Manders Mindset
Hosted by Amanda Russo, The Breathing Goddess, who is a Breathwork Detox Facilitator, Transformative Mindset Coach, and Divorce Paralegal.
Amanda's journey into mindset and empowerment began by working with children in group homes and daycares. She later transitioned to family law, helping people navigate the challenging emotions of divorce. During this time, Amanda also overcame her own weight and health challenges through strength training, meditation, yoga, reiki, and plant medicine.
Amanda also shares her personal journey, detailing how she transformed obstacles into opportunities by adopting a healthier, holistic lifestyle.
Discover practical strategies and inspiring stories that will empower you to break free from limitations and cultivate a mindset geared towards growth and positivity.
Tune in for a fun, friendly, and empowering experience that will help you become the best version of yourself.
Manders Mindset
91: Overcoming Childhood Turmoil: Forgiveness and Personal Integrity Part 1 with Debbie Greer Chamberlain
After enduring a childhood marked by abandonment and abuse, Debbie Greer Chamberlain joins Manders Mindset to share her inspiring life story and insights into forgiveness and personal growth.
Debbie shares her deeply personal journey, growing up in a group home after being abandoned by her parents, and how she transformed her pain into a life of forgiveness and self-responsibility. Together, we explore her five-step program focused on forgiveness, acceptance, self-awareness, determination, and faith, offering listeners actionable steps to shift their mindsets and embrace transformation.
Her story is not just about overcoming adversity, but also a powerful guide to building personal integrity and releasing emotional burdens from the past.
We dive deep into the transformative power of forgiveness—both toward others and ourselves—and how it paves the way for true healing and personal growth.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
•The importance of forgiveness in overcoming trauma.
•How Debbie’s unconventional childhood shaped her path toward personal integrity.
•Practical steps to let go of past hurts and focus on your future.
•Why holding on to anger and resentment can be more damaging than we realize.
•How to find personal closure even when an apology is never given.
Main Topics:
•[1:34] Introduction to Debbie and her inspiring book Stepping Stones.
•[3:13] Debbie reflects on her challenging upbringing and family dynamic.
•[7:22] The emotional impact of being abandoned and learning to forgive her family.
•[12:06] Discussing forgiveness: why it was easier for Debbie to forgive her parents than her ex-husband.
•[25:25] Debbie’s experience in a group home and how it shaped her strong work ethic.
•[50:00] A step-by-step method for praying for someone who hurt you to cultivate forgiveness.
To Connect with Amanda:
linktree.com/thebreathinggoddess
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To Connect with Debbie & her Resources:
•Connect with Debbie on Instagram:
@debgreerchamberlain
•Find Debbie on Facebook
•Buy Debbie's Book HERE on her Website!:
Stepping Stones: Creating Personal Integrity
Thank you for tuning in! If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to rate, follow, and share it with others. And don’t forget to leave a review – your feedback helps us continue to bring you inspiring content. See you next time!
Today's conversation is centered on forgiveness, and it was so powerful that we decided to make it a two-part episode. We knew going into it that it was going to be a deep dive and, rather than cutting it short, we split it up to give you time to fully reflect. So, before we get started, I want to ask you have you ever held onto a grudge or pain for so long that it felt like it was shaping who you are? What would it look like to let that go and embrace forgiveness, not just for those who hurt you, but for yourself? I hope this two-part series with Debbie Chamberlain helps you learn to forgive and let go of something that you are holding on to because it is no longer serving your highest and greatest good.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Manders Mindset Podcast. Here you'll find both monologue and interviews of entrepreneurs, coaches, healers and a variety of other people where your host, Amanda Russo, will discuss her own mindset and perspective and her guest's mindset and perspective on the world around us. Manders and her guests will help explain to you how shifting your mindset will shift your life and her guests will help explain to you how shifting your mindset will shift your life.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to Mander's Mindset. I'm your host, amanda Russo, and I am here today with a really special guest who I am so excited to speak to. I am here today with Debbie Greer Chamberlain, who wrote a very inspiring book that I happen to read, called Stepping Stones Creating Personal Integrity. It's a life changing book where she shares her five step program. Debbie grew up in an unconventional childhood, raised in a group home with over 100 children who were abused, neglected and abandoned. But Debbie has come out very positively on the other side of this. As someone who has worked at group homes, I really resonated with her story. She believes in the importance of developing personal integrity and responsibility without blaming other people. The steps in this book include forgiveness and acceptance, knowing who you are, determination, goals and faith. Debbie has also designed a program to present seminars to small groups based on the above topics, with relevant activities.
Speaker 1:I am here with Debbie today. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me and you read my book. How great, I knew you were going to. That's fabulous. Thank you, dawn, I loved it. You gave a lot of different analogies in the book, which I really loved because I relate to that. I love how you ended each chapter with suggested activities.
Speaker 3:Those are from the seminar. I just stuck them at the end of each chapter just in case somebody wanted to practice on their own.
Speaker 1:I love that like actionable steps. Right, that's awesome. So can you take us down memory lane and tell us about your upbringing, your family dynamic, however deep you want to go?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would love to. Well, at the age of six, our mother left and she never came back. I've never seen my mother since I was like six years old. There were seven of us children all together. Then we had a younger brother who died of SIDS very young. So it was the six of us who went on this journey together, and my mother left when I was six and a half and I'm the third child, I had a sister that was eight and a half, a brother that was seven and a half. I was six and a half. Kenneth Wayne would have been five and a half. Then there was Ricky four and a half, tammy three and a half and Jenna two and a half Tammy three and a half and Jenna two and a half and so she left and never returned. So we went to live with our father and stepmother and basically for the next four and a half years she beat one of us, or all of us, every day.
Speaker 3:When I was in the fifth grade, at 11 years old, we got off the school bus. It was the very last day of school and they had abandoned us and they had left, and so we were in a little house by ourself in Florida, right off the highway, and my grandparents lived in Nashville and they had been looking for us the whole time. My father came back to see us twice during that month. We lived alone, bringing every two weeks a big pot of goulash which is a Southern thing, isn't it? Like big noodles and hamburger and tomato sauce, and that's what he left us for two weeks for us to eat on. At the end of that month he surrendered us to the state and we ended up in a foster home in Florida.
Speaker 3:Meanwhile our grandparents from Nashville were looking for us. My grandfather came and found the judge in charge of the juvenile system. He went to his home, sat with him in his backyard with Jack Daniels which is a whiskey here in Tennessee, a very famous whiskey and cigars and taught that judge into finding us, which the judge did. And so our grandparents took us back to Nashville and they were too old and too poor to care for us. They placed us in the Tennessee Baptist Children's Zone right outside of Nashville. We arrived there on September the 17th and I was 11 years old and, if you want me to keep going, I'm dating all Americans.
Speaker 1:I'd love to backtrack a tad. Your mom, your biological mom, left when you were six and you haven't seen her since.
Speaker 3:You said no and he passed away about four years ago. So there's no chance. It's a unique story, story in itself, and I don't talk about it much because that side of the family just because there's no sense in making other people's lives miserable or making them look bad but that entire family totally deserted us. They knew where we were at the children's home that whole time, but they chose to disown us completely and act like we didn't exist. And it wasn't until many years later that my brother contacted them and they were protecting our mother because she had remarried and moved to Florida. She had a husband who never knew she had children and they all made sure that Lai was protected till the day she died.
Speaker 3:And yeah, but it is what it is. I feel really sorry for them because they missed out on some really great kids, because we all are really great kids, and they missed out on really meeting us. But that's their burden that they'll have to bear, not ours. And most of them have passed away now. I think there's one sister left. They finally did tell them about us, but there's no connection there anymore. That's pretty wild. They live right here in this town and everything that is wild.
Speaker 1:Sometimes just hearing it and it's like I get what you mean not airing and making them look bad but it's just like some people don't get why they didn't want anything to do with the girl.
Speaker 3:Well, they were protecting her. In this whole story. Everybody's protecting everybody but us. Our father protected our stepmother, our mother's family protected her and she protected herself. But you know, we were never a thought in the ones that might need protection in any way or form. You and I have talked about this, amanda. It is what it is. You know, life deals you things and you have two ways of looking at it. You can be crafty about it or you can go on and make a life of your own which you're proud of and just be forgiving. Move on. I mean, it serves no purpose to be angry and upset. I made a great life for myself and my children. I'm happy and content and I'm very happy with it. I would hate to be burdened with being bitter as angry. You know, bitterness looks good on no one. It's ugly and it aids you, I know.
Speaker 1:I'm like why.
Speaker 3:It's all that mess. You know that's no good and I'm too vain to go around looking yucky.
Speaker 1:So, Because I'm angry with everybody 're like no, oh, they're just giving me anybody, I guess I just I don't understand some people's mindsets when it comes to kids, because I look at kids differently.
Speaker 3:I get you're protecting whoever, but you have innocent children that don't have control over so much you, you know I've often thought about this because you know you always hear like a mother's love, a mother's love, father's love. You know. But you know, and I would always stop because I would think to myself like, well, I grew up with 120 kids that didn't have. So, trust me, not every mother or every father cares or wants to be a mother or father. And like every Mother's Day, every Father's Day, I've never given out a Mother's Day card. I've never given out a Father's Day card and I never will.
Speaker 3:And there's a little bit of sadness to that. But there are things in life I will never experience or get to Like, even the death my father and my mother both have passed. I only saw my father after he abandoned us three times and never had any serious conversations with them. When I have friends that have the death of their parents, it's so traumatic and horrible for them. I can understand the loss of someone, but I just can't understand how big that loss is. And again, there's a little bit of sadness that I even would miss out on that part. But the closest I can come to it is thinking about one of my children and them passing. And I know it's very different, but there are things that you miss out on in life, that's true.
Speaker 1:I related to you with the Father's Day card. My dad was never in my life, so I had bought the Father's Day cards, given them to my grandfather. But it's different, you know, and even when I was really young I didn't have grandparents' cards for Father's Day. So you're getting him a Father's Day card, but it's weird. You're making Father's Day gifts and bring something that says dad giving it to a man that isn't my dad. There's this weird sense of like I still have the male figure, but it's different. There's still some mourning.
Speaker 3:I went through a divorce when my children were almost nine and 11. That was a very hard time for me because it also shattered that dream of that thinking that I would have this family for the first time. But it was so important that my kids still love their father. There was a lot of betrayal and children aren't stupid but I just told them be open to having a relationship with your dad because I promise you one day you'll want it. Even as bad as my parents were, I still had that desire for it. I always say I gave them permission to love their father because I made sure they knew how important it was. Divorced couples who fight and use each other with their child in the center of it it's a terrible way to live. It's also a terrible negative impact on their children. So they should think long and hard before they do that, because a child wants to love their parent, no matter how bad they were, no matter what they did psychologically. It's better for them to be able to Right that's true.
Speaker 1:You mentioned in your book that you talked a lot about forgiveness, but you mentioned that it was harder for you to forgive your ex-husband versus your parents. Is there?
Speaker 3:You know, I think because I saw my mother as just another human being, especially when I went through my divorce. I knew she was poor, she was uneducated, she was abused by my father, and so I think she just ran and never came back trying to create a life of her own. She was 17 years old when she got pregnant with my sister. She had her when she was 18. My brother was 19. Obviously, she was 20 when I was born. She was 21 when my brother 22, 23, 24.
Speaker 1:Wow, so by 24,. She had a lot of kids.
Speaker 3:Well, she had seven who wouldn't run away when they got an opportunity right. My little sister and I would both have our children very it's like they were within a two-age span, a year of each other. We would always say, gosh, this is far raising babies, but they wouldn't go. We understand why she ran. We just don't understand why she never came back, because I don't think you can fully comprehend that. That's something very hard to comprehend.
Speaker 3:The forgiveness came very easy because I saw her as someone else. I could put her in a place of being someone else, whereas my ex-husband I think he shattered all those dreams that I'd worked so hard for, those dreams of having this amazing family with amazing kids. It was just harder, but I did. We're good friends. We have Thanksgiving together every year with my new husband and the kids to make it easier on them and there's no animosity, no hard feelings. I did forgive him and it's easy to be around him. Matter of fact, I was around the woman who he had an affair with when he married her. She was always with him at my children's graduations.
Speaker 3:You either are going to have some personal integrity in your life to treat people how you know you should. I always told my children that you will treat her with respect, because you are a reflection of what I taught you. It was important to me. She owed me nothing. I wasn't married to her. I didn't take vows with her. I took them with him. He was the only one who owed me something, so I wasn't going to blame her. That made no sense. She was who she was. She got him in the end, and good luck to her. Sometimes karma doesn't last that long. When you enter a relationship that way, it never does, you know. So there's another lesson to learn there.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you saw your parents more as human as opposed to your ex-husband.
Speaker 3:I think that's because I removed them from being attached to me. It was harder to remove him from being attached to you.
Speaker 1:Why do you think that was?
Speaker 3:Oh, I think it's because the dreams were so crushed as a little girl. When you're in that much chaos and abuse and you're just so happy to be out of it, it's a mindset, without even realizing it, that I was just so happy to be out of it that even the children's home, a place with 120 children who were just mean as they could be most, and a really tough life, was so much better than being beat every day and those kind of things that you know. I think it creates a gratitude in and with him. There really later did become a gratitude of not being married to him anymore, but I still have my two wonderful children.
Speaker 3:I am now married to an amazing man who gave me the one thing I desired more than anything. I always thought that was this amazing family, but instead it was safety and he gave me a safe place. He gave me a safe environment and that man would do anything in the world for me. He adores me and I'm like his pretty, pretty princess and I'm tough as nails, but I'm nailed around him. He gave me. The biggest desire of my heart was a place of safety that no one had ever given me. I'm so grateful for that. You know, I mean that was the silver lining and what I went through. And you know that Other marriage being destroyed and so you know it's always silver lining you got to look for. You know and you change.
Speaker 1:That's true. Can we backtrack a tad? Um, I would love to go back into. You started living with your dad and your stepmom and that was for about a month.
Speaker 3:You said we were with them for four and a half years when they they abandoned us. We were in the house, then you were alone for a month. We went to live at the children's home at the end of that summer, and so that's where I grew up. When I arrived there, it was September 17th and school had already started. There were six dormitories, segregated by age and gender.
Speaker 3:I was in what was called the middle-aged girl building, because that house the girls from age 10 to 13,. I was 11. So I was on the very top floor because I was one of the younger ones of that group, and it was two large rooms that had these little iron cot-like beds and a big old bathroom and lots of stairs, and so my brothers and sisters were all living at different dorms too. My brother was in the middle-aged boy dorm, my little brother was in the little boy dorm, my two little sisters were in the little girl dorm. My older sister was in the big girl dorm because she had just turned 14. So she was in the bigger girl dorm. So we were all separated. We didn't live under the same roof, and I got to see her at early in the morning when we walked over to the cafeteria to make breakfast for over 100 children about 120. And I was 11 years old, getting up every morning at 5, walking across campus and making breakfast.
Speaker 3:So that old Southern saying I walked two miles up a hill and two miles down was a joke in the United States. When I hear that joke I kind of laugh because I literally really had to do it. And then we'd walk back, catch the bus for school, go to school alone with all the other children in the community wearing someone else's clothes because they were hand-me-downs. It was always a little awkward. If somebody's looking at you like I think that's my shirt. Those things change you and define you. Later, like now, like all my friends, they tease me because I am never underdressed. I'm always overdressed for every occasion. I do not own a t-shirt, I do not own a pair of sweatpants. You won't pitch me dead in there. You know I'm dressed all the time and they're always like like they go, what's casual? And I'll show up and they'll say that's her casual. Somebody will say what is she dressed? Go, well, it's casual. And I'll show up and they'll say, well, that's her casual. Somebody will say, well, she dressed like that, that's Deb's casual, that shaped me.
Speaker 3:When you're wearing other people's clothes and you have these dreams of doing something and seeing yourself as something different and better, it shapes you and it changes you and you either keep those dreams alive or you don't. I kept them alive. I protected them. When I had an opportunity to make money and buy my own clothes, I bought nice clothes. I still do this today and you know it's important to me. I don't like my hair messed up. I don't like going out without my makeup. I'm very Southern like that. I'm always pulled together and that's one of the things that shaped me.
Speaker 3:A very strong worth ethic is the other thing you know. When you're a little girl at 11 years old cooking breakfast for over 100 kids and then you get off the bus in the afternoon, do your homework and walk back over to that cafeteria to make dinner for 120 kids, you learn some kind of worth ethic for 120 kids. You learn some kind of work. You learn something very deep in you that you have to earn your way, that nobody's going to do it, and those lessons also stick with you To this day. I hate cooking. I hate it. I'm a terrible cook and I still cook for an army. My husband every night is like who's joining us? And I go no, it's just us.
Speaker 3:He goes okay, guess we're throwing the rest away because he don't eat leftovers. So I try not to overcook, but I but I've always done that was the negative side to opening those big cans okay now do you remember how it felt that month? You guys were alone oh honey, we had a blast. We had an absolute blast I.
Speaker 1:I was thinking you'd be scared, shitless.
Speaker 3:Most people do, but we didn't. We had an absolute blast. As a matter of fact, when I was doing a podcast last week, the guy asked me the same question. He was dumbfounded too and I went to see my brother who? The brother was 10, almost 11 months older than me, burl Clothes. I said the guy asked me about our time at the house and he said did you tell him we had a blast? And I said I did.
Speaker 3:I know he's crazy to everybody, but when you're a little kid, who is, you know, jerking your bed in the middle of the night and thrown to the floor and kicked and hit for no reason whatsoever and you never know when it's coming, when they make you sit in a corner and they slam your head into that wall or kick you in the back every time they pass you. So you're always just tense and you're waiting for it. When you know you get drugged through the house by your hair and beat with a hairbrush all the time and you watch your brothers and sisters going through this every single day and you never speak a word to your father or your stepmother other than yes, sir or no sir, because you just aren't allowed to. Then all of a sudden they leave. We we became kids. This this house was small. It had a flat roof, like a lot of houses in Florida did. We'd climb up on the roof and jump off of it like we were Dracula and chase each other around. My father had been a race car driver in Nashville and so we loved racing, and so we took the lawnmower and we made a figure eight and we act like we were cars and we raced each other. We made a figure eight and we act like we were cars and we raced each other. I was Walter Wallace, who used to be a race car driver among Tonga. My brother was Cuckoo Marlin.
Speaker 3:Each of us had our special person that we liked and we would race. We'd play cowboys and Indians and we'd bite over who was going to be the cowboy and the Indian and the chief. I always wanted to be the Indian because I had a pair of moccasins when I was at the children's home that somebody brought. They were new and I wore them almost every day until I wore the bottoms out. I put cardboard in them so I could still wear them, and the children's home one of my teachers saw that and she towed the children's home. So my house parents made me throw them away and I was so mad because I love those moccasins and I was like look, I'm Oklahoma, I know right. So we fought over who was going to be the Indian chief, and me and my younger brother we'd always fight over that and he'd say well, I'm a boy and I'd go, but I'm older.
Speaker 3:So we had a blast, other than when we were hungry. We never got to be kids and we were disappointed when our father showed back up. It was scary because we were like, oh no, we thought you were gone, and as a little kid you don't think about all that other stuff, you just know nobody's beating you in the middle of the night or when you get off a school bus. There was never any rhyme or reason to it. There was. You never knew why, and so that's really hard, because you can't change your reactions or your actions if you don't know why. That's a really place to be in, you know. And so as a kid we took the opportunity to be little kids, which we'd never gotten to do, so it was a blast.
Speaker 1:And you know that makes sense. You know I worked at a group home for about three years and I saw so many different types of kids we didn't have as many as over 100, but I used to have coworkers say to me all the time like I feel so bad for these kids and I'm like I don't feel that bad for them because, yes, part of it sucks that they're in the residential program, but you don't know what they're coming from. Like they have food, they have a roof over their head, they can shower, they can play basketball outside, they have video. Okay, these 16 year old boys can't be smoking weed, but it's not awful. It wouldn't be better for them to be with the family? Sure, but you don't know what they came from. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I had one kid say to me once and I remember this very specifically in like it wasn't physical abuse and it was they neglected him so much he wouldn't eat. He hadn't eaten in days and all he wanted was any type of food. It didn't matter what. It was right. They're just glad to have this freedom right, which it seems like that's what you're saying it was a freedom and it was safety.
Speaker 3:You know whether, even though we were by ourself to us, we saw it as safety because somebody, an wasn't beating on us all the time, and you know we have very fond memories of it. Now, as an adult, looking back, I'm like oh my gosh, no telling what jumping off the roof. My gosh, we did a broken leg. There was this canal, because in Florida they have canals and they had snakes and stuff. We used to take our little sisters. I know it's not funny now, but we would take them and swing them over and act like we were going to throw them in there.
Speaker 3:Now I'm horrified. I'm like, oh my gosh, we were such silly little kids, but we were just being children. What if one of them had slipped? Man, there's a lot of really dangerous and poisonous snakes in Florida. We just thought it was funny. We were little kids just swinging them because they were little. But when you think back, like my little children, I would be mortified. First of all, I'm not going to leave them by themselves ever. There's a lot of good times. But when you think back you're like, wow, that's wasn't the best environment.
Speaker 1:And now you said your dad gave you guys up to the state after they just come and pick you up. Yeah, they came up to that little house with my father.
Speaker 3:He met them there and surrendered us to them, to the state. That's when we went to a foster home for probably about another month. My brother's so much better at this. He's got a memory that's like an elephant. He doesn't forget anything. But when we went back to when my grandparents found us and took us back to Nashville by the time we went to the children's home it was September 17th. They left the day we got off the school bus the very last day of school. They left the day we got off the school bus the very last day of school. This whole process took place during that summer of me being 11 years old. So we ended up in the children's home probably about two, two and a half weeks after school had started. Okay, yeah, for that year, yeah.
Speaker 1:So that whole thing was probably a summer about three months long.
Speaker 3:yeah, how was the children's home? It saved our lives, amanda. It wasn't perfect by any means, but the people were loving and caring most of them and taught me a lot of really great lessons in life. When we first arrived, scared to death I had just seen the movie the Littlest Princess, which was Shirley Temple, where she was at a school and her father they thought he was dead. He was in the army and so they put her in the attic. I immediately thought I was going to be put in an attic.
Speaker 3:It was a tough life but coming from what we came from, I don't look at it as bad by any means. I had to learn to navigate a lot of different things. I learned to navigate people because with 120 personalities, trust me, you learn some skills pretty quick. Most of them were really damaged children, so there was so much anger and there was so much violence. But I get that now, as an adult and later growing and maturing, when I think back. How else did you expect them to act when all they had ever seen was violence and out of control actions and reactions to everything?
Speaker 3:When we first moved there, the houseparents were an older couple, retired in their 60s trying to take care of these reality children. They were outnumbered, maybe 20 kids to one set of houseparents or women who were old maids, who'd never been married, never been mothers, and they were responsible for. Like. Miss Broome was in charge of my floor, thank goodness she had the littler ones, like me, 10 and 11, so we were very sweet. She was a sweet woman.
Speaker 3:In 1973 and 74, the children's home started building cottages. They started tearing down the dormitories and bringing the numbers down to probably about 80 to 90 children during that time and my family was one of the very first to move into a new cottage, which means for the first time we all slept under the same roof, ate at at the same table. I no longer had to cook for 100 kids. Instead I was cooking for eight. We had a set of houseparents of Pilkingtons and they were wonderful, like our mother and a father, and so a lot of the violence stopped because we were in a smaller, contained environment. That was ours, my brothers and sisters and one other small family, the Coopers were brave. They became like brothers and sisters to us.
Speaker 3:When you go from living in an environment of eight children versus 40, that's going to take care of a lot of problems pretty quickly, you know, and it did. But it kind of settled everybody down to more of a calmness, a feeling of being in a normal family instead of this big group environment. That was really nice, and I was a singer so I traveled and sang at the churches. They had what they called Mother's Day offerings every May, because the children's home was supported only by churches and donations from what they call friends of the children's home, and they took no subsidies from the government. The government was not involved in any way.
Speaker 3:It was a private home and so there were no psychiatrists. There were no. I think there was one social services like social worker on the whole campus of 100 kids. No one ever asked us what happened to us. When we arrived there and when I left to go to college, no one still had ever asked what happened to us. It was like read your Bible, go to church, you'll figure it out. And some of us did, but most didn't.
Speaker 1:That's interesting.
Speaker 3:It's interesting to me that they didn't ask only because I've seen the process and even been involved in the intakes when clients have admitted. I remember yours was not a private home, yours was probably a state rent right and that's the difference. I'm 66 years old, so that's a long time ago. They didn't really have social services that got involved for a very long time. I kind of miss that whole era of that even being a possibility. I was the only one to go to college. There were 22 of us who graduated that year. No one else went and I know why they were so afraid of the unknown and nobody ever told you you were smart or you could do it. I was scared to death but I had two choices I could leave and get a job, or I knew I was maybe. If I really applied myself, I was smart enough to do it. I was maybe. If I really applied myself, I was smart enough to do it Turns out that's where I learned I was pretty darn smart.
Speaker 3:I got to go free to Belmont University, which is a great school here in Nashville. It was a private Baptist college at the time. It isn't anymore. I got to go free. They dropped me off four weeks after I graduated from high school they packed my little box of things, dropped me off at the van in the parking lot, said have a good life. And that was it. I was on my own. I lived there during the spring and I took scuba diving, sailing, tennis skiing, because I had to take classes during the summer to live there, because I had no home to go to. I lived straight through and ended up with about five and a half years worth of credit of college, for you know, in about three and a half years.
Speaker 3:That's where my adulthood started, right there, at 18 years old, somebody dropping me off with a box and going have a good one. Which is also why, a few years ago ago, I went back to the children's home to mentor and do some fundraising and I helped them write a program that was traditional. I mean, I'm sorry, transitioning the children out of the children's home, because they said you did so well and most didn't, and most didn't know very few of us did well and I said well, don't drop somebody off with a box and tell them to have a good life, let's try some mentoring, someone they can call If I messed up, there was no one to call. That made me a real follower. It made me very conscious of every decision I made, because there was no way I'm going to bail me out. There was no one, and I was smart enough to know that. And so that's how I lived my life, making sure I didn't make any big mistakes.
Speaker 1:Do you think it helped not talking about your experiences at the children's home?
Speaker 3:It wouldn't help other people, but for me it didn't harm me because I'm so incredibly focused that I was going to make a life for myself, and being a real follower helped that. And so I didn't even start looking at my life until about 45 years old when I started doing a lot of personal development. I remember a preacher saying to me how come someone like you, who came from nothing I've been in sales my whole life, sales and relations and business development why do you always go back when the others, you know they let one door slam in their face, they stop and they just shut down. And I said I'm not really sure why. And he goes. Well, once you determine that, then that will be your message to the world. And it made me curious, like why do I behave how I do? Why am I always behaved like that? And so then that's when I started opening those little Pandora boxes and looking in them and, man, I must have sobbed for two and a half years. But I came out on the other side saying girlfriend, let me tell you, you always knew you were smart. You always knew you were strong, but you are so much smarter and stronger than you ever realized, so don't you ever let anyone tell you any differently or behave in any way that doesn't display that it was good once it got over that two and a half year hump.
Speaker 3:But it's also when I started writing my seminar program and when I started writing the book, because it did become a message that I wanted to give out to people. And that's why and I've always had friends I'm the friend that everybody comes to get advice to people and that's why and I've always had friends I'm the friend that everybody comes to get advice. What would you do? Because I'm a real good advice giver and I'm very kind, but I'm very honest. But I don't care if they take it or not, so I'm not going to get mad at them if they don't. Other friends are like I gave them advice and they wouldn't take. Wouldn't take it. Well, guess what? You don't get to decide if they take it or not. You just give it and move on. And my friends are all supportive and they would say you're already doing this for us. Do it for other people like we're the first person that you know, you're the first person we call, you know you're the person we want to talk it over with Because, first of all, I know how to keep a secret, because when people entrust you with their secrets and you make a promise to keep those, then you do, because there is no integrity in not doing that.
Speaker 3:And there was a situation where one of my very best friends, who was one of my biggest supporters, who, on her deathbed when she was dying of cancer or not really her deathbed, but two weeks before made me promise I'd finish my book. And because she kept saying and a year later on, the date of her death is when my book came out and was published I remember saying to her husband do you think she knows? And he says she knows. She asked me not to tell them that she had cancer and I didn't. They were so mad and I said I've kept every secret of yours. Why would I not do the same for her? Do you want me to tell your secrets? And they said well, no, I go. Then you have to honor that about everybody else as well. Right, and people have to remember that If someone wants to, they'll tell you, and if they don't, they won't.
Speaker 1:So it's true. Yeah, now, in terms of the children's home you mentioned, it got smaller. Did you have house parents when it was big or just when it got smaller?
Speaker 3:well your parents, when it was very like, in the dormitory we had an older woman who was probably in her 70s her name was miss broom and she had never been married she'd never had and so she was in charge of our floor the Williams, which were an older couple they must have probably been in their 70s. They were in charge of the girls that were 12 and 13 on the bottom floor, the older ones. So it was a very hectic time because most of these elderly couples were not equipped to take care of children who were as damaged as a lot of the kids were. You know, yeah, no, I started getting younger house parents as they built the cottages, and so that was nice because they take you to the movies. We had these vans and they follow us up in vans take us to the movies. Take, we had these vans and they'd follow us up in vans, take us to the movies, take us to the. You know, even going to church was fun because they'd buy us candy Saturday night before we'd sit on the back pew of the church and eat candy. So we went camping Now, I'm not much of a camper because they don't have electricity, so I went, but I wasn't that thrilled. Okay, no, but you know there were a lot of things like that became. They would take us in the van to see the football games. We didn't always get to do that because there was no way to get there. When we were in the dormitories they'd take a big old bus and drop us off and then we'd meet back at the bus to go back home.
Speaker 3:My husband went to the same high school I did. He's one year ahead of me and we didn't really know each other, even though we were around each other. He's from Franklin, he was born and bred here. So he's always like do you remember this? I go. Do you forget where I was raised? I didn't get to go to the dairy and hang out on the square with all the kids. You get to do stuff like that. Would you ever go and have a sandwich at? No, I didn't. And he you know he forgets that my life was not like his. It wasn't normal, you know, like it's normal where all the kids meet up on a Friday night or Saturday night and stuff like that. So I'm always just kind of shaking my head at it and going no.
Speaker 1:I didn't do that stuff, Fair enough. I've heard of different programs that have what they call house parents, but any of the residential programs I've worked at there's never been house parents. I feel like that would make it seem more home-like. I could be completely wrong.
Speaker 3:It gave it more of an ormacy and more feeling. Yeah, it did. Yeah, and some of them were so amazing Like the McClendons. Well, he was the assistant director, I think. Anyway, he's the director. His wife was beautiful and tall Funny story. She was wife was beautiful and tall Funny story. She was so beautiful and so tall and they were the sweetest people.
Speaker 3:Anyway, my first year of high school I had lost a whole bunch of weight. I'd started running, and so she had taken me that summer and said do you want some new clothes for school? I was going to be going from middle school to high school in the 10th grade and I said, yeah, I would. So she took me and she was a seamstress, so she was going to make me some things. When we got there she was like so what do you want? And I go I want a suit. She's like you want a suit for school? Yes, I want a suit, and I want a brown suit. She's like are you sure? And I'm like yes. So the first day of school I get off the bus, have on this little brown suit and somebody goes who's the young teacher? Of course I never wore the suit again, but can you imagine.
Speaker 3:But that was the kind of innocence I had about things like I wanted to look like Miss McClendon because she was tall, she was beautiful, whereas I'm only 5'2, so I'm very short. I needed all the help I could. She was. I always paid attention to the people around me who I admired or respected. They became an image in my head of how I wanted to present myself. I know, looking back now then I was just thinking, well, I just want a brown suit, so I'll look like Ms McClinton.
Speaker 3:I think back on that now and there's some really funny stories like that about this innocence of me that always kept real intact. Like the first year I went to his children's home and I ordered a doll, a little walking doll where you hold its hand and it walks. Now I'm 11. All the girls are so mean If they're already old, and the boys and they're making fun of me for having this doll. I guess we don't play with dolls anymore, right? And you know my graduation present for graduating, along with my box that they packed, I asked for a rocking chair and someone asked for a rocking chair to go to college when my head rocking chair went on.
Speaker 3:I still have that rocking chair today. I still have that rocking chair today. My daughter took it to college for her apartment and then gave it back to me six months ago. She just had her first little baby, my first little grandchild, and our husband refurbished it and brought it back to my house for when they visit Zuck and Rocker. I've had that rocking chair for 48 years, but just little things like that. That made no sense to no one else, but they made perfect sense to me Through growing up and leaving the children's home. A lot of things didn't make it, but that rocking chair always made it for some reason, and so sitting in one of my bedrooms right now it's crazy, makes no sense.
Speaker 1:Now, you mentioned in your book how some of the people in the children's home helped you with forgiveness. How did they help you?
Speaker 3:with forgiveness on Wednesdays, tuesdays or whatever there was. You know, we just lived in church and these people that were in the church, most of them, were so loving and kind. They didn't have to care about us but they did and they gave us a sense of importance. They gave us a sense of acceptance, more than anything, because the community we lived in was a very affluent community. We lived in was a very affluent community. Brentwood, tennessee, is where all the country music singers lived, all the titans, all the predators, anybody, you know, all the very wealthy people lived there.
Speaker 3:So, as a little girl going to school with children who came from a very wealthy environment and I'm maybe wearing one of their dresses one day to school which they donated to the children's home, no, no, but the majority of people there were some who were nasty and mean, like I remember one little girl asking me to come home with her. I was so excited because we could go on weekends and visit a family that were called sponsors. He came back the next day and said my mama says you can't come home to me because you live at that mean place where all the mean kids are. I'm just like. I'm just devastated, like what. I'm not a mean kid, you know, but there were things like that happened. But the majority of people were loving, were kind to us and they always say about the innocence of a child. The impressions that are left on them is what carries them through. And the impression left on me were that people were kind, people were loving, people were caring and that's what I held on close to and that's where my gratitude came from. But being raised in the church is where my forgiveness and my faith came from. It's all those things. I developed, this strong faith. The faith was there before I went to the children's home.
Speaker 3:But the forgiveness, because God expects us to forgive, he asks us to, and he asks us to because you know, and people get so confused about that, well, I can't forgive them. They were so mean or they were so nasty. Well, it's not for them, it's for you, because unforgiveness and bitterness is so ugly and damaging and it does you no good, it serves no purpose that will bring anything good into your life. I think God knows that and that's why he says forgive. I just think it's a really important part of life and about anybody's journey. Like I said before, bitterness looks ugly on people and you can feel it on them at times, don't you agree? Haven't you run across people that are so bitter and angry and you're like what in the world has happened to them that they can't let go? So it serves no one? I don't think you know I get Now.
Speaker 1:In your book you mentioned the best technique that you learned for forgiveness from a wise man.
Speaker 3:Can you share that you need to do is pray for him and his mistress, who became his wife, every single day for 28 days. And I don't mean Lord, help me to forgive, because that's how everybody prays. What I want you to pray and how I want you to pray is like you're praying for your best friend, a loved one or a family member. I want you to pray to ask that they have favor. I'm a big believer. When you ask for favor for someone from God, that's putting a blessing on them, that's going to God on their behalf and saying you know, I want you to put favor all over them, I want you to put your blessings all over them.
Speaker 3:It's almost impossible, but it's an amazing thing that starts to happen. Your heart starts to soften and your mind starts to open up. Something just beautiful happens to where you get to on the other side of it and the resentment and the anger and the. You know just that bitterness, it's just gone. And the anger and the. You know just that bitterness, it's just gone.
Speaker 3:And you know if you can make it to that first week or two and not choke on that. And you know and really believe it and really feel it and want it. And you're not going to the first week, trust me, but you eventually do, and I'm a praying person. I do my devotion every morning and my devotion and my meditation and just getting myself right every morning, and still to this day, I pray for him every morning and along with praying favor over my children and praying for favor over my brothers and my sisters and my friends and you know, and that type of thing, and so he's included, you know that type of thing, and so he's included, you know so that's I really liked when I read that.
Speaker 1:And I resonated a lot when you mentioned the 28 days, because all growing up my mimi used to say to me like pray for them, pray for their forgiveness, and I I don't know how long I would do it for because I was young, but I can always remember I'd never do it long enough. I was always like frustrated and I'd be, I don't really want to be praying for them and I eventually not. But like you said at a first week, you are not going to want to be free. You got to keep doing it and then, by 28 days, I was like, wow, you know, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3:You know that it would. Psychologically it's a habit, it's a forming a habit too. Yeah, you know, and it changes. You know your habits change too if you'll practice them for what it is three weeks to four weeks. And so I guess it's the same concept. I don't know this gentleman who was a really good friend of mine and I considered a mentor he was so fascinating. It's the one who told me about that, and so I and I've always stuck with that.
Speaker 3:And when I have a hard time with forgiveness which I really don't anymore because I'm about old enough now that things just roll off my back because I don't have time for it. And so if most people take on the hardships and the feelings of other people which I don't understand, that like I've got enough in my life to contend with. You know I have a brother who has cancer. I've been taking care of a husband I just found out had kidney cancer and he just had surgery that you know I'm starting a new business. You know I don't have time to take on other people's struggles and, more importantly, to be in their business, like my general business, and then your life won't be so weighed down with stuff like people say.
Speaker 3:Well, can you believe my friends? Can you believe it's none of my business? I don't care. I have to live under my roof. I don't care, I don't care what you do with your own life and your life. You live it how you see fit, because we all have a journey. And guess what? We do not get to decide anybody else's journey but our own. And if most people would spend time worrying about their own journey instead of worrying about everybody else's, they might do a better job at having a better journey right yeah, yeah it is.
Speaker 1:I completely agree. We've all got enough stuff going on like why are you worried about other people's craft? You know I had, I had somebody.
Speaker 3:And that's not people that you care about. I'm not talking about people that you care about and you want to comfort them. I'm talking about somebody that, yeah, I mean like stop you know, stop you know. And most people I find that worry about everybody else's business. Their lives are so in the toilet anyway that I'm like take the time and figure out your own stuff here, because your life's not really a shining example for anything or anyone.
Speaker 1:Now you mentioned also about the work ethic that you developed through the children. Now, making breakfast was that a chore you had to do or was that like something you voluntarily did?
Speaker 3:No, if we wanted to eat, that's all we had to do. Okay, everybody had to. And you would be on different sections, like for a week, like one week you would be doing gathering all the dishes and putting them in these huge big commercial dishwashers and then these huge big commercial dryers on these big racks and as a little girl you know you get burned from the steam and stuff. But it'd be buttering toast or it'd be sitting the table or, you know, at night it would be cutting the lemons or setting the table or opening the vegetables.
Speaker 3:When you're 11 years old and I was a little bitty kid I'm a little woman, as it is so there wasn't a lot of the really heavy things that I had to do. The older girls were required to do those and by the time I became an older girl that I would have gone to the older dorm, those and by the time I became an older girl that I would have gone to the older dorm, I ended up getting to go to one of the very first cottages that was built. So I kind of escaped that. But yeah, no, you had no choice, it was your job and if you wanted to eat, you helped. I always say, my poor little children would have starved to death.
Speaker 1:If you have an, 11-year-old, can you imagine I could barely get mine out of bed in the mornings to go to school.
Speaker 3:I'm not. You know they would have starved to death and so would everyone else around them. You know they would have not done that.
Speaker 1:So how would you say it helped you develop such a strong, woke ethic if, like you, were required to do these chores?
Speaker 3:Well, I think a worth ethic is something that's taught, and I think the mistake that we make nowadays with our children and I even made it with mine I wasn't, as you know, letting them be passive about not earning their own thing. I wasn't, as you know, letting them be passive about not earning their own thing, but I wish I'd done a better job, because our tendency is to make sure our children do not have to go through the hardships that we did, right and so, and I think, as parents, we forget sometimes that hardship is what builds character, it's what builds character, it's what builds reliance, it's what builds strength, it's what builds your ability to fend for yourself, think for yourself and, you know, for all practical purposes, at some point take care of yourself. And we do it by not introducing and raising our children in a way that they can get those, you know, examples to be able to, you know, learn those lessons that are so valuable in life. You know, I used to say to my children they'd always say that's not fair and I go, nothing in life fair. Get over it. You want you wondering another story about how unfair. No, no more stories. And it's really funny. And just a quick little note here. You know my daughter has never read my book but she's an incredibly intelligent, beautiful woman who's an attorney at one of the most prominent law firms in Nashville. But she won't read my book because she said I can't take the stories and I had to remind her. You've already heard the stories she goes, but I don't think I can see them in print.
Speaker 3:It was so funny when I was doing volunteer work for the children's home and she was 14, 15 years old. Well, in july they'd have a birthday party at these people who were friends of the children's home. They had this big pool and every july they would bring all the children and this was like, uh, about five years ago, and so that in the children's home only had 27 kids by that time it was closing down and it had since closed down last year from that location where we were. They have now turned it into a subdivision, but anyway she went with me so it had to be a little bit longer that when she went, because she was about 15 or 16 years old, I guess. So they made little individually birthday cakes for each of the kids and I was a speaker that day and you know talking to the children about.
Speaker 3:You know that they can be anything in life, that they want to be at their work hard and have a good work, that they not let you know their past defying room and that type of thing. And when we left there, when we got in the car to go home, my daughter looks at me. She starts crying and I said what are you crying? And she said just seeing that I never realized, you never had prophecy, you never had a room of your own. You never had. And you know, and I just said I never thought about those things when you're in the midst of it, own you never had. And you know. And and I just said I never thought about those things. When you're in the midst of it, you don't.
Speaker 3:But I think that was the day she had a real new respect for me and as her mother and the strength that I had because it takes children a while to get there. Like I love that she's a mother. Now she no longer rolls her eyes at me. You know Like I'm a very smart woman to her. Now it is great to you know, have that back again to a little kid who adored you when she was little. And then they go through this stage where they don't think you're quite that bright anymore and so it's just nice to be back there. But you know that was the first time She'd heard the stories her whole life, but that was the first time witnessing it and her imagining like what it could have been like, you know, and it always stayed with me that thought. You know, you can tell people stories but they don't understand until they can see them, you know yeah, it's different when you're looking at it almost.
Speaker 3:It almost makes it more like real life yeah, right, you know, but there were these 27 kids and she was like, oh my, you were one of them. And especially what? Remember the story I told you about the little girl who was saying I want to see my mom, but I think I hate her. And I asked her to look at her mom as a little girl who'd been damaged and could she see her as that instead of seeing her as her mother? And that was the same day for that conversation that I had and my daughter was listening, that conversation that I had and my daughter was listening, and so, but just reminding this little girl that one day, if she worked really hard and did the you know things that she needed to do, like build her character, build her strength, build her integrity, that one day she could go back and see this mother when she was able to handle this mother, because it doesn't, she was able to handle this mother Because it doesn't mean you have to go away forever, and that's what I want these children to understand.
Speaker 3:You do sometimes, to protect yourself, have to walk away from these family members that are so destructive and aren't going to be good for you or your life, but if you work really hard and become very strong and very capable. Then you can go back and you can interact with them and some fashion that you can still protect yourself from them. You know, and I wanted them to understand that because I I had to do the same thing.
Speaker 1:You know Now what family members are you referring to? Specific family members or just in general?
Speaker 3:No, my brothers and sisters and I are very close, but I just, you know, I saw my father again, my stepmother. They came to my home I've only saw them three times. They were still in touch with my home. I've only saw them three times. They were still in touch with my grandparents and they came to my home with my two children when they were five and seven and I'd already practiced the forgiveness thing. So that wasn't the hard part. But the only thing I was concerned about is I would not allow them alone with my children, period. And I didn't.
Speaker 3:But it was a very superficial meeting. We were all having lunch and dinner together. They had come into town and I had the big house and the family. So everybody came over there and you know. But you know I sat in a room with them and I can remember my children asking me how I could do that, you know. But you know I sit in a room with them and I can remember my children asking me how I could do that, you know. And I said, you know I just can now because there's nothing I need or want from them and I feel very sorry for them because they're really just very damaged people and, but I want nothing really to do with them. I don't want them as a part of my life. But I could sit in a room with them for two to three hours and be okay with that, but they'll never become a part of my life, nor would I want them to, you know yeah, no, I do.
Speaker 1:I think you made a really great point when you mentioned about seeing them as like a traumatized, younger version of themselves, whether it's a child, a toddler, whatever and like removing them as your parent, removing, like you, from the situation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, and I think that's one of the best ways to be able to do that, especially if you know that one of your family members went through a lot of trauma or something when they were young. Or, you know, some didn't. Some are just mad. I mean there are bad people in young. Or you know, some didn't. Some are just mad. I mean there are bad people in the world, you know. Not everybody wants to acknowledge that, but I believe that to be true. Yeah, you know, but I think most are just damaged people. You know, and I try and stay away from those really bad people. I feel the energy of them and I want nothing to do with them. You know, and I stay away from them. Really bad people. I feel the energy of them and I want nothing to do with them, you know, and I stay away from them. You know. But normal everyday people are just cranky. They're not as nice as they should be. You know, those are very different situations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's true, but I think it's a really helpful. Helpful when you mentioned that to me, because I definitely did not have the abusive childhood growing up, but I've struggled with a lot of forgiveness with my father because he wasn't in my life my whole life. I didn't even know who he was till I was 18, reached out to him at 26 it it started off like the best thing ever and he went mia and you know let me down again, didn't he?
Speaker 1:yeah, but it was thank you. But it was just like when you mentioned like seeing him as this traumatized younger version. Like I haven't had many conversations with him I can count on one hand the amount of actual phone conversations we had but there there was one conversation and he mentioned it very quickly and he would never elaborate. But but he made the comment once. He was because I said something along the lines of because, like he had told my mom, he's always wanted a daughter. He's always wanted a daughter. Like you, don't act like you've always wanted a daughter. But I made that comment to him. I was like you've got a funny way of showing you've always wanted a daughter. And he was like you don't know what my father was like. And I was like that, that's true. You know, like I, I never got the opportunity to meet either of his parents, so I can't say whether he had the best or the worst upbringing. So like I don't know men, usually won't.
Speaker 3:You know, it was very hard for men to talk about things like that, and especially that age of a man. Yeah, they're not going to share those things.
Speaker 1:No no.
Speaker 3:And it's sad that you didn't get those answers, but you'll have to learn to become okay with it, which I think you probably have. No, I have, you're not. You're working towards it very quickly.
Speaker 1:You have to learn Okayness. I had a guest do a photo of this word called okayness. It's not a okay, it's okayness. Yeah, right.
Speaker 3:You have two choices either to not be okay with it or to somehow become okay with it. Right, those are the two choices. And not being okay with it, it's not gonna serve you well in any form or fashion. So, yeah, you know, like I wish I could remember the saying that I keep seeing over and over again, and it's like most times in life, you will never get that apology that you need for closure, so you're going to have to find your own closure. You know, and it's not exactly that, but it's something. That's what it means.
Speaker 3:It's saying and we do, I think, each and every one of us we have to find our own closure somehow, because we're probably never going to get what it is we want from that other person. We're probably never going to get what it is we want from that other person. And, to be honest, like in my situation, would there really be a good answer for any of it? No, so why wait around for that or why need it so desperately? You know, and I think that's what I did is I decided to handle it myself and the best way for me, which was I'm going to have to be okay with it and I am what else?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's true. You mentioned a lot throughout your book. There's just certain things that are just there, just happen. You know that we each just deal with not that they're good, not that they're but there's certain things you can't change. You know, like you can't change your past, regardless of how much you think about it, how much you talk about it, how much you write about it, how much whatever, like there's no changing so you're just stuck with it.
Speaker 3:So figure it out. You know, I'm always like the short straw, drawing the short straw, and a lot of people draw the short straw in life. A lot more draw the short straw than that really long nice straw, you know. And so you've got to be okay with that. You've got to plan better, you've got to work harder, you've got to be intentional about your actions and the things that you do in life, because you didn't have that advantage and most people don't get that advantage anyway. They just don't.
Speaker 3:So it's not like sitting here prying in your milk thing, because there's a whole lot of people like myself and like yourself that I'm sorry, we just kind of got dealt a little short straw. And so make better choices. Make better decisions, because that's the only thing that is going to get you ahead of the game. And I believe in the 80-20 rule that 80% of the people will never do the work that they have to do to get where the 20% is, and it's a shame, but that's how life is. And that 80-20 rule to me works in every aspect of life, you know. And then you can narrow it down even more to 10% of people who go even further and a 5% of people who go even further and a 1% of people who go even further, father. But they did things and worked harder and did the things that these others did not want to do. Period. Yeah, you can hope and dream all you want to, but you gotta put some actions behind it. No, that's so true.
Speaker 1:No, that's completely true, right. This has. That's completely true, Right. This has been an amazing thing. Thank you so much for speaking with me. I really appreciate it. I love this.
Speaker 3:You're so welcome. Doll Anytime. Thank you.
Speaker 1:And now, where can the listeners connect with you if they want to get in touch?
Speaker 3:Well, let's see. My website is dot com. On Instagram I'm Deb Greer Chamberlain. On Facebook my business page I'm Debbie Greer Chamberlain, 1023. On my personal page, I'm Debbie Greer Chamberlain, it's really easy. I'm Brendan myself, and on LinkedIn I'm Debbie Greer Chamberlain and the Instagram is Deb Greer Chamberlain.
Speaker 1:I will link all of that in the show notes so you guys can connect with Debbie directly. Thank you again. So much and no pressure, but do you have any final words for the listeners before we close out? I always like to leave it back to the gap.
Speaker 3:Well, I really just want to say people need to be kinder to each other. You don't ever know where someone came from and you don't know why they behave the way they do. You don't know why that they react the way they do. So just be kind and give everybody a little bit of grace, because really our perceptions are determined by our experiences and we all have different perceptions of things by how we've lived or what we've lived through. So just be kind and show grace, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's, that's beautiful, completely agree. Thank you so much, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3:You're welcome, miss Amanda. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Appreciate you having me on oh my gosh, of course, and thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of
