November 24, 2020 • 20 mins
This is Amy’s ‘5th Thing’ (a bonus episode). ‘4 Things With Amy Brown’ comes out every Thursday, but on Tuesdays Amy shares emails from you guys and answers questions y’all have sent in. On today’s episode Amy addresses: Her little hiatus from the podcast, a listener asks about the Born Year Hats that are a great gift idea, two ideas to release some stress, and finishes with a few stories from another listener!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Happy Tuesday, everybody, Amy here and I will be hosting
this entire episode and I'll be here again on Thursday. Now,
if you're brand new to the podcast, you might be thinking, well,
why is Amy telling us she's going to be here?
This is her podcast. But if you have been listening
for a while, or at least to some recent episodes,
you know that I've had some other things that I've
had to really focus my energy on, totally not work related,
(00:27):
and that's where I've had to be. And I've had
amazing people and friends step in and still put up
content for you guys to consume, and I hope that
you have enjoyed that and appreciated it. But I will
be here this week, and I'm here this week because
I think it's healthy for me to be here. Currently,
I don't know for sure, can't say that i'll be
here next week. I am really just one day at
(00:50):
a time with this. I want to encourage anybody else
going through anything right now, whatever it is, whatever it
may be, I don't know. I don't even know I'm
getting emotional right now. I just think I feel a
connection with you, and anytime I've shared anything that I'm
going through and while you don't know the details, those
are not important. I don't mind you knowing that it's
(01:11):
very hard right now. It's really hard, um, But it's
not lost on me that some of you might be
going through something hard right now. And the advice I
can give you is one day at a time, one
step at a time. Sometimes it might be minute by minute,
hour by hour. Well. Shoot, I thought it was going
to be healthy for me to be here, but I
guess it's also emotional for me to be kind of
back working again. I love connecting with you. I love
(01:33):
my podcast and it's something that has become very important
to me and I work hard on it. And there's
other areas in my life where I've had to step
back and I care about those deeply. I care about
the work we do with a SPLAW, and I have
stepped back a little bit from that, and Mary is
definitely carrying a lot of that load. I care a
(01:54):
lot about the Bobby Bones Show. Obviously that's what's kicked
off everything. But with a SPLAW love that Mary and
I have grown something that gives back to Haiti, a
place that has a special place in our hearts. And
with the Bobby bones show. Of course, I work for
people that are amazing and where I can step away.
And I recently took a whole week off from the show.
You know, I didn't know what it would look like.
Was I going to take a couple of days. Was
(02:16):
I going to take a week? Am I back for
good right now? I don't know. And I know that
some of you are going through really hard things right
now and you don't even have that option to step away.
You may not have people that can come in and
fill in for you. You may not have a boss
that's like, hey, you know what, Yeah, we got this,
we can do the show without you this week. You
may not have a business partner that's like, hey, take
care of you, like I got it, don't even worry
(02:37):
about it. So I see you, I hear you. I mean,
you're not really speaking to me physically right now, literally,
but I think of you often. I think of people
that are going through hard things right now that can't
step away, and I don't know how you're doing it.
So in a spirit of gratitude, I want to say
right now, I'm so thankful for the people I have
in my life so that I have been able to
step away. I am here today, I will be here
(03:00):
Thursday because I'm gonna do a Christmas gift guide. It'll
be a little bit more than that, and I'll have
some people joining me here and there. It's not going
to just be all about hey, go by this, go
by that. But I know that shopping can be hard,
especially you can't go out and shop for people in person,
depending on where you live and what shopping is like
in whatever part of the country that you're in. But
(03:20):
all of it will be online stuff and just suggestions
for you and hopefully stuff that will help make you,
know getting through the shopping season easier and finding meaningful
and impactful gifts to give people in your life. So
I thought that was an important episode, and I knew
that I could show up this week. I have the time,
and I have the space, and I talked to my therapists,
and I can sprinkle work into my life here and there.
(03:42):
But I have to have some healthy boundaries. And you know,
I had a lot of friends speaking into me about
work and whether or not I should be working, and
I need to take more time off or less time off,
and just because work can be a good healthy distraction,
but for me I started to realize I was using
work as a way to avoid And we start every
Tuesday episode off with a quote, which I know, we're
(04:04):
almost five minutes into the episode and I haven't given
you a quote yet, but I pulled one to share
that my pastor shared in church on Sunday. And it's
not the most you know, inspiring quote. It's actually might
be one of the more depressing quotes I've ever shared,
but it's something that resonated with me. The quote is
from Blaze Pascal, and here's what he said. The only
thing that consoles us for our miseries is diversion, and
(04:28):
yet it is the greatest of our miseries, for it
is that above all, which prevents us thinking about ourselves
and leads us to destruction. But for that we should
be bored. And boredom would drive us to seek some
more solid means of escape. But diversion passes our time
and brings us to our death. So again, I know
won't want But for me, I thought, oh my goodness,
(04:50):
Oftentimes I have been using diversion to avoid certain things
that I need to address in my life. So work
might be a diversion or just completely avoiding whatever form
I do that. I I was taught early on to
brush certain things under the rug and act as if
(05:12):
they are not there. That is how my family handled
some stuff. And I am learning now not to do that.
And I feel like I probably encourage y'all not to
do that, and I don't do it in all areas
of my life where there are definitely some things I
have been in major denial of. So thank you, Pastor
Matt Smallbone for bringing up that quote during your service
(05:32):
on Sunday. I know that this is again a healthy
time for me to be here. I feel really good
about it. But I don't know where I'll be next week.
All this to say I may be here next week,
I may not. I may not be here the following week.
I don't know. But I appreciate y'all sticking with me,
and hopefully you enjoy the variety of people that have
been coming on and will be coming on to fill
(05:54):
my shoes here on the podcast. Now, speaking of my
pastor Matt Smallbone, his cause are in a band called
for King and Country. And I got this email from
someone his name was Matt said, Hey, Amy, I got
the chance to meet Joel Smallbille last week through a
virtual meet and greet before one of their driving concerts.
Joel wears this four hat, and me, being nineteen eighty
(06:17):
four myself, I wanted to see where he got it.
He mentioned that he received it as a gift from
you last year. Do you sell them or could you
please refer me to the company that does. Thank you, Matt,
which Matt, what up you're in? Look? And I don't
think we were going to talk about the Born in
Your Hats coming up this Thursday and the holiday gift Guide.
So I'm glad that Matt brought this up because we
do make them, and the company is a squaw, the
(06:39):
one that I have with Mary, and we have all
the years most of them. Some of them may be
sold out, but you should be able to find when
you want. And they do make great gifts and you
can give people the year they were born. That's what
we based them off of, Born Your Hats, but really
you could get any year that is special to someone
and buy them that hat and they'll fill the special
and also feel good about it knowing that it's going
(07:01):
back to spread hope in Haiti at the same time
with purchase. So that is one of the emails that
I wanted to share in today's episode, and then I've
got another email that I'm gonna get into that is
pretty much the only other email that I'm going to
share on the show because it was very long. But
also I really enjoyed the note, and I think that
you will too. I love when y'all send us things
(07:23):
that can be inspiring and that I can share with
everybody else listening. But I don't know if y'all listen
to the Bobby Bones Show on Monday. But I was
gifted and experience from Eddie on the Bobby Bones Show
where he had a TV that went out and it
was no longer working and he was just going to
have to trash it. So he thought, oh my goodness, Aim,
he's had a lot going on. I bet if we
(07:43):
get her a sledgehammer and some goggles and some gloves, like,
she could go to town and get out some of
her emotion. And I did, and I gotta say it
was amazing. So I'm not condoning destruction of property, Like
I don't want you to just be reckless and go
start breaking things in your house, but if you have
an opportunity to do it in a constructive way. I
(08:03):
highly recommend it. I mean it is awesome. I don't know.
Maybe you have a friend that's about to do some
work at their house and they need some demolition or
a wall taken down. Maybe ask if you could come
over and just bang a few holes in the wall
or something, or maybe you could go outside and chop
some wood. It felt a lot like that, although I
(08:23):
don't trust myself with an axe to chop wood. Um,
not because I would do anything crazy, but I just
don't feel confident enough in my swing to like actually
make contact with the wood. But I don't know, maybe
there's a way to do that. I'm going to bring
this ball up again on Thursday's episode as a gift
because I think it's so amazing. But the art ball,
I've talked about it here on the podcast. My therapist
(08:43):
had it in her office and I really really liked it.
We ordered them. Everybody in my house has one, and
those are great too. They're awesome, Like you can throw
them as hard as you possibly can and it's not
going to hurt the person that's catching it or really
damage anything because it's just the way that it's made.
But for me and my son sometimes when we're working
through something like we'll just grab that and start throwing
(09:04):
it at each other as hard as we can and
not in a mean way, but it does help him
move past some stuff that he's got going on as well,
and then ends up making me feel really good. It's
a it's a sensory ball. It is for stress and anxiety.
So highly recommend that, or sledgehammering a TV that is
no longer working. So shout out Eddie for that fun activity. Okay,
(09:25):
now I'm going to get into the email that was
sent to me from Nikki, and she started the email
off with her favorite four things, which I think is
so cute. So Nikki, I'm going to throw these four
things on a customized four Things tote for you and
I'll be putting that in the mail I emailed you
to get your address, so hopefully you check that soon.
But her four things that she put our family, hot Chocolate,
(09:46):
happy Color, and wonder Woman, so those will look super
cute on a tote. And then she put us her
fifth thing, four Things with Amy Brown, which I thought
was super cute. And then she even started her email
off with a quote from Shannon l Adler when you
are joyful. When you say yes to life and have
fun and project positivity all around you, you become a
son in the center of every constellation and people want
(10:09):
to be near you. Again, that quote was from Shannon
l Adler in case they all want to look it up,
and I thought it was fitting that Nikki put that
in there because we're big on joy here. But also
I started to think about how I've been lately, and
I know that with what I do have going on
in certain people that are dialed in with the circumstance,
I feel like that's what I talk about a lot,
(10:30):
and I found myself to want to draw back because
I feel very negative and it just doesn't make me
feel good. And then I feel like, if I'm just
off this debbie downer, then nobody's going to really want
to be near me. But at the same time, I
think that this quote is important. But you need to
allow people to know all that's going on so that
they can show up for you. And then the hope
(10:51):
is is that those friends will also want to reciprocate
and share with you all the things that they have
going on so that you can show up for them.
But it's not always easy for people to share things.
I feel like it's easier for me if someone asks,
I kind of give them a lot of it, probably
too much if I trust them. But then I also
don't want to create an environment where then they don't
(11:14):
even want to ask me how it's going, because then
they might get like, well, like all the negative things,
and I you know, in general, I want to try
to be a positive person that people want to be around. Okay,
(11:34):
so here is the body of the email that was
sent to me. Hey, Amy, I want to start off
by saying I love your podcast. My name is NICKI,
I'm forty seven. I'm new to the Bobby Bones Show
and to you, let's face it, i'm new to podcast too.
If I'm honest, your podcast is my first. Like you
sometimes ramble, I apologize for that. I just finished catching
up on all of your podcasts. I've been binging them
(11:54):
for a little bit. I work overnights in retail the
stocking pet department, so I listened to you talk to
me pretty much all night. Now that I'm caught up,
I'm not sure what I will listen to on my
days that I don't have you again rambling. Sorry, so
many things I want to say, so this is going
to touch on a lot of the things I heard
on your episodes. I loved the episode about your mom.
I have had interactions with hospice. The people that worked
(12:16):
there are God sent for sure. My husband I met
when I was twenty one, and we spent nine years
together and had two children. Then we split for fourteen years.
In two thousand and fifteen, I moved to Ohio to
be with him, and it was like no time had passed.
He was still my best friend. I could tell him anything,
and I did. I had no secrets from him ever. Anyway,
when we got back together, I felt happier than I
had been in fourteen years. In two thousand and sixteen,
(12:39):
we found out my husband had pancreatic cancer. He went
in for surgery. He did awesome until the day before
he was going to come home, he started coughing up blood.
He ended up going back into surgery. He was asleep,
that's what I call it, for a week. At one
point during that week, the doctors didn't think he was
going to make it through the night, but he did,
and he woke up. Hearing his voice again was the
sweetest sound I had ever heard. He eventually came home
(13:01):
but had to take chemo. He ended up taking four
different chemos. At first they thought they got all the cancer.
They were wrong with the surgery and its spread to
his liver. The chemos didn't work. The one that was
working gave him pancreatitis, so they took him off of it.
The cancer got so big that it broke through the
liver lining and spread everywhere. That was the point it
hit me he was going to die and I was
going to lose him again, but this time for good.
(13:23):
I always believed if anyone could beat cancer, it was him.
Cancer took him from me on February second, two thousand eighteen,
or day of my life. He was only forty four
when he died. I couldn't believe that God brought me
back into his life just to take him away from me. Now,
on the other hand of that, I also believe everything
happens for a reason, and I believe I was meant
to be with him through this. He got to not
(13:44):
only reconnect with me, but he reconnected with his kids
as well, and got to see two of his grandkids.
It does make me sad when I think that the
two grandkids he did get to see were so young,
and they won't remember him. I have moved on as
much as I think I ever will. I am with
someone else, but it is not the same. He was
my soul mate. He completed me rambling again. Sorry, but
Hospice came to my house about the last month of
(14:06):
his life. They were great. Not only did they take
care of the one dying, but they take care of
the family. They got lows to give us a new
fridge and deliver it and take the old one. After
he passed, they still called for a while to make
sure that I was okay. I remember always saying I'm fine,
everything is fine. Everything was so not fine. I don't
think I will ever be fine. There will always be
(14:27):
sadness on holidays and his birthdays. Another story I'm want
to share with you is about my sister. She is
blind and has been since birth. She's my older sister
and she has six children. Her first four part white
and part black, her younger two are part White and
part Pakistan. She is my hero and all of her
kids are doing beautifully. She always made it a priority
to make sure her kids knew both sides of their heritage.
(14:49):
She would make sure that when she bought dolls for
her daughter, she bought both black and white dolls. I
thought that that was so great. She wanted to make
sure that they knew who they were, and the town
she lived in was a little town that didn't have
been black people there. I think she did a great
job teaching them their heritage, being a single white woman
living in a pretty much all white town. The last
thing I want to say is I love the healthcare
(15:09):
worker shoutouts. Maybe you could shout out to the essential
workers that are not in healthcare. I'm an essential worker.
I've been making sure the stuff everyone needs is on
the shelf so they can buy it. Just saying it
would be nice to hear about the other essential workers
that have been right there through all of this. Well,
I think I have talked your ear off enough. But
before I go, just want to say I got my
Gratitude Journal the other day and I love it. I
(15:30):
want the tied I want to, but couldn't afford both.
But I'm glad I got the new two point oh
version because it has your Alabama mac and cheeseo recipe
in there, and I've been wanting that. I am for
sure making it for Christmas. I know there is more
I would love to say, but I will close for now.
Thanks for all you do your friend, Nikki, which okay, Nikki,
I love that you signed up your friend because we
are all friends here and it makes me feel super
(15:52):
connected to you guys when you tell me that, because
I do want to again recognize that you are an
essential worker and give you a big old thank you
for making sure that we have stuff on the shelf
so that we can buy it. Yeah. I said in
the beginning, I will be sending you that customized four
things tote, but now I'm going to for sure throw
in a tight eye gratitude journal so that you can
(16:14):
have that one as well. So I appreciate you, Nikki,
and thank you for this note. And I just thought
it was really sweet that Nikki wanted to email this
to me and open up and share all that has
gone on in her life. I know that it is
not easy. And she brought up hospice and I honestly
had never worked with hospice at all until my mom
went through what she did, and it was a beautiful experience.
(16:36):
I don't know if any of you have anything like
that going on in your life. Right now where you
might be close to losing a loved one, if you
could reach out to the hospice in your area. There
could be several different ones, but maybe read some reviews
see which one you want to look into, and don't
be scared of it. I remember being terrified and thought,
(16:57):
what are these people and what are they going to do?
But they really make end of life beautiful and special.
And my sister and I were able to lie with
my mom and be by her side when she took
her last breath, and that was simply because of the
amazing hospice care that we had. There may be somebody
that needs to hear that right now, or you might
need it down the line. And I was so ignorant
(17:18):
about it. I wish I had known a little bit
more before going into it, because I would have gone
into hospice with more open arms. I went in very
closed and kind of angry and confused and thought, why
are they sending us here? This is so bizarre. But again,
it was the best decision we could have made. So Nikki,
thank you for sharing that with us, and even that
story about your sister. And I'm a white mom with
(17:41):
black kids, and I think it's important to make sure
that my kids, being Haitian, they know their culture. We
Coucasian food every week because they love it, and I
think that that's important. And I don't want them to
just look around and see white people all the time,
so I try to be intentional about that as well.
So just a word of advice, even if you don't
have kids of a different ethnic background, maybe look at
(18:02):
who your family is surrounded with. Are you a white
family with white kids? And all of your friends and
your kids friends and everybody they encounter, are they all white?
Just something to think about. Maybe is there a way
for you to diversify your friend group or people that
you hang out with? All Right, I'll end here and
I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Again, I don't know
(18:24):
that I'll be bringing my A game this year. I
have no idea, but I do know there are times
I want to be able to show up for y'all
when it is right for me and feels good for me.
This week, so I look forward to seeing y'all on
Thursday for the Gift Guide episode, and again I'll have
some guests. Mary will come on. I think I'm gonna
get my sister on I may have Steven from Home
(18:45):
Street Home, which is a homeless organization here in Nashville
that does a lot of great work. Because I feel
like gifts don't always have to be anything I'm suggesting
like a four Things toted or a gratitude journal or
really cool coffee Froth or the Arc Ball. It may
be that you're donating something in someone's name, and so
I just want to put that out as an option.
(19:08):
And then I have a few other ideas for y'all
that I think you might like that could help make
gift giving this year special and means something. Gifts are important.
They're an important way to show someone that you appreciate them,
that they're a big part of your life, and that
you enjoy them. In his way of saying thank you
for being my life. Here is a gift, but it
doesn't always have to be something that you bought and
(19:29):
that they get to open. While opening presents is fun,
and I'm going to definitely give you ideas for that,
there's some other ways that you can make sure that
people know that they're special that actually don't really cost anything.
So uh yeah, that's what we'll be going over on Thursday,
and I can't wait to talk to you. I don't know,
I haven't fully gotten that entire episode together. Since there
might be some other fun things as well. Maybe we'll
(19:51):
do like some sort of giveaway, trying to figure out
how to work that in so anyway, make sure that
you're listening. So however I do figure out the giveaway,
there will be something involved and maybe you could win
it in time for Christmas, and it's like my little
holiday gift to you. All right, hope you'll have a
great rest of your day if you're listening to this
on Tuesday or whenever, and then don't forget to email me.
(20:13):
That's how we get content for this episode. Four things
with Amy Brown at gmail dot com and uh Gratitude
Journals were mentioned here. Four things tot obviously Born your Hat.
You all can find all of that stuff at Radio
Amy dot com. And I don't even know whenever I
was reading that email from Matt, I don't even know
(20:34):
if I said where he could get it shop espoa
dot com. That's where you can find the Born in
your Hat shop ESPOI, s h O p E s
p w A. All right, I'll talk to you later.
By
Happy Tuesday, everybody, Amy here and I will be hosting
this entire episode and I'll be here again on Thursday. Now,
if you're brand new to the podcast, you might be thinking, well,
why is Amy telling us she's going to be here?
This is her podcast. But if you have been listening
for a while, or at least to some recent episodes,
you know that I've had some other things that I've
had to really focus my energy on, totally not work related,
(00:27):
and that's where I've had to be. And I've had
amazing people and friends step in and still put up
content for you guys to consume, and I hope that
you have enjoyed that and appreciated it. But I will
be here this week, and I'm here this week because
I think it's healthy for me to be here. Currently,
I don't know for sure, can't say that i'll be
here next week. I am really just one day at
(00:50):
a time with this. I want to encourage anybody else
going through anything right now, whatever it is, whatever it
may be, I don't know. I don't even know I'm
getting emotional right now. I just think I feel a
connection with you, and anytime I've shared anything that I'm
going through and while you don't know the details, those
are not important. I don't mind you knowing that it's
(01:11):
very hard right now. It's really hard, um, But it's
not lost on me that some of you might be
going through something hard right now. And the advice I
can give you is one day at a time, one
step at a time. Sometimes it might be minute by minute,
hour by hour. Well. Shoot, I thought it was going
to be healthy for me to be here, but I
guess it's also emotional for me to be kind of
back working again. I love connecting with you. I love
(01:33):
my podcast and it's something that has become very important
to me and I work hard on it. And there's
other areas in my life where I've had to step
back and I care about those deeply. I care about
the work we do with a SPLAW, and I have
stepped back a little bit from that, and Mary is
definitely carrying a lot of that load. I care a
(01:54):
lot about the Bobby Bones Show. Obviously that's what's kicked
off everything. But with a SPLAW love that Mary and
I have grown something that gives back to Haiti, a
place that has a special place in our hearts. And
with the Bobby bones show. Of course, I work for
people that are amazing and where I can step away.
And I recently took a whole week off from the show.
You know, I didn't know what it would look like.
Was I going to take a couple of days. Was
(02:16):
I going to take a week? Am I back for
good right now? I don't know. And I know that
some of you are going through really hard things right
now and you don't even have that option to step away.
You may not have people that can come in and
fill in for you. You may not have a boss
that's like, hey, you know what, Yeah, we got this,
we can do the show without you this week. You
may not have a business partner that's like, hey, take
care of you, like I got it, don't even worry
(02:37):
about it. So I see you, I hear you. I mean,
you're not really speaking to me physically right now, literally,
but I think of you often. I think of people
that are going through hard things right now that can't
step away, and I don't know how you're doing it.
So in a spirit of gratitude, I want to say
right now, I'm so thankful for the people I have
in my life so that I have been able to
step away. I am here today, I will be here
(03:00):
Thursday because I'm gonna do a Christmas gift guide. It'll
be a little bit more than that, and I'll have
some people joining me here and there. It's not going
to just be all about hey, go by this, go
by that. But I know that shopping can be hard,
especially you can't go out and shop for people in person,
depending on where you live and what shopping is like
in whatever part of the country that you're in. But
(03:20):
all of it will be online stuff and just suggestions
for you and hopefully stuff that will help make you,
know getting through the shopping season easier and finding meaningful
and impactful gifts to give people in your life. So
I thought that was an important episode, and I knew
that I could show up this week. I have the time,
and I have the space, and I talked to my therapists,
and I can sprinkle work into my life here and there.
(03:42):
But I have to have some healthy boundaries. And you know,
I had a lot of friends speaking into me about
work and whether or not I should be working, and
I need to take more time off or less time off,
and just because work can be a good healthy distraction,
but for me I started to realize I was using
work as a way to avoid And we start every
Tuesday episode off with a quote, which I know, we're
(04:04):
almost five minutes into the episode and I haven't given
you a quote yet, but I pulled one to share
that my pastor shared in church on Sunday. And it's
not the most you know, inspiring quote. It's actually might
be one of the more depressing quotes I've ever shared,
but it's something that resonated with me. The quote is
from Blaze Pascal, and here's what he said. The only
thing that consoles us for our miseries is diversion, and
(04:28):
yet it is the greatest of our miseries, for it
is that above all, which prevents us thinking about ourselves
and leads us to destruction. But for that we should
be bored. And boredom would drive us to seek some
more solid means of escape. But diversion passes our time
and brings us to our death. So again, I know
won't want But for me, I thought, oh my goodness,
(04:50):
Oftentimes I have been using diversion to avoid certain things
that I need to address in my life. So work
might be a diversion or just completely avoiding whatever form
I do that. I I was taught early on to
brush certain things under the rug and act as if
(05:12):
they are not there. That is how my family handled
some stuff. And I am learning now not to do that.
And I feel like I probably encourage y'all not to
do that, and I don't do it in all areas
of my life where there are definitely some things I
have been in major denial of. So thank you, Pastor
Matt Smallbone for bringing up that quote during your service
(05:32):
on Sunday. I know that this is again a healthy
time for me to be here. I feel really good
about it. But I don't know where I'll be next week.
All this to say I may be here next week,
I may not. I may not be here the following week.
I don't know. But I appreciate y'all sticking with me,
and hopefully you enjoy the variety of people that have
been coming on and will be coming on to fill
(05:54):
my shoes here on the podcast. Now, speaking of my
pastor Matt Smallbone, his cause are in a band called
for King and Country. And I got this email from
someone his name was Matt said, Hey, Amy, I got
the chance to meet Joel Smallbille last week through a
virtual meet and greet before one of their driving concerts.
Joel wears this four hat, and me, being nineteen eighty
(06:17):
four myself, I wanted to see where he got it.
He mentioned that he received it as a gift from
you last year. Do you sell them or could you
please refer me to the company that does. Thank you, Matt,
which Matt, what up you're in? Look? And I don't
think we were going to talk about the Born in
Your Hats coming up this Thursday and the holiday gift Guide.
So I'm glad that Matt brought this up because we
do make them, and the company is a squaw, the
(06:39):
one that I have with Mary, and we have all
the years most of them. Some of them may be
sold out, but you should be able to find when
you want. And they do make great gifts and you
can give people the year they were born. That's what
we based them off of, Born Your Hats, but really
you could get any year that is special to someone
and buy them that hat and they'll fill the special
and also feel good about it knowing that it's going
(07:01):
back to spread hope in Haiti at the same time
with purchase. So that is one of the emails that
I wanted to share in today's episode, and then I've
got another email that I'm gonna get into that is
pretty much the only other email that I'm going to
share on the show because it was very long. But
also I really enjoyed the note, and I think that
you will too. I love when y'all send us things
(07:23):
that can be inspiring and that I can share with
everybody else listening. But I don't know if y'all listen
to the Bobby Bones Show on Monday. But I was
gifted and experience from Eddie on the Bobby Bones Show
where he had a TV that went out and it
was no longer working and he was just going to
have to trash it. So he thought, oh my goodness, Aim,
he's had a lot going on. I bet if we
(07:43):
get her a sledgehammer and some goggles and some gloves, like,
she could go to town and get out some of
her emotion. And I did, and I gotta say it
was amazing. So I'm not condoning destruction of property, Like
I don't want you to just be reckless and go
start breaking things in your house, but if you have
an opportunity to do it in a constructive way. I
(08:03):
highly recommend it. I mean it is awesome. I don't know.
Maybe you have a friend that's about to do some
work at their house and they need some demolition or
a wall taken down. Maybe ask if you could come
over and just bang a few holes in the wall
or something, or maybe you could go outside and chop
some wood. It felt a lot like that, although I
(08:23):
don't trust myself with an axe to chop wood. Um,
not because I would do anything crazy, but I just
don't feel confident enough in my swing to like actually
make contact with the wood. But I don't know, maybe
there's a way to do that. I'm going to bring
this ball up again on Thursday's episode as a gift
because I think it's so amazing. But the art ball,
I've talked about it here on the podcast. My therapist
(08:43):
had it in her office and I really really liked it.
We ordered them. Everybody in my house has one, and
those are great too. They're awesome, Like you can throw
them as hard as you possibly can and it's not
going to hurt the person that's catching it or really
damage anything because it's just the way that it's made.
But for me and my son sometimes when we're working
through something like we'll just grab that and start throwing
(09:04):
it at each other as hard as we can and
not in a mean way, but it does help him
move past some stuff that he's got going on as well,
and then ends up making me feel really good. It's
a it's a sensory ball. It is for stress and anxiety.
So highly recommend that, or sledgehammering a TV that is
no longer working. So shout out Eddie for that fun activity. Okay,
(09:25):
now I'm going to get into the email that was
sent to me from Nikki, and she started the email
off with her favorite four things, which I think is
so cute. So Nikki, I'm going to throw these four
things on a customized four Things tote for you and
I'll be putting that in the mail I emailed you
to get your address, so hopefully you check that soon.
But her four things that she put our family, hot Chocolate,
(09:46):
happy Color, and wonder Woman, so those will look super
cute on a tote. And then she put us her
fifth thing, four Things with Amy Brown, which I thought
was super cute. And then she even started her email
off with a quote from Shannon l Adler when you
are joyful. When you say yes to life and have
fun and project positivity all around you, you become a
son in the center of every constellation and people want
(10:09):
to be near you. Again, that quote was from Shannon
l Adler in case they all want to look it up,
and I thought it was fitting that Nikki put that
in there because we're big on joy here. But also
I started to think about how I've been lately, and
I know that with what I do have going on
in certain people that are dialed in with the circumstance,
I feel like that's what I talk about a lot,
(10:30):
and I found myself to want to draw back because
I feel very negative and it just doesn't make me
feel good. And then I feel like, if I'm just
off this debbie downer, then nobody's going to really want
to be near me. But at the same time, I
think that this quote is important. But you need to
allow people to know all that's going on so that
they can show up for you. And then the hope
(10:51):
is is that those friends will also want to reciprocate
and share with you all the things that they have
going on so that you can show up for them.
But it's not always easy for people to share things.
I feel like it's easier for me if someone asks,
I kind of give them a lot of it, probably
too much if I trust them. But then I also
don't want to create an environment where then they don't
(11:14):
even want to ask me how it's going, because then
they might get like, well, like all the negative things,
and I you know, in general, I want to try
to be a positive person that people want to be around. Okay,
(11:34):
so here is the body of the email that was
sent to me. Hey, Amy, I want to start off
by saying I love your podcast. My name is NICKI,
I'm forty seven. I'm new to the Bobby Bones Show
and to you, let's face it, i'm new to podcast too.
If I'm honest, your podcast is my first. Like you
sometimes ramble, I apologize for that. I just finished catching
up on all of your podcasts. I've been binging them
(11:54):
for a little bit. I work overnights in retail the
stocking pet department, so I listened to you talk to
me pretty much all night. Now that I'm caught up,
I'm not sure what I will listen to on my
days that I don't have you again rambling. Sorry, so
many things I want to say, so this is going
to touch on a lot of the things I heard
on your episodes. I loved the episode about your mom.
I have had interactions with hospice. The people that worked
(12:16):
there are God sent for sure. My husband I met
when I was twenty one, and we spent nine years
together and had two children. Then we split for fourteen years.
In two thousand and fifteen, I moved to Ohio to
be with him, and it was like no time had passed.
He was still my best friend. I could tell him anything,
and I did. I had no secrets from him ever. Anyway,
when we got back together, I felt happier than I
had been in fourteen years. In two thousand and sixteen,
(12:39):
we found out my husband had pancreatic cancer. He went
in for surgery. He did awesome until the day before
he was going to come home, he started coughing up blood.
He ended up going back into surgery. He was asleep,
that's what I call it, for a week. At one
point during that week, the doctors didn't think he was
going to make it through the night, but he did,
and he woke up. Hearing his voice again was the
sweetest sound I had ever heard. He eventually came home
(13:01):
but had to take chemo. He ended up taking four
different chemos. At first they thought they got all the cancer.
They were wrong with the surgery and its spread to
his liver. The chemos didn't work. The one that was
working gave him pancreatitis, so they took him off of it.
The cancer got so big that it broke through the
liver lining and spread everywhere. That was the point it
hit me he was going to die and I was
going to lose him again, but this time for good.
(13:23):
I always believed if anyone could beat cancer, it was him.
Cancer took him from me on February second, two thousand eighteen,
or day of my life. He was only forty four
when he died. I couldn't believe that God brought me
back into his life just to take him away from me. Now,
on the other hand of that, I also believe everything
happens for a reason, and I believe I was meant
to be with him through this. He got to not
(13:44):
only reconnect with me, but he reconnected with his kids
as well, and got to see two of his grandkids.
It does make me sad when I think that the
two grandkids he did get to see were so young,
and they won't remember him. I have moved on as
much as I think I ever will. I am with
someone else, but it is not the same. He was
my soul mate. He completed me rambling again. Sorry, but
Hospice came to my house about the last month of
(14:06):
his life. They were great. Not only did they take
care of the one dying, but they take care of
the family. They got lows to give us a new
fridge and deliver it and take the old one. After
he passed, they still called for a while to make
sure that I was okay. I remember always saying I'm fine,
everything is fine. Everything was so not fine. I don't
think I will ever be fine. There will always be
(14:27):
sadness on holidays and his birthdays. Another story I'm want
to share with you is about my sister. She is
blind and has been since birth. She's my older sister
and she has six children. Her first four part white
and part black, her younger two are part White and
part Pakistan. She is my hero and all of her
kids are doing beautifully. She always made it a priority
to make sure her kids knew both sides of their heritage.
(14:49):
She would make sure that when she bought dolls for
her daughter, she bought both black and white dolls. I
thought that that was so great. She wanted to make
sure that they knew who they were, and the town
she lived in was a little town that didn't have
been black people there. I think she did a great
job teaching them their heritage, being a single white woman
living in a pretty much all white town. The last
thing I want to say is I love the healthcare
(15:09):
worker shoutouts. Maybe you could shout out to the essential
workers that are not in healthcare. I'm an essential worker.
I've been making sure the stuff everyone needs is on
the shelf so they can buy it. Just saying it
would be nice to hear about the other essential workers
that have been right there through all of this. Well,
I think I have talked your ear off enough. But
before I go, just want to say I got my
Gratitude Journal the other day and I love it. I
(15:30):
want the tied I want to, but couldn't afford both.
But I'm glad I got the new two point oh
version because it has your Alabama mac and cheeseo recipe
in there, and I've been wanting that. I am for
sure making it for Christmas. I know there is more
I would love to say, but I will close for now.
Thanks for all you do your friend, Nikki, which okay, Nikki,
I love that you signed up your friend because we
are all friends here and it makes me feel super
(15:52):
connected to you guys when you tell me that, because
I do want to again recognize that you are an
essential worker and give you a big old thank you
for making sure that we have stuff on the shelf
so that we can buy it. Yeah. I said in
the beginning, I will be sending you that customized four
things tote, but now I'm going to for sure throw
in a tight eye gratitude journal so that you can
(16:14):
have that one as well. So I appreciate you, Nikki,
and thank you for this note. And I just thought
it was really sweet that Nikki wanted to email this
to me and open up and share all that has
gone on in her life. I know that it is
not easy. And she brought up hospice and I honestly
had never worked with hospice at all until my mom
went through what she did, and it was a beautiful experience.
(16:36):
I don't know if any of you have anything like
that going on in your life. Right now where you
might be close to losing a loved one, if you
could reach out to the hospice in your area. There
could be several different ones, but maybe read some reviews
see which one you want to look into, and don't
be scared of it. I remember being terrified and thought,
(16:57):
what are these people and what are they going to do?
But they really make end of life beautiful and special.
And my sister and I were able to lie with
my mom and be by her side when she took
her last breath, and that was simply because of the
amazing hospice care that we had. There may be somebody
that needs to hear that right now, or you might
need it down the line. And I was so ignorant
(17:18):
about it. I wish I had known a little bit
more before going into it, because I would have gone
into hospice with more open arms. I went in very
closed and kind of angry and confused and thought, why
are they sending us here? This is so bizarre. But again,
it was the best decision we could have made. So Nikki,
thank you for sharing that with us, and even that
story about your sister. And I'm a white mom with
(17:41):
black kids, and I think it's important to make sure
that my kids, being Haitian, they know their culture. We
Coucasian food every week because they love it, and I
think that that's important. And I don't want them to
just look around and see white people all the time,
so I try to be intentional about that as well.
So just a word of advice, even if you don't
have kids of a different ethnic background, maybe look at
(18:02):
who your family is surrounded with. Are you a white
family with white kids? And all of your friends and
your kids friends and everybody they encounter, are they all white?
Just something to think about. Maybe is there a way
for you to diversify your friend group or people that
you hang out with? All Right, I'll end here and
I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Again, I don't know
(18:24):
that I'll be bringing my A game this year. I
have no idea, but I do know there are times
I want to be able to show up for y'all
when it is right for me and feels good for me.
This week, so I look forward to seeing y'all on
Thursday for the Gift Guide episode, and again I'll have
some guests. Mary will come on. I think I'm gonna
get my sister on I may have Steven from Home
(18:45):
Street Home, which is a homeless organization here in Nashville
that does a lot of great work. Because I feel
like gifts don't always have to be anything I'm suggesting
like a four Things toted or a gratitude journal or
really cool coffee Froth or the Arc Ball. It may
be that you're donating something in someone's name, and so
I just want to put that out as an option.
(19:08):
And then I have a few other ideas for y'all
that I think you might like that could help make
gift giving this year special and means something. Gifts are important.
They're an important way to show someone that you appreciate them,
that they're a big part of your life, and that
you enjoy them. In his way of saying thank you
for being my life. Here is a gift, but it
doesn't always have to be something that you bought and
(19:29):
that they get to open. While opening presents is fun,
and I'm going to definitely give you ideas for that,
there's some other ways that you can make sure that
people know that they're special that actually don't really cost anything.
So uh yeah, that's what we'll be going over on Thursday,
and I can't wait to talk to you. I don't know,
I haven't fully gotten that entire episode together. Since there
might be some other fun things as well. Maybe we'll
(19:51):
do like some sort of giveaway, trying to figure out
how to work that in so anyway, make sure that
you're listening. So however I do figure out the giveaway,
there will be something involved and maybe you could win
it in time for Christmas, and it's like my little
holiday gift to you. All right, hope you'll have a
great rest of your day if you're listening to this
on Tuesday or whenever, and then don't forget to email me.
(20:13):
That's how we get content for this episode. Four things
with Amy Brown at gmail dot com and uh Gratitude
Journals were mentioned here. Four things tot obviously Born your Hat.
You all can find all of that stuff at Radio
Amy dot com. And I don't even know whenever I
was reading that email from Matt, I don't even know
(20:34):
if I said where he could get it shop espoa
dot com. That's where you can find the Born in
your Hat shop ESPOI, s h O p E s
p w A. All right, I'll talk to you later.
By
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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