Interview with author Careshmeh Dean - The Culture News

Interview with author Careshmeh Dean - The Culture News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Ladies and gentlemen, and a good afternoon. Well, come on
the Culture News. My name is David Suri Roy and
I have the pleasure to have today on Iheartwed You
on the Culture News. A wonderful, wonderful author. She is
absolutely amazing. She wrote something really wonderful. We're going to
talk about all of that. Don't worry. Her name is

(00:23):
kersh May Dean. Let me spell it for you. Is
c A r E s h.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
M e h and we pronounce it kersh May, and
her last name is Dean. She's going to tell us
all about her debut book title Made for Me, Made
for Me, and indeed it is made for her and
made for everyone around.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
And this show is for you.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
She's going to talk to us about all her beautiful
things that she has done. She has spent over fifteen
years building a very important career and real estate, and
she has learned great skills and communication, negotiation and leadership.
She's a speaker and natural storyteller, and we're so happy

(01:14):
to have her today.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
How are you, Kershmi?

Speaker 3 (01:19):
I am doing fabulous and I am so privileged to
be able to do this show with you.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
First of all, all the pleasure is mine, So thank you.
Let's stop by that. So it's really, you know, nice
to have you. So a couple of questions. First of all,
you have a beautiful first name. Can you tell us
does it mean something particular?

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Where is it from? Yes?

Speaker 3 (01:44):
I was named for my grandmother. She is Iranian, my
dad is Iranian. We actually lived there the first four
years of my life. So my grandma decided that she
was the one who's going to name me. And kershme
means charisma. So it's not very popular or over in
Iran either. I have not heard it wow ever. I mean,

(02:04):
really any other cash Mas except for someone who is
named after me here in the States.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Why, it's a beautiful name. And of course we say
hello to all the.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Beautiful Persian culture and Iranian culture in people. This is
this beautiful first name. So you were born in the US, right.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
Yes, So my father's Iranian, my mother is American. My
dad came over in a cohort of boys to go
to school and get their engineering degree and various degrees
at the University of Utah, and then when he was finished,
they moved back to Iran, where my dad took over
my grandpa's company and became a construction management engineer and

(02:52):
we were only there for four years. When the Shaw
was exiled. My dad was a lieutenant in the army
and we left the country just because you know, they
exiled the show. We were supporters of the Shah and
came back over to the United States to start a
whole new life, a whole new life, and came back
to Utah, where my mother's family is from. My mother

(03:15):
made sure to have all of us in the United
States because we have dual citizenship. So that kind of
gets dodgy, especially with all of these various world leaders
and how they have certain sticks with things, I mean,
depending on their mood, depending on you know, how they
want to roll over in the morning. It affects millions
and millions of people.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
So wow, it's a beautiful journey.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
You know that we tend to forget of these people,
you know, living.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Their lives to start a new one somewhere else. This
is really beautiful. And and boy, I've seen videos and
pictures of Tehran at the time of the Shah. It
was like Dubai of today.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
You know.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
It was it was like partying all the time.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
And there was at some point I was told one
of the biggest contemporary modern art collection in museum, and
they had some of the most important museum with Andy
Waholes and all of that.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
Absolutely, absolutely, they were what they would refer to in
history as the Golden Age, right, they were coming into
their own. The show was very industrially minded. He was
very progressive, and he wasn't really I mean, you can't
say you can't take religion outside of the unit of
the Middle East, but he wasn't fixated on it. He

(04:39):
was a diversified man.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, very very and he protected everybody.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
And you know, I of course you know they all have,
you know, dark side, but no one understands.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Really, you know, you don't. You know, you don't.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
You're not the president or the You don't control a
country like the United States the same way you control friends.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
Or you control Russia or you control fact. You know,
it's different mentality. You know, in Russia, we don't have contracts,
for example, like we have in the US with the
lawyer and everything. You know, it's a it's a total
different world.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
But you know, I met the widow of the shop, Yeah,
I met her in Paris, and she's an adorable woman,
a very beautiful lady, so elegant.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
And uh and cultured, very cultured.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Yeah, And she told me, can you believe I cannot
go back to Iran?

Speaker 1 (05:37):
You know?

Speaker 2 (05:38):
And right, she has friends who go back to Iran
and they go to visit her in Paris. And she
told me, I always ask them, please take in a
small bag, take a little bit of the of the soil,
you know, like the dirt. Get some dirt, yeah, like
like like you know, from the floor, like the lit
bit of grass.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
So I can hold it with me. It's so beautiful anyway. So,
but this is not just about that. I want to say, book,
Let's start about what motivated you to do this book
and what can we find in this book.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
Yes, so I too, am a widow. I was married
to my first husband for twenty two years. It was
a very volatile, very violent marriage and you know, thankfully
I had three beautiful children as a manifestation of that marriage.
But when that ended, I was looking for my soulmate.

(06:36):
I was looking for a good man to be honest,
and I manifested him. I wrote him down. I had
lots of people giving me advice. At the time. I
had gotten into real estate and there's all of these
classes and trainings, you know, how to make your life
the way you wanted. And I had spent twenty two
years morning not having the husband that I really felt

(07:00):
was out there, and by chance or by God, or
however anyone wants to look at it, for me, I
believe it was a blessing put in my path that
I was able to meet my husband and we just
fit on every level. That's the hence the name made
for me. That you know, we sat down before our

(07:22):
religious leaders to have some pre marriage counseling and make
a list of all the things that we should maybe
consider getting married so that we could be aware of
each other's you know, idios and syncristities and all of
those kind of things. Have it up front, and we
found that our lists matched perfectly. I mean, I know
that sounds ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
But it did.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
And we spent five years together in absolute love, the
kind of love that I felt other people already had.
I felt like I had arrived finally to where everyone
else already was. Come to find out, not until after
he passed, asked that truly there were very few in
the world, very few in the world that can find

(08:05):
that kind of love, and I don't know why it manifested.
I don't know why our personalities fit so perfectly, you know, united.
But halfway through our marriage, he was diagnosed with acute
Mylloyd leukemia. And we're both go getters, were both positive.

(08:25):
We felt that we could surmount anything. We took the information,
we did everything exactly the way that we were advised
to have the most optimal outcome, and after his transplant,
everything went fantastic. He was the poster child, and something happened.
Of course, imagine this was all going on during COVID,

(08:47):
So this all happened during He was delayed in his
diagnosis because everyone was so hyper focused on COVID and
worried about something else when the other diseases are killing
everyone too, right, there was no attention or focus put
to that. So it was good that I was a
persevering soul to be able to get him back in
And that's when we found the leukemia and we just

(09:10):
continued our manitra our life motto of where you know
it's going to get better, We're going to surmount this,
We're going to be victorious. And that looked to be
the case in every way until he relapsed, and oddly enough,
he relapsed right after this. It's a strange, strange story

(09:32):
because when you have a bow mayre transplant, they do
not allow you to have any immunizations. The tried and
true immunizations are not allowed for one full year. The
ones that we know all the side effects not allowed
for one full year. However, these doctors began pressing him
to get his COVID shot three months after his transplant,

(09:54):
and we just kept asking questions, why would you want
us to do that? Why this doesn't make any sense?
Who told us that these are not allowed? But why
would you put this? This one hasn't even been tried.
This was this is the experiment you want us to experiment,
and we're already depleted in all of our immunity. So
he eventually accepted, he capitulated and said, Okay, I'm going

(10:18):
to get this vaccination in October, and he promptly was
relapsed into leukemia in November, so we had to re
enter the hospital and start the whole program over. And
it was anyone who's experienced cancer in any form knows

(10:38):
how life decimating it is. It just drives you. But
he was so young. He wasn't even forty yet, and
so we were trying to get ourselves to the finish
line once again. And everything looked positive and he was
taking the treatments positively, and then he relapsed a third

(10:59):
time and they looked at us and said, I'm sorry,
take him home, go on hospice, which I have to
tell you, I regret that we didn't do that. I
regret that I didn't take him home, and we didn't
go on the trip that we wanted to go on.
We had all of our plans, because people who don't
think they're going to die, people who are manifesting life,

(11:20):
don't sit and wallow. They make plans. And we had
made all of these plans to travel and go on
missions and just do things, live our life so fully.
And so instead of going home, my husband was bent.
He said, there's a trial at MD Anderson. We're going

(11:42):
to go. And so we sat in the parking lot
of LDS Hospital here in Utah and I started making calls.
I am bent, you know, that's my personality. I joke
with people, I'm hell bent, but that just means I'm
going to see it through to the finish line. And
so I called everyone I could think of and got
the contacts brit By Anderson, and then went to the

(12:04):
next hurdle was, of course, insurance, because they're not helpful,
and I was able to get a phone tree going.
We were able to, you know, get everything within days,
including getting ourselves on the airplane and to Houston from
Utah within four days, and we arrived at India Anderson,

(12:25):
which is in my definition a chop shop. I know
that it is in world renowned cancer institute, but our
experience was far different. They failed in positions in places
where they had no business. It was just pure neglect
and it cost me my husband, even though everything we

(12:50):
did everything right, but that spiraled me into a hell
of unforseeable debt. I could not even begin to tell you.
I would tell people I feel like I'm on fire.
My insides they're burning. I can't quench it. I don't
know how to stop it. I don't know what to do.

(13:12):
And you learn very quickly after being widowed that you
can only talk to people so much. You start to
pay attention to the expressions and the nuances of their
conversation to see where you've gone too far, and they
start to fall away. People eventually flee, or worse, they

(13:32):
turn upon you like hyenas, as if you are the
sickly one of the bunch and they want to kill you.
And they will do that with words, they will do
that with lies, they will do all kinds. It's shocking
when you consider how the widowed are treated. It's incredible.
And I learned, and I'm not someone who I'm very transparent,

(13:54):
so this was very difficult for me to figure out
how to put this mask that they talk about on
how do you secure your mask? Every day? And the
only way I could was to allow myself time out
to run away, whether it was driving my car and
go someplace where I could just scream for good five
minutes straight, scream at the top of my lungs. Or

(14:15):
I would go on hikes, or I would pray and pray.
But even then I felt like God had abandoned me.
Why would he, after twenty two years of hell, give
me this beautiful human only to take him away. It
was shocking, and it shook my incredible faith. I have
always had a strong relationship with my maker, one in

(14:40):
which I feel it's personal. It's intimate and personal, and
I never would have considered that I would have felt
abandoned or forsaken, and yet here I was just watching
a door close, like watching God close a door on me,
and that only infuriated the people around me even more.

(15:02):
So I learned contrary to my personality. I learned to
be quiet. I learned to.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
Pull up.

Speaker 3 (15:10):
I became basically a recluse, you know, I didn't really
want to go anywhere. It just canceled everything. And then
I started to be awakened to how God works for real,
how he really does bring people into our life. What
does he do to encourage us and help us. There's

(15:33):
two forces in this world, good and evil, and the
good is working just as hard as the evil. But
make no mistake, the evil is working over time, and
they don't take a break just because you're down or
you lost your husband, or you've lost a child, or
you're sick. They don't care. They double down. And so
I had to be retaught how to see this good

(15:57):
and it had to come into the form of people
that were not really to me, people that were not
my friends originally. And the more I paid attention, the
more I thought, oh my gosh, he's still here, and
one incredible human, my sister. I have a special need sister,
and I've always said jokingly that I would take care
of her when my parents couldn't, you know, she could

(16:19):
always come live with me. But this special need sister,
she stepped up and instead of me taking care of her,
she insisted she come live with me, and she too,
she took over. And so for three solid years we
were roommates, We were best friends.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
We were you know.

Speaker 3 (16:35):
I mean, she is an angel of mercy, an angel
of love, an angel of care, and she could teach
everyone how to sit with grief. She'd never pushed, she
never told me what to do, she never criticized, she
never said stupid trite things like well they're in a
better place, or God needed them more than you, or

(16:58):
things that don't even make sense if you really analyze them.
So anyway, that I wrote this book so that I
could show this story that ultimately it's a story of love,
it's a story of grief, and it's a story of
redemption because I was able to meet my current husband

(17:21):
and he saved my life. I was suicidal and somehow
again got intervened in such a miraculous way. And that
is the gist of this story. How do we rise
up like the phoenix? How does that happen? It looks

(17:43):
different for everyone, but how do we recognize when those
paths are being forged? For us?

Speaker 2 (17:50):
Wow, that is such a beautiful piece that you have delivered.
So he was very profound, and of course we have
a thought for your belife of it, a husband whom
I'm sure must be smiling upon us, you know, and
be very proud of how you carrying his legacy, if

(18:11):
I may so that you know you deserve a lot
of kytos, you know, for all the great things that
you're doing.

Speaker 4 (18:19):
So in a way, you answered a lot of my questions.
To be honest with you, I would just say that
I would just ask you sharing about a story, do.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
Not use this arm nurse? Can you tell us more
about it? Yes?

Speaker 3 (18:39):
So you know, we're in the United States of America,
where everyone is held to an accountability level. So we
think and we feel like we have come so far
with technological advances and training, and that we are in
the premier state of medical technology, and yet we owe

(19:00):
over look the simple things. The experiences we had in
the hospital were shocking, shocking, from having his urinals left
and having him trip on them, spill and almost fall,
luckily falling back into his bed, but he could have
fallen on the hard floor. I mean not changing their gloves,

(19:21):
not doing things that are basic logic. You know, rational
thinking people know they don't have to have medical degree.
I call these people the stupidest smart people you will
ever encounter, because they allow things that are clearly, clearly
logical to be surpassed. And when we were at M

(19:41):
d Anderson, he had developed a blood clot in his arm,
so that meant that it could not be touched. No ivs, no,
no injections, nothing could be done with that arm. And
so you know, this compounded his leukemia treatment. It was
awful and we had ended up in the ICU because
of other negligence on the part of M. D Anderson.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
So here he is.

Speaker 3 (20:04):
He's got a bright pink bracelet on his wrist to indicate,
don't you know, because the medication they were giving him
was giving him diabetes, so they had to constantly check
his insulin and give him what needed to be done.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
It was.

Speaker 3 (20:18):
It was a crazy time. There is a posted sign
outside the door that says, in a giant I mean giant, red,
big circle with the slash through it. Don't touch right arm,
you know, No, no, no, right arm. And I am
laying in bed, I'm you know, and my bed is

(20:39):
basically a chair next to him. And I had fallen
asleep from exhaustion. And this woman came in. And I'd
learned to be very alert. I would listen to see
if they would click their gloves. I would listen to,
you know, if I had knotted off, I listened. Still,
it wasn't complete sleep. And she came in and she
now super loud, Joshua, I'm here, got to pick You've

(21:01):
got to test your blood. And you know, I mean,
it was that in and of itself, was just courteous
at such a grand level. You know, he's sleeping, it's
it's gosh, just a little bit of courtesy, just a
little bit. But she came in blazing, her guns blazing,
and she went to grab his arm and I just
jolted up out of my bed. Don't touch that arm.

(21:23):
And she looked at me impressed, Well, I've got to
check his insulin. And I said, not that arm, that arm.
You've got to do it on the left arm, not
the right arm. And I had to come over and
just stop her because she was going to do it,
come hill water brainshine. She was going to grit his
right arm. And I finally just escorted her out to
the lobby and I said, I need you to just

(21:44):
look at the room. Just just look right there. What
do you see? And a nurse, a male nurse, came
over because he thought something awful was happening. And I said,
can you both just tell me? What does that sign say?
It says don't touch the right arm. He's got a
bracelet on. You guys have to do your job. Job,
you have to. We are at your mercy. Please help

(22:04):
me keep my husband alive. And they just both stood
there in dumbfounded silence. It's like, ohoh, but that was
that was very common. That kind of treatment was commonplace.
I tell people all the time, you can't go to
the hospital, not for any reason, by yourself, and especially

(22:27):
if you're sick. I mean, my poor husband was laying
most of the time, incoherent and they would still talk
right at him as if he was hearing anything, just
and make all decisions based on themselves. If I had
not been there, he would have died way sooner, way sooner.

(22:49):
I would have not had the year and a half
almost two years with him before, but it was just incomprehensible.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
Wow, it's a beautiful story that you're telling.

Speaker 2 (23:03):
What do you think people will take away by reading
your book that or you hope that they will understand
and they will that you would be able to benefit them.

Speaker 3 (23:18):
I feel there will be many. I mean, we are
not a one dimensional human. Everyone is multifaceted and they
all have various sufferings that they are going through. This
book encompasses quite a few of them. The concerns, the worries.
You know, there is going to touch people who want

(23:40):
to believe that there is true love, that love can
conquer all, even in the face of loss. I feel
my husband with me every day. I talk to him
every day. He comes to me in dreams. You know,
he is a part of my life for us. So

(24:01):
it's going to tell people that love exists, it is there,
seek it out and give it, not just it's not
just for you to get, it's for you to give.
And advocacy, how important it is to advocate for your
loved ones. And it will touch people who have grieved
and are grieving. Grieving never stops it's the full length

(24:26):
of your life. As long as you will be alive,
you will be grieving the loss that can't be replaced.
And I'm hoping it'll show the people who were so
cruel and unbelievable that hey, there's a better way to
approach people who are grieving and you don't have to
fix it. It's funny because people treat me like I have

(24:47):
I'm contagious, and I always say, well, the joke's on you.
You already have the virus. We're all going to die.
How are you going to behave once that happens? What
do you do to people who are absolutely crushed? Are
you going to sit with them? Are you going to
be the shoulder they need? Because you can't fix it,

(25:09):
but you can get them groceries. You can show up
for game night. You can just show up. So that
will be another message, and it will. The far reaching
one is how God is always in the details of
our life and he doesn't abandon you. And life is hard,

(25:29):
life is excruciatingly difficult. But how are you going to
maintain your faith, your humanity? How are you going to
press forward and help the world be just a little
better even though you are suffering.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
Wow, again, the beautiful explanation. It is a wonderful book.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
That I really recommend everyone to read.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
To purchase, and it's a vay everywhere you can purchase
sit online And this is a beautiful I cannot believe
it's her debute book, but it is a debute book
and it's called Made for Me. Could we hope? What
are your next project coming up? So? Could we hope
for another book? Yes?

Speaker 3 (26:19):
Yes, I have actually some children's books that are already
written and I am publishing them as well. They have
they have their motive. The intent behind them is to
teach children to choose good, to be kind, and to
choose the higher road even though it's hard. One of

(26:43):
them is actually an Iranian tell that my father used
to tell me as a child. And there'll be more
of those as well coming. But I'm also going to
tackle another book called a Grief. There's there is the
book A Grief Observed, and that that's a great book.

(27:03):
I was given many many books when I first lost
my husband. I have about twenty five new books to
read and I didn't touch any of them except this one.
This one was pivotal in helping me it's a C. S.
Lewis and he had lost his wife almost the same
arc as mine. But he talks about a lot of

(27:23):
things that are applicable, but what he didn't talk about.
And that's why I'm going to do a Grief Unobserved,
meaning that most people don't want to observe grief, they
don't want to see it, they don't want to sit
with it, and you become a pariah. So I'm going
to tackle the appropriate ways to deal and the things
that you should not say, things that you should not do.

(27:46):
How do we actually come together and help people who
are in extreme loss?

Speaker 1 (27:52):
Wow? Well, what would be there to definitely support you?

Speaker 2 (27:55):
And we'll be there to definitely applaud you for all
the beautiful things that you are doing and all the
great things that you're bringing uh to everyone. This is
the one and only Kershmee Dean, Kersh Mae Dean. She
has a new book debut book as a matter of fact,

(28:18):
called Made for Me. I invite everyone to go and
purchase that beautiful book. Ladies, my name is David, So
I had the pleasure I hearty on the Culture News
the wonderful cash Mae Dean, Kersh May Dean. She has
released her debut book called Made from Me Right Now

(28:42):
more music to follow up on.

Speaker 1 (28:44):
iHeart with You stationed with Us It is a Beautiful
Day