TRANSCRIPT 🔗
speaker-0: And welcome to Second Chances with Christy Bells Podcast. I'm your host, Christy Bells. Enjoy our array of talented, open-hearted guests and their thoughtfully curated stories of second chances, life-changing choices, and new perspectives. We are here to empower you on second chances in your life. Welcome to the show. Second chance of the Christie Bells. Today's guest is Nancy Sharp, an award-winning author, TEDx speaker, story coach, and a resilient expert whose life is a profound example of what it means to begin again. On the day Nancy gave birth to her premature twins, she learned that her husband's cancer had returned. In the years that followed, she navigated motherhood, caregiving, and ultimately the devastating loss of ⁓ Brent when he passed away at just thirty-nine. But Nancy's story didn't end there. She made the courageous decision to rebuild, to move across the country, to open her heart again, and to create a life rooted in purpose, storytelling, and bold living. She's the author of Both Sides Now, an eight time award winning memoir. And today she helps others reclaim their stories as a path to healing and transformation. Nancy, I am so honored that you are here today. Thank you for being here.
speaker-1: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
speaker-0: Yeah, you're very, very welcome. I always start the show with something I call permission to pause. So we're just gonna take a moment. The audience joins along. We're just gonna take a breath and bring ourselves into this moment, this time. Good it is just to pause, just to remember. It is beautiful. Thank you. So I also always start the show with how do I know my guest? And although I don't know Nancy really, really well, we serendipitously were neighbors in the same neighborhood when she moved across the country and ⁓ married her beloved Steve. And yeah, so I knew her from the neighborhood and then our paths have crossed through various ⁓ activities in the community and her work in storytelling and ⁓
speaker-1: But
speaker-0: I've just I've always been such a a fan of your work and what you do with your life and I feel like I have a kindred spirit in you, you know. We live our we live our experiences.
speaker-1: We do, we do we are very much aligned in that regard. It's probably not surprise then that we have so many circuitous connections.
speaker-0: It's right. probably do. Circuitous. I love that word too. Secure security. I can't even say it now again. Circuitous. I know the meaning. Leave it to me to mess up the word. Good lord. Anyway. ⁓ Nancy, tell us about your journey. I love ⁓ this is a podcast about you and the story of second chances. And ⁓ my gosh, how many you had. ⁓ but yeah, start. Let's start with your story. Tell us about you.
speaker-1: That's certainly. It's interesting because my journey is still unfolding. And I really believe that that's true for all of us. I have journeyed, I've journeyed through and past some really difficult things, as you alluded to in the very generous introduction, but also that journey is still unfolding. And I think that's really important for people to remember because when we think about second chances, I have always believed and and coached writing students and others that, you know. you there's you're never stuck, right? You always have options of some sort. So for me though, ⁓ you know, life was wonderful until it took some really dark turns ⁓ when I was in my early 30s. Actually I was just thirty when my my husband Brett at the time was diagnosed with a brain tumor. I mean he had never been sick with anything in his life more serious than a head cold. And one day he just started hiccuping and burping. And it was funny at first until he couldn't stop. And then some eight months later he was diagnosed with this freakish brain tumor that just changed everything. So because cancer that he had typically affected children ages five and under, there was not a lot of n protocols for adults at that time. Actually there still isn't. He had something called a medulla blastoma, and it's still primarily a pediatric tumor. So we had great care teams, and he did really, really, really, really well. And because a good percentage of children with medullas live, there was no real way to predict his protocol, ⁓ his his diagnosis, rather, whether he was gonna live, whether he was gonna be okay. But we just went by his symptoms and by the scans. And because everything had been really great. For a long period of time, we decided that we really wanted to start a family. I mean, he could have been just fine. And he was fine, unfortunately, until everything sort of came to a head ⁓ on the exact same day that ⁓ I gave birth to twins. Yes, we had to go through in vitro because he had had cancer and it took a few times. But I did get pregnant and it was very, very joyful. I had a great pregnancy. And then on the exact day that our daughter Rebecca and our son Casey was born, Brett got a call from his neurooncologist at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in the city saying that the routine MRI he had taken the week prior, the one that was clean for a couple years, was back and there was cancer everywhere. So it was just unbelievable collision of life and death all at once. Because I knew, I knew in that moment he was gonna die because it was everywhere. And then sure enough, while the twins who were born early, as can happen with multiple sometimes, were in one hospital, he was in another. And then we heard from yet another oncologist that he had less than a five percent chance of survival. So, you know, it was like they were getting stronger and healthier, the kids, and he was getting sicker and sicker. And then it was merciful and anguishing when he eventually died, ⁓ when they were two and a half years old. But you know We had the gift of being able to say goodbye, which a lot of people don't that was a luxury. I see that now. I feel very good about
speaker-0: Just
speaker-1:
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how I was able to personally support him. ⁓ it is and how our families and and we had the right teams in place. And yeah, it's excruciatingly hard and painful that my children, our children, who are now twenty four years old, have zero memories of him. They were just too little. So that experience was really the most formative experience of my life. And it set in motion the way I live my life today, honestly. After a few years of sort of figuring out, ⁓ my gosh, how am I going to navigate life? How am I going to do all this? I realized that for me, I needed to make a a bold change because I could not stay put in New York City. It was just too, it was too much of everything, honestly, for me at that juncture. And I needed to slow life down. And I just needed a reset. And there was something very healing and spiritual about Colorado that spoke to me. The mountains, the open sky, the sunshine. My closest friend lived here from college and I thought, that's enough. We're gonna come and we're gonna we're gonna try life anew. And you know, the kids were just in kindergarten at that time, so it was a good time to make a transition.
speaker-0: Wow. You moved from New York City to Colorado with kids in kindergarten after the loss of your husband. Did I hear that?
speaker-1: They were going into kindergarten.
speaker-0: I'm really speechless, but I'm kind of speechless. I mean, I know your story, but that is a lot. It's a lot. How like
speaker-1: It was a lot. It was a lot at once. ⁓ so many people ⁓ have asked me over the years, how did you get through that period? So many of us have hard circumstances. I was very lucky. I was extremely lucky that I had great family support. I had health insurance. Right. I don't take any of that for granted because today I do a lot of work at Denver Health, which I love. I know you interviewed Donna Lynn on this program a few months earlier. And I see how hard it is for so many people who don't have half of the resources that I had. And yet it was still incredibly difficult for me to navigate that kind of change.
speaker-0: Yeah, resources, you know, if you go to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, there's the basic needs, right? Which we see and a lot of people don't have. But, you know, as you build your way up that, the necessary aspects of what it takes, you know, ⁓ the resilience that it takes to go through that type of devastating loss at the same time that you're a new mother, that you are hormonally changing, like there there's just so much in that, Nancy. How You know, and I heard you say you know, the other thing is you had community, you had family support around you, which obviously was critical. ⁓ but you know, the inner resources for you to be able to go through that and and you said earlier something to the fact that it shaped how you live your life. I really wanted I really want to to have you pull that through for
speaker-1: Yeah, you know, and writing for me has always been very cathartic. It's been very healing. And it's funny, when I came to write both sides now, I wrote this simple sentence that has stood the test of time for me, which is seeing takes time. I could not really see my experience for all the years, the almost seven years that I was living it. I couldn't see it clearly. even in the immediate aftermath and in the couple years that followed, it took time for me to absorb and to integrate that loss and also to figure out how what I wanted and how I wanted to live my life because life had been completely turned upside down for me. I do feel, you know, it's interesting, I came to think about the the duality of life, right? Life and death. y youth because I felt very young when all of this happened to me and and and old age. I also felt like so much older than my years. I went to a bereavement group in New York City and the person I felt the closest to was ninety-five years old, grieving his wife of six years. You know, 'cause I felt old and and young old and and young in my soul all at once. And it'll figure out how to wrestle with that sort of internal struggle. And you know, I came to believe and I came to approach my life through this wisdom of that gray space because I was somehow raised with this belief that life was kind of black and white. And boy, did I learn life is life is not black and white at all. There is a whole lot of gray. And when I learned to accept what had happened to me and to see my life in that space of gray, it really gave me permission. To be able to take chances again, ⁓ to put out there in different ways. It took some of the pressure on me to have everything figured out, because I had nothing figured out. Putting myself out there, putting myself on the path of opportunity with my career, with Steve, the wonderful man who I met because he was featured in 5280 magazine at that time when I had just moved to Denver as one of Denver's most eligible singles. And I read that he who was widowed with two children. And I thought, wow, maybe we can be friends. I don't know anybody else really here except my friend Julie. And had not I not done that, had I not put myself in the path of opportunity, because I wanted to find love again. I wanted to find connection. And that has been so true with career. Also just trying new things, whether it's writing a book, whether it's Becoming a TEDx speaker, which was scary, whether it's doing a lot of keynote speaking, whether it's changing my career path and going more in house now as I I feel that I am at Denver Health. It's been really, really rewarding and really important to be able to
speaker-0: Take that. Let me ask you something. Have you ever noticed how the same patterns keep showing up in your life, your work, or even your relationships? That's exactly why I created Uproot. Uproot is a transformational framework that helps you uncover the unconscious patterns running your life, reconnects you with your authentic self, and intentionally creates what comes next. For years
I've taught this work in coaching, leadership programs, and workshops. And now, for the first time, Uproot is becoming an evergreen online course you can take anytime. If you're ready for a real shift, not just another inspirational idea, join the wait list now. At Christy Bells.com backslash uproot. Your next chapter starts with awareness. Many years ago, I started noticing something in my coaching work. Brilliant, capable people kept coming to me with the same question. Why do I keep repeating the same patterns in my life and leadership? That question became the foundation for something I now call uproot. Uproot is a framework I've used for years to help people uncover the hidden patterns shaping their decisions, relationships, and sense of purpose. And now, for the first time, Uproot is becoming an evergreen online course so you can move through the work at your own pace. If you're ready to understand yourself at a deeper level and create real change, join the waitlist at www.christyvells.com backslash uproot. Welcome back to Second Chances with Christy Bells. ⁓ my gosh, Nancy Sharp. I just am still a little in awe of the story, the beginning. And I know it's just the beginning of the story, but what a journey from having twins and finding out your husband's cancer's return to losing him to moving across the country from New York City to Colorado. ⁓ wow. Wow, wow, wow. So ⁓ you talked a little bit previously about ⁓ seeing it ad in the paper about the sexiest man alive or sexiest man. right. Most eligible was it sexy. Now that I saw I'm shirtless. Now that I saw I'm shirtless, I'm like sexiest man, right?
speaker-1: Okay, now we have to tell your listeners though that we he was only showless because he was just writing the Peloton and we were having technology help and he came to save me. ⁓ no, fifty two eighty at that point in time, fifty two eighty magazine did a biannual ⁓ special issue on the most eligible singles. So he was featured that year, and that is how I met.
speaker-0: And he also had two children and ha was also widowed. Is that correct? Yeah.
speaker-1: He he was, yes. Actually his first wife ⁓ died of pancreatic cancer a year before Bret did. And his boys at the time were ten and eleven. At the time that I met them, they were fourteen and fifteen and my twins were still five. So
speaker-0: Wow. What a journey. ⁓
speaker-1: Twenty years. I'm actually gonna be twenty years in Colorado this summer, which is really a remarkable milestone.
speaker-0: Talk about second chances, like lifting up and you know, uprooting yourself. I call it uprooting, right? I did that from Kansas to Colorado. But so you started over here in Colorado. And remind me what were you writing back ⁓ in New York? Were you in the writing profession?
speaker-1: Yes and no. I was freelancing ⁓ a lot. So I started ⁓ my career in public relations and communications and I was working for some big agencies. I was head of public relations at UNICEF for a while and then
I started my own business. I was doing a lot of speech writing. I think I was always drawn to helping people tell their stories. ⁓ and then when this happened I started to reflect on my story. So I did start to to freelance in New York. But ⁓ and I was writing some travel pieces and then I started to write about my story for Self magazine. I did a piece in Good Housekeeping magazine and people were interested. But ⁓ you know I never really had the desire to to write my story for the sake of sharing my story. It was always to do so because I felt I had something to say that could serve other people. And that is what continues to guide me today.
speaker-0: I love that. You know, people often say to me, Why do you share so much about your life personally? And I'm like, you know, number one, I believe that there's a growth period when you one heal, right? When you go through a grief and loss like you have, or you've gone through shame and and different aspects of experiences that you weren't so proud of. And then you can tell the story and you don't carry all of that baggage with you. Like there's a freedom to it, right? And I think that is a telltale sign of it's time to. the story's time to be told, right? And and making it making a difference for other people because loss is part of life. I mean it's part of it. What what really precipitated you wanting to write the story? Like where when you got to that point
speaker-1: Because I felt that I had something to say that could serve other people. So we began to talk before the break about this this gray space, right? This nuanced place of gray. And that was so powerful for me when I came to that all on my own, you know, and I felt that my goodness, if I could learn to live in this liminal space of gray. Right. And there's a lot more than fifty shades of gray. Everybody does actually two hundred and thirty-six or something like that shades of gray. And if you can learn to live in that liminal space and just be okay in that space without the expectations and the pressure of having to be of things having to be either, you know, just god awful horrible or perfect, then you're gonna be okay. And I realized for me that was the way I needed to live my life and that a if I could help other people to reflect on their experiences too, that could really serve them. That's also why I wrote the book with a lot of white space and using sometimes very fragmented sentences and sentences and chapters because I didn't I wanted the reader to be able to see themselves in my story, but to see their stories. ⁓ I had actually I I've gotten a lot of mail over the years. Something that just, you know, came to me a moment ago, Christy, is once I got an email from actually he was a neurosurgeon, and his wife was dying of a brain tumor. And he told me, he wrote to me, I never met him. He wrote to me and he said that he was holding his wife's hand as she lay dying, as he was reading the story out loud. Wow. So
speaker-0: Something powerful, right? And hearing your story and another person's story, you know you're not alone, right?
speaker-1: We're never alone. And until we give voice to our stories, we feel like we're alone, but we're not. ⁓ I mean, I I teach reflective writing today, I teach narrative workshops, and I was just working with a group of clinicians this morning and we were reflecting on the theme of joy in medicine. And you know, some of them started out the stories were not that joyful, and there were tears amidst the joy, but it was very powerful. for them to be able to give voice to those experiences and to suddenly feel like weightless because they had shared what they had been holding on to. And that's true for all of us.
speaker-0: Yeah, the power of the story. It's incredible. I start all my retreats with the power of the story. And I have a kind of a funny story one time. I had a group of women, it was a a night, evening. We start with the story. We got up the next morning. We were all sitting around the new day. And ⁓ we were debriefing. And one woman said, You know what I'm really amazed by is what I didn't tell you last night. Like what part of my story did I not tell you? And I had this moment of like, What? I mean my heart almost sank because I was like, ⁓ God, what did I not write about in my book? What did I not tell? What story do I not share? Right? Does that resonate at all with you?
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, but some sometimes also what's left unsaid can be just as powerful. Mm-hmm. And that doesn't mean that you're not being honest about your story. It just means in the case of writing, you're respecting the reader to fill in the blanks, or you're respecting the listener right to to fill in the blanks. That's there's power in that.
speaker-0: I love that 'cause I took it like, ⁓ my God. Yeah. Well, I love that. There's power in that in holding back some of the truth, right? And not having to tell the whole story.
speaker-1: Especially if the story that you're holding on to, whether consciously or subconsciously, doesn't necessarily reinforce the theme of what it is you want to speak about. You have to select the scenes and select the moments. And that's true in life too. It's very true.
speaker-0: Let's talk through that. Like ch choose the themes and then select the moments, right? So when you think about that in in story of your life and and sharing with other women, because we have a primarily women audience, say more about that. Like what does that look like to choose the theme and then choose the story?
speaker-1: Well, I think your story is always unfolding, but as I said at the beginning of the program also, I have worked with a lot of people who something has happened to them. ⁓ well other one of two categories I see a lot of people something has happened to them and they feel stuck by that experience. ⁓ and I have to I I help them to see that no, their story is still unfolding. Or maybe they think they have they don't have
enough of a story. Nothing dramatic or traumatic has happened. Right, and you don't need anything traumatic or dramatic to happen to make your life meaningful, to make your life purposeful. So I believe that selecting the scenes, selecting the moments, it means different things to all of us. But ⁓ you know, I like to think of life and story as an evolution, right? There isn't necessarily in the case of our own self. growth and development. There doesn't necessarily need to be a hard ending. I don't also believe in fairy tale endings anymore. And I never really voiced that before, Christy, but after what I lived through, I really don't believe in s in storytelling storytelling, fairy tale, black and white endings. I believe life is a little more messy than that. And it's a little more nuanced. I mean it really is. in that place of gray where you've got some really important themes and important moments, but then you have others that tug at you and that pull you back. And that's all part of the journey. Writing is very, very powerful. And writing can be a very powerful tool though for listeners. It really can be because it's so it could be so cathartic and it can really help you connect what you're feeling on the outside and connect it with What you're feeling on the inside.
speaker-0: Is there a particular way I write every day? I journal every day before I get out of bed. I started morning pages years ago, Julia Cramer's work. But is there a certain way that you teach in your workshops about writing and and some tips and tricks that we can teach the audience about journaling or writing for themselves?
speaker-1: Yeah, and journaling is very different than ⁓ it's a different ⁓ exercise and I would never wanna impose any constraints on the journaling process because I applaud anybody who has the the ability to just put pen to paper, right? Whether you're journaling or anything else. It's hard. We're all we're busy for a lot of us. It's very easy to make excuses and Just if you can bring yourself to journal every day or journal you know as you see fit or just write about what you see fit, I think that's really important. So there's sort of two different streams. One is don't put any pressure or expectations on yourself. Write what you feel, write where you're at, write about a problem you're having, write a letter to somebody on the page. If you're writing because you want to write an article to be published possibly, That's a different kind of a process. But in a lot of the groups I teach, I use a a ⁓ a decades old curriculum called Guided Autobiography, which was developed at the University of Southern California in the nineteen seventies by at that time a well-known gerontologist and psychologist who was trying to do some research to help seniors feel a greater sense of purpose and optimism about their lives. And today that work is used all over the world with groups young and old and It's really an interesting and very forgiving curriculum because you take a universal theme, like a branching point moment, right? Which could be a second chance, a branching point moment in your life, and you write two pages about that. So whether you are watching this program, right, from Kansas, where you said you were from, or from Connecticut, where I'm from, or Colorado, or Paris, France, or Florence, Italy, right, or anywhere in the world. Anybody, no matter your life circumstances, can speak to a branching point moment. So it's really rewarding to be able to take themes like that, like trust, like health, like education, like family, and to look at our experiences. There's so many different ways to get at the essence of what it is you want to say. I excel in the personal narrative, in the memoir space, in the nonfiction space. I really love being able to help people to distill and to reflect and get to the heart of what it is they want to say.
speaker-0: I find if I write enough, right? If I do have pen to paper, I can usually, you know, if I write enough that I can actually get to the heart of it. I actually call it puke on paper just so you know. That's what I do every morning. I just get up and just regurgitate everything that I like. Everything I thought about.
speaker-1: Have you ever heard about you know the shitty first draft? Also, I mean when most of us write, we're writing shitty first drafts. But pucan paper is a great thing to do. I found the morning pages really hard. ⁓ and I think it's amazing that you've been able to stick with it. I did it for a while, but then it started to feel contrived to me. And I never want to write when it feels contrived. ⁓ I love Cheryl Strade. I love Cheryl Strade, who wrote Wilde and and you know, ⁓ many other books and I have met her a couple of times through the Lighthouse Writers Workshop where I serve on their board and I've taught and guest lectured there and just been big supporter of Lighthouse over the years. And she was there once and you know, people asked about her process, her craft. And she was so funny. She said, you know, I ⁓ I don't write every day. She said, but when I do write, I write like a motherfucker. And I really thought that was so great. You might have to edit that out of this this script, but I thought that was great. And she gave all of us permission who don't have the time or the bandwidth maybe to write every day, to write when we have something to say and to do it well.
speaker-0: I love that. I love that. And you can say fucker anytime you want on my podcast. I didn't teach Yeah, right. That that that bomb is like yeah, it's funny. I appreciate that. And you know, writing like a motherfucker, I think is really important because you know, if you have something to say and you aren't I think for me at least, it's so cathartic to write on paper and know that I'm not having to like engage in a conversation about my thoughts or feelings, right? That I can just express that and and it's just mine, right? It's just mine. And it
comes up and out of me. So I'm not holding it, you know, as a empath or a sensitive being. You know, sometimes I carry a lot of shit that's not mine. And I'm like, I need to get it out every day. I need to be able to say, you know, that didn't feel good. That makes me mad. This is blah, blah, blah. You know, whatever it is.
speaker-1: I mean, you you wouldn't be you you wouldn't be normal if you didn't feel that way. We all do that. And I oftentimes use my journal when I do journal, right? Because I'm griping about something or I'm I'm trying to figure out something. But you know, you were asking about my process before. I like you know, writing can be a very solitary act and that's important because that is how you grow. However, I teach I like to teach writing in community. And so I really love working with groups of people to help them reflect on some of these themes and get to their stories. And there's been so much research about guided autobiography over the years, how it shows that in fact you really do grow more when you learn and reflect in community with other people. Because if you're doing this full time and you're just writing by yourself, it can be a very, very lonely task.
speaker-0: Very isolating, right? It can be, yeah. I love that because you know, the other thing is that we women grow in community together. That's how we learn and grow and develop, is that we need each other. And so, you know, when we silo and yeah, so I love the the idea of theming and writing together and sharing and you know, that's gotta be so cathartic. So cathartic.
speaker-1: It can be. It can be. Love to do that for you with some of your retreats. Be fun. Yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, that would be really fun. We should we will definitely do that. Definitely do that. So what other, I mean, not that you haven't had enough second chances in your life, but when you think about second chances, are there other opportunities in your life that you feel like have really represented a second chance for you?
speaker-1: Well, let's see. We talked about writing my story, we talked about meeting Steve, we talked a little bit about career. You know, I do feel that I'm the kind of person, and maybe I've also learned this through my experience, ⁓ early experience, that I just keep putting myself out there and I try to learn and I try to recreate myself along the way in a way that serves me at that moment. You know, ⁓ we were talking b before, you know, five years ago, six years ago, I'm not sure that I would have been at the same place I was when I I made a decision to say, you know, I wanna I wanna come into Denver Health, right? I really want to do this work and to help tell the story of this 166 year old healthcare system. But I felt that I was needing something different and I also thought that I could bring value to Donna Lynn and to the organization as a whole. So I had to recognize that within myself that, you know, that meant letting go of other things that maybe I I had been doing, like a lot of keynote speaking at that time. I had to let go of some of those things because you can't have everything. And sometimes your life has to bend in a certain way based on where you are at in your life. And it's important for women, I think, especially. To be able to recognize that and to see that. So the only other thing I would say about second chances are it's just, you know, the word stuck really unnerves me because I don't believe anybody, no matter how bad a situation can be, that you're ever truly stuck. And I would love your listeners to know that there are always people, there are always resources. available. ⁓ there were I mean the world of online now has made the the world a lot smaller. And it's we're living at a time when there's a we're I feel like we're being barraged constantly, right, by hard, hard news, hard world events. Life can be very hard. I mean nobody ever said life is going to be easy. But at this moment in time, it feels especially hard. And even so, we're not stuck. There are still things that we can do individually, we can do as community, and there are things we can do to to take hold of hope. I don't think I'm overly idealistic, but maybe sometimes I am, because I have to I have to live in a world of hope. It is everything. Hope is key to resilience. It's key to being able to and you know, resilience, by the way, it's not just about bouncing back from difficult experiences. It's about reframing those experiences in a way that allows you to move forward, to grow and to change. And yes, to have to have hope. It's so, it's so important.
speaker-0: I so love that, Nancy. I really cause I think that's the pinnacle of second chances for me. You know, whether you fall down, you make a mistake, or you get downtrodden or you're, you know, you're hopeless sometimes. There is always a choice. There's always a choice to be able to choose again. And for me, that's what second chances have have been about in my life is the ability to choose again and choose a different path or go a different way. When you talk about, you know, that we individually, communally, collectively can do something. Like what are what's one thing? I'm gonna go into some rapid fire questions for you. What is one thing that you do on the regular that helps you find balance or more hope in your life?
speaker-1: Writing, journaling, ⁓ writing down some things that are important to me, taking a walk and clearing my head, listening to a book on tape, swimming in words, ⁓ having a talk with my husband or my family, or listening to beautiful music that takes me outside of myself and it makes me appreciate beauty in the world again. That is so important.
speaker-0: Those are all beautiful, beautiful concepts and ideas and ⁓ yes, take a walk, listen to some great music, you know, dance, do write, journal, do
speaker-1: Friend. Right. See a right. See a good friend. And just be reminded, right, that hope is everywhere if you
choose to see it.
speaker-0: Who in your life has taught you the most about second chances?
speaker-1: I'm glad that's just not a rapid fire question. I don't know. You know, I really don't know. But I will tell you that when I was at I worked at UNICEF, I met some really incredible women. ⁓ I met Audrey Hepburn. I got to work with Audrey Hepburn. And she was remarkable. I actually got to spend a day with her at the Plaza Hotel in New York. And, you know, I was very moved by her grace. She was beautiful inside and out. And and I yes, she had had a charmed life in many ways, but a lot of people forget, you know, she was she had serious malnutrition as a child because she grew up in Belgium during World War Two. ⁓ and so she's somebody who had to remake her life and she never forgot who she was. She was very, very kind and she was very gracious and she, you know. Whether you were the president of a country or ⁓ or of UNICEF or you were a secretary working in the office, she treated everybody the same. And that I have always tried to hold on to. I think it's really, really important. And I I try very hard to just be very kind to other people. ⁓ so I'm not sure beyond that if there's really anybody or any story, I feel like I just had to figure this out on my own and and I'm still figuring it out because aren't we all? But you know what, Christy, that beats the alternative, right? People complain all the time about getting older and that is a hard it's hard. It's not easy, right, for women to accept aging and changes in their body and, you know, and everything. But it it I have to remind myself too, having experienced an early traumatic death of my husband, I'm so glad I get to have those birthdays. And I'm so glad and so lucky I get to age.
speaker-0: gonna be with that. It's so true, right? What's one word that describes your ⁓ life right now?
speaker-1: Joyful. And that's very intentional. I'm really, I feel at this moment I'm joyful, but I also choose to be joyful. I don't I it's it's a choice. It really, really is. I could wake up and I could be really upset about one thing or another, or I can choose to say, I don't think I'm gonna give that feeling free rent in my head, and I'm gonna choose to be joyful because that's the most powerful thing I can do. For myself and for my community and for the world.
speaker-0: Joyful. I love that. What's one thing you say to yourself at five words or less that is like a pep talk? You
speaker-1: You've got this. So this is something my d my daughter and I. My daughter is going to medical school ⁓ this summer. She'll be starting, and I'm not exactly sure where, but she's got a couple different places she's leaning toward. But as I have tried to be a parent to a young woman who has had her share of anxieties too, I have her I have ⁓ been able to reflect to her, you've got this, and it's something I think We all need to be able to tell ourselves from time to time. And I I probably don't do it enough. So thanks for the reminder.
speaker-0: You got this. Let me remind you. You've got this.
speaker-1: I'm really good at telling other people. I it's a lot harder for me to tell myself that. And that is probably something I have to work on. That's I have to work on that.
speaker-0: I agree too. That's so true. ⁓ we can see the forest from the tree, can't we? ⁓ God. Yeah, gosh. Yeah, your story is just a powerful reminder that life really, you know, it can break us open. And yet there's something still more that invites us into being more connected, more hopeful, more alive than we can ever imagine. And you're just such an inspiration. And I really appreciate you taking the time and the vulnerability to share. your story and your wisdom and your gifts with us. And I look forward to working with you and helping other women share their stories and their journey in the writing path. Let's tell our guests how they can get a hold of you. If they want to l learn more about your workshops or get to know you in a a different way. How how can the guests find you?
speaker-1: Thank you so much. I've had a great time talking with you and I really appreciate your interest and love love the idea of second chance chances in every which way. ⁓ you know, feel free, my website is writeyourlife letter.com. We didn't really talk much about that, but in the face, ⁓ in the vein of helping people to reflect on their stories, I help people write life letters, legacy letters. So write your lifeletter.com or you can email me at nsharp at nancysharp.net. or I know you'll be able to post social media channels, but I would love to hear from you.
speaker-0: Beautiful. I'm sure you will ⁓ have people reaching out and wanting to learn more and know more. So again, I just thank you so much. If you want to learn more about me and my work and follow me and my uproot course coming out, go to Christybells.com backslash uproot. And until next time, again, thank you so much, Nancy. So appreciate you. Take care. Bye, everyone. You too.
speaker-1: Thank you so much. Okay. Take care. Bye bye.
speaker-0: It is the joy of my life to showcase the voices of people and the messy details of life's journey. As you have experienced, my guests are thriving with purpose and style, but that does not mean that their life is easy and without challenges. I've dedicated my life to you and your journey. Thank you for listening to Second Chances with Christy Bells. Please subscribe and learn more at ChristyBells.com backslash second chances.