The Uplifters

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THIS WEEK ON THE UPLIFTERS

To fill some empty train travel time one cold morning in January, Gina Hamadey wrote out a few Thank You notes that had been lingering on her to-do list. When she was finished, she felt something different than the usual satisfaction of crossing a task off of her list. She felt a sense of lightness that carried into her day.

So, she did it again the next day and the next. By January 31st, she’d written 31 notes and felt energized. She became curious about what would happen if she kept writing one note each day for a year. It sounded crazy, but as she started to think about the groups of people she’d reach out to: her neighbors, family, and friends; the store clerks who made her daily life warmer; the restauranteurs, servers, and chefs who made meals memorable; and people who had mentored and guided her in her life and career, she got so excited that she turned it into a plan to write 365 Thank You notes to people who were important to her. 

She started simply, but as she went along, she began to face and overcome big emotional obstacles by reaching out to people she’d lost touch with and people with whom the endings hadn’t been simple. In doing so, she healed fractured relationships, rekindled lost connections, deepened her sense of belonging, and even though the year didn’t mark any major life milestones, she looks back on it as one of the best years of her life. 

I thought Gina’s story would be a reflection on gratitude, but it turned out to be a how-to manual for something much more significant: connection. In my research, I’ve asked many thousands of people what it means to live a good life. Their answers boil down to three things: to be well physically and mentally, to leave a positive impact on the world, and to connect with other people. Gina’s story teaches us how small and simple acts can deepen our sense of connection, which can feel difficult to cultivate, especially in adulthood.

Aransas Savas (28:02.962) Your book is a challenge to all of us to look at where we feel a little craving for deeper connection, from our weakest to our strongest ties, and to reach out bravely and take action to strengthen those ties,

Gina Hamadey (28:36.58) We have more ties than we realize. If the prompt was to write 30 mentors or 30 neighbors, you might be surprised to find that you have those people there. It's just that some of those connections need fostering.

Aransas Savas (29:02.962) Yeah, just like anything that matters. My plants die if they don't get sunlight and water. My relationships wither without attention. 

Want to embark on your own gratitude journey? Gina offers some powerful prompts in our conversation, and offers this as a starting point: If you want to just write one gratitude letter, think of somebody who has meant a great deal in your life, but who isn’t aware of that impact, perhaps a teacher, role model, or mentor, and write to them letting them know of their impact on you.

LIFE LESSONS

While I truly love Gina’s focus on connection and gratitude, her book is most universal for the lessons it teaches on how to work through mental hurdles to accomplish our biggest, scariest goals. Here are a few that you'll hear in Gina’s story, that maybe you’ll want to add to your story too:

* Build a plan made up of actions that energize and excite you.

* Timebox it in small chunks.

* You are in charge, so if something feels boring or uninteresting, look for ways to make it more compelling.

* Build your muscles by starting with the most do-able and clear tasks first, and use those newly honed strengths to make the next section of your long-range goal easier

* When it feels like you can’t go on, change your rules to make it easier

* Use accountability as a forcing function by telling other people about your audacious goals

* Release any expectations of any response or reply from others. You’re doing this for you, so focus on what you are doing, and do it well.

Follow Gina ON INSTAGRAM, SUBSTACK, and on her WEBSITE.

Paid subscribers: stay tuned for the full video episode coming your way on Monday.

Let’s keep rising higher together 💓,

Aransas

More on Gina

Gina Hamadey is the author of the book I Want to Thank You (TarcherPerigee, spring 2021), about her year writing 365 thank you notes to friends, neighbors, family members, mentors, and more (much more!) She was the travel editor at Food & Wine and Rachael Ray Every Day and started her career at the groundbreaking titles O, the Oprah Magazine and George. She founded the content and social strategy firm Penknife Media. She has written for The New York Times, Real Simple, and Elle, and wrote the cookbook ¡Buenos Nachos!

Messy Transcript

Aransas Savas (00:02.838)

Welcome to the Uplifters podcast. I'm your host, Aransas Savas, and you just heard the wonderful Rachel Lipson, who you met in episode four, nominating a woman who inspires her, Gina Homidy. And Gina's book, I Want to Thank You, is about her year writing 365 thank you notes over the course of a single year.

Aransas Savas (00:27.51)

And I will say that when I started reading this book, I thought, oh, wow, cool, a book about gratitude. I love gratitude. Gratitude is awesome. I know all the research on gratitude. I know why it matters. I know how transformative it can be for our presence. But what I was deeply surprised and thrilled by is that it wasn't just a reflection on gratitude. It was...

Aransas Savas (00:53.69)

actually a how-to manual for something that is so much more significant. Human connection. And in my research I have asked so many thousands of women what it means to have a good life and their answers have boiled down to three things. To be well physically, mentally, to leave a positive impact on the world and to connect.

Aransas Savas (01:22.994)

deeply with other human beings. And this book is a beautiful demonstration of how we can use just small and simple acts to deepen our sense of connection and presence at the same time. It's truly essential to our well-being.

Aransas Savas (01:48.778)

And even though it can feel really difficult to influence or change that sense of connection, Gina's book teaches us how. So Gina, thank you for embarking on this journey and then sharing it with all of us so honestly and so specifically. And that's really one of the things that I was most moved by as someone who studies human behavior and habit. I think the topic itself is really exciting. I think your journey is really exciting. But it was that process that you built and that you shared with us in such specific detail that made me so excited to share this with the Uplifters. But before we get into all that process, Steph, let's talk, my absolute joy. Let's talk about your journey.

Gina Hamadey (02:46.866)

I came up in magazines. I was a magazine editor, journalist, and over the last number of years, I've pivoted into content marketing, mostly lots of different projects. And one January, January 2018, I had a new gig out in New Jersey. I live in Brooklyn. It was for a sheet company, Bowl and Branch. And I was spending that hour-long commute.

Gina Hamadey (03:16.278)

doing all kinds of stuff the first few weeks, what you would imagine on my feeds, in my to-do list. And then one day I had thank you notes to write. I had organized that December a big fundraiser for City Harvest, and I had promised a bunch of thank you notes. And so it was just the next thing on my to-do list. I pulled them out. I started writing them. Everything was like a checklist. I had two little kids at that point.

Gina Hamadey (03:43.902)

You know, just everything was like, okay, next thing on the list, go, go, go. And now it's thank you notes. Okay, let's do it, let's get it over with. And after that hour spent writing those thank you notes, which was, you know, basically just thank you to these random people in my life, some of which I haven't seen for years. You know, thank you for donating to this, this cause that means a lot to me, how nice. You didn't have to do that, so nice, thank you so much. After an hour spent writing that, it just felt...

Gina Hamadey (04:13.79)

really, really good. Like I felt like I exited that like ticking off a to-do list, go, go, go. It felt like it delivered me to a different plane, you know? I just felt my shoulders relaxed, my breathing slow, and my whole day sort of started on a different, I don't know, like a different tone. And that nice light mood kinda carried into my day. And I don't know that I...

Gina Hamadey (04:40.978)

very much noticed that the first time. I had a general background sense of that, but I had 31 notes to write. So after the third, the fourth, the fifth day, I was like, this is weird. I'm like a happier person when I start the day with thank you  .. And I was reflecting on this when I finished the last thank you note, and it was January 31st, and I was thinking,

Gina Hamadey (05:10.754)

This was so positive, this was such a surprise. I've never been like a huge, now I meet them because I'm like a thank you note lady, officially, like with a book. And now I meet the thank you note people but I wasn't really one of them. It wasn't like that was something that super important in my life. You know, it's just, I would say I was neutral on the topic. And I was reflecting on it thinking, okay, this was really positive.

Gina Hamadey (05:34.774)

How do I, what would that even mean to keep it up? It seems crazy, right? Just keep writing thank you notes for what? Like, what does that mean? You know, but I have this background in magazines and a lot of experience writing an editorial calendar. So I just sort of challenged myself, like, what would that mean, right? Especially when I noticed it was January 31st and the number kind of stuck out at me because I had just written the 31st thank you note. So it was like 31, 31. And so I was like, huh. Like I've written a thank you note for every day of the year so far, so what if I did keep it up? Like what would that even, I probably won't, right? Like I probably won't, because that's nuts, but like what if I did? What would it even look like? You know, and I figured January was already done, that was charity, if I'm gonna calendarize it. And then what would February be kind of dedicated to? I knew, because I had all this, you know, experience in content, I guess, slash editorial, you don't just start writing.

Gina Hamadey (06:34.538)

Like everything has to, you have to have a plan, right? So I figured if I were to do this thing, that kind of seems weird and like who does this, but if I were to do it, I would have to organize it in some way. So let's say it was by the month. And so let's think of 11 more topics, charity was already done, what would those 11 topics even be? You know, and so I had a little brainstorm and started getting excited. Like, okay, well there's neighbors, that's obvious, there's friends, that's obvious. And then when I started thinking of some of the other more obscure,

Gina Hamadey (07:04.226)

kind of creative topics like food and travel and health and parenting. I kind of was like, that sounds like fun. It sounds like fun to think about 30 people in my food life to say thank you to. And so by the end of that train ride, I had a little plan for the year.

Aransas Savas (07:25.638)

I think anything we want to turn ourselves on to doing, we can usually amplify that little desire by integrating some amount of joy or pleasure. And so you tuned in naturally to, oh, this feels good. And I feel a sense of joy and purpose, right? Like, I do think there was some element to, I've got this time that I'm in the train.

And it's not that high value or impactful in my busy life. So how do I also give that a little more purpose along with that connection that you were building with those people that was giving you that endorphin hit?

Gina Hamadey (08:06.45)

Right, as soon as I turned it to like, I don't want this to feel like a homework assignment. I don't want this to feel like, and that's the whole thing with thank you notes, they always feel like that. They always feel like this should, and you should, and you're late, and it's like, bleh, it's etiquette, and you're already late, and you forgot the last time, and this was like, what if, like what if this was just fun? Like what if it was just like a nice fun thing for me? And then obviously there's that, you know.

Gina Hamadey (08:35.75) 

I haven't even sent them yet, so then there's that. But just actually doing it sounded like fun.

Aransas Savas (08:42.63)

I love that. And then you said, I'm going to turn it into a plan. So I actually have a method for doing this that highlights my interests, my passions, and my community. So you gave yourself a way to doing it, which I think is so powerful. What was the hardest part about continuing on?

Gina Hamadey (09:09.694)

I think probably the emotional obstacles could have derailed it some of those were very hard to write and hard to send.

Gina Hamadey (11:43.13)

I really went kind of deep with the thank you notes. I really pushed myself in a lot of ways to write something meaningful to somebody who meant something to me at a certain period of my life and maybe we're not in touch anymore. And that is a scary thing. It's a very vulnerable thing to send that out and say like, hey, I don't know if you remember me.

Gina Hamadey (12:11.478)

thinking of you still. You know, it's a, that's a challenge emotionally. And I felt like it took a lot of bravery. And then that becomes sort of addictive though, because it feels really good to like, do something emotionally brave in that way. if there are any repercussions, they're positive, you know. It's, you know, got me back in touch with friends with whom I'd become estranged. It kind of healed.

Gina Hamadey (12:41.422)

some tricky relationships, a boss who had laid me off, I feel like it really created this nice closure on my end and for her, I think it was really positive too. 

it was just a great year and nothing spectacular happened. Do you know what I mean? Like, I didn't have a baby or get married or get a new job or make the most money I ever made or anything like that from the outside would kind of mark it as a great year. But it was a great year because I was like steeped in

Gina Hamadey (14:08.146)

you know, everything that you've read about gratitude that I hadn't at the time, but then in writing the book, I really boned up on all that gratitude research. You know, I was really steeped in all of that. Like I was really rewiring my neural pathways to be more positive and more grateful. That's one thing, the gratitude thing. And then the other thing is just how much more connected I really felt in all of these circles in my community.

Gina Hamadey (14:37.914)

with my friends, even the ones who don't live nearby, even in my own house and in my own family with people who I see all the time. My husband, I spent a month writing him a note every day. You know, just sort of reinforcing these ties that were already there, but naming them and expressing that gratitude so specifically and like bravely and open-heartedly just made me have like one of the...

Gina Hamadey (15:06.698)

best year, maybe the best year of my life, and nothing outstanding even happened.

Aransas Savas (15:14.858)

Ugh. I think from the outside, it's such a powerful story to be able to tell. Because what it says to all of us is that by these simple acts of courage, and you're right, it is really freaking courageous to put ourselves out there and to say, hey, it's me. And I'm thinking about you.

Gina Hamadey (15:41.022)

I don't know if you remember you, I think of you constantly. It's like the least cool thing you could do.

Aransas Savas (15:47.286)

Oh, I am so not cool, girlfriend. And I am such a big fan of not being cool because I think you're right. It's being cool that stands in the way of connection. And it's like one of the things I preach most often to my 12 and 14 year old daughters. Like we celebrate awkwardness in this household. Every time we do something that feels awkward, it's a party. Because I do think it's like, we...

Aransas Savas (16:15.986)

My kids talk about it all the time. They're like, oh, it's so awkward. And I'm like, yay, it's awkward. That means we're uncomfortable. We're in unknown territory. And you started out with sort of low-lift awkwardness, which felt really important. You walked into the market, and you said, thank you for your tiny act of kindness in my daily life. But even that felt awkward initially, I think.

Gina Hamadey (16:44.63)

the neighbor month. Yeah, yeah, I started with the lowest, yeah, I think I started with the lowest stakes because the neighbors, you know, I'm just writing to the guy at the mozzarella store, the owners of the bookstore, and I'm saying like, I love that this is in the neighborhood. I have that one time that you let us in early and you let Henry pick the music. Such a great memory. You guys are the best. Like, it's very, you know, it's, it's...

Gina Hamadey (17:11.354)

is nothing but pleasant, you know? It still does take a little something. Like I remember when I gave the mozzarella guy his card and then he read it later and the next time I came in, he came out and gave me a hug and he's like, are you moving? And I'm like, no, I'm not. I'm just, I mean, I know it's kind of weird that I did it. I'm not even moving, you know? But then, but you never know when it is your last chance that Esposito's that was in the.

Gina Hamadey (17:39.37)

book that, you know, if you read the book, there was an illustration of Espositos with the little pig out front, and I wrote both brothers thank you notes for specific reasons. And now it's closed. It just closed last month. You know, so you never, it's like somebody's going to be moving sometime, even if it's not you right now. But it was great to start there, because if I had gone right to like estranged friendship or like...

Gina Hamadey (18:07.658)

write to some of the harder notes I wrote to family members or, I don't know, trying to find my fifth grade teacher and all I had to say to her. Neighbors was a great place to start because it was just kind of fun and easy and short and pleasant.

Aransas Savas (18:25.878)

Yeah, and so many of the things I watched you do in the book were like, how do I lower the complexity and the barriers here and just make it a little bit easier on myself so that I can keep going? And I think so often we're afraid to lower the walls, A, because our society...

Aransas Savas (18:45.738)

rewards effort and an overwhelm and over structuring so much, but also because we think that makes things more worthy or right. And you challenged that every step of the way. You're like, oh, this feels hard signal time to make it a little bit easier on myself. And just from the outside doing that, what you allowed yourself to do is to build that muscle.

Aransas Savas (19:09.366)

so that you were a little more comfortable with the awkwardness, you were a little more comfortable with the vulnerability, and you let yourself get rewards right away. So that hug, right? That was a big hit of dopamine to walk in, and the Esposito brothers now know you. You're not just the woman who gets this cold cut, you're the woman who wrote the thank you note and gets this cold cut.

Aransas Savas (19:37.258)

And I think there's so much power in that reflection. And so that was one of the big lessons, I think, from your book, was just the power of reflecting on what's easy and what's hard. And you worked your way up to those really deep connections and the really vulnerable notes and outreach. How have t hose relationships now two years later

Gina Hamadey (20:06.23)

Well, some of the, some of the, I mean, there's three, there are four. There were four notes in my friend month in particular. And that, so for my friend month, and one of the fun things about this was every month really felt different. Like it was a totally, the audience, the different audience made for an entirely different approach. So the neighbors, quick note on a little card and handing it probably in person.

Gina Hamadey (20:33.878)

For the friends, I just couldn't figure out what to say exactly, like beyond a generic like thanks for being a friend all these years. It just sounded so generic and like couldn't... That's the other thing is I just don't like being bored. So like anything that sounded boring, I was like, I'm not going to do it if it's like I have 30 stack of like, well, I'm not saying anything, you know, like it has to feel fun. So I ended up...

Gina Hamadey (21:02.994)

I remembered that you can turn a picture into a postcard. So I found, I kind of opened up a shoebox of all these old pictures, high school, college, and people say, whenever I tell the story, they're like, oh my God, you gave away pictures. I'm like, oh my God, it was like the 90s and the early 2000s, there's so many doubles, and they're all getting yellowed, and it's fine. You could also just print them out or make a copy. I just was like, this is better suited out in the world than like...

Gina Hamadey (21:31.766)

getting even more yellowed in my shoebox. So I just like reinforced those with four by six stickers and turned them into a postcard. And then it became really fun because there's something to write about because there's like a memory attached to this picture. And so four of those postcards I sent, the last four I sent because I kept kind of shuffling those postcards to the back of the pile, were people that I had been in some amount, some degree of estrangement with for some.

Gina Hamadey (22:01.374)

reason or another. And all four of those, one of them I haven't seen yet, but we had such a wonderful exchange. It basically just did, it was so impactful in getting us back in touch in this really lovely way. One of them, my friend John, he and I now have a monthly standing Zoom and he's in Finland and so that's just special that we are both

Gina Hamadey (22:30.166)

back in touch in this way once a month. One of them, Sarah, she was kind enough to let me interview her for the book and she was really open about, it was this crazy conversation where we really talked about why we had stopped being friends and my impression of it versus her impression of it and why this postcard was a really good way for us to get back in touch versus an email versus a call versus any other way you might.

Gina Hamadey (22:58.346)

get back in touch. She said it was a very slow way of communicating which offered a slow response. It was just gradual. There was no time stamp on it. So she explained what was going on in her head when she...

Gina Hamadey (23:26.37)

got the card and she said, oh my god, this is so, what is this magical thing among all my bills and like, oh god, it's Gina and how is she doing? Oh god, I really messed that up. I, she, she, you know, I think it's like too late. Like she's not going to want to hear from me. And then it's like a day later, it's like, but she must want to hear from me because she sent me the card, you know? It's like a day later, like, maybe it doesn't matter that I don't know exactly what to say. it was this

Gina Hamadey (23:55.042)

kind of slow way for us to get back in touch, which turned out to be a perfect way for us to get back in touch. And it starts with gratitude, right? I didn't say anything untrue. I didn't say our relationship is without its complications, you know what I mean? But I started with the gratitude for what we had and how important she was in this time in my life, of which she played a crucial role in my life.

Gina Hamadey (24:24.514)

20s. So it was just starting from there, just allowed us this relationship again. And we have, I mean, I saw her two weeks ago. I mean, we were very much back in touch because of that.

Aransas Savas (24:39.642)

I loved that story especially because so often when relationships end, and they do, they end with our own individual stories and beliefs. We don't have that sense of clarity about, well, what were they thinking? Why did this relationship end? It just feels like, especially in friendships, right? Like we in like...

Aransas Savas (25:00.878)

dating relationships, we often have a moment of clarity where people say, I am leaving this relationship because of this. And at least people express some of their truth, just in that discussion. Whereas in friendships, it's just like a slow fade.

Aransas Savas (25:19.722)

And what was once intense is just gone. And so that slowness, I think what Sarah's saying, is it gave me a chance to reflect on why I started to slip away. And it gave you a chance to reflect on what your stories were for your choices and what you believed about Sarah's. And for the two of you then to come back together and say, no, no, no, no, no, no, this is actually what was going on with me.

Gina Hamadey (25:45.854)

Yeah, yeah. One of the people I interviewed during this book, and I can't honestly can't even remember which one, but I always think about how they said, we think we are great at knowing what the other person is thinking and we are actually terrible at it. Like we have no ability and yet we still walk through the world as if we are good at it and that we know.

Gina Hamadey (26:11.742)

what people are thinking. And you really don't, and you really can't.

Aransas Savas (26:17.366)

No, and then you show in this book how these thank you notes as a practice can open up even more of those tougher conversations where we say the things we might not otherwise. So do you want to tell the story about your mother-in-law and what happened there?

Gina Hamadey (26:29.462)

Yes. Okay, so one thing is I didn't send out 365 cards to 365 people. I sent the 30 notes within the month based on whatever that theme was, so a number of people got more than one note. Everybody in my family got a number of notes because they qualify as maybe food and travel and...

Gina Hamadey (26:58.458)

um, you know, and parenting or, you know what I'm saying. So it started becoming interesting how many notes my mom got a lot of notes in a lot of different months and my mother-in-law got so many notes. And just, just that, just knowing, just seeing how often she, you know, is working to meet our needs and anticipate our needs and how much she gives is just a powerful thing.

Gina Hamadey (27:28.094)

when you see it all together like that. And then I noticed the more that I would be expressing my gratitude to her for these really specific, granular things, you know, you bought Henry Winter jacket, you noticed it was getting too small, you took that off my list, whatever, you know, all throughout the year. I felt her kind of, you know, it just meant a lot to her, that she was really being seen in that way for all that she does. And by the way, I should say, we started off like not with a bad relationship, we had this nice relationship.

Gina Hamadey (27:58.154)

But something that really changed was, you know, A, it just softens any edges when you are feeling that thanked for something, right? And when, on her end, and on my end, to just really see how much she does, it's like, how could you not be kind of amazed at how much this woman does for her family? And then what I noticed was, she and,

Gina Hamadey (28:24.35)

my father-in-law, they are the nannies on Mondays for my kids. And so they are very much in our lives. Like, they are very, very much in our lives. And there can be conflict with that because there's little kids and maybe just different opinions on how different issues should be handled. And I was just... Any kind of harder conversation that we had to have or that I brought up, it just felt like a much... We were...

Gina Hamadey (28:53.87)

we were approaching it from a much better place because it was understood that I wasn't saying I'd I you guys you don't do anything and also I'm pissed at you about this one thing it was clear that it was like I am so grateful for everything I think you guys are amazing about this one thing I would have done it differently and here's why can we talk about it and it's like it could just be about the thing it was about you know and it without

Gina Hamadey (29:18.534)

sort of a defensiveness of like, oh my God, can't she see all the stuff we're doing and she's got this complaint? It's like, I'm allowed to have a complaint because it's not even really a complaint, it's just like a conversation we should have. Because by the way, like, we're starting from a place of like such,softness and,gratitude where we are starting from, you know, that really positive place and then the Like the little problem can be what it is 

START OF PART 2 AUDIO

it's easy to see how it improved your relationships. And because of the process of segmenting your outreach, you worked on what you refer to from sort of sociological terms in strong and weak ties.

Aransas Savas (00:29.686)

and you balance those. So talk for a second about what those are and what you learned about them through this journey.

Gina Hamadey (00:36.424)

Sure. So, weak ties. I did this research when I was writing my neighbor's chapter. And, you know, basically a weak tie is, you know, your neighbor, an acquaintance, the people in your life that you, you know, it's low stakes, basically. And then a strong tie is your good friends and family. And, you know, the research that I was...

Gina Hamadey (01:04.312)

reading and speaking with some people who did that research, basically the upshot is weak ties are quite important. You shouldn't discount weak ties. They sort of go a long way in making you feel social and you being a social person in the world saying hello to that mozzarella guy, the bookstore owners in my case, having a basic...

Gina Hamadey (01:33.368)

even if it's a little, if it's kind of surface, but it's regular and it's friendly and it actually goes a long way in making you feel like you're part of something. But the feelings I was getting, like, you know, as you said, the dopamine from the hug from the mozzarella guy behind the counter, but just all of it just felt so good.

Gina Hamadey (02:32.888)

felt good for me, felt good for them. And it just gave me the sense now that I have the, you know, that term weak ties, I didn't have it at the time, just felt like it's, you know, you just can't discount it. It actually means something.

Aransas Savas (02:48.554)

Yeah. Yeah. And it doesn't happen by accident. It was really an act of you. You talk about waving first and being the one who says, Hey, I'm reaching out to connect as opposed to waiting. And I do think that that we do that so often. We're like, well, if I matter, if I'm important, other people will reach out to me. This whole project, though, was you saying

Aransas Savas (03:17.963)

I'm gonna be the one who reaches out.

Gina Hamadey (03:19.816)

I'm gonna do it. Yeah, I was quoting somebody that said, nobody waves, but you always wave back. I decided to make that explicit, that this was my project. I was the one reaching out.

Gina Hamadey (03:48.804)

and I would have no expectation about what comes back because I felt like this could get very depressing very quickly if I'm like, in fact, I opened up a spreadsheet where I started writing the names of the recipients and then I deleted it because as I started sending them out, it's like there was a column that was just waiting for me to say, how did they reply? What did they say? Was it a voicemail? And I'm like, I don't wanna, some of these people won't write back or won't respond or won't.

Gina Hamadey (04:18.628)

And I just can't, I can't get in, that can't be the point of this year, is to like wait and what does it mean? It's been weeks, did they get it, did they not get it? Did they think it's weird? And I'm like, so I just deleted the spreadsheet and I'm like, I will, this has to all be a gift. It just has to be. And anything that comes back to me, I will think of as a lovely bonus, but it's just not the point. The point wasn't, let me do this and...

Gina Hamadey (04:48.004)

get a bunch of love in return. The point was like, let me give it. Let me say all the stuff I have to say. Let me remember who I am in the world and in my community and what's important to me and let me name it and name the people and tell them. And that's the point.

Aransas Savas (05:12.286)

Yeah. And it is so easy though, right? To not, to miss those little thoughts that say, oh, they didn't write me back. This is hurtful. And ultimately that's going to stop us from doing the things that feel good. And so you just, you were so honest with yourself. And again, I, I, I feel like the

Aransas Savas (05:32.278)

greatest thing about this book, the thing that is most exciting for me as somebody who cares about human behavior and who understands motivation is the awareness you had of your own mental hurdles.

Aransas Savas (05:48.546)

and your honesty because you were able to say, oh, this might stand in the way of my progress. So I'm gonna acknowledge, yeah, there is a part of me that would like a response, and I'm going to reinforce for myself that that's not the truest, most important thing. And so I'm gonna set that aside and refocus my energy and attention.

you use the word generosity a lot in the book about the you do that the idea of gratitude is an act of generosity, but also the responses as an act of generosity. And I do think that that is the more generous approach.

Gina Hamadey (07:47.321)

Oh, did I? That's interesting.

Aransas Savas (08:00.05)

is to say, I'm gonna put this gratitude out, I'm gonna send love, but without an expectation of receiving it back. And I think that conscious awareness of that distinction probably had a big part to play in you finishing, because you could have stopped. Like you said, it was all self-imposed. You could have stopped any of this at any time, but you kept simplifying it. You kept facing the mental hurdles and you did it.

Aransas Savas (08:29.226)

And then you shared it with us. Yeah, thank you. It was really generous of you to give us all of your lessons that you learned in the process of it, and to remind us that those thoughts are going to come up for all of us too if we try to 

Gina Hamadey (08:29.636)

I did. Thank you. I did.

Gina Hamadey (08:49.864)

I'll tell you the usual ones that I hear all the time, just to get ahead of people. My handwriting's too bad, and I always say it really doesn't matter. I mean, A, you could type and print if you want, if you want it to be something that you mail,  everybody's handwriting is bad, nobody's is good, yours is fine, And it's never too late. Everybody thinks it's too late.

Gina Hamadey (09:40.912)

Maybe a lot of people who, maybe people didn't write me back because they wanted, instead of doing a text, they wanted to really put that time into a response and really do it right and then months go by and now I'm too late, you're never too late. Because this isn't a thank you note from, for your aunt for the sweater that is there really to serve as a confirmation receipt. I got your sweater, thanks so much. This is different.

Gina Hamadey (10:09.296)

this is thank you for something you did or said that meant a lot to me. And nobody ever writes to say thank you about that. So if you write it 10 years later, not only are you not late, it actually means more because you can share your perspective, what you remember after all this time, Also, people are worried about how to get an address. And I'm also like, just text somebody for their address.

it's this sense that people are going to be judging this project or this act. And what we hear in your story is people are just going to be excited. They got a thank you card.

Gina Hamadey (11:05.564)

Totally, totally. Yeah, I had this wonderful conversation with a social scientist who studies the impact of gratitude letters on the recipient, He studies how it feels on the receiving end. And he had a great way of putting it, as the writer, you're thinking about all these choices. You know, the letter, the stationary.

Gina Hamadey (11:34.524)

your handwriting, the examples you're using, the greeting, like you have all these choices that you're making, right? And so you're in your own head, maybe I made the wrong choices, is it good, is it not? On the receiving end, they don't know any of that. They're just thinking, this is so nice. This is so delightful. What a gift.

Aransas Savas (11:56.03)

And so when people want a lightweight taste of this without committing necessarily to a 365 day journey, what do you recommend?

Gina Hamadey (12:13.252)

If you want to just write one gratitude letter, If you could think of somebody who has meant a great deal in your life, who maybe doesn't know that they've meant that great of a deal, or maybe they just haven't, you just haven't thanked them. So maybe that's...

a teacher, maybe a mentor, maybe that's... I wrote this letter to my best friend growing up, her dad. You know, people in your life that were sort of accidental role models or purposeful role models, that showed you something about yourself or taught you something and you just never told them. That's kind of the first place I would go.

Gina Hamadey (13:10.084)

My career mentors month was one where I'm like, people should be doing this more often. 

Aransas Savas (14:20.484)

You described it as the most authentic networking.

Aransas Savas (15:12.534)

Yeah. Well, and I think to universalize your guidance, it's really, consider where you want to deepen your connections. Is it in your neighborhood with the people you meet each day for a sense of place? Is it with your family? Is it with friends? Is it within your career? Where do you want a tighter web of connection and start there? Yeah.

Gina Hamadey (15:36.904)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Another topic that was just like, oh, this was so fun,My son Henry and I, in my author's month, which was like my fan mail month, he and I wrote to his eight or 10 favorite authors, and a lot of them wrote back.  I talked to this expert that wrote the book, um, Making Grateful Kids. And he said the thing that kids really need help with is umaking this connection that there are people behind the stuff you love. It's like obvious but it's like not obvious. So it's like you love this book, like somebody wrote it, somebody drew it, like this was somebody's idea so one of the things we like to do in every episode of the show is to do a quick lightning round. So what is one quick way you raise your own energy, Gina?

Gina Hamadey (17:59.528)

So I live in New York City, and any time I'm walking in a neighborhood that I haven't been to in a little while, the city just fills me up with energy. I spent COVID-2020 in nature, and I realized, I love nature, nature's great. It doesn't feed my soul like this city does. 

Aransas Savas (18:42.494)

I think, yeah, I love that answer because it points toward this sort of core piece of you, which is that you are somebody who thrives on connection, who clearly enjoys and appreciates humans. I love the weirdos. I love, like, just seeing something new that's a new idea and like a cool outfit. And I, yeah, I just love to see people and what they're making and what they're doing and the art they're creating. And that just fills me up with energy.

Aransas Savas (19:23.298)

We are kindred spirits in that way. So what's one easy way you boost other women?

Gina Hamadey (19:25.905)

Yay.

Gina Hamadey (19:31.3)

So, okay, so one thing I do for anybody who asks, I will send my book proposal to anybody. I feel like there is this scarcity thing. I also do this with my friends who do similar things, my fellow content marketer, writer people. If I can't do a project, I am sending it to somebody.

Gina Hamadey (20:01.448)

um, somebody wants one of my contacts, there you go. Like I feel like what I have is yours. A book proposal is a specific example where when I was writing a book proposal, I could not find good ones. You can't just like Google that. Like it's really hard. And so I will send mine to anybody that wants to write a book.

 So how do you elevate your community, the planet or the world in some little way? just expressing gratitude to the people in my community was just so, so meaningful to me and so impactful. You know, it's just something that I wouldn't have done if I hadn't challenged myself to this. If I didn't say, okay, Gina, February, you were writing to 28 neighbors.

Gina Hamadey (22:32.892)

thanking them for something. It's a challenge. And it was, you know, just really felt like it took these weak ties and it just strengthened them. And it just made me feel like I was part of this community that I love and it made, I don't know, I kept hearing this made my day and like, what a nice thing to hear, you know?

Aransas Savas (23:16.182)

Yeah, and even hi Gina

Aransas Savas (23:20.266)

You are known, you are seen, and that's what humans want. So one of the reasons I started this podcast, Gina, is because I have a lot of really beautiful, amazing women in my life. And I wanted them all to know each other. And I wanted to know their women.  So who is a woman that you know and love that you think we would know and love?

Gina Hamadey (25:14.896)

Yes, okay, so Molly Chen, you should know and love, and maybe many of you do, because she is the greatest connector that I know. It's just the way her brain works. It's like, as you're talking, she's just thinking of like eight people who she wants to connect you with, who can help you, who you can help them. It'll, you know, she's just that kind of person.

Gina Hamadey (25:39.3)

So, Molly Chen started like me in magazines, and then she was a co-founder of Birchbox.  She is just a interesting person in the world and is always up on so many things and is a true, true booster uplifter of women. Like, absolutely walks that walk.

Aransas Savas (27:04.782)

I can't wait to meet her. She sounds amazing. So as I start to wrap this up, I think maybe your book is a challenge to all of us to look at our own relationships, to look at where we feel a little craving for more connection or deeper connection.

Aransas Savas (27:30.57)

And it may be in the weak ties, it may be in the strong ties, but to use your journey as our own invitation to strengthen those ties that are calling for a bit more attention. And it doesn't have to be a big freaking deal.

Gina Hamadey (28:36.58)

we have those strong ties, we have those weak ties. You know, if you wrote, if the prompt was to write, like I said, 30 mentors or 30 neighbors, you know, you'd be surprised that you,have those people there. It's just, some of those connections need fostering.

Aransas Savas (29:02.962)

Yeah, just like anything that matters, it needs attention. Yeah, my plants are gonna die if they don't get sunlight and water. So will my relationships if they don't get attention.

Gina Hamadey (29:09.272)

Yeah. Yeah.

Aransas Savas (29:19.53)

Thank you so much, Gina. It truly is an act of generosity. Thank you for sharing your story with us. For those of you listening, you can find more from Gina at Substack, at her website, ginahabide.com. All the links to all her things will be in the show notes. So find her there. Come over to theuplifterspodcast.com and join the conversation with us about what it means.

Aransas Savas (29:45.462)

to reach out, to connect, to be well in our relational lives, as much as we are in our physical and emotional lives. Gina, thank you for being here. And to all of you Uplifters, thank you for listening

In this episode, join us as we dive into the remarkable journey of Chrisie Canny, who turned her personal pain into a powerful purpose. When Chrisie lost her father to cancer two decades ago, it ignited a spark within her to make a difference in the lives of others facing similar challenges.

Synopsis:

After experiencing the devastating effects of cancer on her own family, she embarked on a mission to support and uplift other families enduring the same hardships. Through fundraising efforts and a deep desire to make a positive impact, Chrisie built a successful local business called Vented in Brooklyn, offering aromatherapy bracelets that contribute to cancer charities.

Just as her company was on the verge of national distribution, Chrisie received her own cancer diagnosis. However, her unwavering belief in the healing power of helping others fueled her determination to overcome her personal struggles. She shares with us the profound impact of finding purpose through selfless acts and how it brought newfound energy and meaning to her life.

During our conversation, Chrisie shares how she overcomes her own doubts and fears, how she found healing through giving, and perhaps most importantly how she learned to self-advocate for her needs during her cancer treatment.  Her incredible ability to create connections and foster support within communities shines through as she discusses the profound effects of sharing our stories and finding strength in unity.

Join us as we explore Chrisie's journey, discovering how she transformed her pain into purpose and continues to inspire others to create positive change. 

Key Highlights:

• How Chrisie turned personal pain into a powerful purpose after losing her father to cancer.

• The birth of Vented in Brooklyn: Building a thriving local business to support cancer charities.

• Overcoming personal challenges: Chrisie's own battle with cancer and the healing power of helping others.

• The importance of self-advocacy in navigating cancer treatment and addressing personal needs.

• Creating webs of connection: Discovering the strength and power of sharing our stories.

• Inspiring listeners to find purpose, courage, and resilience in the face of adversity.

Join us for this impactful conversation that will leave you inspired to transform your own pain into purpose and create positive change within your community.

 To get more inspiration from The Uplifters, visit us at www.theuplifterspodcast.com

Learn more about Vented in Brooklyn and Chrisie: https://ventedinbrooklyn.com/

Listen to our latest episode in the player here, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. 

In this episode, join us as we dive into the remarkable journey of Chrisie Canny, who turned her personal pain into a powerful purpose. When Chrisie lost her father to cancer two decades ago, it ignited a spark within her to make a difference in the lives of others facing similar challenges.

Synopsis:

After experiencing the devastating effects of cancer on her own family, she embarked on a mission to support and uplift other families enduring the same hardships. Through fundraising efforts and a deep desire to make a positive impact, Chrisie built a successful local business called Vented in Brooklyn, offering aromatherapy bracelets that contribute to cancer charities.

Just as her company was on the verge of national distribution, Chrisie received her own cancer diagnosis. However, her unwavering belief in the healing power of helping others fueled her determination to overcome her personal struggles. She shares with us the profound impact of finding purpose through selfless acts and how it brought newfound energy and meaning to her life.

During our conversation, Chrisie shares how she overcomes her own doubts and fears, how she found healing through giving, and perhaps most importantly how she learned to self-advocate for her needs during her cancer treatment.  Her incredible ability to create connections and foster support within communities shines through as she discusses the profound effects of sharing our stories and finding strength in unity.

As we explore Chrisie's journey, discovering how she transformed her pain into purpose and continues to inspire others to create positive change, I share how I managed my own cancer scare last year (spoiler alert: not well). You can read more on that here:

Join us for this impactful conversation that will leave you inspired to transform your own pain into purpose and create positive change within your community.

Paid subscribers: stay tuned for the full episode, on video, coming your way on Monday.

Let’s keep rising higher together 💓,

Aransas

Messy Transcript

Aransas Savas (00:02.786)

Welcome to the Uplifters podcast. I'm your host, Aransas Savas. And as most of you know, I'm a transformation coach and have been a behavior change expert for over 20 years. And you just heard the wonderful Melanie Cohen introducing our guest today, Chrissy Canney. Chrissy is a wife, a mother, a serial entrepreneur, an inventor, and a fundraiser who truly puts the fun in fundraising.

by throwing parties and events to raise money to support those who need it most. Chrissy has probably raised hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years for causes she believes in. And she does it by bringing uplifters together and then encouraging them to share their authentic stories and helping them support one another, whether it's with love or money or hugs or smiles or.

whatever they have to give in ways that mean everyone receives. She's perhaps best known for her incredible work supporting cancer patients on their journeys. And so in this episode you're going to hear the events that led to the discovery of her own breast cancer diagnosis and how she has yet again

translated this challenge into new and powerful ways to uplift herself, her family, her community, and the incredible patience that she advocates for. Chrissy, thank you so much for being here.

Chrisie Canny (01:48.386)

Well, that was like a beautiful intro. Thank you. I'm like a little like, you know, I can't talk. Like that was beautiful. Thank you. So honored to be here with you. Oh.

Aransas Savas (01:57.506)

I'm so in awe of you. I'm so glad you're here. What initially drew you to advocacy and fundraising for cancer patients specifically Chrissy?

Chrisie Canny (02:10.870)

What led me to fundraising is the loss of my dad 20 years ago to cancer. And just seeing how somebody so strong could deteriorate so quickly and how when you have cancer, it's not just you who has cancer, it's your family, it's your community, it's your neighborhood.  

Aransas Savas (02:55.606)

Hmm.

Aransas Savas (03:08.418)

It's such a beautiful way to look at something too that can feel so paralyzing and helpless. So what does it give to you to give to others?

Chrisie Canny (03:23.994)

It gives me energy. It just, it seems like it's my gift f that I'm just able to like, all of a sudden think of a fundraiser or be able to like call on my community and be like, hey, we need to help somebody. It just.

Chrisie Canny (03:42.311)

I would be lost if I didn't get to help others.

Aransas Savas (03:45.282)

I think that your ability to do it is pretty remarkable. So I think a lot of us feel a desire, maybe a wish, to help others. It is the nature of being an uplifter. And yet it's really easy to feel like, who am I?

I don't know how to do this. How does this even get done? Will my energy be worth the amount of effort and learning I have to put into this? Are people going to think I'm the wrong person to do it? All these conversations in our heads that can stop any sort of motivation or activation to do this kind of work. So how did you get past that and do it?

Chrisie Canny (04:32.450)

Okay, I've never gone past it because every fundraiser I have that fear. So you know, I'm always transparent, you know, like, I, you know, like, please, I do not. I, you know, we're sitting here raising money for a local Staten Island cancer patient. And you know, I'm just like, wait, can I do this again? You know, like, you know, you have those doubts because I'm like, oh my God, these people are people are going to kill me. I'm always asking for money.

Chrisie Canny (05:00.086)

But I love how people realize that like $5 can make a difference to somebody else when we all rally together. So it's, you know, but it's, you have to push through and you just start simple. And, you know, you can even start teaching your children how to fundraise.

Aransas Savas (05:05.973)

Mm.

Aransas Savas (05:20.882)

Mmm, that's a cool idea, because 

Research has shown that we're more likely to do things for the benefit of others than for ourselves, And what I hear you saying is, when I get out of my own head and I think, oh, this could help give my kids confidence to work toward their dreams, or this could influence or impact someone else's life, then it gets you out of your head and out of the self-doubt and into action.

Chrisie Canny (05:58.590)

Yeah, because the end cause is to help somebody and you realize what a difference you can make. So you just push through the fear. You just push.

Aransas Savas (06:02.515)

Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (06:07.110)

And I think, too, there's some real power in what you're doing by acknowledging, yeah, I have doubts. I have fears. And you said, kind of off to the side, I never lie about that. I'm honest that this is scary for me. Do you think that's been helpful in building relationships with the people in your community?

Chrisie Canny (06:33.494)

100%. It's been helpful to me. As a business owner, as a woman, I connect to people because I'm honest. So because people will be like, Oh my God, you have life altogether. Like, you know, you got you this great business. And I'm always like, No, no, listen, it's not what you see. It's not the world of Facebook and Instagram. Life is not perfect. And don't think that I like I never want another room to feel bad. That I'm

doing better than her. I always want to be honest and be like, no, we're gonna do this together. We all have that same fear. I really like, my motto is like, for no one to feel alone. We all fail every day. And it's how we take those failures and move on and learn and help others.

Aransas Savas (07:23.070)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I think that kind of honesty is so rare. And it's a protective measure, right, to be like, it's fine, it's good. Everything is going great. Because then we don't have to admit that this is hard and scary. And yet, while it may feel empowering temporarily, it can feel disempowering and actually get in our way over time.

So you've spent years

Aransas Savas (11:46.554)

advocating for cancer patients, making extraordinary donations from the products that you've invented  And then you were invited to take what you had been doing to a completely different level. So tell us that story.

Chrisie Canny (12:48.870)

So, on, in, what was it, 12-2-20, I can't remember, no, 12-2-21. I was given the opportunity to go on live TV for Joy Mangiano's show, America's Big Deal. And it was huge. I was on live TV. Like it's like, it was a show like QVC. Like you're up there competing against other people. It was a lot of fun.

I sold like over $10,000 worth of goods in like 15 minutes. It was exciting, but yeah. And it was months and months and months of work and anguish, but it was such a huge opportunity to be on.

Chrisie Canny (13:36.070)

And behind the scenes, there is a lot going on. 

 a week before the show, I was going for my routine checkup for my mammogram. And I have really been going every six months for the past 10 years. And the doctor came out after my mammogram,, She's like, I think you have DCIS. . And I was just like, okay, I don't have time for this. I'm gonna be on live TV next week. I have to focus on like really succeeding because this could change everything for me. So it was like.

Chrisie Canny (15:26.194)

I needed to focus. Like, I'm just gonna be on TV next week and that's it. I go and have a biopsy the following week after the show. And I'm at a Christmas party at seven o'clock on a Tuesday night, the week before Christmas, and I get a call that, you know, oh, it's cancer. And, you know, I guess because I was always, the past 10 years always been going through so much, I finally felt powerful.

Chrisie Canny (15:56.854)

All right, we have it. Like, it's stage 0.5. I was sad. I had my day of like a couple of tears and I went home to my husband, told him. And then just like a week later, I decided, I'm not keeping these girls. They're going. And I had really already decided that.

Aransas Savas (16:03.145)

Mm.

Chrisie Canny (16:25.218)

So by talking to so many women, I had heard, well, let me start with what they wanted me to do. What they recommended that I do, and that it would give me a 28% chance of recurrence was to have a lumpectomy, to have five weeks of radiation, and to go on tamoxifen for about six years of my life. That's what I was told. And I'd still have a 28% chance of recurrence. And I'm like, that's not for me. Like, what if we cut these girls off?

Aransas Savas (16:53.340)

Mm-hmm.

Chrisie Canny (16:54.766)

because that's what I want to do. I don't want to have treatment. I don't want to have radiation. And I don't want to take tamoxifen. And they were like, OK, your chances go down to under 3% for recurrence. And I'm like, well, that's what we're going to do. And I felt really.

Aransas Savas (17:08.886)

Wow.

Chrisie Canny (17:14.962)

Again, I was empowered that day. And that's why I'm such an advocate for women to stay on top of it. You gotta catch things early so that you can make the choice. And I feel so many times when women are there, they get so, they're in such shock, they don't know to ask those questions.

Aransas Savas (17:17.918)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (17:37.791)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chrisie Canny (17:39.338)

Like, what's my other option? What else can I do? You know, like I have a girlfriend who's going through and she's just like, I gave her a list of questions. Like, okay, ask this when you're there with your husband, ask this, and she just couldn't. Like, you know, so I tried to like really instill in women don't take the power, do what you wanna do, do what feels right for you. I decided to be very verbal, you know.

and broadcast it to so many people. And that really gave me a lot of energy. Like to have so much love and support was amazing. And how could I not be so open and honest after all these women the past five years have shared their journey with me? How could I sit there and pretend that I'm not going through anything?

Aransas Savas (18:30.142)

Right, right. And I do think that's really liberating to be able to say, hey, this is what's going on with me. And that part of the reason we get so overwhelmed by things like this is because we try to hold the entirety of what's happening in our one little brain. Or maybe we share it with one or two people. And it's just too freaking much. And somehow, I think.

by putting it out, not only do we disperse the energy and allow ourselves to get a wide range of perspectives and experiences to maybe balance our own, but we also just get support. And that's what you had given to so many thousands of women over the course of your life and career. And so you put it out there and received it back.

Chrisie Canny (19:36.618)

I decided that I wanted to do something when I was going into Sloan that day. I'm like, so I'm like, I had the idea like, how about and asked all my friends, how about you sponsor a bracelet, events in Brooklyn bracelet, and then we're gonna gift the staff and we're gonna gift the patients. Vented in Brooklyn is my room with their, a jewelry company that I started six years ago in honor of my dad.And between my two surgeries, we gifted over 660 bracelets, you know, which is just, it was so good because.

it took the distraction and the worry for me, my quote is always, you find strength by giving strength.

Aransas Savas (20:08.565)

Mmm. Mmm!

Aransas Savas (20:12.478)

So smart.

Aransas Savas (20:20.250)

Mm-hmm. Say that one more time.

Chrisie Canny (20:23.015)

you find strength by giving strength.

Aransas Savas (20:25.974)

Yeah, I think that's really the heart of your story. And this idea of giving people a way to support you is so powerful because, I mean, it is absolutely true for uplifters, but it's also true for most people, that we want to help others and often just don't know how. And we can feel really helpless as people who care.

in these situations. And one of the things that I hear happening over and over again in your life is in those moments where somebody else is in trouble or somebody else is having a challenge and you feel that urge to be there for them, you're an inventor and you invent ways to give us purpose and to see you do that in your own life. And then that quote you just said 

Chrisie Canny (21:24.426)

You find strength by giving strength.

Aransas Savas (21:28.190)

The truest example of that in your story so far was the strength you had to self-advocate. Because I think so many of us as women are trained to keep our voices quiet and small and to not have opinions and to not cause waves. Don't make, oh, yeah, they're in charge.

Chrisie Canny (21:49.074)

especially with doctors.

Aransas Savas (2 2:17.274)

Ugh, I can only, so incredible. And sometimes I think we all get intimidated. You knew what was okay for you, you knew what was gonna feel like a rich life for you, and so you allowed your voice to come to the table.

Chrisie Canny (23:18.710)

Yeah. And the day I walked out of the doctor's office with my husband, I just looked at him and said, I am so at peace with that decision. And I knew that it was the right decision for me. And it's not the right decision for a lot of women.

Chrisie Canny (23:52.074)

when the results came back from my double mastectomy there was cancer hiding somewhere else in my breast that they did not detect. And that took me to stage one cancer. So, I mean, things would have been a lot different. So to me, it was the best decision.

Aransas Savas (24:27.823)

Mm-hmm. And it gave you, as you said, peace and power. Yes, peace and power, the two P's here. And I think that's a great barometer for us when we are in these moments of trying to self-advocate. And

Chrisie Canny (24:31.334)

Yeah, peace and power. Peace and power.

Aransas Savas (24:48.862)

to use our voices is to ask ourselves those questions, maybe as filters. Does this answer give me peace? Does it give me a sense of power? And if the answer is no to either, it's Time to find someone who will help us find that voice. Yeah.

Aransas Savas (25:15.234)

So you've spent a lot of time with cancer patients. You've spent a lot of time talking about cancer, thinking about cancer, and now you've battled your own cancer. What do you know now? What did you learn through this journey, Chrissy?

Chrisie Canny (25:31.874)

That cancer doesn't mean the end of anything. It doesn't mean the end of life. You always have to have hope. I feel like this, like five out of eight people will have cancer of some type. one out of eight women will have breast cancer. So I think we have to look at cancer differently, like a cold, and how are you gonna be proactive and fight it and get it from the beginning?

Aransas Savas (25:48.331)

Wow.

Aransas Savas (25:54.256)

Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (26:09.062)

Yeah, I mean, I do think it's really easy to get into catastrophic thinking. And I'll say for myself, I had a cancer scare, a breast cancer scare, I guess it was a year ago now. I was debilitated. It was the only thing I could think about for the two weeks that I was waiting for results. I'm still annoyed that it took two weeks to get results. That's another conversation. But it really was the only thing I could think about.

Chrisie Canny (26:34.143)

Yes, yes.

Aransas Savas (26:39.070)

the data that you're talking about can be a real comfort to those of us who like evidence to help inform our mindsets. And so for me, frankly, if I'd heard that, it could have helped me balance all the other craziness I was Googling.

Chrisie Canny (26:56.022)

Yeah, don't Google.

Aransas Savas (26:57.622)

Don't Google. That's the real answer. Look for experts. Talk to people who've been there and don't Google.

Chrisie Canny (27:04.290)

Right. You know, I've heard, you know, by talking to so many people, I've heard a lot of people who had stage four cancer who are living 10 years later. Like you can't think of things as a death sentence. And yes, listen, I got in my head, but you gotta find that power to be like, I'm winning, you're not winning.

Aransas Savas (27:48.509)

What were the rewards of this journey?

Chrisie Canny (27:52.382)

Oh my God, I have this conversation with another survivor. It's been the best gift in the world.

Chrisie Canny (28:03.310)

A, you don't take life, like, not that I lived taking a life for granted perspective, but it really kind of smacks you in the face. Like, you meet the most amazing people, you realize how much you're loved and wanted and needed, you realize that you're not alone, that there's so many amazing women who are going through the same journey with you. It has been a blessing for me.

Aransas Savas (28:33.554)

Interesting that every single thing you mention as a benefit could not have happened had you not had the courage to be honest about what was happening with you.

Chrisie Canny (28:43.610)

you're so right like andthere's people I know who don't like to share it and I understand it but I feel like that's how you heal you can't keep it in.

Aransas Savas (28:46.302)

That was the...

Aransas Savas (28:58.946)

Sure.

Chrisie Canny (29:06.006)

Like, you know, God didn't give us other people to like not talk to and keep things in. He gave us a voice for a reason so we could share. And it's scary. And that's OK, too. I think to share and acknowledge that, hey, this is scary to me to share, it just makes us more human. And we have this tendency as human beings to see other human beings as being one dimensional. And we create characters out of people.

Aransas Savas (29:46.742)

that are no richer than the people that we pass on the street. We make all these assumptions about how people feel, about how they live, what they think. And all those assumptions just create distance. And the thing I'm mostly struck about in your story is that how honesty created closeness.

Aransas Savas (30:10.490)

And that, I think, I watch how you interact with people in social media. And there is an intimacy. There is a sense from everyone that I see you interact with that they matter and that they feel seen and known. And I'm getting from this conversation that it's all dependent.

on the honesty with which you have journeyed through your life and relationships.

Aransas Savas (30:45.930)

And it's almost as if, if we want that from and for other people, we have to be the model of it.

Chrisie Canny (30:54.779)

We need them for our daughters. Yeah.

Aransas Savas (30:57.834)

Yes, yes. I love telling my daughters, I do not feel like my best self today. Man, I am really grumpy. Could you give me a little extra grace today?

Chrisie Canny (31:13.430)

Yeah, my daughter and I are very open about our feelings and emotions. Like, okay, just, you know, just give me five minutes.

Aransas Savas (31:13.675)

Yeah.

Aransas Savas (31:22.278)

We're human beings. What an important place to model that for the next generation. I think too though, it lets us trust that we are known and loved when we're honest.

There's a real non-judgment in the way you approach life, a real acceptance of people's differences that I really admire.

Chrisie Canny (34:12.978)

I think that came from my dad, So I wrote a chapter in the book that's coming out this year, Magnificently Made. And my chapter, I talk about, like it starts with how much I enjoyed my father's week.

Aransas Savas (34:32.020)

Mm.

Chrisie Canny (34:33.274)

because so many people were just like sharing stories and telling how good he was and beautiful and what he did for them and how he helped them in their business and you know inspire them to go do something you know and maybe it's morbid to some but at my wake I want people to think that way about me.

Chrisie Canny (35:04.278)

Right? So, yeah, he was a good guy and he taught us all to be caring. And, you know, to me, it's just important to like, being a light spreads. Right? So, you know, just making the day and one woman's life helps her, you know, her mood changes and, you know, but then that light just keeps growing. We have to make them wear in like such turmoil with certain things. We just have to be nice people. Like just don't be a jerk. You know, like don't be a jerk. Just be kind.

Aransas Savas (35:32.606)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that can be hard sometimes. And it's a practice, I think, a muscle that we can strengthen, just like any other, that if we practice kindness, we become kinder.

Chrisie Canny (35:50.066)

Yeah, and I think that that's what people tell me when they're like, why they want to donate when I'm asking for money for another person. It's like they realize that it feels good. And like you said, people are afraid to do their own charity. So like, I like to be the facilitator for people to do good. Right. So that's like, you know, just to help, you know, it just warms everybody's heart when you help somebody else.

Aransas Savas (36:07.307)

Yeah.

Aransas Savas (36:12.267)

Yeah.

Aransas Savas (36:15.566)

What do you hope your life teaches people, Chrissy?

Chrisie Canny (36:21.026)

that it's really easy to help somebody else.

Aransas Savas (36:27.422)

Yeah, how simple and important and powerful. Because I think you're right, we get caught up and slowed down by thinking it's gonna be really hard to make a difference. And what you're saying is it's just tiny stuff.

Chrisie Canny (36:47.670)

Yeah, we all have the ability to make a difference every day of our lives. The way we react to what we do, to opening a door to those little skills that we taught as a kid in the books that we read, like, you know, go back and read a children's, a little inspiring children's book of manners. you can change somebody's whole day by how you react. Chrisie Canny (37:45.986)

You know, that mom that has a screaming kid in the supermarket. Distract the kid for her. Help her. Don't yell at her. Don't make her feel bad. You've been there. Just say, yeah, I've been there. Like, hey, try to distract the kid as much as you can. Help her out.

Aransas Savas (38:29.682)

I love that story. It's just this idea of looking for little ways to make the world better, not worse, to make us feel closer and safer, not further apart and more left out or ignored. 

when we lift other people up and we bring empathy to the conversation and truth and humanity to the conversation, the ripples are so much more likely to be helpful and positive than when we bring judgment and anger and ignore the fact that we're just talking to human beings, frail, fragile, feeling human beings.

Aransas Savas (41:23.738)

Easy stuff, quick stuff, and yet it makes so much difference. Chrissy, thank you for being such a bright light in the world. We like to end every episode with a lightning round. So what's one quick way you raise your own energy? What's?

Chrisie Canny (41:38.955)

Alright.

Chrisie Canny (41:42.806)

going for a walk by the water. That totally like can change my mood in a second.

Aransas Savas (41:50.646)

One easy way you boost other women.

Chrisie Canny (41:59.610)

Give them a compliment. I probably, you know, when I meet my girlfriends and give them a hug, I pick out something of them that like, oh, your hair is great today. Oh my God, that blouse. You can, so easy. You should do it to every girlfriend every day that you're with them. Oh yeah, totally, totally. I did to somebody the other day, I was like, oh my God, your boots. Like, I love them.

Aransas Savas (42:17.386)

Yes, and even strangers. 

One little way you elevate your community, the planet, or the world, it seems sort of silly to ask you this, since it's, I feel like, the whole of your life.

Chrisie Canny (43:01.050)

you know, yeah, I'm gonna get, I love to bring the community together to fundrise and you know, that's what we do.

Aransas Savas (43:09.282)

So tell us about a woman who has inspired you, who you think might inspire us, Chrissy.

Chrisie Canny (43:15.926)

Maureen Spataro is amazing. She lifts every woman up that I know. And she is the victim of sexual assault and domestic violence. She had a mental breakdown at the age of 49.

Aransas Savas (43:34.817)

Hmm.

Chrisie Canny (43:42.238)

She went and worked on it. She's still working on it. She loves to say her mess is her message. And she's just a beautiful gift to us all. She's going out, she's talking, trying to give the warning signs to teenage girls.

Oh, for those of you listening, head over to theuplifterspodcast.com to tell us about the women who inspire you. We all get so much braver and stronger and more empowered when we are together.

Aransas Savas (44:44.218)

And this is how we raise one another up, through telling our stories, through being honest in the way that Chrissy has, through embracing all the mess as a part of the message. And I am so grateful for you, Chrissy, for your story.

Aransas Savas (45:04.950)

And whether the folks listening are looking at this through the lens of a cancer journey or through frankly any challenge that exists, I believe there is a message in your story to all of us that we can find greater power together in our truth and all it takes is the courage to share our story with honesty.

Aransas Savas (45:32.690)

as we look for the opportunities to use these challenges to bring us a greater sense of purpose and impact with our lives. Thank you all for listening and Chrissy, thank you so much for being here.

Julie Hartigan didn’t grow up with much money, but she was smart, worked hard, and was good at math. As she neared high school graduation, she filled out a bubble form that told her she should pursue engineering, accounting, or architecture as a career. She knew she wanted to get out and see the world, and since her high school guidance counselor told her girls couldn’t be architects, she decided to become an engineer. 

She was on track to make lots of money and get lots of fancy promotions to her job title, but she walked away from it all.

It turns out, Julie wasn’t just good at math. She was also really good at cooking, hosting, and understanding what other people want and need. In this episode, you’ll hear what happened when Julie leaned fully into all of her gifts and talents. Spoiler alert: It all worked out really well. 

And that makes it extra important to listen closely to this episode because while we will hear stories over and over about what happens when it doesn’t work, maybe what we really need is more stories about what happens when it does. (And honestly, if it doesn’t work out as you hoped, you’ll probably be fine, and learn exactly what you need to learn for the next bold choice you make!)

💓Give yourself permission. It’s pretty unlikely that you’ll get what you want without asking for it. 

💓Don’t wait until you’re ready. Start saying yes before you are 1000% sure that you're ready, because otherwise, you'll never be ready

💓Say yes to adventure. Maybe that thing you want to do is scary. Maybe you aren’t sure you’ll be good at it. The adventure is finding out what’s possible if you try.

💓Tune out discouraging voices. It doesn't matter what you do. People are always going to have an opinion of you. You might as well do what's true for you because even if you do what they say you should do, then someone else will have something to say to you.

💓Stay clear-eyed. Your old familiar life or career or relationship will always want to pull you back, so remember what you didn’t want as you create what you do want.

💓Do what truly lights you up. Even though everyone else is doing something, and it’s possible for you to do it, if you are not truly energized by it, it’s going to be infinitely tougher to be successful.

If Julie’s story makes you hunger for more joy, more connection, and more delicious wisdom, join her on one of her fabulous upcoming trips to Tuscany! You can learn more about them at www.JulieHartigan.com. Follow @juliehartigan on IG & @cookingwjulie on FB and Youtube for more delicious wisdom!

Meet all of The Uplifters at https://www.theuplifterspodcast.com

Julie Hartigan

Julie Hartigan is an engineer-turned-chef and empty nester mom of 2 girls - who helps women live their best lives at all ages and stages through healthy cooking & coaching programs as well as through empowering and fun Food-Wine-Culture trips for women to Italy with more locations coming soon. Julie is a regular on morning and lifestyle shows and has published 1000's of recipes and cooking videos. Her small group women's travel experiences focus on women-supporting-women with a priority on visiting with inspiring women chefs, winemakers, and artisans in Italy. The chef-led trips are designed to be both inspiring and transformative as well as a safe supportive group for solo travelers to join to experience the world.

Listen to our latest episode in the player here, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Julie Hartigan didn’t grow up with much money, but she was smart, worked hard, and was good at math. As she neared high school graduation, she filled out a bubble form that told her she should pursue engineering, accounting, or architecture as a career. She knew she wanted to get out and see the world, and since her high school guidance counselor told her girls couldn’t be architects, she decided to become an engineer. 

She was on track to make lots of money and get lots of fancy promotions to her job title, but she walked away from it all.

It turns out, Julie wasn’t just good at math. She was also really good at cooking, hosting, and understanding what other people want and need. In this episode, you’ll hear what happened when Julie leaned fully into all of her gifts and talents. Spoiler alert: It all worked out really well. 

And that makes it extra important to listen closely to this episode because while we will hear stories over and over about what happens when it doesn’t work, maybe what we really need is more stories about what happens when it does. (And honestly, if it doesn’t work out as you hoped, you’ll probably be fine, and learn exactly what you need to learn for the next bold choice you make!)

Here’s a taste of Julie’s recipe for a big, juicy life:

💓Give yourself permission. It’s pretty unlikely that you’ll get what you want without asking for it. 

💓Don’t wait until you’re ready. Start saying yes before you are 1000% sure that you're ready, because otherwise, you'll never be ready

💓Say yes to adventure. Maybe that thing you want to do is scary. Maybe you aren’t sure you’ll be good at it. The adventure is finding out what’s possible if you try.

💓Tune out discouraging voices. It doesn't matter what you do. People are always going to have an opinion of you. You might as well do what's true for you because even if you do what they say you should do, then someone else will have something to say to you.

💓Stay clear-eyed. Your old familiar life or career or relationship will always want to pull you back, so remember what you didn’t want as you create what you do want.

💓Do what truly lights you up. Even though everyone else is doing something, and it’s possible for you to do it, if you are not truly energized by it, it’s going to be infinitely tougher to be successful.

If Julie’s story makes you hunger for more joy, more connection, and more delicious wisdom, join her on one of her fabulous upcoming trips to Tuscany! You can learn more about them at www.JulieHartigan.com. Follow @juliehartigan on IG & @cookingwjulie on FB and Youtube for more delicious wisdom!

Watch the video of our full conversation

Note: as we transition to paid subscriptions, the videos and transcripts will be for paid subscribers only

Messy Transcript

Aransas Savas (00:03.650)

Welcome to the Uplifters podcast. I'm your host, Aransas Savas, and I've had the great joy of working in coaching and behavior change for 20 years now. And along the way, I've met all sorts of women with extraordinary stories. Today, I'm gonna introduce you to one of them. Our guest today is Julie Hartigan. And Julie is an Uplifter in...

every sense of the word, every room she walks into is just a little bit brighter. And not just because of her effervescent and contagious joy and smile, but because her life story reminds us all that when we are true to ourselves, we are able to have more impact on the world with our lives.

Aransas Savas (01:01.874)

deeper and more meaningful connection with other people and we just feel better in every way. So today we're going to hear Julie's incredible journey from a career in engineering to her life as a celebrity chef and recipe developer who appears frequently on morning shows and you've probably seen her on television somewhere over the years. She's published thousands of recipes

Julie Hartigan (01:24.860)

Thank you.

Aransas Savas (01:31.768)

best, truest lives through her work coaching and leading transformational food, wine, and culture trips through Italy. Julie, thank you so much for being here.

Julie Hartigan (01:43.867)

goodness. Thank you for having me so much and thank you for that intro too. You've already lifted my day just from hearing you speak that way. Thank you.

Aransas Savas (01:51.730)

My favorite thing to say is that uplifting is contagious. And it is. I will leave this conversation, and all of our listeners will leave this conversation feeling a little elevated, I believe, based on your story. So let's start with this transition from engineering to being a chef. So how did you even get into engineering? So outside of my brain.

Julie Hartigan (01:55.214)

true.

Julie Hartigan (02:03.427)

Mm-hmm. I am here for that.

Julie Hartigan (02:15.295)

Yeah. So funny. It's so funny. You know, don't you want to go back to your little 17 year old self and just hug them and be like, Oh, gosh, it's so confusing right now. So I was just really good at math. And I grew up in a very blue collar environment where my family didn't always have enough and I kind of had we had enough love but we didn't you know, have all the things and

For me, I had a really lovely childhood, but I always wanted to see the world and just do more and get out there. And the best path, it truly had nothing to do with, I wanna be an engineer. It was a path to go get a very stable career. And I mean, I graduated high school in 87. So, you know, engineering in the late 80s, early 90s was like one of the better careers to get into and I could do it.

Julie Hartigan (03:09.223)

I filled out a bubble form that was sort of like, what are your skills and interests, you know? And I didn't know, I'd been waitressing and working in a supermarket. And it was math, engineering, accounting, or architecture. You know, the math, I was like, well, I don't really wanna like teach, just teach. I wanna have a corporate career. I wanna get out there and travel and do things.

Julie Hartigan (03:36.095)

the accounting, I was like, no, you know, some people love accounting to me. Even then I knew architecture sounded fascinating, but believe it or not, I had a high school guidance counselor tell me I could not as a woman be an architect,the things that were said to me as a young woman. And I just had to really plow through. Um, but ironically, and interestingly, the type of engineering I decided I really wanted to be was an industrial engineer, which.

Aransas Savas (03:48.613)

Ugh.

Aransas Savas (03:54.176)

Yeah.

Julie Hartigan (04:05.347)

combines people and process because I knew I was a people person. I just wanted to be an engineer to go do the thing. So yeah, I got a master's in engineering. I did process engineering and a manufacturing plant. And then I went and did tech management consulting all through my twenties and early thirties.

Aransas Savas (04:07.355)

Mmm... Mm-hmm...

Aransas Savas (04:22.582)

Wow. And so for you, it sounds like this stable professional life was really also about freedom to be able to go see, do what you wanted to do.

Julie Hartigan (04:31.375)

Yes, absolutely. Oh yeah, and really give myself a different life and give my daughters a different life. I have two daughters that are in college and I actually grew up with their dad, which is interesting too. And I'm now happily, amicably divorced. That was another major change in my life later in life. For us both, he and I, both to get to be happy and true and live the way we wanna live. But...

Yeah, it was, it was about stability. But I have to tell you the whole way through, I remember being an undergrad in this intense engineering program. It was seven guys to every girl, 12 to one in grad school. I'd be the only woman in the room all the time with lots of things being said to me. But interestingly enough, like the guys were more like your brothers. It wasn't like that. It was more that you had, there was definitely a lot of sexism about women in tech. Even through the nineties, it was that way. But even as an undergrad, I would say.

Aransas Savas (05:21.495)

Mm-hmm.

Julie Hartigan (05:26.491)

I'm just going to do this engineering thing to set myself up, make some money, buy a house, and then I'm going to open a B and B with a cute little gourmet shop in it. Or then I'm going, I always had my mind's eye on something in the food. It was just always about food for me. I, I was the little kid who would eat the weird thing. I would order the thing no one ever had. I would stand behind my grandma, anyone's grandma, especially I grew where I grew up. It was pretty diverse. And

If someone's grandma was making something I'd never seen or had before, I was like, I need in on this. I'm gonna stand behind you on a little stool and write it down. And I wrote my first recipe, it's on my website at joeyhardigan.com for rhubarb crunch because my grandma's rhubarb crunch. And I wrote that when I was eight years old by standing behind her. Like it was always there. It was just finding her, giving her permission to come out and letting her out, you know?

Aransas Savas (06:19.710)

Yeah, yeah. So talk about that. So you've got this stable career. It sounds like you were doing it. You were successful.

Julie Hartigan (06:29.651)

Oh yeah, I was on partner track. I was rocking it. And you know, but I was the person on every consulting project. I was a road warrior. I was always traveling. I was always the one who would research ahead of time. And this is before the internet. You couldn't, I mean, in the early 90s, you couldn't just go online and find things. I would be the one figuring out, picking up the free newspapers. Who's the chef in this town? What's the like iconic cuisine? I was the one planning all the travel for all of us, you know, like on vacations even. I'd be the one.

picking the location and finding the cool places to eat. And honestly, even with this intense and lucrative career, I would come home weekends and help a friend who was starting. He now has a few successful restaurants in Hoboken near where I live. I would help him cater parties just for fun. I would help him open his restaurant just for fun. So I was always looking for the way to do that while still having the other. And it was really, it was quite the process to

I use the word give yourself permission a lot, because I think that's really all we, as humans, need, is to look inside and give ourselves permission to do what we want to do. And it took a while to get to that.

Aransas Savas (07:38.862)

It's interesting as I listen to you, because it feels very clear based on the way that you're telling this story, that some of your core values are curiosity, which I think we've now, I mean, just in these first few minutes, we've heard you reference your innate curiosity and how much that energizes you probably 10 times already, which speaks volumes for what that means to you and your personal satisfaction. And then this feeling of freedom.

Julie Hartigan (08:01.251)

Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (08:08.046)

and the ability to explore and discover and do things on your own terms. And then this problem solving aspect. And so the thing that I think is really interesting is that you were embodying and being true to all those values in your career as an engineer. And then.

Julie Hartigan (08:08.294)

Mm-hmm.

Julie Hartigan (08:29.262)

Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (08:31.526)

you decided to shift that attention into a different way of honoring those core values. So talk to me about that big moment of transition. How did you work up the nerve after living with some lack maybe financially and some uncertainty there to go back and try something?

Julie Hartigan (08:45.418)

Yeah.

Julie Hartigan (08:52.475)

For sure.

Julie Hartigan (08:55.315)

Oh, it was, oh my gosh, my ex-husband, I'm so thankful. He was extremely supportive of me wanting to make this shift, which enabled me, right? I was able to stay on his benefits because for a lot of people, when they go to, it's such a sad about the state of healthcare, right? We should all have access to it. But that was something that was limiting me at a point, or a lot of people would limit them. It was not a September 11th driven decision. A lot of people did change their lives with 9-11. It was a huge like… obviously like terrible, horrible, horrible moment. For me, what happened, again, this was always on my mind. I probably had a million different, I actually had my eye on the culinary school that I wound up going to in New York City because they had a work study where you could work there as an assistant in the classroom, learning and exposing yourself in exchange for free tuition. And for me, I was like, that's perfect. No student loans later in my thirties or whatnot. But so I was pregnant with my first daughter when 9-11 happened and I was...living right across the river from Lower Manhattan. I worked on like one building over from the Trade Center. I was home morning sick. I was running tech training programs for Goldman Sachs. I had like 20 men working for me in the city downtown that day. All the students at Goldman, I'd been in Windows on the World the day before testing the students. And again, it wasn't that 9-11, I mean, 9-11 for many of us made us realize like, wow, life is short. We've really, I've always been a big believer in like, Life is short, really, really live it. That was definitely one of those awful events that reminded so many of us of that. But what actually happened for me was it gave me permission to be at home for the rest of my pregnancy because my company went under. I was reporting, I was set up to actually stay trapped Aransas, if you want to know the truth. And it's very interesting how some turns of events, it was, I reported to the president who was a powerhouse woman, who was a working mom.

The head of sales was a working mom. They were ready to support me as a new mom with this pregnancy. They were ready to let me go part-time. They were making it very easy for me to stay in tech. The company went under. And what can be considered, and the economy was terrible after 9-11, and I looked around and I said, am I going to go and put myself into this stressful economy, stressful career, road warrior, not get to see my daughter?

and give a nanny half. And for some women that's a choice, if they love their career, of course, that makes so much sense. But for me, to do that for a career I didn't really, really wanna stay in. So that was my shift. I worked as a hostess while my daughters were babies, while I had my two daughters in a row. I helped organize townwide events in Hoboken. It's a Hoboken for anyone who doesn't know it, is a mile square city.

Aransas Savas (11:22.286)

Mm-hmm.

Julie Hartigan (11:43.619)

right across the river from lower Manhattan. It has about 60,000 residents. It looks like Sesame Street, it's all stoops and everyone knows each other. So I just, I plugged myself into ways to start dabbling in the culinary field, if you will, and in events while being a stay-at-home mom for two to three years. And then the second, my little one, who's now in college, the second she started preschool, I...

ran right into the city and that was the day that I started working at the culinary school. So that was my transition period. And I loved being a stay at home mom. I was someone in my twenties who thought I didn't even I was such a type a little tech consultant. I was like, I don't know what babies are gonna do for me. I don't have time for that. I really wasn't sure if I wanted to be a mom and getting to be home with them for three years was like such a joy and a gift to sue. I tried to always enjoy whatever I'm in. Right. And um, yeah, so that was that was my

9-11 correlated, but not exactly story.

Aransas Savas (12:38.706)

Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think the pandemic was that for so many people as well. Whenever I think of the pandemic, the image I have is like a barrel of monkeys. Do you remember that kid's toy? And you shake the barrel of monkeys, and you throw them, and they go all over the place, and you don't know where they're going to land. And I kind of feel like these.

Julie Hartigan (12:49.251)

Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah.

Aransas Savas (12:57.546)

major events that we experience, 9-11 being one, the pandemic being another, it is this, it's just a barrel of monkeys and everything gets scattered and then we look up and we're like, am I where I want to be? Or do I need to get from here to there? And if so, how the heck do I do that?

Julie Hartigan (13:05.603)

Amen.

Julie Hartigan (13:09.639)

Exactly, exactly.

Julie Hartigan (13:18.563)

Right, right, right, right. I've seen a lot of changes in personal life, friends coming out of the pandemic, not just people moving. Yeah, and I'm sure you have too. I agree, I agree with that. I think also early loss. I've lost, and this is really interesting, I've reflected on this a lot. There were three close friends of mine who were very special to me, who were very informative in how I live, and they all died sudden.

Julie Hartigan (13:46.663)

One didn't die suddenly, but like at 42, she was diagnosed with cancer and died from cancer in six months. So to me, that's like, um, and they were very, very special people in my life. And I lost all three of them way younger than you would expect to lose a friend. And I think that, you know, as you're saying with 9 11 pandemic, I think also with sudden loss, it can be such a reminder to really not squander your time.

Julie Hartigan (14:15.767)

We get this one shake at life, don't squander it. Like really make the most of it because we're not guaranteed anything tomorrow.

Julie Hartigan (14:38.235)

How often do you go, I can't believe it's been a year. I can't believe that was a year ago. We do that all the time. I can't believe that was a month ago. Like for everyone listening, like our time is just like fleeting by. So enjoy it and maximize it and live your best true self while you're here.

Aransas Savas (14:54.238)

Yeah, I think that's so right. And yet, why don't we? Well, we don't because we don't know what's ahead. And that's scary. we've seen what other people have done, we've seen their paths, and we're like, okay, that can be all right. Oh.

Julie Hartigan (15:01.947)

conformity. Now, there's also...

Julie Hartigan (15:10.353)

Yeah.

Julie Hartigan (15:13.143)

Oh, but messages too, Aransas, right? Like, you know, I think especially as women, I'm sure when you became a mom too, everyone has an opinion when you suddenly, you know, but with your whole life, right? Doesn't everyone, oh, and I think it's way, the norm is to stay safe and play it safe. So anyone who's choosing not to is thus bucking against the norm and you're gonna have to be ready.

Aransas Savas (15:24.179)

Yeah, everybody has an opinion.

Aransas Savas (15:31.526)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Julie Hartigan (15:37.111)

Oh man, the things loved ones would say to me like, oh so much for those engineering degrees or oh so much for, you know, it's okay. Like, but you have to get, oh sure, yeah, they care. But you gotta get real comfortable in your own skin and say, I love you and I know you're saying this to me with love, but I have to release myself from what your expectations of me are or were or what you think is best for me because I know what's best for me. I think once you can, as a woman, like,

Aransas Savas (15:44.105)

And it's well-intentioned and it's based in their experience.

Aransas Savas (16:01.518)

Mmm.

Julie Hartigan (16:04.619)

untangle from that and not care so much about what other people think about you. People are always, I was just saying this to your girlfriend the other day, people are always going to have an opinion of you. It doesn't matter what you do. They're going to say some things. You might as well do what's true to you because even if you do what they say you should do, then some other population will have something to say to you.

Aransas Savas (16:19.815)

Mmm.

Aransas Savas (16:24.638)

It's so true and it's so important for us to say and hear. And the, because I think our brains, our imaginations are really great at conjuring all the ways things can go wrong. And we can absorb all the stories of what doesn't work and we can think about all the ways we can fail, we can flounder, we can feel unsafe.

Julie Hartigan (16:40.231)

Sure.

Julie Hartigan (16:49.197)

Mm-hmm.

Julie Hartigan (16:52.862)

Right.

Aransas Savas (16:53.310)

And so that's a big part of why we even have this podcast, because I just firmly believe that every time we hear a story like yours and we hear it worked out, and sometimes it doesn't, and then something else comes from that, we can all start to just turn up that little voice in our head that says, what if it works?

Julie Hartigan (17:08.176)

Yeah.

Julie Hartigan (17:15.847)

Sure, yeah. What if you flip it to, what if it all works out? What if it's even better than that? Oh, I'm done, you know? And also, what if it doesn't? I'm still whole and complete and wonderful and worthy, and also I'm flexible, because I'll say this, I didn't get into the culinary world and say, I know exactly what I'm going to do. I know exactly how this is going to play out. It's been, I've been in the culinary.

Aransas Savas (17:21.186)

Yeah.

Aransas Savas (17:29.164)

Yeah.

Julie Hartigan (17:43.487)

world now for 12 years and the adventures I've had here. One thing that's big, I think that would give as advice to anyone who's starting out anything new is again, give yourself permission. No one's ever going to like give you this promotion and a new title. You have to just say, start saying yes to things before you are 1000% sure that you're ready because otherwise you'll never be ready and say yes to the adventure is another mantra of mine that like, you don't know what I started doing television live TV at age.

Aransas Savas (17:57.952)

Mm.

Aransas Savas (18:02.166)

Yes, yes, yes.

Julie Hartigan (18:13.175)

And you could never have told me that TV is in my, if you paid TV was in my future, you know, like the different things, like you just, I think just go with your joy and go with your curiosity, like you said, and trust the process. And if you find something that you aren't enjoying, it's okay to stop doing that and go in a different direction, stay nimble.

Aransas Savas (18:32.502)

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, so you made the shift to being a stay-at-home mom. Then you went and you attended culinary school. What was your vision of what your life would look like after culinary school? So, what was your vision of what your life would look like after culinary school?

Julie Hartigan (18:41.920)

Yeah.

Julie Hartigan (18:50.179)

Oh gosh, I, yeah, so if I told you the different things that, well, this is actually really, this was a good like, I caught myself, thank goodness. So in culinary school, I started personal chefing, so it was something that was accessible to me as a student and my kids were still, my girls were still little. I started teaching cooking classes because that was something that I love to teach. I've always loved to do that. I was starting a little cooking school for kids and moms. I would get pulled into helping with events or catering. I kind of said yes to anything, if you wanna know the truth.

Aransas Savas (19:04.908)

Yeah.

Julie Hartigan (19:20.099)

I said yes to free things, to unpaid things, because at that stage in a career change, you do that to make the connection to learn. Not for long though, you have to remember your worth, right? It's like this fine line of like, work for free until you're like, no, okay, now it's not free anymore. I took a class. It was, I don't even know that I knew recipe development was a field. And ICE culinary is where I went to school and they had a woman in, she was lovely. She worked at Food Network. I wound up interning with her.

Aransas Savas (19:24.586)

Mm-hmm.

Julie Hartigan (19:48.247)

She was a mentor to me for sure, Sarah Copeland. She wound up being at Real Simple Magazine and things, but she did a little class on a Saturday on recipe development. And I was like, that's interesting. Again, just like keep your ear out, that's interesting. I took that one class and a friend of mine, it's a mutual colleague who we know named Lisa, who is a mom friend, had just moved from an editorial magazine to work at WW. And she said, hey, you know.

I think you is the engineer brain. Plus I've eaten at your home for a zillion parties and you've cooked for me and like your sensibility works for the kinds of recipes we need. So it started with like two recipes. But the other thing I think for people who are looking at a career change, you never really understand or know how what you used to do will help you in what you do now. And it does, nothing is not for naught. So.

Aransas Savas (20:29.762)

Wow.

Aransas Savas (20:42.035)

Mm-hmm.

Julie Hartigan (20:42.891)

My consulting background paid off in spades in the corporate world. So coming out of culinary school, you know, a lot of people didn't have that corporate background. I did. I knew how to navigate companies and work with budgets and, and, and, you know, healthy, honest, like cross-sell upsell, seek new project opportunities within any, any client. And I worked with WW bed bath and beyond real simple major, major corporations. But then Aransas, it just kept shifting. It was like.

oh, now there's social media to learn. Okay, I can figure that out. Let's learn how to do Instagram and Reels and Facebook and okay, you wanna put me on TV? You think I can, okay, let's, like, it just, let's go. I think having that kind of approach is what allows you to. And I did know, I'll say this, I had a hard no coming out of culinary school on working industry hours. My daughters were little. I knew I'm not working nights and weekends. So for me,

Aransas Savas (21:22.082)

Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (21:32.609)

Uh huh.

Julie Hartigan (21:37.615)

Food media, what they call it, was the angle. Oh, the watch out, I applied to a job, there's a company, they do grocery delivery, they're huge in New York City, called Fresh Direct, and they had a job posting with my culinary school for someone to create recipes for them, they do prepared meals. And I said, oh, okay, cool, let me apply for that. So, former management consultant Julie winds up interviewing with them, convincing them that they need a head of total quality management for their entire facility and I write a job description for it and they want to hire me for it. And I suddenly realized like, whoa, you just wrote yourself an engineering job. Yeah. Like, what are you doing? And thankfully there was a close friend of mine who said like, you just recreated your old career, but in a food. Yeah. But like, it's, I think we also, as we grow and develop and shift and change, we have to always be like, things still happen to me. We have patterns we fall back into that are, that are safe and secure.

Aransas Savas (22:15.346)

want to do that. Yes!

Aransas Savas (22:25.381)

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Aransas Savas (22:34.858)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Julie Hartigan (22:37.259)

And if we're not always on the lookout for them, it's really easy to go and yeah, I love that you brought this up, because when I think about what you said about how you started at your culinary career, it was, well, I was really good at throwing these parties, and I was really good at teaching these classes, and this was easy for me. So it was tapping into places where you were comfortable and confident. On the other hand, you had this really strong clarity about where you didn't want to be.

Julie Hartigan (23:04.250)

Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (23:11.966)

which was in a corporate role, in a restaurant, in that very structured environment again. So you have to consider like both what kind of work do I wanna be doing, but also like where, you know, what hours, like what do I want? And I know I'm sure as you coach and when I coach I'm like envision your life, right? Like, do you wanna be going into an office every day? Do you wanna be sitting at a desk every day? Or do you wanna, I actually had worked at Food Network coming right out of culinary school and it was great. It was so much fun. I worked there and at a cooking magazine. So it got me into it.

Aransas Savas (23:28.628)

Mm-hmm.

Julie Hartigan (23:50.051)

And Food Network wanted to hire me to be a producer. And I thought about it. And then again, I said, wait, you know what? Like, let's go on your own and be creative and let this be fun. They love that you're corporate and that you can do this. But so I said no to some major opportunities to pursue myself and my own creativity, I would say.

Aransas Savas (24:08.106)

And you just couldn't have done that without, again, this sense of clarity about what you wanted your life to look like and what you wanted it to not look like. And we do so much visioning about where we want to go. But I also think it's super important to flesh out the visions of what we don't want. Where did we feel trapped or closed down in the last chapter? Where did we feel held back? And

Julie Hartigan (24:26.630)

Yeah.

Julie Hartigan (24:30.969)

Mm-hmm.

Julie Hartigan (24:34.821)

Right.

Aransas Savas (24:36.254)

Let's not replicate those. But I do think, and I see this, it's funny, whether I'm coaching people in work or running or relationships, we have these tendencies to fall back into the places where we feel like, I know what I'm doing. I know my way around here. I know how to succeed. I know how to have an impact. So I'm just gonna go do that. And then we keep holding onto that stuff. And then we're like, ah, why am I still where I always was?

Julie Hartigan (24:44.251)

Yeah.

Julie Hartigan (24:52.327)

comfort zone. It's comfort zone. Yeah. Yeah.

Julie Hartigan (25:00.015)

Yeah. I'm ready.

Julie Hartigan (25:04.779)

Exactly, exactly.

Aransas Savas (25:07.650)

So it just like, I'm really struck by your bravery and your clarity and your ability to move forward and let go because it is, you used the word nimble before. And I think that really to me is such a strong aspect of this story so far is yes and no, yes and no.

Julie Hartigan (25:11.223)

Oh, thank you. Thank you.

Julie Hartigan (25:30.355)

And honestly, always stay open. I think I've always been a very open person, which I think for me, food is a connector. It's cultural. It's a way to, you know, and open in everything. Like don't also with ageism, you know, I've already seen, I'm 53. I'm going to be 54 in November. And, you know, I think also not, oh, as a woman, yeah, I'm here to, I'm here to like proclaim it from the mountains because so many of us hide it. And, you know, honestly,

Julie Hartigan (25:59.751)

I get better the older I get. I'm wiser, I'm kinder, I'm more gentle with myself and with others and with all the things. But also don't limit yourself, anyone listening because of age. I have a client that is hiring me to run their TikTok for them right now. I'm gonna be creating content for them. And you know what? The engineer brain says, I'm on TikTok anyway. Anything, there's probably a lot of people know Marie Forleo, her book I think, Everything is Figureoutable.

Aransas Savas (26:16.174)

I'm going to go to bed.

Aransas Savas (26:28.787)

Yes.

Julie Hartigan (26:29.479)

Which is like, let's not limit ourselves and say that, oh, I can't do that. I'm too, I'm too what? I'm too, I'm too anything. Don't limit yourself, right? You can, you can, you can always stay nimble and stay curious and learn something new.

Aransas Savas (26:44.782)

Mmm, such a good reminder. So you Became a media chef you were again really successful at it. You were having a big impact you were Constantly creating new creative challenges for yourself and it feels like over the last few years You've begun to make another pivot 

Julie Hartigan (26:53.284)

Yeah.

Julie Hartigan (27:07.875)

I have. So there was like a, yeah, there were two quick shifts. So the first one was, you know, I always did work with France and collaborations and created content that way. And then I started identifying and realizing, you know, people want to hear from me too, like me creating recipes for directly for women and coaching programs for women. So I started joyfully and spontaneously doing that during the pandemic because we were all home.

Aransas Savas (27:26.347)

Yeah.

Julie Hartigan (27:34.243)

I was hosting cooking clubs, you know, we'd go live and I'd give people ideas for things to make. But then it's funny, I went and I don't regret at all this like career sidestep that didn't, honestly wasn't, didn't like, it was the first time that it felt like something I was working on wasn't like working and sticking and it was getting me really upset. And I finally figured out, sometimes you can't tell when you're in it, you have to look a little bit in the rear view and look at it. I decided, you know,

Julie Hartigan (28:03.143)

So I had in my mind's eye that I wanted to create these culinary travel experiences. I've always wanted to do this. My daughters were now in high school, about to go to college. It's the perfect time for me to do this. But we're in a pandemic. And at the same time, a lot of my corporate clients who I was doing YouTube shows for and all different things, they lost budget and they disappeared. So it was like this, like, everything shifted all at once for me. And I said, I'm going to just lean all in on creating online courses.

Aransas Savas (28:21.320)

Mm-hmm.

Julie Hartigan (28:32.615)

online programs and there's like a big, for anyone who's an entrepreneur out there, there's a lot of talk in industry about passive income and online courses and online things. And you know, I do believe in them, but I think also my energy is so personal with people that they, I want to be with them in person or live and they want me live. And I just poured myself into whatever I apply myself to. I really, really try hard. I really work hard at.

Aransas Savas (28:41.713)

Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (28:49.943)

Mmm.

Aransas Savas (29:00.263)

Yeah.

Julie Hartigan (29:01.739)

And I poured myself into building these things out. There's a whole terminology of like launching and launch event and funnels. And for people out there who know what I'm talking about, they're laughing right now because they know exactly what I'm saying. And you know what I have to say, it was also because we had what? I can't even remember them all now. Delta, blah, blah, blah, all the people weren't traveling. It wasn't a good time to launch a travel business, right? In 2021, even into 2022.

Aransas Savas (29:23.634)

Right, all the variations, right?

Julie Hartigan (29:29.875)

And I have to tell you, it was the first time it was quite the experience for me to say, wow, I've always actually kind of like, there are other areas of my life where I've like not been super successful with a career. That was a place where I always felt very good about things, right? Like I would apply myself, I would work hard. It was the first time that I worked hard and it didn't work. It wasn't easy. It was not easy.

Aransas Savas (29:50.594)

Mmm.

Aransas Savas (29:53.898)

What do you, looking back at it now, I think you're right, we have to have some distance. What do you see as signals that maybe this wasn't where your energy was most needed or where you were most engaged?

Julie Hartigan (29:58.618)

Yeah.

Julie Hartigan (30:03.407)

and

Julie Hartigan (30:13.843)

It kind of boiled down to a should versus a really excited about, right? Like I think I thought I should be doing this because it makes sense because a lot of people are successful at this. People are telling me I should do this. Not necessarily that this is the thing that lights truly lights me up.

Aransas Savas (30:17.206)

Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (30:21.250)

Yeah.

Aransas Savas (30:24.543)

Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (30:35.362)

Mm-hmm.

Julie Hartigan (30:35.827)

I love people. I joke that I'm like kind of a human golden retriever. Like let's play ball, let's hang out, let's have fun. Like that's just my approach to it. I might hug you. I've learned to ask, are you comfortable with a hug? But you know, that's just sort of, and so for me, yeah, it's gonna go to a should. That's the smart thing to do versus this is what I really wanna do. Because as soon as I shifted that to, I'm leaning all in on creating international women's.

Aransas Savas (30:53.706)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Julie Hartigan (31:04.783)

like juicy culinary food, wine culture, like how women like to travel travel experiences. It's so amazing how when it is the right thing, how much easier the launch pad is, how smooth it is, how it's just authentic and real and the energy is there. So, you know, I started working on that, honestly, just last spring. And it's like, I have a close friend,

Julie Hartigan (31:34.287)

who runs a women's adventure travel company for a decade. And she helped like coach me on, how do you start a travel company? You know, what do you, like, how do you even start that? And within nine months, I had like a fully booked sold out trip and bringing 15 women to Tuscany with me. And the thing that I wanted to do as part of the Aransas that I'm so excited about, we don't just go on a trip. It's, we go meet with really inspiring women.

Aransas Savas (31:41.628)

Uh huh.

Aransas Savas (31:51.915)

Oh.

Julie Hartigan (32:02.483)

In Italy, I wanna create experiences where women who want a shift in their life or who want that travel, who want that fun, who want that pampering, who wanna experience the world in a safe, supportive way. You know, a lot of women limit themselves. They don't travel, they're too busy raising a family, they're too busy with their career, they're waiting for someday to go on this trip. I wanna make them feel safe to come with me, but I wanna bring them, or am bringing them, to really inspiring stories too. So they get to meet with the woman who

Aransas Savas (32:04.138)

Huh.

Julie Hartigan (32:31.683)

Like that woman who raised her family on a vineyard and took over the vineyard in Tuscany from grandpa. And like all the men in the village said she couldn't do it but she did like that. Like kind of like a groupie pray love meets under the Tuscan sun meets, you know. t's funny how the push, the pushing to something and saying you should do it. And it's the smart thing that your heart isn't.

Julie Hartigan (33:01.015)

100% for it. How do you know, I wasn't as excited to do my job. I'm someone who really needs to be excited about what they're doing. I would sit down and go, I have to write these funnel emails. It just, it just wasn't me. It. I wish I could have tapped myself on the shoulder six months into it and said, it's okay to stop and not do that.

Aransas Savas (33:01.779)

Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (33:08.267)

Mm.

Aransas Savas (33:12.918)

same.

Aransas Savas (33:27.414)

Yeah, again, you use that word nimble. And I do think this is something that's maybe come up more often in these episodes than I expected. This permission to change our minds.

Julie Hartigan (33:36.240)

Hmm.

Julie Hartigan (33:39.671)

Yeah, yeah. And not call it failure. I don't look at my divorce as a failure at all. I look at staying in an unfulfilling marriage where you're not feeling yourself as for your life, just for the sake of it, personally for me. Everyone's different. For me, that would have been more of a failure than peaceably letting go of a relationship that wasn't serving me or him any longer. To me, that's not a failure, that's growth. Yeah.

Aransas Savas (33:43.445)

Right?

Aransas Savas (33:51.018)

Yeah.

Aransas Savas (34:07.394)

growth. Yeah.

Julie Hartigan (34:09.079)

And so any mistake we make in our career, I don't even call it a mistake, it's growth. I learned so much about myself. I also learned, you know, personal development wise, how much I tied my worth to my work, which is not good. That's not good. I went back into therapy, I talked through it a lot. I tried to untangle that. You know, and you think about it, you trace back all the way to that little girl who was like, I wanna create a life for myself. I'm gonna work hard to do this.

Aransas Savas (34:14.326)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (34:17.612)

Yeah.

Julie Hartigan (34:37.487)

So, you know, it's so interesting after, even after that whole journey to get to, you know, my early 50s and realize, oh, hey, wow, that's not a good, you shouldn't be so attached to that to define your worthiness and your success in life, right?

Aransas Savas (34:53.274)

Another theme I think that comes up in your stories is that these difficult times are difficult. And they are the teachers that in every instance have allowed you to break through into greater joy and connection and purpose.

Julie Hartigan (35:00.675)

Oh yeah.

Julie Hartigan (35:12.615)

Mm hmm. Absolutely. And you can't predict. It's so hard to see. You can't. It's really hard to see it when you're in it. I think the best advice would be to always call back on. And we've all had those times, whether it's like a bad breakup or a job loss or loss of a loved one or health scare or a mental health crisis. Like we've all had those moments in our lives. And it's to kind of remember, try to.

Julie Hartigan (35:36.919)

not relive the pain, but recall how you felt in it, but then also reassure yourself that there was sunshine on the other side of that and learning and growth on the other side of that. Because when you're in it, so hard to see it, it's so hard to see out of it, right? So for anyone out there struggling in any way, please try to remember another time you struggled and then were so joyful or so happy or in your group afterwards, because life is those ups and downs.

It's a roller coaster. remember that movie, Parenthood? It's a really sweet moment in it where it says, I don't want to ride the merry-go-round in a circle. I want to ride the roller coaster. Right? Without the down, you don't have the up. It's, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, I'm definitely, like, I'm really just so excited. I leave in...

Aransas Savas (36:24.106)

It's a roller coaster.

Aransas Savas (36:29.972)

Oh.

Aransas Savas (36:36.860)

Oh, I love that. That's right. That's right.

Julie Hartigan (36:46.063)

10 days, I have the most beautiful group of women and they're, yeah, they're, and they're, you know, I'm so joyful. I'm so thankful that they're, they're coming with me and that I get to be part of their experience of sharing the joy and beauty of this travel. There are some that are going through divorces. There are some that are older single women who maybe have felt left out, like everyone was off on the couples trip. You know, our cultures, women are left out a lot in a lot of ways, or they leave themselves out because they say,

Aransas Savas (36:48.580)

Oh

Aransas Savas (37:15.195)

Mm hmm. We're uncomfortable. Yeah.

Julie Hartigan (37:16.415)

Oh, I can't do that now. You know, my own mom and my aunt, like I know a lot of women I love, I love a lot who have not said yes to themselves in life and gone on the trip. And they now, you know, again, life goes fast. We're not guaranteed good health forever. And you hit a point and you're like, wow, now, like to get to a point of your life and look and go, oh gosh, I was meant to do that and didn't do it, is heartbreaking to me.

Aransas Savas (37:41.562)

Mm-hmm.

Julie Hartigan (37:43.855)

So to create experiences, I have three mother daughter duo is coming. And the moms are like in their 60s or 70s, you know? So it's quality time for mother and daughter to go bond. And you know, we're all so busy. It's long distance friends who don't get to see each other who are coming. Like I just want to create such a, I'm so excited to create a magical joyful experience for them.

Aransas Savas (37:47.745)

Uhhh...

Aransas Savas (37:55.438)

Yes.

Aransas Savas (38:06.334)

Oh, I'm so excited to hear the impact of this too, because this transformative experience that you're giving these women, that's the thing about women. We are communal, we are social, and we are influential.

Julie Hartigan (38:24.615)

Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (38:24.894)

And so every one of these women who are touched by the woman at the vineyard and the food that they experience and the scenery that they envelop themselves in and your beautiful spirit, all of that then will ripple out and infuse every person that they touch. And that will reach out to others. And I just think I get so inspired just imagining that.

And it's all because you said, I'm not gonna do what doesn't feel true. I'm not gonna do what doesn't bring me joy. I'm not gonna suffer. I'm not gonna shut on myself. I'm gonna go and do what I dreamed of, and I'm gonna let.

Julie Hartigan (38:54.141)

excited about.

Julie Hartigan (38:58.743)

Right, I'm not gonna do what I should do.

Julie Hartigan (39:06.915)

lean into the joy. There's so much, so much open, I'm sure you've felt this too, and for I've felt this, like when you travel and you're in a different place, your mind is open, you're more, you're just willing to receive, I think, because you're out of your everyday. I know that's happened for me when I've been in another place. When you're on vacation in some magical, beautiful place, you start to think bigger about yourself.

and your life and the possibilities that there are. And I'm going to be, they don't know it yet, but I'm going to be doing some gentle coaching and prompts and journaling and things to help. I believe that if you're open to receive when you're in that kind of an environment and you're taking care of yourself, you're saying yes to you on a trip, you're in a different place, that's when you're going to come home transformed, come home feeling different, ready to make change in your everyday life. Let's bring those, that feeling.

Aransas Savas (39:34.487)

Yeah.

Aransas Savas (39:43.597)

Mmm, yes.

Aransas Savas (39:57.474)

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Julie Hartigan (40:02.427)

that message you got back into your everyday life.

Aransas Savas (40:05.078)

And you're doing more of these strips, it's not a one and done. Yay. Oh my God.

Julie Hartigan (40:06.911)

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no. So multiple times a year, spring in Tuscany, fall harvest in Tuscany with a truffle hunt coming up in October. I'm keeping the groups really small too. We're traveling like girlfriends. We do Zoom calls leading up to the trip to get to know each other. I...

Julie Hartigan (40:34.831)

Oh, it's going to be a blast. We have like a group WhatsApp chat. It's like 10 to 12 women at a time. These aren't massive touristy things, but I'm adding new locations. So spring break in Sicily is coming next spring, which is going to be fabulous. And I'm scouting the Loire Valley, France just in two weeks I go, which is, honestly, I was not quite aware until I dug in. It's an hour south of Paris and it's where the kings and queens would vacation in these.

Aransas Savas (40:48.916)

amazing.

Julie Hartigan (41:02.383)

beautiful chateaus and mini castles that are now places you can stay. And it's wine tasting and bike riding and baguettes and French cheese. And it's going to be, so yeah, I just want to create, my goal is going to be to create magical, dreamy, transformative experiences for women to get to say yes to themselves and experience the world with me and with Chef Julie as their guide.

Aransas Savas (41:06.986)

Oh my gosh.

Aransas Savas (41:25.942)

Oh my goodness, I'm so excited for you and I'm so happy for you and I'm so happy for the world. Because you are a model of what this can look like and you are a reminder that it's worth it to do the scary stuff and it's worth it to stop shoulding on ourselves and it's worth it to feel a little unsafe and a little uncertain sometimes and there is a chance.

Julie Hartigan (41:34.236)

Oh, thank you.

Julie Hartigan (41:43.579)

Mm-hmm.

Julie Hartigan (41:49.861)

Yeah.

Aransas Savas (41:54.230)

that if we bring our gifts and our passion, it could work out. And what if it does?

Julie Hartigan (41:59.739)

Yes, and it does, exactly. Imagine up, someone said that. Don't imagine down, don't visualize down, it doesn't work, visualize up. Another, and you know what, Aransas, and you're doing this with the Uplifters, I'm so proud of you and excited for you. And I've been such a fan of yours for so long. We've been like you-go girlfriends for such a time. But I think it's so important to...

Aransas Savas (42:19.454)

We are.

Julie Hartigan (42:24.239)

Choose carefully what you feed yourself, like what you read, what you watch, what you listen to. Surround yourself with positive people who love you and support you. Not just yes people, however, with people who see the possibility in you, and this is in your personal life. It doesn't mean you have to cut people out of your life, but like manage their messages, because their messages are coming with love, but they might be limiting you. So be really, really careful of who you let into your.

Aransas Savas (42:26.762)

Mm. Yes. Yes.

Aransas Savas (42:34.861)

Right.

Aransas Savas (42:44.206)

do you spend your time with, yeah?

Julie Hartigan (42:53.091)

I heard someone say that's a mindfulness coach, your mind garden, like whoever comes into your mind garden better be helping you grow flowers in there, not creating scary thoughts and storms and like darkness. You want your garden to grow, right cobwebs? I sound like such a woo-woo person right now, but like only let the juicy, supportive, uplifting people into your mind, into your whole energy, you know?

Aransas Savas (42:56.545)

Ugh.

Aransas Savas (43:05.294)

cobwebs. Yes.

Aransas Savas (43:12.394)

No.

Aransas Savas (43:20.906)

And you're right, that isn't just the yes people. And in fact, it's often the one, the challengers, right? And you spoke to that earlier. All right, so this is a good segue into our lightning round. What's one quick way you raise your own energy, Julie?

Julie Hartigan (43:23.972)

No.

Julie Hartigan (43:32.923)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's go.

Julie Hartigan (43:36.459)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. If I need energy, it's some kind of like, walk outside or get outside. If it's a rainy crappy day, I cuddle with my dog. My dog Harvey is like Instagram famous with me and I'll cuddle with Harvey and I immediately feel better.

Aransas Savas (43:45.765)

Ugh.

Aransas Savas (43:51.530)

I love that. One easy way you boost other women.

Julie Hartigan (43:55.159)

Oh gosh, yeah. So one thing I do is I catch any woman who puts herself down, because culturally it's such a common thing. Oh, we make fun of our hair, our clothes, our body, all these things, and I always gently say, hey, hey, and I counter that with like more uplifting, and I try to just always share uplifting messages with any woman that I'm sharing space with.

Aransas Savas (44:03.746)

Yes.

Aransas Savas (44:20.162)

Feed yourself well, as you said. One little way you elevate your community, the planet or the world.

Julie Hartigan (44:21.992)

Yeah.

Julie Hartigan (44:27.855)

Sure, I actually honestly, I am truly on a mission to have just about anyone who interacts with me feel better after that, whether it's a smile for the stranger on the street or holding the door or asking the person without a home, can I buy you a sandwich? I'm going in this deli right there. I try to like in small ways, it's micro moments people that can change other people's lives. It's, we have so much power and impact just in how we carry ourselves.

So I try to leave each person I interact with just a little bit better.

Aransas Savas (45:00.950)

ripples. So speaking of ripples, we ripple out by connecting uplifters to one another. So who is a woman who has inspired you, who you think might inspire us?

Julie Hartigan (45:13.435)

Yes, absolutely. Okay, my friend Caroline Scruggs is amazing. I actually met her through a women's entrepreneurial program. She's a singer songwriter who grappled and dealt with the music industry and the level of rejection and just like judgment, physical judgment she was receiving from that. and she leaned into coaching women in vocal embodiment using her talent. So it's like, how do you find your voice and find your power through singing and through songwriting, whether you're a musician or not. And she's just such a, she lives unapologetically. Aransas Savas (45:56.098)

Yeah.

Julie Hartigan (46:09.583)

She does the most interesting, creative things and lives unapologetically herself. And she's one of the most loving, wonderful people I've ever met. Aransas Savas (46:20.590)

I can't wait to meet her. We made a joke on a recent episode that the scariest thing for me to do would be to sing karaoke on this show. So I just feel like, where, where, yeah.

Julie Hartigan (46:30.979)

Oh, you're okay. You have to have Caroline on. you're gonna love her, you're gonna love her, Aransas.Aransas Savas (46:36.878)

Oh my God.

Aransas Savas (46:40.226)

Same, same.

Aransas Savas (46:49.522)

I can't wait.

Julie Hartigan (46:57.883)

She was like, I want you all to break a rule every single day. Like what's a rule that you have for yourself? It's like limiting you, that's keeping you from joy. Like be a little bit of a rule breaker with yourself every day. Just like really live life fully. Oh, she's so great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aransas Savas (46:58.654)

Yeah.

Aransas Savas (47:02.216)

Uhhh...

Aransas Savas (47:06.710)

Yes.

Aransas Savas (47:10.114)

That's so good. Oh, I can't wait to meet her. Oh, thank you for being here. I am so glad you're in my life. I'm so excited to be Go Girlfriends with you.

Julie Hartigan (47:16.103)

Thank you for having me. Likewise.

Aransas Savas (47:21.826)

For everyone listening to this, share this with your go-girlfriends, the ones who could use a boost today, your friends, your sisters, your coworkers. You know who they are, the women who are taking care of everyone else, but maybe aren't always finding time to take care of themselves. I hope you will take Julie and I out for a walk with you to go and see the world, or maybe to pet your dog while you listen to us, or make some dinner for someone you love. Because...

Julie Hartigan (47:49.115)

Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (47:50.986)

The more we hear these voices, the more, as Julie says, we feed ourselves well, the higher we can raise.

I am gonna have links to all of your places in the show notes, but in case people can't find those, where should they look for you and these amazing trips? And I hope you're ready for us because these are like uplifter made, so we may crash your server. Sorry. I mean, let's, let's talk. Yes.

Julie Hartigan (48:15.855)

Yeah.

Julie Hartigan (48:20.533)

all the time.

Julie Hartigan (48:24.083)

I think I should do a cus like just so we could just do an Uplifter group, which would be fabulous I'm doing like groups like that, you know, like little like women's groups. So I'm everywhere. It's at Julie Hartigan It's j u l i e Julie and then h a r t i g a n Julie Hartigan comm Please come say hi on Instagram at Julie Hartigan. I post lots of fun adventures there and different things Yeah, that's pretty much where I am on YouTube too. I'm

Cooking with Julie on YouTube, my YouTube channel is much more about healthy cooking. It's Cooking W. Julie on YouTube and on Facebook.

Aransas Savas (48:56.978)

Awesome, thank you.. Ciao.

Aransas Savas (49:03.118)

Ciao.

Listen to our latest episode in the player here, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Susannah Ludwig was born in the 1970s without an esophagus, a condition that almost no children survived at the time. But, by what some would call a miracle, her family had recently moved to Washington DC for her father’s residency in the one Children's Hospital in the nation where there were surgeons who knew how to handle her condition. 

There was no blueprint for her treatment, so every day that she survived was unprecedented. It would be understandable if surviving against these terrible odds made Susannah want to play small and stay safe. But, not Suz. She chose to believe it was all a sign that she had to live and love extra big. 

“I had been given the gift of still being here. And I realized that if I was gonna still be here, I wanted it to be the best life it could possibly be.”

After an esophageal transplant, she boldly left her marriage and her career as an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker and set to work envisioning exactly what she needed for her richest life. There were two non-negotiables: “A true partner who met me exactly where I am, who could help me balance life, co-parent with me, be a financial partner, and who could share the same vision for how we wanted to spend our time and how we wanted to raise our kids. I also wanted financial freedom.”

The little girl who barely survived has become a woman who truly thrives and uses her life to help others do the same, and though she’s spent much of her life in hospitals as a patient, she is better known as a healer. 

“The life that I have now is far greater than even what I could ever envision.”

In the last four years, she has changed careers; moved from Brooklyn to suburban Long Island; and transitioned from being a divorced mom of one child to being remarried to her ideal partner with a blended family of four kids. In this episode, you’ll hear Susannah’s extraordinary, and yet totally relatable, story of how she dreamed a life of great big love into being.

If you’re ready to turn up the volume on your life, here are a few steps to guide you through the process. And stay tuned for a big announcement on Monday to help you amplify your dream-growing!

Dreaming whatever you need into being. 

Step 1: Write your truest needs down in as much absurd detail as you can. 

Step 2: Take a deep breath and take in your vision as a whole. Notice what stands out to you. Maybe there are patterns? Maybe there are a few details that stand out among the rest? 

Step 3: Highlight the things that go beyond wants -- the needs, the non-negotiables. Take another deep breath. Zoom in on your needs. What do they say to you? 

Step 4: Reach out to an Uplifter in your life. Tell them your dreams. Feel free to respond to this email. I'd be honored to hear what you're dreaming into being.  

Susannah

Susannah Ludwig is a life coach and expert on transitions. As a coach, she loves helping her clients learn about resilience and get from where they are to where they want to be – moving steadily toward the life they long for. 

www.susannahludwig.com

Messy Transcript

Aransas Savas (00:02.020)

Welcome to the Uplifters Podcast, the show where we celebrate the women who inspire us and learn from them so that we can all keep rising higher together. You just heard a beautiful description of my cherished friend, Susannah Ludwig.

Susannah is a life coach and an expert by choice and default on transitions. Her specialty and her work is helping her clients shift from where they are to the life that they long for.

Aransas Savas (00:45.908)

And Susannah may know more than her fair share about transitions. In the last four years alone, she's gone from being an Academy Award-nominated film producer to a coach, from living in Brooklyn to now suburban Long Island, from being a divorced mom of one child.

to being remarried and a blended family of four kids, from being fearful of dogs to becoming a loving dog owner. And when I think of Susannah, I always think in terms of journeys from patient to healer, from barely surviving to truly thriving. And in this episode, you'll hear Susannah's extraordinary and yet totally relatable story. While learning the powerful skills and systems she has developed, she has tapped into from her own inner wisdom that allow her to keep moving forward even in the most daunting situations.

Thank you for being here, my friend.

Susannah (03:03.458)

I am honored is not even a strong enough word to be here. You've literally been a miracle from the moment you were born. So to tell your story, I think we need to start there.

Susannah (04:42.651)

Okay.

Susannah (04:51.924)

Yeah.

Susannah (04:56.458)

Okay. So I was born, I'll age myself because I have no hangups about my age, in 1971, eight weeks early, weighing two pounds. And the reason I was born eight weeks early was I was born without my esophagus, which my mother and my father, my parents didn't know until I was born.

Susannah (05:21.798)

So, and at that time, most of the babies who were born with this birth defect that I had, a very large percentage of them did not survive because there was not a lot to, a lot known about how to treat those babies. So in 1971, I was actually the second child in the country at that time to be given a certain kind of surgery where they created a new esophagus for me from a piece of my

Susannah (05:52.514)

But what that meant was that I spent pretty much a good part of the first two years of my life kind of in and out of the hospital having various treatments, , ever since becoming an adult, I have always felt that there was sort of a magic to me still being here. And that there was a reason, there was a purpose. And that I was, because I overcame all of that and then have continued to overcome health challenges as an adult.

that there was something I was meant to do with that.

Not every person faces their mortality at such a young age. You talk about that giving you a sense of purpose, that your life was here for a reason. How has that belief influenced the way you live?

Susannah (08:18.738)

When I was 21, I unexpectedly needed to have my esophagus transplanted.

Susannah (08:35.430)

And I had just graduated from college. I was a young adult. I was about to start my new life as a college graduate. And then this major surgery happened. And so at that point, I was old enough to really understand it or try to understand it. And I think coming out of that, I really faced mortality in that moment because it was a scary time. They weren't sure, you know, the doctors were hopeful and thank God that procedure worked. But again, it was experimental. Like there is no real roadmap to my health condition. So it was hard for everybody involved. And I think my reaction has been,. One is work hard, play hard.

Susannah (09:29.958)

So I bring a full zest to every day that I get to be alive. Number two, I have immense gratitude for every morning that I wake up and I get to open my eyes and still be here because there for sure have been times along this journey of my health when I didn't think I would get to be.

Susannah (09:57.662)

And number three is I really try every minute to fully express to the people I love how I feel. Because I think that looking death or one's mortality in the eye makes me, I'm very aware of mortality all the time, both my own and everyone around me. And so I just wanna be really clear that everyone I love really knows how I feel.

Susannah (10:26.662)

And I don't really hold back. I think, I mean, you probably know as your friend, most of the time, as my friend, most of the time when I'm texting or writing, I'm always signing off with how much I love you. It's just the way I roll. And many years later when I became a coach, my mission statement as a coach is to share love. 

I feel that life is for living.

 And you've way surpassed any expectation of your life.

Susannah (12:25.064)

I have.

Aransas Savas (12:26.616)

When you were first born, what was the expectancy?

Susannah (12:30.206)

I don't know that they even knew because I think what I had was such a rare thing that they couldn't even really say.

Aransas Savas (12:58.892)

And it's not even about just having this really rare disease, but surviving well into adulthood. And I have to think, because you were born into an extraordinary circumstance without which you might not have survived. Uh-huh.

Susannah (13:04.098)

Yes.

Susannah (13:06.613)

Yeah.

Susannah (13:13.826)

Mm-hmm.

Susannah (13:19.978)

so my dad at the time of my birth was a resident at Children's Hospital in Washington, D.C. And if that, and so my family, both sides of my family are originally from Philadelphia. And my family, my parents were living for the first and only time in their marriage outside of the Philadelphia area while my father was doing his residency in Washington, D.C.

Susannah (13:48.254)

It just so happened that the surgeons who knew how to handle my situation were also in Washington, D.C. So if I had been born in Philadelphia or somewhere else, I might not have made it.

Susannah (14:03.654)

And my father later reflected to me that, you know, in those early years, he often questioned, like before I was born, why didn't he get a residency in Philadelphia? Why wasn't why weren't they allowed, you know, because that's where their family was. Why were they not in their home city? But he realized after I was born that there had been a reason.

Aransas Savas (14:25.824)

Yeah, there's something that just feels so divine about the timing and the situation that I have to think further strengthens this belief that you are not here by accident. What do you believe your purpose is?

Susannah (14:28.962)

Totally.

Susannah (14:38.807)

Definitely not.

Susannah (14:43.122)

I really think my purpose is to share love. I really think it is. And I know that sounds sort of like a new agey thing to think, but I really feel like I am here every single day to bring love to everyone in my life, whether that's my husband, my children, my parents, my siblings, their families, my clients, my friends.

Susannah (15:11.902)

All of it. I just feel like my job is to just express how much I love them all and hope that in doing that, that will enrich their lives and open up them to do the same so that there's sort of a ripple effect.

Aransas Savas (15:27.356)

Hmm, yeah. So talk to me about the middle years, between 21 and now.

Susannah (15:31.821)

Yeah.

Susannah (15:34.446)

Yeah, so the middle years were, you know, after that surgery in 21, I eventually did, you know, sort of have launched my adulthood. I...

Susannah (15:50.102)

fell in love with my first husband. I lived in Washington, D.C. actually for a couple of years right after college. Then eventually I moved to New York to be with him and we built a really beautiful life together. And I built a career as a film producer, which was very successful and very fun and I loved it. And had a really great life in Brooklyn for a long time. When I was 35, I needed to have another pretty major esophagus surgery that was pretty serious.

and kept me in the hospital for quite a while. But I recovered from that, and a year later, I ended up having my son Jack, which was the greatest blessing of my life, really. Not only...

Susannah (16:34.206)

because of who he is, but being able to have him was a huge blessing that I never thought I would get to do, and I did. And we lived in Brooklyn, my ex-husband, Jack and I, for a number of years after he was born.

Susannah (16:50.930)

And then when he was about four and a half, I got divorced from Jack's dad,and started on a whole new chapter and journey where Jack and I moved out and created a whole new life, the two of us. And then eventually after that, I met my now husband.

after about five years of dating.So much is happening in that chunk of time. you've built a marriage, you've built a career, you've created a child, and there was some point in there where you said, things are not the way I need them to be. What, what did you long for?

AAfter about three and a half years into Jack's life, unfortunately, I had another really bad flare up with my health that was pretty serious. I was looking around and realizing that I loved my career, but that it was not the most financially stable.

Susannah (19:33.612)

and that my marriage felt taxing to me. And it's not anybody's fault, it's just the way that it was. 

So after that period with my health, I had just turned 40. And I was looking towards my future and realizing that once again, I had been given the gift of still being here. And I realized that if I was gonna still be here, that I wanted it to be the best life it could possibly be.

Aransas Savas (20:21.232)

Mm-hmm. I hear you moving toward something that felt more stable, more grounded, and a greater sense of ease is really sort of what comes out of me. What was the life you began to envision for yourself at that point?

Susannah (20:29.162)

Yep, yep, yes, exactly.

Susannah (20:41.226)

Well, I'll just say that the life that I have now is far greater than even what I could ever envision. And that is so exciting to be able to say that I, you know, what I envisioned was one thing and what I got was even better. I think the main thing that I wanted to envision there were two sort of facets of it. One was a partner who was a true partner who met me exactly where I am, who could

Susannah (21:11.042)

helped me balance life, who could co-parent with me, who could financially be a partner, who could share the same vision for how we wanted to spend our time and how we wanted to raise our kids, who had the same values in all ways. So one was, a big part of it was that. And then the other part of it was a life in which there was financial freedom.

Aransas Savas (21:35.528)

I hear so much specificity in your description. I think that's so important as you know. I feel like I received my husband in much the same way, and that I said to my mother, this is what love, the love that I want.

Susannah (21:39.007)

Mmm, yeah.

Susannah (21:51.874)

Yeah.

Aransas Savas (21:59.376)

the love that I know I need would look and feel like. And I wasn't describing physical characteristics or qualities, I was describing what the experience of it would be like in a way that's very similar to what you're describing. And I did the same as I described my first career and the mentorship that I looked for. And each time that I've done that in life, I've found that

it finds me because I open myself up to it and I recognize it when it comes. So what was that like for you? when I was single, I was on vacation one time and I sat down and made a list of all the things I was looking for in a man. And some of them and because I'm a little crazy, there were 92 things on the list. And some of them were ridiculous, like, I don't know.

Like, likes Broadway theater, which, you know, to some people might not be important, but to me, I was actually excited to find somebody who would want to go see shows with me. And some of them were much deeper and more meaningful, like has a spiritual practice, is close with his family, loves children, maybe wants more children. You know, like those were the kinds of things. And then I kind of put the list away after doing the download for my brain. And then about six months after I met Dave, I found the list. And he is 87 of the night.

things.

Aransas Savas (23:49.714)

Do you believe that was a coincidence?

Susannah (23:51.422)

No, not at all. And I think that, to your question about the specificity, it's just as much about what you want as also what you don't want. Because when we figure out what we don't want, that helps us to be clearer about what we do want. And sometimes, especially in the process of dating, but also in the process of anything, really, understanding that is helpful.

Aransas Savas (24:00.785)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (24:18.580)

Mm-hmm. It's understanding yourself and acknowledging the truth of yourself instead of hiding it from yourself or others or just following down the road that was laid out for you or expecting it.

Susannah (24:21.418)

Yeah.

Susannah (24:26.306)

That's right.

Susannah (24:30.722)

That's right. Like one thing I always joke with Dave about is that Dave was a foreign correspondent for many, many years. And he's not anymore. if I would have met him when he was a foreign correspondent, I'm not sure that I could have dated him. Because he was on the road all the time, and often without notice. That was just his job. And

that would have been really, really hard for me. And I think I know that about myself, but luckily the timing worked out, And it just goes to show how knowing yourself helps you to figure out what works and what doesn't work for you.

Aransas Savas (25:16.972)

I think that's such a good point, too, as we start to talk about what these last five years have been like for you. Because I think part of what happened, and you'll tell me if this is right or wrong, part of what happened is you got really clear on what you wanted, what you valued, and got really honest with yourself about what that looked like And in doing so, allowed yourself to really honor that in your choices. And then.

Susannah (25:31.988)

Mm-hmm.

Susannah (25:35.010)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Susannah (25:43.228)

Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (25:46.232)

It set you up so that when that was not easy, it was not clear cut, it was not convenient in a lot of ways. As we talk about what happened in these last five years,It was challenging in a lot of ways. And yet I gather that from this...

Susannah (25:49.770)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-mm. Mm-mm.

Susannah (26:00.851)

Yeah. Yeah.

Aransas Savas (26:07.392)

approach of specificity and valuing, you set yourself up to navigate those challenges with greater commitment and purpose.

Susannah (26:11.499)

Mmm. Mm-hmm.

Susannah (26:16.500)

Mm-hmm.

Susannah (26:19.966)

Absolutely. And remembering why you chose the things you chose.

at every turn. so Dave and I dated for about four and four and a half years, we got engaged and then we decided to move to Long Island. And that was a very hard decision for me and not one that I was excited about, to be honest. I loved Brooklyn and Brooklyn was my, my happy place. But what I realized

Aransas Savas (26:26.649)

Yes!

Susannah (26:55.700)

was actually being with him and having our family be together. That was more important to me than the where of where we lived. And so I got really clear like I said to myself you wanted the kind of partner and husband that he is.

Aransas Savas (26:57.669)

Hmm.

Susannah (27:16.662)

Does it really matter? What is the more important value? Is the more important value that you kind of hold on to your position of living in Brooklyn? Or is your more important value that you found the person finally that you wanted to share your life with and you follow that?

Aransas Savas (27:32.149)

Hmm. So in that way, it was a clear decision, even if it wasn't easy. Yeah. Yeah. So talk to me about these last few years. You got married, you moved.

Susannah (27:36.894)

Yes, it was clear. Yes, that's right. That's right. That's right.

Susannah (27:45.842)

Yeah, the last few years I got married, we actually got married twice because of the pandemic. So we had two weddings, which was amazing and crazy. We, I moved from Brooklyn to Long Island. We got a dog right after we moved here. So that was a huge new heart opening that I did not expect. And Dave has three kids, so we blended our family. So now I'm the mom to, a mom and a stepmom to four kids, which I, you know, it's funny, I always wanted four kids. And then I met him and that happened. So, and my life is totally different than what I ever expected it would be.

Susannah (28:39.568)

feels like it's on my terms. Even though that one decision of moving here wasn't totally what I wanted initially, the rest of how I've chosen to live my life and have my days is really up to me. And it's because I've gotten super clear about what it is that I want and how I wanna, going back to that original thing that you said about the lessons that I've learned from my health, is that I'm aware every single day that we have this one opportunity.

Aransas Savas (28:44.997)

Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (29:05.834)

Mm-hmm.

Susannah (29:09.828)

What are we gonna make of it? How are we gonna have the life we want?

Aransas Savas (29:16.024)

And so when you talk to clients that you coach about creating the life that they want, how do you guide them?

Susannah (29:29.314)

Well, the biggest thing is most people are afraid to say what they want. So the first step is really helping them get clear to say it out loud. And sometimes it's just like a little whisper and I encourage them to let it out. And then once they let it out, we can come up with the action steps of how you get it. The action steps are actually much easier than the admittance of what it is.

Aransas Savas (31:11.480)

You talk about really, truly loving your life right now.

Susannah (31:14.912)

Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (31:19.327)

What brings you the deepest satisfaction?

Susannah (31:24.798)

I think in the times that bring me, I mean there's small things and there's big things. So the small things are that every night before I get to go to sleep I get to talk to my husband about my day and we actually try to have three meals a day together also, which we don't always do but we make a good effort at. And I, even in that small kind of ritual and time with him, I really don't take it for granted. I feel really lucky to just get to connect with him in that way and to know that he wants

Aransas Savas (31:28.718)

Mm-hmm.

Susannah (31:54.772)

I want to connect with him. So that's one thing. But even in a bigger way, I would say, like the times when one of Dave's kids lives in California, so unfortunately we don't get to be with him very often, but the other three are local. And when we're all together, like playing a game or having dinner, it's really joyous.

Aransas Savas (32:16.152)

What do you hope your kids will learn from your life?

Susannah (32:21.374)

I hope they'll learn about resilience. I hope they'll learn about good communication and gratitude, I guess. Really getting clear on and saying what they mean, asking for what they need, but also having tremendous gratitude for all the things in their lives that are wonderful and knowing that they have internal resources when things are hard.

Aransas Savas (32:35.748)

Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (32:51.532)

Yeah. So it is, it's, it all comes from within, doesn't it? And even though, cause I was thinking about that as you were talking just now, that as we talk about this really sort of magical feat.

Susannah (32:57.198)

100%.

Aransas Savas (33:10.560)

that we each accomplished in our lives by being able to say, hey, this is really totally, clearly, specifically exactly what I want. And then we watch it happen. You did it by writing a list and communicating with other people. We get to do it with our clients through coaching.

Susannah (33:20.670)

Yeah. Yeah.

Susannah (33:32.809)

Uh huh. Uh huh.

Aransas Savas (33:38.560)

If you wanted to help someone else achieve that type of clarity and specificity about their own dreams in order to start to bring them to life, what advice would you give them?

Susannah (33:47.598)

Mm-hmm.

Susannah (33:53.290)

I'd say two things. One is write them down. I think writing down is a huge thing. It makes a big difference. And the other is to look for models. When I was dating, I would be in the presence of other couples and I would witness their magic and I would take notes. And I would think, oh, see how that couple laughs all the time when they're together? I want that. Oh, see how he is so supportive of everything that she says? I want that. Oh, see how like they are talking about their future in a way that feels really aligned? I want that.

Susannah (34:44.934)

And I paid a lot of attention. And it helped me to recognize when Dave showed up and he had all those things, it helped me to see them because I had been paying attention to what else had been put in front of me.

Aransas Savas (36:24.056)

I've heard you say before that you believe that life doesn't happen to us, but happens for us. What does that mean?

Susannah (36:30.158)

100%. Yes.

Susannah (36:33.694)

It's all in the perspective. I could choose to feel, for example, victimized by my health or to spend a lot of time in the why me, why do I have to live with this health condition? Why did I have to go through a divorce? Why did I have to struggle financially? Like, I could choose all of that. Or I could see it as, if I didn't go through my divorce, I would never have the coaching practice I have right now. If I didn't go through my health struggles, I would never have the appreciation.

for the richness of life that I have now.

Susannah (37:08.754)

So it's all in how you look at it, and we can choose to make it what we want it to be.

Aransas Savas (37:16.224)

How do you help people make that perspective shift?

Susannah (37:22.126)

I think I try to point out what is going well for them, even if they're small places where they can derive their own joy or look at their own success.

Susannah (37:33.746)

I sometimes ask clients to make what's called a did well list for me, which is like a little list of all the things that they did well in a day, because they might not even be realizing how they helped someone at work or they helped their kid with a hard homework assignment or they they counseled a friend. And those things add up to having more confidence and having more feeling good about themselves and their place in the world.

Aransas Savas (37:37.797)

Mmm.

Aransas Savas (38:03.328)

One of the things we talk a lot about in behavioral science is self-efficacy and the belief that we are capable and we only get that through evidence. So I think your approach there is so wise because it gives people proof points to say, hey, look at you. You are doing this. You are making progress. You are capable. And you have all the resources you need.

Aransas Savas (39:26.116)

So let's talk about how you take care of you. One quick way you raise your own energy.

Okay. Uh, my favorites are exercise, meditation, and my friends.

Aransas Savas (39:44.252)

Hmm, one easy way you boost other women.

Susannah (39:49.094)

Uh...

Susannah (39:56.734)

I think by just telling them how amazing I think they are. I think by getting back to that value of expression and being a mirror reflecting back all the ways in which I think they're awesome.

Aransas Savas (40:09.940)

one little way you elevate your community, the planet, or the world.

Susannah (40:16.011)

sharing my love.

Aransas Savas (40:20.476)

Tell me about a woman who inspired you who you believe would inspire us.

I want to talk about my friend Jennifer Salos, who owns a holistic health center in Maryland.

And she, not only is she like my closest friend, but also my mentor in learning how to take the best care of ourselves so that we can serve our clients in the best way possible.

Aransas Savas (41:20.700)

Hmm, incredible. I can't wait to talk to her. I can't wait to share her with the Uplifters. For all of you listening, you know that all of our guests come from our guests and listeners. So if there's a woman who inspires you, head on over to theuplifterspodcast.com to tell us about these women so that we can all learn from them. The thing that feels most important as we wrap this episode up.

Susannah (41:24.498)

Yeah, she's amazing.

Aransas Savas (41:51.496)

is to reinforce, and Susannah help me with this, but to reinforce that although your lived experience is unique to you, the strength and ability that you have shown in creating the life that you want through a clear, honest intention.

Aransas Savas (42:21.356)

is something that is available to every one of us.

Aransas Savas (42:27.244)

And all we have to do is take the time to really be honest with ourselves and then to boldly declare it. And I don't say only to underestimate how difficult that is because I mean, that's why we have our jobs because it can be really difficult to say out loud. Yeah, this is what I really want. And even though this is what my parents thought I should want, or this is what society says good looks like.

This is actually what I care about. And to say that, I think it takes us from a place of hiding from our dreams to boldly stepping into them. And it kind of, it's almost irrelevant what comes next.

. 

Aransas Savas (44:02.412)

For all of you listening, if you were inspired by Susannah, reach out to her. There'll be links to her website in the show notes. Join us and all of our other guests and our beautiful community of Uplifters over at theuplifterspodcast.com. And please keep sharing these episodes. It matters. We have the potential to raise one another up.

And the more we surround ourselves with stories and messages that inspire us to boldly declare and go after our dreams, the more we all lift up higher. Thank you. I love you.

Susannah (44:46.190)

Thank you so much, Aransas. Thank you so much. I love you.

Susannah Ludwig was born in the 1970s without an esophagus, a condition that almost no children survived at the time. But, by what some would call a miracle, her family had recently moved to Washington DC for her father’s residency in the one Children's Hospital in the nation where there were surgeons who knew how to handle her condition.  

There was no blueprint for her treatment, so every day that she survived was unprecedented. It would be understandable if surviving against these terrible odds made Susannah want to play small and stay safe. But, not Suz. She chose to believe it was all a sign that she had to live and love extra big. 

“I had been given the gift of still being here. And I realized that if I was gonna still be here, I wanted it to be the best life it could possibly be.”

After an esophageal transplant, she boldly left her marriage and her career as an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker and set to work envisioning exactly what she needed for her richest life. There were two non-negotiables: “A true partner who met me exactly where I am, who could help me balance life, co-parent with me, be a financial partner, and who could share the same vision for how we wanted to spend our time and how we wanted to raise our kids. I also wanted financial freedom.”

The little girl who barely survived has become a woman who truly thrives and uses her life to help others do the same, and though she’s spent much of her life in hospitals as a patient, she is better known as a healer. 

“The life that I have now is far greater than even what I could ever envision.”

In the last four years, she has changed careers; moved from Brooklyn to suburban Long Island; and transitioned from being a divorced mom of one child to being remarried to her ideal partner with a blended family of four kids. In this episode, you’ll hear Susannah’s extraordinary, and yet totally relatable, story of how she dreamed a life of great big love into being. 

If you’re ready to turn up the volume on your life, head over to www.theuplifterspodcast.com to access the tools and techniques Susannah and Aransas used to clarify and create their dreams.

Guest Bio

Susannah Ludwig is a life coach and expert on transitions. As a coach, she loves helping her clients learn about resilience and get from where they are to where they want to be – moving steadily toward the life they long for. 

www.susannahludwig.com

Listen to our latest episode in the player here, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch us on YouTube. 

Hey there, Uplifters! 

Julie B. Hughes , author of Staring Down A Dream: A Mom, A Marathon, A Mission, fell in love with running when she was just a young girl. It was the perfect antidote to the relentless urgency of farm chores. She started racing and winning early and kept going. She landed a spot on a competitive college track team, and while the Olympics didn’t feel like a realistic goal, she set her sights on following in the footsteps of the heroic women who blazed the Boston Marathon trail. Like the good girl she is, she trained her heart out. And in the end, maybe that’s what stopped her. Her body began to suffer from mysterious pains that ultimately forced her to set her Boston Marathon dream aside. Eventually, she found the right support to understand the mind-body connection that was standing in her way. In this episode, you’ll hear about Julie’s 20-year journey to the start and finish lines of the Boston Marathon.

This episode might be for you if…

* You’re a people pleaser

* You grew up believing that progress comes from pushing the pedal to the metal and continuing to grit your teeth and keep going no matter the pain

* You’ve wondered if your mindset and thoughts might be playing a role in your body’s pain

* You feel like your thoughts might actually be the biggest barrier between you and success

* Your inner judge is exhausting you

* You're feeling stuck and struggling to make progress toward your dreams

Lift Up: Putting it into Practice

In this conversation, you’ll meet Julie’s inner critic: Aunt Pheobe. We all have an Aunt Pheobe in our heads. She’s the one who distracts us from our goals by telling us, in one way or another, that we aren’t good enough. She’s usually well-intentioned and wants to protect us from risk, fear, and loss. But, she can also stop our growth. If Aunt Pheobe is in the driver’s seat in your life, one powerful way to begin transitioning her into the passenger seat is to create a Judgement Journal.

Spend a couple of minutes each day reflecting on the times you thought or felt like you weren’t enough, or that you weren’t accepted, loved, or safe, or as though you were being criticized. Then, notice the patterns among these thoughts and feelings. Becoming aware of these thought patterns allows us to better understand them, challenge their validity, and move past them.

Keep Rising Higher with Julie

Julie B. Hughes is a writer, marathoner, self-published author, and licensed physical therapist. She lives in Manlius, NY with her husband Jeff, and two children Brindsley & Delaney. She is thrilled to share her most recent book Staring Down a Dream: A Mom, a Marathoner, a Mission.

Follow Julie’s journey and read her beautiful poetry by subscribing to her Substack Run to Write .

Messy Transcript 

Aransas Savas (00:03.124)

Welcome to the Uplifters podcast. I'm your host, Arances Savvas, and I've worked in coaching, research, and behavior change for the last 20 years, talking to the women who uplift and inspire us, but can also get stuck on their journeys along the way.

Aransas Savas (00:22.636)

In each episode, we talk to an inspiring woman about her journey and mindset to understand how she overcomes the inevitable obstacles we face so that she can keep moving forward. And today, I am just beyond excited to meet, for the first time, today's guest. Now, I first heard about her when I read about her book, Staring Down a Dream, a Mom, a Marathoner, a Mission,

About her journey to reach the starting and finish line of the Boston Marathon. I read about it my first thought honestly was, oh, did I write a book and forget? Because like Julie, I'm a mom.

Like Julie, I am a mom of two kids, and I'm based in New York, and I've run marathons for 20 years, and I've had this one big goal of crossing the Boston Marathon finish line. And of course, anybody who knows me would say I'm on a mission. So when I read through Julie's book, I was honestly a little bit stunned to read how much more we had in common. Notably that of all the marathons in all the world, we qualified on the same day within minutes of one another at the same race. So to say that I feel a sense of kinship with her, even though I don't know her, is a bit of an understatement. But I'll tell you the thing that stunned me the most. Not that our lives have looked so similar in so many ways, but that the way we overcame this big hurdle in our lives that we achieved this massive stretch goal for ourselves was through the same mindset technique. And so today, in this episode, we're going to talk about what made the difference for

Maybe this story will help you find some fuel to power your progress. Julie, welcome. Thank you for being here.

Julie Hughes (03:05.838)

Oh my gosh, thank you for having me. Oh my gosh, I love that intro. I got goosebumps.

Aransas Savas (03:12.012)

It's crazy. Honestly, when I told my husband about you and my children, they were all like, “Mom, did you write a book?”.  And now I don't feel like I have to. Thank you for writing our book. I think we'll cover in this that.

While on the surface there's so much about our lives and our relationship to running that is similar, there's also a ton that's very different. But before we get into all of that, I think we have to talk about Boston. And for us, it's been this big goal off in the distance for years. But.

When I say Boston Marathon, I think for a lot of people, it's not gonna have as much meaning. So maybe we ground ourselves in why that dream mattered first. What was it to you that made Boston so alluring that you chased it for 20 years?

Julie Hughes (04:19.502)

There's a lot there. I think the first thing is the women that came before us. I mean, I don't know how many people know the story of Katherine Switzer, but for her to go to that race and to say, I'm gonna finish that race, even if someone's grabbing me, trying to rip my bib off me from running, that just that courage and that bravery alone.

Julie Hughes (04:48.998)

As a young girl, I was like, I want to be like that. When you are a runner, when you are seeing these women ahead of you, oh, I want to go there. I want to do that. I think too, you know, I don't know about you, but when I was a young girl, oh, I want to go to the Olympics. I remember making a picture and then on the back of that picture, I'm going to run in the Olympics. I mean, I've heard that so many times, but I was one of those girls. And I felt like the Boston...was like would be the second option. Okay, I can't get to the Olympics. Well, I can get to the Boston Marathon. That is attainable. That is something I can do.

Aransas Savas (05:28.780)

So for those of you who aren't familiar with the Boston Marathon, it is the only race, really, in the world for which there are strict qualifying standards for the marathon. When did your love of Boston and your curiosity about this race begin?

Julie Hughes (07:17.998)

So, you know, I started running, I don't know, five, six years old, going to races. My uncle would take me, and that's really where the love and the joy of it began. It wasn't until I was in high school and started running for the team that, you know, I would hear coaches talk about Boston. I would just hear, you just hear people talk about it at races and in the running community.

Julie Hughes (07:44.478)

you know, you would grab books and read about it. So I think just hearing it and there was this.

Julie Hughes (07:53.362)

And again, for me, I felt like, okay, if I get there, then I will be loved, I will be worthy. So there was this mixed feeling of, okay, I have to run Boston, then yes, and I'm a good runner and I'm, and I, yeah, I'm lovable and people will notice me and see me and I matter. So there was, you know, in that beginning part there in my young adult life, where I felt like it was kind of my identity if I can get there.

then my life is gonna change, things are gonna be better. And as my life progressed, I realized that none of that is true. But there was still this desire to run it, no matter what. I was like, I wanna be there, I wanna run it. And I think just having, accepting that no matter what happens through this journey, when I get there.

Julie Hughes (08:52.902)

Oh, the joy, just the pride in crossing that line.

Aransas Savas (08:57.196)

And so you ran your first marathon when you were quite young, a teenager.

Julie Hughes (09:05.386)

I was a high school senior actually and I ran that for a teammate of mine who passed away from leukemia. So I ran through team and training. And I think that also just spurred this too that, you know, I want to run this for maybe people that would have wanted to that aren't able to. And I can. I can do that.

Aransas Savas (09:30.924)

And it really powered, it sounds like, your sense of purpose in racing. So from reading the book, I know that you ran that first marathon. You finished. You were like, wow, that was hard and amazing, and I can do this. And there is this big possible dream. If I'm not going to go to the Olympics as a marathoner, the next best thing is to chase Boston.

Aransas Savas (09:59.820)

And so you actually qualified not long after that.

Julie Hughes (10:05.994)

Right, so I qualified, it was my senior year of college, so I was just getting out of college for my four years, and I qualified, and then, and then that's when my life just sort of went downhill, to be honest.

Julie Hughes (10:24.874)

Unfortunately, but it was, I mean, this is where I learned and grew and did the work. But yeah, I was ready to go. I was ready to go to Boston in 2003. 2003. And I didn't physically get there till 2021.

Aransas Savas (10:43.852)

What a journey. Who knew?

Julie Hughes (10:46.286)

Yeah, no, I know, who knew? And it's easy now to look back and be like, oh my gosh, you actually, I mean, that's a long time to want to get to one marathon. But it did it, it meant more to me than just crossing. It meant a lot of things. Like I said, for other runners I knew that aren't here anymore, to prove to myself too, that I can keep showing up and I can do this.

Julie Hughes (11:16.542)

And even through all the setbacks and the challenges, you know, don't give up on those dreams.

Aransas Savas (11:24.652)

And to prove to your kids, I think you've said, yeah.

Julie Hughes (11:26.614)

Yes, yes, to show them that yeah, we have this plan. We want all these things to go our way, but they're not always gonna go our way, right? We know this, we know this as adults, but right, we're still like, wait, we're gonna have a tantrum because that should have happened, right?

Aransas Savas (11:43.180)

And that's exactly what happened in 2003.

Julie Hughes (11:45.302)

Yes. Oh, yeah.

Aransas Savas (11:47.564)

So what got in the way? Yeah.

Julie Hughes (11:51.074)

Pain, pain got in the way and it wasn't, and it was physical pain, but it was the years of emotional pain that I was just shoving down and not acknowledging. And not understanding the link, not understanding the mind-body connection. Yes, they are, there's no separation. And I think that's the biggest thing. I just want people to understand there is no separation. You know, what we think matters, it affects how our...

Julie Hughes (12:18.006)

our body feels and what our body's going through it. I mean, it's constantly communicating, constantly. The body's communicating to the mind, the mind's communicating to the body. But at that point, I didn't understand that.

Aransas Savas (12:31.660)

So talk to me about that journey to, I mean, so you were injured, your knee was debilitating, and so there was this physical pain that actively stopped you and made you say, wait, what? So what was the journey to understanding that pain for what it really was?

Julie Hughes (13:00.078)

Yeah, it was a process for sure, because in my mind's eye at that point in my life, I'm like, okay, it must be my sneakers, or it must be I'm not strong enough. Okay, give me all the exercises to do. Just tell me what to do, and this is all gonna go away. And so I think in my mindset, okay, I just need to do this exercise. I need to get these right shoes. Again, pushing away that what I'm telling myself

Julie Hughes (13:30.318)

That doesn't contribute at all. So it took a long time because I had this belief that it was something was wrong with me. I needed to be fixed. Oh, you're a little, oh, your ribs are not right or you're a little crooked or you're, you know, and not to dismiss any of those things, but some of those things are just not.

Julie Hughes (13:56.846)

you're not going to fix them and to assume that we can is just setting, it was setting me up for failure because I can't change some of these structural things about my body. Um, so it was going through a lot of seeing a lot of people, seeing a lot of different clinicians going to physical therapy school because I'm like, all right, I want to figure this out. I want to know what I need to do. What do I need to learn, um, to help myself?

Julie Hughes (14:24.910)

And again, it always just kept coming back to the muscle, the ligament, the herniated disc. Oh, your sacral iliac joint isn't where it's supposed to be.

Julie Hughes (14:40.814)

You know, so there's all these little things that I'm thinking, oh, so I mean, so I don't even want to go into all the gadgets and the things I bought. And at this point now, I'm a physical therapist. And to say that I was major imposter syndrome because I'm thinking, OK, I'm having this pain and I can't even figure it out. How am I supposed to help my clients? So I'm up at night studying constantly, going to all the classes.

Julie Hughes (15:10.958)

I want to know everything so I can help these people and then in turn help myself. And it was never enough.

Aransas Savas (15:18.636)

I think too, whether it's racing or any other dream, there's so many ways in which we get trapped. And all right, let me just get all the little quick fixes, all the little external diagnoses, and you talk about like the muscles, the ligaments, the joints, the vitamins, the I'm not eating enough kale, right? Like there's all these things that it's like, maybe if I do this one little thing, it will change everything. And so we change, we change, and we burn out, I think, all of our mental and physical energy on hope.

Aransas Savas (15:57.164)

It's like maybe if I read this book, or I see this expert, or it's just exhausting. And the thing that I think is so profound is when you said, well maybe I'll just study harder. And then we get these messages, I think that it's like, well, if you just worked harder, if you just saw more experts, if you just did more things,

Aransas Savas (16:20.140)

then you'll be fixed, you'll be okay. And I see this with so many runners I've worked with, but I also see it with people in their marriages and their friendships and their jobs and every part of our lives, it's like, read this one thing, do this one little thing, and this quick fix, this will be the thing that will make it all okay. But ultimately, you did all those things and you were still in pain.

Julie Hughes (16:46.062)

Oh yeah, I had rock solid abs and I'm still hurting. Why was that? You know this constant, oh you've got to have a stronger core. Oh come on.

Aransas Savas (16:59.436)

Now you've got a stronger core and you're in pain. Wee. Yeah.

Julie Hughes (17:03.566)

And I hurt, right. And I'm, yeah. And I, oh, and I have to be thinner. Oh, I need to be thinner. I need to lose some weight.

Aransas Savas (17:11.340)

Mm-hmm. And it was all just a distraction.

Julie Hughes (17:13.582)

So that was a whole nother dynamic I had to move through. That whole thing. Oh, we gotta be thinner to be faster. We gotta be thinner to be better. If we're thinner, then we're happier. That's a whole nother conversation. And it's bright, yes.

Aransas Savas (17:29.452)

And it's a whole other conversation, and it's all the same.

Aransas Savas (17:35.148)

You've got to be more. You've got to be different. You've got to be less. You've got to be older, younger, slimmer, heavier, stronger, weaker, whatever. And it just, it becomes impossible to actually achieve what you want, which is to feel good.

Aransas Savas (17:56.748)

So what finally made the difference for you, Julie?

Julie Hughes (18:02.286)

Well, I think for me, you know, I was, I did therapy. So I was working with a therapist who at one point was like, Julie, I, and I give her so much credit. She's like, I can't, I can't help you at this point. We need to link you up with someone else. And it was at this point where I linked up with someone and we did what's called EMDR. So it's basically a desensitization therapy to heal my brain. Um, because there was some traumatic things that happened as, as when I was young.

and this was feeding into it. At that point, I just was becoming a mother, and so I was starting to have these nightmares. Things were coming up because I never healed from this trauma as a child. And I'm thinking, this is crazy that this stuff's coming up. So anyways, I'm doing EMDR, and...That's when things really started to change. I think it was just because I think my brain was finally starting to be able to pay attention to what are my thoughts? What am I saying to myself? What do I believe? Just to even ask that, to sit back and ask yourself, okay, who am I? What do I like? What do I wanna do? I think so many beginning...parts of my life were just doing to what, I mean, there's so many dynamics and things that contributed to my story, but this people pleasing, that was built in. So to go through that treatment, that is what really helped me start to get things moving. And then working with someone to start recognizing, okay, this is your circumstance, what is your thought about this? Because that's going to create the feeling and the feeling is going to create your action and the action is going to create your result. And so just understanding that was like totally, I was like, what? Wait a second. Are you kidding me? The fact that I can control what I think and that no one else has control over how I feel. That was huge for me. That was huge.

Aransas Savas (20:18.604)

Yeah, and to realize your power.

Julie Hughes (20:22.062)

Yes. And to not be the victim anymore. To take responsibility. You know, and not that I wasn't, you know, I really was working hard to figure it out. I just was going about it the wrong way. I wasn't looking at, there's a lot of contributors to pain, but for me a big part of it was that self-talk, was that judge those saboteurs, right, that are just.

Aransas Savas (20:53.932)

Aunt Phoebe is maybe the main character in your book.

Julie Hughes (20:55.662)

Aunt Phoebe. Yeah. One of the main characters, yes.

Aransas Savas (20:59.820)

She's the antagonist. Yeah, so talk to us about Aunt Phoebe. What does she represent?

Julie Hughes (21:01.998)

My inner judge. Yes. I, oh yeah.

Julie Hughes (21:10.990)

So I worked with someone who said, you know, name your inner judge, describe her. What does she look like? What does she sound like? Become friends with her. And that really helped. Some of my poems are about her. Some of my writings are about her to understand, okay, this is a part of me, but what she's saying isn't true. She just wants to protect me. She wants to keep me safe. And I had to understand that pain.

is also protecting me. Pain is a way to keep me safe, but it's not always, my mind doesn't always get it right. My brain doesn't always get it right.

Julie Hughes (21:50.158)

So to understand that those thoughts can contribute to my physical pain was huge. So to understand, okay, what is Aunt Phoebe saying here? Is this true? Is this outdated? Do I still want to believe this? Do I still wanna keep saying this to myself?

Aransas Savas (21:56.300)

Mm-hmm.

Julie Hughes (22:15.310)

And a lot of the thoughts I'm like, and where did this, this isn't even what I believe. This isn't even serving me anymore. So to be able to really sit with that and do that work.

Julie Hughes (22:29.198)

was really healing.

Aransas Savas (22:31.148)

Yeah, and it goes back to those big questions you asked a minute ago. Who am I really? What do I really care about? And not what have I absorbed through the messages I've gotten from coaches and parents and friends and media, but what's really true for me?

Aransas Savas (22:48.876)

And how do I let those thoughts guide my beliefs and actions as opposed to the thoughts and feelings I've absorbed through my circumstances? Yeah.

Julie Hughes (23:01.262)

And you know, if I want to feel more curious, if I, you know, because I do, I want to feel curious about this, about this pain or about what's going on. Well, what thought would I have to feel that?

Julie Hughes (23:14.638)

So be able to recognize too. What thoughts do I wanna say? I mean, that's something we need to be delivered about because Aunt Phoebe, man, she is coming for me and she just wants, she is waiting on the side, just da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And I have to be like, okay, yeah, I hear you. No, not today. This is what I'm gonna say today.

Aransas Savas (23:36.044)

Well, and I think for me and so many of my clients, it's a distinction between Aunt Phoebe and truth, right? And so we think Aunt Phoebe is the law of the land. This is the only perspective. You are in pain because there is something wrong with you. You are too much, too little, too fast, too slow. And that, when Aunt Phoebe says it, it sounds like an authority. Like.

Aransas Savas (24:04.812)

There is no other story that might exist. And so when you talk about curiosity, I think what you're saying is like, what else might be true?

Julie Hughes (24:14.478)

Exactly. And I think too, you know, I don't know for other listeners, but for me too, I feel like I had to be hard on myself or I wasn't going to get there. So you almost have to watch out for that, is okay, we don't, that's not, I don't think that's helpful either to be hard on yourself. That's not power. That's not a sage power.

Right? Just be attacking yourself and, oh, you've got to do this and you've got to work harder. And so I'm still working on that because it's been ingrained in me for so long. And so I think that's the other thing. I think we, I had to finally accept that, okay, she's here, yeah, make friends with her, but start recognizing, just start questioning that those thoughts. Whose voice is that?

Aransas Savas (25:09.612)

Mm-hmm. And is that voice helping? Do I feel more empowered, inspired, able when I hear that voice? And sometimes, I'm going to work harder can feel really inspiring. And sometimes, you're not working hard enough is disempowering. It's not clear cut or simple.

Julie Hughes (25:13.710)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because how do I feel? Right.

Aransas Savas (25:37.708)

It's very subtle and the effect, I think, is what we measure. I ask clients to do this a lot, to say, well, how do you feel when you hear it that way? And so noticing and understanding the impact of it on our systems and on our motivation and our energy, that's the measure.

Julie Hughes (25:56.526)

That's it. That's it. How does it feel in your body? Where do you feel that in your body? Because again, if your nervous system is looking out for you, and what are we saying to ourselves? Well, if that's a threat, our nervous system is going to dial right up and that's me. My pain went right up because of, again, the language I was saying to myself.

Aransas Savas (26:20.428)

You're really good at protecting yourself.

Julie Hughes (26:25.006)

Which I get, it makes sense, right? But, too, but yeah. But overprotection. Yes, right, right, right.

Aransas Savas (26:25.164)

And yeah, yeah, yeah, what a skill. And it's going to help you. And it has helped you. It saved you in those times of trauma, no doubt. But now, now it was over protecting you. Now it was shielding you from success or progress because you were so, quote unquote, safe. Yeah.

Julie Hughes (26:50.990)

Yeah. Oh yeah, I wanted to hide.

Aransas Savas (26:54.348)

Yeah, yeah, and it worked. Your body and your mind worked together to do that. So when you recognized Aunt Phoebe and you realized, oh hey, that's just Aunt Phoebe. Bless her heart. She's here to help me, but there are other options. What started to change for you, Julie?

Julie Hughes (26:58.382)

Yes, that's right.

Julie Hughes (27:23.438)

I went running. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna run. You know, and I think that was a thing that really.

Aransas Savas (27:29.292)

And it brings tears to my eyes to hear you say that because again, I think we have to contextualize this. I think for the people who haven't read the book, you had been running since you were five. And it was everything for this little farm girl. That is where our stories are different. I was not running when I was five. I was the chubby kid avoiding it at all costs. But from age five, it was like a survival mechanism for you.

Julie Hughes (27:43.310)

That's right. That's right. Yeah.

Aransas Savas (27:59.628)

And then to have that ripped away from you, it felt like you almost had to have that one outlet removed in order for you to do this other work.

Julie Hughes (28:14.254)

Absolutely. Because that was my only tool I had, was to run, run, run. That was how I escaped, how I dealt with the stress, how we dealt with the voice. You're not good enough, I'm just going to go run. So yes, I absolutely see that now. I mean, of course, it was painful to not be able to have that. But I was like, OK, I've got to figure this out. So when I recognize that, OK, my thoughts are a big contributor.

Julie Hughes (28:41.934)

And it wasn't that my pain was gone, my pain was there. But I'm like, all right, I'm gonna run and let's see what happens. So when I start running and I'm feeling this tingling and this, I'd get these nerve symptoms in my feet and my legs. I'm like, all right, I feel it. But I could name it then, okay, this is my nervous system. Okay, these are my nerves talking to me, trying to protect me, looking out for me. If I keep running, what happens?

Julie Hughes (29:12.238)

If they get, if it increases, okay, then I will stop and walk. If it stays the same, I'm gonna keep running. I'm not changing my form. It's the same. And it was unbelievable because it would come on and I would just come, I would stay calm because before I'd freak out. I would stay calm and 99.9% of the time it would go away. The longer I kept going.

it would go away and by the end of the run it was gone. And so there was also an aha moment for me. I'm like, oh, this has nothing to do with my back or my SI joint or my knee or my IT band or my feet, or all these things over the years that I've accumulated. This is about my nervous system. And it's looking out for me. And it's looking out for me.

Julie Hughes (30:07.662)

you know, yes, when we have the flu, when we're run down, when we don't get enough sleep, but also what we believe about ourselves, what we're saying to ourselves, what we're hearing from other people, and then we're internalizing that and making it now, so, oh, I guess I have to think that now too.

Julie Hughes (30:29.166)

You know, because I have to, you know, even in this whole time, everyone's like, oh, you got to stop running. Don't run. Oh, man. I'm just so glad I didn't. I'm so glad I didn't. I would have never got to Boston.

Aransas Savas (30:39.404)

Yeah. Yeah. So talk to me about that. So you started running again, you started to understand your mind body connection. How'd you finally get to Boston?

I really just focused in on, okay, getting your sleep and eating well. I mean, nutrition, yeah, is important. So adding that piece in and figuring that piece out too was a whole nother area. But just to go for it again and believe in myself was big and to have other people behind me knowing, yeah, you can get there, you can do this.

Julie Hughes (32:24.238)

So when I finally qualified and then 2020, that was disappointing. That was disappointing. But I said, but you know what? It also made me laugh because I'm thinking, okay, I might as well wait another year. What's one more year? I've been waiting since 2003. What's one more year? And thankfully we were able to have that opportunity that they had it again in 2021.

Julie Hughes (32:53.422)

and I got to go and I got to bring my family. And I think, and it was perfect timing. It was perfect timing to have my children there, to have my husband there, my mom, see me cross the finish. I mean, I was, now, I mean, it's so easy now I could say, oh, I'm glad I didn't go in 2003. This was the, look at all how I've grown. And now look what I can show my kids. So that's the story I wanna, you know.

Aransas Savas (33:21.548)

Yeah, well, and I think, and I said before that I have chased the same dream for 20 years. I was a...

Julie Hughes (33:39.310)

That's alright.

Aransas Savas (33:48.844)

chubby kid who didn't run a block until her 30th birthday basically, somewhere in my 20s, when I was 22, I was like, I'm gonna quit smoking. And I woke up and I was like, I'm bored, I need something to do with my hands, so I should get outside. And somewhere I found like some converse, some not at all appropriate for running shoes.

Julie Hughes (33:58.990)

It's amazing, oh, great.

Julie Hughes (34:11.438)

No way.

Aransas Savas (34:15.180)

went for a run and it was that little burst of encouragement. Somebody was like, oh, good job. And I was like, well, I could run two blocks and two blocks turned into a half marathon, turned into a marathon for my 30th birthday. And I, so I like after those first few, I was just like still on the high of being able to do this thing. And then once that seed was planted that I could run faster, I got this big

Aransas Savas (34:44.524)

inspiring and terrifying goal.

Aransas Savas (34:52.044)

worked really hard, like you. I worked really, really hard. And I hear that, I think, in your book, but also in your telling of this story about how you tackled the mental hurdles. You put as much diligence and commitment and effort into taking care of Julie holistically as you did into running and chasing that goal. And so you are a person who efforts.

Julie Hughes (35:21.102)

Yes, I guess so.

Aransas Savas (35:22.028)

You are a person who is diligent and who shows up. Like I think anyone who reads your books will be struck by your diligence. It is core to who you are and how you approach every challenge. And for me the thing...

Aransas Savas (35:39.724)

that that was the thing I related to is I'm an efforter. I'm a hard worker. I am diligent. I showed up and I ran all the miles and I ran them with integrity and I committed myself. I'm not somebody who would have thought of myself as a natural runner or any sort of athletic ability. It was like this huge mental hurdle of, whoa, I am an athlete.

Julie Hughes (35:44.462)

Thank you. That's all right.

Julie Hughes (36:03.054)

That's right.

Aransas Savas (36:04.044)

Oh, and then I start putting in these times. And I'm good at distance, right? And so running sub-4 marathons for me was a pretty natural thing. But running a Boston qualifying time was not. It was such a big stretch goal that I had to really, really kind of overcome my own identity, to use your word, to even go there.

Aransas Savas (36:32.652)

And for me, after all those efforting, hardworking races, the thing that made the difference was showing up in 2018 at the Wineglass Marathon, which is so crazy that you were there BQing on the same BQing short for Boston Qualifying, for those who are not in the nerdverse with Julie and I on this, showing up and qualifying that day. Was it?

Julie Hughes (36:47.566)

So crazy. Yeah.

Aransas Savas (36:59.148)

My, I trained well, I was strong, I was ready, but I trained well and was strong and ready many times before and not done it. This time I was strong and ready and I had one major difference. I decided to run with as much love as possible. And it probably sounds kooky to everyone in the world but you.

Julie Hughes (37:07.118)

That's right.

Aransas Savas (37:22.092)

Because what I did is I just decided to look for joy everywhere I went and to run with as much softness as possible. And so what happened is I got out there and I ran with no effort.

Aransas Savas (37:37.292)

I just ran with full joy and I cracked jokes and I said hello to people and I didn't take it all so seriously and I looked for flowers and trees and signs and smiling faces and I was present. And I mean I'm gonna cry again. I was like the sappiest podcast ever. I just enjoyed it.

Julie Hughes (37:44.174)

That's it.

Julie Hughes (38:03.438)

I feel you, yeah.

Aransas Savas (38:05.356)

And what happened in my body was radically different. Because I got to the end of 26.2 miles, same distance I'd run many, many times, and I had no pain. I had no tension. I went hiking an hour and a half later.

Julie Hughes (38:10.702)

That's right.

Julie Hughes (38:22.542)

Wow.

Julie Hughes (38:28.558)

Ah!

Aransas Savas (38:30.860)

The difference was that my brain, this powerful force, had not released all of these fear and stress hormones into my body for over three hours. It had infused it with dopamine and joy chemicals and relaxation and pleasure. And so I finished the race. I...

looked at my time and I was like, oh, I ran every single mile at the same pace. I was within like three seconds without looking at my watch because it wasn't about efforting. It was about ease and enjoyment. So when I read your mindset, I saw something very similar.

Julie Hughes (39:04.334)

That's awesome.

Julie Hughes (39:17.134)

Yeah, it's...

Julie Hughes (39:22.542)

I think when I stepped on that line, it was the first time, and I've run many marathons, it was the first time I showed up and didn't put pressure on myself. I just came, I know I'm ready physically, I know I can do this. It's always the mental aspect. Every time I toe that start line, it's the mental aspect. What am I going to say when I do feel uncomfortable, when the pain comes?

Julie Hughes (39:53.902)

But I don't know what was different that time. I just, I already made up my mind that I made it. I already made up my mind when I came to that start line. I'm already, I already made it. And I think because I believed it already, it happened. I mean, I don't know. It just, it just was, it felt very different. And I just, I already knew on that day. And that was the same day that they lowered the time. Right? They lowered the time and I was like, ah, all right.

Aransas Savas (40:17.964)

the day before they lowered the time. But somehow I didn't process that. I was like.

Julie Hughes (40:23.470)

I'll run faster, no problem. I mean...

Aransas Savas (40:27.436)

So again, for those not in the nerd verse, they set these very strict qualifying times for the Boston Marathon by age, group, and gender. And right before our race, we had been training, Julie and I each for different age groups, I think, had each been training for a very specific time bracket. Right before our race, we found out that we actually had to run a different time bracket.

Julie Hughes (40:55.342)

I think they lowered it five minutes. So they lowered it five minutes. Yeah. Five minutes. That's a lot. That's a lot. That's huge. Yeah. That's huge. Because when you, and the thing is when you want it, we want to get to Boston, when you feel like you need this five minute buffer time so that you know you're going to get in. Cause right? You can still qualify and you may not get in. Right? And that happened to us. Yes.

Aransas Savas (40:57.804)

Yeah, it was huge. Five minutes is a bit, it sounds like not a lot of time if you're not a marathoner. Five minutes is a lot of time.

Aransas Savas (41:14.764)

Right.

Aransas Savas (41:18.124)

Which is another similarity in our stories, yes, that we both qualified the year before and didn't get in because our buffers weren't big enough, because so many other people had qualified. So it's so weird that that happened. And I think pointing out this time change and the fact like.

Julie Hughes (41:22.446)

2017, yeah, and we did not get him.

Julie Hughes (41:30.190)

amazing.

Julie Hughes (41:32.750)

I know.

Aransas Savas (41:38.892)

As runners, we spend so much time thinking it's got to be the perfect day and the perfect conditions and I've got to be wearing the perfect shoes and there's got to be the right temperature and humidity and...

Julie Hughes (41:51.886)

It's not going to happen. And I think that's the thing we have to like, we can't, okay, these are the circumstances. What am I going to think about it?

Aransas Savas (41:58.796)

Mm-hmm. That matters more. That matters more. Catherine Switzer did not have good shoes.

Julie Hughes (42:01.422)

That's it. That is it.

Julie Hughes (42:06.030)

No, and she was wearing sweatsuit. I mean, she was wearing a sweatsuit for goodness sakes. I mean, and she ran, and that's what I remember. And I love what she said. I'm gonna just crawl, I'm gonna crawl to that finish line. I mean, that's what she said. She's like, I'm gonna show women that we can run this distance and our uterus isn't gonna fall out. I mean, exactly. So the fact that she, she's like, well, I'm just gonna crawl to that finish line if I have to. And she did it, and she ran it, and she ran well.

Aransas Savas (42:25.996)

because that's what they were saying was the reason she couldn't run.

Julie Hughes (42:35.694)

Oh, I love her.

Aransas Savas (42:37.356)

There will never be a perfect circumstance or a perfect situation. But there are mindsets that work, and there are mindsets that don't. And even if efforting and working really hard and bearing down can get us there, it will not get us as far. Period.

Julie Hughes (42:40.622)

That's right.

Aransas Savas (43:04.332)

We will go further, we will go faster, we will feel better if we do it without all of that fear-driven efforting.

Julie Hughes (43:12.910)

Yes, right.

Aransas Savas (43:17.932)

Because I think for both of us behind all of those, I don't know, missed attempts, if that's the phrase to use for it, behind all those frustrations and all those disappointments, it was a fear of not succeeding.

Julie Hughes (43:25.774)

Yeah.

Julie Hughes (43:38.510)

Yeah, a fear of not getting there.

Julie Hughes (43:42.510)

Look, you're able to get there, what the heck? It's not like I'm not working hard, right? It's not like I'm not, yeah.

Aransas Savas (43:47.020)

I have a little post-it on my desk. It's like all tattered and sad looking. And it says, what if it works? And I leave that there to remind me of how often we are driven by another voice, which is Aunt Phoebe saying, what if it doesn't work? What if you fail? Everybody's going to laugh at you. You're going to look like a failure. You're not going to belong.

Julie Hughes (43:49.998)

Oh

Aransas Savas (44:16.620)

What has it meant for the rest of your life to train your brain, to train your thoughts, and your feelings, and your action with the same attention that you did your body?

Julie Hughes (44:28.686)

I'm just, I'm so glad I have this tool. Because it's helped my marriage, it's helped my parenting, I can teach my children. Hey, you have control over your feelings, nobody else. When we were little, oh, don't let them hurt your feelings. Well, no, they're not in charge of my feelings, I am. I'm in charge of how I wanna feel. So to be able to give them that too.

Julie Hughes (44:58.574)

But I will say whenever I do something I haven't done before, whenever I venture out there in this world, Aunt Phoebe's there. So I have to just keep, okay, I don't have to sit with her as long as I used to. You know, I would ruminate and you know, I am a lot better at that.

Aransas Savas (45:07.948)

Yeah, sure.

Aransas Savas (45:22.188)

It's training, right? Like.

Julie Hughes (45:23.086)

Yeah, it is. It is a practice just like running, just like writing. I mean, it's just... And anyone can learn it. That's the best part. It's a skill. But yes, daily practice. Daily practice. Yes. Oh, yes. Yes. 

Aransas Savas (45:33.868)

moment by moment practice, right? In every situation. And it started with awareness for you of recognizing that Aunt Phoebe was even there. Yeah.

Julie Hughes (45:43.054)

That's right. And what is she even saying? Like, because you just don't even realize those thoughts because they've just been replaying and they're on repeat this pattern for so long. You really have to just sit with that first and understand what is even up there.

Julie Hughes (46:00.750)

But I will say becoming a mom that has been, my children have given me the opportunity to practice even more. Oh, because let me tell you, you're not doing this right. I'm not a good enough mom. All of that has been coming up.

Aransas Savas (46:19.564)

Yeah, that was the hardest part of being a new mother for me was the, everybody's looking at you and thinking you're not doing this right voice.

Julie Hughes (46:25.230)

Yeah, that's right. That's right. And nobody, I mean, there's no there's no handbook. We're all just trying to do the best we can. But then we're also but then we're causing more suffering on ourselves by what we're thinking. Yeah.

Aransas Savas (46:43.788)

Well, and I think that's it. And for everybody listening, if you're curious about what these voices might sound like for you, because they have different scripts for all of us. Uh-huh. And it's like, if the voices you're hearing are causing you stress, then they're worth examining.

Julie Hughes (46:56.014)

Yes, what are the messages? 

Is it bringing you closer to what you really genuinely care about? Then it's probably working. And if it isn't, it probably isn't. Oh, Julie, this is so healing and therapeutic and beautiful to get to talk to you about this. I will say I have not run the Boston course yet. And I ran my 2020 with my family and friends around Brooklyn. And it was an amazing, beautiful day of celebration. And I have some unfinished business.

Julie Hughes (49:08.718)

Good.

Julie Hughes (49:13.998)

Oh god.

Julie Hughes (49:21.902)

Oh, you gotta, I'm hoping you get there.

Aransas Savas (49:37.420)

I just got physical pain soon after that and that's why. So this story too has me examining if maybe there's some work to be done to help heal my plantar fascia through the work that I'm doing on myself to maybe go there. But at the same time, I've also had some big conversations with myself about.

Julie Hughes (49:42.030)

Oh.

Aransas Savas (50:01.676)

whether or not it's still what I really want and care about. There are so many things I want to put my energy and attention into now that I'm not certain that running more actually makes me feel better and makes me feel healthier and happier. And when I do an inventory of what I give and take for running marathons, the equation doesn't necessarily balance out in favor of my holistic well-being right now. And so.

Julie Hughes (50:04.302)

Sure.

Aransas Savas (50:31.020)

That for me as a doer and achiever is a hard place to be. And I still don't know the answer, but maybe there will be a part two to this conversation. So in each episode, we do a quick lightning round. Tell me Julie, what is one quick way you raise your own energy?

Julie Hughes (50:34.158)

Yeah. Oh, I bet. I bet.

Julie Hughes (50:41.134)

That's right.

Julie Hughes (50:53.358)

Go outside and run or walk. But I gotta be outside. Gotta be outside.

Aransas Savas (50:56.044)

Ah.

Aransas Savas (50:59.468)

For those of you following along and pulling together a playbook of these boosts, there is something about nature and movement that keeps coming up. Just saying. Boost, how do you boost other women?

Julie Hughes (51:16.814)

listening. Listen. Just listen.

Aransas Savas (51:22.252)

I bet you're an amazing physical therapist. One little way you elevate your community, the planet, or the world, Julie.

Julie Hughes (51:33.710)

guess it would just be share what I can give. Share what I can give. So if it's through poems or listening whatever that is yeah.

Aransas Savas (51:47.244)

And who's the woman who inspires you? Who you think might inspire us?

Julie Hughes (51:52.686)

so many. Who do I put on the spot here? Oh my god, you know, I would say one woman who has really inspired me is Terri Tomoff. She is the author of The Focused Fight. Her son is a cancer survivor five times. And I met her through a writing group and I just, she is just amazing. Inspiring.

a go-getter, a mover and a shaker. I mean, she just, she really inspires me and I'm so blessed that our paths have crossed.

Aransas Savas (52:31.244)

Amazing. I can't wait to hear more about her. So where do people find out more about you, Julie?

Julie Hughes (52:36.302)

Yes, I'd love to share you.

Julie Hughes (52:42.446)

Well, I am on Facebook, Julie B Hughes. I also have a platform on Substack. So I share stories, poems, Monday through Friday, so they can find me there. It's Substack, Julie B Hughes, and it's Run to Write.

Aransas Savas (53:01.516)

And I will be sure to add links to that to our show notes and link to you through our sub stacks. So for all of you listening, please join Julie and I in conversation at Live Up Daily and at theuplifterspodcast.com where all of our guests are gathering and together.

Julie Hughes (53:06.766)

Yeah.

Julie Hughes (53:09.390)

Great.

Aransas Savas (53:24.108)

We are bringing our lived experience, our challenges, and skills for overcoming them into the conversation so that we don't all have to keep learning the same lessons on our own. We can learn from one another and through one another and hopefully tap into a little more belief.

A little more ease.

Julie Hughes (53:56.622)

Yes, ease and flow. Ease and flow.

Aransas Savas (53:58.924)

Yes, yes.

Aransas Savas (54:02.796)

to help us all move toward what really matters for us. So if this conversation has been helpful to you, please share it with the women who you love, the women who inspire you, so that we can all keep rising higher together.

Julie Hughes, author of Staring Down A Dream: A Mom, A Marathon, A Mission, fell in love with running when she was just a young girl. It was the perfect antidote to the relentless urgency of farm chores. She started racing and winning early and kept going. She landed a spot on a competitive college track team, and while the Olympics didn’t feel like a realistic goal, she set her sights on following in the footsteps of the heroic women who blazed the Boston Marathon trail. Like the good girl she is, she trained her heart out. And in the end, maybe that’s what stopped her. Her body began to suffer from mysterious pains that ultimately forced her to set her Boston marathon dream aside. Eventually, she found the right support to understand the mind-body connection that was standing in her way. In this episode, you’ll hear about Julie’s 20-year journey to the start and finish lines of the Boston Marathon.

This episode might be for you if…

• You’re a people pleaser

• You grew up believing that progress comes from pushing the pedal to the metal and continuing to grit your teeth and keep going no matter the pain

• You’ve wondered if your mindset and thoughts might be playing a role in your body’s pain

• You feel like your thoughts might actually be the biggest barrier between you and success

• Your inner judge is exhausting you

• You're feeling stuck or struggling to make progress toward your dreams

Lift Up: Putting it into Practice

In this episode, you’ll meet Julie’s inner critic: Aunt Pheobe. We all have an Aunt Pheobe in our heads. She’s the one who distracts us from our goals by telling us, in one way or another, that we aren’t good enough. She’s usually well-intentioned and wants to protect us from risk, fear, and loss. But, she can also stop our growth. If Aunt Pheobe is in the driver’s seat in your life, head over to www.theuplifterspodcast.com to learn a powerful practice for moving her into the passenger seat.

GUEST BIO

Julie B. Hughes is a writer, marathoner, self-published author, and licensed physical therapist. She lives in Manlius, NY with her husband Jeff, and two children Brindsley & Delaney. She is thrilled to share her most recent book Staring Down a Dream: A Mom, a Marathoner, a Mission.

Follow Julie’s journey and read her beautiful poetry by subscribing to her substack http://juliebhughes.substack.com

Hello Uplifters!

Listen to our latest episode in the player here, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch us on YouTube. 

Our guest today is Beth Raynor Webb. Beth grew up in a world that had strong opinions about what girls could and couldn’t do. She married young, started a family, and followed the path that was laid out for her.

When her kids left the nest, she began to ask herself some big questions: “Who am I really? What have I not done that I really wanted to do?” She realized that she’d spent most of her life caring for others, supporting them in their dreams, but not actively participating in life. She was an observer.

“There's nothing more empowering than becoming a participant in whatever it is that you find joy in. When we get into a participant mindset, we stop just dreaming and we start doing.” Beth Raynor Webb

So, Beth decided to start doing things, especially those that scared her. She took up hiking and kayaking and cooking, she moved across the country, and now, she’s looking straight into the eyes of a fear that she’s held since she was a little girl: horses. 

Fear is contagious, but so is uplifting.

So, if you want to catch some of Beth’s courageous and participatory mojo, here are some things you might want to experiment with:

* Understand the source of the fear with compassion for its’ context

* Suss out whether your fear is there to save you or stop you

* Find a safe space and a capable teacher or another source of support for facing your fear in small steps

* Celebrate all of the wins and learnings

* Stop when it’s no longer serving you. It's okay to dive in, and it's okay to climb out.

After you listen, join Beth and me and a host of other uplifting women over at Live Up Daily to continue the conversation. And if you find value in this episode, please leave us a review and share this episode with your friends and colleagues who might benefit from Beth’s story.

A little about Beth

Beth Raynor Webb has been a weight loss leader, trained personal coach, and certified Focus coach since 2013. After living over fifty years in upstate New York, she and her husband embraced adventure and moved to the beautiful southwest and now reside in El Paso, TX. She enjoys travel, hiking with her Yorkie, off-roading, and loves spending time with her children and greatest inspiration…her granddaughter. Learn more about Beth and her work with Blue Owl Solutions.

A Messy Transcript of This Episode, for those who prefer to read it.

Aransas Savas (00:05.733)

Hello, welcome to the Uplifters podcast. I'm your host, Aransas Savas, and this is the show where we talk to the Uplifters, the women among us who live their lives with courage and passion and purpose, and through the honest stories that they share with us help us tap into our own courage and passion and purpose.

Today we are joined by Beth Raynor Webb. And Beth is someone I've known for a long time and have been deeply inspired by. Her book, Everyone Has a Mountain, is a powerful exploration of so many uplifting themes. She's been a life coach for 10 years. She leads the company Blue Owl Solutions that delivers powerful coaching to women and men who aim to maximize their own health and wellbeing. But Beth is a human being, like all of us, and she is not perfect. She is not fearless. She has fears, very real and present fears, like all of us, that she is learning her way through.

Aransas Savas (01:27.761)

And Beth is actively looking her fear in the eye right now. And so in this episode, we're going to talk to her about her fears and about what it's been like to face them head on. And we're going to look at it through a lens that actually is a fear that is far more common than I maybe realized. I actually have a couple of clients right now who are facing this very same fear. And so it felt like just such a powerful opportunity for us to journey through this fear with Beth and see what it means for all of us as we face our own fears, whether they are the same or vastly different. And the thing I think that is super interesting about this particular fear is that this fear like so many of our fears has a flip side. It is something that for so many people is a dream. And what we're talking about here is horses. Horses, I'm fascinated by because they hold this really mystical, mythical position in our culture. They are revered and admired for their strength and their speed and their soulfulness, and yet it's those same qualities that for many people are the source of tremendous fear. And while so many of the images that we see of horses are, you know, I don't know when I picture them, I picture like Merida from Brave on a horse with her hair flying off behind her in search of freedom and agency. And yet for so many people, it is something very

very different.

Aransas Savas (03:30.553)

So today, let's talk to Beth about what it's like to journey from fear to maybe some little taste of that freedom. Beth, thank you so much for being here today.

Beth Webb (03:51.354)

Oh, it's an absolute honor. Thank you for having me. Yes.

Aransas Savas (03:56.689)

So... horses. When did this fear start for you? What is your earliest memory of it?

Beth Webb (04:00.534)

Horses. Yes.

Beth Webb (04:08.274)

Yeah, so I have to go all the way back to when I was a very small girl. I lived in upstate New York and I had a dad who was always bringing crazy things home with him from work. And one day he showed up with a donkey. And in my little tiny girl brain,

Somehow I connected donkeys and horses like it was all the same. But I also had a mom who was very nervous. And there was a constant, oh, don't let her go near that thing. It's going to bite her. Don't let her go near it. And of course, my dad took me right over to it. And what did it do? It tried to bite me. So from that moment on, I just had this.

fear of anything that looked or sounded like a horse. And it never made much of a difference until I moved to the Southwest, when horses became a very big deal to everyone and everything around me, the community here.

Aransas Savas (05:16.381)

Interesting. So what are horses like in the Southwest? And this is a new move for you, right?

Beth Webb (05:22.446)

Yes. So I think that we have this picture, those of us who grow up in the East, we think of the Wild West, and we think of cowboys and cowgirls. And I think you even used the word freedom when you were describing horses. And literally living in a place now where I am surrounded by ranches and cattle and horses and real live cowboys. And I have a pattern in my life since I have been on this journey of self-discovery to just challenge myself with everything that scares me. And that has taken many shapes and forms. But I knew once I got out here.

Um, that this, this getting over the fear of horses was going to have to be one of those fears I conquered.

Aransas Savas (06:28.289)

And so what was the dream for you? What motivated you to want to face this fear?

Beth Webb (06:37.413)

It's not a want. I wouldn't call facing fears a want.  It's a challenge. So part of my story is knowing that many years ago, about more than a decade now, I decided to get healthy, get well.

Beth Webb (06:55.970)

And part of being well and part of being healthy is more than just physical. Part of it is mental. And growing up with a mindset of constantly being afraid of everything and told that it's not your place to do certain things, young ladies don't participate in certain things.

Beth Webb (07:21.886)

And my choices were I could either be a secretary, I could be a teacher, or I could be a nurse. Those were my choices. So as I started this journey of wellness, yes, the physical side of it was part of it. But I knew I had to start embracing parts of my authentic self that had been tampered by culture and tampered by the expectations for the roles that I could play as a woman. And so taking on these fears and conquering these fears is my way of discovering my authentic self. It's my way of figuring out who I could be once I gave myself permission to be more.

Beth Webb (08:27.138)

So the ultimate goal was, yes, to be able to jump on a horse and ride off into the sunset with that magical freedom that we all talk about with horses. The reality was I was so afraid of them that just to walk up to them and lead them on a rope was terrifying. And so I found a place and people that supported a beginner and was willing to take me on and started taking the steps to overcome that fear.

Aransas Savas (09:05.613)

I want to go back to this sort of overarching story here of you deciding that you wanted to get healthy, you wanted to embrace life fully, and you said, find my authentic self. Why was that so important to you?

Beth Webb (09:28.686)

I think because it had been tampered for so long. I was married very early, had my family very early. I took on the roles that I was supposed to take on, being of the generation that I was. And I grew up surrounded by I'm one of three girls. My mom is one of four girls. Her mom is one of four girls.

Beth Webb (09:56.146)

I have these incredible aunties and grandmothers and sisters. And I very early on understood that there was this dichotomy between the characteristics I saw in them. They were these strong, talented, creative women. And yet the life applications they were afforded were different.

Beth Webb (10:25.486)

than what those characteristics were. And I also grew up in a time when Title IX had just come about. I was in elementary school when all of the sudden, I could now participate in sports.

Aransas Savas (10:29.387)

Mm-hmm.

Beth Webb (10:46.842)

And I remember wanting to do all of these crazy things. I also have middle child syndrome. So I was the tomboy. I was the son my father never had. I wanted, I was one of the first girls in my school to take the shop class instead of home economics. I wanted to play all the sports and be on all the boys' teams. I remember being very angry.

Aransas Savas (11:05.534)

Hmm

Beth Webb (11:16.514)

that the girls teams got these crummy little t-shirts and the boys got full uniforms. So I grew up with a lot of anger about things, but didn't understand it, didn't understand how to process it, didn't understand what it meant to me personally. And so it wasn't until my kids were kind of grown and gone that I said,

Who am I? What do I really want to do? And what did I want to do then that I didn't get to do? And so that's where this need, I find myself saying that I spent a lot of my life being an observer. And I was a motivator. And I was an inspirer because I was cheering people on constantly.

But I was cheering them on in a way that was not by example. It was just by being there and observing. And so it was time to take a step and start doing things. And so do things I do. You know, now I just do and do. And if it scares me, that's all the better. And so this fear of horses, you know, came out when I realized that there were all these opportunities for trail riding here in the southwest.

Beth Webb (12:49.010)

And so little by little, little by little, you get closer, and then you get on, and you learn about horses, and you learn about yourself while you're learning about horses. And it still scares me every time I go for a lesson, because they push me to do things that I didn't do the week before, you know? And I said, well, what could be better than let's just go ahead and buy a horse?

Aransas Savas (13:04.293)

Hmm.

Beth Webb (13:22.382)

Yeah, and I did. I bought a horse. And so now just about every day I go and I put myself in a situation where I'm discovering who he is and he's teaching me confidence. He's teaching me abilities that I wished I had had my whole life.

Aransas Savas (13:22.857)

And you did. You bought a horse. And you did. You bought a horse.

Beth Webb (13:51.170)

I meet young girls and I see them insecure and I see them fighting the stereotypes. I say you can do this, you can do this, it doesn't matter if you're afraid, just go do it anyway.

Aransas Savas (14:07.897)

What a beautiful message to demonstrate through your life.

Beth Webb (14:14.550)

Yeah, yeah. I figure it's better to empower people by example than it is to just give them words. Because then you can say, well, if I can do this, then you can do that. It's real. It's tactile.

Aransas Savas (14:15.705)

Yeah.

Aransas Savas (14:23.069)

Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (14:25.585)

Hmm.

Aransas Savas (14:32.793)

And you talk about learning about yourself through learning the horse. What do you mean by that?

Beth Webb (14:40.782)

Horses are, by nature, extremely nervous beings. They are not aggressive in any way. And yet, many people are hurt by horses because they don't take the time to understand them. Horses are inquisitive, but they are scared easily. And so I felt I had a kinship to them.

Aransas Savas (15:07.703)

Oh, yes, me too.

Beth Webb (15:09.646)

Right? I mean, they're very, very flighty. They spook. And it's the craziest things. One of the first things that I did with my horse was lead it around the big arena. And he was afraid of a shadow that was in one corner. So we had to stop, and we had to pause, and we had to breathe. And how important is learning to stop and pause and breathe?

Beth Webb (15:36.746)

You know, that's a lesson that who knew I would get that at a horseback riding lesson. Yeah.

Aransas Savas (15:42.437)

Who knew? And who knew you could feel so seen by seeing that very natural and understandable survival instinct in another animal?

Beth Webb (15:46.356)

Mm-hmm.

Beth Webb (15:56.190)

Right? Right. Yep. Yep.

Aransas Savas (16:00.765)

I think so much of fear is misunderstood. We feel like there's something wrong with us for having fear, but just like all emotion, it makes sense. There is a reason for our emotion and our experience of fear and anger and happiness and all of the vast emotions that we experience.

Aransas Savas (16:29.857)

And the thing that I think gets muddled oftentimes, I think about fears as falling into sort of two categories, right? There's the fears that save us and the fears that stop us. Right? And so your mother saw the fear of horses, it sounds like, as a fear that could save you.

Beth Webb (16:40.046)

Correct.

Beth Webb (16:50.252)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (16:51.021)

She was like, don't let something bad happen to my baby. And as a mother, I get this. And I question it every day. Am I instilling in my kids fears that save them or stop them? Look both ways when you cross the street, yes. That saves you. Be afraid of walking across the street because someday you might get hit by a car. That's a fear that stops you. And so it's a fine line.

Aransas Savas (17:20.537)

And I think what you are doing, both through your journey with the horse, but also through all these other fears that you have been facing, is you're parsing out which ones are the ones that save you and which ones are the ones that stop you.

Beth Webb (17:35.830)

Right, right. And I find, too, that sometimes they can be one-offs. Sometimes we can build a little bit of confidence and gain a little empowerment by a tiny one-off. Let's say you're afraid to go sing karaoke. And you do it once, and you're done. You don't have to go do it every week. Right? Ta-da. But sometimes it's a fear that lingers and you have to keep reminding yourself that you're capable. I can do this. Right. I mean, there's that old saying that, you know, if you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. So every single day I have to get up and I remind myself that I can, I can.

Aransas Savas (18:26.881)

Yeah. And what do you say to yourself to keep facing it? Because if I went and I sang karaoke once and I was like, oh wow, this is true story. I'm terrible at karaoke, why would I do that again? That's not fair to myself or the people listening. There's not a lot of pleasure or satisfaction that makes me hunger for more.

And I'm sure that first time you went for a horse ride and it's not like you rode off into the sunset, right? So how do you keep going back?

Beth Webb (19:02.126)

correct.

Beth Webb (19:05.750)

Well, you keep going back because every single time you do it, you build confidence. And the more confidence you have, the more empowered you are, the more empowered you are, the more you can inspire someone else. Right. And, you know, my idea of what an uplifter is, is someone who can find joy in helping someone else succeed.

Beth Webb (19:33.278)

So if I can help someone else succeed by doing something myself, by getting over a certain fear, or not even getting over it, but by pushing through it, by doing something meaningful, it's going to then, like a domino effect, inspire somebody else.

Aransas Savas (19:56.321)

And I think there are, I think in most of these cases, what we find is that people need an intrinsic and an extrinsic motivator. And so you have this extrinsic motivation of impact and purpose in helping others. So that is both intrinsic and extrinsic and that it's satisfying you and it's helping other people. What's the difference?

Beth Webb (20:04.607)

Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (20:19.361)

What's like the dream vision you hold for yourself? What's the best possible outcome that could happen as a result of you sticking with this dream?

Beth Webb (20:21.814)

Hehehehe

Beth Webb (20:31.554)

The best possible outcome is I can walk up to my horse at any point. I am competent enough to saddle him by myself, to put the bit in his mouth, that's one I'm working on right now, getting over, and get up on him by myself, right? Because there it is, that independence, that by myself, by myself. I love asking for help when I need help.

Beth Webb (21:00.566)

But I want to only ask for help for a period of time until I can do it myself. And so the goal is to be able to do all of it myself. This independence, this freedom, this ability to navigate the horse world as a southwestern cowgirl. There you go.

Beth Webb (21:30.518)

And I will tell you this coming weekend, not only am I standing next to a horse, I will be participating in my first three-day cattle drive. And if I can do that Aransas, anybody can do anything.

Aransas Savas (21:43.699)

Oh my goodness.

Aransas Savas (21:48.785)

Oh my goodness. That's huge.

Beth Webb (21:53.694)

Yeah, it is. And the other thing I have to say, though, is it doesn't always have to be this huge. It can be little things. It can be little things, right? It can be as much as just taking the brush and brushing him for a day. So we have to be OK with some days it's some things, and some days it's other things.

Beth Webb (22:21.202)

And take the confidence away to whatever our ability is that particular day.

Aransas Savas (22:27.985)

Mm-hmm. And I think so much of what I hear in your approach to this, it is very much about celebrating the moments. Yeah, so it's these little signals of progress and change. Oh, and as humans, most of us are so bad at that.

Beth Webb (22:39.027)

100 percent.

Aransas Savas (22:54.797)

We're so good at dismissing our progress and being like, eh, didn't count, doesn't happen, wasn't the way I pictured it.

Beth Webb (22:58.134)

Yes.

Beth Webb (23:02.622)

Right. But see, if we put our mindset into a participant mindset, I'm doing this. I'm doing this right in the moment. I'm doing this. I'm touching this horse. I'm riding this horse. I'm doing it. And it's that shift between being an observer and then becoming a participant.

Aransas Savas (23:19.185)

Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (23:21.889)

and being a participant. Ah, that's so good.

Beth Webb (23:25.614)

There's nothing more empowering than becoming a participant in whatever it is that you find joy in.

Aransas Savas (23:34.961)

And it's a practice.

Beth Webb (23:36.194)

Yes. Yes.

Aransas Savas (23:39.573)

I think the thing that is really striking me about your story at this moment is the fact that this act of courage is the culmination of many acts of courage and lots of fears faced.

Beth Webb (23:52.554)

Yes. Yes, yes. And being told that you can't do that. And saying, yes, I can. Turning the narrative, saying, yes, I can. Women need to turn the narrative and do whatever they want to do.

Aransas Savas (24:00.046)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (24:11.682)

Mm-hmm. And what did that shift for you to be able to say, oh, yeah, I can, I just proved it to myself?

Beth Webb (24:21.286)

It's the minute you stop caring what other people think. It's the minute you realize that you don't have to stay in somebody else's box that they've built around you. You can build your own boxes. And we do! We put up our own walls and our own limits. We don't need other people's limits on top of that.

Aransas Savas (24:25.698)

Mm-hmm.

Beth Webb (24:46.674)

So as soon as you let go of those things, then you can try these other things. And for me, it hasn't just been horses. It's been one thing after another. You know, I do lots of crazy things. And sometimes they're for the moment, and sometimes they become a real passion that stay with us. But we'll never know what brings us joy unless we try things. So we have to be open.

Aransas Savas (25:13.829)

Did you always know that you had that courage to face your fear?

Beth Webb (25:16.210)

No, no, no. It wasn't until much later in life. I knew I had a lot of anger, and I knew I had a lot of gumption. But I didn't know that it was OK to just go do things. Because that might be selfish, or that might be looked at as frivolous, or unladylike, or.

Beth Webb (25:45.258)

Whatever. And you let go of those labels. You just let go of it.

Aransas Savas (25:51.765)

I love that you use those words because I think those stories are the ones we hear in the back of our minds and we trust as truth. It's not ladylike. People don't do that. It's selfish. And believing those is what actively stops us.

Beth Webb (26:13.650)

100%. Yes.

Aransas Savas (26:17.101)

And so the second we challenge them, we hear stories like yours that say, oh, yeah, you can be happier, freer, more authentic, more purposeful, more impactful, more whatever you value and want to be more of in your life when you let go of those old limiting stories and experiment with being the things that you always wanted to be.

Beth Webb (26:49.210)

Exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And you never know unless you try.

Aransas Savas (26:58.345)

I think that's so important. So let's talk about that a bit more for a second. So one of the things that I think you are really saying with your story is I'm gonna face all my fears and I'm gonna do things that I may or may not actually wanna keep doing.

Beth Webb (27:14.254)

Correct, yes. And there's been instances when I haven't kept doing things. And that's OK, too, because sometimes we dive headfirst into something and we think, oh, boy, I've invested so much time, energy, money, I better keep doing it. I'll give you an example. I also got really, really into off-roading. And I decided I was going to learn everything there was about the mechanics of a Jeep.

Aransas Savas (27:19.343)

Uh huh.

Beth Webb (27:42.858)

Right? And so I'm underneath my Jeep on my garage floor turning wrenches at one point. Right? Like a crazy lady. And yes, I had a lot of fun doing the overlanding and going out on the trails. And that would scare me to death because I'd go up on these shelf trails that were way up high. And at one point, I was.

doing something out in the garage, and I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. I'll still go ride, and I'll go do the trials and stuff, but I don't want to turn wrenches. I don't have to prove anything with that. So there was an example of I gave it a whirl. I know what I know now because I took that step, but I'm not going to become a mechanic. And that's OK.

Aransas Savas (28:14.304)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (28:36.409)

Right. But it wasn't time wasted. No. And I think you're so right. We've, again, like that selfish story that so many women are told that stops them. There is this, well, if I do it, I'll be wasting time or resources or no, I think what you're telling us.

Beth Webb (28:38.835)

No.

Beth Webb (28:43.626)

Right. Mm-hmm.

Beth Webb (28:52.331)

Mm-hmm. It's an investment.

Aransas Savas (28:55.733)

Yes, it's all an investment. And that knowledge now is yours. That understanding is now yours. That understanding of that culture and the people who do that is now yours. And it's going to inform what you do next. There's a good chance that something you learned in off-roading, maybe about balance, is now going into your experience of horses. So it's cumulative wisdom.

Beth Webb (28:57.686)

Yes.

Beth Webb (29:05.942)

Right. Right.

Beth Webb (29:13.419)

Right. Yep.

Beth Webb (29:22.554)

100 percent.

Aransas Savas (29:22.817)

It just may not be used in the way that we expected. So, so, so important, Beth.

Beth Webb (29:27.742)

Yes, yes, yep, yep, it's okay. It's okay to dive in and it's okay to climb out. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha.

Aransas Savas (29:35.457)

Ah, I want to just like say that over and over again. It's okay to dive in, it's okay to climb out. And I am one of those people who has less trouble starting than stopping. So I'm a little more fearless about, I'm gonna experiment, I'm gonna play. But I'm also super accountable. So once I've done the thing, I'm like, I need to stick with it.

Beth Webb (29:48.282)

Mm-hmm.

Beth Webb (29:53.771)

Mm-hmm.

Beth Webb (29:58.684)

Mm-hmm.

Beth Webb (30:02.059)

Right.

Aransas Savas (30:02.533)

I grew up with a very strong finish what you start story. And my work has been to say, I'm finished. I can stop whenever I want to. I don't have to keep going past the point where it's satisfying or fun or helpful or of service in whatever way I need it to be. And that's really been my story with running for the last year. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Beth Webb (30:05.879)

100 percent.

Beth Webb (30:14.003)

Mm-hmm.

Beth Webb (30:25.438)

Right. When something stops being of service in your life, when it no longer empowers you to a point where you're getting anything out of it anymore, you don't need to keep doing it.

Aransas Savas (30:39.377)

going. Yeah. Yeah. It's okay to start. It's okay to stop. That's right. And I mean, the the key really here is to give ourselves the freedom to follow our curiosity. And that freedom comes with knowing that we don't have to be good at it. We don't have to find our life's purpose in it. We don't have to.

Beth Webb (30:40.718)

It's okay, ladies, stop.

Beth Webb (30:45.142)

Yeah.

Beth Webb (30:57.547)

Mm-hmm.

Beth Webb (31:08.533)

Right.

Aransas Savas (31:09.913)

change everything because of this, but the work is just showing up.

Beth Webb (31:17.922)

Yes. Yep. Participate.

Aransas Savas (31:20.441)

Yeah, participate. That word is so good.

Beth Webb (31:25.150)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because when you're participating, you have to be in the moment. You have to intentionally be there. It's not like the world is just happening around you. It's your part of it.

Aransas Savas (31:27.450)

Yeah.

Aransas Savas (31:34.477)

Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (31:41.073)

Well, and I think, too, we throw around the word presence a lot. And I spent a long time not really understanding what it meant. I have a very strong relationship to it now, and I have a very strong meaning associated with it. But to me, when we're talking about participating, we're really talking about presence. When you talk about brushing the horse's mane, and you talk about

being in the fear with the horse, all of that is simply presence.

Beth Webb (32:14.898)

Yes. Yeah.

Aransas Savas (32:17.025)

It's not letting our lives slip by, counting the days until we die, spending our lives looking backwards at what we wish had been different or looking ahead at what we hope will happen, but it's being a full participant and being fully actively engaged in what is.

Beth Webb (32:21.670)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Beth Webb (32:36.670)

Yeah, in the choices we make. Instead of the choices that others make for us, we need to own our choices and be in those moments.

Aransas Savas (32:47.121)

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So well said. So one of the things we love to do on this episode is wrap up each episode on this podcast, is wrap up each episode with what we call a lightning round. So, welcome to the Uplifter lightning round, Beth. What's one quick way you raise your own energy?

Beth Webb (33:11.346)

Nature. Immediately get outside. Yeah.

Aransas Savas (33:13.833)

Yeah. And it's instant for you.

Beth Webb (33:18.610)

Yeah, give me mountains, give me a storm. Yeah.

Aransas Savas (33:24.561)

It's interesting you picked such intense experiences of nature. One easy way you boost other women.

Beth Webb (33:32.674)

Oh, I intentionally, whenever I am out anywhere, I make a point to say something I like about them, whether it's, oh, I love your hair, oh, I like your earrings, that shirt looks so beautiful on you, like restaurants, in line at the bank, whatever it is, if we on purpose uplift women, you never know how that might make their day just a little bit different.

Aransas Savas (33:58.181)

Yeah, and it forges an instant connection, doesn't it, when people feel seen like that? Yeah. And especially when we feel like we can authentically do it. It is a beautiful challenge, I think, to say, what do I admire about this person? I did an experiment for a while, as I would walk through Manhattan on my way to work each morning, to admire something about every person I passed. And it was so interesting what I could find in people who were like,

Beth Webb (34:00.930)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep.

Beth Webb (34:12.831)

Yes.

Beth Webb (34:21.482)

Mmm.

Aransas Savas (34:26.969)

yelling at someone on the street. I was like, I wonder what I could possibly admire about this person who is belittling someone. And I would find something, whether it was just that they woke up this morning, or they had the courage to wear that vibrant headset. Exactly. Yes, to express their anger instead of holding it in. And something really powerful happens when we look for admiration in others. Yeah, they do.

Beth Webb (34:36.780)

Mm-hmm.

Beth Webb (34:42.368)

I like their intensity.

Beth Webb (34:49.372)

Mm-hmm.

Beth Webb (34:51.850)

Yeah, and everybody has something.

Aransas Savas (34:56.825)

Truly, one little way that you elevate your community, the planet or the world.

Beth Webb (35:04.626)

Ooh, so community is really important to me. And one of the things that I started doing when I moved here was I began like a little group of women, all different ages.

Beth Webb (35:19.158)

all different backgrounds, some even speaking different languages. We all got together for wine one evening and made connections, made connections, made community, introduced each other. And it has been such a beautiful, uplifting thing to watch the relationships. Bud, from just this one little meeting of women, it is amazing. When you put five, six, seven women together,

Aransas Savas (35:31.258)

Mm.

Beth Webb (35:49.078)

What can happen just the way that they all have connected and grown our community as women together? I just, yeah, that was, and anybody can do that. You just start a little wine club. Yeah.

Aransas Savas (36:04.001)

Mm. Yeah, and I think what's really smart about that, for anybody who's listening to Beth and thinking, I want that, she started with something really accessible. She didn't start with like, do you want to go deep and make a new set of friends? But who wants to meet for a glass of wine? And then created the conditions. And these conditions were, let's have a very real conversation, it sounds like. Let's introduce ourselves to one another in a meaningful way. And

Beth Webb (36:18.059)

Right.

Beth Webb (36:21.414)

Mm-hmm.

Beth Webb (36:28.778)

Yes.

Aransas Savas (36:32.937)

That's no different in some ways than how you approached facing your fear of horses. You said, let me find a safe space, someone to connect with who can help guide me through this. And then you created the conditions for getting to know the horse and building that relationship there.

Beth Webb (36:41.975)

Yep.

Beth Webb (36:50.946)

Yeah.

Beth Webb (36:56.158)

Look for the uplifters. They're always there.

Aransas Savas (36:58.521)

Yeah, they are. They're all around us. So tell us about a woman who inspires you, Beth.

Beth Webb (37:05.694)

One of the ladies I've met out here, her name is Alexis Nelson, and she is in our military, and she signs up for the craziest assignments. She just got back from Norway, where she plunged into freezing water and slept in tents out in the snow. And

Beth Webb (37:29.858)

You know, we had a conversation one time and she said, yes, I'm totally afraid when I do these things, but we do them anyway. So Alexis, she's my shout out, she's my hero. Anybody who does something, even though they're afraid is my inspiration.

Aransas Savas (37:50.565)

Yes.

Aransas Savas (37:53.349)

Yes. Thank you for saying that. I think there's so much shame around fear. I'm afraid of driving. I'm afraid of, I'm just going to list all of my own, afraid of singing karaoke now that you reminded me of it. I'm afraid of speaking other languages to people who speak them better than me. I was afraid of weightlifting. I'm still afraid of it sometimes.

Beth Webb (37:59.398)

Mm-hmm.

Beth Webb (38:08.161)

Hahaha!

Beth Webb (38:15.606)

I'm sorry.

Aransas Savas (38:21.093)

I have so many fears. I could probably, if I sat here, come up with 30 other fears. We all have fears. So the goal is not to be without fear.

Beth Webb (38:24.942)

Mm-hmm.

Beth Webb (38:31.006)

Right, right, it's to do it anyway. Yeah.

Aransas Savas (38:34.561)

Yeah. Yeah, that is courage.

Aransas Savas (38:41.005)

And that's what we're working toward here, not to be fearless, but to be people who courageously face fears in our own ways. Mm-hmm. Yes.

Aransas Savas (40:41.837)

So not just experts and horses, because my 12-year-old, yesterday, asked my husband, because we live in New York, my kids have spent very little time in their lives in cars, she was like, how do you drive, Daddy? And he was like, well, there's a gas pedal and a brake pedal. But how do you even answer that question? And the truth is, I don't know how to tell somebody to drive, because I'm OK at driving.

Beth Webb (40:59.563)

I'm sorry.

Aransas Savas (41:09.769)

I'm not an expert at teaching driving. So I think that's where it's looking for the experts

Aransas Savas (42:24.401)

Mm-hmm. Yes. And it's part of the journey. And I think I can't imagine that we will ever do an episode of the Uplifters podcast where we don't say these journeys have ups and downs. And if we only expect the ups, then we'll probably stop.

Beth Webb (42:38.048)

Mmm. Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (42:48.493)

And so we have to normalize and accept that the downs are a part of the process. The failures, the frustrations, the hiccups, the things that don't go well, are as essential to progress as the things that go well. Yeah.

Beth Webb (42:56.182)

Right.

Beth Webb (43:00.266)

Right. Exactly.

Beth Webb (43:08.642)

Hmm. Yes, here's to participating.

Aransas Savas (43:13.221)

Here's to participating. Yeah. I don't want to be an observer in my life. I want to be an active participant. And I think most of us do. It gives life meaning and purpose and passion and energy. And that means succeeding and failing and all the things in between. And hearing your story.

Aransas Savas (43:43.317)

reminds us all that the fear is just a part of that process. And it is a starting place for growth and limitless potential. Yeah. Thank you so much, Beth, for sharing your story. Are there any other key takeaways that I'm missing that you feel like we need to?

Beth Webb (43:54.328)

Mmm.

Beth Webb (43:58.050)

Yeah.

Aransas Savas (44:13.014)

re-emphasize when it comes to facing fears.

Beth Webb (44:16.698)

I think we just need to invite Aransas to come sing karaoke.

Aransas Savas (44:21.613)

No, I will do it. I will do it. I will sing loud and proud and badly and probably with lots of caveats, which I'm working on. But I will do it. Maybe even someday on this show. Oh gosh, that would be terrifying. Okay, here's to doing the scary stuff. Here's to growing. And here's to surrounding ourselves with the people who do this.

Beth Webb (44:28.848)

Hehehehe

Beth Webb (44:32.869)

Hehehehehehe

Beth Webb (44:42.225)

Yeah, yeah. Here's to facing fears. Yes.

Aransas Savas (44:49.153)

Right, like if we surround ourselves with people who are constantly saying, stop, you might hurt yourself. Stop, this might go badly. Stop, this isn't what you were supposed to do. Stop, this is not what little ladies are expected to do. We will stop again and again and again and again and again. And we will never believe that we are capable of anything else. And if we surround ourselves with people like you, Beth.

Beth Webb (45:11.879)

Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (45:19.409)

If we surround ourselves by the uplifters, the people who are doing it, who are falling off and getting back onto horses.

Beth Webb (45:23.720)

Hehehe

Beth Webb (45:27.054)

Mm-hmm.

Aransas Savas (45:29.605)

then we will believe that we can too. Because like I said, fear is contagious but so is uplifting.

Beth Webb (45:33.123)

Yes.

Beth Webb (45:36.966)

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Aransas Savas (45:39.849)

And so for all of you listening, I hope you will join us over at the Uplifterspodcast.com where you can be surrounded by the voices of courageous, fearful, overcoming fears, facing fears, uplifters, the people who prove to us through their actions, their lives, and their stories that

Aransas Savas (46:10.325)

It's okay to let go of the limiting beliefs and the old stories and experiment and in the great words of Beth, participate. So please share this show if it means something to you. We are so much stronger. And so much braver. Together.