. I mean, doesn't Austin Cleon even say that?

Speaker 1 35:41

Oh, yeah. He says, I didn't make art to make money. I made art to keep from wanting to jump off a bridge. Exactly.

Speaker 35:49

So true, my friend. So true.

Speaker 1 35:52

Austin. Um, let's talk about the story of you starting your Facebook videos. This is regular content that you put out in the world. One question I have for you do you do that on your personal Facebook profile or your author page? Both. I put it both places. Okay, you put it both places.

Speaker 36:08

All right. So tell that story. Well, the pandemic started, and we lived uh out in the middle of nowhere, and Wendell was on front line. He was a family practice physician, so he was working 14 hours a day, and people were scared. And a lot of his patients were also my readers, and uh they were elderly and a lot of them were widows. And I think it was the first week of the quarantine in March that I said, I know, I know people are really scared. Would you, I said to him, would you just go on my Facebook page with me for a minute and just reassure, let's just reassure people that we're gonna be okay, we're gonna hang on, we're gonna find our way. So we did that. I I think he was only in the first one. And it got a huge response, of course, from people. And so I said, Well, I guess I could keep doing this. And so I, every morning, five days a week for two years, I would just get up in the morning and say, Oh, God, what do you want to say to people today? And I talked about the pandemic and I talked about news and I talked about life, but I always just tried to say, We're we're going to be okay. Somehow let's hold on. I would tell stories. And I started hearing back from people. Specifically, they would be in the clinic talking to your dad through their face masks. And one one sweet lady, Mildred Jennings, who's in glory now, said to him, You know, will you please tell Kathy the only reason I get out of bed in the morning is because I know she's going to talk to us on the video.

Speaker 3 37:36

Oh my gosh.

Speaker 37:37

Yeah. So, like, no pressure to not stop that. Yeah. But yeah, so for two years I did it every day. I think I rare, I'm not sure I missed. I'm probably missed a little bit here and there, but not very often. And so I continued it. I'm not that, I don't post nearly that often right now, but I'm probably gonna pick it up a little more often because I still hear from people all the time who say it makes a difference. I heard not just from the widows, but I heard from several young moms. I mean, it was so terrifying to have little babies and little toddlers and not know how to protect them. And I've heard from several of those moms who said, it wouldn't have mattered what you said. Just hearing your voice gave me the courage to get through the day. We're gonna be okay. I think she said we're gonna be okay. And of course we weren't, of course, we weren't all okay. I mean, we lost people that we knew and loved. So it wasn't all okay. Because you know, my you know my thing. It's that um I'm a what am I? An optimist? Eternal optimist, that's it. I'm an eternal optimist. I don't believe everything's good in this world. It definitely is not. But I do believe everything works together for good to those that love the Lord. Or another phrasing that's often used is everything's gonna be okay in the end. And if it's not okay, it's not the end.

unknown 38:56

Yeah.

Speaker 38:57

So that's where my Facebook videos started, and they're still going. And if you want to go find me on Facebook, I'd love to hear from you. How do they do it? Kathy Nickerson. Just my name. There's Google Kathy Nickerson. Yeah, I can't.

Speaker 1 39:10

There's a doctor in California. Ignore that one. Ignore that. Put in Kathy Nickerson, author. I think you'll do it.

Speaker 39:17

And we could put a link in the show notes. Yeah, we will.

Speaker 1 39:20

Do you know what I did when the pandemic started? I downloaded a game to my phone where you like squash little bugs and stuff. And I don't, I'm not a gamer on phones, but I became one during the pandemic. And it's like all I could do was watch Jimmy Fallon from his home and play this.

Speaker 39:37

Didn't he do? He's kind of what inspired me because he like gave me a breath of life. I was like, yeah, he did. Okay, we're gonna make this. So he was that was excellent. So that's partly why I did what I did, I think.

Speaker 1 39:47

Jimmy Fallon inspired my mom's Facebook video. Yeah, he was he was delightful through that time. Um given all this, so you had these little you had some jobs, you worked with dad, you did the daycare, you're writing on the side, started these Facebook videos. You and dad are in the retirement years, but do you consider yourself retired?

Speaker 40:10

I do not. I didn't think so. A couple of a couple of reasons. Because my primary occupation and designation in my own mind is homemaker, there's no retirement from that.

Speaker 2 40:24

Oh but hold on, hold on. Don't give up, don't give up.

Speaker 40:33

There is no retirement, but we do it differently. I don't keep home like I did when I was having to feed a family of six.

Speaker 2 40:41

Yeah.

Speaker 40:41

And um I I wouldn't be against hiring someone to do the dusting and the mopping and the vacuuming. Those to me, those aren't the homemaker things. The homemaker role is different than that. It's about heart and intention, and those things play into it. But if you can hire somebody to do those things, do it. Absolutely no problem. Stimulate the economy. Um, so yeah, from that job, I would probably never retire. Even if we lived in like a nursing home, I think I would feel if I had was in my right mind that I wanted to make it be our home. So that's a no retirement job. And writing is the same way. I can't imagine, as long as I ever have a brain, a time when I won't want to tell stories.

Speaker 1 41:26

Yeah.

Speaker 41:26

That's what I say. I anyone would tell you Serenity hates work.

Speaker 1 41:30

But I don't. I love work and I want to do it forever. It's just I want it to be work that's meaningful to me and that feels like it's putting something significant in the world. So I I thought you would answer that way. Yes. Um, so what all do you do for a living right now? It's it's even more than the writing, and I'll get you to it if you don't think of it. But so what do you do for a living? Okay.

Speaker 41:53

Um, well, we live in a multi-generational home.

unknown 41:57

Right.

Speaker 41:58

Yeah. So we're in our nice little apartment down here, beautiful big windows that I look out every day while I'm working. And upstairs is a uh our son and his family with three littles. So I do a lot of that. Um, entertain them every now and then. And um I write, well, I do face, I do Facebook videos. I write a weekly column on Substack. I occasionally blog on my website. I'm pretty bad at that right now, but I'm gonna get better. I write novels. I am a freelance writer for Papillion Lifestyle Magazine, Papillion City Lifestyle Magazine here in Papillion, Nebraska. Um, I've been writing, I usually write an article a month for them, which is super fun because I get to go meet people in the community that I haven't known before. So that's been a great thing. And um then I, well, I try to keep up with all the children and grandchildren. And that's, you know, a full-time job. Totally. And then re Wendell and I um recovery is very much on our heart and a part of our lives. Is that where you wanted me to get to? Yeah. We uh have been involved in recovery circles for over 20 years and feel deeply called to that area of life. And our church uh here in Omaha has started um a ministry out of Watermark Church in Texas that's called Regeneration. And so we've been a part of that for the last couple of years, and we're in the process now of bringing it to our local campus, like 10 minutes from our house. And I'm kind of the lead person getting that off the ground. So uh it's a bit it's a lot of work. It's taking a lot of my time right now, but I'm I feel really happy about it, really happy to do it.

Speaker 1 43:43

What does that mean? You're taking also the cool kids call it Regen, right? It's Regen. Yeah, Regeneration, they call it Regen. What does that mean that you're getting it off the ground?

Speaker 43:54

Um, I'm I'm like spearheading the recruitment process. What we do uh to launch a new regeneration circle, and there is one in your town, by the way. You can look it up, and um, there is one going on, and I think it's still going one of the churches you can. You know what church it's out of? Uh-huh. I think it's at the crossing. Okay. I think. I apologize if that's not true any longer, but I believe it is going on there. Um so to launch a pilot program, we wanna we want to have a men's group and a women's group. We want at least 12 people in each of those group groups. We need the four leaders to handle that. Then we just need the the basic setup and planning things for teaching times, who's going to lead worship. It's a multifaceted evening. We start with a short time of worship and there's a testimony. So lining up people to do that. Then we break into small groups that are 12, it's a 12-strep step program, but it's based completely on the Bible, completely different than anything we have ever seen before. And so there's a lot of volunteers, and I'm coordinating a lot of volunteers working with our team from the West Dodge campus, Pastor Sarah. Shout out to Pastor Sarah, who really launched it here in Omaha for the whole city. It was the first time it had ever come to our city, and it's beginning to spread out in some other churches now, too. We're just seeing phenomenal, phenomenal change in people's lives. And um they just story upon story. I mean, I went through it. We went through it two years ago. I was almost 70. And I thought, you know, I've walked with Jesus a while, more than 50 years. And I know there's stuff still, always, there's stuff in us always, but I had no idea, a couple of things specifically that were in my life that were still broken from childhood and uh teenage years that had me so weighed down and I didn't know it. And I touched them, the Holy Spirit touched them in this curriculum that I worked through. And I know it sounds cliche to say, I got set free, but I got set free. And so I feel like this is these are the best days of my life.

Speaker 1 45:59

Dang. Yeah. Tell talk about how when when you say recovery, people might think drugs and alcohol. And that's not just like, let's say I'm a person who doesn't have a drug and alcohol addiction. Why would I want to go? Um it would help you figure out why you hate work. No. But seriously, if I get free of that, do I have to stay in work forever?

Speaker 46:26

Yeah, probably. No, just until just until you hit retirement age. And then, like grandpa, you'll have all those years of creativity beyond these years of the work you don't enjoy. Um, but you're correct. I mean, we've seen there are people do go through with severe addictions to everything you can imagine. But also people who are going through because I have this anger, I just flare up at people and I don't know why. And in this program, they find out the why. And then once you find out the why, you can let Jesus deal with it. And then, well, you're not going to be all different tomorrow, but you will grow and things will change. And um, yeah, so just life issues. Uh, people come out with eating, realizing how to handle their eating disorders, overspending, uh, living in debt, um pains, pain, and a lot of uh pain from past abuse and hurt and mean people, wrong living. And those things just layer in us, you know, even when we think we've dealt with them. So we are recovering from all kinds of things and being regenerated.

Speaker 1 47:33

Oh gosh, it's like that hope floats line. Childhood is a thing you spend the rest of your life trying to get over. Yeah, and I'm trying to break them. I know, me too.

Speaker 47:42

But there are things, things happen. This is a this is a mean broken world.

Speaker 1 47:45

Right. And yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, so how much so it takes a lot of your time right now as you're getting it off the ground. Will it continue to take a lot of your time? No. No, it won't.

Speaker 47:57

We meet on Monday nights. And as uh I've as I lead, I normally lead the group called Groundwork, where people are in their first six weeks, and it's kind of a come in at any time. This isn't making sense probably, but it doesn't require any follow-up from me really. When we move into step groups, I will have follow-up during the week, just checking in on people, making sure they don't need anything, they're doing okay, or if they have something come up that they need extra help with or extra prayer for. So there will be some extra time expended as we go along, but can people do it remote or only local? No, okay. We we don't do it remote. There are some churches who are. Okay. So we can put a link to the re uh regeneration main website in the show notes, and people can put in their zip code and see if there's one new.

Speaker 1 48:45

Let's do that. Okay, let's get back uh to writing. Um I want to talk about I don't know if I know enough about your current book if the if I'm going the right direction here, but I'm gonna say the books that you have out so far, a lot of them are written. You have called it, what do you call it? Granny lit? Granny lit. Okay, so it's it's for like, it's the protagonists are older. Tell us about it. What are their ages? Old ladies. Okay, a bunch of old ladies. And I want to know, like, what draws you to that? Is it, are you imagining yourself there one day and you're kind of writing for yourself? Is it that's the audience you were writing to? Or what is it that inspires you about that?

Speaker 49:28

I I love old church ladies, and I always have. As a little girl, the most colorful characters in my mind are a few old church ladies that I knew. I can think of some of the. I mean, my aunt Annis would come on the bus to our little bitty town of Atlanta from Kansas City occasionally to visit to visit for the weekend and go to church with us. And she had blue curly hair, you know, the gray, blue, curly hair, so much rouge. She was like her cheeks were so pink and her lipstick was always nice. And she wore a fur cape. And she smelled delicious and had on a suit and heels. And uh, she was just, and then um, and on and on. I there were several little ladies that I just I just thought they were the most colorful characters I knew in the world. And I loved them, and I uh they contributed a lot to my life, I felt, all these sweet little old ladies. Some of the more salty, you know. So, and then my mom and her friends, I admired them as they grew older, and my mother-in-law, I admired her as she grew older. So that's kind of where I think it started. But the truth is the original, the very first book though, started with the little old man, the little hermit named Elmer. And I literally saw him in my mind. Oh my god. And living in this garage apartment with um, you know, no can opener. And so that's the place where that book first started. Okay. And um, so then yeah, I just, and I thought it was just one book. I didn't set out to write it as a series, and it's not a good idea to create a series after you've said it's not going to be a series because it's a lot harder. You if you're building a series, you want to build things in that you can follow up on.

Speaker 3 51:11

Right.

Speaker 51:12

I had to go back and figure out, oh, well, that happened in the first book, so now this will have to go this way. And it was a little harder, but so it ended up being a six-book series, a five-book series.

Speaker 1 51:24

Okay, I have a question about the writing craft. Um, that was so that's so interesting that you didn't really think of it at a series at first, and there were some problems there. So when um when the friends reunion happened um on HBO, and they asked some the pe the interviewers said, What would you guys do do it again, reopen the show? Do a what are they calling them now? Reboots or whatever. And Lisa Coudreau said, uh, Phoebe, no, because I've heard the writers talk about it. They tied everything up with a bow. And if to start again, they'd have to break it all. And and it's that's just true of TV in general. That's one reason I tend to be more of a movie person because I love a contained story instead of them constantly having to break the piece that has been achieved by these characters. Did you have to do that? Did you have to break some things that had been tied up?

Speaker 52:20

I didn't, and uh, it was actually fascinating to me. This is gonna sound weird, but I'm not really a plotter or a pantser, I don't think. I do a little bit of both. And so in this story, characters continued to kind of show up in my early morning thoughts, doing things and saying things, and they kept, they just kept the story going. And uh I I didn't know. I thought I did tie the story up at the end, but I didn't at all.

Speaker 1 52:50

Okay.

Speaker 52:51

And there was a lot more life in some of those people, a lot more experiences ahead, specifically Madge. Might as well just say it. Madge is kind of my favorite. She's a she's sort of a cranky old character, and I really love her. And she had a long story yet ahead of her, and I did not know that. And so it was kind of just fun to let that unravel.

Speaker 1 53:12

Would it be an okay characterization for people who need a visual to compare her to Weezer in Steel Magnolia's? Yes, it would.

Speaker 53:19

She's a little bit sweeter than Weezer. She is sweeter. She doesn't, but she doesn't want anybody to know that. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 1 53:27

It's just a gesture drum. We're not, or Clarice, we're not feeding drum till the end of time. I literally just had that phrase in my um uh. Wow, I had a question on the tip of my tongue about breaking and the the oh, tell people what you mean by plotter versus pant star. I was gonna try to explain it, but I think you can do it better. It's it's been too long for me since I tried to decide which one I was.

Speaker 53:54

A pantser means I sit down at the computer and I just fly by the seat of my pants. Okay. I was thinking that was the phrase, but I get C's wrong and like Yeah. A plotter plots out the entire plot line of the story. They know what's gonna happen when, which series of events is events is coming, and they can't write until they have that pretty well figured out. I do a little of both. Like I use a storyboard sometimes, and so I'll have things I know still have to happen in this story. I'll have those somewhere down on my storyboard so I won't forget to write them. But mostly I just sit down and start writing and the story starts coming out. Whoa. Like the character that I'm writing now, I never in my entire I have a whole file of my novels I might write someday. Scenes or characters or thought lines. This one is not in that file. I never heard of her. I never thought of her ever until last fall. And she rose to the top.

Speaker 1 54:51

You had these other ideas, but she okay. Um what that's one thing I wanted to talk to you about is Nathan Brandsford. I'm sure you heard that episode. I did. He talked about when he was a kid, he knew writing looked hard. He thought the hard part was getting ideas. And then he said, When you're adult, you know, that's the easy part. Ideas are never doesn't. And I just kept my mouth shut because not for me. I had like three ideas, and I've tried two of them. The third one, I've I guess I've started the third idea. Um, but I gave up, I sort of gave up on it a little bit. And that and it's just, it's just no ideas. There's nothing really there. There's no, well, not nothing. Every now and then I yeah, I get little glimmers, but not like you. You literally, I know, have so many ideas that you could pull down and start working on. What do you think that is? I feel like my I feel like my imagination got stifled at some point. I don't know.

Speaker 55:49

No, you have a beautiful imagination. Uh, part of it is that you lean so much harder toward the nonfiction world. Oh about what you read, you read nonfiction entirely. Or almost entirely. Almost entirely. Outside of Anne.

Speaker 1 56:04

Um I just got stuck on Anne. It's Anne and nonfiction for me.

Speaker 56:08

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you you love story because you love move movies. So obviously you like stories. I do love stories. It would be interesting to me to see if you um stopped thinking about trying to write a novel and you tried to write screenplays. I wonder what would happen. I have a feeling you might discover you had all kinds of ideas for that.

Speaker 3 56:28

Maybe that's a good idea.

Speaker 56:30

But I don't know. You know, you have z lots and lots of ideas about how to make systems work better, how to make the world work better. That's you're full of ideas. Mine just happened to be made up stories, and I don't know why. Yeah. But I have I mean, I can sit here and watch the cars go by at five o'clock at night, and I'm making up stories about where people are going when they get home. That's just who I am.

Speaker 1 56:53

Yeah. Yeah, that's fascinating to me. So uh, did you ever not have your mind full of story ideas?

Speaker 57:06

Oh no, I don't think so. Yeah. I can't remember. But we told stories. There wasn't much on TV when we were growing up. And uh, I mean, you know, once a year, The Wizard of Oz, once a year. And that was the only movie we ever saw on TV. And so we told stories at bedtime to each other. We would lay in our beds and fall asleep by telling each other stories. So that probably fed into it.

Speaker 1 57:31

So when you grew up, you would tell stories when I was a little girl. Did you have an opening line when you were a little girl? When you were a little girl, what did you how did you start stories?

Speaker 57:38

I think I always started with Once Upon a Time. Once Upon a Time, there was. Okay. Okay. Cool. Cool. And I don't remember those stories. I don't think they're probably any good because I don't remember any of them.

Speaker 1 57:48

Let's let's go there. Your new book. How do you want to start? How the idea bubbled up or uh yeah.

Speaker 2 57:56

Well that's not a very dramatic story because literally I was working on another novel.

Speaker 58:06

Probably in the uh original Glory Circle series. There was probably there's another story I think I could tell. And I was several chapters in, 30,000 words maybe, but not really enjoying the story, not really loving the character. And I um my friend Anna, who's my co-producer of books, was coming out to visit, and she said, uh, we want to talk about what book you're gonna put out next because you're kind of behind on books. And I said, Okay, well I'm working on this one, I'll see. And I think it was right after that conversation, I heard this title, A Girl Called Something. And I said, Well, I wonder what that would be. And I just started thinking about it, and then I started just writing it down. And so by the time Anna was here a few weeks later, I had a brief synopsis for her to look at. And I said, Which of these two books do you think we should pursue next? And she picked, basically. I mean, she said, This is the one that intrigues me.

Speaker 1 59:05

A girl called something, what's the pitch? What's the elevator pitch? Okay.

Speaker 59:11

When she was born, her father said, What are we gonna call this one? And her mother said, I don't know. We'll call her something. And so they did. And 18 years later, she's orphaned, alone. There's a world war and a global pandemic, and all she has is her father's tavern and a no and a nonsensical name. So the future looks very bleak unless one customer and one cup of coffee can change her story. Wow. I love it. Do ya? A lot of things, I said it in 1918 because I was going to have her, she's like my grandmother, my granny grubbs. It's gonna be her life cycle. And I knew nothing really about that era, other than I I mean, I remember a lot of stories from her she told from that era. We have pictures and various items and so forth. But when I started digging into the history, it was astounding what went on in that two or three year period. Just uh the world was uh busy. Yeah. Well, I mean, World War I was ending or had just ended. Started. It was uh in 1918, we had just we just went in between 17 years, around seven years.

Speaker 1 1:00:25

See, my my World War I history is very tied to Rilla. They they went in in 1915.

Speaker 1:00:32

Yes, exactly. Exactly. They carried it. And then I this is set um in northeast Missouri, actually, in the area where you near where you live. And so researching that specific history was fascinating. And the role, the role Missouri played, the role Missouri mules played in World War I, fascinating. Do you enjoy the research part? I do, I really do. But here's the thing, I'm not trying to write. I used to say I was writing historical fiction. I kind of hate to use that because I'm not really, I'm just writing a story, and I need to have some historical background in order to write the story. There's no way I'm trying to write history, uh, but I am pulling historical details. So that yes, that's been very fun. Osteopathy plays a role in the book. And of course, I'm married to a handsome osteopath, and so they played a major role in the pandemic, and I had fun researching that. So yeah, I'm enjoying it. I can't wait.

Speaker 1 1:01:33

What will what will I be able to link to? It's not out yet.

Speaker 1:01:36

No. My website we'll just link to your website and people will and my Facebook page. Yeah. I'll I'll uh I will do a cover reveal, I hope, very soon. Okay, cool. It will be out in, it will be out this summer. We don't have the exact date. Because I, you know, when you're independently publishing, it's hard to uh set the date until you know for sure things are gonna work. Yeah. I mean, you know, is this cover I want to see the I want to see the book. I need to make sure the cover's right. Those are things your publisher would do for you. And so your publisher would say, we're gonna release on August 1st because they knew they would have to meet these deadlines. So when it's you working together with your own team, you have to sometimes be it, you can set hard deadlines, but I don't because they put too much pressure on me.

Speaker 1 1:02:23

I just fell into a um reels rabbit hole today and saw this uh girl painting her bathroom green striped. And it's just, you know, she talks about, I want green stripes, and they told me to do this. And so she's putting the painter's tape on, and then she painted the actual color that the wall writes anyway, whole thing. Paints it gray, then paints it green, then pulls the tape off, has a green-striped bathroom. You should you could do a reel like that because you've got the the storyboard thing with your post-it notes, and then you get the because you're in every bit of the process, not like um handing it off to a publishing company and not having any any no.

Speaker 1:03:04

I've done both. I should you should probably throw that in. My original books were published by a traditional publisher, a very small company, but God bless them, they got me launched. I really do appreciate them. Uh, but it came to a point where I realized, which is true even in a bigger house, that the author is doing a lot of the work. And I felt like I was in a position where I had people who could be a team for me and I could control the whole process. And I wanted to do that. And so um I was very, I was really uh fortunate that they returned all my rights to me. And so I was able to go back in and independently publish the books they had published originally. And then since then, yes, I had my own team. Yeah, and that team changes. Anna is always the team, she's my uh stable publishing partner and uh always always works with me and does covers and but we've hired artists in the past to do have we've hired a couple of different artists. I think I've hired three or four different freelance editors because I wanted different experiences and I love editors and uh so yeah, it's uh it's a business.

Speaker 1 1:04:13

It's a business and a team and a network, you have a network of your own of your own little publishing company. Yeah. Um how do you you kind of said this. How do you define success for your life, I guess.

Speaker 2 1:04:32

Your work life.

Speaker 1:04:33

For my work life, right? That I made a difference for somebody. Um I I I heard, I won't quote him, but I I heard someone say who has a lot of followers. I will he said, I would never say, I'm gonna write this book, and if it only changes one person's life, it was worth it. He said, to me, that's not worth it. A book's too much work. If I can only influence one person, I'll just write a blog post, which is fine, except I I write blog posts too, and I'm not hearing feedback saying that changed my life very often. I mean, sometimes you do get that kind of thing. But for instance, in the first book I wrote, uh I know multiple stories of people, like there's one family who read about Elmer Grigsby and had a heart for him, and then saw a little old man on the street in their town, who was obviously in the same set situation. They offered to buy him a hamburger, and before you know it, they'd become his friend and they remained friends with him until he died. My gosh. And uh, so that book was successful. And that's just one story from that book. I have so many from that particular book. And uh The Secret of Serendipity, which I originally wrote as a children's uh a young adult book, probably, or maybe children's really, but all my adult readers just have enjoyed reading it in this series. And I never expected anything dramatic from it. And I named um one of the characters in the book as After a librarian that I knew. And it happened that the year it came out, she retired. She was extremely concerned about retirement, thinking she wouldn't be able to find her next purpose, moment of purpose. And something in that book caught hold of her, and she wrote me a letter and said, I it completely changed me. I see purpose ahead. I think I know what I'm supposed to do. And she is now like a counselor and making a big difference in people's lives. And that's from this little nothing book, you know, it's just a sweet little story I wanted to tell because of you and and Beth and your friendships in life. So yeah, that's to me, I'm successful if my books have made a difference in life. And so far they have.

Speaker 1 1:06:43

What makes you successful as a grandmother? Oh. Says the woman who has a new grandchild due the day we are recording this episode.

Speaker 1:06:56

Yes, yes, yes. So excited. Oh, well, great grandparenting is so different because it's as grandma Jane and I were just talking about this, that we're we're a layer removed from these babies. But it doesn't feel bad. It just is different. It just feels different. So success for me as a grandmother is um seeing everybody healthy and uh pursuing things that make them feel fulfilled and give back to the world. For me personally, because of my faith view, I want to see everybody active in the kingdom of God. And I don't feel some urgency, like I've got to like preach at everybody. I just pray for everybody and love them and celebrate them and know that Jesus will do the work. And um, I mean, it just knocks my socks off. The amazing things all of our grandchildren are doing. And it just, I mean, I'm as thrilled with little when the little ones get potty trained as I was when your John graduated from his grandpa's alma mater and he hooded him at medical school. I mean, wow. There's so, and all the way down. You could, I could list all 17 of them and the two grades and everything they're doing in this life. I'm just so proud of them. Even things I don't understand. I'm proud of them. Even if what they do is not something that would be my style or uh following my faith tradition, even, I'm just so proud of them that they're good human beings and they're trying to make a difference in the world.

Speaker 1 1:08:23

So I'm really hearing for you, your actions as a grandmother. You know you're doing what you want to do as a grandmother if you're praying for them and celebrating them.

Speaker 1:08:35

Yeah. Yeah. That's right. It's very good. And witnessing. Even if I don't witness in in person, I mean, I'm always online looking at what they're doing because I love to witness their lives.

Speaker 1 1:08:48

Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm looking forward to. Even with my own kids, I'm ready to move into that. I'm I'm happy to be in that phase now where I'm just witnessing them build their lives. It's delightful. It's yes. It's the fruit, baby. Yeah. Um, when, okay, let's see. When um I there's there's a few more places I want to go, and I don't know which one to go to. But um here's what I want to talk see, I want to talk about. Um I'm I'm into this idea of cohesion when you're these moments in your life when who you who you are, what you believe in what you're doing are really aligned. I feel like you have a lot of those. Um what I kind of want have you ever done the strengths finder that Joe was talking about in his episode?

Speaker 1:09:37

I have, and I meant to look those up before we came on here today, but I don't know what they are. Yeah, I remember at the time, I remember at the time thinking, oh yeah, sure. That should be.

Speaker 1 1:09:45

As he would say, if if we don't, you know, if we can't really speak the language, that's fine. But I do think you know certain things about your strengths. And what I want to do is kind of match up the things you're doing and what it is that lights you up about that thing. So what is it about writing? Like what strength or gift or makes you go, makes you feel alignment when you're writing?

Speaker 1:10:09

I would I was gonna say communicator, but it's also probably connection. Yeah. Because I I love to connect, I love to connect people to each other and to purpose and destiny and hope. What about with Regen? That one feels uh actually it feels the same. It feels like I'm doing the same thing. I'm connecting people. Um Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:10:35

What okay, so you love to say, because I love this about you. You were born do you say I was born with a microphone in my hand? Is that how you say my microphone's my favorite accessory? Yes, a microphone is my favorite accessory. So what's that?

Speaker 1:10:49

Oh gosh, what is that? Uh showmanship. I mean, you know, it is. That's I I love, I think Felicity talked about how let's put on a show. She has to do that and every time she goes into the classroom. And it's that. I don't know for sure what strength that is. But I I love that. Like, don't don't put me at a table where the MC says to the group, take these five points and turn a story, turn them into a story. Recently happened to uh to me. Don't put me at that table unless you want me to be the leader because I'm gonna lead it until somebody takes over instead of me. And it's just I I want to see things flow, I want to see people everybody I want everybody to connect, everybody to have their say, I want everybody to find their place. Yeah.

Speaker 2 1:11:42

What do you believe about a calling? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1:11:49

Well, I think it's real, but I think it can be expressed in a lot of different ways. I think uh Joe, our son Joe, said it so well. He has obvious calling on his life, and he's expressing it as a police officer. He could probably have expressed it in a Fortune 500 company or in a church. He could have expressed that calling lots of places. Now, my calling, for instance, I feel like my calling as a mother is a real calling. I feel like I was born with that. God put that in me, and I can't walk away from that. But there, I've expressed it in lots and lots of ways. Um, I mean, honestly, in my Facebook videos, I'm just really expressing motherhood. Yeah, too. Yeah. And at regen, I mean, I just I mother people. I try not to, you know, over mother people, but that's what I do.

Speaker 1 1:12:37

Interesting. Motherhood is kind of your ult. Does it get into your writing? Oh, I know it does actually. I read your books and your mama voice is what I'm hearing, hearing. Totally.

Speaker 1:12:52

I mother the clerk at the checkout. Oh, you know, it's just who I am. I want to know how's your day? What can I do to make your day better? You're doing a good job. I'm glad you're here. Thanks for being at work today so I could buy my cereal. You know, I just I always want people to feel connected and loved and supported and cared for.

Speaker 1 1:13:13

Oh, okay. This is one of my new journal prompts. I keep getting journal prompts from this this podcast, but that's what I've been trying to figure out lately. I have been so I have been so um obsessed with writing. I'm a writer, I'm a writer. But yet I've practically given it up, sort of almost right now. I'm in a I'm in a I'm in a it's a little bit dormant right now because I I got tired of fighting so hard. Um, anyway, and I don't know what the next idea is. Where am I going with this? So, but then I had that episode the episode with Melissa Cassera where she talked about being a storyteller. And she does it a lot of different ways. One of them is writing, one of them is helping CEOs tell their story through marketing, whatever. And so this is kind of a new thing for me is wondering what am I really? Because a writer is just a tool. Writing is just a tool. It's just a it's a medium.

Speaker 1:14:06

Right. Right. Yeah. So that would that's a defining question for you that you should definitely sort that one out and figure it out. Because when I when I figure out that everything I do is about mothering, really, um, then that helps me look at things with the right perspective. And and I know what the weaknesses are of that, where sometimes mothering, I want to make things too easy for people and do it for them. And um, so that's regen's been especially good for me there because you literally cannot do anything for anybody. It's completely dependent on the Holy Spirit. And so it's helped me know how to love and mother without overdoing that.

Speaker 1 1:14:50

That is amazing. I wonder what Clifton's strengths would tie best to mothering. We gotta ask Joe that. You're too. Yeah, that would be interesting to because that's really that's really interesting. That even once you know what you are and what lens you're pretty much doing everything through, it has weaknesses. It does.

Speaker 1:15:08

It does. Oh my god I I've told I've told you guys uh that one of the weaknesses as a mother is that you want to control everything. And you want it, you want the vacation to go just right. You want everybody to get the right Christmas present, all those really, really damaging things. Damaging for other people and damaging for you, for your own heart. So I feel like I'm coming out of those. I feel like I'm and I uh you were kind you and Michael were kind to say you didn't know that I was controlling. No, I didn't. Well, that's just because it was internal. I didn't do do it out loud very much. But um the story I tell everybody at Regen is we were, I was one of the, I think it was when your daughter-in-law Parker was gonna have a baby shower. I think that's what it was. And we got the invitation months and months away. And I caught myself sitting at the computer looking up Airbnbs in the town we were going to travel, I was going to travel to so that I could get a room for your sister Felicity and her daughters. And suddenly I just thought the Holy Spirit just kind of slammed me. And he said, what I heard in my head was Felicity is a grown-up woman with grown-up children. She leads entire departments and has at classrooms, she's in charge of. If she wants a bed in Kirksville, Missouri that weekend, I think she can find one. And I realized, yeah, this is one of those places where I've let my mother in get out of control. So I stepped back.

Speaker 1 1:16:33

You don't even understand what an aha moment I'm having right now. Because when I think calling, like Joe being a police officer, Joe being a leader, um, Michael being called to the people he works with, what I think only oh, the hallelujah chorus, the golden thing, the superhero, the perfection. I don't think, no, it's just who you are. Yeah. And it will have that it could have the shadows that you can watch for. Absolutely.

Speaker 1:17:08

Absolutely. What a beautiful um little what a beautiful little moment that has it's true for everybody in the world except Jesus, you know. If you read the Bible, all those people, their greatest strengths, and then those tended towards weaknesses that had to be overcome. It's the human story.

Speaker 2 1:17:29

Amazing. Okay. Yeah. I don't know why I have this question here, but I'm gonna ask it.

Speaker 1 1:17:36

All right.

Speaker 1:17:37

Have you ever quit anything? Boy, I'm not a good quitter. I'm not I thought so. And I hold I hold on way too long to things. Okay. Um, and I'm not sure what that is in me, whether that's some kind of an enabler thing. I know that's been a probably been an issue in my life that I've tried to enable people, or I'm not even sure what it is. And and but in my inability to quit is always this relational thing. Like if I quit this, what does that do to these people? Yeah. And so it's hard for me to quit things. Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:18:17

So on the other side of that says the person who's, you know, in a bit of midlife where you start asking questions about things like this. Do you ever question if the thing you're doing or in or is your own idea? Oh yeah. Okay. Oh yeah.

Speaker 1:18:37

Yeah. And and uh, should I have quit? Could I have quit sooner? Um and I was really bad about I wanted an outside influence to impact my quitting something. I couldn't leave, but um if something, if this would happen, then I could go. So that's not a good healthy way to do anything. Yeah. And when your dad first started going through recovery 20 years ago, I did I did quit some things that I quit some attitudes, I quit some behaviors, and um this enabler thing in me, I like would never express an opinion. I know that's hard to believe, folks, but I would never express an opinion if it was contrary to the person I was talking with, especially if it was your dad. I would never, I would never disagree with him. And I'm not even sure what that was. So he goes through recovery, and in that process, we do a lot of counseling together. And and one of the things we discovered, both of us, was that that was happening. And he didn't want me to be that way, and I didn't want to be that way. So I learned started practicing expressing the opinions that were obviously in my head. And on the way to charity's engagement party, your dad and I got in a fight in the front seat of the truck, and you and Felicity were in the second back seat, and we just finally just stopped. I said, Girls, can you help us? I mean, I don't know. We're just arguing here and we're not really mad at each other, but we're just arguing, and I don't know why. And can you figure out what is going on right now? And I don't know which one of you said it. Not me. I remember this. It was you? No. Oh, no, Felis. Very wise, very wise. And said, Mom, we are so, so excited that you've learned to express your opinions. But maybe you don't always have to express every one of them.

Speaker 1 1:20:22

Yeah, the only reason I'm saying it was Phyllis is because that's so smart. I don't, yeah, I don't think I would have worn up with that. It's really bad.

Speaker 1:20:31

The older you get, the longer you're married, the less you care about your opinions.

Speaker 1 1:20:35

You don't have to say all of them. Yeah, I I once read in a book, a good marriage is the things you don't say. And at the time I kind of I kind of poo-pooed it probably. Cause I'm like, no, you're supposed to have open and honest communication and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But yeah, the old I feel it. It's it, it is there's you don't have to say everything. You don't have to fight about everything.

Speaker 1:20:55

And I don't, yeah, things don't matter as much as you think they do.

Speaker 1 1:20:59

George Clooney says he never fights with them all.

Speaker 1:21:02

Well, he probably doesn't. He's gorgeous and he doesn't deserve.

Speaker 1 1:21:05

Well, he says it's because of that. He's like nothing, like, what could I possibly fight with her about? I'm nothing that I none of my opinions are better than hers or whatever. I don't know.

Speaker 1:21:14

No, and he's right, she's brilliant. And evidently, I mean, I don't know her, but it appears that she's her work would say that she is brilliant.

Speaker 1 1:21:20

So do you know that awesome clip where he was getting it was the at the Golden Globes? Oh my gosh, I love it. Tina Faye. They list off Amal's achievements in life and then say, So tonight her husband is getting a lifetime achievement award. So good. And he's laughing because you can talk about it. He's laughing too. He because he um so we talked about your strengths in how it shows up in writing, how it shows up in Regen. Is there anything missing right now, like a thing that you love or that makes you come alive and you don't have an outlet for it?

Speaker 2 1:21:53

Hmm. I don't think so. Cool.

Speaker 1:21:57

Do you think there is? I mean, I'm trying to think. But uh now I'll I'll give you this this quote from Judy, my friend Judy again, because we are living, you know, mirrored lives all our all of our life. And she said the other day, she and her husband were out on their farm riding around in their little four-wheeler thing, and she just looked around and said, Wow, I'm living all the best parts of a Hallmark movie. And uh I just love that so much because it's so true at this stage. I mean, there are things I'd change about life. Your dad doesn't feel well. He's very, he has lots of health issues. That's that crimps our lifestyle a little bit. It keeps us from doing some of the things we thought we would do in retirement, uh, like coming to see you more often. But at the same time, we're so happy to be here together in the same room and not working across counties from each other like we did at some seasons of our life, that we can put up with that kind of a little thing. And um, I would have said maybe, yes, there was a I um, I know this is getting along, so you can cut any of this you want, but I went through this thing where I couldn't hardly stand it that I did not know the pastor of our church. Oh, I think we go to a really big church. To me, it's a big church. I mean, I most of our churches were like very, very small. So I went to a really big church and I knew we have a campus pastor. I know them, I love them. I know several people on the leadership team and love them, but I knew that's a big church, and there's no reason for me to ever actually know our lead pastor. I mean, meet him, yes, probably, but I won't sit down and have supper with him. And I it was bothering me and I was having kind of a bad attitude. And so I talked to Jesus about it because I thought I was being prideful or pushing for a seat at the table. And I heard this very simple thing in my head was it's just what you're used to. Your first pastor was your grandpa, your last pastor was your brother-in-law. You're used to knowing people in that circle. And it's just different for you out here. And that just like set me free. I was like, oh, yeah, that's all it is. And um, but that sense of being a part of that kind of a team in a church specifically, I think, just a team in general. When you re when you pull back from active work life, I was really missing the team. I missed the team. Shout out to the girls from Calvary Medical Center. I really missed that team that I worked with at the clinic. We were, it was a great team. I missed being a part of that. And that was a thing that was not alive in me until we started regen. And now uh I just feel like wow, I'm back in a team that's doing something so significant. And there's we're all such a different bag of people. I mean, we're so different from one another, which I think makes a team great. And but we're central, central purpose, uh, central goals and learning it together. So yeah, I was missing that. And now did you know you were missing it? Or did you just okay? Yeah, I knew it. I specifically knew if I would think back about the clinic and the years that we worked in the clinic, uh, because that's my most recent paying job before we moved out here. And I knew I missed that. And it wasn't that I just missed that job. I missed those people specifically, but I missed that sense of team as well. And when you're when you move when you're 65 years old to a new city, first of all, it's a city and you've been grown up in the country, and a new church and everybody, it's just hard. Like I've heard it said, you can't make new old friends. And but then I realized, but you'll have time to make good new friends. Yeah. These these will grow. So yeah, I eventually realized it was missing and I didn't know what to do about it.

Speaker 1 1:25:39

I don't know if I believe that phrase, you can't make new old friends. I do, but I don't. No, you can't make a new Judy. There's no replac, there's no making a new there. But when I met Christy um in college, so I was in, we were in college. I mean, it's not like our brains were four, you know, fully developed. We weren't 25, but we'd had all the childhood years without each other, knowing each other existed. And she was a new friend. And then a dear friend from high school, Corey, passed away in an accident. It was my whole emotional world for a moment in time for sure. And she was outside of that. She didn't know him. She didn't really even know me from those years. I just told her about him one night. That was it. We just we were together. I told her the situation. I told her what he had meant in my life and what missing, you know, missing hit the goodbye with him because we were out of town. What it and I wrote in my journal that night I said, Christy's an old friend now. It's like it just you really can kind of you can. You're right. You have to get lucky sometimes and rein build a new thing. But a question about when you when you felt like, oh, it's just what it's just what you're used to. It's not, you're not this horrible person who wants to meet the famous person that you know. Right. Um, I have a lot of things like that in my life that I'm asking myself, why do I feel this way? Why do I feel that way? When did that answer come to you? Were you specifically sitting in a moment saying, I need to think about this and get an answer? Or did it pop out of the blue?

Speaker 1:27:15

I think it just popped out of the blue. I was probably thinking about it, but I don't remember feeling desperately needing to get an answer. No. Because I thought I had the answer, because I thought I had the answer. I thought the answer was neat. Oh yeah, it was a total intervention. Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was.

Speaker 1 1:27:31

Okay.

Speaker 1:27:32

And so I was so grateful. I was so grateful.

Speaker 1 1:27:35

Yeah, I love that story. I just love I love that you were seeing it as your a a fault. And it was really, it wasn't, it was a beautiful thing. It reminded me. Okay. I love that. I love the story.

Speaker 1:27:47

And um and uh and then I was missing those relationships. Yeah. You missed my grandpa. I miss Martha and Chris. Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:27:54

Do you did you figure out a way to kind of replicate? Like, what are you gonna do with that? Just For oh well, I don't get to know that one Yeah.

Speaker 1:28:03

Well, I was okay then because um I realized who I do get to know. Okay. I do I do have people that I get to know because I I was feeling it was this positional thing for me. And when God took care of that question, it's not their position that you want to be a part of. It's just the team thing. It's just you're just you're used to that being your team, it's not your team right now. And of course the hilarious thing is I probably am getting to know them a little bit now. And so, you know, that's probably what will happen. Yeah. I'm charity's best friends with them.

Speaker 1 1:28:33

So charity's best friends with them. Um the I love I was gonna ask you if you could be only one of the things that you are, what would you be? You've answered that. It's the mother, I think. Yeah. Um wife, wife first. Wife first, okay. Um so mother, mother, mothering. Parenting is uh a gift, it's something you know a lot about. You've trained a lot of people about it. I want to tell you one thing that I notice about myself that I have a little pet peeve is when people say post a picture of their kid or their kid in as a senior when they used to be a kindergarten or whatever, and they say time is a thief. Ooh, it just makes me hurt. I'm like, no, it's not. Time is not a thief. It's all the seasons are precious, which is I totally get from you. And um nobody's stealing anything, you know that you don't yeah. And so I don't I don't like that phrase because of your lessons over the years that every season is precious and really the best one. So you have given a lot of parenting advice over the years. You and dad have taught parenting classes, and parenting goes through trends. There's all kinds now this is in, now that's in. Do you see trends today that you would argue or support that are maybe new to you, or is there any tried and true parenting advice that you would still give any parent today?

Speaker 1:29:58

The tried and true we would give, I think, is communication. It doesn't matter what the trend is, if you and your child can talk and talk about it. And because of we come from a worldview of faith in the Bible and Jesus, God, um also that you communicate, but neither your opinion nor your kids' opinion is the right one. The opinion of the Bible is the only one that's the truth. And you both have to figure out how to come to that, uh, because you're you both probably have a different idea of what the Bible says about that. And so uh trend wise, social media, I would I would say if I was giving advice, it would be to keep your kid off as long as you possibly can. Uh it's just devastating to kids. And I we never had to deal with it. You guys, that wasn't even an issue for you guys growing up. And I cannot imagine how I can't imagine how people are caring for children who carry the world in their pocket.

Speaker 1 1:30:59

Yeah.

Speaker 1:30:59

Uh the good, the bad, and the ugly. So keep them off as long as yeah, and then but then communicate. You can't you can't keep them off forever. I mean, you know, to play in the marching band, you have to have a smartphone and have the app. And so there are things they're they're gonna have to do. But to communicate, to be able to openly talk to each other about what is happening, who are you talking to online, what's that look like, let me see.

Speaker 1 1:31:29

Let me tell a story about this in my life with my mom in communication. So we um we how do I how do I present this? We went, we were in a church world that did not feel good about boy girl dances. Right. And so we did not do that and um at all ever. And then I had kids and junior high started creeping up on us, and there was a spring dance. It was um we we just decided to do it differently, and our boys were gonna go to the dance, and I had not told you. I was a little nervous about talking about us parenting differently. I mean, for goodness sakes, when you came to my house one time and I had a different butter than we had grown up with, I was afraid that you would be hurt, your feelings would be hurt when you saw that I did not have country crock in the fridge.

Speaker 1:32:18

I remember you called me to apologize.

Speaker 1 1:32:21

Oh my gosh. This speaks more of me than than my mother's parenting, everyone. I don't know. Um, but so you found out from the hairstylist in Kirksville that your grandsons were going to the dance with this girl and this girl. You didn't even know they were going to the dance, and you so you came over, like, hey, yeah, here, you know, here you're going to the dance with so-and-so, or great, have fun, whatever. And I was just like, Yeah, they're going to a dance. And you said, Sredity, um, you know how we always talked about you can tell us anything. And I still thought you were giving me parenting advice. You were telling me, make sure and tell the boys they can tell you anything that they're feeling that that happens at the dance, whatever. And I said, Right, yeah, yeah. And she's and you said, that's still true. You can tell me anything. Is that so beautiful?

Speaker 1:33:18

That is beautiful.

Speaker 1 1:33:19

I think it's beautiful. And I'm like, oh, yeah, okay. So the boys are going to a dance.

Speaker 1:33:26

Well, we're doing it's something kind of different, but well, remember that you had to that started long before when you had to tell us that your firstborn was not going to go to the church school that your dad and I helped establish, and he was going to go to the local public school. And it was kind of a pivotal time in our lives when that came down, that news came down. And so I was rattling it around in my head like, well, how do we deal with this? And I asked that question in just in my head, how do we how what should I do? How do I answer it? What do I say? How and I had this clear thought was go buy something orange and cheer for the tigers.

Speaker 1 1:34:00

And that settled it.

Speaker 1:34:02

That settled it. The beginning of your being a witness and celebrating and and your boys proved that to be absolutely right. Absolutely true. Look at what men, men of God they are, and men in the community they are.

Speaker 1 1:34:15

They're very good men. Yeah.

Speaker 1:34:17

Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:34:18

They're good, they're good boys. Well, oh man, this is so fun. So so where can we find you? I'm gonna put the links. It's gonna be Facebook, um, your website, etc. People watch for a girl called something. Girl called something coming.

Speaker 1:34:35

A new book coming out. One thing we're gonna do is a uh virtual book party. We'll do a Facebook cool Facebook Live book party. So you're gonna do Facebook Live.

Speaker 1 1:34:47

So you're always on the cutting edge doing the things I'm scared to do.

Speaker 1:34:51

I've already done that. I've already done I did uh because I launched two books during the pandemic. So we did Facebook Live for those.

Speaker 1 1:34:57

When I go to do a Substack post, the button to push live or to put to is right, and I'm scared to death I'm accidentally going to push that button. Suddenly I'm doing a Substack Live and I'll be like, I don't know. I'm just here to write and oh my gosh. You're brave. You're brave. I'm audacious, that's for sure. Um I did have a quote I wanted okay Well, no, especially because of what?

Speaker 1:35:22

Well, because this book that I'm just releasing this summer, I think it's a multiple book series. That feels audacious to an old lady to say. Yeah, yeah. We'll see.

Speaker 1 1:35:32

I I had someone say to me once, I heard you they had just met me and they weren't giving this impression. They said, I heard you used to be audacious. And I wanted to live up to that again. So I hope I hope I'm you are okay. This podcast. Um I wanted to share a quote that I got from you indirectly. Also, do you want that book back, Life at Hamilton? Because it's living in my life forever unless you want it back.

Speaker 1:35:57

You you you can keep it. If I want to read it again, I'll get you.

Speaker 1 1:36:00

Great. Mom shared with me a book called Life at Hamilton by Mike Anthony Mike Anthony. And um, this person worked as a bartender um in the theater where Hamilton took place, even though he had wanted to be, you know, a main actor in Broadway. And he said has this quote in that book you can't necessarily be whatever you want, but you can keep finding things you want to be. And that quote is very important to me. It's shaped me a long time. So thank you, mom. You're welcome. It's so true. For introducing me to that. And now, what are you gonna tell the people? It worked for me, something that regularly works for you, or it's an aha moment from your life that helps you find more meaning.

Speaker 1:36:42

People are the most important ingredient in every decision and every experience. If you're looking for a job, if you're thinking about moving to a new town, if you're thinking about being a part of a church, if you're thinking about starting a new project, think about the people and how will there be people for you in that project? Will there be people for you in that town? Are there people you can impact with this project? People are it. Every time your dad and I have tried to make a decision in life, it's always gone back to relationships. Even if the relationshipships are going to be brand new, those are the that's how we make our decision.

Speaker 2 1:37:18

Amazing, mom. Thank you.

Speaker 1:37:23

This was fun. The mama episode chicken.

Speaker 1 1:37:27

What? Yeah, I know. The chicken were sitting at Colton's drinking, they have the best at Coke. People think McDonald's is the best at Coke in the world. That Colton's diet coke is so crisp and delicious.

Speaker 1:37:39

I wish I had one right now. Yeah, me too. What? Thanks for having me. I know Prince William was not available today, so I'm glad you had.

Speaker 1 1:37:47

I know, I know. He's he's it's like when Joe had to postpone because the FBI was calling. My my people, my guests are very busy, but um I've been waiting for you for a while. The mama episode. I wanted to get the siblings in first so we could talk about you. About me and then we like to you.

Speaker 1:38:06

And it was great. This was so good. This weekend is very, it feels very poignant to me because you were born on the bicentennial year in August.

unknown 1:38:16

No.

Speaker 1:38:17

Yeah, I keep thinking about that.

Speaker 1 1:38:19

I know, yeah. I'm I read in uh in the 1440 newsletter this morning where you where I get my news so that I just get the headlines and I can talk about stuff at the water cooler if I must. And it said, um, this is the last day that the country can say it's only 249 years old. And I was like, shut you, because it's uh real similar to the last month I get to say such a thing. Yeah.

Speaker 1:38:46

It only gets bad, sweetheart. Thank every season. Every season. Okay. And aren't we glad you're turning this age? I mean, there was a time we thought you might not. It's so true.

Speaker 1 1:38:57

I'm very glad. You're right. Me too. Okay. Me too. Thank you. Thank you, Mama.

Speaker 1:39:02

I love you so much. You too. Bye. Bye.