Breakfast With Champions Episode 248 with Susie Miller – Resilience

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. How are you, my friend? How are you, my friend? Welcome. This is the Breakfast With Champions Podcast, one of the most unique, amazing, and powerful podcast you’ll ever come across off in your entire life. Listen, we bring you motivation, education and inspiration and ultimately give you an opportunity to get a seat at the table to hang out with some of those that are doing the things you know you can do that have reached some of those levels, you know, you can reach. What makes this podcast so unique and incredible is we have over 100 different thought leaders that are constantly delivering amazing, Overthetop, powerful and impactful content in bite sized Nuggets that you can absorb, take action on and implement in your life. So with that said, make sure you filter through. There’s going to be some of these thought leaders, these experts in the industry that you’re ultimately going to connect with. You’re going to totally, totally resonate, going to totally be your vibe. And then there’s going to be other ones that you’re going to be like, you know what I like, but I don’t know if I love them, and that’s what’s great about Breakfast With Champions is we have something for everyone.

So make sure you sift through, find the ones that you love and know that they’ll be coming back every single week to be able to deliver to you the motivation, education and inspiration that you need. With that said, my name is Glenn Lundy. I am your host super excited to connect with you. And let’s kick off today’s episode of Breakfast With Tampa as our room. We set for today. You’ve heard about the event in November, and I’m going to dive right in because I have really felt led to talk about resilience today. And if you are a believer, it is about surrendering to God and allowing him to take the broken pieces, the Ashes in our life and bring beauty from them. And the word I use to encapsulate that process is cultivating resilience. Resilience is the ability to bounce back, to continue on, to find meaning and not be defeated by the difficulty. And right now I feel like with all our worlds going through our countries going through, you’ve heard stories. There’s struggle, even if things are going well in our life personally, professionally, there’s places where we are struggling, where we are weary, where we may have dashed dreams. We may wait, as Tamara said, waiting on that spouse waiting on that, yes, from a client waiting on those wounds to heal from scars into places that we can serve from.

And I think what happens is we do that in the context of resilience. And I use resilience so often with my clients. What we talk about is what takes us from struggle to success. Resilience is what happens between the before and the after. Resilience is what happens between the before and the after we rarely see this process. We see the after we see the success. We might be very aware of them before, but the process of going through the hard times, the doubt, the questioning, the wandering, the shaking of our faith, the doubling down on the promises we’ve been taught to believe in, the getting woke into new ways of thinking and new boxes that were breaking and the grit and the determination it takes that leads us through them to the other side. And so this morning, I want to talk with you about resilience. And three steps to cultivate resilience. Resilience is a muscle. It is a muscle. We have to work. We have to grow. And the hard part is that resilience grows in the struggle, just like a seed has to fall to the ground, break apart and die to become the Oak tree. Resilience happens in the breaking and in the struggle. And so the first step in cultivating resilience is to have the courage to name the struggle, to name it to ourselves. You don’t have to pretend I love that, Bernita said.

I’m still struggling. I’ve moved through this stage one, stage two, I’m still in this place. It isn’t strong to fake it all the time until we make it. We’ve got to have places where we touch down. Denial is not a superpower. When you are struggling, we need safe places to land. We need to give ourselves time and space to struggle and to not be alone in the struggle to share it with a few friends, to invite a few friends in as I was looking at teaching on Resilience this morning, when I teach this in companies, I use a story of a famous person that’s very relevant right now, but I really felt God compelling me to tell my story. And my sweet friend Sarah inspired me and then encouraged me to share how resilience in my own story. So it’s a little part of my story for you guys to understand. Very personal, tough time of year for us as a family. It is a time of sorrow and loss in the midst of joy and celebration. And so this time of year really requires me to dig deep into the resilience muscle that I’ve spent years building. There’s a song in Hamilton towards the end of the musical that has a line that says they’re going through the unimaginable. And whenever I listen to that song, I can’t listen to it without tears because it’s almost like this domino topple of the places of imaginable my life.

And it reminds me of this time where we were going through the unimaginable and had to build this resilience muscle. And so many years ago, halfway through my second pregnancy, I found out I was having identical twin girls, same sac, same placenta. And we found out in the midst of this time this pregnancy that one of our twins had died. They called her twin a because she was closer to first to be born. And we had named her Amy. And at 30 weeks, my placenta, the baby’s sustenance was showing 40 weeks of wear, and Amy had passed away and she was in the same stack with our twin B, who we had named Emily. And at that point in time, after weeping and crying and wrestling with the loss of one baby, all of our focus came into prayer and struggle and questions. And just all this positive energy. Would we be able to carry Emily to the end? Would my body be strong enough with my body register that one baby was still alive? Or would I go and do early labor because there was a baby to be still born and knowing her AMIA died and prayed with Emily, who still share that same amniotic sac would be alive. We had to dig down and name this horrible struggle within. We had to name it to ourselves. Our doubts, our questions, our fears. The doctors didn’t know why Amy had died.

They didn’t know if my sack would hold. They didn’t know if there was an imminent death for Emily because there was no understanding. It was a mystery. And this was over 30 years ago. And so Emily, the prayer became that Emily would grow and be strong. It was a lot of unknowns. It was a lot of pain, a lot of prayer. And yes, we fell apart for a couple of days. And honestly, we had to push our sadness aside to really focus on this positivity and this potential to have the healthy birth of one baby girl. And so in that time of heartache, yes, our faith was shaken. Yes, we have all kinds of why questions for God. But we began to build that resilience muscle in our questions, in our asking God in our begging Him to show up in the moments of pain and promise all together in one womb. And so I want to invite you as the world’s crashing down. I think about resilience as bending without breaking when the world comes crashing down, no matter what you’re facing today, no matter what the hardships you’re dealing with today, there is real strength in naming the struggle, in sharing it with a friend and asking others to walk beside you. It may be a dash dream. It may be a goal that you are still trying to achieve. It may be financial hardship. It may be the loss of someone in the midst of this pandemic.

It may be a broken relationship with someone that matters to you. It may be shame and struggle inside of you on your own story. And so as you have this courage to name the struggle, you will begin to build the muscle resilience. Step number two is you’ve got to continue on. You name your fears, you name the struggle and you choose to continue on. I’m going to expand that a little bit more as I tell the story. But eight weeks later, after they found out that my placenta was literally dying and they had me in the hospital twice a week, checking out everything, fetal monitors, baby heart rates, amniotic levels. They induced me and I delivered two babies, one that was still born, and Emily, Amy, who was still born. And Emily, who was alive. And all of the focus in that labor and delivery room was about Emily. Would she be alive? Would she be okay? Would she have been literally poisoned in her own amniotic fluid because there was a decaying body with her? And I remember having a moment as I held her that first time and thought, oh, my sweet girl, you have experienced life in the entwining limbs with your twin and death in her, no longer moving beside you before you ever took your first breath. What is it going to mean to mother you as a living twin? And so she looked good.

The Avars were good. She seemed healthy, and the requisite. Two days later, we went home with Emily, and I’ve been building this resistance muscle as we waited for her birth. And as we had this joy and sadness on intertwined. And we were so grateful that she was healthy. And we were so sad about her sister, Amy. I remember sitting at home holding her, thinking those same things. And just as we began to process and kind of touch down in this moment of her being okay, Emily spiked a fever at five days old, and that is a huge concern for an infant. Infants don’t spike fevers unless there’s a huge problem, they get colder and they need to be warm. Their bodies just don’t spike fevers, and they have no antibodies, nothing against infection. So we took her to the Er, and this was back in the day before Mama stayed, and they put a bracelet on her. And they said, okay, you need to leave her here overnight in this NICU in the local Holy Cross Hospital in Maryland, and they ran all kinds of tests. I remember going home looking at, how can I leave her? I just got to hold her. I’ve waited. Not just the nine months of a normal pregnancy. We had two year old, almost two year old at home. But all that we had been through, leaving her felt like this ripping away. And we left her overnight.

I remember calling my dad, who’s a doctor, and saying, here’s what they’ve told us. What shall we do? How do we answer their questions? They’re asking to do a spinal tap. And he said, Let them do whatever they need to do to find out how to keep her alive. And overnight, Emily started having seizures. And so the next day, we got a call. And in the continuing on, I remember this moment. There’s so much that’s a blur from those days. But I remember this continue on moment for me in building this resilience muscle. John had gone to work. He had his own business. He had a retail store, and the way he continued on in the midst was working. I remember having played with Kate that morning. We played dolls, and I had gone upstairs to get something bodies after babies have their own level of recovery going on anyway. And I remember I had read in the Psalms about God being with me and Hemming me in behind him before, and that there was nowhere I could go from his presence. And so I remember praying that over Emily, that she would feel his little Angels wings just beating over her in the NICU. And I was standing at the top of our stairs getting ready to come down and the phone rang and my mom had picked it up and it was before cell phones, and she walked upstairs.

She said, It’s for you. It’s the hospital. And they said to me, Come as fast as you can because she stopped breathing. And we don’t know if she’s going to make it. And so in that unimaginable moment, I remember thinking, oh, my God, I don’t know why we are here now. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but if we only got her for five days. Thank you. Thank you for the five days. And I think it was that innocent moment that Tamra talked about when God held my face in his hands. He says, I see you. I know you. I love you. I’ve got you. And so continuing on in that moment, what I wanted to do was crawl up in a ball and cry. Because of all that was happening, I was totally undone. But I remember very calmly walking down the steps thinking, okay, I’m going to continue on. I’m going to get to the hospital. My mum drove me to the hospital and that song I mentioned from Hamilton the rest of it. There’s a one line later where it says, there’s a suffering too terrible to name. They’re going through the unimaginable. And the unimaginable happened as I walked into that hospital room and saw my sweet five pound baby girl with her arms pinned down so she wouldn’t pull the ventilator out of her mouth so she could keep breathing. I remember my husband walking into the room.

He worked ten minutes from the hospital, and he’s a very solid, steady man. And I remember him breaking down into tears. I may have seen him cry once or twice in my entire life with him so far, the at hopelessness he felt to watch his baby girl there. And they looked at us and they said, we have no idea what’s going on. The spinal tap has shown some sort of infection. We don’t know what it is. We don’t know how to treat her. It could be this. It could be this. They threw the kitchen sink at us and they said, We’re taking her to the neonatal unit, the NICU at Children’s Hospital in DC and to get in your car and come there and follow us and we’ll see what we can do. We don’t know when you’re going to get to see her. We don’t know when you’re going to get to hold her. We don’t know if she’s going to live, but here’s what we’re going to do. And so resilience comes in those in between moments between the before and after, in those moments when we don’t know how the story is going to end. But we know we have to have the courage to name that. This is breaking my heart. This is dashing my hopes. This might be the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through. It might be the shame blanket of growing through something. What has happened to you.

It might be the confession that you’re in financial dire Straits to your spouse. It might be the mistakes you need to own. It might be something unimaginable and uncontrollable circumstances that are happening in your life that you have to choose to continue on. When you want to crawl up in a ball and let me say this, it doesn’t mean you don’t crawl up in a ball for those next ten days. It was a total blur, and I’m going to tell you a little bit about this, but I want to give you permission that continuing on might just be taking the very next breath. It might be sitting for me. It was sitting on the floor, coloring with our Kate. John had the wherewithal to say you cannot live at the hospital. You have to spend the morning at home with Kate. She needs her Mama. She needs you to be with her, spend some time with her and then go at 10:11 a.m. And then spend the day at children. I’ll tell you about that in a minute. It might be making the next sales call. It might be giving your $10 and tide and trusting that God is going to grow at 3600 fold. Continuing on has no formula except for that. You refuse to give up. But as Tamara said, you spit in the eye of the enemy. And you say not today. Say today, trusting in God, trusting in the universe, trusting in this place of purpose.

I am going to do the next thing. I am going to take the next step. I am going to continue on. And so I remember getting in the car and driving down. It was about 40 minutes down to Children’s Hospital and walking in until this day, the smell of hospitals does something to me viscerally. I remember the smell walking in. I remember walking up to the NICU and kind of waddling post pregnancy. My hips were still extended. I was going through my own post pregnancy recovery. It’s been seven days, six days since she and Amy had been born, and at this point Amy was not. There was this deep sadness in my soul. But this frantic prayer on my lips all the time. But please let Emily live. Please, Jesus, let it be okay. Please help me know how to get through this with some semblance of not falling apart. I didn’t use the word resilience, but there was this moment that later Amy Grant put the song when she said, Breath of Heaven, Hold me together. And I just remember praying that as the doctors would put the PPE on me back. And they didn’t know why she was ill, why she was continuing to see if it was causing brain damage. And so they would mask us up, put gloves on us, put this yellow gown on us, walk us into this room where she was all by herself in this really big bed.

And let me just take a minute and say thank you if you are a nurse, thank God for nurses and doctors, because they are Angels with skin on in these moments. And we couldn’t touch her skin to skin because again, they were trying to figure out what was affecting her. And they were asking us all these questions and they were trying to figure out what’s going on. I remember sitting there holding her for 15 minutes. At first we could just touch her on the bed. We could hold her hand, we could rub her leg. And I remember my husband bought this little Teddy bear and that wound up to see music because we couldn’t be with her. And this one nurse, Sarah, would come in and I wound the Teddy bear a couple of times last night for Emily. And I remember then going out and laying on the bench or sitting in the chair waiting for the next hour for my 15 minutes when I could go be with her again and again. This was years ago and there’s different protocol now. But that was our life. And then I would go home and my sisters would come. Our friends would come and sit with us. They couldn’t go in. John would come. We weren’t allowed to go in together, but then going home to be at dinner with our Kate. So she knew that Mama was okay and that things were, quote, unquote normal in her life because we colored, we read books, we sang songs, we played stickers.

And so the shifts became our life for the next ten days as they began to try to figure out what was going on. And I remember the first time they tried to wean Emily off the ventilator. I was holding her in my arms and she was tiny. I think at this point she was under £5 and they said, you could hold her. We’re going to wean her off. She’s doing okay. And they moved her to my arms and she stopped breathing and all the buzzer going. And they picked her back up and they put her in bed, rushed me out, incubated her again and in these moments, this resilience muscle of what does it mean to continue on the courage to name dear God, this is hard. I don’t know how I’m going to get through this. I need you with me. I’m going to go breathe and sit in the chair. I’m going to call my Mama. I’m going to call my friend. I’m going to continue on because all I know to do is breathe and do the next thing. And so in cultivating resilience, we have to have the courage to name the brutality of the heart, on our hearts, on our minds, on our souls, on our dreams. But we don’t stay in that place. We continue on by saying, I will take the next step. I will take the next breath. I will do the next thing. I will color with my kids. I will make the next move that will take me forward.

That is how we call rebellion. One step, one day, one moment at a time, and over the next ten days, Emily started getting better. She stopped having seizures and they looked at us and said, we have never been able to identify what happened. The guess is something happened in Utero as she lived with death and life, as in those last weeks and months. She had that same sac as the placenta started breaking down. We’re going to attribute it to that. I mean, they were calling Georgetown. They were calling doctors, my OB, my neonatologist at the hospital. They were trying to figure out how they came in and they said, we don’t know. What I know is I’ve had people praying for this baby girl across the world, my uncle grandparents in India and Pakistan, my family in Maryland, my brother in California, my friends in the Church, people who never knew us. This was before Facebook. This was when there really was a phone tree. That was your prayer line. And I said, and we’re going to just keep praying and the doctor calls and said, the seizures have stopped and I’ll never forget. It was Saturday morning. We had some friends over to pray over her, pray over us and what we would do and comfort us and whatever was happening. And they called and said they took her off the ventilator and she had kept breathing this time.

And if she kept breathing, there was another protocol towards healthy baby versus sick and dying baby that they would start following. And she began to be on that checklist and move through those checkpoints. And she began to gain weight through her Ng tube that was feeding her. And I remember going in and getting to change her diaper and it was the size of a cabbage patch diaper like two inches wide. And she was really tiny. And they said, we have to get her two £5 and you can bring her home. And so we kept continuing on in the midst of pardon. And they said, we don’t know if she’s going to have brain damage. We don’t know what toll this was taken, but here’s what we know. Her vitals are good, and you can come tomorrow and take her home. And the day we went to bring her home, they said, before you can bring her home, you’re going to have to learn infant CPR because we have no understanding of what’s happening and her heart could stop. We need to have you have these protocols in place. She can’t be with anyone who doesn’t know infant CPR. She has to wear this heart monitor around her. She had this little foam band with these green and red wires coming out of it. We had to register with a fire Department so that we were on their emergency service.

Should we ever lose power? Because this heart monitor that she wore would tell us if her hearts slowed down enough, or if her breathing stopped and that would trigger a big alarm. And we would know to do the CPR. And in every single one of these uncertain, difficult struggles, my resilience muscle grew, my resilience muscle of naming the heart, naming the fear. Now we had to worry about electricity going out, and that sounds so small, but it was something I could control. Let’s buy a generator. Let’s make sure we have all the things we have to choose to continue on and choose to move forward. And the third step in cultivating resilience is to choose to be creative. Will you be creative in what God brings from the heart in your life? And so, piece by piece, Emily grew. Emily got stronger. We brought her home, and I’ll never forget. I began to sew buttonholes in all of her little sacks because she was tiny way to keep her warm. And I sewed buttonholes in all of her little sacks and all of her little bloomers. John went out and bought every onesie that had snacks that he could find. And we began to watch our little girl get stronger. She never had another seizure. She never had any long term brain issues. And our little Emily grew up strong and resilient, having fought hard before she ever took her first breath.

And then for months afterwards. And I remember taking her back at six months old. And they said, okay, we’re going to take this heart monitor off to her. That heart monitor. You guys never went off. She never had another incident. And they looked at me and they said, we don’t know what to do. But we do know you believe in a God whose power is greater than our science. And so we’re going to call this a miracle. We’re going to call her a miracle from the very fact that she was born alive to the fact that she is six months old is doing well and online with every other development mental marker. We’re going to call it a miracle. And so in those moments and in that time that choosing creativity. And that final piece, we began to talk about how to reframe that circumstance, not to deny it’s hard but to help us grow. Please hear. We never minimize the heart. We never deny the struggle we’ve survived in our movement to thrive. And I think it takes great creativity to thrive from struggle in the uncertainty we live in the broken dreams, the dash hopes. It takes creativity to thrive. And here’s the thing. Resilience isn’t linear. We name the heart over and over again as the grief and memories wash over us as new challenges come that might trigger old wounds.

As I talked to Sarah this week and I shared my story with her, it became live again in a different way that I haven’t had in a number of years. As we continue on, we get to grow, we get to thrive. We get to take our heart and create something amazing out of it. In Joel, God talks about how he will restore the years the locusts have eaten. And it always hits me that he goes through and says, the crunching locust, the swarming Lotus, the young locust, the jumping locust. And I remember writing a paper about that and going, Why would God take so much time to write all kinds of locusts? The locust is enough. And in my creative mind was like because he means all the things, all the things that have eaten up your dreams, all the struggles you’ve gone through, whatever it is you’re struggling with, I will restore that. I will take that brokenness those Ashes and I will create beauty from it. I will help you in those creative times, thrive. And in the resilience you have created from the heart. From Glenn’s heart. He wakes up every morning at 530 that inspires millions to change the way they wake up so they can change their lives so they can change their generation so they can change the world. I know Sarah has started a fund for her Moses on October 6.

I’ll be running with her to raise money for those very doctors and nurses in the very same hospital who kept our baby alive. Who cared for their sweet Moses? I know Dr. Roe has started an organ donation drive and a registry to really make sure that organ donation happens. And my dad wasn’t given an organ years later. People create Creativity camera has taken the story of her life. People I’m not even naming. I work in the field to help people create resiliency because of what I’ve been through. I work to talk about the goodness of God in the hard times because I believe that we can thrive and be creative as we use the resilience to bring new life from our darkness, from our dark times, from our struggle. So no matter what you are going through today, I want to tell you that good can come from it and not cheap. Good, never cheap Grace. Never a moment that I look at Emily. Do I not miss my sweet Amy, but also I focus so hard, John, and I can never let Emily’s life be defined by the loss of Emily of Amy so she could grow and become her own person. I so want you to hear me, friends. We cultivate resilience because we look at our brokenness. We look at the struggle and we say God will use this for good in my life and in the lives of others. If I love it.

When a seed falls to the ground and dies and cracks open, we get the Oak tree. We get the Apple tree. We get the beauty of the butterfly from the cocoon. I talked about that in another segment. And so cultivating resilience means we take the time to name. We have the courage to name our struggle. We choose to continue on, even if it’s one breath, one tear, one. I got to wash my face and now do the next thing at a time. And then we choose creativity. When the time is right in due season, God brings goodness and beauty from the Ashes. And in that our resiliency grows. So we’re able to stand with our friends, to link arms with those who are hurting, to weep, with those who weep, to rejoice with those who rejoice to create new things, from our hardship that give life and hope to others. And so whatever is going on, it is a place that you can thrive and how you do that may be public, and it may be private. There is no right way to be creative. But growing through, growing through, growing in the midst is what resilience is all about. It is what happens between the before and after. Growth is not always easy, but I promise you, friend, it is always worth it. And cultivating resilience in those most difficult times that grief is unimaginable, that suffering, too powerful to name.

I’m sorry, too terrible to name the rest of that song. Is there’s a Grace too powerful to name? And so on this transformation Tuesday on my very first segment with Breakfast Champions morning, I want to tell you that I sit here with you in whatever you’re going through. If you need more hope, please, DM me if you need to celebrate DM me, I will celebrate with you if you need to be reminded on a day, a week, a month, a year from now that thriving comes that your resilience muscle was worth it, that you can use what God has done in your life and allowed in your life and brought from your pain to give promise and purpose and hope to someone else. I am here for you. Cultivating resilience is something that will take you through the heart to get to good. As I tell you, what happens in between the before and after and all that it’s costing you in this moment is worth it. All that God will use from it. You may never know as it ripples out and blessed others. And so at 958, that is my time. Thank you for letting me speak into your life. Thank you for those who came before this morning because I hope you have some hope today. This is Sarah. I just want to say thank you for sharing Amy and Emily with us. I’ve never heard you share this story on clubhouse. I know you said it was new, and it was so beautiful.

How you just opened your heart to us. You shared your soul. I could hear this calling for you to share this with us in your voice. And I’m so grateful that you let us in. I know that you helped people today. I know that you touched people today. And it was just such a beautiful share. We do have carmilia coming up at 1000 a. M. But since I don’t see her in the room yet, we can absolutely kind of pass around. Tara, I promise I’m coming to you next. I see you almost dancing on that mic. You’re clapping so furious. Thank you, Susie. They blessed me so much because it really was an act of obedience to share. Thank you, Sarah. Absolutely. Ms. Tara. Yes. I actually just want to take it back up. You said, Susie, my heart is so full. And I was sitting here. I actually parked my truck, put it in park and found some reception so I could hear you so clearly. And I want to honor you and take this time to honor you because that was one of the most beautiful and graceful, vulnerable shares I think I’ve heard on the stage. And you said so many things that I could really pull out of. But when you talked about the resiliency, the bending. I remember in my journey before I actually wrote my book, one of the doctors that I was speaking with said to me, what is your superpower?

And I said, I don’t know what my superpower is. And I thought about it for quite a while. And I said, I think it’s resiliency. It’s this beautiful little thing, like a tree in the vortex of a storm. That’s like bending and bending and bending. But it never breaks. And we all have that within us. And we find that through stories like your own. And so I just love you. I honor you. I cherish you. And I just want to thank you for being so vulnerable on stage because you just gave someone else the permission to do the same. And I love you on you for that. Thank you. Thank you. I love that image of bending and not breaking. I have felt that many times in my life, and it’s such a beautiful reminder of when you think about the pliability to bend and the strength to outbreak. Thank you, Tara. Doctor Row, did you want to say something? Yes, ma’am. Thank you so much, Susie, for being vulnerable, as everyone has mentioned, just the fact that you were able to get through that and do it with strength and Grace and honor your baby. It’s incredible. And I just want to say that to you. I’ve never heard that, didn’t know that when I met, you would have hugged you longer if I knew. But it also goes to show that everyone is going through things that people have no idea what they’re going through, what hurrying, what has been in their past, the pains, the grief. And it’s so important to meet people where they are in that space. And then you also allowed us to hear the opportunity of how you’ve risen through that. You still get through it even every day.

But you do it with Grace. So I am here to love on you, support you, hug you from afar. And I know our babies have met in heaven, and I just want to share that adaptive love with you today. So thank you. Thank you, Dr. Rowan. Let me call you and Sarah really quickly and say, I have never shared that story on clubhouse. I rarely share it publicly. I’ve shared it a few times when I’ve spoken, but the courage that you and Sarah have had to share your story. And then some conversations with Sarah over the last week or so have really compelled me to share it. And I had this moment as I was praying last night, as I knew I was going to share this this morning of our little ones and your grown son meeting in heaven. And it just made me smile and thought, there’s joy there today. And I would love for Moses and Giovanni and Amy to know each other and all the other sweet people who are on the stage who may have lost a loved one, that there is joy. And so you both in your vulnerability, reminded me that for all of my strength, I need to be willing to say and share my vulnerabilities as well. And so thank you both for that. And thank you for your work. Susie, I’m so grateful you said that. And another part of your story that really touched me is when you talked about the fact that this happened.

I think you said 30 years ago, even 20 years ago. And one of the things that I have found in my journey of being open. And I just want to acknowledge that for some people on stage and for some people in the room, this might feel really uncomfortable. You might be like I was here for motivation, education, inspiration. And I’m not used to people talking about losing their babies and losing their children. And this is really confusing for me. And one of the things that I think is so powerful when we talk about everyone feeling seen, herded, significant and everyone having a seat at the table. I was actually writing about this last night is that every year when I share my story, I generally have mothers reach out to me who feel that there is no one who they can share their babies with. And when we think about his parents, I don’t think there’s anything more special than sharing your child and telling a story about your child that brings a smile to your face. And especially this is something that is new. I think it was two years ago, I had a mom reach out to me over social media who had had a soborn and she kept her photo in a closet in her room because she didn’t think that people coming over to visit would feel comfortable with the photo being like where all of the other photos of the family were on the mantle, that they would find it distressing and disturbing. But that’s your child.

And I remember speaking with her about that because I was in a Facebook group with other mothers who had the same condition that I’ve had in my first baby. And there was a space where they would share photos of their so born because we have this moment. Or I think about Chrissy Teigen when she shared the photos with her baby, and people said, Is she attention grieving is not appropriate. And it’s so interesting that we have a culture where people can spend $25,000 on a maternity shoot and that’s appropriate or to share their healthy baby with the world. They can do that every birthday. And that’s totally cool. But these sometimes are the only photos and the only memories that a Mama has with their baby. And I think creating a space where we say your mother, her journey is beautiful, no matter where it ends, no matter where it starts. Your parenting journey is beautiful. We see you and we uplift you and we uplift your children in this space. And I want to thank you for taking the time to do that on this stage. And I know Dr. Roe has something else to share. And then I think what we’ll do because I do want to be really inclusive, and I’m sure that Carmilla is on her way. But let’s broaden it out a little bit and talk about rebellion.

I was going to actually take what you just said and broaden it. So let me do that real quick, because I do want everyone to hear the story is important in this exampleing, but all of us. Sarah, thank you. Let me back up here. I’ve got seven words, seven sentences. My ad is kicking in. Okay. Yes. Thank you for the space. Thank you for what you’re doing for other mothers. And I imagine if we all stop for a minute, you think of a hard that you’re going through that might be in the closet that you might be afraid to share or something that you’ve survived or thrived through that you’re not quite sure other people would be comfortable hearing about what you’ve done has been resilient. You’ve been so much bigger than the circumstance, and you could have let that define you. And it did shape you. Please hear a fun story about Emily. She’s one of the healthiest people in our family. She traveled the world on a mission, never got sick. She literally has an immune system of iron. And again, miraculous. And every baby is miraculous. Every child’s miraculous. But I want you to hear folks, that this idea of resiliency, this courage to name whatever your heart is, whatever is going on in your life that you’re wrestling with and that you. I love Tamra’s visual of spit in the eye of adversity, of the adversary. She called it.

But I want to invite in the bigger, even faith conversation, spiritual conversation to spin in the eye of adversity. And so you will not define me. You will not be the only track in my life. And so courage to name that is really important. And then continuing on whatever that looks like for you, it could be the lost business. That’s devastating. It could be a longing that isn’t meant. It could be whatever your heart is, it is a real heart. And when I work with my clients, I tell them this all the time because we tend to compare cards. Well, my life isn’t as hard as theirs. And what I say to them is this you would never look at a paraplegic and say, Well, at least you’re not a quadriplegic, because, yes, they have the use of two of their limits. But they’re dealing with being a paraplegic. We never want to quantify hard. We want to honor people’s heart and say, oh, my gosh, how are you dealing with? How are you handling? How can I be with you in your heart? How can I sit with you, walk with you, grow with you, grieve with you, and help you to the next place. So please understand in this conversation that became very specific. Let’s broaden it out. Please share your resilience. Please share some of the things you do to continue on.

The courage to name the courage to continue on, and then the choice to creatively use, whatever you’ve gone through to grow. And beyond that circumstance, those are really the three steps that I want to focus on. And all of us have a story about how we have had to pick ourselves up again, dust off our knees, wash our faces, bite back the tears and show up somewhere. Whether it’s at the breakfast table for our kids, whether it’s in the automotive industry for the next sale, whether it’s on the stage to keynote, whether it’s coloring with your kindergarteners, please hear all of it matters, and all of it is important because it is your story. So I want to tie that back to what Sarah was saying and really broaden it big and would absolutely invite more conversation around that I see Jackie and Tina flashing. Yes. I would love to add to that. And, Susie, thank you so much for your vulnerability and sharing. So what really helps me get through? And I’ve been through so much. I’ve been abandoned. And then the year that I was abandoned by my son’s father, eight months later, my mother passed away. I moved into my sister’s house with no money, had to pick myself up, and I had to figure out a way to make money and move out with my son. And I just remember those moments.

Those dark moments. I was crying in bed instead of asking why me, right? I kept telling myself, You’re almost at the finish line. You’re almost on the other side. Just keep going. And even in those moments when I talk about manifestation a lot, but I just want to take it back for just 1 second. It’s just those tiny moments that will help you get by. Just tell yourself I’m almost on the other side. I’m almost there. I’m almost there. It’s like running a marathon, right? You know, you’re going to get to the other side. So just keep pushing through and reminding yourself that this is not a permanent situation. And if you could say the same thing that I did, because that really helped me through, and that really changed my life. And still I’m human, right? So I still have moments where things come into my life. My father was diagnosed with cancer two weeks ago. This is the first time I’m saying it so openly. And I still keep saying, I’m going to get there. I’m almost there. I’m almost there. Everything’s going to be okay. So I just want anyone who’s going through something right now, in those moments where you’re really in pain and you’re crying, just tell yourself you’re almost at the finish line and you’re going to make it through. Susie again. Thank you so much for sharing. I’m Jackie, and I’m done speaking. Jackie, I love that. Thank you for your kind words and for everyone to just hear that.

That’s a great example of the continue on to say to yourself, I’m going to make it. I’m almost at the finish line. There’s moments where I’m like, I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. And that manifestation that’s speaking to ourselves that you talk so often about. It’s so important that we catch our inner dialogue. And I love that I’m almost at the finish line. One more breath, one more day, one more step, one more phone call. There have been times where I’ve kicked off the hours. And so I appreciate you saying that. And I also want to say, I’m so sorry about your dad’s diagnosis. We’ll keep him in our thoughts and prayers. Who else has something they want to share about resilience? Because we’ve all been there. I see. Tina. Go ahead. Hi, ladies. How are you? And I want to thank you. Guys for letting me speak. And I’m going to try to keep this as short as possible. But it feels like or have felt like in the past, when I was younger, when I had a tragedy or something happened in my life. Oh, my gosh. This is the worst point in my life. My father died when he was 49 years old. He was so close to me, so close. I actually was hospitalized two weeks in a mental Ward once he passed away. And at that point in my life, I’m like, oh, my gosh, this is horrible.

And then moving forward, I realized everything that’s horrible in your life just gets you stronger. For the next thing, my grandmother died super young, super close to me being a single mom, very challenging to raise two kids. And I gave my children the space to just live their dreams. And my son was murdered at 21 years old. But the one thing that I love is that he lives his dream. I’ve always been to go get her a hustler, and my children do the same thing. And my son opened a boutique sneaker store with a high end store. Very profitable, had a second store. And then one night, some jealous people came in, robbed the place, shot and killed them to death. We don’t know who it was. But the point of this whole story was the craziest thing was I had to look at the video to see if I knew who did it because everything was recorded. And as I was watching it for the very first time, when they shot him, he was still fighting. So it’s like, as he was dying, I’m seeing him punching and punching, and I’m cheering. And I’m happy. And I’m like, yes, go, even though you know what it’s like in my mind, I’m like, what’s going on? I was happy that he went out charging like a lion because he lived his dream. And I always taught him that fast forward. That happened five years ago.

I met my husband two weeks before I met my son. And then the marriage was horrible. My husband left me. So the point of this whole story is, I know it gets worse. It’s like, oh, my gosh. More and more and more. But I truly believe God put me through all these tragedies, all this horrible crap so that I can show other people that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and it makes you stronger. My son changed so many lives, and I didn’t even realize it until he was gone. The children, the day of the funeral makes you guys laugh. I wanted to get a really pair of cool glasses, so I think I bought I don’t know if it was Louis. Whatever. The glasses were, like, $300. I’m going to have to look great for the funeral because it was televised. It was huge. And I bought these glasses. And I didn’t cry once at the funeral because so many children, so many people came up to me, and I felt as if I had to be strong for them. They were coming to me for strength. So my purpose, I was going to say it felt as if I had to be strong for all these people. And now when I hear people’s story, it kind of frustrates me when people get mad, like, oh, I lost my job, okay? It’s just a freaking job. Get over it, get moving. And I believe that’s what makes me so strong. My superpower is my energy.

I have so much energy, and it just goes. And I always say my vibe is my tribe. So anyone that’s around me, you have to be powerful. You have to be strong, because if not, you’re just going to fall off the freaking wagon. I hope that shared someone help someone to realize no matter what you’re going through, you are going to get through it. God made us so strong. And I hate this thing. But it’s so true. God is never going to put you anything you can’t get through. And I’ll say sometimes when my mom gets mad, when there’s traffic, she’ll have, like, a heart attack, I’m going to need to interrupt you because we’ve got our next segment, and I don’t want people to lose. What you just said is that the strength to continue on and the impact of your son’s life on all those children. I want to highlight that. And so we have our next speaker on stage, and I appreciate you sharing, but I want to pause you here before you get into the story about your mom. So thank you for that. And thank you for the reminder. I’m so sorry about your son’s death, and I’m sorry for all you’ve gone through. I think that, as you said, your purpose and how God is using it is very powerful. And I appreciate you for that.

And if you want to connect with Tina more, feel free to reach out to her at this point in time. I do want to just wind this little bit up and just say, please feel free to reach out to those of us who have touched you. That resilience is a muscle you can work on every single day as you face hard. Be gentle and gracious with yourself. Keep moving forward. And I just want to thank everyone for their kind words. And thank you for being here. And that is motivation. And that is inspiration. That is education. Back to what Sarah said. Thank you for joining us on Breakfast with Champions. If you want to catch the live version, you can follow us on Clubhouse and listen from 05:00 a.m.. To 11:00 a.m.. Eastern time Monday through Friday, Saturday, six to noon and Sundays with our 111 Sunday service. Make sure you’re keeping up with breakfast with Champions and getting yourself a seat at the table.