RESILIENT PEOPLE

So much of resilience is in being prepared for life's unexpected challenges. How does this relate to money?

Doris Belland is a Financial Repair Expert who has witnessed firsthand the power of knowing all about your finances. She was in her 20s when her husband was diagnosed with cancer and then following his death at a young age, she found herself dealing with deep grief but also a large amount of debt.

Doris learned the hard way that she should have known more about their finances and now counsels women on this very topic. She wants people to know that it's never too late to learn and to become comfortable with managing your finances. To learn more about Doris Belland visit www.yourfinanciallaunchpad.com

Doris Belland has also offered listeners a free PDF version of her book, Protect Your Purse, and you can get it here.

To learn more about Janet Fanaki and RESILIENT PEOPLE visit www.resilientpeople.ca

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The challenges of being a stay-at-home parent are real. There are many rewards but it's a job that is 24/7 and at times very demanding. 

For Dale Allen Berg, being a stay-at-home dad to three active young children under the age of 6, is enough to make anyone run away in fear. On top of the regular chores he does at home: cooking, cleaning, driving for last-minute items, appointments, programs - his three children: Liam, and twins Ethan and Madison all have special needs that require a lot of medical and occupational assistance. In addition, Dale is also living with his own serious health issues. He has said that people call his life a rollercoaster, that he’s been flung from the most exciting highs to the scariest of lows. As a former concert producer and executive chef, these high-pressure jobs may have prepared him for his life now. But it’s still a lot to handle. Dale's resilience comes from sharing his daily experiences on a blog and prior to the pandemic he spoke to groups to share his life story and lessons learned.

 I spoke with Dale from his home in beautiful Kelowna, British Columbia. To learn more about Dale Allen Berg visit daleallenberg.com, or find him on socials @daleallenberg. To learn more about RESILIENT PEOPLE visit www.resilientpeople.ca or on socials @resilientpeopleca.

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Dr. Caitlin Kirby is an environmental science educator and researcher. She successfully completed her doctorate degree in October 2019. Normally 3 years long, there are many struggles in completing a PhD. Stress, funding, work life balance and in Dr. Kirby’s case - rejection.

“Rejection from what?” you may be wondering. For Caitlin she did something unique when challenging her doctoral dissertation that brought the issue of resilience and rejection to light and she hopes that it will help others. I contacted Caitlin after seeing a post she did on Twitter, that was actually originally done on an academic Twitter account, and it got her a whole lot of attention worldwide. Just so you know, her original post read: “Successfully defended my PhD dissertation today! In the spirit of acknowledging and normalizing failure in the process, I defended in a skirt made of rejection letters from the course of my PhD. THANK YOU to everyone involved in my journey.” To learn more about Caitlin’s idea in creating this special skirt, I chatted with her recently over Zoom.

 To learn more about Dr. Caitlin Kirby you can find her @kirbycai on Twitter. 

To learn more about RESILIENT PEOPLE visit www.resilientpeople.ca or on socials @resilientpeopleca Please subscribe to the RESILIENT PEOPLE podcast and leave a nice review. Thank you.

My friend Maggie highly recommended that I somehow find Mr. Elly Gotz for RESILIENT PEOPLE. Her daughter attended one of his infamous school presentations on his experiences while living during the Holocaust. My son also heard Elly speak at his school. Until the pandemic started in 2020, Elly Gotz was doing over 100 speaking engagements a year - and at the time he was 92 YO! 

Not only is he a public speaker, but also an author, engineer, business owner, pilot, a husband for more than 60 years and he recently added skydiver to his list of accomplishments - and there are many more! Elly’s presentations on living through the Holocaust and his message of giving up hate to find happiness leaves such an impact on all attendees - teachers and students as well as audiences everywhere young and old. I wanted to learn more about how he found resilience to move beyond the Holocaust, his message to others and where he gets this amazing energy to constantly challenge himself. 

To learn more about Elly Gotz visit www.ellygotz.com or on socials @ellygotz. 

To learn more about RESILIENT PEOPLE visit www.resilientpeople.ca or on socials @resilientpeopleca Subscribe to the RESILIENT PEOPLE podcast and please leave a kind review.

I’m doing something different for this episode. Instead of bringing you a conversation that I’ve had with someone, I’m going to talk about a topic that I’ve been thinking about for some time and anyone who is facing grief will be able to relate to it. 

We’re a few days away from the biggest and most romantic day of the year - if you’re in a couple. Valentine’s Day. If you’re not in a relationship, it’s most likely a “trigger” day for you where you either don’t care about it, want to skip it or are doing some sort of a pivot with it. 

This Valentine’s Day will mark one year minus a day that Adam passed away at only 51 years old. So as with all other special occasions during the past year, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, our anniversary and birthday (we shared the same day, same year) I’m doing a bit of a pivot.

 I’m here to share some suggestions that will hopefully make the day a little easier for us all. 

To learn more about RESILIENT PEOPLE visit www.resilientpeople.ca or on socials @resilientpeopleca Subscribe to the RESILIENT PEOPLE podcast and leave a kind review. Thank you.

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Jim Swan, an esteemed cardiologist from Toronto. He is one of the most highly-regarded physicians in Canada and a real trailblazer in the field of cardiology. 

In 2019, Jim lost his twin brother George to Glioblastoma (also known as GBM), the most aggressive form of brain cancer. They were 70 years old. As fate would have it, only one year later, Jim would be diagnosed with the same deadly disease. Just as Jim made the practice of medicine a mission in his life, he found a new purpose in searching for the root cause of GBM. With a $3M donation, he established a fund at the University of Toronto to research the genetics of GBM in order to prevent others from getting it. 

We met at his home in Toronto in the early summer of 2020 with his beloved golden retriever Hennessey by his side. We spoke about his love of hockey and the amazing relationships he has built from it, times with his brother and his resilience to look beyond his own terminal brain cancer to help others also living with a brain tumour.

 To learn more about RESILIENT PEOPLE visit www.resilientpeople.ca or on socials @resilientpeopleca Subscribe to the RESILIENT PEOPLE podcast and leave a kind review. Thank you. 

Elizabeth Verwey had a major shift in her life when she was 56. Her husband whom she had known since she was 17 and married when she was 19 had decided that he wanted out of their seemingly happy marriage. She found herself as a single mom and faced her fear of being alone. I met Elizabeth, pre-pandemic, in her apartment in Toronto where she shared her story with me.

Even as a successful and award-winning business mentor to many clients, Elizabeth found herself having a fear of being alone in her mid 50s. She made a list of all of the things that she feared and decided to tackle them one by one. What she discovered was that it was exciting to do things on her own and she learned a lot about herself. She also started a speaker series called Spoken Lives where like minded women gather together to listen to an empowering speaker share their story of adventure, success and what they learned along the way. Now these events have been taken online and they are just as motivating. 

To learn more about Elizabeth Verwey visit www.spokenlives.com or @spokenlives on social media. 

To learn about RESILIENT PEOPLE visit www.resilientpeople.ca or on socials @resilientpeopleca 
 

Sixty-year old Lee Silverstein has lived with three different cancers in his lifetime including kidney, colon and liver. He created the We Have Cancer podcast to provide information, inspiration and hope.

As Lee sees it, cancer affects everyone. I spoke with him and his wife Linda from their home in Florida. In between the laughs, we talked about his resilience, the valuable life lessons he's learned from his dad and why he started a podcast about cancer and the takeaways from his guests.

To learn more about Lee visit wehavecancershow.com or follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. 

Contact RESILIENT PEOPLE on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook or by email at [email protected]. If you or someone you know is resilient, I want to hear from you.

In this episode, I speak with educational consultant, Jane Kristoffy, in Toronto. Jane is a teacher, guidance counsellor and operates a consulting business to help students, parents and educators everywhere. 

Her goal is to help elementary, high school, university and college students to reach their personal and education goals. She can help you if you’re struggling in certain subjects and need extra support, preparing your applications for post-secondary institutions, or getting your resume ready for a job hunt. But Jane says there’s more to think about when getting our kids ready for the real world and it doesn’t just involve getting high marks. 

Jane and I spoke about building resilience in children, and how this generation of parents may be getting things wrong. She offers some great tips to gently loosen our grip and how our kids will benefit in the long run. 

To learn more about Jane Kristoffy visit www.righttrackeducation.ca or on socials @jane_right_track. 

To learn more about RESILIENT PEOPLE visit www.resilientpeople.ca or @resilientpeopleca Subscribe to the RESILIENT PEOPLE podcast and please leave a kind review. 

Matthew Pullan is 18 years old and lives in Bury, near Manchester, in the UK. He’s preparing for university, continuing to study, spends time with friends where possible during the pandemic, and blogs about running and exercise. 

The blog was called Matthew's Running Journey until a recent name change to reflect a big change in his life. A terminal brain cancer diagnosis. Matthew and I spoke about his illness, where his resilience comes from, how his blog inspires others to push themselves forward and his future plans.

To learn more about Matthew visit www.matthewsrunningjourneyblog.wordpress.com or on socials @runningthroughcancer. 

To learn more about RESILIENT PEOPLE visit www.resilientpeople.ca or on socials @resilientpeopleca Please subscribe to the RESILIENT PEOPLE podcast and leave a kind review.