She's Brave Podcast - Kristina Driscoll
She's Brave Podcast - Kristina Driscoll
Hilary Peach on Shattering Stereotypes and Building Connections
Hilary Peach: Shattering Stereotypes & Building Connections
Against all odds, Hilary Peach challenged the conventions of a male-dominated trade and found unexpected success in welding. But just when she thought her journey was complete, a twist of fate changed everything...
Hilary Peach, a young woman with a flair for the unconventional, found herself in the world of welding, a trade typically dominated by men. Undeterred by her challenges, Hilary was drawn to the craft after discovering her mentor, Denby, an artistic welder with a wealth of knowledge in various fields. Despite the skepticism and obstacles thrown her way, her stubbornness and determination to succeed saw her through. Hilary's curiosity and passion for the trade led her to a memorable journey to Colstrip, Montana, where she faced the challenge of passing a job test to secure work. The unwavering support from her newfound community gave her the motivation she needed to persevere and develop her skills, proving that sometimes the most unexpected paths can lead to the most fulfilling experiences.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Delve into the obstacles faced by women in trades predominantly filled by men.
- Understand the importance of perseverance when tackling life's challenges.
- Acknowledge dangerous working situations present in the oil and gas sector.
- Investigate the significance of pursuing curiosity and forging relationships within unique vocations.
- Comprehend the structure and societal aspects of the trades profession.
About Hilary:
Hilary Peach is a writer, recording artist, and producer of unusual art projects. She was a founder and the director of the Poetry Gabriola Festival, an infamous interdisciplinary performance event that presented many Canadian and international artists on Gabriola Island. She also worked as a transient welder for twenty years, traveling across Canada and the United States, working in pulp mills, chemical plants, refineries, and generating stations. In 2022 she released a memoir about this time, Thick Skin: Field Notes from a Sister in the Brotherhood (Anvil Press 2022). She has a collection of poetry, BOLT (Anvil Press 2019), and has released three audio-poetry projects, Poems Only Dogs Can Hear, Suitcase Local, and Dictionary of Snakes. Hilary Peach now works as a welding inspector and a Boiler Safety Officer, and is writing fiction.
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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. Hey, everyone, it's Christina with the she's brave podcast. Today's guest, you guys is so frickin amazing AI. She's an author. Her name is Hilary peach. She's the author of thick skin field notes from a sister in the Brotherhood. Her story evolves from her years of experience as a welder. And as one of the only women in the Boilermakers Union this book Hold on, guys don't just say, Oh, no, this is this is about a boring thing in trades. No, no, no, this book is about a woman in trades in the early 2000s Up until now. And it's all about grit and persistence. And she's such a phenomenal writer, run, don't walk, run to your bookstore or to Amazon, I have to tell you, when I was reading the book, it was over Easter, my parents were visiting, I kept reading them excerpts out loud to them, my parents and my brother. And then basically everybody kept stealing my book. And I'd find it all over the house. So I ended up buying like four copies. I was like you guys read your own copy. Welcome, Hilary. I'm so glad to have you here today.
Unknown:Thanks so much, Christina. It's really great to be here.
Kristina:I'm a big talker. So I'm so impressed with your grit, like Courage doesn't happen in the absence of fear. Courage is showing up in spite of your fear. And that's what this whole book is about. I mean, it really is. And when we lean into our pain with purpose that leads to our expansion. I really feel like throughout the book, you know, and you in essence as a person, one of your favorite things is that when someone says, oh, no, you can't do that. You're like, oh, yeah, I can. You're that person that just keeps showing up. And it's right from the very beginning of the book, where you're working in the shipyards on Vancouver Island. And you realize that if you can get what's called a travel card and go work in the States, because you were working on Vancouver Island in Canada, that you could get paid a huge amount of money, but you had to become really, really proficient in welding. And I know that you trained with an older gentleman named Denby, can you tell us a little bit about that?
Unknown:I can happily tell you a little bit about Denby and a little bit about those sort of beginning times You make it sound very noble Christina, I've got to say you make me sound like a very noble person, but holy crap.
Kristina:I Hillary, Hillary, listen to me, girlfriend. Listen.
Unknown:Do you know what happens on a job site when you interrupt me?
Kristina:Now what do I get fired? I'm such an interrupter. I'm totally an interrupter. But no, you have no resistance. Yeah, tell me about Denby. He seemed like such a character and it. I had no idea with your profession, the level of skill that was involved. So just tell us a little bit about that.
Unknown:So I don't know what it was what it's like where you live in the United States, in Canada and all of the colleges, we have universities, but then we also have technical colleges and others college and university. But we also have kind of tech, technical specific colleges that have heavy duty mechanics and welding and carpentry and electrical, and all of those things. And the last, say 10 years or so they've been blurring the line and kind of putting more management level and academic level courses trying to kind of Spruce those colleges up a bit so that there's different kinds of credentials that people can get by attending them. But at the time that I went to school in 1995, the school was in a city called Nanaimo, which is a real working class town. It has a pulp mill there, and it used to be a coal mining town 150 years ago, or 100 years ago, I guess. And the college was very much geared to the trades. So Danby was us kind of an old hippie guy. I mean, he was a real Grateful Dead fan. He had long haired war aviator glasses and he was quite small and talk to me almost exclusively in Bob Dylan lyrics. But he was a philosopher, but he was also an excellent excellent tradesman and welder, and he had a kind of encyclopedic knowledge of metallurgy. But he also had a really broad knowledge of Art Deco architecture and Rococo design, and glassblowing, and biology and marine life. So, you know, we sort of talked about all kinds of things. He was just a really understanding person, and he was an artist. And you know, they say you find your teachers, right, in your art training, by our training, they always say you find your teachers and I think I was pretty lucky that I found. So, you know, so that was pretty good. I wasn't kind of discouraged right off the back. Before that, I went to school in Vancouver, and it was a much less nurturing environment, you could say, and they're just a bunch of young guys being young guys, like my, probably my second day, they were doing pornographic chalk drawings inside my welding booth, like just pictures of women with their legs spread in my welding booth. So going in there on breaks and doing stuff like this. So but I realized recently I've one of the reasons I've kind of gotten through was in the trade for over 20 years is because I really just have one strategy, which is that I'm stubborn. I don't know that that's the best way to be. It's probably better to have a variety of strategies. But that's, you know, you just kind of dig in, I guess. Yeah. Hey, are you are you familiar with, with a musician from California, whose name was Vic chestnut, he was kind of amazing. He had a song. He was in a terrible car crash when he was young man, he performed, he was physically disabled. And he performed in a wheelchair with this crazy little guitar that he kind of made because he had limited mobility in his hands. But here he has a great song about courage. You were talking about courage, where he he says the courage of the coward is greater than any other. A scaredy cat will scratch you if you back him into a corner. So I think we're debt. So what talks to me about courage? That's what I think about right?
Kristina:Yeah, I love it, I can totally relate to it. It's like, you can be scared and still have courage. And that's basically what, how you were, and it was a difficult path for you. To get that travel card, you had to go drive down to Spokane. And then you actually had to, I mean, when you talk about testing, it's literally they're giving you a project and you're actually doing it and then contractors were inspecting your work. And if they liked it, they would sign off on this clipboard. And if they didn't like it, they wouldn't. And the first time you went down for testing, it was in Spokane, and you only got one signature, correct? Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. But you know, you regret it. So you went back to Portland, and went a little better the next time? Yeah. Tell me more?
Unknown:Well, I didn't expect to get I didn't expect. So welding is the most scrutinized of all the trades. Which is weird, because when you're actually working, nobody can watch you work. Right? Because Oh, yeah. So if you're once once you're actually working, it's sort of the least scrutinized, nobody can actually watch you often it's loud, the environment is loud. If you're, if you're doing a process, there are processes that are very, very loud. But if you're if you're production welding, nobody can sit down beside you and just kind of start talking to you because you can't hear each other. And then you can't see each other because you have this kind of huge ball of toxic gas and ultraviolet light blinding them. So you're totally on your own when you're once you're actually welding. But in order to get there, every single job, you have to do a job test. So when you're talking about you had to actually do a project or do with a practical thing. Yeah, every single time you go on a job for as a pressure Well, there, you have to go into a booth and do a job test to prove that you can do it. And right now, part of my new job is that I am testing people I am now the person who administrates or invigilator the tests. So I have to tell these poor kids how to get through this thing. At that time that you're talking about though, I was one of the people trying to get through it. And basically they give you a couple of pieces of pipe that are prepped on the ends with a with a bevel and you have to tack them together and then you have to weld them together pretty much perfectly. They have to either be able to pass an x ray, literally an x ray, or they cut the thing into strips and they put it in a bending press and bend them into you shapes and basically apply hundreds of pounds of stress to the steel and see if your well holds. And if it breaks open, you fail and you go home. Yeah, it feels the X ray, you fail and you go home. So every time you go for a job if you pass the test, you get this great job. And for however long then if you fail the test, that's it. Goodbye. So. So as always, thanks, right? Yeah. And
Kristina:you talk about that, like, your hands were shaking like you were terrified, but you still did it. You know, you did it. And then eventually you did get that first job in Montana. And the way you write is so good. So the guy calls you in Montana, you're in the union, he's obligated to hire you, because you're also in the union. And he's like, Are you sure you want to take this job like he was just so shocked, he didn't want to work with a woman?
Unknown:No, that was actually my dispatcher in in from my, the shipyard local. That was, I think that he was sort of worried for me, because he knew that I wasn't very experienced at that time. But that was every time. So when you work for a union, when there's lots of work, everybody gets hired off of what they call the dispatch board, and everyone's off working. And it's all great. But it's seasonal. So when you're not working, you you leave the job, and then you phone in, and you say I'm calling in and they put your name on the list. And then that list rotates. So the person at the top of the list gets hired next, then the next person then the next person. So you always have a number on the list, you might be number four, oh my god, like in four people I'm up. Or you might be number 230? In which case, go ha, guess I'll go to Mexico for a month, because I'm not going to be getting called out anytime soon. Right? So here's my aspect. And this was a special case, because the cross border stuff between Canada and the United States is very complicated. So if you want to bother, and you can pass the drug test, and you have the right immigration papers, and you know, you don't you can work in the United States, like there's all these caveats. But if you can actually qualify to go there. So you're in Seattle, right. All right. So if the if the Washington State Boilermakers local was looking for people because they didn't have enough pressure welders, they could go to local in Canada and say, Hey, we can't find anybody in the United States. Can you send us 20 pressure welders, we have this huge job coming up. And then my local could send people so that's what I was applying to do. But my I think dispatcher knew how green I was. And I would actually be able to pass the test. And he was afraid that I would go down there and I would blow my test. And then he would look bad. I would be sent home, you know that it will, all he could see was how disastrously it would end. But I was just kind of determined. But you make it sound like
Kristina:you were unbelievably determined, though you were unbelievably determined, when I read that part, where you said you had to take four flights. First of all, you show up at Vancouver International Airport. And the guy is just saying, you Ma'am, you can't travel on your husband's work papers. And you're like, these are my papers. I'm the I'm the Boilermaker I'm the welder. And then he calls his supervisor. I mean, it was just one thing after another it was for flights. Yeah, go ahead.
Unknown:That was like a terrible movie. Like that guy was huge. He was like this huge guy with a blonde buzzcut. And I was late for my flight. And I got up to the counter and sort of handed over my documentation. And he just handed it back to me and said, You can't travel on your husband's papers. And I said, What? And he says you get dropped? What do you what I'm not married, what? And he said you can't travel on your husband's papers. Like I wasn't understanding him. And I said, I don't have a husband. I'm not married, and they're not his papers. And he said, Okay, well, then your boyfriend, like whoever this is you can't travel on their papers. And I said, they're my, like, over and over. I was telling him, they're my papers. And he said, but it says right here, these papers are for someone to go to work as a welder. These are for a boilermaker these can't be your papers. Yes, yeah. 89 I guess it was 1999. So really not that long ago, you know? But it was inconceivable to him. inconceivable that I would be able to do that job because I just didn't look like a boilermaker
Kristina:Yeah. And it's just like you were traveling for 24 hours. You were on night shift. So you finally you know, have the four plane rides and you're you're literally down your last 200 bucks. Literally, My palms are sweating. I'm like turning the pages going, well, this is like, you can't make this stuff up. Like I'm nervous for you. I'm terrified. And then you're late for work. And I'm like, oh, no, this is just getting so bad. We're going from bad to work. And then they leave you with a guy named weasel, who is going to supervise you for your tests what we were just talking about earlier, and literally there should be at least one other person kind of overseeing him and he was being a real jerk to you, trying to get you to fail the test. Tell us a little bit more in detail about how he was trying to get you to fail the test.
Unknown:Okay, so So I kind of, as you said, there were a bunch of plane rides. So I flew from well, I lived on a gulf Island, I lived on this little island in the United States, they call it the chain of islands is called the same ones. And then north of the border there, the Gulf Islands. So I flew in a floodplain really early in the morning from their to Vancouver Airport, and then went from the old terminal to the new terminal. And then from there, I did this big adventure with the customs and immigration where they just I feel I finally found someone who would let me and then I went to Seattle. No, I went to I think I flew you, Jean. No, I went to Seattle. And then from Seattle. I flew to Billings, yeah, billing. Mute, I flew into Butte to Billings, and there's like four or five hours in between each of these planes, like it was almost impossible to get from Vancouver, to coal strip, Montana, which is outside mile city. And it was probably$1,300. Like it was absolutely maxed out my credit card. So but the last leg was about 100 miles, and I couldn't, there was no bus, there was no, there was no way to get there. So I had to get a taxi. And the taxi is wild. There's like $130. And I had 100, I had $200 left in my pocket that my mom had given me. And I had an apple and a tuna sandwich. And that was like it. So So I go, I get it. I've already checked it booked into the hotel ahead of time. So I had two nights in the hotel. But then they were kicking me out because there was a giant Bowling Tournament coming in these people were going to go bowl at the COBOL in colstrip, which is kind of like, again, it's like a movie. So so I had to do this test. And I had to practice the test. I mean, I had to pass the test, because if I failed it, it was called make or break. So if you make the test, you get the job. And if you break, you have to go home, but I couldn't go home because I didn't have any room on my credit card. And I just didn't have any way to get home. I was 28 years old, you know, so I can't call my mom and say, I need $2,000 to get home like you know, anyway. And so he's the tool crib attendant. And generally there's one person in charge of the tool crib giving out the tools to the people on these big shutdowns. And that's usually someone who's either been injured, or maybe it's a retired guy. Or sometimes it's someone who just has no social skills. And they put him there because they know he's not going to be any trouble or, you know, get into anything out on the field. And this guy was just the nasty little guy. He was trying to sabotage my process so that I wouldn't make it. But what I didn't say in the in the book is that I went into the welding booth and all the tools are different in the United States. Ah, wow. So so the thing that we used to hold on to the welding rod here, it's we call it a gooseneck. And it's like a little, it's shaped like a gooseneck. And it has a hole in it, you put the welding rod in and you twist it and it holds on to the welding rod, where you live, they don't have those they've never seen them before. It's more like a big clamp, like a big clip kind of. And I looked at I didn't even know what it was. I'd never seen one before. And then they told me what it was. And I thought, Well, how am I going to pass a test with this? I've never even seen one. Wow, pretty crazy. But he didn't want me there. And he slipped some stainless steel rod into my late near the end. So that right at the end, I laid a big slug of stainless right across right across the top, which of course contaminates the test. It ruins the test. And that's it. It's an automatic fail. So I had to take on the I had to go and have a discussion with the management the next day, but we won't tell anybody how that turned out. Except that I did end up working in Montana. Yeah,
Kristina:I mean that. Well, the whole book, honestly. I just was like I did. I felt like you were the heroine and I was rooting for you. And it was just everything was so hard. But you just kept going and going. I do want to read this one section because you did have to find housing, like you mentioned, like you only had two nights of hotel and you had to find housing. You did first kick me out? Yep. Yeah. So you did and you did have a friend named Gavin. And he was like found a home to stay in. And I just want to read this section. And then we'll talk a little bit more about it because I just love the way you write. So Gavin asked you basically How is everything going at your house that you're staying at? And you said, I'll tell you how things are going Gavin Oh, yeah. Did you want to say something?
Unknown:Yeah. Um, yeah, he was just a guy that I met there. He was like, he was just he was a guy from Helena that I met who I ended up working with. He knew I was looking for housing and I found housing. Because I went to the grocery store.
Kristina:I remember that
Unknown:mountain. And I know that if you find that gossipy gal in the grocery
Kristina:cashier that knows everybody and everything, and you wrote about that.
Unknown:It'll turn you on to something. So I went in, I just started talking to the gal at the grocery store and she started asking around and she found us My phone number got me a house a woman ready, ready to render me a room in her house. So that's how I ended up in that house.
Kristina:Setup. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's so good. I love how you write. You said, I'll tell you how things are Gav. What are you tell me what you think. I hadn't spoken to anyone confided in anyone or really said, how I felt about anything since the welding test. I'm living in a house by myself. The dog lives next door most of the time. And my landlady has gone away for the quote weekend. But she's taken her passport, her clothes, the pictures of her kids off the mantel and my money. Her 16 year old daughter has run off to be a stripper or possibly some kind of devil worshipping porn star in Los Angeles. Her son is in jail, and her husband has been in a detox center for the last two months. He gets out of the dry out the day after tomorrow. So I'll be living here alone with him. Just the two of us. The house is full of guns and dead animals. And there are x holes the size of my head in my bedroom door. What do you think? I just love that so much. I mean, it was really succinct. But that's and it was like, Yeah, you know, she this woman, like she's scurrying around that she takes your rent, and she's scurrying around packing and you're like, What is going on? And then you notice these, these like X, someone who's who was like, taking an axe to a bedroom door, you were sleeping in the daughter's room, the daughter ran off to LA, but there was like these marks like somebody had used an axe to try to get to break the door down. And I was like, I would be so over it. I'd be so done. I'd be so terrified. I wouldn't have been able to hack that. I'm telling ya.
Unknown:That's cool. Does that's actual x. Cool.
Kristina:No, yeah. Yeah, Axl. Oh, my gosh,
Unknown:yeah, I always I always refer to that as the axe murderers house. But it's one of those things. And I know that anybody can relate to this one of those things where you're going, just kind of going along in your life. And you don't realize what's happening while it's happening. Because you're in it. And then as soon as then eventually, things start to add up, and you start to get a picture of what's going on. And so I spent, I think, three nights in that house. It started out, I was just renting a room from a gal. You know, she was just a gal in town. She sold Bibles out of a van. That was one of the things that she did, I just was renting her spare room. Well, her daughter was away in quotation marks. But it was after like three nights, and I realized every person associated with that house had either run away or was incarcerated. Like the women had run away. The son was in jail, and the husband was in some kind of rehab center. And he was getting out. And she all she said was, yeah, he's getting out early. And then and she was obviously terrified. And she said she was taken off to her mother's but she took everything with her. And she just split. So I thought, Hmm, okay, so I'm going to be in this house with this guy. And every inch of wall space was covered with a dead animal head like to use a Trophy Hunter, even little tiny animals. Like he just killed everything and hung it on the wall. And did that, huh? So this guy is coming home and will do he'll be my roommate, like, just us. And his whole family is taken off. So So what does that mean? And then I was like, opening the window in the bedroom and seeing how far of a drop it was. And if I jumped out of the bed member that how far do I have to run before I can get to somewhere? And like, what are the chances like Where's the light? Where can I hide if I get out? And I thought yeah, probably I shouldn't be having to figure that out. Like maybe I need a new place to live.
Kristina:Yeah, that I mean, you would just been through so much. All the stuff that we were talking about. It was you don't
Unknown:think of it that way though. Right? You're just kind of like, going oh my god, I've been through so much. You're going huh? Well, I got to Billings, this is awesome. And then you're going I found a taxi. And then you're going oh my god the hotel. This is awesome. And then you're going I pass my welding test like eventually and then you're going wow great place to live at what a nice house and then you go Oh, like this is bad. This is a terrible house better find an alternative and then you find an alternative and you go this is working out. This is good, right? Like you don't go. You're not like oh, you don't you know what it's like you don't keep a tally of now is while you're going through challenges. You're just kind of looking for the next thing. I was younger and spunky or.
Kristina:Yeah, yeah. I want to read a page now. I mean, I just love this book so much. This actually doesn't have to do that much with your trade. But I I've loved how this was written about Fort McMurray and I want to talk about Fort McMurray that sounded just so insane and so intense and that's in northern Alberta and So, I'm gonna read this part because it's just I love how you write. In the early 2000s, the retail side of Fort McMurray was run by children. The minimum age for working legally in Alberta had been reduced to 13 years old ostensibly for part time jobs on weekends and after school, but kids who are 11 and 12 were lying about their age on application forms and cutting classes in grades five and six to pick up shifts. In many families. Both parents worked in the oil sands taking advantage of the boom, and would each be pulling in two grand a week after taxes big money on the projects left a void in the retail sector. And businesses were offering top dollar to anyone who would put a name tech who would put on a name tag. Minimum wage was 875 an hour but McDonald's was paying $17 in the spec in the early 2000s. footlocker was paying 21. So kids, little kids would sign up to flip burgers and retrieve boxes of expensive shoes, and pull $800 In a week, finding someone to watch your kids while both parents worked 12 hour shifts for 14 days in a row was just about impossible. No one wanted a babysitter's wages not even babysitters. So the kids got a credit card and a cell phone a key to the house. And a threat that if they got into trouble, they'd regret it. Nobody questioned the ages filled in, in childish printing on the application forums, businesses needed workers, if the kids were working in a fast food place, the parents at least knew where they were that they were being fed and that there was probably someone over 18 Keeping an eye on them. Okay, that just like blew my mind, I actually read that out loud, to my husband, my parents and yeah, I mean, anyway, at this point, they were all grabbing for the book. But because there's just you know, it's so it's not just about the welding, it's just about the culture and the times and the places that you went. And you talk about in Fort McMurray, how the people that were permanent residents didn't like you guys, you know, the transient workers. But what they didn't realize is that you guys, were actually spending millions of dollars, you know, going to the grocery store and buying clothes and doing all that stuff. But they didn't seem to appreciate that. So their Point is,
Unknown:they realized that we were contributing to the economy by buying stuff, but they're the residents beef was that people from out of the province, we're making big bucks, but not paying taxes in the province, because you pay taxes in your province of residence, right? provincial taxes. So they had, and they were sort of saying, well, we pay for the roads and the community center in the infrastructure. The transient workers who lived on the other side of the river in these camps, of whom I was one are living in horrible conditions living in these trailers, some of the better camps were modeled after American prisons. There's a very famous prison designer, and a very popular prison design that is kind of like a central hub sort of shaped like a what is that, like a five sided shape with dorms around it, and then a central room in the in the center. And some of the camps were shaped like that. But so the transient workers were living in these appalling conditions. And we're basically saying, Hey, we do all the work that keeps this whole economy rolling, you guys are have these cushy jobs and a regular looking life, you work in the bank or the wonderment, you know, whatever, the restaurant, the whatever you do in the city, but and we're the ones that are actually keeping everything rolling. So there was a yeah, there's some animosity between those two populations, I guess. Yeah. I,
Kristina:I want to really unpack about this particular time in your life because, for instance, you said quote, I went three times, and each time returned after a month or so traumatized, bitter and sick. The final stint involved a hospital visit, and I never went back. Yeah, just says a lot. And then here's another thing, sure the money was good, and was welcomed back home. But you were treated like an animal housed like an inmate and always went home with a cough. Wow. Oh,
Unknown:yes, they call it Syncrude is the big company up there that one of the first major oil sands projects and they call it the Syncrude flu. But you got to understand even in those days, there was 60,000 workers working on the sites in pretty small area. And all of those people were being housed in these work camps. And they were getting from the work camps to the sites in school buses, and some bigger buses, but mostly school buses. And it would be like 25 below all the time in winter. Lush and the hydrocarbons and gases coming off of those plants. squirt, unbelievable. So it's just a super unhealthy environment in every way. And then you get on the bus and the bus is full of people that are sick. So the germs are flying around. And so then everybody is sick, you don't not get sick when you go there to work one way or another. And, you know, if you get away and you're not hurt, and you don't get injured, then you know, you're kind of the kind of lucky. But so why would anyone do that? Right? That's the question, why would anyone go to work in these abhorrent conditions in this, like, just in this horrible thing, and the reason is for the money, so I went a couple of times, just because of research, like I wanted to see what it was like, I had this idea that I would maybe someday write about it. And then I went a couple of times for about a month at a time, I went four times in total, I think people spend their lives living there and working there, because they kind of get addicted to the money. So$2,000 a week then is like$5,000 a week now. So like, that's 20 grand a month. That's good money. And if you are from a place where there's no work, like a lot of people came from Newfoundland and the eastern seaboard, or the eastern coast, you call it the seaboard east coast, you know, they've got nothing, they've got not a lot of options for high paying jobs, except maybe the offshore oil rigs. So maybe they have some experience with that. So they go to Alberta for a part of the year and they work like crazy, they make huge amounts of money, and then they get to go home. So it's all about the ends and the means, right, you get to go home and be with your family and have a nice life for your family kind of thing. There's another sort of super dark part to this, which is that there are 10 hours or 12 hours, and often 14 hours. And they'll work the workers as long as they can. So the provincial legislation says you can't work more than 28 days in a row. Sometimes that's adhered to. And sometimes it's not. So people work like like weeks and weeks and weeks every day. 12 hour shifts every day for weeks and weeks. Like it's it's impossible. It's actually impossible to do. So then people start doing cocaine.
Kristina:Because yeah, about that. Yeah. Some people were spending all making all this money and then turning around and spending it on drugs or gambling.
Unknown:Yeah, well, let's spend it on crack. And you can spend a lot of money on as you know, I'm sure as everybody knows, I mean, I don't know if you can spend a lot of money on crack. So they get their giant paycheck, they cash it, and they go and buy crack. And maybe they do more crack than they have in their paycheck. So then they're borrowing from that they become indebted to their dealer, and then there's no way out, then you have to keep making the giant money to feed your addiction and to keep paying your dealer. So then you're just kind of trapped, right? I didn't write about that very much. But that to me, it was just like an incredibly interesting and tragic trap that Oh, yeah.
Kristina:You know, yeah, a vicious circle, like what you said, this is kind of funny. The first trip, you said that first trip, I never did any welding. They were overmanned hiring people all over the plant. And even though we weren't needed, they wouldn't let us go. Because there was a big furnace coming up. And they wanted us to work on it. Not going off to some other job.
Unknown:Yeah, they couldn't get enough people would hire whoever they could get. The contractors were all competing with each other, right? So they were all just hiring as many people as they can get, partly so that they had a pool of workers kind of in reserve, so that if they bid on a contract and got it, they could say, Hey, I've got 200 Guys ready to go right now. We can do that right now.
Kristina:Yeah, it's kind of funny in some parts of it, where you were talking about kind of hiding, like, or trying to look busy or stuff like the
Unknown:other. I mean, the reasons that they would hoard workers is so that the other contractors couldn't get them. If you had the money, you would just hire everybody you could and then your competition couldn't find anybody. So the companies had to give the contract to you because you were the only one who could fill the order. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So so there were a whole bunch of us. Yeah. And it was I always worked, I tended to work night shift. So it was like a below, like, really, really cold with the windshield. And there are these incredibly dangerous plants, like they're basically supersized oil refineries. And what the tar sand is, is they're strip mining mountains, they're taking the tops off of mountains, and they're strip mining bitumen right out of the ground, they're not drilling for it as a liquid. They're just taking the dirt that is soaked in crude oil, and just lopping off whole chunks of the world, and then processing it to try to get the oil out of it. They're these enormous amounts of material that go through the plants and these huge, huge glands. So yeah, they're they're incredibly dangerous because a lot of this stuff is run by hydrogen. So the there are these hydrogen furnaces that are like you know, as big as apartment buildings, they've done modeling about what would happen if there was ever there always a risk of explosion you As it's essential oil refinery, so there's confined spaces and highly flammable and explosive materials under pressure and work all the time and tons of it. So they're always worried about fires and explosions. But there's modeling that's been done that about a chain reaction from explosions so that if one thing were to go off how it would trigger all these other explosions, which would trigger then other explosions, so the depth and breadth of the disaster that could be ignited is just inconceivable. And yet, they're hiding all these workers in that environment. You know, there's hundreds of people hiding underneath all of these pressure vessels, like because you're not supposed to be seen, because you don't want the boss. You know, the client, the customer seeing you just hanging around doing nothing.
Kristina:And we talk about that too. And you talk about running out of blankets, and running out of chairs. And one time, the person didn't want to give you a blanket, because they said, Well, you already have a sleeping bag, but all the guys behind you in line were like, give her a blanket. And your first room was like eight feet by 11 feet. You talk about toxic sludge, sewage and mold accumulating under the buildings. Oh my gosh, wow. Yep. And Phil
Unknown:there and people are still living in them. Really? Oh, yeah. Yep. That's how it is. You could go there. You could go there. Christina, if you wanted to go in on you. If you wanted a job working in Fort McMurray, you may call it we'll figure it out. All right.
Kristina:All right. Let's go. Oh, my gosh. And then so then your second time. You basically you know, it's a haul to get there. It's an it's you fly into Edmonton and flew. This is the second time you went you could actually take a flight to Fort McMurray, but then it's a six hour bus ride away. Wait, that was condensed into a 40 minute flight. Then the shuttle was shorter. Yeah. And the shuttle comes in and, and you were assigned to a place called Millennium Lodge, one of the oldest and worst of the worst camps. And there was no record at the camp that I was checking in. Come back in the morning, the security guard said and tonight I asked. She shrugged. I asked politely. If she would check the ledger again, suggested maybe they had spelled my name wrong, asked her to try under the contractor's name. It was known that if you were ever rude to the security personnel swore or raised your voice, they would kick you out of the camp and you will be banned, which is fair enough. It was also known that they would sometimes book more people in than there were rooms because there were inevitably no shows the guys who got drunk and missed their flight, or the one who just had enough and decided to stay home. By overbooking the camp they ensured the rooms were always full. So here you were, you had done all this. And then this person is saying to you, I don't have a room for you. And you can't really argue you have to be polite because they could kick you out if you're not.
Unknown:I didn't I never planned to write this book. Okay. The publisher that published my poetry book asked me to write this memoir. And so I was kind of assembling it from the journals and notes that I had been keeping over that period of time, I was like, you want me to what will? How am I going to do that? You know, so I sort of was trying to figure out what kinds of stories people might want to read. But in assembling the stories I had to ask myself like, was it true? Is that did that really happen? Was it really like that? Or did I just imagine that or am I exaggerating, but I'm a member of a number of women in trades Facebook groups right now. And just this week, there was a woman on there who told a very similar story of something that's happening right now, in those camps. There was a common wash house down the hall and in BC all the logging camps all apart. No camps are like this. You don't have a bathroom in your room, you have to walk down the hall. And then there's a common room like usually, there sometimes there isn't even a room for for the women. There's just a long line of urinals and then a line of stalls. And then another room that has a bunch of shower stalls. So sometimes, you know, in the old days, it was men and women. Now it's more modern. Some of the places have what they call Jack and Jill bathrooms where you have this tiny little camp room and you share your bathroom with your neighbor and she was saying she had to share her bathroom with a guy like with a dude. And she was going are they allowed to do that? Like I don't think they're allowed to do that. We looked up the camp regulations and in fact they're not they have to put two women sharing and so that because you want to be in the bathroom and then have some guy barging in sort of thing right if you forget to lock the door, I just see this this gal had to had to fight it out with the camp and there were other rooms and other women but they they don't like to give a trailer to the women because if there's only you know the women are supposed to have their own Trailer. But if there's only four women, and there's 20 rooms in a trailer, that means they're wasting 16 rooms. So they try to get rid of all the women. Or they say, you have to share with a guy. So it's really interesting, right? Like those kinds of battles, the daily battles for little things like a bathroom, they become kind of a big deal and their constant, the end is still happening. That's what I think is kind of interesting.
Kristina:Yeah, I mean, I wanted that was one of my questions, but you already did answer it that. Is this still going on? And you're like, yes, it is.
Unknown:Yeah, I mean, different different variations. But yep.
Kristina:Yeah, yeah. But basically, third time you got that? What did you call it? The Syncrude flu. Is that what it was called? That's what they call it. Yes. Sounds like the doctor was had a little side hustle. Like where? If you? If you paid cash, you'd get the X ray. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I
Unknown:don't know what was going on there. If you know, it was cash for a note.
Kristina:Cash for the note. That's right. Yeah. Then yeah,
Unknown:didn't have to go work for a couple of days. He would write a note. But of course, the note wasn't worth anything because they don't care if you gave them $60. And they would give you a photocopied piece of paper with a signature on it saying she shouldn't be working with you. No, you shouldn't. But anyway, it's a different place. Yep.
Kristina:I want to switch gears a little bit to something that's more humorous. I mean, this whole book is just packed fall. Just telling my listeners like this is this book. There's just packed full of all these different angles and so many interesting stories. So you went to the lakes, which is I believe, east of Edmonton. Is that correct? Or west of Edmonton? West of Edmonton? That's right. Okay. You've got to tell the story of making coffee. Let's hear that story. I want I want to hear it from you. Well, the way you wrote it is just so funny.
Unknown:Um, I was hired Well, yeah, you're as a pressure welder. And so you gotta understand this kind of a food chain. Okay, there's a hierarchy. Okay. There are laborers hired by every company hires all kinds of people like they hire Boilermakers pipe fitters, carpenters, insulators. You know, the boiler contractors will have a whole variety of people on their crew brickies laborers, so the laborers sweep and clean up and then within the Boilermakers there are welders and there are fitter fabricators, fitter and fabricators do almost everything like like putting the stuff together while the welder well to meet the rigors who are in charge of the heavy lifting, rigging up the cranes picking up and dropping the giant things that were welding in. In the welders. There's sort of regular welders who weld plate or beam structural or who weld small stuff like skin casing like sort of beginner welders and then there's pressure welders and by the time I went to that job, I was a crusher. Well, there I was in my mid 30s. And I was at the top of my game and I was really good at what I did. And I could still see very well. So I was going out making my living as a pressure welder TIG welders what it's called, because, yeah, TIG tungsten inert gas is what it stands for. It's just a kind of special process that is used for doing X ray welds on pressure joints. So off I go, I got dispatched to a certain date, and I get there, and they kind of put me in the lunch room. And that's it. I kind of don't see anyone usually you go for orientation. I had a safety orientation, but I didn't have like a job orientation. I didn't get a foreman. Nobody came through and said, Okay, you're on my team. We're going to the superheaters. This is where nobody came to get me. So I just sat in the lunch room. And then these guys kept walking through looking for somebody like where is that soccer? Like they're just going through like getting madder and madder because somebody who was supposed to show didn't show up. It's really funny
Kristina:in the way you write it. It just it was so funny. Yeah.
Unknown:Isn't it funny who I'm telling you? It? That's probably funny. I love it. They're going through asking, have you seen that? Have you seen another TIG welder? And I was like, nope. But you know, there's me. There's always me and I could do this and I'm ready to go. And the guy said, finally, the foreman says to me, Do you know how to make I said, What should I do anyway? Do you know how to make coffee? And I said, Yeah, and he goes, go make coffee. So it was a long weekend, which meant the Saturday Sunday Monday I think we're all double time. And I was working night shifts. So I had three night shifts like 312 hour shifts of double time, which was like around 100 bucks an hour at that time, you know, so I'm making 1200 bucks, like over $1,000 a shift for making coffee but they didn't know I
Kristina:just said well these right now. I just love it how he just like I kept you know, coming through yelling where's the TIG welder? And you're like, it's me. He's like, go mate.
Unknown:It's the same thing as The border right there's a blind spot. That's what I'm going to trade to dealing with a lot right now is that you? We don't, I don't look like a boilermaker when you just look at me, you know, I look like some superannuated housewife. Right? Right now I'm going to be 55. I just looked like a middle aged gal that works in cars. I don't look like a crane operator, or whatever. So, yeah, their laws, they paid me a lot of money to make coffee is what happened there.
Kristina:I know. It was just it was just funny. And also in that wasn't in that same area where you really had a pretty serious sexual harassment situation of there was one where you know, this, this guy was really saying really horrible things to you.
Unknown:You are afraid we're going to clarify something. I never had a sexual harassment situation. I never went to the union and said, I want to file a grievance against one of my union brothers for sexual harassment. I never even complained to a foreman about that. So yeah, I'm very clear. When I'm talking to people about this. We always sort of settled our stuff. We keep it in the house. Right? We settle it on.
Kristina:Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean,
Unknown:I didn't qualify. I didn't call it a sexual harassment.
Kristina:No, you did not call it that. There was a guy being a dick, right? Yes, he was. Yeah, no, but it's interesting, like the culture to like, but the other guy's all back to you up to and? Yeah, it's, it's kind of like what you said, like other trades are kind of more out in the world. But in your particular trade, it's very insulated. Right? It's interesting culture.
Unknown:So some trades like electrical and carpentry and plumbing have a retail face, they have a commercial or public side to them. So if I say to you, Christina, what is a plumber? Do you can probably tell me or what is a carpenter? Do you think you have an idea of what that is, but boiler making iron workers, pipe fitters mill writes, There are industrial trades that don't have the kind of aspect to them that you would use in your house. And they're, they're quite mysterious to the general public, right? That there are a lot of people who go around in the world who don't know what an iron worker really does, or what a millwright really does, or what a boilermaker really does. So because of that, this is just my, my theory, or my idea, you're always in the back room, you know how you go into a thrift store, there's always the front room with all the stuff. And then if you want the good stuff, you always say, Hey, you got a back room? Can I see your back room? Right? So what are the makers only have a back room? We don't have a front room? Yeah. So it's kind of a secret language. And it's kind of a secret culture. So when we're talking to each other about our trade, if you take that home with you, your people at home, don't know what you're talking about. Right? If you're talking about the technical stuff to do with welding, or to do with fitting or rigging or calculating a load, and figuring out what kind of spreader bar to put on the crane, your home people don't know what that means. Unless they're in the trade too. Right? All right. So because of that, because of kind of a secret inside worlds, there's a lot of stuff that goes on that I think is allowed to go on that that is protected, behaviors are protected. I'll just leave it. I'm just gonna, that's all you
Kristina:know, I just I love your attitude, though. Like you take everything in stride and you you work with whatever, like throughout the book, you work with whatever situation you're in, you're never a victim. You're always just strong and courageous and going on, you know, keep going on going on. I want to read this little sentence. It's really kind of more in the middle of the book, but it's quite poetic. And I just want to talk about a little bit. You say, then one day, I looked at my torch, and there was silence. There was nothing but the hiss of argon, and construction noise. My mind was quiet and clear. And the welding was fine. All of the knowledge had gone into my hands. It was like typing or playing the piano. The moment when you realize you no longer have to look at the keys to know where you are. I love that. I love that song. That whole paragraph so much.
Unknown:Oh, thank you. Yeah, well, do you play any sports? Christina? Or have you ever played sport? You know,
Kristina:it reminded me of ballet actually. Somehow Your body knows what to do. And you can actually think about other things. They call it muscle. Yeah, yeah. Muscle, like that. Muscle memory. Yeah.
Unknown:Okay. So it's muscle memory, in the sense of, I have to replicate this move. Exactly. And this is what the muscles need to do to do that. But it's also like muscle decision making. Because it's a dynamic process. Things are changing. all the time. So you're constantly adjusting, adjusting, adjusting, adjusting, as you're making. As you're making that joint. I'm just talking about the technical aspect of welding right now. Yeah.
Kristina:Yeah. How many years into welding? Did it take for you to get to that place?
Unknown:Eight or nine? Is a long time. Yeah. Yeah, I know. And I took this trade because it was a short apprenticeship. I thought, oh, I can get my taking three years, that'll be great. But in fact, it was like nine.
Kristina:Wow. I think by reading your book, Hillary, I had no idea of the complexity and the depth of knowledge that you have to have to do your job and that it doesn't happen overnight. It's like years of learning things. And you even say at one point in the book, that it's the learning through the doing, like you have to basically do the job to learn it, right? Yes. Well, yeah,
Unknown:this is a funny thing. It's oral tradition, right? We were talking about muscle memory. And yeah, we learn things with the body. A lot of this trade and other steel trades, our oral tradition. And I think that comes from blacksmithing. Like our union is called the Boilermaker, iron shipbuilders, blacksmiths, forgers and helpers. So blacksmithing, none of it was written down. I mean, it was really hard to find blacksmithing books up until those reality TV shows started, like forged in fire, and things like that they all got reissued, but there were gender I have elected. So there was generally about three or four really good blacksmithing books, and they were all out of print. And then it hit fad. And they all got reissued. So you could learn how to temper your tools and stuff like that, because of the whole TV phenomenon. But blacksmithing is an oral tradition, there was an apprentice who would work with the master. And it was basically I do you watch you do. And that's the tradition. And it's been like that for, you know, 400 years. Yeah, it's a very hands on thing. So that's part of it. But the other part of it is that there's a lot of kind of trade secrets. So the workers don't necessarily want everybody to know how we do these really hard things that we do like how to make a tic joint so that it passes an x ray. It's the secret knowledge. And we don't want the pipe fitters to know how we do a joint freehand, for example. And we don't want the non union guys to know how we do it. So what happens is, there's the really, really good welders take the promising pressure welders and show them, and you can't just explain it to somebody and have them learn how to do it, and you can't learn it out of a book. So I wanted to write down some of that knowledge, too, because it isn't anywhere. And I wanted to give the reader a sense of the complexity and the intricacies of some of the things that we're trying to figure out on the fly.
Kristina:And you do it in such an artful way. I think that, you know, someone might pick up your book and go, Oh, my gosh, this is gonna be a boring book about welding. And part of why I really, really wanted you on my podcast is that it's really, you know, it's about welding and a million other things. And it's just so fascinating. And even just little things like how you talked about when you took that job in Montana, and how the moisture the humidity in the air was different. Now on the West Coast, we have a lot of humidity, or you know, there's a wetter climate. And then in eastern Montana, it's really dry, and even so then that affects how you weld. So it's just things that I had never thought about all these factors that come into play. And then another one was someone that you'd been testing with for years and years and years. And one day, you like, for some reason, you just had a bad day and you test and you failed. And then he showed you a trick. And you're like, Why didn't you tell me this like 10 years ago, that was at
Unknown:the Boilermakers Hall in Edmonton. If you're going to Fort McMurray, or to one of the sites they have a testing, right in their union hall. So you know, I fly into Edmonton, I'd rent a car, I would go to the hall practice if it was a hard test and practice a little bit. But then later, when I got to be really confident that I knew what I was doing, I could just go and do the test. And this one time I failed and I couldn't believe it. He showed me a way of feeding the wire through the center of the tube so that it was pretty well foolproof, and then I just started doing that. But yeah, that's it. I was joking with him. I was saying, Jesus, John, how come it took you 12 years to show me this, you know, the job much easier my life could have been if you showed me this like five years ago,
Kristina:but you kind of just explained it like five minutes ago about the nuances of it, you know, of the whole culture that you work in. If you click up back to that young girl who made the decision to go into the field that you chose, would you make that same decision today?
Unknown:Oh, I never made a decision.
Kristina:I think Gotta love it. You're so honest,
Unknown:totally accidental, I had been working with street entrenched youth, basically, I was detoxing teenage heroin addicts in a wilderness camp. And one of them pulled a weapon on me. And after three years, and I was working for five bucks an hour, and I quit, I didn't have a job, I had a theater degree, I had a lot of education. And I knew how to write but I wasn't gonna make a living writing. And I wasn't going to be able to make a living doing experimental theater. And I didn't particularly want to work in the care industry or other low paid women, you know, female dominated, if I was going to work, if I was going to pimp myself out for a wage, I wanted it to be a high wage, or else I want to work and myself, is how I was seeing it at the time. Now, sort of going, No, there's no shame in working in the care industry. There's no shame in any of those things. Right. But at that time, I felt as though you know, working was hard, and I didn't like doing it. And, and I also thought, why is it that guys coming out of university or even out of high school or college or whatever that guy's entry level work is approximately twice what women's entry level work was like, What is going on there? So I thought, well, I'll just take one of those higher paying jobs until I figure out what to do. But it was just a temporary thing until I figured out what I wanted to do. And then it ended up being over 20 years. So yeah, that that wasn't really the plan. Well, before though, right? When you're in it, you don't see what is everything's adding up to and you don't really see where you're going. You're just kind of in it, right?
Kristina:Yeah. Yeah, for sure. What would you say to my listeners out there most mostly moms, but you know, or even but could be younger listeners. Women looking for careers? What What's your opinion now of that industry? You're the industry, the Boilermakers and the welders. And for someone wanting to who's curious about it today, what do you have to say about it?
Unknown:I always tell people to follow their curiosity. That is, particularly advice that I give at writing workshops. When I'm teaching a storytelling class, you know, don't try to structure the thing. And I'm going to go from here to there. Follow your curiosity, because you're, you're curious. Yeah, that's a very rewarding way to proceed with anything, I think, totally agree. Having that feeling that spirit of inquisitiveness, if you're asking me, do I recommend that women go into welding? I don't think I'm really prepared to answer that. I once had a woman come to me and tell me that her 16 year old daughter should go into welding. And she wanted me to convince her of this. So she I said, well, to talk to her about it. I said, Okay, well, I'll talk to her. So she brought it, she was quite insistent, but she brought her by my blacksmithing shop, and we were going to do a little blacksmithing. And the girl clearly was not interested. She had no interest. So I realized this quite quickly. And I said, you're not really interested in this RU. And she said, yeah, she's like, oh, yeah, yeah. And I said, come on. And she went, Yeah, no, I'm really not. And I said, What do you want to do? And she said, I want to go to hairdressing school. And I went, Oh, and she said, I want to be a hairstylist. And I said, Okay, well, then you should go and be a hairstylist. So her mother came to pick her up a couple hours later, and she was all excited that because her mother was like, a little older than me. But she had dreams for herself. She thought that she have gone into a trade. And she didn't lose, she wanted her, act it out for her. And she said, What did what did you say? What did you tell her? And I said, I told them to go to hairdressing school. And that's very unpopular with the parent. I wouldn't tell anybody to go into this trade, I would say that it's there. And it's certainly there for women. And there's a renaissance going on right now. There are 1000s of women entering the trades right now. And there are huge networked communities that have meetup groups and societies. And like, there's a vast support system. Now that wasn't there when I was entering. So it's a good time, if anybody's interested. But if you're not interested, don't go just because you need a side hustle is kind of my advice, I guess.
Kristina:Yeah. That's really great to hear. And I know I agree with that, too. I mean, even think about like, as a parent, I have a son who's 19. And when he was first born, had there been like Facebook groups or I don't know, like, I feel like there's a lot more connection now. And that's what you're saying about you? Your industry as well. And for women, there's more connection among the women and that makes it better. So looks like things are heading in the right direction. Hillary, this has been so much fun talking to you. I love your honesty, your grit, your rawness, and I'm gonna be really honest with you. I loved your book so much. I think it needs to be made into a movie and I think it will get into a movie. I think you could do a screenplay, or you know what I mean? What did they call you write a new script, you write the movie, you write it, and then it becomes a movie. I think your story is so good. And maybe someday we'll be able to watch it as a movie will be works. We're gonna work on that. Okay, awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Tell my listeners how they can connect with you if they they want to know more about your career and or your book, and how can we get a hold of you. So I know this
Unknown:is super old fashioned. So there is a Facebook group that is the same name as the title of the book, which is thick skin field notes from a sister in the Brotherhood, and people are welcome to join that group. There's a lot of postings on there for upcoming readings. I'm hoping to travel around a lot. We have these book launch events in Victoria and Vancouver that were sponsored by the BC Centre for women in the trades. And we had 100 People at each event. So if you could just imagine like a bar with 100 Screaming yelling, female plumber, pipe fitter, Boilermakers and carpenters and insulators and electricians just like going completely bananas. It was super fun. It was really, really love it. I read a bunch of stories, and I kind of did some stand up. And it was really fun. So I really liked doing that. So, you know, if you if you want to do that in Seattle, I'm not that far away. That would be really good. Well, look, we
Kristina:need to talk about that. I think it'd be so fun. It would be great. Why not? So yeah,
Unknown:yeah. And I was in Detroit a while ago doing a conference. So things like that I posted to that group. But basically, I guess Facebook's sort of the best thing or through the publisher. Yeah. Which is in progress. Anvil press.
Kristina:Yeah. Okay. Oh, yeah. So and I'll put everything in all of the show notes too. So people can literally click, and then jump over to the Facebook group and stuff like that. So yeah. Super. Great. So thank you so much for your time today.
Unknown:Well, thank you for taking the time. I know it was kind of difficult to connect. And that was my fault. My life's a little crazy, but I really appreciate your perseverance. And yeah, I was good. Great questions. Christina was just a pleasure.
Kristina:Yeah, no, I was determined. I was like, I guess I was taking on some of your characteristics. I was like, this is a great story that needs to be told. And, you know, my mission is to get more women's voices out there. So that's what I'm here for.
Unknown:Yeah. Well never give up. You know?
Kristina:Yeah. Now for sure. Thank you, Hillary.
Unknown:Thank you so much.
Kristina: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.
