Massive Acceptance and Radical Presence: A Journey of Love with Sue Ryan

Sue Ryan is an experienced caregiver and TEDx speaker who has dedicated her life to helping others learn how to be brave and live their best life. She has cared for her father with dementia and her husband with Alzheimer's for the past 40 years and shares her journey of massive acceptance and radical presence as the keys to ultimate freedom.

Sue Ryan's journey of caregiving for her father and husband with dementia taught her the importance of being present in the moment and accepting life's experiences without judgement. Through her hardships, she was able to develop strength and resilience she never realized she had, and was eventually able to share her message of massive acceptance and radical presence on a Ted Talk stage. Her inspiring story of bravery and love is a great reminder of the potential and possibilities in all of our journeys.

In this episode, you will learn the following:

1. How to use the parable of the Chinese Farmer to live with radical presence and acceptance.

2. Achieving peace in challenging situations by practicing massive acceptance and radical presence.

3. How to maintain a valuable role as a family caregiver while still providing for your family.

About Sue: 

Sue’s mission is to empower and embolden individuals to maximize the opportunities and potential change will bring. As a speaker, change strategist, author, executive coach, caregiving coach and mentor, she lives this through two passions of her purpose. She guides and inspires leaders and emerging leaders committed  to business growth and next-level leadership to be great leaders of themselves and others. She guides non-professional caregivers to become confident, balanced, and supported in all phases of their caregiving journey.

Sue specializes in helping individuals and teams thrive during times of change. Working with them to clarify, align, develop, and implement solutions in highly competitive markets, while creating their culture poised to face the challenges of change with resilience and right action in the direction of their goals, they successfully deliver long-term brand growth and value. Whether change is due to external factors such as market shifts, technology innovation, economic changes - or setting their sights on growth and expansion - understanding the dynamics and psychology of change enhances their ability for success. Sue delivers these through her signature offerings Intentionally Navigating Transitions - Leadership Through the Dimensions of ChangeTM, The Prodigy ZoneTM, Leadership C.A.R.E.S.TM, and The Caregiver’s Journey.

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Transcript

0:13

Hey, it's Christina Driscoll posted the she's brave Podcast. I'm so glad you're here with me. When our son was five, my husband was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. For the next 12 years, I learned how to be brave, resilient, and live my best life. On the podcast, we're going to meet so many amazing, brave, authentic and resilient women who share their own journeys of how they learned how to be brave, and are now living their best lives. Step into your best brave life with me. And let's go on this journey of how to be brave together. Hi, Sue. Hi, Kristina. How are you doing? I am fabulous. I'm so glad to hear that because you have had such an interesting life. You have been a caregiver many, many times over in many different situations, you were a caregiver when your dad had dementia. And now you are a caregiver to your husband who has dementia. And there's a lot to unpack today. But when you and I met, I was just kind of blown away by how much we have in common. And I'm really, really excited to share with my audience, your journey, your path and your incredible strength and bravery and your optimism and your light with my listeners because I know there's people out there that are caregiving, whether that be three small children, or a new baby or an elderly parent or whatever, but the way you approach it, I have not met anyone who approaches it the way you do. And I absolutely love how you approach it. So you were on a TEDx talk, which you guys, I will put that in the show notes. And it's I absolutely loved it. And I want to start with you telling the parable, there's a Chinese parable. And I want to start right there, the parable of the Chinese farmer. And in the TED talk, I use that I don't tell the parable in the TED talk, because we're limited with time when I reference it, and it's a really powerful parable about life. And it was very powerful for the purpose that I had it in the TED Talk. And the way the parable goes is there was a Chinese farmer. One day, the Chinese farmers fries tours horse ran away that evening, the Chinese farmers neighbors came by and judging the experience is bad. They said, Oh, that's terrible news. That's great misfortune, Chinese farmer simply said, maybe the next day, the Chinese farmer's prized horse returned. And with that horse came seven more wild horses that evening, the Chinese farmers neighbors came by, and judging that experience has good they said, Oh, this is great good fortune. The Chinese farmer simply said, maybe the next day, the Chinese farmer's son was training one of the wild horses, and while riding it, it threw him off, and he fell and he broke his leg badly. That evening. Chinese farmers neighbors came back by we'll give them more time. And they judge this as terrible. This is great misfortune. This is awful. Chinese farmer simply said, maybe the next day, the Chinese army came through the village that the Chinese farmer and his family lived in. And they took every young man who was able bodied to go and fight in the war. Chinese farmer's son couldn't go to war, because he had a broken leg. Guess who came by that evening? Yep. The Chinese farmers, neighbors and judging experiences good said, This is great, good fortune. And the Chinese farmers simply said, maybe the lesson in the parable of the Chinese farmer, is that if you judge the experience, in the moment, you can't be present to what really is. It's so often in our lives, specially when we're in roles of caregiving support, something in the moment could seem like it was a bad thing. And yet, if we don't judge it, there are several things that happen. If we look at it, the observer, not the judge. First of all, we have access to the potential and possibilities. Second of all, we're staying fully present. We're not living in what we've judged it to be, which is bad. We can let it kind of play itself out and see what really happens. And if you'd like later, I can share one of the stories that I gave that A representative example of that in our lives. But that's what the parable is. And it's really powerful in all areas of our lives. Just accept things as they are, without judgment, be the observer. And let us see what's going to happen. I just think it's so powerful. It's so powerful for caregivers. But I feel like it applies to every single person in every single situation, how we, we like to slap a label on something and judge a situation is good or bad. And that parable is so powerful, because it really shows you really don't know and there is no judgement. Your TEDx talk was about how massive acceptance and radical presents are the keys to our ultimate freedom. Wow. Wow. Like, can we just expand on that, please? Absolutely. When I was caring for my dad, I've, as you mentioned, I've been on a variety of different roles of caregiving support over the last 40 years. And my dad, my hero hit me he's got a type of dementia and and I want to try to help him do everything I possibly can. And I had accepted he had a type of dementia. By the time that I was caring for him, I had been in a variety of caregiving roles already. And I was sitting in with him one night on the lanai. And it was a beautiful evening, and we were just sitting there, so I'm present to, you know what's going on, all of a sudden, he jumped up and said, walk the dog, because part of the symptoms that he had impacted his ability to communicate. And so I love living in the world of no coincidences, the Lanai My parents lived at one side had a screen door that went out on a sloping grassy hill, we're down in Florida, they've got this Bermuda grass, which is like walking on grass, it's rough, and all that stuff. So I'm thinking all these terrible things that could happen. Well, on the other side of the Lanai is this door that walks out on this smoothly paved path, that what goes right down to the manmade lake where we could walk the dog and all that stuff, but it's very safe. So I'm, of course trying to keep my dad safe, which is what he's tried to teach me all my life. So I'm like, Daddy, Daddy, let's use this other door. And now he's having none of that. He wants to go out the other because that's all he's got access to. But I'm not thinking about that. I'm thinking about all these things that could happen. And I'm worried and blah, blah, blah. So ultimately, we get out there, we get down the hill, the dog is fine. But everybody's agitated. It was so frustrated, I was frustrated, my whole, my heart was pounding, the dog had gotten agitated, it was not a good experience. And I felt really bad because I was letting my dad down. And I have always reflected on experiences, whether they were positive or challenging, because there's always a lesson to learn, I may not understand it, but I want to harness it so that someday maybe I can use it if I don't understand at the time. And so when I was reflecting on it, I recognized that while I had accepted he had a type of dementia, and I was present to what was going on, I hadn't really fully accepted and that wasn't fully present. And what came to me in that moment was massive acceptance, acceptance of exactly what is 100%. In that moment, we don't have to like it, we don't have to agree with it, we don't even have to understand that we just have to accept this is exactly what is so that if we accept it, then we can be like the Chinese farmer, fully present in the moment had I been fully present in the moment, I would have known my dad had access only to go out that door. And so while I may have checked with him one time and said, Hey, Dad, you want to go this way, when he just kept Beeline in for the door, I would have known he doesn't have access to anything else. And I would have stayed put. So radical presence is fully present in that moment, it's not wishing it had been the other way that it had been, it's not fortune telling to the future, it's staying fully present. And when we accept something completely, and we're fully present, then when we have a challenging decision to make, we can make the wisest choice, because we are fully balanced, where we're able to look at what's going on. And then the other thing though, is when there's a moment of joy, and there are so many moments of joy in our journeys, we can see it and we can appreciate it, we can feel the joy. So we can feel the full range of emotions. But we can't do that when we're clouded by judgment or when we're not fully accepting something, or we're not staying present. Yeah, beautifully said. So you really had a major aha moment. And how did that shape the next chapter. It's changed every part of my life. I live that way now with every single thing I do. My husband was diagnosed while we were still caring for my dad. So there was an overlap of a few years. And yet by practicing massive acceptance and radical presence, which I really believe that part of my dad's journey with us was to teach me that so beautiful, that experience for me to have that insight and enlightenment so that as I then became the caregiver for my husband, I could have our journey be so much different because I fully accepted and because I fully stay present. And so I'm now at peace in any situation, and I have been through some income audibly challenging challenging situations with my husband, and in other areas of life. And yet I'm able to stay focused and balanced. And I have a positive perspective. Yeah, it's so, so beautiful. And I think it's very, very similar to me, I just don't think that I verbalized it the same way. But I did have massive radical acceptance of my husband's diagnosis as well, although not right away. Sometimes we need time to process things. But yes, and then you're able to live with joy in the moment, in the present, when people have dementia, you cannot predict the future at all. And I think that's one of the hardest parts of the journey for a lot of people is people want to, they want to know their future, they want to be able to plan but with dementia, you can't because they can go for years at the same level, and then suddenly have you know, a great drop and the fact that you are living, you're not just surviving, you're thriving, but your father had dementia, you cared for him, he passed away, and now your husband has it, and your husband has had it for a long time how many years, we're in our 11th year with his journey. mazing I think you are the most brave person I have ever met Sue, I do. Because I was a caregiver to and caring for someone with dementia is just this incredible journey. And yet, you come out on the other side of it just so incredibly strong. You know, we have the opportunity to do that there are some people who haven't learned, which is part of the reason that I share what I do, because they haven't found the capacity to step into the consideration of the perspective that everything that happens for us has a purpose in our lives. Yeah, that while it may not always be something we have a lot of enjoyment about. Or if we had a list of things we would have chosen. Ultimately, it strengthens us. It teaches us resilience, we learn about ourselves in ways that we wouldn't have known if this hadn't been part of our experience. And I talk about my journey with my husband is our journey of love. Together. Yeah, yeah, that's really beautiful, our journey of love, and you cherish the moments together. And yeah, I mean, all we really have that moment. And one of the, you know, and again, I'm going to call this a great lesson and a blessing. Because in there are blessings in our journey, other challenges, but their blessings. One of the great blessings that I have learned, and I have been able to implement in my life, and it's helped me with my care for my dad, as well as for my husband, is that when people have, for example, a diagnosis of dementia staying fully present in the moment is the only way we know how to provide them the best care because they shift moment by moment by moment. And when we're able to stay fully present with them where they're at, for example, I know people will say, Well, what stage is your husband, and I don't give them that information. Because I could put him into any stage, I could look for symptoms, that would put him into a stage. And yet, then all I'm doing is looking for him to match something that I've created. I don't ever do that I go and I am fully present to him in the moment, day by day, some days, he doesn't even open his eyes, he won't squeeze my hand, he doesn't communicate. And then there are other days, and I'll go I greet him the exact same way every time I see him. And there'll be days and his face just lights up. And he'll squeeze my hand and maybe he'll be able to say something. And so if I'm not staying fully present in the moment, I missed those opportunities, because I'm judging what it is that he's fitting into those symptoms. And I don't want to miss any part of our journey. Yeah, you have a lot of what you call su isms. And there are these really wonderful quotes. And I just want to discuss a few of them. Sure. This first one, I believe each of us is here for a reason. When we know our reason, we direct our potential and possibilities in the right direction, and make our most positive impact. We feel great about ourselves. We're fulfilled by what we do. And we love the life we live. Yep. It's just like so, so beautiful. And it's reasonable that we wouldn't know that in seasons, our lives because we're growing and we're learning. And one of the things that I'll say is that I have recently realized even another level, it's kind of like some of this reveals itself. One of the things many of us go through in our lives is feeling that we're not worthy. Because we don't necessarily really somebody has either led us to believe that way. Or we've chosen to believe that about ourselves. And when we finally realize that we've always been worthy and we're always great, and we're unique, and we're wonderful, and we wouldn't be here if there wasn't a reason for us to be here. It's like this world is this great gift and we're in it and we're already perfect. And so it's just living the things that we're doing without I've recognized is that my professional career in business and all of the things that I learned in the pieces of that that was great. I stepped away from that when I married my husband, I went on a sabbatical with him and, and then he was diagnosed. So my sabbatical has lasted a little longer. And now I'm doing entrepreneurial your work, but that in and of itself, and then all my roles of caregiving support, how many people can say I have more than 30 years of experience in business with the CEOs and board presidents, as well as people throughout every level of an organization, understanding what they need in order to be successful, and recognize recognizing that family caregiving is a crisis globally, in businesses, I understand both sides of that I've been a family caregiver for more than 40 years, I've had those experiences all come together to allow me to have the expertise in the background to now share and be supportive, and try to help businesses keep the family caregivers who are so valuable to them, and have the family caregivers feel that they can still come and be a valuable resource while being able to say, Hey, I am a family caregiver. And there gonna be times when I've either got to care for my child or a loved one or a parent, you know, the spouse, and it's like, thank you very much for helping me continue to have my purpose revealed to me. Yeah, I mean, I totally agree, like you are totally aligned with your purpose. And it's beautiful to see, because we are in a time where a lot of us don't understand that caregiving really can take its toll. And, you know, number one, just the tools that you just gave us, you know, on being 100% present, to help get through it. But then also, like you said, like, the reality is, most caregivers actually work. So working with companies and helping them understand this process as well. It's so incredibly important. It is and it's helpful for them. I mean, this is one of the things where it's valuable for everybody. But at the end of the day, businesses want to make money, they want to keep valuable employees. Absolutely. And yet family caregivers have felt some of them that they can't stay working because they have to step away in order to do the caregiving responsibility. Or I've made a phone call to some of the legal organizations and Medicare and all of those things, trying to get things worked out, it takes hours, takes hours. What if you had resources that allowed it not to take hours, so having businesses understand that if they can provide a support mechanism, so that their employees can stay valuable at what they're doing to help the business stay profitable, and other people can help them with finding some of these and making these phone calls and doing the things that they do day in and day out? I didn't know I didn't know what it was, I didn't know I didn't know who to call or how to figure it out. And you keep searching. And then they get in these do loops, or there's another phone call you have to make and then they say oh, no, somebody else does it. It's overwhelming. And so the potential is there for that to be so much better. Yeah, definitely. My husband's journey of Alzheimer's was 12 years. And I did learn how to live in the present. I mean, I think you almost have to, at some point, especially if you want to be happy, you have to live in the present, you have to learn how to do that. I did manage to do it. But I literally didn't have the bandwidth while I was raising a child to so I was a caregiver. And you know, truly Sue, I just embraced those 12 years, I didn't care what other people thought that maybe I wasn't successful. According to society standards, I was just a caregiver to my husband and my son. But I felt like it was the right place for me to be at the right time. And now I'm in a very, very different chapter. And you know, breaking out and doing my podcast and getting women's voices heard all over the world. And, you know, speaking at different symposiums and things like that. But you know, I have to give you really credit because I have also been on the journey. In the midst of all your caregiving, you're doing all this other stuff, like being on a TED talk. So tell us a little bit about how that transpired. Because I wouldn't have had the bandwidth to do that when I was in my caregiving years. Well, first, I would like to give you props, because two of the most important roles that you can have in your life are wife and mother, spouse, and parent. And so for you to have the additional layer of caregiver added to that. That's essentially three full time jobs. And then you're raising the family. So you're in earning a living and doing all the other things and one of the things that is so easy and I created an online course about a lot of the lessons and stories and tips and tricks that I've learned and one of those is that it's so easy for us to look at somebody else in their caregiving journey. and go, you know, and I only did this and they were doing that. And now that you know, we just don't know, it's how brave of you and thank you very much for your bravery in caring for your husband and putting that and raising a child as a higher priority than anything else. And it is it, it takes more of you than you actually, theoretically we have. And yet we keep digging down and you talk about being brave, you keep digging down and finding what's in you that you didn't know you have. And yet, part of the thing that I love about what you're doing about being brave, is that once you went through that experience, and you found resilience, and you learned about yourself, you recognize things that if you had not had those experiences, you would not have learned. So you're stronger, and you're more capable. And you can go out and do more things than you would ever have thought you could be for crops for you talk about bravery. And thank you for bringing this to our world so that people can recognize that, even while they may be in a challenging situation, it is developing them into something even more amazing than they already are, by taking a muscle if you will, that hasn't been used, and allowing them to develop it. So they see like, wow, I can do this. And then the next time something comes they're like, I got it. Yeah, it's true. Now to go back to the TED journey. Many years ago, I said, I wanted to do a TED talk, I was fascinated by it, I saw one and I just loved it. And what I recognized is it was more than a presentation, it was more like getting up and doing a speech. This really I mean, it's ideas were spreading. And while it didn't need to be a new idea, I wanted to make sure that the idea that I found to be worth spreading really was and even if the audience was only of me, if I was the only person who ever saw it, I would know in my heart that I had shared something that wasn't really an idea were spreading last fall, an opportunity came to me to consider doing a TED talk that I could apply for it. And I could consider giving a TED talk, then I recognized that being at choice in what we're doing in our lives, and applying massive acceptance and radical presence. So we are at choice and raising to our level of consciousness. Because so much of what we do, we're highly unconscious with sharing all of that was the message I was prepared to share. It was what I was meant to do, or or I wouldn't have had those experiences to have massive acceptance and radical presence come up. And so when I got the opportunity, originally, the talk was going to be this coming April 23. And I said, Oh, that's great. Well, I've got plenty of time, I'll just, you know, zip along. And about two weeks after I had the opportunity to start applying and doing all the other pieces to get to a TED Talk. They said, Well, we're going to actually do one on December 10, would you like to do it December 10? Well, you know, why not? If you're gonna do it, go ahead and do it. And so I put a variety of other things on hold, because this had been a passion and a dream of mine for so long. And if the opportunity came to do it in December, it was meant to be in December. And so I just did it in Oh, my gracious glory, I loved it. I love the preparation. I love the journey, railroad kind of an article about it, I share in it that while I was on the stage, looking at the circle and looking at it saying TEDx, I kind of got lost in the moment. It's like, I'm finally here. So beautiful. I do love how you just believe so strongly that everything in your life is not happening to you. It's happening for you. That's and I came to that same conclusion, I really believed that my husband's journey and our journey as a family was happening for us. And it was my spiritual path. And it was my son's spiritual path. And it was my husband's spiritual path. And it sounds like, you know, you, you just basically, with this TED talk, you could have just easily said, Oh, gee, that's not enough time. Like you're just throwing it, you know, I mean, but you're like, Nope, this is meant to be, I need to get the word out. I'm gonna do this. It's like, I think when we really are aligned and authentic with ourselves, we just do it. That's what you did. Thank you very much. And I really do feel that way. Because if there's something in my life where there's all of a sudden, like it's meant to be, then I'll be given the capacity in my life to do it. They'll be things that may seem serendipitous about an idea or something that it's almost like, Well, where did that come from it? Wow, that yeah, I want to do that. And it's things that we aren't consciously even thinking about. And they just arrive. And yet part of all of this applies in other areas of our lives as well. So for example, I know that a lot of things that have happened in my life I didn't understand at the time. And so again, I call it repurpose lessons. They've come back when I'm able to to have the capacity to understand it, or there's an experience for it. And one of the things I talk about in the course I created I call it the grace of grief. One of the things I've recognized so much with people going through navigating grief is they get stuck in grief because they feel like grief is happening to them. And grief happens. But it's an emotion we're meant to have. If we weren't meant to have the emotion of grief, we wouldn't have it if it didn't have a purpose for us, just like joy or anger or frustration, every emotion, if they weren't meant for us, we wouldn't have them. And by being able to be present, and to realize that everything in our lives is meant for us in some way, it allows us to learn about ourselves and our grief, which you know, could be you know, how deeply we can love. If it's for us, then we're able to move forward. If it's happening to us, we get stuck in it, because we don't know how to get out why me why this, we get stuck in a du loup. And so that's what I do a lot in my life is when I look at things being meant for us. It's what else is possible. What's they're here for me to learn? Yeah, that's super, super powerful. Helping people with grief to I'm going to do another Su is because you've got so many good things, actually, I'm going to read a couple of them. were meant to thrive in our lives. live your best life feeling great about yourself satisfied with your success and fulfilled through your impact. Choose your perspective, from a place of observation, not judgment, using a period is judgment, replace it with a comma, to explore potential and possibilities. I've never heard anything like that. Let's talk about it. Okay, which one do you want to start with? I think let's do choose your perspective, from a place of observation, not judgment. Sure. I love this. In my life, what I have learned is that when I'm judging something, I'm using my mind, I'm using things that I already know, anytime we judge something, it's bringing up the past, it's bringing up things that we already know, okay, so I'm the judge of this I'm weighing. If I'm the observer, I'm not emotionally attached. I'm observing it just like what is there here for me what can be like, I have to be fully conscious as the observer, because I'm looking for things. I tie observation with unquenchable curiosity, we were brought into the world with unquenchable curiosity, originally, for our safety, because we didn't have all these wonderful things that help us stay alive. And so we had to be very, very curious to try to figure out what we should do. And so we're very observant. I maintain unquenchable curiosity, what is possible, what looking around. So as the observer, we're curious, we're not pre judging, pre determining what it is, and trying to fit it into what we already know. We're open to potential and possibilities. And so that's why I say be the observer, not the judge, because what we may have judged as something in the past may not exist the same way. I'll actually add a caveat to that though, one of the things I do want to say, and there's a pastor Andy Stanley, who I follow, and he's a great communicator in the marketplace, as well as a faith based and one of the things that he said, he says, use your past to remind you not define you. So we all have experiences in our lives. And a lot of those are going to help us move forward in our lives. The way there'll be the most valuable for us, though, is if we harness the lessons and the experiences of it, not the judgment of it, because then we can't explore the potential and possibilities of what could be different moving forward, we'll see something the exact same way if we judge it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, totally. And I really resonated with you, when you were talking earlier about when people ask you like, what phase is your husband in? Because I got that question all the time to, or even, like, how long do you think he's going to live? And, you know, it's interesting, because with dementia, in some ways, there are no phases because they they go through one thing, and sometimes they go through something entirely different. They can go through a phase where they're sitting a lot, then they can go through another phase where they're really, really active, and they're moving around. What do you call that? I mean, what what phase is that there is no such thing as phases with dementia. That's just not a thing. And that's what I learned to do to was there's no definition like, I'm not putting him in a box of what phase he said that when you stay fully present, you see where he's at today, today. So hey, if he's really active, you want to make sure that you are caring for him to support him being really active, right? And then tomorrow, if he's not really active, if you're trying to make him be really active, it's not gonna work out well for you or him or anybody else. Right, right. Right, right. One of the other Suez items you are talking about is thriving. We literally were created to thrive That's not just a phrase, we really literally where you can go. There's a lot of science to it and everything. However, one of the things I talk about is that we sometimes step away from what thriving means. So we just go on, we're existing. Yeah, big thing I talk about with people who are considering that I've got little air quotes here retirement, and they're like, Oh, I'm trying to plan for retirement. What is it like, stop it, you're not retiring, you're thriving, you're the way that you figure out you're going to stop doing what you have done in the past, which might have been a traditional job of some sort, is when the things that you're so passionate about now that you enjoy your hobbies and other things that you want to be able to invest more and more and more and more time with that make you feel great. We can't wait to get up in the morning. And do you do them? That's when you one day say that other season of my life has now ended. I'm not retiring. I'm really thriving, I have found something that is where I am today. That's what I really, really want to do. So I encourage people to stay unconscionably curious, so that they learn in this season of life, whatever it is, for them, what thriving looks like for them. Yeah, I love that. That was one of your su isms I was gonna bring out don't retire, re thrive, and I totally am no percent on board with that as well. I don't plan on ever retiring. I just am going to be re thriving, and discovering more things and going on more adventures like building my life, spreading the word, trying to make the world a better place. Like, that's life like that there's not a retirement, it's just thriving. I you know, another repurpose lesson. My grandparents were taught to be old. Rocker, and they required him to retire at the age of 65. And they started sitting and they started doing things that quote unquote, old people did. And I watched their health decline, I watched their joy decline. Well, we can't do that we can they. So they, they taught themselves to be old, because they were retired. And they were like, This is what retirement looks like, you quit working, you quit doing this, you quit doing that. And fortunately, in our lives, and health and things like that, now, we are thriving from a health perspective and continuing to be active. And yet people still talk about retiring or when people have navigated their caregiving journey, and their journey has ended, unless they figure out how to thrive where they are in this season of their life, which is often different than the way it had been, then they're not moving forward. And they're not thriving, or they don't feel like they should my loved one passed away, I can't be happy, you know, that I would feel so guilty, being happy. And yet we're meant to we're meant to take the lessons where you know, we've got the love, and to move forward. And so I really feel like having people understand that, you know, stay curious about what makes you thrive. Ah, I love that so, so much. And I felt that in me, My husband had passed away. And then my son graduated from high school, I got remarried this last summer. And I literally felt very uncomfortable for about a month. But I got curious about it. And I started taking action. And that's what I tell people to just take any kind of action, literally sign up for a course or, you know, go to Chamber of Commerce network meeting, do something because I think when you have that restless feeling inside of you, it means there's more, there's more for you to share with the world. Absolutely. And a great exercise for that you can do with a little notebook as you can open this little notebook in the front, and you can start writing things that fill your heart or that strengthen you that you enjoy. It doesn't matter whether you're any good at it or not. But just start thinking about things that you enjoy. You know, petting a cat, is it rowing a boat? Is it hiking a mountain? Is it doing a podcast? What things fill your heart, make you feel great, bring you joy? And then what are other things that you start with the back of the notebook? What are things that just drain you of energy that you don't want? Don't like to do? And again, it doesn't matter how good you are at it. Yeah, just raising to your level be unquenchable, curious, start raising to your level of awareness. And things will start coming to you that you want to begin doing or oh, you know, I used to do this or, you know, well, you know, I haven't tried that. But I've been curious about it. And again, it doesn't matter how good you are one of the ones that strengthens me is singing and the only way money would be associated with me singing is people paying me not to sing because I can't carry a tune. Yeah, I think there's really something to that. Or even like, if you think well, I'm kind of good at something, but maybe I don't know if I'm superstar at it, but I really want to do it. So like, you know, the podcast just basically kind of launched me on this whole realm of possibilities. Like I took a podcast course and doing that I ended up meeting a very well connected and quite well known editor who lives in New York, New York, and she's written books like she wrote Dr. Phil's books for example, she's I could name off like a bunch of famous people. And then she was like, Oh, by the way, I'm gonna be doing class like, do you want to come be in my class? And I'm like, what? Like, it's always been my dream to write, but I've never thought of very good, but what the heck, I'm just gonna sign up. And literally this morning, I had a writing class. It's just a small group of us. And we do it on Zoom. And she helps us along. And that was one of the things that she said, she said, Oh, let me tell you, she said, I was not the best writer, she majored in English and writing and all that and Creative Writing, and went to Northwestern. And she said, I was not the best writer in the class. But I did it anyway. And she said, with all of you, you don't have to be fantastic writers you don't, you can just do it. And there's actually people who can help you to make it even better if you want. And you get better as you go along, like you just do, even if you're bad at something starting out. She just like gave us all this confidence that we were all like, oh, oh, yeah, we can be good writers. Like, it's just interesting how the world just opens up for us. One of the things you just said, That's so powerful for so many of us, and especially people who are coming out of something or you know, coming out of a job that they've lost, or they're not sure what it is they want to do, or they've been in a caregiving role is that, you know, it's not that you have to be great at it. Curious about it, curious about it. Everybody had me she didn't, she didn't start off as a good writer and editor, you know, she was she said that she literally said that I was not that great. But I've just kept working at it. And here's the other thing, though, when we start out, and this is where I talk about be the observer and not the judge, I have learned instead of saying, Well, I'm really not great at it, or you know, other people do it a whole lot better as I am so curious. And I'm excited to see how good I'm going to get with this. Because there's a potential here, and it's shifting the narrative. 90% of the comments we make about ourselves are negative judgments. And we become aware that we're doing that, and we practice shifting the narrative. This is none of us as rose colored glasses. This is not saying, Well, I'm just the very best, and then somebody's gonna have to figure it out. It's none of that. It's that well, how will we know unless we explore it? Yeah, you know, if I if the first time I ever wrote a sentence, it didn't work out well, and I stepped away from it. How would I ever know what it is? You know, Patrick mahomes, just became the the MVP of the Super Bowl. There was a time when he threw his first spiral. And I'll bet you it was not the best ball he's ever thrown in if he had said, Okay, I'm never gonna do that. Again. I'm no good at that. He wouldn't be where he is today. And great, are you look at it, everybody. They've started somewhere. And so when you can do, we're starting somewhere we are. And that's why I just love that parable so much. And I just love hearing it and being reminded of it because you know, even with writing, like she's really encouraging about, listen, this is not about the quality of your writing, like right now, like we write every single day. And it's not about quality, it's just about writing. It's just like, Okay, this is the topic today. And you're going to write for this many minutes, and you're going to no filters, nothing like you're just going for it. And there's just something about that, that goes back to the parable of it's neither here nor there. We're not going to put a grade on this writing. Like we're not we're not gonna say it's good, it's bad. It's in between. We're just gonna do it. You're just gonna do because most what happens the next day. In the talk that I give, I use several examples of people in real life experiences. And one of them is a woman whose name is Bethany Hamilton. Oh, yes, I Yes. The woman who lost her arm when she was only 13. Right, and a tiger shark bit off her left arm. In less than a month. She was surfing again. She became an international best selling author. She won national surf titles. She's a speaker, she's got this whole brand. If this tiger hadn't been off her arm, because she set herself she never set out her life to have great impact or anything. And yet the trajectory of her life gave her the the opportunity to choose to be a victim or to choose to thrive, and she chose to thrive. Well, again, we're at choice. And when you look at where we start out, the woman who's teaching you the writing, it doesn't matter how good you are in the beginning, but as you're writing, and this is the same for anything that we're doing, as we're doing it if we're open to exploring it with curiosity, and if we accept ourselves, then the potential and possibilities are there just waiting for it. Ah, so beautiful. I love this conversation. It's like the best I kind of want to go back for a minute though, because I know what it's like to be a caregiver. And it was so incredibly hard and you just barely touched on. You said I can tell some stories. Have some brave things that happened in my past. Can you pick one and share that on your caregiving journey? Sure. When my husband had been diagnosed, we were living up in Atlanta, Georgia part time. And we had our home down here in Naples, he had been invited back to work at a company he'd worked at previously, he retired and we came down here, and we were living down here, and he's a very social person. So I was trying to get him involved in as many activities as I could. And that's pretty time consuming in the day anyway, but but I had him in a routine, and I was trying to have him have a lot of social stimulation in 2017. In September, I got the news that we were going to have hurricane Irma calm and hurricane Irma was scheduled to come right up the street we lived in which it did in my naivete. The Sunday before the hurricane was going to come. I called my husband sons and said, Would one of you fly down and take your dad back to Atlanta. And then after the hurricane, I'll drive up, and then I'll bring him back while the morning and this is kind of a faith based thing. So some people might think this is a little woowoo. However, it's really what happened the next morning after I did this. So early Monday morning, I was getting ready to take him he went to a gentleman's meeting. And then he went to church every morning. And then I brought him home for breakfast. And then we did other things during the day. So I was putting something in the car and this voice behind me as I just said out loud. Get out. Ah, I love this. No, I love these kinds of stories. So good. I took him to his gentleman's meeting I called I had a care buddy for him. I called Dan, his care buddy and said, when we get home from church, would you please feed Jack, I'm going to get us ready and we're gonna go to Atlanta, take him up to Atlanta. So I got the legal papers, and I got his stuff put together and blah, blah, blah, and kind of organize the house so that you know, because we were potentially saying goodbye to it. And that was great. Because you recognize, okay, well, it could all be gone. But it's just stuff I had Jack, I made a reservation for partway up. And when I got back, I got him in the car and we started heading toward Atlanta, I had already been evaluating it was time for him, it was getting more and more difficult for him to be at home. And I recognized for him to have the social stimulation and to be in the kind of routine that was gonna be the healthiest for him. It was about time because if he felt he's a lot bigger than I am, if he fail, or if he had one of those dementia moments where he would do things that he really didn't want to. But he didn't know that I wasn't strong enough. So I'd already evaluated places that I was going to move him in during the Christmas holidays because there'd be a lot going on. So this is September, we start driving up to Atlanta and he's not happy because he doesn't know what's going on. Then we get to the hotel to stay at and I literally had to barricade the room and I slept on the floor in front of the door and had the door lock so he could not get out because if I accidentally fell asleep, and if he got over me or somehow he got out. So we get to Atlanta, and by this time he is absolutely distraught. I had gotten a room at a Marriott for three days later I said we'll stay you know, friends and family stay for three days. Then we'll go to the hotel. We got to his son's home. He didn't recognize the house. He didn't recognize the people. I took him immediately to church. He's a man of great faith, mass everyday Catholic, his whole demeanor just relaxed. So as long as I physically had him in church, he was calm. And that was the only time he was calm. And I stayed with him. 24/7 Literally, I stood in the shower with him. Wow. And we were doing the showers and I would sleep on the floor. We're staying there. So I slept in front of the door in the bedroom. If I fell asleep, he couldn't get out. He would wake up in the middle of the night, because he didn't know where anything was. And he was just this other person. I call him it was in his dementia moment. And his eyes were glazed over and he was just this other person. And I knew we had to go to the bathroom and I'm trying not to disturb the family. So I would get it it would take me over an hour to get home, the five feet from the bedroom, into the bathroom, go to the bathroom and then get back. It was so hard for him. And he wasn't on any medication at the time he had been diagnosed in Atlanta at Emory, I finally called them and they gave us some medication that would soften it a little bit. But literally for 23 days. Because I told friends down in Atlanta, I said don't have a down here in Naples. I said don't have us come back until we wouldn't be disruptive because all the power was gone. Everything, all that stuff. So we finally came back and I had called the care community that we were going to move him into and I had moved that timeframe up because this adjustments so brutal for him being out of his routine. Now I gift in that in a blessing and that was he has four sons, and they were all in areas of Atlanta. And so the sons and their respective families were able to see him and they were able to recognize that it would be more supportive for him to be in a care community. And so while some people in some families might resist it, they were incredibly and they have our whole journey. They've been incredibly supportive. too, and I hope everybody who has family members figures out how to make collective agendas bigger than individual agendas, because that makes a difference. So anyway, so we moved in, we got him down here, I got him moved in the care community. And then the advice they had, which I will say is great advice. We can talk more about that another time. But when you move them into the care community, they ask you to leave and not come back until the loved one has adjusted. So that was about six weeks. And so once we moved him in there, like I would take things down and all but I didn't physically see him for six more weeks. But he thrived in the environment, he got used to it, he was walking around, they had activities going on, he was able to be social. And I felt so grateful for the opportunity for him to be in that environment where he could once again feel good, because I knew how brutal it was for him out of his routine. I understand everything that you said, like literally every single thing that you said, I was like, I've been there that happened to me, like basically in some way, shape, or form. And once you take them out of their familiar surroundings and their routine, everything gets turned upside down. Like when you said that you had to actually stay in a hotel, I'm like, Oh, my goodness, that is so incredibly hard. And I had the same experience where I knew that he would thrive and his brain would do better. And he would have more joy, more happiness in an environment where like, there's music, like all day, you know what I mean? Like there's a music director who's doing music activities, like all day, if you've got like the art director, or you've got, you know, it's just he seems that he was so happy, and he just really thrived for a long time in that environment. It was so much better for him. And yet, there were so many lessons for me in there. Yeah. And while it's not if if you know if we had the option, so like most of us enter our caregiving journeys, not because we've looked at list and said, You know, I would love for that to be the experience in my life, I'm gonna check that box. So many life lessons that have helped me to be a better person came from that, that while I would not have wished it on him, or on his son and and their family, for what they had to go through seeing Pop Pop, you know, in a different way. Well, I wouldn't have wished that on any of them. It was such a valuable experience for me. And it deepened my love for Jack, you know, I loved him so much, I would do whatever it was, and I got him to church throughout the day, I would take him to church. And it was it was amazing to see. And then the people who were in church saw that he just literally calm the church environment. And we would just there, and it was a gift. And so it reminded me, love of God and the gift of God. And so I kept sitting there and saying there are gifts from you in this journey for me helped me while I sit next to Jack to know your heart and what you want for me as the guide and the caregiver for Jack, you know, and it can be pertained to any kind of caregiving, like what we said it could be a mom of young children or a mom with, you know, a challenging child or anything like it's all part of our journey, and you have embraced the journey and I did too. I have no regrets. And I'm in a new phase and you are kind of got one leg in a new phase as well. I do feel now I have more time in my day that I can invest in other things. In addition to my care for Jack, very comfortable, the team of people who are watching him in the community that he's in his clear needs have diminished to where it's pretty much routine. I'm there for five days a week checking in at different times of day, so that I can see how he is in the morning versus the middle of the day or afternoon or evening and, and actually a blessing of hurricane II and that we just tagged in it also went a little west of us. I stayed with Jack during the hurricane in case they had to evacuate or off. When he went to sleep, everything was fine. And I had been going and seeing him and I would see him until he would go to sleep at night and then I would leave and that's like 730 at night. I sat next to him for four days. And at eight o'clock the first night, he started fidgeting. He was sound asleep and he was fidgeting. He fidgeted all night long. I wasn't aware of that. And so I was able to contact the hospice team and get him some medication so that that wouldn't happen. So again, that was a gift that I got from the hurricane, because it wouldn't have been something I would have thought of. And now it's a lesson that I can share for other people who have family members who are in care communities, is to not just go at different times during the day, sometimes spend the night and see how they are overnight. I love that. That's so so good. So tell us a little bit more about what you're up to these days other than your caregiving journey. Now what I'm doing is because I think everything is for purpose. Several years ago, I had written a book called our journey of love lives. helps to navigate your caregiving journey. And it was a lot about a lot of the day in and day out things in the caregiving journey. And yet, as I began speaking about it, people would ask me about different parts of it. And I coach people through their caregiving journeys. And I recognize that it would be valuable for me to share the lessons and stories and tips and tricks and strategies that I've learned over the years that have worked or not worked. So I create. Here's a novel named the caregivers journey, I created a program called the caregivers journey that walks through the phases of the caregiving journey, and it uses massive acceptance and radical presence as the foundation and I'm getting ready to launch the online course for that. And it talks about what to do in the very beginning, when all of a sudden there's a diagnosis, or we kind of see it on the horizon. Oh, yeah, get ready. First steps. And then I put a step in there that based on education I've had in my life and things that have made a difference that I've included, it's called, The journey begins with me, so we can understand our unique personalities. And we can understand that we deal with stress differently, and what that looks like so that our personalities can support our beliefs, and not sabotage us. And then it talks through kind of a day in and day out. And then the grace of grief, which we're grieving all through our journey. But I talk about grief and inviting people into the consideration of the purpose of grief in our lives, so that you navigate it, and you honor it. And yet the last phase is moving forward. Yes, so that you can wish you would have wrote a book a long time ago, because it kind of helped me. That's what I'm doing. And then I've only, I've got a ton of lessons because I'm keeping them very, very short, because we're busy as caregivers, so many of them are like five minutes or less. And yet, I'm only going to have the investment be $130. Because I want people who are caregivers to be able to afford it, and I will lightly I want them to be able to take the time to do it. So I've just shifted the platform, so the launch is going to be delayed a little bit. And then the other thing I did is I created a program called Leadership pairs. And cares is an acronym for caregiving awareness, resources, empowerment and solutions, to take that into businesses to help them create the culture that supports family caregivers, and to help them provide resources so that family caregivers can continue to work and so that the business can continue to thrive, and the teams that the people are working on can continue to thrive. Wow, you are one busy woman, I am just blown away with everything that you have done and how you have handled this caregiver journey. And thank you for sharing that one little chapter of you know, the hurricane coming to your town and having to leave and all of that because I think a lot of people really don't have a grasp on the day in and day out how incredibly exhausting it is and what's really going on, we got a really nice glimpse of what that caregiver journey can look like. So tell my listeners where they can find you if they want to connect with you. My website is Sue Ryan dot solutions. I also have coaching and speaking that I do on leadership development for leaders and emerging leaders. And so it's not all caregiving, and I have what my offers are on it Sue Ryan dot solutions, and then my email is Sue at Sue Ryan dot solutions. Beautiful. Thank you so much for coming on today, Sue and really sharing with everyone what it's like on this caregiver journey and sharing all the resources and all the things that you're doing to help the caregiving community. Well, thank you, Christina for inviting me to be on I appreciate the opportunity. And I am so passionate about sharing these messages, because we're all in this together. And while not everybody will have the same perspective and I respect that. I want everybody to know they're never going to be alone. They're so beautiful. You're totally and I agree with that. If anyone listening out there feels like they need some help. Get a hold of Sue. Exactly. Reach out you got my email, you got my website, get in touch. I may not have the answers, but I will certainly do everything I can to help connect you with somebody who does. Thanks again. Sue. Thank you, Christina. Hey, everyone. Thanks so much for taking time out of your busy life to listen to today's episode. I love learning about what makes you brave. I'm here with you. I see you. I hear you and I want to hear from you. I want to know how you're showing up as being brave and authentic. Connect with me on Instagram at she's brave podcast or come join our community in the she's brave podcast Facebook group. I'm sending you so much love. Until next time. Keep being brave.