# Episode 42 - GenX Speaks Series: Sherri Dindal - The Real Slim Sherri

- Podcast: GenX Adulting Podcast
- Published: 2025-07-30T19:00:00.000Z
- Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2398379/episodes/17582328-episode-42-genx-speaks-series-sherri-dindal-the-real-slim-sherri.mp3
- Page: https://genxadultingpodcast.com/transcripts/podcasts/genx-adulting-podcast/episodes/episode-42
- Source: https://genxadultingpodcast.com/episodes/genxadultingpodcastepisode42.html
- People: Brian Barker (host), Nicole Barker (host), Sherri Dindal (guest)
- Topics: GenX Speaks

## Summary

In Episode 42 of the GenX Speaks Series, Sherri Dindal, known as The Real Slim Sherri, shares her experiences growing up as a Gen Xer, discussing the challenges of childhood, the impact of parenting styles on her generation, and her journey through life and career. The conversation delves into the unique struggles faced by Gen Xers, including the transition to adulthood, parenting, and the effects of societal expectations.

## Key takeaways

- Sherri identifies as a middle child of Gen X, born in 1972.
- She experienced a chaotic childhood marked by domestic violence and instability.
- Gen Xers often had a 'feral' upbringing, spending unsupervised time outdoors.
- Sherri emphasizes the importance of breaking generational cycles of parenting.
- She discusses the impact of perimenopause and menopause on women, highlighting the need for awareness and conversation.
- Sherri's career as an investigator began at age 19, and she later transitioned to entrepreneurship.
- The support of her partner was crucial in her decision to leave her corporate job and pursue her own business.

## FAQ

### Who is Sherri Dindal?

Sherri Dindal, known as The Real Slim Sherri, is a Gen Xer who shares her experiences growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, discussing the unique challenges faced by her generation.

### What are the common experiences of Gen Xers?

Gen Xers often experienced a 'feral' childhood, with unsupervised play and a sense of independence, which shaped their approach to parenting and adulthood.

### How did Sherri transition from being an investigator to an entrepreneur?

After working as an investigator for over two decades, Sherri was encouraged by her partner to quit her job and pursue entrepreneurship, leading to the successful establishment of multiple businesses.

### What challenges do Gen X women face regarding menopause?

Gen X women often face a lack of awareness and support regarding menopause, leading to feelings of isolation and confusion as they navigate physical and emotional changes.

### What role did Sherri's partner play in her career decisions?

Sherri's partner provided unwavering support and encouragement, helping her to believe in herself and take the leap to leave her corporate job for entrepreneurship.


## Referenced links

- [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAnH1X91m6Q)
- [Listen on Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-42-genx-speaks-series-sherri-dindal-the-real/id1764838823?i=1000719847092)
- [Listen on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6lfPhOQWraXdtTwTyU4r1s)
- [Listen on Buzzsprout](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2398379/episodes/17582328-episode-42-genx-speaks-series-sherri-dindal-the-real-slim-sherri)

## Transcript

[MUSIC]
Welcome to GenX Adulting.
Today we have Sherri Dindal,
who listeners probably better know her as
The Real Slim Sherri in
the studio. Welcome Sherri.
Thanks for having me. It's good to be here.
We're thrilled to have you here.
Our first question is always,
what year were you born?
1972, man. It was a good year.
It was a good year.
Yes, you're GenX.
Yeah, right in the middle, right smack.
Everybody's like,
there's all these microgens,
where they're like, "Oh, I straddle
this gen and that gen,
I'm right in the middle."
I'm right smack in the middle with GenX.
I'm not the oldest of GenX,
I'm not the youngest,
I'm the middle child of GenX.
We also are, we're 1971.
Another good year, right?
Also, right in the middle.
No, it's nice to be able to claim,
we are GenX. There is no zennial,
there is no Generation
Jones for us. We are it.
I said, those micros,
I'm dead in the middle.
You cannot argue that I'm GenX.
I mean, I'll get
people occasionally be like,
"Are you sure you're not a boomer?"
I'm like, really?
Oh my goodness.
Absolutely not.
Where were you born?
I was born in Ohio, Finley, Ohio.
Tiny little town. It's not as tiny as it,
it used to be, but
just a small town in Ohio,
the Midwest, Bible Belt.
But I didn't, I spent
probably about seven years
of my life there and then
grew up the rest of my youth.
I spent in the city in Toledo, Ohio,
which is north, right on the
border of Ohio and Michigan.
Now, were your parents from Finley?
My dad was from Finley.
My mom was from Akron, Ohio.
Okay.
And so, obviously,
they met wherever they
met and she moved to Finley.
But yeah, originally she was from Akron,
but she was born in
West Virginia, actually.
My dad was born and raised in Finley.
Where in West Virginia?
My mom was born in Charleston.
Okay.
Brian's, his dad is from
Morgantown, Granville area.
Yeah, I know where that is.
Yeah. That's so funny.
A lot of people don't know Granville.
They know Morgantown.
I know Morgantown.
Yeah, I know Morgantown.
Granville's right across the river.
Okay.
He looks from the Coliseum like,
whatever direction it is to the river,
Granville's right there.
So you grew up there?
You grew up almost there?
My dad grew up there.
I actually spent a lot of
time there in the summers,
all through my childhood,
even through college, I would go back.
We go back every now and then.
It's beautiful. It's nice.
No, it's beautiful there.
I spent a lot of time there as a kid too,
visiting my great-grandmother
and my mom's family down there.
We would go down in the summers as well
and spend time in the mountains.
The rivers and it's just beautiful there.
Really is.
Absolutely.
Rivers and mountains.
Yeah, it's amazing.
Do you know how your parents met?
Not really.
They probably should have
never met, to be honest.
I don't know how they met.
I should know that story.
Both my parents were still alive.
I guess I should maybe ask
one of them at some point,
but no, I'm not sure how they met,
but they did.
Okay, so they met and they moved to Finley.
Well, you had already lived there.
My mom.
Okay, your mom moved to Finley.
They got married.
Yep.
And were you the oldest?
I am the, of my parents, I am
the only child that they had.
I have an older
half-brother from my mother.
My mother was married, had a husband
before she met my father.
So my oldest half-brother.
And then my dad, after
my parents got divorced,
he got remarried and I
have a younger half-brother,
but I'm the only child, but
technically the middle child.
Okay, and what are the years,
the distances and ages
between the boys for you?
So my older brother and I
are about two and a half years
apart.
My younger brother and I,
there's 13 years between us.
Okay.
So when your parents got married,
you and your older brother
were pretty close in age.
Did you guys jive at first?
Oh yeah, we were really close.
And yeah, we, you know, we
had a pretty crazy childhood,
I guess you would say.
So, you know, we were pretty close.
We relied on each other.
How long were your parents married?
I don't know.
I was seven or so when they
got divorced, close to eight.
So they were to be
married maybe nine or 10 years,
I guess, in total counting, you know,
my mom being pregnant with me.
And then I think they had been together
not maybe a year before she got pregnant.
So yeah.
And during those years,
did you experience that
typical Gen X childhood
where you were gone during the day
and no one knew where you
were until the nighttime?
I think that that's like a standard.
You can't be Gen X if you didn't.
I mean, I can't say you can't
be, but most Gen Xers, yeah.
We were feral.
We ran around.
Nobody, I mean, my mom
locked us out of the house.
Like we were kicked out, get out, you know,
we were locked out of the house.
We, I can remember
very, very young, you know,
the house we lived in when I
was around four or five years
old, my brother and I
being blocks away on our bikes
at that age, you know,
in the, I don't know why,
but I have this memory.
I don't have a lot of
memories from my childhood.
They're kind of sporadic and crazy
because I had a chaotic childhood,
but I can remember my
brother and I going to this,
this woman that lived a
couple of streets away
had a candy store in
the front of her house.
And we were like in her house buying candy
and looking back on like,
this is like some old mother Hubbard shit.
Or like, or like the woman who, you know,
like Hansel and Gretel, that
lady, like she could have put us,
she could have cooked us
or some shit, you know?
Like we should, we didn't
have belong in her house
buying candy.
It was all, but we, we
played on the railroad tracks
and you know, we played in the creeks
and we did, we did all the
crazy wild shit, you know,
drank from the hose.
We had, that was my, that
was my upbringing very much.
And were you with neighborhood kids
or was it mainly just you?
Okay, so it's like a group of you.
Yeah, there was a group that my,
I think most of the
kids at that, at that age,
were all being locked out of the house.
I think it might, maybe
it was like a standard
in the neighborhood of
like lock your kids out
and we all ran together, yeah.
Or we would go from
house to house, you know,
we would go from place to place.
We had a couple of friends who,
their moms didn't lock them out.
You were low.
I remember one friend had,
they had like a, looking back,
I mean, I didn't know at the time,
it's probably like a,
what do they call them?
A Casita where you have
like a mother-in-law suite.
That's like a separate house out back.
They had like a separate house, you know?
And we would go out there and play
and that's where we,
that's where we hung out.
You know, we would hang out there.
Nobody ever checked on us.
And then, you know, I
mean, we, we wanted to eat.
If we scrounged up some
quarters out of the couch,
we'd go down to the
Lawson's and buy some candy
or some shit, you know, or
maybe a Slurpee, but yeah,
we were, we were wild and feral.
Yeah, I think that's definitely one
of the shared experiences
most of us Gen Xers have.
And it always shocks me, even
though I hear it repeatedly,
it still shocks me
every time because you think
about all the things that could have
happened to all of us.
And as parents, we know now.
And I sometimes, I
don't know if you remember
that Tom and Jerry cartoon
where they're watching the baby
and no matter what happens
to the baby is always okay
and they're killing
themselves trying to save the baby,
but the baby's fine.
Sometimes I think some, we
were, we were just floating
through and somehow
okay with all these things
that could have happened
to us, you know, I don't, I-
I think that, I think as
adults now we look back and go,
I think a lot of us
overcompensated as parents of like,
I will never, my, you
know, that would never,
I'm never gonna let my kid do that, right?
Cause we did really crazy
wild things that nobody,
they don't even know that we did.
Like I still haven't
admitted some things to my parents.
So I think there's a
little bit of that of like,
we were determined to make
sure our kids didn't have
that type of a childhood.
But then as adults, we also
kind of come to this realization
of like, how could somebody
let us just be free and feral
and wild like that?
And this is, but then this
is why we had kids on the side
of milk cartons, you know,
this, this is why, you know,
we had so many missing kids.
And I think that, you know,
in hindsight, you know, we,
like I said, as adults
can look back and go,
that won't be my kids experience.
And now there's a lot more stranger danger.
We had a little bit of that.
Yeah, a little bit.
Our parents would tell
you, don't talk to strangers,
take candy from strangers, right?
Stay away from white panel vans.
Those are like the standards.
But yeah, like it was like,
you told me not to take candy
from strangers, but you
didn't tell me I couldn't go
in some lady's house and
give her money for candy.
Like she could have been
a predator looking back
and nobody knew, they didn't
even know we were in the house
because nobody knew where we were.
They didn't, they didn't,
as long as you were home
and looking back,
that's so crazy to think like
you would leave the
house early in the morning
and then you wouldn't come home
until the street lights came on.
And if you, I think about those parents
who had kids go missing
and think, well, your kid
just didn't come home when
the street lights came on.
And at what point do you
go, like they're missing?
You know, I think
about that process of like,
did you wait until the next day?
They didn't come home to
figure out they were missing
because we were gone for
hours already, literally hours.
Gone.
It's not like now where
like if a child goes missing,
you typically know where they are
within some shorter
window of time, you know,
but this is probably why most of those kids
on the milk carton were never found.
Yeah, I agree.
I mean, we've had some listeners comment
that their parents would look
for them after a couple days
because their parents assumed
that they were spending
the night at a friend's
and they were, they were, but what about,
you do wonder when the
kids who went missing,
was it a couple days before
or a day before those parents?
I've always kind of wondered like how did,
at what point did you go there, you know,
they're not coming back, at
what point did that happen?
And it's, you know, it
definitely made me as a parent
much more, I'm very
protective of my children
and I have three kids.
And so I think about my
first one, who's my oldest,
you know, he'll be 36 this year.
So I think of my oldest and
how I raised him, you know,
he was a little, he had a
little bit of that feral
because it was still the 90s, you know,
so it was a little bit
different, but you know,
people, it's funny to
me how people were like,
oh, it's, but the world is
so much more dangerous now.
I'm like, but is it, is it
really that much more dangerous
or is it just that we're
more aware of the danger
because you have this kind of
24 seven media in your face,
news channels and
social and everything is like
an instantaneous headline.
We didn't have that.
You either caught the
shit on the six o'clock news
or you read the
newspaper, if you were lucky
and everything else was
kind of word of mouth.
And so you look back at the eighties,
specifically the
eighties and early nineties,
crime rates were at
their highest, you know,
they were literally at
their highest for violent crime,
violent crimes.
Those are down significantly.
And so I'm like, I don't
really know that it was any,
that it was a safer time.
I think we were just not as
aware and, and, and, you know,
it wasn't in our lens like it is today.
And so that made me a
very overprotective parent
of my younger ones, but my oldest,
he did still get a
little bit of the benefit
of not having this constant, you know,
fear mongering with this, with the media
that keeps it in your face.
So my girls, they're,
they can't leave the yard
without me knowing.
Yeah, yeah, no, I think
it makes sense though,
because how could we not
be so hyper aware when,
as you said, we're
constantly consuming what's going on
every second around the world.
So as the reaction to that,
not just us trying to create the childhood
that we always wanted and
be the people that we needed,
but the reaction to just
social media consumption
and then 24 hour, 24 seven news cycle,
what do you expect us
to be like as parents?
You know, I think the
way we parent part of it
is the reaction to all of that,
because it scares the shit out of us.
Well, yeah, I mean, would
they rather the opposite
of us to parents?
Could you imagine in this day and age,
if we parented kids
today with all that we know
and with media in our face the way it is
and the news and all the
stuff that, like you said,
around the world that we're aware of,
if we parented our kids like we were
parented in this time,
what that would look like.
Yeah.
It would look like we
were the shittiest parents
on the planet.
We would go to jail.
You go to jail today for neglect,
for endangering your
children, for whatever.
Nobody gave a shit about that at the time.
And I don't know a
question that sometimes like is it
because they weren't aware,
they didn't have that
knowledge or did they not care?
I don't really know.
I don't know if they paid attention
because how fucked up is
it that when we were kids
and you're eating your
shitty sugar-laden cereal
with the milk carton of a
missing kid right there, right?
I remember reading that
thinking what happened?
So it was there, the
parents kind of had an idea,
but I don't know if they ever
corrected or changed, right?
That is the question of
like, did they not care?
Were they, so to your point,
the milk carton right is in their face,
but were they really
absorbing that information?
Were they looking at it going,
were they wondering the same thing we were,
we're sitting there eating our honeycombs,
looking at this kid's face
on the side of the milk carton
going, wonder what the
fuck happened to him?
Like I don't know if they were doing that,
but I also think that part of it was,
and I try never to talk negatively
about any other generation.
I intentionally try not to do that.
So this is not a dig at our parents
or either the boomers or silent gens,
but the boomers specifically,
very self-centered and
narcissistic generation
that were very much me, me, me.
And so there's some of me that wonders too
was just the sign of the times.
Like everybody was just for themselves
and kids were sort of like an expectation.
You have to have kids.
Everybody has to have
kids, you get married,
you get a job, you work
till you die and you have kids,
that's your job, that's
what society expects of you.
And so they had kids
that they didn't maybe
necessarily really want.
And so in some cases, I think some of us,
and I'm not saying
that that's my experience,
I'm just saying maybe some,
and maybe it was my experience.
I don't know, I'm still working on it,
I'm still in therapy for that.
But that maybe we weren't really wanted.
We were just sort of in the way.
Yeah, I think that's a really good point.
I think you can only
claim ignorance so much.
And I do think there are people
that shouldn't be parents in general.
And I think back in that
time, women especially,
I would not have been
supported to make that decision.
That really has just shown
up in the last, strongly,
I wanna say in the last five to 10 years
where if a woman says I'm
not gonna have children,
people are like, oh,
okay, it's not a big deal.
But back then, I think
people would have said,
what do you mean you're
not gonna have children?
That's what you do.
Like you just said, you get
married and have children.
And they married them young.
It was like an expectation.
Like you gotta find a man.
You have to find
somebody to take care of you.
You have to have
children, secure everything.
You wanna secure your future.
Somebody to take care
of you when you're old.
Like all these sort of
like expectations of the world
of like who they were and
what they were to become.
And so I do think a lot of them,
they were kind of in that whole free love,
the 60s and they just
wanted to just be themselves.
And I think that's
beautiful until they decided,
I have to get married and
settle down and have kids.
And I don't think a lot
of them really wanted it.
It was also the expectations of the church.
It was the expectations of their families.
And now you just mentioned something
and I don't get into anything too crazy.
But talking about like
the last five or 10 years
and how now it's not as big of a deal,
but now we're starting
to turn back a little bit
because now birth rates are down.
And so now all of a
sudden you get a shit again
about whether women are having kids.
And so like make up your mind.
You either don't give
a shit if we have kids.
It's not an expectation.
Or you absolutely, it's an expectation
that every woman puts out at least one kid
so we can keep this machine running
because that's the money maker, right?
Yeah.
I don't usually talk about stuff like that,
but when you look at it,
it's like kind of fucked up.
We started to fix things where maybe women
had a little bit more ability to choose.
Do I wanna have a kid?
Do I not wanna have a kid?
Do I wanna get married?
Do I not wanna get married?
To now we're back to, hey, we're declining.
Our numbers are declining.
So yeah, you gotta have kids.
No, I think it's a really good point.
Just as Gen X swung the pendulum as parents
and went completely the
opposite of how we were raised.
And maybe sometimes a
little too helicoptery,
but so what?
That's again, the
reaction to many variables.
I think to write that expectation of women
to get married and raise children,
women are swinging the
pendulum to the opposite of that.
And now you want it to come back.
Well, there has to be balance.
And not like you said, not
to go too deep into that,
but I'm hoping for the Gen Z women,
and I see it happening,
that they are going to
have higher standards,
higher expectations,
and hopefully the Gen
Z men will rise to it.
Because if they wanna have these families,
they're going to need to,
at least from my experience.
Do you see us get to a
place of like you have kids,
you choose to have
children because you want to.
Yes. I think that's
the difference is that a
lot of people, unfortunately,
and especially if you
live in an area where maybe
the more low income
neighborhoods tend to be,
there tend to be more
children in those environments,
and that's a byproduct of that.
And those kids,
unfortunately, they're gonna have,
a lot of them will have
more difficult upbringings,
and that's unfortunate.
But I would love to see us get to a place
where you have kids because you want to.
Because the last thing,
what I despise is people
who have kids and don't really want them.
And the only people who
suffer are the kids for them.
The kids. Yeah.
The kids suffer.
100%, and I think that brings it back to,
I think there were many boomers,
we're talking the Woodstock generation,
and then it was like--
You love, man!
(laughing)
You need to go into a box,
and you need to have
these children and raise,
and so, I mean, you think about it,
not just was there the commercial,
do you know where your children are,
that would come on at
10 p.m. to remind them,
do you know where your children are?
But there was a commercial, I
think a few years before that,
that was all about have
you hugged your child today?
Oh, I remember that, yeah.
Yes, and I think--
That's the one, if you listen to the,
what's being said in that
commercial, it is gut wrenching.
I'm like, I can't believe
that we, this was our life.
But this is what they were putting out,
and I think that was to counter abuse,
more than just--
Well, yeah.
We would view it as,
oh, we need to remember,
because of course we
don't abuse our children,
we need to remember to
give them a little extra love,
maybe, for their
self-esteem, their confidence,
whatever they need.
Back then it was just, don't hit your kid,
hug them instead.
What was fascinating?
I'm sorry, go ahead.
No, go ahead, go ahead.
So if you listen to the
little, the kids that are in that,
like that, I think if we're
talking about the same one,
there's like a mom who's
upset, the dad's upset,
the kid's like, I don't
know what I did wrong,
and they're like making
excuses for the parents of daddy
had a long day at work, you
know, mommy is stressed out,
like they're making
excuses, they were making excuses
for their behavior and
for abusing their children,
for hitting their children.
And so, and it wasn't,
it's not like discipline.
We're not talking about discipline,
we're talking about hitting
kids for all kinds of shit.
Yeah, yeah.
As an outlet.
Dysfunctional.
Yes, as an outlet.
Because, you know,
whatever, they did something,
a minor mistake that was--
You know what's crazy to me though,
is it wasn't the parents that
were watching it, it was us.
We were the ones that were
the consumers of this thinking,
oh, it's okay, that dad should--
You mean the commercial?
Yeah, it's all right, guys.
It's not just that shit.
No, it's so true.
I think Gen X, we are the first generation
to be gas lit as a whole,
because every time we showed
any emotion or concern
or needs, we were gas lit,
like completely
undermined, completely belittled.
And so we all grew up, and
we'll get deeper into this,
but grew up grinding.
Oh yeah, we're still
grinding, what are you talking about?
We're still grinding.
But, and again, when we get to midlife,
we'll go on this further,
but I think that it's just now,
where we're kind of
like, wait a minute, we can--
We're waking up, we're
hitting this phase of life
where you start, and I'm
actually, we can get into it,
I'm writing a book about that very thing.
But it's, you know, when you
talk about the gas lighting,
we still gas, we're
still gas lighting ourselves.
We gas light
ourselves, we were taught that.
And a live product of that was Apathy.
And we are just, we, you know,
we became a very apathetic generation,
a generation that kind
of took on the mantra of,
you can't, we don't
care, you can't hurt us,
we don't give a fuck about anything.
That's a facade, that's a mask.
And we learned to wear
that very, very young.
And that was a result of conditioning,
that was a result of
compliance and obedience
and all the things that we were taught,
which was, you stop that crying,
I'll give you something to cry about.
You know, it was go to
your room if you're gonna cry,
self isolation even, we
still self isolate a lot of us.
Because we were not taught healthy ways
of managing our emotions.
And so we just stuffed them
down, we've pushed them down.
And so usually if you see, I usually,
I make jokes about it,
but I try to, my content,
I take serious topics and
I infuse humor into them
in a way to give people
something to think about
or maybe see things in a different way.
But I've talked about, you
know, how our generation,
you know, the whole self isolation,
the shoving our emotions
down, you know, masking,
that if you see a Gen Xer
getting upset about something,
get the fuck out of the way.
Because we don't, we were not,
and I don't say this as like a joke,
it's like pretty serious
that we were not taught
healthy ways of coping with big emotions.
Because we weren't
allowed to have big emotions.
Big emotions would get met with discipline
or that wasn't even
discipline, it was just punishment.
And so we learned that
emotion equaled punishment
or emotion equaled isolation, you know.
And so when you start
peeling those layers off
and you start looking deeper, you're like,
I don't, I don't process big emotions
because I don't fucking know how.
Those were during our fundamental
and foundational years of our life.
And we were kind of stunted there.
And so I also joke
about how we're just kind of
perpetually adolescent.
Well, that's a joke, we got
Peter Pan Syndrome people,
but it's because we, a lot
of us were very emotionally
stunted during those fundamental
and foundational years of our life.
And so here we are as midlife adults going,
I don't know what to do with this.
What's remarkable to me is you're spot on.
You're an absolute expert in this.
I'm not an expert in anything.
Just hearing you talk about it,
you are absolutely spot on.
No, 100%.
It's amazing.
100%.
We were never taught how to identify
even what emotion we're feeling.
No one said, you're
feeling anxious because of this
and that's okay, I
sometimes feel anxious too.
This is what you can do
to deal with your anxiety
or you're feeling depressed
and this could be the reason.
It's boys and girls,
especially the boys though.
Like I think some of us girls had a look.
Well, boys weren't
allowed to, boys don't cry.
Boys don't cry and sometimes--
Boys don't show emotion.
No, and then, yeah.
They gaslight, back to
the gaslighting ourselves,
we still gaslight ourselves.
It is what you're talking about
is when I am feeling anything.
We gaslight ourselves into going, I'm okay.
Everything's fine.
Shove it down, shove it down.
I'll be okay because
that's how we've always been.
That's how we've gone through life.
That's how we have gotten to where we are
is just by shutting everything else out
because we generally can't
even manage our own emotions,
let alone anybody else's.
So we're just apathetic to
everybody else's emotions
because I don't even know
how to process my own shit.
Get away from me, I can't handle your shit.
And so I find myself,
especially with two girls,
one is 14, one is about to be 12.
So I am on the ride in the
struggle bus, let me tell you,
is looking at them going,
I struggle to manage their big emotions
because I don't know how to manage mine.
And so I'm like, my only response is,
your crazy's gonna meet mine
because I don't know
how else to deal with you.
But I don't want to
cope with them that way.
I want to be a better parent.
I want to be able to manage.
And so I'm having to
work through my own stuff
to figure out how to
manage my own big emotions
so that I can be a better parent
and teach them to have
good coping mechanisms
and good ways of dealing
with their own emotions
so that they can be
better people in the future.
And this is what a lot of Gen X parents
I think struggle with.
And so you have two kinds of Gen Xers.
You have the one that you're talking about,
the helicopter the shit out of their kids
and overcompensate it.
And then you have the
ones that never changed
and they're exactly like their parents.
They raised their kids
exactly the way they were raised.
And so you're seeing
this reflection of that
in these younger millennials and the Gen Zs
where they're like, you have two sides.
They either absolutely
love their Gen X parents
or they fucking hate them.
Yes, yes.
I'm always surprised
when we'll hear from people
who say that their Gen X parents are
exactly like boomers.
And they'll say Gen
Xers are just like boomers.
And I'm thinking, we aren't, but it's--
Because there's two types.
There really are two kinds.
And I didn't really realize it until,
and now almost four years making content.
And I see the comments, I read it.
I can pick them out very, very quickly.
The ones that are still,
they didn't break the cycle.
They didn't break that
generational abuse cycle.
I wonder if there's a third
because I almost feel like
I'm in that third in that
because on a continuum, I
feel like I'm in the middle.
Well, there could be a hybrid of the two.
Habits, but trying to--
You were born in 1971.
Yeah, maybe.
I think there could be a little hybrid
of one that's like still
has a little bit of that.
Because there are people,
especially if you're an older
Gen Xer, like almost Gen
Jones, they're kind of, I joke,
but it's not really,
they're kind of boomer light.
So they've got a lot of boomer tendencies,
but they also are Gen Xers that have a lot
of Gen X tendencies.
So there could be like
a hybrid, but I think--
It's a struggle.
Yeah, I think this is--
You don't want a helicopter too much,
but you also don't want
to be completely devoid
of understanding and support.
And I find it fascinating.
How many kids do you guys have?
We have three.
So we have a 28 year old, a 24 year old,
and then we have a 15 year old.
He was our surprise baby.
Bonus baby.
And when you said, I'm
actually laughing inside
because he's
characterizing himself as in the middle
of the road, but he
tracks our kids constantly,
even our 28 year old.
On the GPS on the life 360.
Yeah, but I don't tell them.
No, they don't matter.
They all know that.
There's a time our daughter was--
Your helicoptering behind a curtain,
that's all you're doing.
Yes. Probably, yeah.
When he wants to know all the goings ons
and he hears us talking,
he's like, what's happening?
He wants to know everything.
So--
But I want him to figure
some shit out on the ramp.
Yeah, yeah.
You don't want to solve every problem.
You want to bring some tough love,
wherever that may fall.
Yeah.
So here's a question for the two of you.
I'm curious.
I was an investigator for a long time,
so my brain works in
really wild, curious ways.
Because this is your
podcast, I'm asking you questions.
As parents that parent together,
how do you parent differently in that way?
Are you more of a more
helicoptery and more protective
and you're more behind the scenes,
still protective,
helicoptering from a distance with,
I wonder because I'm
questioning if it's maybe a male
perspective versus the
female mother perspective
versus mom, I'm
wondering if that's maybe that.
So you see two parents together,
what is your take on that dynamic?
Yeah.
So because your dad?
I think in some ways--
Well, I'm gonna go first.
Go ahead.
I'm on the front lines, so
I find out the information.
I'm knowing everything
that's going on first.
So you're the one saying we
wait till your dad gets home?
No, I'm kidding.
No, no.
You wait till your father gets home.
I have a complimentary
answer to where you're going.
And then I fill him in,
like just so you know,
this is what's going on.
So then when he approaches them,
he already has background on a situation
and it helps him
communicate with them easier.
So he's not 20 questioning them as much
because he already has some background.
And I found through the years,
he's worked from home since COVID,
but when he used to be
driving home from work,
he would call me and I would fill him in
on what went on with them through the day.
So when he walked in, he
could kind of ease into it
a little bit easier.
Cause I don't know if
you've experienced this,
but especially once they turn 12, 13, 14,
if you start 20 questioning them,
they stop answering all your questions.
So it's a dance.
I've had two, we just didn't have,
they couldn't track us.
That was the difference.
Yeah, well, no one was
asking us any questions.
Yeah, nobody gave it.
Well, if you did get asked,
you were probably already knew the answer.
It was a loaded question.
They already knew wherever you were
and they were just
waiting for you to lie to them
so that you had a reason to hit you.
But anyway, what's your-
It was a setup.
I was gonna say, I
think she prevents problems.
I probably solve problems.
And it's maybe not always with grace,
but maybe a bigger hammer or something.
Like if there's ever an issue at school,
which is very rare to probably count them,
she'll work with the
administration to solve it.
But I'll be the first to say,
we'll come in tomorrow
and we'll talk about this type of thing.
So I don't know if that
makes sense to you or not,
but you certainly prevent.
And I'm like, fuck it,
let's see where this goes.
Other than when it goes sideways.
Then is the heavy.
Yeah, then I'm probably the heavy.
I was wondering if,
because I think about the
dynamic of dad versus mom.
Are you feeling maybe more like a hybrid
because you're the dad
and dads are supposed
to show up a certain way.
They're supposed to present a certain way
to the family dynamic, to their children,
especially being that we're Gen Xers
because we were taught this dynamic
of the dad versus the mom.
And dad was the heavy.
Dad was usually,
although my mom would
beat the shit out of you
with a belt and a heartbeat,
but dad was usually the
one you feared the most.
And also dad was the
one that we often worry,
that was my mom with threat.
I mean, I think a lot of us
were threatened with the dad.
Like you wait till your
dad's around about that.
You wait till your father gets home.
I thought that was just me.
Apparently that is a
standard across Gen Xers
that brothers use.
But it was an interesting dynamic
as I'm like, do you yourself that way
because of the way we were--
The difference might be,
I'm okay if they get
hurt and if they're crying
because I look at it as a longer journey
that this is part of growing up.
It's part, and the world sucks.
The world's full of
assholes, world's tough.
You need to be able to deal with it, right?
And so, whereas she's
the mom primary caretaker,
I don't think she likes to see them hurt.
I'm not saying I like to see them hurt,
but it's like they're gonna grow from it.
And it is, it's the only
way I could frame it, I guess.
I mean, he says that, but his first answer
is always if someone hurts them, fuck them.
And like, you know, and
he's angry immediately.
So I think--
That's part of the solution though.
Yeah, yeah.
I think you're spot on in,
and him as a Gen X dad
trying to still hold on
to some of that
traditional male role, that vibe.
Oh yeah.
But also be progressive enough
where his children will talk to him.
Yeah, he's there for him.
That's what I'm
wondering if that's maybe where
that feeling of being a little bit of that,
a hybrid, if you will, of like new age dad
versus old school dad.
And you fall somewhere in the middle,
carrying on a little bit of the tradition
that you grew up with, but
still breaking a lot of that,
the curses that we
were plagued with, right?
Breaking the cycle.
So when your parents were
married, was there a lot of,
you said your mom would
hit you guys with the belt.
Was there a lot of physical abuse?
My dad was an alcoholic.
So yeah, there was a lot
of, not just abuse to us,
but just domestic
violence in the house in general.
And yeah, I mean, if my dad,
I can recall my dad
backhanding my brother across the room
and bloodying his nose and stuff like,
so I did live in sort
of this chaotic hyper,
hyper vigilance is like
my, that's my calling card.
Like I just, always reading the room.
I think that's another thing with Gen X
is that we're always reading the room.
We learned at a very,
very young age, a lot of us,
not all, I'm not in any way implying
that all of Gen X was abused
or that all of them were hit.
Cause I get told that
that was not my experience.
That's great.
I'm happy that that
was not your experience,
but for a lot of us it was.
And so for a lot of us, we
learned really, really young
to read the room, micro
expressions, body language,
behavior, anticipating and
trying to correct ourselves.
I mean, I remember already,
I didn't need to be punished
cause I was learning to
punish myself at the age of four.
You know, I'd stand myself in the corner,
myself in the corner.
And so, you know,
thinking about that of like us
at a very young age,
already learning hyper vigilance
and like how to read micro expressions
and how to read body language and all that
in an attempt to sort of
predict and then avoid, right?
That's that's an avoidance.
And so yeah, for me,
that was a pretty standard
in my house from my earliest memories.
You know, my earliest memories
were probably around the age of three.
So were your coping
mechanisms mainly to either be gone
and out of the house or just in your room
and away from everything to be hiding.
Quiet.
Yeah. And you're nervous
system, fight or flight.
Oh yeah.
You're a constant fight or flight.
Oh yeah. Yeah.
You know, that definitely, you know,
I've just recently started working,
I moved my mom here a
year ago from New Mexico
and we hadn't really been
around each other in 30 years.
And that's been an interesting experience,
just getting to know each other again.
And it brought up a lot
of things in me physically
that I couldn't explain
and it's fight or flight
and fawn, all of them.
And so it was surprising to me.
I thought I had done a lot of work
and that I was much further along
and then my mother shows up in my life
and I'm just, you know,
triggered like all over the place.
And I'm like, what the fuck is this?
So I started EMDR therapy
and it's actually helping me tremendously
to sort of work through some of that.
Cause I don't think
traditional talk therapy,
I've always been not,
I don't have a problem
with therapy for anybody else,
but I always had a barrier to it.
Like I wasn't really okay with sitting down
and getting really
intimate and getting into,
I don't need to do that with some stranger,
but EMDR is different.
And so it's helped me to
learn to identify things
that trigger me physically.
Like your logical brain
will tell you one thing, right?
Logical brain is like,
we're fine, we're safe.
Like what the fuck is your problem?
But the other part of your brain,
cause the body keeps the score,
you know, it's sending
you the wrong signals
because at a very young
age, we were wired essentially.
You can think about how you have
fundamental foundational
years where the hard wiring takes place
and is wired for that.
And so it's trying to undo those,
trying to rip those fucking
wires out and rewire myself.
And so that's been an interesting,
it's been an interesting year.
I think that a lot of
Gen Xers can relate to that
of having to care for their parents
or having their
parents live closer to them,
all of a sudden, and it triggers traumas
they thought that they had resolved
or that they buried and never dealt with
and are now having,
cause you almost become that child again,
as you said, your body does at least.
Yeah.
I think it can be very shocking,
especially if you've never,
if you've buried everything and never dealt
with any of your emotions
as a lot of Gen Xers have,
and then you're in midlife,
and now you're having to care for someone
that was the cause of a lot of your trauma.
And it's almost like being re-traumatized.
It is.
Well, the body doesn't see it,
the body, I had to learn this,
the body doesn't
perceive it any differently.
The body still perceives it as a threat.
Yeah.
And so if you don't fix that part,
you know, like I said, your logical brain
could be telling you one thing,
but the body is doing
something totally different.
So it shows up in a lot of ways,
shows up in anxiety and
stress and heavy breathing
and heart palpitations and tension
and just shortness of like,
just being short with people.
It shows up in so many ways that I never,
I mean, I always knew I was wound tight.
I would tell it would warn people,
I'm wound pretty tight.
But I'm learning that that was,
that was showing up, that
wound up tight part of me
was showing up under
moments of stress and anxiety
as that was a trauma
response that I didn't recognize.
I didn't know because I was the person
that tried to bury the shit as deep
as I possibly could under concrete.
And unfortunately, it doesn't matter.
The truth is for all the listeners,
it doesn't matter how deep you bury it,
it can resurface someday.
And for me, I didn't expect it to show up
in the ways that it did with my mom.
And so both my parents are still alive.
And I knew my dad
triggers the shit out of me.
Every time he comes to visit,
I'm like, I can tolerate
you for about two days.
And then I'm gonna probably
start coming off the rails
because he just
triggers me all over the place.
But I'm aware of that.
My mom, I hadn't really
been around in 30 years.
And so it was surprising to me
to discover that I felt like I was having
these physical responses.
So I decided to go and start therapy.
A friend recommended EMDR
because I just was like,
I didn't move her here to
make her life miserable.
And I realized that I was,
because she would say things like,
my reaction to her
made her say things like,
I'm just a burden, I'm
just a problem for you.
And I was like, but you're not.
But I realized that my reaction to her,
and very short, treating it almost like,
this is a task I have to get done.
I have to do this, this and this.
And then I'm gonna go back to my life.
And it was very transactional.
And I was like, that's not fair to her.
I don't want that to be her experience
for whatever days she
has left on this earth.
And so I decided to do the work.
And so I recommend it
highly to people to do this work.
What is the EMDR?
EMDR, I don't know what the EMDR
specifically stands for.
It's like bilateral.
So for me, I do it through a computer,
but you can go into an office and do it.
And it's either through tapping or
bilateral stimulation
through the eyes.
So you kind of follow these dots.
So you work on certain memories,
things that you, maybe trauma or whatever.
And you don't really have
to talk through anything.
You just watch these
dots and whatever happens,
happens and then my therapist will say,
what are you feeling?
Because you're looking for
the response in the body.
Like where do you feel that in the body?
And essentially what is
happening is our brains are,
they're basically a computer.
So when you think about your hard drive
and all these files and shit that are on it
and the way that it's wired,
you're basically reprogramming your brain.
You're allowing, you're
working through memories
and allowing it to basically like,
it's always been sort of wherever it is.
For me, it was like in this
nice little tight little chest
that I had locked up,
shoved behind another safe door,
like I'm not gonna set it.
It's dragging those out
and figuring out like, okay,
where do those belong?
How can I process through that feeling?
And so, the trigger or the trauma response
and put it where it belongs,
where that memory is like
you're not erasing memories,
but they do, what I have
noticed is that over time,
they have faded a little bit.
Like they're not as prominent.
Like I used to be
pretty controlled by like,
the loop of memories
that would just sort of play
in my brain that I couldn't control.
And it's being able to file those
and put them in places where they belong.
And sure, the memory's
still there, I can reach for it,
but it doesn't disturb my
system like it did before.
You don't need to reprocess it as a--
You do, your brain is just reprocessing.
You're reprogramming
essentially that wiring,
that wiring I was talking about.
And so, it's kind of
like taking the wire and go,
okay, that wire doesn't really belong here,
it belongs over here.
And so you just, and
you work, it's wild to me.
It's very woo woo to
me, it was very woo woo.
And in the beginning, I
didn't have any expectations.
I was like, this is,
initially I was probably
a pretty standard gen-ex
response, this fucking stupid.
Like what am I doing?
But over time, it has
really allowed me to just show up
in ways that I haven't before.
And it has allowed me to
like reach for memories
and not feel that overwhelming response.
I can now step in my mother's house
and not feel this instant
heaviness that I had felt before.
I was just about to ask you that.
So if you go into an
encounter with your mom,
you can deal with it now.
Yeah, I'm still
working-- You've got some school.
There's still little
things we're working on.
Oh, I'm sure, yeah, yeah.
But yes, it has gotten better.
I can now sit down at the table
and have a cup of coffee
with her and just have a chat
and not feel all that
stuff that I was feeling
that I couldn't understand.
Like I was like, I don't understand,
I've been around her in 30 damn years.
Why the fuck do I feel like this?
Like that was really wild for me.
And I couldn't control it.
And I knew it was showing up in ways
that were aggressive for me.
Like I was snippy with
her or short with her,
like I said, transactional.
And I like, okay, I gotta come in,
I gotta do this, this
and this, and then I'm out.
And so it's allowed me to work through that
in ways that I don't think,
that probably would have
taken me years of talk therapy
to get through.
And I've done that in six months.
So-- It's a huge.
Yeah, it almost sounds like
it allowed you to have closure
with each of those experiences.
It does. Those experiences
and then disconnect the
physiological reaction
that those memories triggered in you.
That's what you're trying to do.
It's just, what you're
doing is essentially trying to,
you're trying to tell your body like,
that's not a threat anymore.
Right.
And so because the body still perceives,
like I said, the body keeps the score.
I don't know if you've ever read the book,
the body keeps the score, it's very valid.
Like the body's gonna say,
this is a perceived threat.
And not only because of
whatever happened to you
like as a child with your parents,
so it's not just my parents that trigger,
but even allowing me to connect the dots
with other things that go on in my life,
with my children, with my family,
to identify like, ooh, I just,
I'm more aware of
what's happening in my body,
where I'm like, oh, why did
that make me feel that way?
Like I'm more aware to be like,
oh, I need to think about like what that is
and try to connect it,
try to figure out where
that learned behavior came from
or where my body learned that.
And it's allowed me to
sort of peel back the layers
in other aspects of my
life, not just with my mom.
Yeah, and it's probably,
in a way it's allowed you to
ground yourself physically,
like ground your body more,
because I think for a lot of Gen Xers,
we've buried our emotions so much
and we have been grinding so hard
that our mind and our body
kind of became disconnected a little bit,
because you're just kind
of going through the motions
of life sometimes
without being fully grounded
physically head to toes,
like toes deep into the ground.
And so by what you're doing,
by disconnecting those
traumas physiologically
from your body and
allowing your body to heal,
you're fully present.
Yeah, that was something,
I love that you said that,
because I can tell you prior to,
I spent 51 years of my
life, 50 years of my life
not being present.
I could be here and we could
be having this conversation,
but my brain could be
doing all kinds of wild shit.
And like I said, that kind of loop
that just sort of always made in my brain,
like I would wake up in the morning
and I would for a moment have like peace
and then it would just kind of flood in
and that's sort of, and
that's the stuff that you're like,
nobody knows, you just put that over,
I know it's here, but I
can still get through that,
I just grind, we just
go, we just suck it up
because that's what we were told to do,
you're fine, suck it up, rub
some dirt on it, keep going.
And that's how I went through life.
And so yes, it has
allowed me to be more present.
And I talk about this
because it's so important of like,
life is happening in them now.
So many people spend so
much of their lives in the past
or in the future that
they're missing all of what life
has to offer, all the good
that's happening right here
in the moment.
And I had never really truly been living
until I figured out how to be present.
And I was working on mindset
and working on being present before EMDR,
like I had been, 50 was
a big like year for me
where I was like, I
gotta shed this baggage,
this shit is heavy.
And so I was already
working on sort of trying to learn
to ground myself and be present
so I could control my thoughts.
But this EMDR process has made,
I don't even have to work as hard at it.
It has allowed me to be more
in the moment and more aware,
like I said, more in tune with my own body
and how my body's showing up,
even when my brain is
showing up in a different way.
And so that has been just amazing to have,
for the first time in my life to be like,
oh, my brain and my body are in sync.
Yeah. Wow, wow.
Yeah, and as a result,
you can truly enjoy
moments that are enjoyable
because I know I found for myself
before I connected
fully with my body again,
even in enjoyable, relaxing moments,
I still wasn't 100% there.
My body was still tense.
I was still in fight or flight,
even though I'm going through the motions.
Yeah, this is great,
but I'm still on alert.
But when you go through that and you ground
and you become fully present,
then you can enjoy the good times truly
and your body can relax and enjoy it too.
You remember more of those moments.
Like memory has always
been a struggle for me
from the time I was a child.
I think a lot of that just has
to do with trauma in general.
I know it does,
because I've talked
about that with my therapist,
but looking back at moments
that should have been
really significant in my life
and big joyful moments
and having so little
recollection of those moments,
that's sad for me.
And so now it's like,
oh, I can fully embrace
and enjoy these moments in the present.
And my memory is a much, much more,
it's a much broader memory now.
I'm able to be like, oh,
there's more detail to it.
There's more to the
memory than what I had before,
rather than just these little snippets,
almost like a little movie trailer.
Now I'm able to really take in more
of what is happening in the moment.
And I look back and I'm like, that's sad.
That the first 50 years of my life,
I didn't really have that.
I didn't really
experience life in that way.
Yeah, but I think that Gen Xers,
especially disassociation
was like our number one tool.
It is.
And it was our survival mechanism.
It was everything.
So I think for a lot of us,
just not disassociating anymore,
is like can be shocking to the system.
Because that's a-
It's also recognizing
when you're disassociating.
That's something I never could do before.
And now I'm able to go, why are you there?
Why are you here?
I never could do that before.
I couldn't have that kind of control
over where my brain was going
or what my brain was thinking about
or what my body was doing.
Now I'm able to be more
aware and more in tune with that.
And I talk about this a little bit.
You guys are kind of the first people
I've talked about the EMDR thing with.
But I wanna talk to share that with people
because there is hope.
I think for a lot of
times, most of my life,
a lot of times I felt
like there was no hope.
I was just meant to live
that way my entire life.
And that's a horrible place space to be in.
When you just feel overwhelmed all the time
by these emotions, you
don't know how to express
and you don't know how to control them.
And you also don't
know what to do with them.
Nobody wants to hear,
we also were never told,
we also were told
nobody ever wanted to hear
how we felt either.
So also believe that nobody wants to hear
about your feelings.
And so finally arriving
at a place where I'm like,
there is hope.
You can actually feel joy
and happiness and peace.
And you can feel like you
are standing in your own power
where I never did before.
A certain event that,
because I feel like
I've gone through a similar
enlightenment or
epiphany, whatever it might be.
Awakening.
Awakening, it was there,
and it feels like it's
almost onset with age
because I can't trace
it back to anything else.
Was there anything like that for you?
Was it, do you think it's age?
Was there an event, some big--
There wasn't an event, age
definitely played a factor.
So I'm always sort of looking back at me,
even my 30s, my 40s, I
was too young and stupid.
I was just surviving in my 20s.
I was a young mom, I had a kid at 17,
like 20s is a blur.
But my 30s and my 30s
and 40s, I always wanted.
Like I had this hope and wish
for wanting to feel the way I feel now,
but never knowing how to do it.
Like it just felt like an impossible thing.
You'd hear people talk about it,
but it just sounded like that,
like some fantasy, some
myth, like that's not real.
And so turning 50 for me,
I think was the big moment.
I really struggled with
the idea of turning 50.
Like it was this looming
huge number that I was like,
I can't believe I'm turning 50,
partly because I think a
lot of Gen Xers like myself
didn't think I'd live that long.
I didn't think we planned for that.
We lived hard, ran
hard, the whole work hard,
play hard mentality.
And we just were like,
only the good die young.
That's what we were told.
And so it was like, I
didn't really plan to get there.
So when 50 was coming,
I was like, holy shit,
I'm turning 50.
I think you become, I did for me,
became suddenly very aware of my mortality,
which I don't know why
that 50 number made me
very aware of my mortality.
And this idea of like time was running out
and not, I think for me specifically,
I can't speak for
others, but for me personally,
for living 50 years
and never really feeling
like I had ever really
lived, that was scary.
I'm like, fuck, time is running out
and I haven't even lived.
So that was a big number
and a big moment for me.
And something happened when I
turned 50 that just was like,
it was like an awakening.
It was like this unraveling of like,
it was almost like there had been these
little frayed threads
for a long time that I
was always afraid to pull at
for fear that I would just fall apart.
And then one day I just
started picking away at them
and I realized that as I pulled them out,
that I wasn't falling apart,
I was actually falling into place.
And so I just started
letting that shit unravel
and wanting to be
like, for me, it was like,
look, I plan to live to
be like over a hundred.
I've been planning that
for a long fucking time,
even though I didn't
plan to live this long.
In my brain, I was always
like, I'm gonna live to be,
my great-grandmother lived to be 104.
And so I was always like,
I'm gonna live as long as she did.
And so in my mind, after I
accepted like, okay, you're 50,
that's a big number, time is running out.
Yeah, okay, in my brain,
I'm convinced I'm gonna
live another 50 years plus,
but this first 50 years went by so fast,
that I'm like, time is running out.
And if that first 50 years
went by as fast as it did,
this next 50 is going to be like this,
because time just
speeds up as we get older.
And so I just wanted so
badly to just truly know
what it felt like to really live
and feel what happiness felt like and joy.
Not happiness, like
where your babies are born
and you're like, oh my
God, I'm so happy, I love you.
That's like a, not that kind of happiness,
but like genuinely true
everyday peace and happiness and joy
and just finding good in my days,
not always looking into the dark,
which is where I spent most of my life,
was sort of in the past.
You were unpacking your trauma
and you were honoring
yourself for the first,
you were honoring that
little girl and that teenager
and that young woman
that never was given that,
her moment, her time,
and you finally created
space to honor yourself.
And you looked at the next
half of your life and said,
it's her time now.
And made a decision to live
an authentic life for you.
But in order to do
that, you have to unravel,
you have to unpack so that
that healthy version of yourself,
the version you were
supposed to be and would have been
if you hadn't grown up
in trauma can now exist.
Yeah, I talk about that
too, like, who would you be
if you could be
whoever you were meant to be
before the world got its hands on you?
That's the version of me that I am today,
is like, I'm still
working on that version of me.
Like, who I'm supposed to be
before the world got its hands on me.
And so I try to share that with others
because I want that so
badly for other people.
I know what it's like to live
in that darkness for so long
that I'm like, that's what
really got me making videos
to begin with, was wanting to just somehow
either inspire
somebody or share some nugget
that I had learned.
I don't even call it wisdom.
It's just like, this is what I think.
I don't, it worked for me.
I don't know if it's gonna work for you,
but I'm willing to share
it because you know what?
Wisdom serves nobody but yourself
unless you share it with other people.
I was like, I never had
anybody sharing any kind of insight
like that with me.
I wish that I had had
that, but you know, for me,
I'm like, I love being able
to connect and touch people
in my age demographic,
but I really wanna touch the young people.
I wanna give them those nuggets to be like,
listen, figure it out sooner.
Cause if I could just get back 10 years,
that time that I wasted in that dark place,
in that miserable place,
in that depressed place,
in that place that was
constantly showing up
because of my trauma, like
that person, that version of me,
if I could give that to somebody else
and they could get back some of that time,
like that's all, that's why I do it.
Even if it's just one person,
to just have them, and maybe I never know.
I'm like, that old saying, what is it?
The student appears
when the lesson is needed
or something like that.
I don't know what the teacher, teacher,
but whatever the fucking saying is,
I'm hoping to be the teacher maybe,
that goes up when they need it.
Well, and I think also a lot of Gen Xers
have worked hard to try to
break the cycle as parents.
And so hopefully just by
being different parents
to our children, we're giving them that,
to we're giving them their own voice.
We're giving them space to express
themselves, anything.
Even if it's the smallest thing,
we're honoring whatever it is.
Even if it's a Tuesday and
they feel like the world's
falling apart, we know
it's gonna be fine tomorrow.
They don't.
We're stopping and we're saying,
okay, let's talk about
this instead of being like,
it's no big deal, go away.
So I think by us doing that,
we're already giving
them so many of those tools.
And then I think Gen Xers
and especially Gen X women,
the more we talk about all this,
if you combine the two,
hopefully they're gonna
be 10 steps ahead of us
by the time they hit 30s and 40s
and not have to go
through some of the suffering.
I can tell you when I get to menopause,
my kids are gonna know.
Oh yes.
You asked if there was a big moment.
It's 50 yes.
Yes.
Menopause.
Listen, the shit starts
falling off really fast
when you hit menopause.
You're just like, my give a damn meter
is completely busted, okay?
And so that was part of it too,
is I think you just hit this phase of life
and just suddenly things just hit different
when you're in menopause.
Oh, 100%.
I know for myself, I was
in perimenopause in my 40s
and I had no idea.
No one talked about it.
No one talked about it.
No one was talking about it.
I didn't know either.
I look back, I quit my
corporate job when I was 40.
It'll be 10 years this year.
So I was 43.
And I look back at that time
and I had been a 26
year career investigator.
I loved my job until I didn't.
And then I was like, I
gotta get the fuck out of here.
So I quit with no plan.
I didn't know what I was gonna do.
I didn't have a job.
I'd never done that.
I had always worked my entire life,
made sure I had another
job before I quit that job.
And so it was the first time in my life
where I was like, no, I don't care.
I have to get out of here.
I'm gonna, I literally
am going to go crazy.
And I look back and go,
I was probably in perimenopause then.
I went to the doctor.
I remember before I quit my job,
knowing I felt off,
something felt crazy in me,
crazier than normal.
And they wanted to put
me on antidepressants.
And they made me feel really shitty.
And I was like, no, I
don't like this feeling.
I don't want to be medicated like that.
So I didn't do that.
So I just went through my
40s not knowing like you
because nobody was talking about it.
Perimenopause was not even a word.
I thought menopause was
just like the only thing.
Like you just, you stop having a period
and then you're just in menopause, right?
But then to find out there's perimenopause
and that that can last for 10 plus years.
And there's over a hundred
different symptoms associated.
I was like, why are we
not talking about this?
Why is nobody talking?
So, and if people don't know,
suicide rates are highest for
women in our age demographic
and drug abuse and alcohol abuse.
And you're in your fifties age bracket
or starting in the 40s?
40s to fifties, yeah.
That age range, highest suicide rates,
highest divorce rates are
high, drug and alcohol abuse,
because so many women are
going through all these changes
and not knowing what is going on.
And you, like me, I felt crazy.
I felt insane.
It's a silent thing.
And it can hit as early as 35.
That's why I tell Gen
X women, talk about it,
talk about it,
because a lot of these millennial women
could be going through
these things at 35, 30 times.
They're all starting to go through it.
Some of them are, they're talking about it.
There's a whole
movement, I think it's hilarious,
but I love it, on TikTok,
where I keep seeing these
videos pop up of these women
in their 30s and early 40s
talking about perimenopause.
And I'm like, yes, I
thank God for social media
in this regard of like
being able to put this kind
of awareness out there.
And it's funny, but then
there's some of those videos
that are not funny.
They're literally women begging other women
to what is wrong with me?
Like, what can I do?
Because there just needs to
be more education around it.
And more doctors need
more education for sure,
but we need to be talking about it.
So I love to see people like
Drew Barrymore and Halle Berry
and Oprah and all these
other people with huge platforms
get behind talking about menopause,
because it's a really big mental health
and physical health problem for women
that is not being,
does not get the attention it needs.
So menopause for me was
really one of another big factor.
And I think it is for a lot of women.
I think it-
I think that it can be a positive thing
in that it can give us
that personal freedom
to just go for things
maybe before we win it,
but it gives us that, I
don't give a shit anymore.
I'm doing what I want,
fuck everyone attitude.
So I think there's a positive to it.
There's a positive to it,
but I don't think we need to
feel like we're going crazy
or utter shit through the process.
Yeah, no, that's the
part they need to do better.
It's like women, so many women talk about
going to their doctors in perimenopause
and being gas-lipped by the doctors,
telling them that this is just normal.
This is just normal phase of life
or there's nothing wrong
with you, your levels are fine.
They want to, again, like
me, put them on antidepressants
and I look back, like I
said, when I quit my job,
had I known more about
what was happening to my body,
maybe I wouldn't have made,
maybe I wouldn't have quit my job.
Not that it was a bad thing.
I've been in business for
myself now for almost 10 years
and life is great, but
everything happens for a reason.
But I do look back at that
and there's times I
miss being an investigator.
I love doing what I did
until, like I said, I didn't.
And so, my hope is for
women, especially younger,
that we'll get to
where we have more doctors
that are advocating for
women, that are more educated,
that are not gas-lighting these women
into believing that
there's nothing wrong with them,
that it's all in their heads.
And that's a law that a lot
of doctors are telling women
is it's just in your head.
And they're bandating the
symptoms, antidepressants,
go exercise more, change your diet.
Eat less, you're overweight
because you're eating too much.
Oh, a lot of these women, they're like,
I literally work out every single day.
I barely am eating anything
and I'm still gaining weight.
And so, what they're doing
is they're lacking nutrition.
They're lacking what
their bodies actually need,
which is doing other harm to them
because they're trying not to gain weight
because society tells you that you're
supposed to be skinny
or there's all these self-esteem issues
and all these other things that creep up.
Your skin starts to
change, your hair changes,
like all these things start to change
and you suddenly become,
you feel less relevant,
you see it feel less appealing, all this.
And then, it's just a snowball.
It's a big snowball.
Yeah, and then a lot of
women during this time
are still caring for young children.
Yes. So there's knees there.
And because it's not talked about,
I mean, if you think the women
don't know what's going on with them,
their partners have no clue.
That's what I was gonna say.
We have no fucking idea what's going on.
At least in middle-
Did you ever have any
idea what was going on?
I'll plead the fish.
No, but at least in middle school,
boys do get an idea of
what girls go through
through puberty, so they
understand physiologically.
They get their period, da, da, da.
But there's no conversation for men
about perimenopause and menopause.
And so you see marriages falling apart.
Well, men go through
menopause too, that's the thing.
They don't call it menopause.
But men also- It's like eight menopause.
Men also go through a cycle of menopause
where they're also affected,
their energy and their libido
and your moods are affected.
And so you have kind of this combination
which is basically
building the perfect bomb
if you don't work on it, right?
And so that's where,
yeah, the divorce rates,
one or the other or both.
They just are like, "Okay, I'm done."
Where those marriages might've been,
they might've been great
marriages until one day,
menopause catches up and they're like,
"I'm over your shit.
I'm sick of everything, shit."
Yeah.
What's that book, "What to
Expect When You're Expecting?"
Yeah, they need to make one.
"What to Expect When You're..."
Yeah, when you hit what?
I don't even know.
It's not middle age.
Well, technically.
Technically. Middle age.
Because technically, if you
go based on life expectancy,
they say 35 is like middle age.
I'm like, "Yeah, fuck you.
That's really good."
Yeah, I don't buy that.
I want you.
But you could say, "What to
Expect When You're Midlife,"
because that's ages 35
and up to probably 60.
That's kind of midlife, 55, 60.
Because there's some women that get there,
they don't go through
menopause until later.
They may be 52, 54, whatever.
And so, yeah, I say there's no handbook.
We should be issued a
standard issue handbook
when we get to this point in life.
It kind of lists all this shit out.
But yeah, there's not, and there should be.
I think there should be more OBGYNs too
that specialize in
midlife and hormones for women,
because there's plenty to
take care of the baby stuff,
but there's so few there for women our age.
And to your point, we get
handed all this information
about get your mammogram, da-da-da-da-da.
There should be a pamphlet or
a piece of paper even saying,
these are the signs of perimenopause.
These are things that look out--
How are you feeling these things
if so talk to your doctor?
I am very fortunate to have an amazing,
I highly recommend, I say
this to women all the time,
if you have a doctor
that's gaslighting you,
if you have a doctor
that's not listening to you
and you feel all these things,
find a doctor that will listen and that
will advocate for you.
I have a doctor who is
my OBGYN, who is my age.
She's actually a
couple years older than me,
so she's in the thick of it herself.
And she is probably one
of the few doctors I found
that listens to everything.
And she knows, because
she's going through it.
So I highly recommend it.
You got some doctor gaslighting you,
because the women doctors do it too.
100%.
And sometimes they're worse.
This is just the way it is.
It's not the way it is.
We don't have to suffer.
And there's so many other
side effects of menopause
that needs to be addressed.
We start losing muscle
mass and bone density
and there's all these other things.
And cognitive function,
there's lots of various
things that are showing up.
But I highly recommend,
go find yourself a doctor
that's in your age.
And I guarantee you they
will see things differently.
Not a male, no offense, no male doctor.
But you need a female doctor.
I don't know how you could go
to a male doctor for this.
I agree with you.
You have to give this to
someone your age or older
who's been through it or is in it.
Well, you gotta be careful
even with some of the older ones
because when I make menopause videos,
because I do, I joke around about it a lot.
Because all I can do is poke fun at it
because it's so stupid.
But a lot of some of, I
feel like the 60 and up,
so the boomers, they're basically like,
it just is what it is.
They are still gaslighting it, suck it up.
It never gets any better, just get over it.
They're still living. No sitting in the sun
and eat more things. They're still living
that way. Yeah.
They are.
But I feel, especially with menopause,
they hardcore judge us.
And once in a while, in general,
when people are projecting stuff,
I'm like, that's not about me.
That's about their own situation.
But once in a while, I
may comment back and say,
what's different is Gen X
women are talking about it.
So the younger generations are educated
and don't have to suffer.
You guys suffered, we suffered.
We're trying to change the narrative
and be part of a cultural shift.
You're way better than I am at that.
Cause you know what?
So my mom, I asked my mom one day,
I was like, why did you not warn me?
Why did you not tell me?
Cause they don't talk about it.
Her response was, well, nobody told me.
This is how they see shit.
Like nobody told me.
So basically you're like, fuck you,
you're on your own, figure it out.
That's how I feel.
You are way better at like
going through the explainer.
Me, I'm like, you know what?
This is where my, I don't
give a fuck attitude shows up.
And I don't give a fuck.
Okay.
We are going to, we are not,
we are going to talk about it,
whether you want us to
talk about it or not.
And I'm, you know what?
I could say I'm doing it
for all the younger people
and maybe, yeah, the rude I am,
but I'm doing this for me.
I'm talking about it because you know what?
This shit sucks and everybody needs to know
how shitty this is.
And it's funny, right?
I talk about it in a funny way,
but it is to get people to go,
wait, that's what's so many
women in the comments are like,
wait a minute, this is
what's going to happen to me.
I want them to pay attention.
I want them to be like, holy shit.
This is, and so when they get there,
they might be quicker to identify like,
this is what's going on with my body.
This is what's happening to me.
I'm not crazy because they
do make so many women feel
like they're crazy.
And that's not fair.
You know, so.
We're undermined in general with our health
and then let alone if we come in
with a mental health issue.
So I mean, no, you're a tool in this.
You know, you're
bringing it to the forefront
and you're kind of
saying, look, I'm future you.
Listen to me before you get here.
I'm giving you the tools.
Let me tell you what's
going to happen to you.
(laughing)
And also bringing awareness.
So men can finally hear
this because I'm telling you,
there's so many men.
It's the first time I
think they've heard anything
about perimenophiles and menophiles.
We just assume you're crazy.
I will give it to some of
the guys in my comments,
not all, but there are a
lot of guys who are like,
oh my God, they see, and
I make a video like that.
They're able to go, this is my wife.
And now you just, I've given them a
different perspective.
And they've, a lot of them
will be okay saying that.
Like I am, you know, I'm here for her.
I'm, you know, I'm
going to be there to honor
what she's going through.
And they're
understanding, but some guys are not.
Some are just like, she's a raging bitch
and I can't stand her.
And it's like, she can't control that.
Like she's, her hormones are all fucked up.
And when you start to lack estrogen,
we start to lack empathy.
So that's where my go
fuck yourself kicks in.
You want to be an
asshole, I can be one in return.
Absolutely, absolutely.
I think it's a full
shift in a relationship.
And it gets the point
where the men in their lives
are either going to go
along for the ride or you're out
because-
And I think a lot of women
do get there where they just,
well, not just the women.
I think some guys too are, no,
I'm not in any way minimizing for the men.
It's not easy to go through that and watch
and like have this person who you've loved
for however long and the
person that you fell in love
would suddenly not be
that person anymore, right?
Because we're not the same people.
Like we are definitely
going through an evolution,
a metamorphosis, if you will,
into a different version of ourselves.
But we can't control it.
It's not something we're
doing that's changing it.
And I think some guys can't take that.
Or they're like, this is
not what I signed up for.
And so, in some cases the guy checks out,
but in a lot of cases it
is the women who are like,
I'm done because they don't have-
Which is why we all need
to be talking about it.
Men too.
I love to see men
talking about their experience
with their wife going through it
and the things they did to help her.
And as a result, they
have a better relationship.
They're closer, it's
strength than their relationship.
So I'm hoping more of that comes out
the more we talk about it.
But to go back, when your parents divorced,
did you go with your mom?
Like how was the custody agreement?
Oh, that's a whole,
that's a can of worms, man.
So I did go with my mom and well,
we were kind of always
on the run a little bit.
And so when we finally got away,
they didn't divorce right away.
I was with my mom.
And then, I lived with my
mom for maybe six months or so.
So my dad always, he's a frugal fuck
and always money was always
a problem for him, still is.
And he didn't want to pay
child support for a child
he didn't have.
And so my mom didn't have a job.
She was just starting over.
She had just met her
future husband at the time
and decided that he was
gonna fight her for custody.
So she didn't fight and I
had to go live with my dad.
So I lived with him for
three and a half years.
And so I was old enough to choose.
I was told at that time, when you're 12,
you can decide who you wanna live with.
And so when I was 12, I
went back to live with my mom,
but it was a little
too late by then for me.
So I was-
When you were nine or eight or nine?
I lived with, yeah, I was
probably closer to nine,
eight and a half or so when I had to go.
I was just, I was in the third grade.
I just remember that.
I was in the third
grade numbers or that age.
That's eight or nine.
So you had been with
your brother your whole life
and now you're living in separate houses?
No, no, my brother was gone too.
So that's what I said,
it's a whole can of worms.
My brother, my dad was a lot meaner to him
because he wasn't his son.
He was mean to everybody, but I mean,
he even kicked the damn dog,
but he was pretty mean to my brother.
And we were sent away
to my grandparents a lot.
And my grandparents, my mom's parents,
they were pretty religious
and they lived out in the country of Ohio
and we were there a lot.
And my brother eventually,
he wasn't doing well in fourth grade
and he came home with
some F's on his report card
and they just decided to send him
to my grandparents permanently.
So my grandparents
pretty much raised my brother.
And so I was already separated from him.
So it was just me and my mom and my dad.
And so, yeah, then my mom
and I were kind of on the run
on and off and yeah, then
I had to go live with him
for three and a half years.
So fourth, fifth, sixth
grade, I lived with my dad.
Did you have to change schools?
Oh yeah, but we were
always kind of moving around.
When you're a family with
domestic violence issues,
you tend to not stay put very long.
You move around a lot because
the neighbors pay attention,
the cops are at your house, shit like that.
So we never set still very long anyway.
I think I went to like four
different elementary schools.
And middle school, I
always say is I hate it.
I think it's the worst
time of all the school.
I agree.
It's the worst to be in it.
And it's the worst to be
parents of kids in middle school.
Like I have four.
Oh yeah, I have two.
I've one in middle school, one just
finished middle school.
It's the worst.
I saw PTSD, especially girls.
Oh, terrible.
I saw PTSD from our daughter
because there's mean girls, right?
And they're mean to your girls.
And so it's a whole thing.
And then you want to
be mean to them, Jennie.
You're like, "We used to solve
this kind of shit after school
out in the park or behind the school.
We threw hands.
And if you talk shit, you
got punched in the mouth."
We don't do that anymore.
I occasionally think we
should go back to that.
But anyway.
Oh no, when there would be
mean girls towards my daughter,
like I did want to do that.
I would go, and my daughter would be,
I'd be so, I would have that Jenniex react.
I've told her even if they're married
and I see them in the
grocery store when I'm 80,
I'll still curse them as I walk.
Well, still don't want
to punch them in the face.
It's never over.
Yeah, it's never over.
It's a funny sidebar.
Our daughter will give her shit for that.
Our daughter's like, "I'm good.
I'm past that."
She's like, "I'm not."
I'm not.
Yeah, I'm not good.
We would go round and
round pulling each other's hair
if this was me back in mid school.
Yes, absolutely.
But so you went through all this
and then now you're in middle school.
So that just added even
more fun to middle school.
Did you, were there any reprieves for you?
Did you play sports?
Did you do art?
Did you have clubs?
Anything that gave you an
outlet to give you a break?
No, no.
So I went to live with
my mom seventh grade year.
I went from living in with my dad
in this sort of middle
class, white picket fence,
although we didn't have
that, we lived in an apartment,
but little middle class, white picket fence
kind of suburb outside of the city
to then moving to the
inner city with my mom.
And so I went to, we called it junior high,
but I went to junior
high, seventh, eighth grade.
No, I did not play sports.
I was in the band because you had to be.
You had to pick band or choir or some shit.
I had already done
choir in elementary school,
so I had no desire to do that.
And no, I didn't play sports.
I wasn't in any clubs.
I didn't have any, my outlet was drinking
and doing recreational shit that I wasn't
supposed to be doing.
So you started that in
middle school or junior high?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, there was nothing else to do.
And I was at, now let me
paint the picture a little bit.
I was in the inner
city, it was the eighties.
In inner city Toledo, which is basically
30 minutes south of
Detroit, it's the eighties, drug,
more on drugs is pretty big at that time.
Violent crime is very high.
We'd be walking to school or,
I mean, I rode public
transportation to school,
so we walked a lot because we
had to take the bus downtown
and catch a transfer to get out to school.
And very different than
riding a yellow bus to school.
Anyway, catching the transfer downtown,
there's homeless people and bag ladies
and drug deals happening on
the corner and shit like that.
So I was exposed to a lot
of shit in seventh grade
and also just coming from the suburbs
where there really was none of that.
And so it was a very big shift in my,
a huge pivot in my life of like,
if you wanna survive in that environment,
you have to show up a certain way.
And that's what I had to learn to do.
And so my don't fuck with me wall,
it's pretty permanent now.
I put off a certain, but
that I had to learn that
because I was getting jumped.
I would get jumped by people, for no
reason, just breathing.
I just didn't look like I didn't belong.
And so I was getting picked
on and bullied and jumped.
And so you learned to fight back.
And so my club was the,
hanging out with the people
who would whip your ass club.
It was one of those, that's what I was
doing just to survive.
It wasn't gonna be, I
looking back, I'm like,
I didn't wanna be that,
but that's what I had to be
in order to survive the
environment that I was in.
And so it was very different.
And it was middle
school, junior high was rough
as was high school.
Did you ever go to bars?
Cause I know in the
eighties, a lot of us were able
to get into bars even.
We had our own clubs.
I was clubbing in eighth
grade and even into high school
because they would have
like these junior nightclubs
and we would go to the club.
We were dancing and a lot of
drugs were being passed around
and shit like that in there.
But that's why looking at my girls now,
I was that age at that time.
And I'm like, holy shit,
the stuff that I was doing
at that age, I will never tell them.
I will never tell them
because I don't wanna plant
any seeds, but no, I was
just, it was a, you know,
it was not your
traditional, I didn't go, I didn't eat.
I never went to college.
I got pregnant when I
was 16, I had my kid at 17.
I didn't even finish high school.
I didn't get my GED till later.
I was very much a
byproduct of where I was living
and growing up and the
environment around me.
And I somehow managed to get out of that.
That's a tough, tough,
tough, tough town, right?
I mean, that's because that was probably
when the auto industry left too.
It was.
So it was a depressed area.
It was a weird decline at that time.
Yeah, yeah.
Falling apart, it's a big industrial city
for people who don't know.
In the steel belt and
very, you know, white,
or not white color, blue
collar, you know, type city.
And at the time, you know, Toledo was not,
it was not, it's still not thriving,
but that was sort of the
beginning of the decline.
Like it's really not a thriving city now.
They've got it, right?
Yeah, they did.
The only thing keeping
that there is Jeep's factory
that they built.
That's the only thing really
holding that city together.
But, you know, at the time, you know,
this would have been, like I said,
84, 85, you know, up through.
And I didn't leave Toledo until my job
took me to Cincinnati in 08.
So I stayed there till like 08.
Always wanting out.
I knew I wanted out, but it was just,
I had to find, you know, a way to get out.
I think if my career, if I
hadn't got a job transfer,
I don't know if I might still be there.
I hated it there, but
yeah, it's a rough city.
And it was rougher.
I can't say rougher.
I just went home a couple, like two years,
a year and a half ago to visit my sister
and my brother and my dad.
And I was shocked at how,
what the city looks like now.
It was, it's almost a shell of what it was.
And it was already a
shitty place before that.
So it's worse, not vice-shred.
Yeah, it's worse.
It's worse.
Crime has definitely gotten worse.
It's kind of, I don't
know if you know anything
about Youngstown.
It happened to Youngstown years before that
where everything kind of pulled out
and it's just a shell of a city,
a lot of crime and low income.
And that's sort of
what's happened to Toledo,
just tiny little
pockets that are still decent.
But we lived in Michigan for a winter
just north of Detroit.
And we were there when
Detroit probably wasn't too bad,
but to your point, it declined.
And yeah, it's crazy there.
Yeah, I worked in our city of Detroit
as an investigator for five years
during probably some of its worst years.
When the mayor and the governor,
there was a lot of controversy.
One of them went to prison.
It was four of the five years I was there.
Detroit was the most
dangerous city in the country.
It was rough.
And going back to
Toledo, a couple of years ago,
I was like, this reminds me of Detroit,
which was wonderful to me.
So in high school,
was it a boyfriend that you had your,
did your son, right?
Yeah, my son.
Was it a boyfriend?
Yeah, he was a high school sweetheart.
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
Tony and I.
Are you still in touch like co-parent?
Oh, yeah, we still in touch.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh yeah, we kind of grew up and grew apart.
I think like some high
school sweethearts do.
He's a cop.
He's been, I mean, we both,
while the way that
worked, I wanted to be a cop.
I let him be a cop
because we didn't think it was wise
for our child to have two parents
who are both police officers.
And so I went into the private sector
and got an investigator
job and that was my career.
And so, yeah, we still keep in touch.
And we left.
We always, when we split,
the most important thing was that we
created an environment
for our son where he
had still had two parents
and that we were never,
we never pinned each
other against one another.
He could go to his dad's if he wanted.
He could come home to me.
He was, you know, he had
that freedom to do that.
And so, yeah, Tony and I
will always be friends.
We said, we'll grow old one day,
rocking on a porch and
rocking chair together.
Did you guys get married?
We never legally got married, no.
No, we didn't.
Were you together?
We were together 11 years.
Okay.
So you got pregnant, you
had your son, you left school.
Were you home with your
son for a while before?
Like, did you start working?
Oh, I've been working my
entire life since I was 14.
So I was already working.
My job as I climbed my career excelled.
I was, you know, I was gone.
I was an investigator.
I would be gone sometimes, you know.
At that time when he was really young,
I was home every day,
because I had a job that was isolated
to just the one city that I was in.
But then as my career progressed,
I started being
responsible for multiple territories.
And so I would be gone sometimes
for a couple of days at a time or whatever.
But he was always, he would be with his dad
or his grandmother and he never,
you know, I can't say never looking back,
I've said to him at times, like, you know,
I hope he never felt
like I wasn't there enough,
but I know I wasn't.
You know, I know I could have,
I missed out on some parts of his life
that I wish I had been present for,
but the job I was, had,
you know, to pay the bills
and that was what did it.
How old were you when
you became an investigator?
I was 19.
Oh, wow.
Well, I mean, that's
where my career started
and then it progressed.
Eventually when I left my career,
I was doing organized crime investigations.
And so it just sort of progressed.
Early on, I was getting into the ORC stuff,
the organized crime stuff.
And then it just, it
became a bigger and bigger
and bigger issue as my career grew.
That's what I specialized in.
And so, but I did a lot of
internal investigations too.
Were you considered a cop?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Tell me.
What kind of investigator were you?
Like a private eye or?
No, no, no, no, not private.
I just worked in the private sector.
So I worked for other,
for different companies
and did internal investigations
or large scale fencing type cases,
like fencing operations.
So large scale theft
cases is what I worked.
Yeah.
So you would get hired
by companies basically
to do investigative work.
I worked for different companies.
Yeah, I worked in either their asset
protection department
or in their safety department.
Sometimes we did safety investigations.
It depends on what company it was,
but I worked for
various, let's see how many,
probably five or six different companies
during that course of my 26 year career.
When I came here, it was
Home Depot that brought me.
I worked for Home Depot.
Their organized crime division,
they called it CIT,
Central Investigations Team,
where I covered the whole country
and did large scale
fencing operations for them.
Not like just loss
prevention, but organized.
Yeah, this was a specialized program,
specialized teams strategically placed
throughout the country that specialized
only in organized crime.
So did you enjoy it?
I loved it.
I loved being an investor.
I love the hunt.
So I love, not only that,
I not only love the hunt,
but the more I've become aware,
like as I've done this
whole discovery process.
I think it wasn't just the hunt.
I do like the hunt.
I like piecing things together.
I like discovering,
uncovering things that lead me,
give me clues to other things.
I really enjoyed that part.
My brain lights up when I do that.
But I've also realized that there's a part,
I think a strong part of me
that enjoyed bringing justice.
I always wanted to be a cop.
And letting Tony pursue that
career, I don't regret that.
But I always knew that I
had this desire to write,
like right wrongs or in
some way bring about justice.
And so I felt very
rewarded when a case would come
to closure and we'd go to
trial and I'd put people in prison.
I did enjoy that very much.
And did you, you said
you left Toledo in 07?
Yeah, I think I moved
to Cincinnati in like 08.
Yeah.
And still as an investigator.
You were still-
Yes.
And then from Cincinnati,
did you go to where you are now or did you-
To Atlanta.
Okay.
And then during that time,
because I know you said you were 43
when you stopped being an investigator.
I quit my job at 43.
Yeah. So it'll be 10 years this year.
Okay. So during that time,
did you have any other personal,
you must've had other
personal relationships.
You have two daughters.
I am celebrating 20
years this year with my wife.
Okay.
How did you guys meet?
How did you meet your wife?
I was in Detroit.
She worked, we both worked
in, she grew up in Detroit,
but we both worked in
Detroit and we met there.
She moved into my house
pretty quickly in Toledo
and then I got transferred to Cincinnati.
So she came to Cincinnati with me
and she's seven years younger than me.
She wanted kids.
So we had our first in Cincinnati.
And then we moved,
Lily must've been
about a year and a half old
when we moved to Atlanta.
My job brought me here.
So she moved, she's
moved many times for me.
And yeah, we've been here
for maybe 13 years this year.
Now, does she work as well?
Well, we both own businesses together.
Okay, so the businesses
you have, that's what--
Yeah, she used to be,
she was a teacher before.
She was a teacher and then she taught,
well, the job she quit finally
when we started our own businesses
and things were going well.
She was actually a professor.
She taught online college courses.
So she, that's where
she lived with her world
as education and media
and technology instructor
is what she was doing before she quit.
And now we, that's all we do.
We just run our businesses together.
That helps in your content
creation, I would assume.
And then online--
Which are the fact that you work
and live with the same person.
No, not just that, but
the fact that she taught,
what was it, media and--
Media and technology,
it actually doesn't help.
It was very different.
Hers was more like how to fix the printer
in an administrative
office and shit like that.
But, or how to, whatever,
tech has changed so much
since she was in school.
It's very different now.
But I couldn't help but make fun of like,
which part, the part where you work
and live with the same person all the time,
24 hours a day and you
parent with those people as well?
Like that, yeah, sure,
there's a lot of content in there.
Oh yeah, so when you guys
were having your daughters,
though, was she also
working as a teacher then
and you were working as an investigator?
Yeah, she was a teacher when we had Lily.
And then when Reese was born,
I think at that time she wasn't working.
She was just kind of a
stay-at-home mom with Lily.
Because I was gone a lot, so
she was a stay-at-home mom.
And then when Reese was born,
I think Reese must have
been maybe, I don't know,
one or two years old
when she started teaching
online college courses,
but it was all remote,
so it worked, so she would teach from home,
remote college instruction.
And so she was able to work from home.
And then eventually I was like,
I just want you to quit that job.
I don't want you to do that.
I don't want you to just do this.
And so eventually she was able to quit
and we just have run our
own businesses together.
She's the one that encouraged
me to quit my job when I quit.
She was definitely the
one stoking that fire,
like just quit, just quit.
And I was like, it took me a long time
to work up the nerve to do it,
because it was scary to me.
I'd never been without a job.
And that's, I think,
another classic sign of Gen X too,
is we've been working
since we were very young.
And yeah, I started working when I was 14,
lied about my age, you know?
You didn't need a work permit.
Your work, if you did, it
was like a piece of paper
work permit, you know, you
could fake any signature on,
nobody gave a shit.
And I never had been without a job.
And so she knew I was
miserable and very unhappy
and also not knowing
that I was in perimenopause
at the time.
She was like, just quit.
She would text me every day.
Did you quit yet?
Did you quit yet?
And it took me a few months.
I had written up my resignation letter
and I sat on it for a
really long time until one day.
I was just like, today's the day.
And I quit.
The courage that had to have taken,
because that was such a leap of faith
for so many reasons for you, you know,
from where you came
from, from your childhood.
Everything I had, I built on my own.
Nobody gave me anything.
And so it was a very
scary thing for me to quit
with no safety net.
Yeah.
Did you have any plan at all?
No, no, my plan was, I'm gonna quit.
I have one year.
I told myself I had enough money saved up.
I could live for a year.
And if I couldn't figure
out what I was gonna do
within that year, I was
gonna have to go back to work.
And to me, that was
kind of like a challenge
because I didn't wanna have to go back.
I was like, I don't wanna fail at this.
I don't wanna be like, I knew
I was gonna start a business.
I have no idea what.
I had zero plan.
I'm gonna start a business.
I have always been really creative
and have a lot of great ideas,
but had never pulled the
trigger on any of them.
And so I was like,
I'll figure something out.
Like I'm gonna do something.
And so I quit not with a plan.
And thankfully this year will be 10 years
and I haven't had to go back to work.
That's awesome.
I worked my ass off, but
I'm gonna work for somebody.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I mean, I think
it's especially courageous
for a Gen Xer to do that
because we were raised in any way
to where we were entitled
or allowed to feel special
in any way and any way.
We were told we weren't special.
Exactly.
And we were not raised
to have high self-esteem
and we were not raised to be confident.
In fact, I think a lot
of times our confidence,
they tried to break it down.
Like you were being too
bully yourself for something,
God forbid.
So just the belief in yourself,
you had to dig up to even take that step
because no one gave that to you.
And so now you're 43,
you haven't even gotten to the
point where you're like at 50
where you really started
to think about unraveling
all the things and
unpacking all the things.
So I just think that's so
impressive at that stage
in your life that you found that,
you dug deep into your well
and found that belief in yourself
to just take that leap of faith.
I think that's so awesome, honestly.
I don't think I could have done it
if it hadn't been for Christa.
She showed up for me,
her and I had extremely
different upbringings.
And so she grew up not in a
house with domestic violence
and chaos and she had
more stability in her home.
And two parents and it
did eventually get divorced
but she was an adult when they did.
And so just a very different environment.
And so she went to college,
she had this, and I
really struggled with this
for a long time.
When I met her, she was
working on her masters.
I felt very,
it felt, I don't even
know the word to describe it.
I felt very out of my league and less
because I had never gone to college.
And that held me back in
my career significantly.
I could have gone much further in my career
but it was always the
degree that held me back
because they wanted it,
even though you couldn't
teach what I knew in a book.
That was not, but it
was just an expectation.
That was a thing that our generation
and the millennial
generation was sold as a,
you're going nowhere without a degree.
And so I didn't have that.
And so I always said, I
really struggled with that.
And remember thinking how
much better she was than me
because she had this master's degree.
And that she was gonna go so much further.
And so to have her in my corner going,
you don't need that.
Like you're so, you are so capable
of doing all these other things.
And she believed in me in a way
that I didn't even believe in myself.
That gave me,
I can't say she gave me the courage,
but she definitely co-signed it in a way
that made me feel
like, okay, I can do this.
And she's gonna be there in my
corner while I figure it out.
And so it's funny that this comes up
because just today she texted me,
because this is our 20th year together.
We just got back from St. Martin last week.
We went on a vacation,
just the two of us for our
20th with some friends of ours.
And she just texted me this morning
and was saying how she was
thinking about 20 years together
and how when she first met me,
that she kind of like
stepped in in a way where,
she got, she helped me with my son.
He was going, he was graduating high school
and going into college.
And I didn't understand that process.
I had no idea what, how
to get him into college.
I hadn't had that experience.
And so she was there in that way
and supported me when the move
to get to finally leave Toledo
and go to Cincinnati and
then move to Atlanta with me.
And she had always sort of supported me
and then followed that
with, and now she's like,
I feel like I saved you, but she's like,
now I look at where we are today
and I realize how much you saved me.
And it was such an interesting contrast
of like all the ways
that I have shown up for her
and like our business now we have,
I think she looks at it and thinks
if I hadn't quit that job,
we wouldn't be where we are.
We wouldn't have the
businesses that we have
because we run, I own four businesses.
And so, and we were just
on Good Morning America
at the beginning of July.
Like there's just so many
things going on in our lives
that are really amazing things.
And when you believe in yourself
and you have the right
people in your corner,
I think you can do anything.
And so I think that's
what it boiled down to
is that her being in my corner
and me believing that she
would support me no matter what,
whether I was
successful at starting a business
or I failed at that miserably
and had to go back to
work for somebody else,
that she believed in
whatever that was and supported it.
It was like, go for it, do it.
Because she had a belief system
that was very different than mine.
She grew up in a different environment
that did support her in that way
and did like give her, you know,
granted she's got her own
trauma, her own baggage.
But she just had parents who supported her.
She played, she went to
college on a scholarship
and played college
volleyball for Notre Dame
and like had all these things
that she was able to achieve
and was proud of.
And so she just had a
different belief system of like,
fuck that, you can do
whatever you wanna do.
It doesn't matter what the piece of paper,
fuck the piece of paper.
Like that was how she approached it.
And it just gave me this sense of freedom
that I didn't feel like I had.
And the ability to say, you know what,
I'm not really sure what I'm doing.
I didn't know what I was doing.
I'm not sure if I'm gonna succeed,
but I'm gonna go for it anyway.
Because I feel like I have this person.
Even though I didn't have the safety net
that I talked about like financially
and like that fear of a
job, especially medical,
like not having health insurance.
And there were all these
factors that I had to weigh.
But you know, it was again,
just the belief that she had in me
that I could do anything that was like,
okay, even without that safety net,
I feel a little safe with her
that she's got my back no matter what.
And that's how it worked out.
And well, she became
the safety net in a way.
You know, like- I still, yeah.
I had some luck there
to catch me just in case.
Just in case, but she also validated
the dream you were about to partake in.
She gave you that validation,
which is another thing
Gen X never received.
And so for her to just
validate you as a person
and just supported,
she created space for
you to believe in yourself.
I'm curious based on your background,
was she the first person to like,
maybe give you that
unconditional acceptance
and love and support?
Yeah.
You know, if I piece it
together, chaotic life,
you know, growing up,
and now you're with her,
you guys are 20 years in, which is amazing.
Congratulations, that's fucking awesome.
But was she that for you, I guess?
Yeah, she really was.
Like, I mean, Tony and I,
you know, he's a great guy
and we just kind of grew up and grew apart.
It wasn't that he, he just,
we were at younger
earlier phases of our life
where we were both trying to
figure out what we were doing
and he was pursuing his
career and going to school.
I mean, I didn't say,
I can't say I let him.
He went to college, you know,
and, you know, I assumed the role of mom,
I assumed the role of,
you know, also working
and being helping to
provide and being a homemaker
and all that shit that I
didn't really have anybody ever,
I think, you know, in my corner
in the way that Krista
has that unconditional,
there was always some
level of expectation of me,
I feel like, and so, yeah, I think that
as I've kind of looked over our 20 years,
you know, she is just been there for me
in a way that nobody ever had.
And I think that you nailed it.
It's that sort of unconditional,
she takes me as I am,
she knows I'm not perfect.
You know, she doesn't
really expect more from me
than what she's, know she's able to get.
And it's, she's put up with a lot of shit
that I've had to work through.
You know, I would say that, you know,
she has, she picked one
with a lot of baggage.
(laughing)
She's been with you for
all your bumps and bruises.
Yeah, she's been there to
cheer me on and encourage me.
And, you know, even in my moments of crazy,
because I have had
them, she's just, you know,
like I said, been there and supported me
in a way that I didn't really,
I've never had in my life prior.
And so I think that's what's kept us
together for 20 years.
I'm the same for her.
I'm a blue for her in a way
that's different than she is for me.
But we just, yeah, somehow
we've held our shit together.
Probably what makes it work.
Yeah, we're very different people,
but also we're very similar.
And so yeah, we've just
somehow, I mean, look,
20 years for me is like the 50 mark,
where I'm like, holy shit,
how the hell did we get here?
Where the hell did 20 years go?
You know, but that's through, you know,
several moves and
career change and businesses
and children and college.
And my, you know, my
daughter had, my 14 year old,
she struggles with
anxiety issues post COVID.
So we, you know, we've been
through all of that together.
And now social media and all of this chaos
that's come into her life
with the tour that I'm on.
And she's just, I'm sure
sometimes if I were her,
I'd sit there and go, what the
fuck is this life that I live?
Does she swear?
Yeah, not as much as I do, but she does.
Everything is just a fact.
She's a Gen X-er too.
She might be seven years younger than me,
but she still, she made it in.
She's born in 79.
I've been around some people.
She just made it in.
I've been around some
people lately who don't swear.
And I'm like, I don't know.
I could trust people that don't say fuck.
I just, I know.
I agree. I agree.
Everything you just described is marriage.
Like everything you
guys have done is marriage.
And I always say that and I
think it's such a beautiful
thing because it's
going through ups and downs.
It's building the life together.
It's going through the bad
days, months, weeks, years,
whatever, but you, I do
feel you hit a point where it's
like, okay, yeah, we're doing this.
You know, this is, we made it.
We're doing it.
Like we do marriage.
Because it's not easy.
No. You know, and at all,
we're going on almost 31 years
and honestly, when we hit
the 20 year mark is when I was
like, okay, yeah, I think
we know what we're doing.
You go from what the fuck
are we doing to, wow, 20.
Okay.
Like we're doing something, right?
There's a lot of what
the fuck are we doing?
We don't know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
If you can get past the hard years, right?
The years you raise your children,
you get past the menopausal years.
Now see, the good thing for
her is that I've already been
through it and she's just starting.
And so I have a lot more
understanding because not
that she wasn't, but she
just didn't know what was going
on either.
She didn't know nobody
was talking about it.
So I'm able to go, nah, that's
perimenopause right there.
I'm able to see it and give
her where she's able to manage
that a little bit better than I did.
And I can also be more understanding.
But yeah, I think if you
can get past the hard years
with children, and there's
a lot of couples that come
out on the other side of
children, the empty nesters
that don't make it, right?
I think is what happens is you find out,
I think what happens once
kids are done and they move out
and they go to college or
whatever they're gonna do,
is you come into this space of like,
do we still like each other?
Do we know who we are anymore, right?
You lose yourself so much in being parents
and being in whatever your career is
and being whatever you're
gonna be for your partner
and whatever.
And so if you can come out
on the other side of that
and still like each other, I
think there's a lot of hope
for like, okay, we can do
this for another 20 years.
And that's where we are.
Our kids aren't fully grown yet,
but we are definitely still
in a place where it's like,
I still like you, even
though, and it's really tougher
for us in a lot of ways
because we also work together.
We work together, we parent
together, we do life together.
And so sometimes I don't like
her and she doesn't like me,
but at the end of the day,
we do still like each other.
And that is the bonus right there,
is if you still love each other.
That's marriage.
Is she your best friend?
Yeah, and that's why it works.
We still like it.
She is my best friend.
She is absolutely my best friend.
And I can't imagine doing life without her,
which is nice that I still
feel that way after 20 years.
It's like, oh, I really
can't imagine doing life
without you and don't want to.
I don't want to go
through life without her.
So that makes it better too.
Like, you know, I mean, Tony and I,
we spent a lot of years together,
but I don't think I ever once was like,
oh, I don't know if I
could live without him.
You know, that thing is I'm like,
it was tough when we separated.
He was my best friend as well.
But like I said, we just
kind of grew up and grew apart.
And I think part of that was
just because we were so young.
We were young parents.
You know, I was 16 when I got pregnant,
had my kid at 17.
He changed my, he,
I really do attribute, you know,
a lot of people could look
back and go, oh, she was 17.
Like that had to be
tough in your life, you know,
was forever altered away.
My son saved my life.
Like I look at where I was, if I had,
I don't think if I'd have got pregnant,
I don't think I'd be here today.
I'd either be dead or in jail.
And so that's the, that was
a big moment for me of like,
Tony and I had this kid
together, we were really young.
And, you know, I look at
Justin and go, he changed,
he saved my life.
Not only changed my life, he saved my life.
And Tony and I, we stayed
together as long as we could
until we couldn't, you know?
And then it was just like,
it wasn't good for Justin
for us to stay together.
We just were not, you know,
we just weren't compatible anymore.
And so, but I love the fact
that we were able to separate
and still be friends.
And so, you know, Tony, he's a great guy.
And he's also with, I think,
probably celebrating
close to 20 years with his,
his wife.
I think they got married,
wife, girlfriend, partner,
whatever the fuck she is.
We're gonna get her a long time.
Now you guys, do you live in the same area
where Justin was able to
stay at the same school
and everything as you've been?
We did, we did then, yeah.
Tony still lives up in,
he's still a cop in Toledo.
And Justin, my son lives
here in Atlanta where I live.
He'll never be far from his mom.
So he followed me here when he was--
You did something right then, right?
You can look at that and say he's nearby.
So that's huge.
Oh yeah, he finished, so he
was still living in Toledo
when I moved to Cincinnati.
He stayed behind and lived with his dad
to finish high school,
because I got
transferred during his senior year.
And so it was like, you
stay and finish high school.
So I moved to Cincinnati.
Now when he started college,
he started college in Toledo.
He fucked off for the
first six months of college
and I threw all that money down the drain
because I paid for college.
And I was like, okay,
if you're not actually
gonna apply yourself,
then I'm not paying for college
until you get your shit together.
So you're gonna take out loans
because I'm not gonna
throw out and throw away money.
And so I also at the same time was like,
I didn't really give him a choice
even though he's a grown man.
I was like, you're not staying in Toledo.
Toledo is going to ruin
you, you're gonna go nowhere.
It's a dead end.
You're gonna move your
ass, pack your shit up
and move to Cincinnati and
you're gonna go to school here.
And so I forced him to move to Cincinnati
and go to Northern Kentucky University,
which is right across
the river from Cincinnati.
So he went to NKU and then I got
transferred to Atlanta
and he was still in college.
And so he had to stay
behind and finish school there.
And then he moved here
when he was done with college.
And when he got here, he looked at me,
he was like, if you move
again, I'm gonna kill you.
(laughing)
And so we've stayed put here
and he is a middle school
teacher going on 10 years now
as a middle school teacher.
And he just finished his master's degree
and he's just doing, he's doing fantastic.
That's wonderful.
I always say middle school
teachers are a special breed.
I don't know how he does it.
I don't either.
I mean, it takes a
special person to do that.
So thankfully there are
people like him out there,
thankfully, but I couldn't do it.
I give him mad props for that.
I don't know.
I told him, I don't even like kids enough
to even teach any grade.
Well, I always say it's such a great sign
if your adult children wanna still see you
and hang out with you.
I think it's always
indicative of how you did as a parent
and how much time and effort you put in
to them in their childhood.
So that's a great sign for
you that he's staying close
and you're, you know, where you are
and wants to still see you
and be a part of the family.
So that's a huge success.
You broke the cycle.
I did.
I poured, I poured every,
you know, when I had my son,
I didn't really have, I didn't have many,
like again, I was a young mom, 17,
not even remotely close to figuring
anything out in life.
And, you know, I said he saved my life,
but when he was born, I
just remember looking at him
and thinking, first of
all, this little person,
this tiny little thing is
depending on me to like,
I'm supposed to keep him alive.
But I looked at him and thought,
nobody's ever gonna hurt you
and nobody's ever going
to make you feel less than.
And I poured every single
ounce of myself into that child.
Even though I was
worked a lot and I was gone
when he, when I was with
him, he never went without,
he always knew he was loved.
And yeah, he's, he is a mama's boy,
even at 36 years old, he is a mama's boy.
And I don't think
he'll ever be far from me.
I think the coolest thing
for me is like looking at my,
this 35 year old man, he's six foot three,
200 pounds, 210 pounds, whatever,
and think we're gonna grow old together.
You know, that's kind of cool.
Is it, when I was young,
it seemed like a huge gap,
but the older we get,
the smaller that gap gets,
you know, where I'm like, it's wild to me
that I have a 30, soon
to be 36 year old son.
And he's starting to
complain about aches and pains
and his joints and shit.
Welcome to old age.
So that's kind of wild,
you know, that we, I get,
kind of cool also that I get to,
I get to grow old with
one of my kids, you know,
the other two will be,
there's a lot of years,
21 years between my son and my second.
How is their relationship?
Oh, he, they love him.
They adore him.
He's a great big brother.
Yeah, they're at their, they
also are now getting older.
And so when he comes around,
he's starting to feel
what I feel, which is,
they're like, he, you
know, he's here high, you know,
they're teenagers and
preteen and a teenager.
So he's feeling a little bit of that,
but he also is aware
because he teaches middle school,
how shitty that age is.
They're just little assholes at that age.
And so he's also aware of
that, but no, they adore him.
He's a, he, they love him.
I love that they're, they
have this really like big,
big brother in their life, you know,
that if anything should
ever happen to me, you know,
they have him as well.
And so, and that he's older
and he's wiser, kind of 35.
The guys are still figuring it out at 35,
but they just mature smaller.
I don't know what it is, but you know,
but he'll have this wisdom
and he'll always look out for
them and I really love that.
Now that's cool.
Like with our 28 year old
son, I remember last year,
he actually, he came over
and we were talking, he goes,
I think my frontal lobe closed.
Like I feel different.
I see the world differently.
He's like, I think I'm understanding now.
Yeah. Yeah.
So it's, so he's 28 and I
still see he's working stuff out,
but I did see that
shift where he's like, okay,
I think I understand
now, like the adult thing.
Cause I just see everything differently.
I think my son's frontal
lobe may be closed then too,
now that I think about you.
Yeah.
Yeah. This is a point where
he said the other day,
I just, things just feel
like life has started, you know,
coming together in a way that it never had.
I'm like, welcome to 35.
Like that's sort of the age
where I feel like that begins
to happen for women, for
me, it was like 33, 32, 33.
I started to feel like
things were starting to sort of
balance out a little bit, even
though life was still chaotic
cause when you're a
mom, life stays chaotic.
But yeah, 35 is like, you
come into this space where you
suddenly feel wiser and
life calms down a little bit.
And you start, he, him
saying, yeah, I don't really like,
I'm not going to the clubs anymore.
Like you stopped doing that, you know,
you stopped going to the bar, like that,
cause the hangover
sucks, you know, whatever.
He's in that point of his
life where I'm like, oh yeah,
he's, he's here.
That's great.
So you have a millennial, you have a
millennial too, Jamie.
He was born in 1989, which is why.
Wow.
December 18th, very 1989.
Yeah, very, so I'm like,
oh, you're officially old
because you were born in the eighties.
Yes.
Technically.
Did you have help when you first had him?
Because he's come out well.
You've come out well.
Did I have help with raising him, you mean?
Yeah, like, so in the beginning there,
statistically at such a
young age, that's hard, right?
You were young having a, having a baby.
Did you have help at
that time to, to kind of get
on your feet and get
him kind of on his feet?
No, I mean, Tony and I
were on, we, we, we left,
we got our own
apartment, like little apartment.
We stayed with his
parents when I was pregnant
and Justin was born
and within a few months,
we, we did move out.
Cause I left home when I was 16.
I moved out of my house
at 16 and lived with him
for a short while and then
we got our own apartment.
But we just had a really
chaotic life where we got
an apartment and then
he got, Justin was a baby
and he got in an accident
and our car got totaled.
Tony did, he couldn't work for like a year.
So we had to move in with
friends and rent like a room
and then we got in, you
know, just, we had a lot
of wild shit that happened to us.
It didn't help our
relationship because it was always
some sort of something
always setting us back
and keeping us, holding us back financially
or other crazy shit that
would happen in our lives.
So no, we just, Tony and
I, and Tony was pursuing
his career in law enforcement.
So I was kind of, even
though we were together,
I felt a lot like a
single parent where I was just,
I was working and
being the mom and the home.
And you had no real model, right?
No, nobody to model mom
after, not the mom you wanted
to be at least.
No, I mean, I had a mom,
but yeah, no, I didn't have,
I didn't, I knew what I
did, I did essentially,
I knew what I didn't want to be.
The opposite, yeah, yeah.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
And I'm sure, I mean, I know for myself,
because I also come from a
fairly chaotic childhood,
when I had our first child,
something inside of me healed.
There was just a part of
me that, not everything,
but something that part of it healed.
And also having him forced
me to get past certain things,
at least to raise him.
And that's probably what
a lot of Gen X women do
when they become mothers,
is they kind of put their stuff on hold,
because I'm gonna now raise these children
and make sure I do it right.
And I give them that
childhood that I always wanted.
And that brings us to then we're in midlife
and our kids are getting
older and now we're like,
okay, now I'll deal with these things.
But I think we were so determined.
I don't know if it's a choice even to like,
okay, now I'll deal with these things.
I think you're almost not,
I think you're almost in a position
where you don't get a choice.
Like you have to, you just
hit a point where you're like,
okay, now I have to deal with this.
I've tabled this stuff for so long,
because I had to assume
these other roles and identities.
And honestly, I think Gen X,
especially Gen X women
really struggle with identity.
We struggle to have an
identity outside of mom or daughter
or caretaker, right?
And so you get into this phase of life
where you're all of a
sudden like, who am I?
Like, I don't know myself
and I have all this baggage
and shit I didn't deal with.
And now I feel like if you want to,
if you want to be able to figure that out,
you have to deal with that shit.
You have to be able to
figure out who you are, right?
And you're out your own identity.
And I know for me,
I was 50 years old going,
I've never been anything
other than, well, at 43 really.
I was like, I've never
been anything other than,
when I first quit my job
and trying to figure
out what I was gonna do,
I was like, well, what do you wanna do?
I was like, I don't know.
I don't have an
identity outside of being a mom
or an investigator.
Like I don't know how to do anything else.
I didn't think I did,
and I didn't think I was good at anything.
And so even now at 52, I
still sometimes am like,
I'm still just a mom and
a wife and a caretaker,
but now content creator, and
apparently now also comedian,
which was new,
there's just all these
things where I'm like,
still trying at 52 to
figure out my own identity.
And I think a lot of women
our age struggle with that.
But you're doing it on your terms now.
Yeah.
And it's on your foundation.
And it's completely present.
Yeah, and I hope that,
I wish that for not just Genex women,
I wish that, I mean, I
wish that for anybody.
Everybody deserves that.
Everybody deserves to
arrive at a point in life
where you're like, yeah, I know who I am.
And I like who I am,
and I'm okay with where I'm at,
and I'm living in the
moment, enjoying life,
what life has to offer me right now.
I'm not gonna say tomorrow,
not what happened yesterday, but right now.
What was the first business you started
after you had left your career?
I started a boutique, a clothing boutique.
And so that, Feather & Vine has been around
going on 10 years,
it'll be close to 10 years.
Online or brick and mortar?
Online, yeah, I know.
I have zero desire to
own a brick and mortar
that's a little too much commitment for me
to show up and be in a building every day,
unlock a door and show up.
I didn't wanna do that, but yeah.
Online, and then about five years ago,
for my boutique, I
started a skincare company.
I thought I would
exclusively carry in my boutique.
And now my skincare company is hands down
the biggest brand of the two.
It's now not only
exclusively at Feather & Vine,
it's its own brand.
And that's what we were
on Good Morning America
a couple of weeks ago, July 2nd actually.
And we might be on some
other shows here soon.
And so Wholesome Hippie,
which is my skincare company,
is an all natural wellness company
that we make right here in Georgia.
And so we have wellness and
beauty and that's my baby.
That's what I poured
my heart and soul into.
So what is, how would you
describe what Feather & Vine is?
What do you sell in your boutique?
So it's mostly a clothing boutique.
Like now currently in the beginning,
we sold all kinds of stuff,
but we sell denim and shoes,
but we also own our own T-shirt machine.
So we make these for the Genex takeover,
but we make our own shirts and hoodies.
We've sold everything and anything,
especially during COVID, during COVID.
We were almost
completely unaffected by COVID
because we've been in
the live selling business
for a long time.
That's how we started was we would go live
and sell, try clothes on
and sell them that way.
And so when COVID came around,
we were a lot of people's entertainment.
Like they were tuning in,
because we have our own app and stuff,
and they were tuning in,
like, oh, can you guys just go live?
Cause they felt lonely.
They were home themselves
and they couldn't go out.
And so we were in their
living rooms every day,
Chris and I, you know,
trying on clothes and selling.
Now we just, we got into
selling all kinds of wild shit
because we could, like they were just,
they're like, can you get this?
And can you get this?
Cause they couldn't go out and shop or
couldn't do whatever.
So we got into selling food
and snacks and kitchen shit
and all kinds of wild stuff.
It was wild, the stuff that we got into
and Christmas decor and
Halloween and all this stuff.
And so now we dialed it back,
back to just a clothing boutique.
And we sell Wholesome Hippie
also through Feather and Vine,
but Wholesome Hippie, it's its own,
it's its own thing
separately from Feather and Vine.
So.
What was your motivation
to start Wholesome Hippie?
It really came out of my
own skin, my own needs.
So I'd spent, you know, I've always had,
I always had really sensitive skin.
I had eczema horribly as a child.
And it really sucked to have it as a kid
because this was during
a time when we didn't,
we were poor, we didn't own a dishwasher.
I was the dishwasher and I was really
allergic to dish soap.
And so I would break out
like from here to here,
washing dishes.
And I just always had
really sensitive skin.
I eventually outgrew the eczema side of it,
but I didn't outgrow the sensitivity.
So as I just, you
know, I got into my forties
and it still was washing my face
with a bar of caress or dove soap
because nothing, I couldn't
use anything else on my skin.
It would break me out or burn me.
All the stuff I would buy
like at the store to try.
I was always like, I wanted
to have a skincare regimen,
but I didn't.
And so I wasn't really
beauty in the beginning.
I, you know, my mom, she had
been in the apothecary business
for over 30 years.
And I grew up with her
being sort of crunchy granola
and in the wellness space.
What people would think was
really woo woo at the time,
you know, essential
oils and shit like that.
And so I kind of knew
a little bit about it.
And a friend of mine who
was in the boutique business
is the one, he started a
skincare brand for himself,
Wellness, and he was like, you really
should check this out.
You should think about this.
And I was like, I know I'm not
going to use any of that stuff
because my skin is so sensitive.
He was like, you just need to try it out.
Well, I didn't.
But I tuned into one of
his live shows one day
because the boutique space is really small.
We're all very interconnected
and you know a lot of people.
And he had had the manufacturer, this
manufacturer on there,
and listening to her
talking about ingredients
and how the products and stuff,
reminded me a lot of my
mom and how my mom was.
And I was like, oh, this lady,
she actually knows
what she's talking about.
She got my attention.
So so much that I was like,
I don't want to talk to her.
I want to talk to her.
I want to ask some questions.
And that's how whole hippie was born.
Because I got her on the phone.
I talked to her.
She sent me some samples.
And initially, it was like,
she was like, what ailments
do you have?
And I struggle with migraines.
At the time, I had really bad--
I was having perimenophiles.
I was having terrible
migraines and pain, joint pain.
She's like, let me send you some stuff.
And I talked to her about
the fact I had XM as a kid.
So our early products were like
wellness, head rescue, ecstema
rescue, stuff for pain.
And then slowly, she chipped away
at me, where she was like, you really
should try-- consider some beauty products.
And I was like, nope,
that's where I draw the line.
My face is very sensitive.
And even though it's all
natural, clean ingredients,
made in small batches, all that, I was
still really hesitant.
But she's like, let me
just send you some samples.
And let me know what you think.
So she did.
And I fell in love with it.
It was the first time in my
life that my skin, my face,
felt like it had something
that was not going to burn me,
not going to break me out.
And our beauty line was born,
and multiple beauty lines now.
But looking back, I look at
pictures of today of my skin,
especially my face, like six years ago.
And I looked older then than I do now.
And it's just because I actually started
taking care of my skin.
Most people think of their
skin as like an afterthought.
Like you think about
what you put in your body.
But a lot of people don't
think about what they put on it.
And what you put on your body goes in.
And so anyway, yeah, we
make a lot of wellness products
and beauty stuff that's clean that people
can feel good about putting on
their skin or on their family.
And that's how in Wholesome Hippie,
we went viral on
TikTok with our Calm Cream.
Magnesium creams is really what--
I mean, we were on the map.
But that really put us on the map,
is our magnesium creams and stuff.
And so yeah, we've just
been slowly building this brand
into something that is like a people love
and can't live without.
And we saw you on Good Morning America.
You did.
Yeah, we did.
That's awesome.
Thank you.
You did a good job.
You did a great job.
Yeah, no, it was nerve-wracking.
I mean, there was a huge commitment
to be on there inventory-wise.
You have to commit a lot of inventory
to do a segment like Deals and Steals.
And so I was really nervous.
I was like, oh my god, don't fuck this up.
This is a big moment.
And it went well enough that
they just reached out recently
to ask us if we might consider being on one
of their other segments.
So-- Oh, that's true.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
You did great.
You did wonderful.
You were seamless.
Thank you.
And I know you had to have been so nervous.
I was nervous.
I don't get nervous easily.
I'm pretty cool and
collected most of the time.
But that did have me nervous.
I had to be there
really early in the morning.
I'm sorry.
Clock, I'm in New York City.
Krista booked the hotel.
So GMA, they just recently
moved out of the building.
They'd been in for, I don't
know, a fucking decade or longer.
If you've ever watched
it where they're like,
you can see the people
looking in through the windows.
They moved from there over to another place
in Greenwich Village.
And so Krista booked a hotel by what
she thought was the Good
Morning American Building, which
was literally a block
down from where I was saying,
which was the old building.
So that made it extra nerve-wracking
because I get there thinking, she's like,
you're going to be good.
You can walk to the place.
Well, then I get there.
My friend from New Jersey
picks me up, my friend Marina,
to take me into the
city because I was like,
Krista didn't come with me.
And I was like, I can't
go into the city by myself.
I can't go anywhere
without being approached.
I get recognized in public a lot.
And so I was like, I can't
go to New York by myself.
Marina will take you.
So my friend Marina comes in from Jersey,
takes me to New York.
So she's like, that's not the building.
And I was like, Krista said she booked us
right by the building.
She's like, that's the old building.
So she looks like it's
2 and 1-1-2 miles away.
We had to get up at 4
o'clock in the morning.
So we could be ready so we could get a cab
because it's New York City.
Unless you're within walking
distance, traffic is a bitch.
So we had to get up really early,
get a cab to get over to Greenwich Village
to get there in time.
Because I had to be there at 6.30.
6.30 was the latest you could be there.
So that you could go on for the segment
that we had to start like
do our run through at 7.30.
And so yeah, I was like,
by the time we actually
got out there on the stage
and everything was going, I was like,
I was nervous as shit.
I mainly, first was being
nervous about being on time.
I was so afraid to be late
because of traffic or whatever.
And so anyway, I was just glad.
I was like, whatever you do, just don't,
don't swear and just say
what you're supposed to say
and shut your mouth.
You did great.
You really did.
And you looked great.
In fact, it was so
funny because we were in,
was that on a, wasn't
it on a weekend, right?
It was on a weekend.
It was on a week.
It was on a weekend.
It was like a Thursday and a winter.
It was on a week. It was like a Thursday and a winter.
It was like a week before 4th of July, July 2nd.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay, so we hadn't gotten
out of bed yet, I don't think.
It was early.
And so I'm scrolling on Instagram, I think,
and you had put up, you're about to go on.
So we quickly turned it on and
Brian hit record just in case.
And I said, I think we missed it.
And then they said, it's coming up.
I'm like, oh my God, we didn't miss it.
So, and then we ordered too.
We ordered, let me-
What did you guys get?
What did you order?
The magnesium.
Oh, I missed it.
Listen, that's right there.
Pain, restless leg, muscle cramps, nausea,
sleep, it can help us know many things.
Yeah.
And then the cold for the migraine.
That's good shit.
Yeah, no, I want to order more stuff.
It's great.
So yeah, we were so excited.
I was nervous for you.
I was nervous because I was like,
obviously we don't know each other,
but I was like, I hope she
does well and you killed it.
Yeah.
You really did a good job.
We were super excited to be invited.
We've also been submitted.
I don't even know if I can say this,
because I don't know if we'll get on.
We hired a PR company
and she just recently,
you have to submit.
We were submitted to be part
of Oprah's favorite things.
So we're hoping maybe for holiday,
we'll be part of Oprah's favorite things,
but they only pick so
many and you have to submit
and like whatever.
So we haven't heard
back on that yet, but yeah.
No, I was nervous.
I'm not nervous, like I said, easily.
And that was the first time in a long time.
I've been like really
nervous where I was like,
good, now we were on GMA last year,
but it was not deals and steals.
It was here in Atlanta.
It was a collaboration with Chase Bank.
Chase had reached out to us and said,
cause we're one of their customers,
would you want to do this segment?
And we were like, sure.
And so it was just like a
quick, not a deals and steals.
They were just featuring like businesses
of like the Chase Bank
customers and businesses
that were Atlanta based.
And so it was like a
very quick little 15 second.
It was nothing major.
So I had already kind of been through that,
but the production here
remote is very different
than the production in the studio.
And so that was very different
where it was like much bigger.
And, but I took it to meet
Robin Roberts and Tori Johnson.
And so Krista was super jealous.
She's like, I didn't, she's texted me.
I didn't know you were
going to meet Robin Roberts.
I didn't either.
I had no idea.
She was standing right next to me.
I gave her a jar of calm cream, you know?
She loved it.
But yeah, I know I'm glad.
It was as soon as it was done,
I was glad that it was over.
Like, that's the mother.
Yeah. It's like, whoo.
Yeah. And there was a dog there too.
Before your segment, like somebody had
their puppy on, right?
Yes.
Yeah.
All kinds of wild shit.
And then in that building,
they shoot Good Morning America,
the view and the Mark and Kelly
show all in the same building.
Oh, wow.
So yeah, there's a lot
of shit going on in there.
And, you know, but I know more
than walked into the elevator
and one of the people
that worked there was like,
Oh my God, I love your videos.
Oh, that's awesome.
I literally can't go anywhere.
Not I can't.
It's, but it's wonderful stuff.
I mean, I love meeting
people, depending on where I'm at.
Sometimes not so much.
I'm like, if I'm at the
doctors, that's a little weird.
You know, but cause
I've been in the dentist
and they're like, I love your videos.
Well, I got shit in my mouth.
That's a little bit
weird, but, or your, or your,
or your, your tech
that's cleaning your teeth.
There's talking about video.
That's happening.
But now it's good.
It's good stuff.
No, I'm sure it's super cool.
Okay. So you have feather and vine
and you have wholesome, wholesome hippie.
What's your third business?
Slim Sherri is my third business.
Okay. So content cream, right?
Yeah.
So when, when did that start?
That it'll be four years in November
that I started making content.
Yeah. So about three
and a half years right now
that I've been actively making content.
Yeah.
And I, and you alluded to this earlier,
but your inspiration to start this account
and start putting up these videos,
was it to connect Gen Xers or was it like,
what, where, how did this start?
I like so many other
people got COVID in 2021.
And I was just laying in bed
constantly scrolling TikTok.
I had never been on TikTok before that.
I didn't even know what the hell it was.
And that, you know, it was
everybody at that time was like,
it's just a kids, a kids
app, dance trends and shit.
So I found myself scrolling.
And what I discovered
was it wasn't just that.
There was like so much
more happening there.
And there were people that I
was listening to where I was
like, oh, this is actually
more than just dance trends.
And I remember thinking I could do this.
Like I think I could do this.
And so that might've
been the drugs talking.
I don't know. I was
pretty sick for a while.
I was, I'd been in bed, I,
I bed for like a month and,
and at one point was like
telling Chris to check my will
kind of shit.
Like it was, I was pretty sick.
But anyway, you know, that,
that's sort of like a near death
where you're like, okay,
let my life needs to really change.
That's, that's a story
for after that later on.
But anyway, I was laying there just
scrolling and thinking,
I could do this.
I thought initially I
would use it for my business.
So I was like, I think I
could do this and, you know,
promote my business or whatever,
but it just never turned into that.
I don't know what happened.
I didn't, I had no idea what I was doing.
I look back at my
early videos and I'm like,
these are fucking cringy as shit.
So cringy.
I didn't know what I was doing.
I was trying to learn the
technology and I made a few
videos, nothing, nothing Gen X related.
And I don't really remember
how the Gen X thing came up.
People ask me all the time.
And I'm like, you know, before TikTok,
I never identified as a Gen Xer.
Like that was not in our vocabulary.
Like we, not a generation
that walked around calling
ourselves Gen X or like
that was more millennial thing.
I feel like we, we, we
called them millennials,
but we, we were not anything.
And so that was new to me.
And I don't know if I, maybe
somebody came up on my feed
and they were talking
about Gen X or something,
but I'm, you know,
maybe I was looking back.
I'm like, I think maybe I
was like, oh, that's me.
Like that's my generation,
but they weren't talking
about anything significant.
It was probably like a, just a dumb video,
but I remember thinking that's me.
And I one day made a video of a call,
it was called the sounds only Gen X years,
which was just like opening notes to songs
that we all would know.
And it was, you know, I
didn't had zero expectation
cause all my videos up
to then had done nothing.
Like they were just like,
I didn't think anybody was
ever going to watch them.
And so I post this video
sounds only Gen X years,
which is like opening notes.
That's the kind of like
a dog whistle, you know,
where it's like, oh,
and I post that video.
I went to bed, I wake up the next day
and that video had gone viral.
And I picked up like
40,000 followers overnight.
And I was like, whoa.
Like I didn't know what to do with that.
And so being an
investigative mind, I was like,
oh, I need to know
more about how this works
because now, you know, I don't know,
I don't know what to do
with all these people.
And so I went down the rabbit
hole and I did the research,
you know, and
everybody at the time was like,
oh, you have to be, you have to niche down.
You have to, you know,
make, pick a niche and get in it
and the algorithm will love you for it.
So early on, I just started
making a lot of Gen X videos
and they were funny videos, just, you know,
kind of like the sounds
only Gen X years until,
I mean, I fell into that
trap of like niche down.
And so I was only making early on,
a lot of my videos were just Gen X videos.
And I get bored really easily.
And so I was like, I can't just talk,
I can't just do this forever.
So I started getting, going deeper.
I started talking about more taboo topics
when it comes to Gen X and really kind of,
I also was going through that phase, right?
I said, I was turning 50, you know,
and that sort of unraveling.
And so I started chipping away a little bit
at some of those topics and maybe traumas
and people, it resonated
and the followers just
started to grow even more so,
like even, you know, just,
they were coming out of the woodwork.
And then I started talking about midlife
and aging and menopause and, you know,
all these things that
really just are hitting
in all the places where we are, you know?
And I feel like I was just not in, not,
wasn't accidental, but it
also wasn't intentional,
where I just feel like I
was meeting a lot of people
in places where they needed to be met.
And they were like, you
are the voice, you know,
that I needed.
And you say all the
things that I'm thinking.
And you nail it, like,
you know, you get me.
And I think some people, they just want,
they just want to be feel seen, you know,
they just want to feel heard.
And first, a lot of people,
they feel like I give words
or credence to what
they feel and how they feel
and they feel validated.
And so, and they also don't feel so alone.
And so that kept me going,
you know, that kept me going.
And now three and a half years later,
I have over 6 million
followers across the, you know,
all the different
platforms, which is wild to me.
And I don't take that for granted ever.
Like I show up every day,
whether I want to or not,
you know, even if it's
just reposting a video,
maybe from that I did a year ago, you know,
so I show up every day,
even if I don't have
the capacity creatively,
or my mental space is not right.
Just because so many
people tell me they need it.
You know, like, I need
a dose of you every day.
They need, whether it's
to laugh about something
or maybe they're gonna cry
or maybe I'm giving
them a little tough love
because now I'm at the
point where I do deliver,
my daily dose of Slim Sherris came around
as like sort of this voice
that I wanted to give to people
that I wish I had had, you know,
that somebody who is
saying the things to you
that you really need to hear,
that you maybe are not, you're not,
you won't pay attention to unless
somebody's kicking you
in the ass, you know, like, listen,
don't you scroll past me.
This is what I have to say to you
and to give them something to think about,
you know, give them
something to reflect on.
That's what I hope for.
And so I show up, I try
to show up every single day
with some sort of intention,
whether sometimes it's
just a video with music
with me doing
something because I don't have,
it takes a lot to
creatively show up like that
every single day for people
and the heaviness that
comes with our generation.
I don't think a lot of
people ever have connected
those dots of like how
heavy it is sometimes
to read those comments and absorb.
I'm in Pafek, so I absorb a lot of energy.
And so that's not easy to
carry that weight sometimes.
So sometimes I'm like,
I can't, I can't read,
like somebody said other
day, said, I left a comment.
I was on a podcast
yesterday and she's like,
I commented on your video.
And I was like, that's really sweet,
but I'm gonna be really honest and tell you
that I probably will never see it.
One of two reasons, I
get thousands of comments
and I try to read a lot of
them, but sometimes I don't,
I can't, I have to protect myself and just,
depends on the video.
Some videos I'll never read one comment
because I know as soon as I post it,
it's going to be inundated and flooded
with just this sadness and trauma
that our generation carries around.
Yeah, that makes, and
well, you, with those videos,
you're creating a space
for them to be able to
mutually share in the
comments and relate with each other.
And it's almost, you're
not even probably needed
to be in there because as
they relate with each other,
you've created the space and
they can kind of run with it.
And they do.
And I'm not, yeah.
And the chat is there.
It's so much healing
happens in those moments
that I don't, you're right, I
don't have to be present for.
Right, you've done your, you've done enough
just by giving them the space.
And I think it's interesting
what you said is that you gave
a name to, they said, you've
just said what I'm feeling.
And how we talked about no one
helped Gen X define emotions.
No one helped Gen X
define what they were feeling.
No one helped us with
our emotional development.
And so you are also finally helping,
I think a lot of Gen Xers
define what they're feeling
for the first time maybe in their life.
And that's really powerful.
Yeah, and that alone is
worth doing what you're doing.
Just that you're helping,
because with all of that,
you're helping people heal.
But I hear what you're saying,
because especially now that
you have such a vast audience,
that's a lot of energy coming your way.
It is.
Especially if you absorb it.
And so in order to, and I
can't imagine having to come up
with new content daily,
because that's a part of yourself.
You're taking a part of yourself and
putting it out there.
And I'm sure you have to be careful
that you don't dry the well.
Yeah.
That you protect yourself.
It is a balance.
In the beginning, it was a lot easier.
It's harder now, three
and a half years in, right?
Like I have touched on a lot of topics.
There's a lot of habit.
There are certain topics I
have completely just not touched.
I don't know if it's my own trauma response
to not touch them, or
if it is that I'm fear
of what it will trigger in others.
So I've been very, I'm
very mindful and cautious
of those delicate topics,
but there's so much more
that I could talk about.
But there is a balance
that I've had to strike
of like early on, it was easy to fire off
with all this stuff, right?
And now three and a half years in,
I see the effect that I have.
I see the impact.
I see the aftermath in the comments.
And I'm just, I'm more careful
because I wanna be very
intentional and help people,
not ever hurt people.
And I think for some Gen
Xers, some of the topics
that I've touched on,
touches something deep in
them that they're not ready for.
And so it has caused me, like I said,
there's been moments where I've paused
and that's, I think a
lot of what I'm gonna save
and I'm working through in
maybe pouring into my book.
Because there are people
who do want and ask me often,
like they get little 30
second or 60 second videos of me,
maybe a minute and a half.
It's rare that I'll post
anything longer than that.
And so I had a lot of people go,
how do I get long form, Sherri?
Like where do I get that?
Cause there's so much more there
than what I can shove
into a one minute video.
And so it's, that's been the work of like,
okay, trying to figure out how to,
I never went to college.
I've never written a damn thing in my life
other than a check and trying to figure out
how to write a book, it's challenging,
but I'm working
through it and trying to give
some longer form,
whether that be through writing
or other means doing
podcasts, things like that,
to give people an opportunity to hear
beyond the funny
version of Slim Sherri, right?
Or the, what they
consider their Gen X queen,
which I never signed up to be that.
Have you found that as your content,
as you have added in, Keelene,
unpacking trauma, midlife,
talking about menopause, premenopause,
have you found that any of your audience
has kind of rebelled against some of that
and just likes the Gen X is tough
and we don't care about
anything and we don't do trauma.
Have you found a little rebellion
as you've brought up
deeper topics, I guess?
Sure, sure.
Yeah, you see it.
I don't tend to pay much attention to it.
I recognize that I have
this very broad audience
where in the beginning
it might've been very,
like a lot of Gen X, right?
But now I've picked up
people that are menopause,
perimenopause, people
that are just think I'm funny
or motherhood or
whatever reasons that they came.
And there are some, yeah, that will tell,
like especially Gen X will be the first
to open their damn mouths.
We're the ones that are
basically like, shut the fuck up.
Like we're be the first to tell you that.
We open our mouths quicker than anybody.
Where we'll tell our opinion and we do,
so they drop their little shit bombs
a lot of times in the
comments where they do tell me like,
if I talk about something they don't like,
I only like you and you're funny.
They don't like the serious side of me.
Just go back to being funny.
Great, I'm just a puppet.
I do whatever you tell me to do.
So there's those, then there's those
that are basically like, stop whining.
Why are you talking about that?
Because they're, they're not
ready to deal with their shit.
Or the ones that, you know, basically,
essentially are the I don't give a fuck.
Like you, you know, whatever.
Like they don't want
you talking about anything
that's other than just
the nostalgic side of Gen X.
Like I only like you
when you give me memories
that remind me of a time
that doesn't exist anymore.
That's essentially, I've got
a big group of those people.
But for the most part,
the majority of them
take me for all parts of me.
Like they love all of it.
They're like, I don't care.
You could make anything
and I will listen, you know?
And so, but there is some of that.
And I've learned in the beginning,
I let those people get to me.
I let them influence my choices
in what kind of content I would make
and how I would show up.
And now I say, fuck you,
I would do what I want.
Because I've learned
that, you know, if you don't,
if you don't like, and I tell people,
if you don't like
something that I make, that's fine.
I don't care.
I'm not everybody's cup of tea.
And I'm not gonna be
everything you need me to be every day.
That's okay, you can just scroll past.
But if you feel the need
to pause and let me know
that you don't like something about me,
or you only want me to be one way for you,
like whatever that is,
whatever it is, your expectations of me,
I don't have time for that.
And in that case, you can just unfollow.
In some cases, I help them unfollow.
I block them.
Because I'm like, you know what?
I don't need that kind of
energy in the comment section
for me or for the people
that are enjoying the content.
Because those people,
they're just some of some,
unfortunately, what I
have discovered about,
especially our generation and boomers.
I told you, there's the boomer lights.
I see them on one of my
comments, let me tell you,
I see them a lot.
Where, you know, like I said,
I used to let them get to me,
but I've learned to ignore it.
I've learned to, in some
cases, back to what you said,
is I'm providing a space for them to
express certain things
and emotions and have a
community and dialogue.
And as long as they keep it,
like not, you know, I don't tolerate people
tearing each other down.
And that, I see happen,
depending on the topic,
happens very quickly, like a
fucking bunch of wild wolf.
Yeah, it's wild.
It's crazy.
It's crazy to watch.
And I hate that because
I'm like, you know what?
That is not, you guys missed the point.
You missed the point of the video.
You know, and so I'll
have to go through sometimes
and filter or block or delete people
for that kind of behavior.
And I hate doing that because
I don't want to be the person
that polices what other people do,
but there are hateful people in the world.
So I do sometimes have to manage that.
But for the most part, I
like to just put it out there
and let them have that.
Because sometimes it
might just be, you know,
it could be the day they're having
or they have something they
need to get off their chest.
And so I hate being the
person that would, you know,
in any way limit that.
But social media is a wild, wild space.
And you have to proceed with caution.
Because it is a crazy place.
Yeah, I mean, as far as
the way I try to look at it
that's helped me not be affected is,
as long as what we're creating is authentic
and coming from a good place,
and we're putting it out
there with good intentions,
once it's out there,
it's really none of our business anymore.
And if there's
hatefulness coming off of someone,
they're just projecting
what's inside of them.
It has nothing to do with us.
And that's how I'm looking at it.
So none of it affects
me if that makes sense.
That's a good way to look at it.
I mean, I think I've gotten to there.
It didn't in the beginning.
In the beginning, it didn't, like I said,
I did allow it to steer me
or deter me, if you will,
from certain things.
But now I'm like, no,
it's my space, my channel.
If you don't like it,
you don't have to be here.
And I love the ones that
like to tell me they're leaving.
(laughing)
I'm unfollowing you.
Okay, you don't need to,
this is not an airport.
You don't need to
announce your departure by,
they want you to know
that you pissed them off
and they're leaving.
Like a child slamming a door,
so stupid.
Like, how old are we, for God's sakes?
It's like, thank you for the engagement.
Yeah, I'm like, yeah, thank
you for leaving this here.
It's for my algorithm.
Yeah, exactly, no.
So, well, I mean, it's just, I love,
I've always loved the stuff
you put out, it's awesome.
And I love how you've used
your space and your platform.
And like, we've only really been,
we've been doing this less than a year.
So our exposure to this is brand new.
And so I give you a lot of credit.
You've been doing this now for three years
and you have such a huge audience.
And like I said,
I can't imagine the
energy that comes towards you.
Cause like you mentioned,
even when you're in public,
there's always that kind of risk
that you're going to
have energy coming at you.
And so the fact that
you've been able to figure out
how to balance that is commendable
because that can throw people off mentally.
It, you know, mentally,
I think I've kept myself
in a pretty good space.
It was weird in public, the first,
I don't know, a hundred
times somebody came up to me.
It was a little weird.
Cause you know, you
don't know what to expect,
especially when about myself, you know?
I mean, I've never encountered anybody
that's been harmful to me in any way,
but you never know, right?
Like there are people who don't like me.
They let me know, they don't like me.
Like, I never know
what your intentions are.
Mentally, I have, in the
beginning, like I said,
I struggled initially.
I figured that out pretty quickly of like,
how to make sure I protect myself
and my own mental health,
because I am a work in progress.
And I was like, I can't
allow that in my space.
And so, you know,
being a big energy person,
I manage that, but I commend you guys.
You've only been doing this
year, you're doing fantastic.
I think it's, you guys are-
Thank you.
Next month, the end of
next month is a year for us.
So yeah, it's been,
it's been awesome and so much-
Can I ask what got you started?
Like what made you want to do it?
It's very similar to what you mentioned.
We turned 50 and we, like you,
I want to be alive until I'm a hundred.
I envisioned that.
I think 50 is midlife.
And we both kind of looked
at each other and we thought,
okay, we say we want to do these things.
And if we're going to do
them, it's now or never.
We're going to either do it or we're not,
but we all facing your mortality.
That was huge.
Knowing that there's a
finite, there's finite.
This is finite.
And so we thought, why not?
Our first motivation was
let's get our stories down
and our thoughts on
things for our children,
their children, their children.
So like, I think it'd be
so cool if I could go back
and see what my great,
great, great grandmother thought
about relationships or, you know, anything.
I would just love to hear her voice
and see what she looks like.
So we thought, let's get us down.
So if nothing comes of it, the kids have it
and future generations have it.
And we'll just talk to
each other about stuff.
And then we were like, this is great,
but we'd love to give this
platform for other people
for the same reason, for their generations
to be able to have their
family's life story recorded.
And then also we took it a step further
by us sharing and our guest sharing.
It could help people feel seen.
It could help people feel heard.
It could help people feel not so alone,
especially people that live in rural areas
that maybe don't have
anyone to talk to about anything
or in other countries that
maybe don't have, you know,
you don't know with
cultures and everything,
there could be something
one of our guests could say
that you just don't
know who you're gonna reach
and it could be life change
and it could change the
trajectory of their life.
You could validate someone.
You could encourage them, inspire them.
So then we said, let's open this up
where people come on and
share their life stories thus far
because it's always going and fluid.
And it kind of just took off.
So something in there resonated obviously.
But like I said, we always
make sure everything we do
is authentic and real, and
it's coming from a good place
and good intentions.
We don't force anything.
And we think, you know,
everyone's story is valuable
and has meaning and has the
potential to reach someone.
I think when I first,
that's probably what I connected with.
I don't resonate with
people that come across as fake
or inauthentic or that vibe is not for me.
And you guys, I got a vibe
from you that wasn't that.
And that's probably what drew me to you
when you first were coming up in my feed
when then you continued to come up
because I was engaging with your videos.
And so every time I saw
you, I wasn't disappointed.
I think there needs to be more of that.
I think that when you
think about the internet,
I guess the internet is a wild place.
What it's lacking, what
people are really growing tired of
and what you guys are hitting on,
I think if you're finding that success,
it's because people are
tired of the perfectly curated,
like fake, you know,
disingenuine world of social media.
That's why I know that's
why people resonate with me.
It's the real, I say the
things that people wanna say,
but they're afraid to say.
I talk about things that
people want to talk about,
but don't.
And I do it in a way
that's authentic and real.
I'm just who I am.
And I'm not gonna sugarcoat for you
because it makes you feel better.
It doesn't make me feel better.
So I talk a lot about
not contorting yourself
into those boxes anymore, right?
You just get to a point
where you're like, fuck that.
That box never fit me.
And I like to spill out over the top.
So here you go, this is me.
And yeah, I think that's
what a lot of more people,
I think those are the next
rising stars in social media,
are those people that nail the authenticity
and the showing up as who
they are every day regardless.
They just are who they are.
And people appreciate that.
That sort of
expectation of that perfect world
of social media is really disappearing.
And so before you're resonating
because you are connecting on those levels
that people are, that they desire.
Which is right.
And authenticity, real talk.
You're touching on topics that other,
they wanna talk about,
but other people aren't talking about.
That's what people want.
I don't think either
one of us could perform
in any way like that, right?
We are who we are, it is what it is.
Yeah. Yeah.
And you have to go into
it as you're enjoying it
and this is meaningful to you.
So it almost doesn't matter
how anyone else receives it.
In a way you can't, at least for us,
we couldn't go into it
with any expectations.
You know, it's just, it is
what it is, we're doing it.
And then if it ends up positively awesome,
and we love that, but no matter what,
we're gonna stay true
to what we've been doing.
We're not gonna alter
anything to fit anything.
That's good.
And I think that's where
things get a little weird is,
and you know, and you
have to keep a level head.
Well, you start seeing videos that do well
in a certain tone or whatever,
but I think our goal is to stay the course.
Stay the course, not--
I think what you're doing--
Yeah, you guys are
doing it right, so don't,
I mean, alter if you want to.
Yeah, yeah.
So you alter because you want to,
not because somebody, not
because some trend tells you,
or you know, that's a
mistake a lot of people make,
is they'll see a video that
pops off for whatever reason,
and they're like, they chased that.
You know, and it's like, don't, that is,
and then they wonder why it doesn't work,
because that was a one-off.
Like, you never know what
the algorithm is gonna do,
or what it's gonna pop
off, and so don't chase it,
just be you.
And so I love that you guys are that,
and I'm not being performative,
which, you know, in all honesty,
and I don't say this enough,
I probably should say it more,
although it'll piss people off,
is Gen X is one of the
most performative generations,
I think, out there.
We put on the show better than anybody.
Fake it till you make it.
That was our mantra.
I think you're right.
I hadn't thought of it that way.
And so I think that
there are a lot of people
that appreciate those of us that are like,
fuck that mask, fuck that performing,
I'm gonna just be me,
and they see something in us
that they wish for themselves.
And so that's why you
keep doing what you're doing,
because that's why you resonate,
because there are a lot of them that wish
they could be that, and
they aren't there yet,
or they maybe will never get there.
It's such a good point,
because I think Gen X had to mask,
and had to, and never felt
safe to be their authentic selves.
And then now they've gone
through all these things,
and now they're hitting midlife,
and it's such a process to
find your authentic self.
And not every, as you just said,
not everyone's ready to do that,
not everyone knows even which step to take.
And so when they come
across something like that,
even if it just helps them through the day,
like what you do for people,
just you're helping them
get through the day with that.
Even if they're still
haven't taken that step,
you're an example of
maybe what their goal is,
or they're shooting
for, they hope to get to.
So I think that's such a great point.
I never thought about that about Gen X.
Yeah, we are the most, in my opinion,
performative, because we had to be.
And when you strip that down,
you had mentioned it
earlier about so many of us,
because we weren't
allowed to have feelings,
a lot of us aren't even
aware of what we're feeling.
And so when you look at
this performative mask
that we've worn and the suppression of
emotion and feelings,
and not knowing how to process any of that,
then when you see
somebody that's showing up,
like I said, as their authentic selves,
that's your age and has a
similar maybe experience in life
or has had shared experiences of some sort,
and also seems to have their shit together.
I don't have my shit
together if anybody wants to know.
But a lot of people think I do.
I think it just makes, it
stops them in their tracks
and they're like, they disconnect in a way
that is, they wouldn't have otherwise.
And I think it makes them more open
to receiving the message.
Social media has
presented this opportunity,
I think unique for our
generation, not really unique,
but I think it's a little bit unique,
because we come from a
world where we didn't have that,
but now we get this
doorway into like this world
of all these other people's worlds.
And we come from a time
where if we weren't face to face,
we didn't have the experience, right?
You had to be there or you missed it.
And so now you get this
glimpse into all these other worlds
and all these other
people and all their emotions
and how they're processing
and how they're doing life
and whatever, and some of it
you look at it and you envy it,
and you wish you could have it,
and some of it you look at
and go, yeah, that's not for me.
And then some of it you stop and go,
wow, this actually is helpful
and might change your trajectory.
And that's what I hope to do for people
is just maybe make them
pause and go, yeah, I can change,
I can be different than I am today.
It's interesting, because it's almost like
it just doesn't have to be this way.
Here's somebody doing it differently.
You can kind of, there are other ways
to do this thing we're all doing.
And I think the social media
helps you kind of get there.
You know what's interesting is that no one,
no one ever gave us those options.
No one ever talked to us about that.
No one ever introduced
other options or pathways
or different decisions
we can make, choices.
It's almost like now
that we're hitting midlife,
some of us are offering that to our peers.
We're saying you can do this.
You don't have to just
be like this anymore.
You could choose this.
There is still life here.
You could live a whole new life
and you could live it
completely authentically
and you could be healing during it.
There's another big chapter for Gen X
and it doesn't have to
exist in this one lane
that we've all been riding in,
I guess, if that makes sense.
Yeah, that's kind of
what I was chipping at.
I maybe didn't nail it
quite the way I meant
what I was thinking in my brain,
because I feel like we're a little unique
in the sense of what
you're talking about is like,
we come from a time when we didn't have
that kind of exposure.
Yes.
We were very siloed and isolated,
not only in our homes, but
even in our world in general,
just this isolation from the outside,
everything else was going on in the world.
And so now we're in this
space where we never had that.
And now you have these
doorways into all these other worlds
and it's insight and
sort of these experiences
that you're living through other people
that you're like, holy shit,
like there's this whole
other world, this vast world,
and there's all the
complexities that come with it
and all of the nuances and all that,
oh, and oh, wait, I can heal?
Like I didn't know that was possible.
Wait, somebody's doing that
and I wanna know how they did that.
And you start following
them and you track their story
and you're like, and they
help you somehow, right?
That is something that I
feel like Gen X is latched onto.
That's the kind of unique part.
Millennials, they had a lot
more social media than we did.
We didn't get it till we
were a little bit older.
And so, and a lot of us by
then were starting our careers
and having kids and we didn't have time
to digest in that way.
And so now getting it,
I feel like we've
latched onto that even more so,
which is why you're seeing
such this huge presence of Gen X.
And I don't think it's because we're like,
over, we're trying to learn
technology or social media.
I think it's just that we're like,
we're attracted to that.
Attracted to the
opportunity to experience the world
in a way that we never did.
And I think boomers are,
that's why you see so many boomers on
social media as well.
I think they too are
experiencing the world in a way
that they never had.
They get glimpses and doorways to spaces
they've never been in.
And into connection
and community with others
that they would have never
had the opportunity to have.
And so this social media
has really just given us
this incredible
pathway to people and insight
and learning and healing.
And I don't think people see it that way.
Sometimes they just look at it and go,
oh, it's social media.
It's just dance trends and negative people,
but there's so much more to it.
There's a whole other world.
There's a whole other world.
And I think that's
what they're attracted to.
They probably don't realize
that that's what they're
attracted to, but that is.
They're gaining experiences
in a way they never had before.
And it's like, for me,
it's almost at times,
like I get these little classes about life
that I would have never was.
It just depends on which
person happens in my feed that day.
And some of them I like,
some of them did, I don't.
And I absorb what I want
and I scroll past the rest.
So how does your
fourth business, Gen X Tour,
that is where you are
taking it beyond social media
and you're seeing everyone face to face.
You're in real life, quote unquote.
First of all, how did that start?
So, one of the biggest
questions I always would get
was how can I see you?
Like, are you on stage somewhere?
How do I, I just wanna hug you.
I get that a lot.
And I'm like, you assume
I'm a hugger, but you know.
(laughing)
I just wanna hug you or
they just want to meet me.
They just want, they wanna hang out with me.
They wanna have a drink with me, whatever.
And so I would hear that
so much that back in 2023,
I decided to do a cruise, like just myself.
Like me and a small group of people.
I just like, if anybody
wants to go on a cruise,
like we should get together.
And so we did.
And it was one of the
most incredible experiences
of my life.
Five days with just hanging
out with a bunch of Gen Xers,
complete strangers I'd never met.
And we had just an incredible time
that I walked away from that wanting more.
Like I was like, I'm gonna do this again.
And so, but I didn't wanna
be the center of attention.
That's a lot of responsibility.
And I was on that cruise.
And I thought I should reach out.
I should do, like get
somebody else to do this with me.
And at the time, before that cruise,
I had reached out to Kelly
Mann and I had reached out
to her, I don't know,
because she was one of
the few Gen X creators
I knew at the time to see if
she wanted to do something.
I asked her to come on the cruise
and she was like, I don't do water.
So I was like, okay, maybe
we should do something else.
So we talked about
doing something in Nashville
and it just never transpired.
We didn't have the time to
get it together, whatever.
So anyway, fast forward.
I was in Las Vegas last April
for the Chair Choice Awards.
And I met the
professor Nick Harrison there,
who I also love.
And I was like, dude, I loved him.
We just, we, we jot, we, you
know, we gelled right away.
And I was like, we
should do something together.
We should like collaborate somehow.
And I was like, you should
come on a cruise with me.
And so he was like, well, before a cruise,
like we should like
get together or whatever.
And I was like, yeah, so we got talking.
And I was like, well, you
know, I talked to Kelly Manno
last year about doing
something and she seemed interested.
Let me reach out and see
if she's still interested.
So she was interested.
Then we pulled it in the dead bod veteran.
And before you know it, we're
like, let's go to Nashville.
And we thought, Kelly especially,
thought we were just going to get together
and hang out in our pajamas,
eat bonbons and pizza weekend,
you know, and have a good time.
And we were all down for that.
We were in the meantime,
we might, we were like,
we will go to a bar and we'll
just tell people in Nashville
that we're at this bar
and they can come out,
hang out with us if they want to.
And I mean, there's between the four of us,
we have like 25 million followers.
So we're like, somebody's
going to be in Nashville.
And so it didn't turn into that.
Nick was just starting to
do some improv at the time.
And I think he had the
itch and he was like,
we should do a comedy show.
He's the youngest of us
all, by the way, born in 80,
July, by the way.
So I'm like, you're like,
but says the trophy Gen X are here.
Like you're barely, you barely made it bro.
So he, anyway, he was like,
we should do a comedy show.
And me, Kelly, John, which is the dead,
but none of us have ever
done, never done stand up.
I was like, I'm not doing that.
I'm not a stand up comedian.
I'm not doing it.
He's like, I think you guys can do it.
You can do it.
Long story short, we did
a comedy show in Nashville
and we did two comedy shows in Nashville
and an after party at Pince Mechanical,
which is like this barcade thing
and over like 550 people came.
And so we were like, what the fuck?
That was crazy.
So we decided to do it
again in Cleveland, Ohio
at a dueling piano bar, which was amazing.
It was incredible.
It was like the vibe of
the music and the comedy
and there we sold that show out.
And anyway, what came out
of that was we were like,
we probably are going to
have to keep doing this
because people kept saying,
when are you coming to my city?
When are you coming to my city?
And we had, I mean, we kept
selling out show after show.
And so just in June, June
1st, we were in St. Louis,
which is Kelly's home state, home city,
and played the factory of 2100 people.
And we sold it out.
Wow.
That's awesome.
It was wild to be walking
the stage with 2100 people.
Oh my gosh.
It was insane, insane.
And now-
The energy, that must be nuts.
It was, the energy
was, it was electrifying.
It was, I can't even describe to you.
It was just, and then, so it's
not just a comedy show anymore.
So I think between the comedy show
and the dueling piano bar and all that,
it's kind of a little bit
comedy, a little variety show.
And so we brought a millennial in now.
He's our host, Justin Rupple,
and he does over 300 voice impressions.
And so he's our
resident punch you in the arm,
little millennial we get to pick on.
He's part of the show now.
And we brought in a musician that is there
that helps us out with cues of music.
And so it has turned
into like a little bit more
of a movement.
I mean, it's people
come, they get to laugh,
they get to feel seen,
they get to feel validated.
And they're around a bunch of people
that have lived a very
similar life to them.
And they get a good dose of nostalgia
and they walk away
feeling lighter and uplifted
and this sense of belonging.
And it's just a wild thing, man.
Like at St. Louis,
everybody lighten up their phones,
like lighters in the audience.
Like it was just this crazy experience
where I was like, what the
fuck life am I living right now?
Like this is insane.
I would have never thought
that that would ever be something
that would come to life
purely out of making videos
about my generation or
any of us for that matter.
We all make our own
versions of generational content
and combining the four of us together
was like "Wander Twins Activate."
I can't even explain it.
It was just like this
crazy combination of powers
that just has been crazy and
insane and magical and amazing.
And the first show we
did, it was what was wild.
We've learned a lot.
In Nashville, we had so many people come.
The first, we went to Penn's Mechanical
for like the after party.
And we, all four of us got pinned down
in four different corners
for like the entire time
we were there, it was
like three and a half hours
with a line of people that was wrapped
around the fucking
building just to come and meet us.
We're like, what the fuck is this?
And so Kelly was like,
we're never doing that again
because she's never left her house.
She doesn't leave, she's
like, I don't leave my house.
Okay, I don't fly, I don't travel,
I don't leave my
house, I don't go on water.
Well, now we have pulled her so far
outside of her comfort zone.
We had put her on planes,
she's getting on a cruise,
she's doing all kinds of well.
And she was just like,
that's never happening yet.
So now we have a very
carved out meet and greet.
We limit the number of people.
We have like, they can come take a picture
and meet us or whatever.
But I love meeting the people,
like the people who come up to me
and genuinely are like,
you've changed my life.
Like you saved my life,
you've changed my life.
Like you make my day every day.
Like I don't, I take
that shit so seriously.
And it's great to just like
feel that sense of community,
in person, not through comments,
like in to be getting
these people's presence.
We had a woman in New Orleans,
we did New Orleans in February,
that came from Indiana
with her entire family
to the show in New Orleans.
She was diagnosed with cancer
and it was on her bucket list.
She had to come and meet us all.
And what?
Like that, you can't put into perspective
the impact you have on
people until moments like that.
You take for granted almost
those moments until it happens.
What is that like though?
What you're describing is
like a rock star, right?
It's movie star grade stuff, right?
If someone saw, we saw,
we're big fans of Billy Strings.
We saw Billy Strings up
in Pennsylvania last year.
And I was just like, I went total fanboy,
total jackass mode.
And he was just like,
what's that like to have,
it's gotta be such a surreal thing.
It's so surreal and it
feels like I'm in a dream.
When people call me a
celebrity, that feels weird.
It almost, there's
like this repellent almost
that feels fake.
I have imposter syndrome,
so that is really difficult
for me to digest and process.
But in the beginning it felt uncomfortable.
I've gotten a little more used to it,
but it's still, there are
still moments where I'm like,
well, I told you in St.
Louis, where you're like,
I was like, what, where
the fuck am I right now?
Like how does this my life?
How am I standing on a
stage with 2,100 people
in the audience that
are all cheering for us
and then come up to you
afterwards and hug you
and just want to love you
and tell you how much
you've changed their life.
Or like I said, that, I mean,
that wasn't the first cancer patient.
There's been other people,
but to have her come and say,
this was, this is on my bucket list.
I wanna do this before I die.
We were like, what?
Like that is really hard to
like process in your brain
and connect with like,
how, what did I say or do
in my stupid little 30
second or 60 second videos
that impacted your life in a way
where you felt like you wanted to come here
and meet me before you die.
Like that is wild.
And that is really, yeah, it is powerful.
And that's the part
that continues to fuel me
of like, I don't, I'll
never take that for granted.
I am very mindful of what
I put out into the world
because I recognize the impact it has.
And the, I wish I
could answer the thousands
and thousands of messages that I get
because I never want
anybody to feel like it fell
on deaf ears that I didn't hear them.
I didn't listen, but I
just can't read them all.
There's so many, so many
people reach out to me through DMs
and like, they just wanna thank me.
They just wanna tell me their story.
They just want to let me know that I
somehow impacted them.
And that there are times
that that's really overwhelming
where it's just like, it's
hard because it is so powerful.
It is so significant.
It is so surreal that it feels like I'm
on another planet somewhere.
I have to pinch myself
sometimes, be like, yeah.
Yeah, no, it's really cool.
It's really cool.
I'm very humble and
grounded and I will never feel
like I make sure in those moments,
like I'm like, remember who you are.
Like I am not, I'm not a rock star.
I'm not, I'm just me.
I'm just normal everyday
person that never wants
to lose that grounding
of like, I'm just human.
I put my pants on just like you do.
Where does this?
Yeah, yeah.
But that's why you connect
so strongly with these people
is you're authentic and you're real
and what you shared came from inside of you
and that's what's drawn them in.
And so it's interesting to
be, in the midst of you being
your most, in this season of your life,
when you're being your most authentic self,
even though it's a fluid
thing and you're always working
on it, but you've created that foundation
to also have imposter
syndrome at the same time.
You know, those two things
don't totally go together, right?
It's kind of like you are being real.
You are being your authentic self,
but the accolades are so vast that I'm sure
there's that feeling
of I don't deserve all.
This is like, where is this coming from?
But it's simply because
you truly are representing
authenticity for a whole generation.
And for our generation,
as we talked about before,
that's such a big deal.
Yeah, it's a lot of weight to carry.
Like the number of people that call me,
like you're our Genex
spokesperson, our Genex queen,
you know, whatever, like
those are big labels for me
that I'm like, I didn't
mean, I didn't set out
to be a voice of a
generation, like I didn't.
And I don't consider myself
like a voice of a generation.
Like I said, I'm just me.
But yes, imposter
syndrome is really difficult
to manage while I do
show up as my real self,
but there's some voice inside of me.
And I think it still
stems from childhood trauma.
And you said something about like,
I forget exactly how you said it,
but basically like
being your authentic self,
but not essentially we were
never good enough growing up.
You know what I mean?
Like you were never allowed to be too big
for your own riches.
You were not allowed to be,
you weren't allowed to
be confident out loud.
Like they, we weren't celebrated.
We would knock you down.
I was expecting this girl.
Yes.
Well, yeah.
Like you're not all that in a bag of shoes.
You know what I mean?
They made sure to let you
know they would tear you down
intentionally to put you in your place.
And so there's this voice in my head
that is still saying,
you're not real enough.
That's not real.
You're a fake.
Like these people think
you're this, you're not.
Because that is in there
somewhere in that wiring
that is like, no, you're not good enough.
You're never going to be good enough.
And so the imposter syndrome
steps in where it's like, nope.
And that's an inherited belief system.
You know, I didn't, I
inherited that from other people.
And so, you know, generational,
the generational inheritance that Gen X
got from the boomers and the silent gen
is heavy shit.
And one of them is just what I, you know,
I think a lot of us
struggle with imposter syndrome.
A lot of us struggle with,
you know, am I good enough?
And I try to put content out
there to tell people you are.
You are good enough
exactly the way you are.
But I still struggle
sometimes to believe that myself.
And I'm on that.
Yeah.
There will be some
asshole that's ready to tell you
that you're not good enough.
Oh, always.
And that you don't deserve it.
Always.
It's there.
That's just projection.
But no, I think that I
don't need somebody to tell me.
I could tell.
I tell myself, I got that covered.
Yeah.
I think we're all, we're as a generation,
most of us are pretty good at that.
That's what we're fighting, right?
Daily, because, you know,
who do you think you are?
And knocking us down
was kind of how it was.
So they didn't want you
to ever feel like you were,
you were better than them or that you were,
you were, you know, you were too good.
Like I said, you were
either too good or too big.
Don't get too big.
The one I remember, don't
get too big for your britches.
Like don't celebrate yourself.
Don't do that.
If you felt good about something
and you were trying to celebrate it,
they would make sure to tell you in a way
that you felt bad for celebrating yourself.
You felt bad for being whatever you were
or achieving whatever you achieved.
And that's unfortunate for a lot of people
because that was my experience.
I know it was the same for a lot of others.
And so I think you, especially again,
that was in fundamental years of life,
you know, where all that's forming,
that becomes your internal belief system.
And there's still this voice in my head,
no matter how hard I try
to beat that shit out of me,
it's still there.
And it's a struggle.
It's an everyday struggle.
And I'm, like I said, I'm honest about it
because I can sit here, you
know, and tell you one day,
you're good enough.
And I can believe that about myself today,
but tomorrow I may not
believe that, you know?
Oh, I think it's a constant fight.
Like we're always fighting our demons,
especially those of us Gen X that had
traumatic childhoods.
Like those demons are there.
I always say no matter
how much I work on myself
and I've healed and all that,
I could be triggered like that
if the right situation
presents, I'm brought right back.
And I'm aware I'm being brought back.
And I know what's going on,
but it's a fight, you know?
And when I was younger, I
would lose the battle a lot more.
I rarely lose it.
And in fact, if I lose it
now, it's shocking to me.
I'm like, wow, that I forgot.
But it also reminds me how far I've come
because I'm like, wow, I
haven't been in this space in years.
And I used to be in this space every day.
So it's also sometimes a reminder to me
to be proud of myself and
to see how far I've come
and how much I've won,
I'm winning the battle.
But there's always that threat.
They're around the corner.
They're never totally gone.
So I feel that.
Yeah, so the whole
celebrity thing, rock star thing,
whatever, that imposter syndrome keeps
me from embracing that
feeling or that title,
that people give me that label.
That just feels weird.
But the takeover itself, like
me being in close to the people
is an incredible thing that I can't deny.
I can't deny that.
I can't deny the energy.
I can't deny just the
feeling of, like I said, belonging,
the camaraderie, the community.
It reminds me a lot of when we were kids
and we ran together in bicycle packs,
little motorcycle gangs.
It's like that.
The gangs all back together.
We're hanging out for a night.
And it's just a good time.
And we got three shows coming up in August.
So we're doing
Atlantic City in August 22nd.
So no, no, no, no, August 8th,
August 22nd is a different day.
I just looked at my
calendar and it says the 22nd.
No, August 8th, we play
Atlantic City at Caesars Palace.
And then August 9th, we're in
Cincinnati at the Hard Rock.
And then August 22nd,
we're playing the Chevalier
Theater in Medford, Massachusetts,
which is a suburb outside of Boston.
And then we've got shows
lined out for the year.
It was September.
I think we're in
Charlestown, West Virginia,
which is outside of DC.
And then we go to Seattle.
And then we go to Hot
Springs, Arkansas, which was not--
I didn't know that was going to be
our calendar, Hot Springs, Arkansas.
And then we've got the cruise coming up.
And we're going to do Fort
Lauderdale before the cruise.
And then we're already
booking shows for 2026.
That's amazing.
And all those ways you described it,
it also brings, I think, comfort to people.
It's a comfortable place.
So it's a comfort.
They leave their feeling
probably just like a hug almost.
It is like a hug.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, they get a hug.
How the hell are you managing all this?
It's really hard.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
It's not easy.
I need an assistant.
I really do.
Now, we have the four of us for the tour.
The wives help out.
Krista's helped out.
And Lisa, which is Nick's wife, Julie,
which is John's wife,
Bronnie, which is Kelly's boyfriend.
He's our security detail now.
Good boy.
You know, we all have pulled together.
And we also now-- we have
some people, booking manager,
Reuben, and then Justin.
We brought on the millennial.
And so we've been-- it's been--
we're learning.
We don't know what the fuck we're doing.
We literally have no idea how to do a tour.
We're just piecing it together.
But it helps for me
running businesses, having kids,
doing this tour now, writing a book,
still being a content creator.
I couldn't do it
without the support of Krista,
because I mean, I just literally could not.
She pulls a lot of weight
for me in a lot of ways.
And I think the same goes for the others.
Each of us have a really
awesome support person,
emotional support person, if you will,
that are there for us, that help us.
But it's not easy.
There's a lot of balls
in the air all the time
that we're juggling.
And I literally got off of our team meeting
and jumped right on here,
like literally 60 seconds.
I got to go.
I got a hard stop.
I got to go.
So we keep each other in check.
We get to-- we meet, Zoom call.
You know, we get together.
We talk about all the moving parts.
And we're just kind of--
we're just taking it one day at a time.
We're just whatever happens, happens.
And we're like, if the
tour continues, great.
If it doesn't, I think
it was an amazing thing
while it lasted.
And I think we all have
really bright futures.
I think my biggest message for people
is that you're never too late.
Who would have thought all of
us in our frickin' 40s and 50s
would be on stage for the first time--
I mean, I did not this kind of stage,
but for the first time,
doing stand-up comedy,
doing on a tour, just
meeting thousands of people.
That was not on my bingo card.
Markle.
No, I mean, I was going to
ask you, what was it like--
how did you-- because you said
you've never done comedy before.
So did you create your own set?
Did you write?
I write all my--
I write all my own material, by the way.
Everything I do.
And so how was it that first time
you walked on stage the very first time
to do your very first set?
Frickin' wild.
It was a very uncomfortable place for me.
Because I really struggle--
I told you guys I struggle with memory.
And so I always have.
And menopause has made it
even worse with brain fog.
And so my biggest fear was
that I was going to forget
what I was supposed to say.
You write the shit, and then I'm like,
if people only knew what it
takes for me to create a video,
like, I have to really--
I have to write all my shit out.
And then I don't practice it per se,
but I sometimes have to
record a video many times for me
to get out what I want to say.
And so having--
writing out my bit for a stand up,
I was so afraid of forgetting and freezing
what I was supposed to say
that I just made a joke out of it.
And I was like, I'm in the phase of life
where I have to have
these giant fucking cue cards
so I can remember what the
fuck I'm supposed to say.
And so I just wrote the shit out.
I just write it out,
kind of the topic, mainly.
And I just carry them in my hand.
I'm like, I'm not ashamed to
tell you guys that I have CRS
and I can't remember shit.
And so I need these papers.
So I fucking remember
what I'm supposed to say,
because I got a lot I want to say.
And so I just use them as part of the bit,
you know, that it's like,
this is important to me,
because I don't want to
forget what I'm supposed to say.
I don't want to disappoint people.
I don't want to forget
what I'm supposed to say.
I don't want to disappoint myself.
And so maybe that's a trauma response.
I don't know.
But I'm still learning all
these things about myself.
But it's been--
I wrote it all out.
And the first time I
did it was scary as shit.
And then I had to do two shows.
So our Nash show, we did
two shows back to back.
And so the second time it
was a little bit easier.
But then the problem is that
we were doing the old person
tour, where we were like, we're only
going to do this like
once every couple of months.
And so that's what we were doing.
We did Nashville.
And then a couple months
later, we did Cleveland.
And then a couple
months later, we did Atlanta.
And then New Orleans.
And they've been spread out.
And so the problem is that when you only
do it like once every
month and a half, two months,
it's like new every time.
I'm like, I don't remember
what I'm supposed to say.
I'm like, all of this
feels new again, you know?
Now this month, I'm hoping
with August doing three shows,
I'm like, I might actually get it down.
I might nail it.
You know, when comedians
do multiple shows a week
and they do the same set
every night over and over,
they just get to where
it's like boom, boom, boom.
I'm not doing that.
We're doing an old person
tour where it's spread out.
And I don't have any desire
to play five nights a week.
I don't want to do that.
I have no desire to do that.
So I'll just have to
keep using my cue cards.
But it's been a wild ride.
The Genex takeover is--
it's like nostalgia meets a best friend.
It's really hard to describe what it--
That's amazing.
No, it's wonderful.
Incorporating the no cars
into your bits, brilliant.
Yeah, a good thing I knew to do.
I was like, I have to bring these on stage.
Because Nick hit his little improv--
I've been doing improv.
We can all do comedy, whatever.
I was like, Nick--
he was the one I asked for.
I was like, Nick, I don't know what the--
I can't remember.
He's like, oh, you just write little--
I just carry a little
piece of paper with me.
Like a little piece of paper like this.
And I was like, that is
not going to work for me.
This is not going to work.
So I actually was like, I'm
just going to have to make--
so I thought index cards.
And I was like, it's still not enough.
I got these big pieces of card stock.
And I write the shit out.
And I take them out on the stage with me.
And I'm just like--
everybody else-- comedians,
they keep their little piece
of paper because they're trying to hide,
that they have any notes.
I'm not hiding shit.
Because I'm real anyway.
I'm like, this is me.
Take me or leave me.
And if you don't like the
cue cards, go fuck yourself.
I don't know what to say.
I love it.
So in the midst of all this, you mentioned
you were at the Cheer Wars?
Cheer Wars.
So what are the Cheer Choice Awards?
Cheer Choice Awards-- last
year was the first year I went.
A friend of mine, another
GenX content creator, actually--
I'd seen that he had been
in Vegas the year before
at the Cheer Choice.
And I reached out.
I was like, what is this?
He's like, it's a big charity event.
He's like, it's one of the most amazing
things I've ever done.
And you should come.
And so I was like, OK.
So I checked it out.
And I told Krista about it.
I was like, hey, Leonard
said we should come to the Cheer
Choice Awards.
And she was like,
well, if we're going to go,
is there an opportunity to be a sponsor?
And I was like, probably.
So I reached out to Leonard.
He got us connected.
Long story short, we ended
up being a sponsor last year
at Cheer Choice Awards.
And what it is is it is a charity that
gives to people in need.
It's called-- the charity is
called Spread the Cheer USA.
And they put on-- the Cheer Choice Awards
is this essentially an award ceremony--
Red Carpet Event Full Award Ceremony--
for content creators to
honor content creators that
are putting and doing
good work in the world.
And so they honor all
kinds of different categories
and motivational, inspirational cosplay--
everything from
motivational, inspirational cosplay,
and dancers, and animal advocates.
So I went last year, and it
was one of the most incredible
things I had had the
opportunity to experience.
And I was like, oh my god,
we have to do that again.
And so this year, my
company was a sponsor-- again,
Wholesome Hippie--
and me, John, Nick, and
Kelly, all four of us.
Because it's a People's Choice Award.
So People nominate you.
You're not nominated by them.
It's a People's Award.
And so we were all
nominated for awards this year.
And so I was up for three awards.
I think John and Nick were each up for two,
and Kelly was up for one.
Well, so that was new.
So my company is a sponsor,
and I'm also up for these awards.
And so the way it
works is you're nominated,
and then there's a voting process,
and you're voted by the people.
It's not like-- so every week, it
narrows and narrows, and
people keep casting their votes.
And so you start off with
a big, big pool of people,
and then they narrow it to the top 10,
and then they'll narrow
it down to the top five.
And so I got knocked out of
two of my categories, which--
again, this is imposter
syndrome showing up in full force here.
So I was nominated for Cheer of the Year,
which is the biggest award
of the entire award ceremony--
comedy novice, and
motivational inspirational
with more than one million followers,
or something like that.
And so I was like--
in my brain, I was like, OK,
motivational inspirational,
I'll take that.
That makes sense.
Comedy novice, that makes sense too.
I'm doing comedy now, and I'm funny.
I mean, I never thought I was funny,
but apparently I'm funny.
And Cheer of the Year, that one felt like--
I was like, no, that doesn't feel--
there's no way I belong in that category,
and I'm not going to win.
So I didn't really put a
lot of effort into any of it.
People voted, and at
the end I got knocked out
of two of the categories.
So I got knocked out of
motivational inspirational,
gets narrowed down to the top five.
I got knocked out of comedy novice.
I'm still in top five
for Cheer of the Year.
And I'm like, this is not right.
And people are like,
what are you talking about?
I'm like, this category is for people
that are making a real
difference in the world.
People that are doing
God's work kind of shit,
they're really out there
doing impactful things.
I just make stupid, funny
videos about my generation.
Like, this is not right.
Long story short, I won.
Amazing.
That's amazing.
It was a wild experience
to hear them call my name.
Because I was a presenter as well,
I was presenting multiple
categories, I was in the back.
I was backstage when they
were announcing my award.
And so I didn't even know
they were doing my award.
I was backstage doing other shit.
They called all of the
presenters to the back.
And so I was in the back.
And all of a sudden they're caught,
they're like, will the real
Slim Sherri please stand up?
And they're calling me out on the stage.
And I was like, what?
I didn't even prepare a
speech because I was convinced
I wasn't going to win.
I was like, there's no
way I'm winning that award.
It's actually the one--
I don't know if you see
the Heart Award back here,
that Chair of the Year award.
So that was wild and
weird and felt crazy to me.
I can't imagine.
Did you have to give a speech?
I did.
I had to go out there and
give a fucking acceptance speech.
I didn't even prepare one.
I didn't know what--
I was like, what I said, I
think what came out of my mouth
first was this doesn't feel right.
If you were giving me an
award for the most swear words
in the year, this would fit.
This would make sense to me,
but this doesn't make sense.
But here I am.
And so the fact that that
was a people voted award
was crazy to me.
That I just really--
I'm still, I think,
processing that a little bit.
I still am like, I can't
believe I won that award.
It didn't feel like I should have.
It just shows, though, the
effect you have on people
in their regular life.
The fact that you have
become such a special person
on the daily for people.
And that's probably where that came from,
because of the consistency you put in
and the connection you've made.
That's it right there.
Yeah, I mean, especially
because during the voting process,
you have to vote-- you vote every day
for a certain period of time.
And so you only get to vote once per day.
That's it.
You get one vote a day.
And so the fact that that many people
continue to show up
for me every day and vote
was crazy.
I was like, wow, that is so--
I don't have words to describe it.
It was just so out of body almost for me,
the thought that somebody
would do that in my honor.
You have a community.
You've built a community.
100%.
I mean, if that little
girl could see you now,
have you ever taken a moment and just
mentally thought of her
and said, look at us?
Look where we are?
I have my moments.
Yeah.
The book is making-- gives
me those moments quite a bit.
There's a lot of reflection during the--
when I sit and I write and I let myself
connect with that little girl.
Because I haven't most of my life.
I have not--
I've just kind of ignored her, I guess.
And so now, when I sit and I
write, we visit a lot more.
And so yeah, there's been a few moments
like that where it's like
all the things they told us
we couldn't be and all the
ways that they held us down.
And look, that's why I
said, you're never too late.
You're never too old.
And you're always enough.
I say it because I mean that.
I mean, I struggle at times
to believe that the last part.
Because that is-- it's a process for me
to unbecome all of those
things that people gave me,
that the inherited belief system that--
so it takes a while.
Maybe always.
Healing is a journey.
It's never-- it's never, never done.
Healing happens forever.
And so it's learning to--
I believe it more now than I used to.
So yeah, we sit sometimes
and we talk, me and her.
You're honoring her
through everything you're doing.
Because I get it.
I ignored my little girl too.
And then one day, I thought, you know what?
I'm going to stick up for you.
And you deserve to come along on this ride.
And everyone ignored you.
I certainly shouldn't be.
I should be the last person ignoring you.
So I'm going to now
recognize you and honor you.
And you're going to come
with me and have all the things
that you deserved.
But you have to be in the right head space
to finally let her join on the journey.
Oh, I totally agree.
It wasn't easy.
And part of that, the
ignoring, we were taught that.
We were taught to ignore
our own feelings, our own body
trying to tell us.
The body tells you it is an alarm system.
And we ignore it.
We ignore the pain.
We ignore the sadness.
We ignore our own needs.
We sacrifice so much of ourselves
for our children, for our families,
for all the expectations
that people have of us,
the world at large.
And we were taught to ignore that.
And so when you finally are like, OK,
I'm not going to ignore you anymore.
The experience that comes with that
is almost
indescribable, like this reuniting.
It's reuniting with a part of yourself
that you had left behind
for so long, for decades,
almost like you buried her.
I buried mine.
To me, I was like, she's dead.
That part of me is dead.
And now it's like, oh, she's not.
I've resurrected her.
And we are getting to
know each other, which
is an experience in itself.
Yeah, it's cool.
So as far as the book,
when did you start it?
I actually started
writing it about two years ago.
Wow.
And I stopped.
I originally was writing
it with my sister-in-law,
a different book, actually.
So if I'm really honest, the book I'm
currently working on,
I've only been working on for about a year.
Maybe not even quite a year.
But the original book I was writing,
I was writing with my sister-in-law.
She has a PhD in English literature.
She's fucking smart as shit.
She writes.
And I was like, she knows
me better, almost as good
as anybody else.
She can really capture my voice.
And we started-- so she was
writing with me co-authoring.
And then it just--
with her job and my work and
whatever, it just got tabled.
So I decided I was going to try on my own
to write a different book.
And so this is more a
little bit memoir, self-help,
motivational development.
I don't even know where
it's going to sit just yet,
but it's a little bit of all of that.
And it's been-- I've
really, the last probably three
to four months, been
putting a lot more into it,
which is hard with the
tour and everything else
I've got going on.
So I've tabled it, but I've just recently
tried to get back into it.
And it's like uncovering
berry shit from thousands of years
ago.
It's crazy.
But I'm really--
I believe in it.
I believe in the work I'm doing.
And I think if I can figure out how
to organize my thoughts in a better way,
I think I'll get it done sooner.
I'm also perfectionist,
also another inherited thing
that I hate.
It's a positive and a
negative at the same time.
So it can be very
debilitating because I overthink.
And it's not good enough.
It's not good enough.
It's not good enough.
Well, and you get
second analysis paralysis.
Yeah, I mean, it's not much to analyze.
The story is what it is.
But I will overanalyze how I wrote it.
Yeah.
I'll overanalyze the structure I put it in.
I'll overanalyze the arc.
I'll overanalyze all kinds of
dumb shit where I'm just like,
god, if you would just fucking stop
already, it's exhausting.
But it's a part of me.
And so I'm writing it--
I thought in the beginning I
was writing it for my fans,
that they want more--
they want that longer form.
They want to know my story.
They want to know, how
did you get where you are?
How did you get there?
What is the map?
Where's the blueprint?
They want to follow those dots.
I get that.
And so I thought originally I
was writing the book for them.
But I've realized the deeper I go into it,
and I'm really writing it for her.
I'm sure that's exhausting.
Thank god for therapy because
I go and sit with my therapist
sometimes.
I'm like, holy shit,
because we'll check in.
I only have it once a week.
We'll check in.
And she'll be like,
well, how's your week been?
And I'll just be like, all these
discoveries or whatever.
Thank god I've got
somebody to talk it through.
But there's a lot of--
it's trying to get through
the extraction of all the shit,
pulling all that out so that
you can get to the good stuff.
And so that is exhausting.
And you can't force it.
It's coming through you.
It's literally coming through you.
And also, there's only
so long you can do it
because you do get
mentally and emotionally drained.
Yeah, I do.
I've recently, just in the last week or so,
started working on it again.
But I had taken a few months
away from it because I had to.
Because it was so heavy for me.
It's a heaviness that puts me in a space
that I don't live in anymore.
And it's also putting me in a
space that I've never lived in.
I can't say never, but I
haven't since I was a little girl.
That's also putting myself
in that space, in that time,
so that I can write about it is almost--
I can't do it for a long time because it
traumatizes you all over again.
Yes, exactly.
Exactly.
She wouldn't bring it up, but she
wrote a book about
experience she had probably
in your teens.
And to go back and write that book, I
remember she'd be like--
I'm like, what's up?
I think I finished a chapter.
Or I just got something out on paper.
It was just gas.
Because you can go back to that place.
And for it to be authentic,
you have to almost relive it.
And it is re-traumatizing.
And one thing I learned is I never
forced it because I wanted it
to be real and high quality.
So if it took me forever,
then it takes me forever.
If it doesn't, it doesn't.
But whatever it is, in
order for it to be real,
I had to give myself breaks
so I could come back recharged.
That's what I have to do.
We do it again.
Same because I want to stay
true to the story while also
honoring who I am today and
honoring who I was or the person
who died--
1,000 tiny deaths, that part of myself.
I want to honor all those parts.
And to do that, I have to be
able to step away and recharge
or reset, if you will, and
bring myself back into you're not
there.
You're not living in that space.
And it has given me a lot of
revelations for my EMDR therapy.
It chronologically going through my life,
especially as a child.
It's pulled out things that I
didn't even really remember.
And with EMDR, you can pick a
target memory or target memories
to work through.
And it's allowed me to pull
some things out where I'm like,
that makes sense.
I need to work on that.
I need to focus on
that and work through that
because it's allowing me to--
I've almost been trying to
write a roadmap or a blueprint
for other people.
I'm also discovering the
map myself at the same time,
where I'm like, I can now
connect the dots in a way
that I never really did.
And I think EMDR has helped me with that.
And I think that process has helped
me to be able to get
back into writing the book
because it's let me to
move past some things,
process those, where I'm able
to sit in them a little longer
than I used to.
Or in the past, it would
pull me back into a dark place.
And I've learned to take
breaks so I don't end up
in a dark place.
I can't imagine the tangency would go on.
You get this discovery and
you're like, oh, you go here.
Then you go here and you go all over.
It's like a spider web.
It is.
That's actually a book.
I talk about the spider
web, kind of how it is--
how you take this tiny
little dot and then all these--
there's just this expansion.
And when you start
connecting things together,
you have these revelations
where you're like, oh my god,
now I can see why.
You react this way or why
I am this way or that way.
And it has been a revelation for me.
Almost every time I sit down to write,
there's a new revelation, a
new something I crack open
where I'm like, holy shit.
And so I think you have--
what I hope to share with
people more than anything
is that you can get there.
You just have to be ready.
You have to be ready to receive that.
And I think for most of
my life, I really wasn't.
I was very closed off.
Like I said, I had a barrier to therapy.
So although my mother
moving here was challenging,
has been challenging for me, I think
it pushed me into places
I wouldn't have gone maybe
otherwise.
Now, you're still on a
very big healing journey
with everything you're doing.
I have been on for a long time.
But yeah, I'm a little more
an accelerated experience of it
now than I was.
Yeah.
So if you could give the
younger generations meaning
they're just getting out of college--
they're at that age, that early 20s age.
Early 20s, mid 20s, late 20s.
And they're feeling-- they're struggling.
They're adulting for the first time.
They are dealing with social media
and comparing their lives to everyone else
and feel kind of lost as
sometimes for a lot of people,
the 20s can throw you off.
What advice would you give
to the younger generations?
Well, number one, stop
comparing yourself to everybody else.
Because I talked about this earlier
that a lot of it's not real.
So you're comparing yourself, especially
through social media, to something
that is unattainable and
inauthentic and not real.
So number one is always be true to you.
I wish I'd have known that
so much sooner in my life
of just be you.
Don't fake it for people.
Just be who you are.
But more importantly is that
you don't have to have it all
figured out yet.
There's no such thing as grown ups.
We're all winging the
shit our entire lives.
We fake it really well, but we are not--
none of us know what we're doing.
So you don't have to
have it all figured out.
And so that idea that somebody sells you
that you have to have your
shit together by the time you're
30 or something, that's bullshit.
It's a lie.
And the world is full of so many lies.
So don't believe them all.
And that is a big one, is that it's
OK to not have it all figured out
and to just take life as it comes,
experience it, embrace
it, enjoy it, and fuck
everybody's expectations.
Stop worrying about what
the world expects of you
and just do what makes you happy.
Because when you do what makes you happy,
it'll never feel like work, number one.
Work won't feel like work.
It'll just be something you
enjoy doing, and it brings you
joy.
And my last piece of advice to them
is to not work--
not live to work, but work to live.
Because I spent my entire
life doing the opposite, which
was living to work, and I
miss so much of my life.
And so that's my other big--
that was my big driver
for when I quit my job,
is I just was tired of
chasing something that
didn't bring me joy.
I wanted to--
actually, I listened to a
leader in the company at the time.
It's his fault I quit joking.
Listening to him speak to
the group, a big giant group
of leaders, because I was in
leadership at the time too.
And he was the one that
talked about his family.
He was of island descent.
And in his world, his
upbringing, his family,
they worked so they could live.
And they don't live to work.
They take time off.
They relax.
They enjoy life.
They focus on their bodies and making sure
that they're taking time when
needed to heal and all this.
And he was telling this whole story.
And here, this guy is standing up there.
He's one of the biggest
leaders in the organization.
And he was talking about how
he, with chasing his career
and climbing the ladder,
how he had lost that sense
and was now more living to work.
And it was something that he said to me
about that whole work
so you can live.
And I was like, I want that.
I've never known that.
I've worked my entire life
and have continued to chase
and try to climb the
ladder and chase the next--
like, I'd get the promotion.
And then it was never enough.
Well, what about the
next one and the next one?
And you chase all of this.
And for what?
I was miserable, unhappy.
I wasn't enjoying my life.
I couldn't enjoy the raise or whatever.
I was never there to enjoy it.
I was just chasing the next promotion,
the next expectation.
And when I stopped doing that
and I started living in a way
where I could enjoy my life,
I just worked so I can live.
I worked so I can pay my bills and I
can spend time with my family.
And we can do things that are enjoyable.
And whatever that looks like for you,
it's different for everybody, whatever
living looks like to you.
But stop living to work.
And just take the--
I think our younger
people are better at this.
I really do.
They're driving a culture of
taking time off when they need
it.
I didn't take any time.
And life is short.
Life is very short.
It's the blink of an eye.
And so live it while you can.
And I know that was a lot of advice,
but these are so many things I wish
somebody would have told
me.
But the biggest one is, like I said,
you don't have to have it all figured out.
And stop letting other
people dump their shit on you
of what they expect you to
have figured out by the time you
get to be a certain age.
I'm 52 and I still
don't have it figured out.
And I probably never will.
So there's no such thing as adults.
And so you can be--
there's no such thing as grownups.
There's adults.
I mean, I'm not the
adultiest one in the room,
but I am an adult. But not a grownup.
I'm still very much
trying to figure out life.
And so it's OK.
It's OK to take your time.
Yeah, that's so true.
None of us-- the
biggest joke is that anyone
has it all figured out.
None of us do.
We're all learning.
We're all figuring it out.
Some of us just fake it better than others.
Like, if everybody thinks
the Boomers had the shit--
we thought our parents had it figured out.
But the more I've gone
through this process of uncovering
and discovery and whatever, I'm like,
you know what I've discovered?
Because they didn't
have it figured out either.
They really didn't.
What I figured out in mid-life
was that my parents at that age
were-- they were just
trying to figure it out too.
They didn't know what they were doing.
Did they do it all right?
No.
Did they make mistakes?
Yes.
But do I think they were trying?
I think they were trying with the best
that they had at the time.
And so they didn't have it figured out.
They just faked it really
well because they were told to.
They were told to hide
it, not talk about it,
and put on the facade and
the mask and all the shit
they gave us.
We inherited all that.
But now I'm like, no.
You know what?
I want to tell younger
people, fuck that mask.
That mask is really heavy.
It's heavy.
Yeah. I know it.
And we're doing it.
We're talking about the things.
And we're sharing that advice.
And we're talking about the hard topics
so that they don't have to
mask, that they can start
living authentically way earlier.
That's why I said, you don't
have to have it all figured out.
Do you know?
No.
Not at all.
You probably still won't have
it figured out when you're 40.
And you might not have
it figured out when you--
anybody who tells you,
I've got it all figured out.
They're a fucking liar.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's so true.
It's so true.
Now before I ask my last question,
do you have any more questions?
I don't.
I don't.
I think you've lived a remarkable life.
It's awesome.
Oh, yes.
Absolutely.
Really super--
I'm motivated.
I'm intrigued.
You got me thinking.
It's just such a cool conversation.
I love that.
I'm glad.
Thank you for that.
Congratulations on all your success.
And it's just really cool.
You didn't come from
the greatest beginning,
but where you're at now is something
you can be so proud of.
And it's just cool.
Thank you.
Yeah.
I think that would be my
other last piece of advice
before you ask your last question is,
you can be whatever you want to be.
You really can.
And you can--
I didn't set out--
I never would have
thought I'd be a comedian.
It wasn't on my bingo card, but here I am.
I still struggle to call myself a comedian,
and I didn't plan it.
At 52, I'm a comedian.
I'm on tour.
I just want an award I
don't think I deserve.
There's just so many things that you
can be whatever you want to be.
It's what you put into it.
You get out what you put in.
And if you do it with the right intention,
anything is possible.
100%.
And I think Gen X is redefining aging.
And we're continuing to
live and tackle our dreams.
And hopefully, that's a great example
for the younger
generations, that once you get to 50,
that's not the end of
anything, or 60, or 70,
that you can continue to reinvent yourself.
You can continue to grow, continue to heal,
and continue to thrive.
And I'm hoping that is
one of the things that
will end up being our legacy
for the younger generation.
I hope that people look
back at our generation.
And really, when they dissect it,
see this group of people who
had this significant amount
of trauma--
we didn't call it that
then-- but this significant amount
of trauma that they had to figure out,
pretty much on their own,
how to unpack and heal from.
And then in their second half of life,
they start discovering and creating
this amazing world around them.
And I think that our legacy will be just
that of looking back and go, look at this--
what you just said to me.
Look at this incredible journey of,
I didn't come from anything.
I didn't go to college.
I didn't even graduate high school.
I had a kid at 17.
I struggled a lot of years.
And to land here where I'm
at, I could look back and go,
that was all by accident.
It wasn't.
It was all through intention.
And finally, somehow,
unlocking some door that always
felt like a mystery to me, it
felt like I wasn't allowed to--
I knew there was
something on the other side,
but I didn't know how to get there.
And so I hope that
people do look back and go,
look at all that they
persevered, all that they overcame,
a lot of us, not all of us, the
generational inheritance
that we were willing to trash.
Say, fuck that.
We're not going to do that.
And hopefully, what comes of that
is that the future ends up being a lot
brighter than the last 50
years or so that we have seen.
I'm hoping that our young
people will pick up where we left off
and will just make a better world.
There's still a lot of shit we got to undo.
And unfortunately, in a lot of ways,
our generation is in the way in some ways.
We are in the way.
Not all of us, but some of us are.
And until we-- just like we'd
like to talk about the boomers
won't retire and they
won't get out of the way,
there's some of us that won't either.
And so we need to move aside and let these
young people flourish
and let them build the world they want.
We are never going to
have the world we wanted.
That is the truth we
have to have with ourselves.
The world they promised us
does not exist, and it never will.
I don't think it ever did.
It didn't.
But it was a fake facade story.
They sold us.
And now we know that's never happening.
So we have to embrace where we are.
But that doesn't mean that there can't
be a better future for the
people that are going to come out.
That's our job, is to
leave this place better
than it was for us.
And that's what I hope is
that we will get out of the way.
I think that's possible.
I think it's true.
And I think the first step
in that is acknowledgment.
And the first step of acknowledgment
is probably calling
bullshit on most things.
Got to recognize that
it's kind of fucked up,
and we should try to do what we
can to make it a little better.
Yeah.
And then show other people
that the next generation can
carry it a little further.
Well, to your point, as far
as the younger generations
and getting out of the way,
being open to listen to them,
listen to their ideas, listen
to what they want to create,
listen to what they bring to us.
Because I think so
many Gen Xers and Boomers,
when there's the new ideas
that millennials and Gen Z bring,
a lot of Gen Xers and
Boomers will be like, no, no, no.
That's not how we do it.
We do it this way, and
that's the way it's done.
So getting out of the way,
part of that is listening
and giving them a chance
to let's try it their way.
Let's see what they have.
And not doing what was done
to us, which is scold them
and make them feel small and
stupid in the process, which
is a lot of times what ends up happening.
And so I do think we're in the way.
I think back to you when
you said the calling bullshit
is that that's exactly what we need to do.
We have to call
bullshit on our own generation.
And that's the thing, is that
there are Gen Xers out there
that, like you just said,
that's not how we do it.
They're still holding on to the old way.
They don't like change.
They don't want to see change.
Maybe they like the way things are.
They're also very apathetic.
It's comfortable.
It's comfortable.
They're apathetic.
They don't care.
And so those people to get out of the way,
the people that don't give a fuck,
they're like, fuck everybody.
Fuck everybody else.
But the problem is, is in doing that,
you're fucking everybody.
It's like, fuck it.
I'm fine.
That's how they are.
My world is great.
So fuck yours.
And it's like, it's the
problem with some of you
is that you are in the way.
And it's the attitude.
And so unfortunately, that
is something that is a plague.
I don't talk about it, but I see it.
It is a little bit of a
plague for our generation
and the boomer generation
that do have that attitude.
That's where the boomer lights are,
the ones that are very much
still have that sort of boomer
attitude.
And it's like, you guys got
to get out of your own way.
Just get out of your own way
and let these young people build
the world that they want.
We didn't do it.
We're not too late.
We can contribute.
But we're not going to build
the world that was promised.
It's not coming.
So we have to make something new.
And to do that, we have
to get out of their way,
is what I think.
Well, and I think the
combination of those of us
who are trying to break the
cycle with the way we raise
our own children, and then combined
with talking about
things and not being shushed,
because we were shushed for so long.
We're like, we're not going
to shush about this anymore.
We're going to talk about all these things.
Hopefully the combination, we will at least
be part of a cultural shift here.
At least half of us,
the other half maybe not,
but maybe half of us
can represent something
for when people look back,
they can say some of us did try.
Yeah.
I don't see it in my lifetime.
I really do.
I hope-- I look at my
young people, my 11-year-old,
and my 14-year-old, and I think about what
their future looks like.
And I hope to see it in my lifetime,
like a truly just better world than--
you look at our
generation, look at all the shit.
If we really dissect all the shit
that we have lived
through and all the promises,
empty promises, it's like,
how much more can we take?
I just don't even know.
It just feels so--
then it just doesn't seem
to be lightening up at all.
It just seems to be
getting wilder and crazier.
We're just better at
tuning it out, I think.
We are.
But if you--
I think we're almost numb to it.
It's almost like a numbness to it.
It's like, oh, yeah,
that's just more of the same.
That's the apathy that
we have to recognize,
that we're so used to
living in that kind of world
that it's like we're apathetic to it.
And we need to not be apathetic.
We need to actually
acknowledge it and do something about it.
And one of those ways is
getting out of the way.
And secondly, is it
purely just what I just said,
which is acknowledging?
Yeah, no, it's true.
But you think about a lot of that, I think,
is a trauma response,
because we come from trauma.
And then think about it.
We saw the Challenger
explode when we were in school.
We were right there for 9-11.
All the things, a lot of generations--
all of it.
There's generations that can say,
well, I was there for that thing.
Hiding under your fucking desk.
For all the things.
I mean, the Boomers were, too.
But not to--
I mean, I hate to say--
the truth is, a lot of that
was their fault. A lot
of it was their fault.
But the Boomers, they went
through a lot of shit, too.
And they called it the rights
movement and the women's rights
movement.
And they've been through a lot of shit.
And that's why they're
even worse than we are.
Because their apathy to all
of that they have been through,
all that they have seen,
all that they have fought for,
and to be so apathetic
at this point in life
and not willing to get out of the way
and not willing to
acknowledge that we need change,
is really a problem.
Because some of them, some of the Boomers
are only in their 60s.
Well, they've given up, I think.
I think that is a difference.
A lot of them have given up.
Not all.
I don't want it being too broad of a brush.
But a lot of them have
given up, to your point,
are very apathetic.
They're like, fuck it.
World's not going to change.
I'm good.
I think we're kind of in that zone of,
I don't think we're
willing to give up and be totally
apathetic.
I think we're trying to do--
move things forward a little bit.
But in 10 years, maybe we will.
I don't know.
I don't know.
The older we get, the harder it gets.
I'm not going to lie.
I know.
But that's why we just all
have to keep living and thriving
and staying plugged in.
I think that's where honesty comes in,
being honest with me.
I think we have to be
honest with each other.
Absolutely, 100%.
Have you guys seen that meme
in the last day or so of the--
I think it was the Challenger, right?
The Challenger blew up.
And we all watched it in school.
And it was like, oh, remember
when the Challenger blew up?
We were all watching it in our classroom.
And then all of our teachers
said, OK, everybody, go back.
Go to math.
Go back to math.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's perfect.
There's a lot of jokes about it.
It's true.
Yeah.
Because that's how they dealt with it.
It was like, well, that happened.
Back to class.
You know, nobody talked about it.
We're not going to talk about it.
No one talked about it.
OK, my last question is always, where
do you see yourself in five years?
I mean, I think I've pretty
much talked about all of that.
Like, I see myself with a published book.
I see myself doing keynote speaking.
I'd like to be on stage
empowering and inspiring
groups of people, not in a comedy way,
but in a way like this,
just truly inspiring people
to live a better, more
authentic life in how you get there.
I see myself doing that.
I see myself retiring from my other jobs.
Like, I do.
I see myself retire.
I give myself till I'm 60.
I said I'll be retired by the time I'm 60,
but I'm not retired from
that, like the other stuff.
Like, I mean, I still
see myself making content.
There's so many things I could be doing,
but I'm retired from
the stuff that, you know,
gets in the way of me
being able to do bigger things,
like what I'm doing with
the tour and with book writing
and stuff like that.
So yeah, I see myself
doing even bigger things
than I'm doing now.
Well, I could see you at a TED Talks.
That's where I see myself there.
Yeah.
Get the book published, and
then maybe I'll get there.
But yeah, I do.
I see myself doing--
you know, when I look back at my career,
I loved being an
investigator, but I used to train people
how to do what I did.
Like, I would train the new
up-and-coming investigators.
I really loved that.
I loved-- I find that I got a
lot of reward and fulfillment
from teaching other people
and inspiring other people.
And so it's not odd to me that
I'm finding my way back to that,
because I did always fill my cup.
And so I just see myself wanting to--
I just want to help people.
You know, I don't know what drives
me to want to help people other than I
spent so long in a place
that was just--
I was miserable.
And to be able to help
people find a way out of that,
I think, is what drives me.
Because I know what it
feels like, and it sucks.
You know, I've seen
comments of people who are like,
I'll never have that.
I'll never be happy.
That makes me so sad for them, you know,
that they'll never
know what that feels like.
That's unfortunate.
Well, what you're--
I see all that happening.
And when you are doing that,
it will be cross-generational.
I think that won't be just a Gen X thing.
I think when you are out there helping
people and your book,
that's a cross-generational movement.
Not that it's not for Gen X, too.
But that will be part of
helping younger generations,
because they struggle with trauma.
They struggle with mental health.
They struggle-- they need--
they probably need advice sometimes
more than our generation.
So I think that'll be
an exciting thing for you
to take how you help people and you--
on the daily, you're helping people.
But to take it on an even larger scale,
and it will be people
of all different ages.
Yeah, no, I see that.
I for all--
I think the other thing
that's going to help us get there,
and I love that you guys are doing this.
Chris and I are actually
talking about doing a podcast.
Oh, nice.
So we have an interesting dynamic.
We both come from very
different walks of life.
And we both are entrepreneurs.
We're married.
We have kids.
She's in perimenopause.
I'm in menopause.
She was a teacher.
She went to college.
I was an investigator.
We just had this really crazy--
we just touch on a lot of different topics.
And we got talking, and we're like,
maybe we should do
something where the two of us--
we both have this
desire to really help women,
empower women, especially in midlife.
In fact, I quit my job
when I was 43 with no plan,
entrepreneurial spirit and all that.
You can, again, going back
to that, you can do anything.
It's just maybe you need somebody
to give you some wisdom
or guidance or experience
that I'm willing to share,
that I want to share with people.
And Krista wants to share.
And so we're like, we actually talked
about doing maybe a podcast.
That might be something
on the horizon for us.
Like, I got time.
Yeah, definitely.
I'm coming from--
but her and I could just sit,
and we can talk about anything.
And so we thought about it.
It's a great way for you to--
what you're offering on social media,
it's a great way for you to
offer it long form to people.
Yeah, it's just the--
when I talked about it, I
was like, it's the edit.
It's the editing.
And I don't care about the
equipment and all that shit
in the setup, because
I've got a studio here.
I've got this room, and
it goes way beyond this.
And we've got a place for room for--
because we've been going live--
we've been live streaming for our business
for almost 10 years.
But we're used to talking
to a live audience, actually.
And so we talked about it.
I was like, studio and equipment,
I'm not worried about that.
It's more like the edit
and the timing and all that.
And I was like, that, I
don't have the capacity for that.
But there's ways around that, I guess.
The editing is a lot, but you can do it.
You can hire that out, though, right?
You can.
You can farm that out, for sure.
You can definitely hire that out, for sure.
Do you like editing your own?
Yes.
Yeah, but Brian's in IT.
If he wasn't, we couldn't do
this, or we would hire it out.
Because that is a huge help,
is that he knows all the ins
and outs and can handle that.
We're trying to get some underage labor
with our youngest.
We can tell him this
will help you with getting--
he's 15.
He's like, I don't care.
They don't care about anything in that age.
No.
They don't care about what they--
Yeah.
What they care.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Absolutely where he is.
For that moment.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, Sherri, I can't
thank you enough for coming on
and spending this time with us.
Oh, we've loved it.
That's very cool.
And I know our listeners, this is
going to be such a great
episode for so many people
on so many different levels.
And I know it's going to help people.
I know it's going to help
people feel seen, understood.
It's going to inspire.
So again, thank you for
sharing all of your story with us.
Not all of it.
It's really just a
glimpse, even though we've
been talking for a while.
I know there's so much more.
But also, I know people call
you Gen X Queen and the Gen X
representative.
And I know that's a lot.
But you definitely are on the forefront
of a movement for our generation.
And I know it's a heavy weight, but you
wear your crown beautifully.
Thank you.
And with a lot of grace, honestly.
Just congratulations on everything,
especially like Brian said, considering
what you went through to get there.
And then the word keeps coming in my head
as you've been talking is just courage.
I just feel like how
courageous, all the steps you've taken,
all the moves, all the leaps
of faith, it's so courageous.
And that just came from inside of you.
No one gave you that.
And so I think you're such a great example
for other Gen Xers.
Have courage and do it.
There's no reason you shouldn't.
Everyone, just go for it.
We get our own way.
Yes.
And you're such a great example of that.
So we can't thank you enough for coming on.
Thank you guys for having me.
I have thoroughly enjoyed this.
And you guys are amazing.
I really love--
I know I said it earlier, but I don't
know if it got into this part of the show.
I love what you're doing.
Keep doing what you're doing.
It's people-- we need more
voices in the social media
world and just in the world in
general that are chipping away.
Like I said, little by
little at our generational trauma,
at our nuances, little
quirky parts of us, all that.
Just call it, like I
said, calling us on our shit.
We need more of that in the world.
We need more honesty and transparency and--
I told you, life goes--
it goes by so fast.
It's like a blink of an eye.
And we're all coming into
that space, that age of like,
life is going to speed
up a whole lot faster.
And trying to just get--
touch people in a way that allows
them to live more presently.
I think you guys are touching on that.
Maybe not in the way that we
did here today holistically,
but you are.
You are giving people reason
to pause and to think and to
reflect, and we need
more of that in the world.
So thank you for what you
guys are doing and allowing
me to be a part of this.
No, we--
That's awesome.
Thank you.
I mean, it means so much coming from you,
and we appreciate it.
And again, we're just so
happy that you shared your time
with us.
We know you're very busy
with all the things, so--
And speaking of all--
I was looking forward to this one.
Cool.
We were too, actually.
Absolutely.
Before our listeners, just a reminder,
Sherri's boutique is called Feather & Vine,
and also check out Wholesome Hippie.
Now, is Wholesome Hippie--
is that its own website, or
is that through Feather & Vine?
No, wholesomehippie.com, H-I-P-P-Y, hippie.
Wholesomehippie.com to get--
if you look into all
natural wellness or beauty,
wholesomehippie.com,
it is its own brand now.
It's actually the stuff
that you see behind me there.
That's cool.
That looks great.
All the links will be in our YouTube video.
If you listen on Apple or Spotify,
all the links will be on there.
So definitely go support Sherri.
We'll put all the links in the description,
and also check out Sherri on social media
as the real Slim Sherri.
I love that.
And then definitely go on GenxTour.com.
They have nine more dates left, right?
GenxTakeOver.com.
GenxTakeOver.com.
Sorry, GenxTakeOver.com.
And we will make sure that
that link is in there, too,
because they have a lot more
shows the rest of the year.
So everything for all of our listeners,
everything related to Sherri, all the links
will be in the description.
But if you have any questions
or comments, please leave them.
If you have any
questions or comments for Sherri,
we will make sure and let her know.
Please let me know when
this is going to air, too,
because I would love to give a shout out.
I'll share it on my socials.
I want more people to know who you are,
because I think that you guys add value.
I don't really share a lot, but when
I see somebody adding value, I'll happily
share that with others.
And so I want other people
to know that you guys exist.
You're doing good in the world.
That's awesome.
Thank you so, so much.
Thank you.
And thank you to our listeners.
Again, we love to hear from you.
And we know you've loved
this episode as much as we have.
So we will see you next time.
Bye.
Bye.
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