00:00:06Remembering Childhood in Northern New York
00:11:46Family Dynamics and Personal Growth
אודות פרק זה
👋 Send a text 💬 or voicemail 🗣
Have you ever wondered how your childhood memories shape your present relationships? Join me on a heartfelt exploration of my formative years in Brownville, New York. ❤️ You'll hear about unforgettable incidents, like breaking my arm while returning Pepsi bottles, and my father's gentle care during my bath time. These reflections aim to inspire you to cherish your past as a way to navigate the present and future connections in your life.
This episode also delves into my personal experiences with family nicknames and the journey towards gratitude and self-love. Listen as I recount a defining moment when my mom courageously stood up against hurtful names at a family dinner. Plus, I'll share the transformative experience of meeting my biological father, Joe, five years ago, which filled a significant gap in my life. Hear how a powerful quote by Sylvester McNutt about controlling effort and attitude resonates deeply with me, and why surrounding yourself with positive, like-minded people is crucial. Join me for an episode filled with personal anecdotes and insights aimed at inspiring you to reflect on your own relationships and past. ❤️
LINKS!
- https://www.sylvestermcnutt.net ( best selling author, podcaster, public speaker, course creator, and father )
- https://www.nearestanddearestpodcast.com ( ✅out my website for more episodes & show notes/links! 📝)
- julierogers@nearestanddearestpodcast.com ( send me a question, comment, or share a personal story! 📧I would love to hear from you! ❤️)
- https://www.speakpipe.com/NearestAndDearestPodcast ( please leave me a recorded message - up to 90 secs 🗣I'll send you one back! 🎤)
אנגלית
ארצות הברית
הראה הערות 🔗
תעתיק 🔗
WEBVTT
00:00:06.708 --> 00:00:15.148
No one ever said life is easy, but I believe by giving yourself permission, you will find you have more control over your life than you realize.
00:00:15.148 --> 00:00:16.391
I'm Julie.
00:00:16.391 --> 00:00:26.210
I hope you will join me by taking responsibility for yourself, by only controlling the things you can and letting go of the things that you can't.
00:00:26.210 --> 00:00:35.362
By doing this, you will have discovered the secret to having happy, healthy and more fulfilling relationships.
00:00:35.362 --> 00:00:39.768
This is Nearest and Dearest Podcast.
00:00:39.768 --> 00:00:46.155
I'm Julie Rogers and you are listening to Season 3, episode 10, A Glimpse.
00:00:46.155 --> 00:00:50.851
I know it's been some time since I last released a new episode.
00:00:50.851 --> 00:00:52.646
Life has been busy.
00:00:52.646 --> 00:00:57.932
We had our grandchildren visit us on the river, along with other family as well.
00:00:57.932 --> 00:01:01.850
Summer keeps going by faster and faster.
00:01:01.850 --> 00:01:06.588
Just the other day, my daughter, Ashley turned 39.
00:01:06.588 --> 00:01:09.900
She shares her birthday with my dad.
00:01:10.983 --> 00:01:15.054
You might remember me sharing with you that I wasn't close to him.
00:01:15.054 --> 00:01:18.001
I have some regrets about that.
00:01:18.001 --> 00:01:22.908
I came across a note I wrote in May of 2020.
00:01:22.908 --> 00:01:28.635
I was sharing my thoughts about my dad reflecting on my childhood.
00:01:28.635 --> 00:01:32.966
I reread it and decided to share it with you.
00:01:34.248 --> 00:01:37.960
As we get older, our memories can start to become blurry.
00:01:37.960 --> 00:01:51.831
Living our lives and creating more and more moments that get stored in our minds can start to push back those once vivid memories into smaller fragments that can cloud over.
00:01:51.831 --> 00:02:07.256
Maybe I'm sensitive to the realization that my mom lost her life due to Alzheimer's and I want to remember as much as I can to understand who I am.
00:02:07.256 --> 00:02:16.835
I only have a couple blurry memories of my dad in the house I lived in with my five other siblings and our mom.
00:02:16.835 --> 00:02:26.831
I have tried to reach as far back as my mind will let me to picture him actually with me.
00:02:26.831 --> 00:02:31.043
It's always been the saddest part of my childhood.
00:02:31.043 --> 00:02:34.592
That has lingered in my mind and heart.
00:02:34.592 --> 00:02:38.561
My parents divorced when I was around 10.
00:02:38.561 --> 00:02:42.328
I was the middle child and the oldest daughter.
00:02:42.328 --> 00:02:46.514
I have three older brothers and two younger sisters.
00:02:47.741 --> 00:02:56.794
We lived in a small town, actually a village in Northern New York, Brown Boulevard in Brownville.
00:02:56.794 --> 00:02:59.362
Our house was historic.
00:02:59.362 --> 00:03:10.810
General Jacob Brown, who was an American Army officer in the War of 1812, used the house as an Army headquarters during the war.
00:03:10.810 --> 00:03:17.024
His home was directly across the street and we knew it as the mansion.
00:03:17.024 --> 00:03:24.895
Fond memories of running across the street, playing there as kids with our neighborhood friends.
00:03:24.895 --> 00:03:42.034
The mansion was glorious to behold, with large gray stones stacked three stories high, set back far enough to showcase a beautiful green grass front and a circular driveway.
00:03:42.034 --> 00:03:46.290
It also held our public library.
00:03:46.290 --> 00:03:54.433
During the summer months the village offered a summer recreation program at the mansion.
00:03:54.433 --> 00:04:06.653
During the winter, the huge backyard made the perfect ice skating rink for all the residents to enjoy, along with a decent-sized hill to go sledding.
00:04:06.653 --> 00:04:15.973
We didn't always have sleds but would drag an old piece of cardboard big enough to sit on and slide down.
00:04:15.973 --> 00:04:24.310
The older kids would make an ice ramp just before the bottom that would send you sailing into the air.
00:04:24.310 --> 00:04:31.625
Living in Brownville during the mid-60s to mid-70s was heavenly.
00:04:32.827 --> 00:04:38.100
My siblings and I were fortunate to start our youths in a neighborhood.
00:04:38.100 --> 00:04:45.851
The saying it takes a village to raise a child is exactly how we were raised.
00:04:45.851 --> 00:04:51.564
I was always barefoot, running out the door to play with my friends.
00:04:51.564 --> 00:05:02.487
Hide and seek, dodgeball, mother may I, hopscotch, jump rope and riding bikes were everyday pleasures.
00:05:02.487 --> 00:05:07.432
My dad was a lineman for the local electric company.
00:05:07.432 --> 00:05:14.108
As the years went by he was a dispatcher and retired from that same company.
00:05:14.108 --> 00:05:26.535
My mom was a secretary for a local propane gas company just one of many other full-time jobs she did to support our family.
00:05:28.120 --> 00:05:41.928
Most of my vivid memories are with my siblings in the house, throw in a couple of my best childhood friends in the mix, and I had a wonderful start in my youth.
00:05:41.928 --> 00:05:50.464
However, my images of both my parents together are somehow lost.
00:05:50.464 --> 00:06:02.718
I have always wondered if that's because I focused only on my happy memories, overshadowing the sad ones.
00:06:02.718 --> 00:06:10.363
To be clear, I only have one specific memory that involved both my parents.
00:06:10.363 --> 00:06:15.788
They were members of the Brownville Legion, post-588.
00:06:15.788 --> 00:06:21.622
My dad served four years as a mechanic in the Air Force before marrying my mom.
00:06:21.622 --> 00:06:25.560
She was very active with the ladies' auxiliary.
00:06:25.560 --> 00:06:30.742
My sisters and I were also part of the junior auxiliary.
00:06:30.742 --> 00:06:35.380
One particular night Mom attended her ladies' meeting.
00:06:35.380 --> 00:06:37.637
Dad was home with us kids.
00:06:38.550 --> 00:06:47.966
I was around six years old and I was upstairs collecting empty glass 16-ounce Pepsi bottles from my brother's rooms.
00:06:47.966 --> 00:06:55.617
I was going to return the bottles to the general store down our street to buy penny candy.
00:06:55.617 --> 00:07:01.591
I was playing dress-up and slipped on a pair of mom's high heels.
00:07:01.591 --> 00:07:19.836
Being only six, I thought I could just simply walk down our wooden staircase holding two six-packs of empty Pepsi glass bottles with those high-heeled shoes on without a problem.
00:07:19.836 --> 00:07:35.860
I clearly remember landing on my face, my body flat on the floor and hearing the clanking of those bottles, some ahead of me and others behind me screaming at the pain my left arm felt.
00:07:35.860 --> 00:07:40.601
My dad heard me and came to my aid.
00:07:40.601 --> 00:07:48.144
At first he thought I was going to be okay, there was no blood and I could walk.
00:07:48.144 --> 00:07:53.185
But it was supper time and he insisted I try to eat.
00:07:53.185 --> 00:08:02.809
I was left-handed and when he realized I couldn't pick up my fork he knew I must have broken my arm.
00:08:02.809 --> 00:08:13.093
He took me to the emergency room and sure enough I did.
00:08:13.093 --> 00:08:14.855
The doctor set my arm in a cast and we drove back.
00:08:14.855 --> 00:08:32.673
There were no cell phones in the 70s to alert my mom and I don't remember if he called the Legion from the hospital, but I specifically remember Dad pulling up to the front door of the Legion.
00:08:32.673 --> 00:08:36.719
I got out and ran into Mom's arms.
00:08:36.719 --> 00:08:43.692
She looked shocked and was crying seeing me in a cast.
00:08:45.395 --> 00:08:52.571
The only other vivid memory of my dad in our house was dad giving my sisters and me a bath.
00:08:52.571 --> 00:08:55.714
It was a tender, gentle moment.
00:08:55.714 --> 00:09:02.101
What was significant to me was what I remembered him saying.
00:09:02.101 --> 00:09:05.605
" I guess you are clean, julie.
00:09:05.605 --> 00:09:09.792
This is the color of your skin.
00:09:09.792 --> 00:09:14.857
You see, my siblings all have blue eyes, same as our parents.
00:09:14.857 --> 00:09:20.304
I have brown eyes and dark brown hair, almost black.
00:09:20.304 --> 00:09:35.778
My brothers have various shades of brown hair and my sisters are blonde, and so was my mom dad too, before he lost most of it as he aged.
00:09:35.778 --> 00:09:43.474
I stood out as being different compared to my siblings, especially compared to my sisters.
00:09:43.474 --> 00:09:48.982
My skin tone was olive and theirs was fair.
00:09:48.982 --> 00:10:01.043
It was so noticeable that my older brothers would tease me and say I was either adopted or mom and dad found me on the side of the road.
00:10:01.043 --> 00:10:08.019
It was always said harmlessly, but it always stuck with me as a kid.
00:10:08.639 --> 00:10:19.115
My Uncle Bob, my mom's only sibling, who was younger than her, along with my siblings, would call me the Guinea.
00:10:19.115 --> 00:10:26.120
Now, at that time, I had no understanding what a guinea was.
00:10:26.120 --> 00:10:29.504
The other nickname was Wop.
00:10:29.504 --> 00:10:36.890
All I knew was I had the nicknames as far back as I can remember.
00:10:36.890 --> 00:10:44.732
It kind of made me mad sometimes and other times it made me feel special.
00:10:44.732 --> 00:10:53.294
As I got older I realized those names were offensive to the Italian-Americans.
00:10:53.294 --> 00:11:00.447
I looked into the origin of those slang words very recently.
00:11:00.447 --> 00:11:13.490
I found Guinea comes from Guinea Negro and originally referred to any black or any person of mixed ancestry.
00:11:13.490 --> 00:11:18.719
This dates back to the 1740s.
00:11:18.719 --> 00:11:32.312
By the 1890s it was being applied to Italians, almost certainly because they tend to have darker skin than Anglo-Saxons or Germans.
00:11:32.312 --> 00:11:44.991
By 1911, the term began being applied to Hispanics, although the reference to Italians is the most common.
00:11:46.515 --> 00:11:58.779
The only two people in my immediate family who never called me the guinea or the wop were my parents, at least not that I can recall.
00:11:58.779 --> 00:12:13.432
As I grew into an adult, married, raised two children, my mom started to really take offense to my family who were still calling me those nicknames.
00:12:13.432 --> 00:12:25.434
My youngest sister shared with me an incident that happened one evening during a get-together with some of my siblings and our mom for dinner.
00:12:25.434 --> 00:12:31.807
Someone at the table, the family went to a local restaurant, mentioned my name.
00:12:31.807 --> 00:12:37.043
I wasn't there for the gathering, I was living in Connecticut at the time.
00:12:37.043 --> 00:12:41.525
Just brought my name up and called me the Guinea.
00:12:41.525 --> 00:12:49.668
Mom was so mad that she made a big deal about it and caused a little scene.
00:12:49.668 --> 00:12:57.369
My sister was flabbergasted and decided to actually get up and leave the restaurant.
00:13:09.940 --> 00:13:20.109
That was a pivotal moment where my mom told my siblings that she did not want to hear anyone refer to me as the guinea or the wop, and how much it offended her and was disrespectful to me.
00:13:20.109 --> 00:13:25.599
It will be five years this October that I met Joe, my biological father.
00:13:25.599 --> 00:13:30.869
I am still very grateful to have connected with him.
00:13:30.869 --> 00:13:37.763
It was the missing puzzle piece that has eluded me for most of my life.
00:13:37.763 --> 00:13:43.071
I believe in embracing true gratitude.
00:13:43.071 --> 00:13:47.743
It has been the gift that keeps giving to me.
00:13:47.743 --> 00:14:07.341
In a world that is filled with chaos, conflicts, wars and unspeakable tragedies, I believe when we realize we can only control ourselves, we will live a more peaceful life.
00:14:07.341 --> 00:14:22.690
I recently put a quote on my refrigerator as a reminder - "In life, the only two things you can control are your effort and your attitude.
00:14:22.690 --> 00:14:27.163
Everything else is not up to you.
00:14:27.163 --> 00:14:29.148
End quote.
00:14:30.375 --> 00:14:42.211
I looked up who the writer is Sylvester McNutt, a best-selling author, podcaster, public speaker, course creator and father.
00:14:42.211 --> 00:14:50.817
I'll share a hyperlink in my show notes if you would like to read more about this insightful, wise young man.
00:14:50.817 --> 00:15:09.288
By surrounding yourself with positive, like-minded people who you choose to be part of your life, will always attract more peace, gratitude and love.
00:15:09.288 --> 00:15:25.268
The views and opinions expressed by Nearest And Dearest Podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Nearest And Dearest Podcast.
00:15:25.268 --> 00:15:32.062
Any content provided by Julie Rogers or any other authors are of their opinion.
00:15:32.062 --> 00:15:42.167
They are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything.
00:15:42.167 --> 00:15:43.409
Thank you.
00:00:06.708 --> 00:00:15.148
No one ever said life is easy, but I believe by giving yourself permission, you will find you have more control over your life than you realize.
00:00:15.148 --> 00:00:16.391
I'm Julie.
00:00:16.391 --> 00:00:26.210
I hope you will join me by taking responsibility for yourself, by only controlling the things you can and letting go of the things that you can't.
00:00:26.210 --> 00:00:35.362
By doing this, you will have discovered the secret to having happy, healthy and more fulfilling relationships.
00:00:35.362 --> 00:00:39.768
This is Nearest and Dearest Podcast.
00:00:39.768 --> 00:00:46.155
I'm Julie Rogers and you are listening to Season 3, episode 10, A Glimpse.
00:00:46.155 --> 00:00:50.851
I know it's been some time since I last released a new episode.
00:00:50.851 --> 00:00:52.646
Life has been busy.
00:00:52.646 --> 00:00:57.932
We had our grandchildren visit us on the river, along with other family as well.
00:00:57.932 --> 00:01:01.850
Summer keeps going by faster and faster.
00:01:01.850 --> 00:01:06.588
Just the other day, my daughter, Ashley turned 39.
00:01:06.588 --> 00:01:09.900
She shares her birthday with my dad.
00:01:10.983 --> 00:01:15.054
You might remember me sharing with you that I wasn't close to him.
00:01:15.054 --> 00:01:18.001
I have some regrets about that.
00:01:18.001 --> 00:01:22.908
I came across a note I wrote in May of 2020.
00:01:22.908 --> 00:01:28.635
I was sharing my thoughts about my dad reflecting on my childhood.
00:01:28.635 --> 00:01:32.966
I reread it and decided to share it with you.
00:01:34.248 --> 00:01:37.960
As we get older, our memories can start to become blurry.
00:01:37.960 --> 00:01:51.831
Living our lives and creating more and more moments that get stored in our minds can start to push back those once vivid memories into smaller fragments that can cloud over.
00:01:51.831 --> 00:02:07.256
Maybe I'm sensitive to the realization that my mom lost her life due to Alzheimer's and I want to remember as much as I can to understand who I am.
00:02:07.256 --> 00:02:16.835
I only have a couple blurry memories of my dad in the house I lived in with my five other siblings and our mom.
00:02:16.835 --> 00:02:26.831
I have tried to reach as far back as my mind will let me to picture him actually with me.
00:02:26.831 --> 00:02:31.043
It's always been the saddest part of my childhood.
00:02:31.043 --> 00:02:34.592
That has lingered in my mind and heart.
00:02:34.592 --> 00:02:38.561
My parents divorced when I was around 10.
00:02:38.561 --> 00:02:42.328
I was the middle child and the oldest daughter.
00:02:42.328 --> 00:02:46.514
I have three older brothers and two younger sisters.
00:02:47.741 --> 00:02:56.794
We lived in a small town, actually a village in Northern New York, Brown Boulevard in Brownville.
00:02:56.794 --> 00:02:59.362
Our house was historic.
00:02:59.362 --> 00:03:10.810
General Jacob Brown, who was an American Army officer in the War of 1812, used the house as an Army headquarters during the war.
00:03:10.810 --> 00:03:17.024
His home was directly across the street and we knew it as the mansion.
00:03:17.024 --> 00:03:24.895
Fond memories of running across the street, playing there as kids with our neighborhood friends.
00:03:24.895 --> 00:03:42.034
The mansion was glorious to behold, with large gray stones stacked three stories high, set back far enough to showcase a beautiful green grass front and a circular driveway.
00:03:42.034 --> 00:03:46.290
It also held our public library.
00:03:46.290 --> 00:03:54.433
During the summer months the village offered a summer recreation program at the mansion.
00:03:54.433 --> 00:04:06.653
During the winter, the huge backyard made the perfect ice skating rink for all the residents to enjoy, along with a decent-sized hill to go sledding.
00:04:06.653 --> 00:04:15.973
We didn't always have sleds but would drag an old piece of cardboard big enough to sit on and slide down.
00:04:15.973 --> 00:04:24.310
The older kids would make an ice ramp just before the bottom that would send you sailing into the air.
00:04:24.310 --> 00:04:31.625
Living in Brownville during the mid-60s to mid-70s was heavenly.
00:04:32.827 --> 00:04:38.100
My siblings and I were fortunate to start our youths in a neighborhood.
00:04:38.100 --> 00:04:45.851
The saying it takes a village to raise a child is exactly how we were raised.
00:04:45.851 --> 00:04:51.564
I was always barefoot, running out the door to play with my friends.
00:04:51.564 --> 00:05:02.487
Hide and seek, dodgeball, mother may I, hopscotch, jump rope and riding bikes were everyday pleasures.
00:05:02.487 --> 00:05:07.432
My dad was a lineman for the local electric company.
00:05:07.432 --> 00:05:14.108
As the years went by he was a dispatcher and retired from that same company.
00:05:14.108 --> 00:05:26.535
My mom was a secretary for a local propane gas company just one of many other full-time jobs she did to support our family.
00:05:28.120 --> 00:05:41.928
Most of my vivid memories are with my siblings in the house, throw in a couple of my best childhood friends in the mix, and I had a wonderful start in my youth.
00:05:41.928 --> 00:05:50.464
However, my images of both my parents together are somehow lost.
00:05:50.464 --> 00:06:02.718
I have always wondered if that's because I focused only on my happy memories, overshadowing the sad ones.
00:06:02.718 --> 00:06:10.363
To be clear, I only have one specific memory that involved both my parents.
00:06:10.363 --> 00:06:15.788
They were members of the Brownville Legion, post-588.
00:06:15.788 --> 00:06:21.622
My dad served four years as a mechanic in the Air Force before marrying my mom.
00:06:21.622 --> 00:06:25.560
She was very active with the ladies' auxiliary.
00:06:25.560 --> 00:06:30.742
My sisters and I were also part of the junior auxiliary.
00:06:30.742 --> 00:06:35.380
One particular night Mom attended her ladies' meeting.
00:06:35.380 --> 00:06:37.637
Dad was home with us kids.
00:06:38.550 --> 00:06:47.966
I was around six years old and I was upstairs collecting empty glass 16-ounce Pepsi bottles from my brother's rooms.
00:06:47.966 --> 00:06:55.617
I was going to return the bottles to the general store down our street to buy penny candy.
00:06:55.617 --> 00:07:01.591
I was playing dress-up and slipped on a pair of mom's high heels.
00:07:01.591 --> 00:07:19.836
Being only six, I thought I could just simply walk down our wooden staircase holding two six-packs of empty Pepsi glass bottles with those high-heeled shoes on without a problem.
00:07:19.836 --> 00:07:35.860
I clearly remember landing on my face, my body flat on the floor and hearing the clanking of those bottles, some ahead of me and others behind me screaming at the pain my left arm felt.
00:07:35.860 --> 00:07:40.601
My dad heard me and came to my aid.
00:07:40.601 --> 00:07:48.144
At first he thought I was going to be okay, there was no blood and I could walk.
00:07:48.144 --> 00:07:53.185
But it was supper time and he insisted I try to eat.
00:07:53.185 --> 00:08:02.809
I was left-handed and when he realized I couldn't pick up my fork he knew I must have broken my arm.
00:08:02.809 --> 00:08:13.093
He took me to the emergency room and sure enough I did.
00:08:13.093 --> 00:08:14.855
The doctor set my arm in a cast and we drove back.
00:08:14.855 --> 00:08:32.673
There were no cell phones in the 70s to alert my mom and I don't remember if he called the Legion from the hospital, but I specifically remember Dad pulling up to the front door of the Legion.
00:08:32.673 --> 00:08:36.719
I got out and ran into Mom's arms.
00:08:36.719 --> 00:08:43.692
She looked shocked and was crying seeing me in a cast.
00:08:45.395 --> 00:08:52.571
The only other vivid memory of my dad in our house was dad giving my sisters and me a bath.
00:08:52.571 --> 00:08:55.714
It was a tender, gentle moment.
00:08:55.714 --> 00:09:02.101
What was significant to me was what I remembered him saying.
00:09:02.101 --> 00:09:05.605
" I guess you are clean, julie.
00:09:05.605 --> 00:09:09.792
This is the color of your skin.
00:09:09.792 --> 00:09:14.857
You see, my siblings all have blue eyes, same as our parents.
00:09:14.857 --> 00:09:20.304
I have brown eyes and dark brown hair, almost black.
00:09:20.304 --> 00:09:35.778
My brothers have various shades of brown hair and my sisters are blonde, and so was my mom dad too, before he lost most of it as he aged.
00:09:35.778 --> 00:09:43.474
I stood out as being different compared to my siblings, especially compared to my sisters.
00:09:43.474 --> 00:09:48.982
My skin tone was olive and theirs was fair.
00:09:48.982 --> 00:10:01.043
It was so noticeable that my older brothers would tease me and say I was either adopted or mom and dad found me on the side of the road.
00:10:01.043 --> 00:10:08.019
It was always said harmlessly, but it always stuck with me as a kid.
00:10:08.639 --> 00:10:19.115
My Uncle Bob, my mom's only sibling, who was younger than her, along with my siblings, would call me the Guinea.
00:10:19.115 --> 00:10:26.120
Now, at that time, I had no understanding what a guinea was.
00:10:26.120 --> 00:10:29.504
The other nickname was Wop.
00:10:29.504 --> 00:10:36.890
All I knew was I had the nicknames as far back as I can remember.
00:10:36.890 --> 00:10:44.732
It kind of made me mad sometimes and other times it made me feel special.
00:10:44.732 --> 00:10:53.294
As I got older I realized those names were offensive to the Italian-Americans.
00:10:53.294 --> 00:11:00.447
I looked into the origin of those slang words very recently.
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I found Guinea comes from Guinea Negro and originally referred to any black or any person of mixed ancestry.
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This dates back to the 1740s.
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By the 1890s it was being applied to Italians, almost certainly because they tend to have darker skin than Anglo-Saxons or Germans.
00:11:32.312 --> 00:11:44.991
By 1911, the term began being applied to Hispanics, although the reference to Italians is the most common.
00:11:46.515 --> 00:11:58.779
The only two people in my immediate family who never called me the guinea or the wop were my parents, at least not that I can recall.
00:11:58.779 --> 00:12:13.432
As I grew into an adult, married, raised two children, my mom started to really take offense to my family who were still calling me those nicknames.
00:12:13.432 --> 00:12:25.434
My youngest sister shared with me an incident that happened one evening during a get-together with some of my siblings and our mom for dinner.
00:12:25.434 --> 00:12:31.807
Someone at the table, the family went to a local restaurant, mentioned my name.
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I wasn't there for the gathering, I was living in Connecticut at the time.
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Just brought my name up and called me the Guinea.
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Mom was so mad that she made a big deal about it and caused a little scene.
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My sister was flabbergasted and decided to actually get up and leave the restaurant.
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That was a pivotal moment where my mom told my siblings that she did not want to hear anyone refer to me as the guinea or the wop, and how much it offended her and was disrespectful to me.
00:13:20.109 --> 00:13:25.599
It will be five years this October that I met Joe, my biological father.
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I am still very grateful to have connected with him.
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It was the missing puzzle piece that has eluded me for most of my life.
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I believe in embracing true gratitude.
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It has been the gift that keeps giving to me.
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In a world that is filled with chaos, conflicts, wars and unspeakable tragedies, I believe when we realize we can only control ourselves, we will live a more peaceful life.
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I recently put a quote on my refrigerator as a reminder - "In life, the only two things you can control are your effort and your attitude.
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Everything else is not up to you.
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End quote.
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I looked up who the writer is Sylvester McNutt, a best-selling author, podcaster, public speaker, course creator and father.
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I'll share a hyperlink in my show notes if you would like to read more about this insightful, wise young man.
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By surrounding yourself with positive, like-minded people who you choose to be part of your life, will always attract more peace, gratitude and love.
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The views and opinions expressed by Nearest And Dearest Podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Nearest And Dearest Podcast.
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Any content provided by Julie Rogers or any other authors are of their opinion.
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They are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything.
00:15:42.167 --> 00:15:43.409
Thank you.
חיפוש פרקים ישנים
חפש פרקים קודמים של Nearest And Dearest Podcast - Bridging Family Dynamics.
הצהרה: הפודקאסט והגרפיקה המוטבעים בדף זה הם מ-Julie Rogers, שהוא רכושו של בעליו ואינו קשור או מאושר על ידי Listen Notes, Inc.
