Tiny Reframes For Positivity And Self-Acceptance

A lot of “positive quotes” sound good and vanish two hours later. We wanted something different: real stories that earn the takeaway, the kind you can carry into your day when you’re driving, cleaning the sink, or lying awake with your brain on repeat. That’s why I loved talking with Lorie Kleiner Eckert, author of Chai On Life, a book built from short slices of life paired with one-line lessons that actually stick.

Lorie shares the flashbulb moment that changed her trajectory, divorce at 42, and how gratitude can coexist with heartbreak. We dig into the meaning of “chai” as life, why the number 18 matters, and how midlife reinvention happens one small decision at a time. From the “flawsome” idea of being awesome with flaws to the very human reality of belly fat and self-acceptance, Lorie keeps bringing it back to compassion over perfectionism.

We also get practical about mental health. Lorie talks openly about therapy without stigma, cognitive behavioral therapy style reframes, and why “tiny steps” beat all-or-nothing motivation. We explore rest as legitimate self-care, why doomscrolling knots up your brain, and how journaling helps when your heart is trying to tell you the truth. If you’ve ever felt stuck in a negative loop, this conversation offers gentle tools you can try today.

You can find Lorie HERE. https://www.loriekleinereckert.com/

Subscribe for more conversations like this, share the episode with a friend who needs a reset, and leave a review.

Transcript

A Quote That Sets The Tone

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We tend to teach best that which we most need to learn. So that's what I'm doing. So as I'm up here talking about, in this case, belly fat, self-acceptance, I'm working on it.

Why Quotes Still Matter

Mary 0:14

For centuries, the phrase shrinking violet was used to diminish women, to suggest we were meant to be small and meek. But in nature, violets are anything but weak. They're resilient, beautiful, and essential to the ecosystem. Hi, I'm Mary Rothwell, licensed therapist, and each week I sit down with women who remind us that being compared to a violet isn't an insult. It's a testament to strength, endurance, and the power of taking up space and living by your true nature. If you're ready to stop shrinking and start thriving, you're in the right place. Hey Violets, welcome to the show. Now that we are neck deep in the social media age, wisdom in the form of clever sayings and quotes is likely lurking in our daily feed. But before everyone was able to freely share the saying that changed their life perspective in a few words, I loved books of quotes. Actually, I still do. And books with essays that each taught a little life lesson. In a world where the commonness of memes and quotes seems to have taken the impact out of such things, finding a book that can help you shift your take on life or deepen your appreciation of everyday events is a great way to bring intention to your daily routine. My guest today is a natural at sharing snippets of her life and, like Aesop's fables, giving us, quote, the moral of the story. She is also a master of quilt making and has used her quilts to help deliver her positive messages. I've also adopted one of her sayings, but changed it to make it my own. She says, I don't hoard fabric, I just shop faster than I sew. So now I can tell people I don't hoard books, I just shop faster than I can read. Today I'm going to get her deeper take on several quotes from her most recent book, High on Life. Incidentally, hi is spelled C-H-A-I, and actually chai is one of my favorite teas, but I'm gonna have her explain that later. My guest today is Lori Kleiner Eckert. She is an author, motivational speaker, and artist who challenges societal norms with humor and heart. She's here to discuss why we should reject perfectionism, embrace our flossome identity, which we will talk about more later, celebrate therapy as a stigma-free tool, and find joy in small victories. Welcome to No Shrinking Violets, Lori.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Oh, that's so nice to be here, Mary. I love listening to your show for those introductions. They're wonderful.

Mary 2:45

Thank you. So then you probably know that I typically start with my guests by asking them to share flashball moments. So there's times in life where it's almost like you have a snapshot of a moment that you recognize had a big impact. I feel like you had a lot of those, but can you tell us some of the most pivotal ones and how you feel like they might have informed the journey that your life has taken?

Gratitude And Getting Help

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Oh, yeah. Um, actually, you know, like I say, I've been listening to a lot of your shows, so I felt that was probably coming. And I think I don't really identify things as, you know, flashbulb moments. Uh, but the one that I would, just because it so changed my life, I mean, I I've really just been uh on the expected trajectory. I had been on it for so long, for 42 years. So I think that my flashbulb moment would be divorce at the age of 42. And that was back in 1994. So I had spent 21 years with mom and dad, 21 years with my now ex-husband, uh, and I was kind of anxious to see what the next 21 years would bring, taking me to 63. And now I'm 74, so I've had a lot of time on my own. But that was really, I, you know, I think for um for many people, just such a huge change in life for me. I think it wasn't it was a flashbulb moment, but it was also the earth opening up and swallowing me whole. But there was um uh my ex-husband and I get along perfectly, and I can tell you how that all happened if you're interested down the road. But um, so there's, you know, really all this time later, well, we have three kids and ten grandkids, so we're together all the time. Everyone lives within a five-mile radius in Cincinnati, Ohio, and we have musical productions and we have sporting events, we're we're just together all the time. So that's all really good. So I don't really have any need to talk about divorce per se. But a really good thing that happened to me on the day of the divorce, well, a couple of things. One is that a good friend went with me. So uh that's always a good life lesson. You don't have to do it alone, take a friend. Um, but um I had been always been the paperwork person in our marriage. And so as we were, you know, uh getting Schedule A in place for the divorce and everything, his attorney's office kept screwing it up and screwing it up, and I kept thinking they're trying to screw me. And uh my attorney kept saying, no, they're just kind of sloppy and it all will be fine. Uh and then so I kept, you know, giving them uh alterations to Schedule A or whatever. And on the day of the divorce, the attorney said to me, if you're ever looking for a job, give me a call because she liked my organizational skills. And so that was such a pat on the back at a really horrific time, which for me is another life lesson that there's always something to be grateful for. So in the middle of that really horrible whatever, I got a pat on the back from this attorney who was renowned for being a great divorce attorney. And I had my friend with me, and we had lunch afterwards, and you know, uh, and now all these years later, basically, all is well. How nice. Yeah. I think maybe my kids would agree, I hope.

Mary 6:27

Well, it strikes me as you're saying the earth, I think you said something the earth opened up and swallowed you whole. So you're saying this with a smile on your face. And I it makes me think, because what I've read that you've written has seemed so positive. It's you take something that happens and you're able to find the nugget or the nuggets of good in it. Have you always been that way? Or did you have to kind of um learn that or kind of get yourself more aligned with the positive?

What “Chai” Means As Life

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Yeah, I think I've been learning that all along in life. I think uh, yeah, I mean, I I have fallen in black holes emotionally in my lifetime. Um, and I sought psychological help, which I'm in favor of and don't find any stigma in talking about at all. Uh, but for the most part, um I think I'm kind of thinking a therapist that I saw forever and ever and ever said I was borderline depressed and I do take an anti-anxiety drug. Um, but I think, especially as I get older, I do try and see the positive. And I do see that there's always something to be grateful for. I write a blog for my website, write two a month, and I'm actually, I think, gonna write one soon about what I see as a new kind of gratitude, which is kind of left-handed. It's kind of like, how could it be worse? You know, it could always be worse, which makes you grateful for what is, you know. Yeah, you just had a fender bender, but um, but nobody was hurt or whatever, you know, it could always be worse. And that's a new kind of gratitude. So I I don't know that I've always felt this way. And I've certainly gone through times in my life where friends have suggested to me that I read my my books that are in print because they're uplifting or whatever, and I need an uplifting message. So yeah, I haven't cornered the market on happiness or anything like that. Indeed, in High in Life, one of the chapters is, you know, um, once you have everything, you know, why why aren't I happy? You know, and so it takes a redefinition of what happiness is. And uh so I try and be positive. That's all I can say. I don't know how long that's been me. Um, people have always liked talking to me. I think I'm a cheerleader. I've always been a cheerleader. I don't know. It is the more I do uh interviews, I wonder if my adult children were sitting here, what would they say? You know, well, how how would they take this? But anyway, we'll have to, yeah, don't know.

Mary 9:11

Yeah, that's sometimes what I ask some of my clients. Like if if so and so, if I ask so-and-so to describe you, what would they say? And I always think that's interesting because we don't we we sometimes assume someone else is gonna think the worst or see the worst, or you know, so anyway, you brought up high on life, and I didn't know C H A I is high, and I think you have the real print the Jewish pronunciation, right? There's a little I can't sort of get that because but when I first saw the title and not knowing that, of course, I'm thinking of my dirty chai tea, which I love. But tell us a little what high is and how you came up with that title.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Yeah, I'd be happy to uh it's kind of over time become a play on words because so many people do read a chai. And I do think that the book is a comfort food, and so chai. I think it works perfectly. But um hi. So if you have friends who celebrate either Hanukkah or Hanukkah, it's the same kind of a word. So it can be high on life, it can be high on life, and I'm more the H sound than the CH sound in my pronunciation pronunciation of Hebrew words. Uh and I like that play on words also, that this could be high on life. So high, though, is a mystical word in Hebrew and it means life. And if you know people drinking uh Jewish people drinking a toast, they drink Lachhayim to life. So this book is drinking a toast to life. And um and high is also uh a number in Hebrew, the number 18, which is like a magic good luck number for us Jewish folks. So when I submitted um my book to publishers, it started off, it has 36 stories now. It started off 18 stories, so it was really high, 18 stories on life. And uh the publisher thought that was too few stories. Could I add some more? So like sure. And so it's double high. It's double high. So I doubled it, yeah. And as you see from reading the book, it's little snippets of this, that, and the other. It's slice of life. So anything that comes my way, I like to say it's from uh belly fat to Billy Joel or the stories that I tell. And I do, you know, but uh yeah, every everything that comes into view can possibly be a story with me. Uh, I'm high on life. I try to be. I try to be.

Flawsome Body Acceptance And Belly Fat

Mary 11:49

Well, and that's one of the things I love because I think when we when we think about, okay, I want to change my perspective, I want to be more positive, we can see that as a huge task. And we can tend to focus on the times when we've quote failed. But I think a book like yours, it takes something that's very relatable. I mean, we all love stories. So it's not one of those books that maybe I as a therapist might read to help my clients. It's not a really a how-to manual. It's kind of like here's the story, really like Aesop's Fables. Here's the story, here's what you can take from that. And so you can decide, okay, every Wednesday evening I'm going to read one of these, which I think is so nice because it can create really that intention instead of this just let's scroll through Instagram and oh, here's a quote. And for a second, it's an inspiration. And then two hours later, you're like, I don't even remember what that said. So that's what I love about this book. And something in there, I had I think this is a word maybe you made up, flossum, which is awesome, with an FL in front. Tell us what that means to you.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

So each story in High On Life has a full color image and a one-line takeaway. So that's um the one-line takeaway um from the story about belly fat, which is called, I think, let's see, my stomach is flat, but the L is silent. That's very true. That's very true. So um anyway, um, and that it was, I would, I'm tall, I'm thin, but they have a belly, which I think has something to do with those three kids of mine that I had. Uh, because I certainly eat right and exercise and all that kind of stuff. Um, but would I trade those kids for a flat belly? I'm thinking not, you know. So that's what I come to in that story is that I'm I'm grateful for my stuff, my belly. It gave me my kids whom I name in that story, and my 10 grandkids, whom I also name, because there's a lot to be grateful for. There's it's a big bunch of stuff to go with that big belly. So um, but anyway, yeah, so flossome is the understanding that in spite of the fact that we have flaws, that we're awesome just the same. And all of the things that I teach are things that I'm trying to learn. You know, I haven't gotten there. I try and remember, you know, I still look in the mirror. And in spite of the fact that I wrote that and published it for eternity, I can still struggle with that belly. I can still struggle with it. So yeah, when I was the motivational speaker person, I always said to my audience that I quoted Richard Bach, who said, we tend to teach best that which we most need to learn. So that's what I'm doing. So as I'm up here talking about, in this case, belly fat self-acceptance, I'm working on it. I I haven't mastered that. And uh, and that's okay. I hope that's encouraging to everybody, you know, and for your, you know, positivity that I'm gonna be more positive, you know, uh my stance on life is everything has to be done in teeny tiny little steps. So when you go to bed at night, if you think, was I positive at all today? Oh, well, I really enjoy that ice cream I ate. That was positive. Okay, good. You know, you found something positive. So yeah, I struggle with all of this. I'm just a real human being.

Mary 15:33

Yeah, and that's I think a beautiful statement, a beautiful message is that even when you are, you know, someone who tries to really reframe something through its lessons, whatever's positive from it, we don't really arrive at positivity and never leave. It's sort of, you know, we have to we slip or we something happens and it we can realize, you know, oh, I'm in a negative thought loop, like when I'm in the left lane and someone doesn't get out of my way. That's really hard for me. But I, you know, it's it's finding those things that we're recognizing it and gently bringing yourself back to focusing on like what you said, gratitude. There's always something that's okay about what happened.

CBT Reframes And Therapy Without Stigma

SPEAKER_00 16:19

Always. There really is always, always something. I did some behavioral therapy, what's the other cognitive behavioral therapy, yes. And uh I don't think this story's in high on life, but uh your listeners can find it on my website. But I came up with an acronym for looking at something in a different way. So my oldest grandchild's name is Tilly, T-I-L-L-I-E. And I and so my acronym, my Tilly acronym was uh, you know, when I'm thinking, I'm really a crummy cook and the kids are coming to dinner and all like that. It's like, okay, think instead like life is excellent. So Tilly. And in my case, since I'm Lori, I can be a little more specific. Think instead like Lori is excellent. And that really helps me. And I don't have to think about that all the time, but it pops up from time to time. So there's so many little tricks we can give ourselves to stay positive, I think, for the most part. And but I always want to say if you're not staying positive, you know, if you're struggling, you really have to get help, you know, you really, really do. Um, I think of Anthony Bourdain, we thought that he had, you know, everything all together and Kate Spade and they both um died, I think, within weeks of each other, didn't they? And so that's all in the chapter that I write about feeling free to go get help for your mental health. I'm I'm hoping everyone can find something positive every day. And if not, I hope they get help.

Mary 17:59

Yeah, because that is really endemic to depression, is the negative thinking loop. And some people do respond to cognitive therapy, which is really, I love the word reframe. It's taking what we're thinking and identifying like what's the irrational belief here. You know, am I really a terrible cook? Am I really, or do I just maybe not, you know, excel at making every dish or, you know, whatever, whatever the case might be. But of course, I love anybody that you know sings the praises of therapy because that's been my lifelong work. And we still have this idea, especially in our generation, of you know, you shouldn't have to go talk to somebody. Like anything that we struggle with emotionally, well, that just means you're not trying hard enough. But if we have a broken leg, of course we're not gonna drag our leg behind us, right? We so I think we still need to shift that in as many people as talk about their positive experience and I think lower the barrier because I think it's really difficult to walk into a room, and I recognize this, somebody's never met me. They're supposed to sit down and just talk about themselves. You know, I know that's really hard, but I think getting over that initially is the key to it.

SPEAKER_00 19:13

I think so too. I'm surprised for you to say though, or it's interesting to hear that that still is a common perception of counseling. I mean, it was certainly my parents' generation, just try harder, you know. Uh, you know, like what's the problem? So I'm I'm saddened to hear that that is still the case. So I started counseling when my son was 14. And um and he was not in a gang, he wasn't taking drugs, he wasn't flunking out of school. What he was doing is he was getting himself and his boyfriends to the mall after school and needing me at rush hour while I was cooking dinner to come get him. Now I realized that I was a stay-at-home mom, so I wasn't working like other moms. I realized that I had a functional car and a tank of gas, I could afford all that. I realized that I had all these foods that I could cook because I could afford all that. I realized all of the many pluses for me, and yet I just died over that. I just died over having to go get Scott at the mall at rush hour. And so I went to counseling. And though that therapist really did see me through divorce, so I was divorced like four years later. So all of that was working in the background, of course. But um, but I really saw Pam was her name. She's no longer living, but what very much missed. But I went to see her when Scott was 14, and I probably saw her for 20 years. I saw her until she retired. And what she turned into for me, uh, because my insurance paid for it, I guess. I don't know. But she was a paid professional friend. She she remembered things that I forgot. She reminded me of my successes. She it was wonderful having her. And when she retired, I wasn't, you know, we went through phases where she thought I was done with counseling, but I didn't, and vice versa. But um, when she finally retired, it was really fine on my own. And I just took a lot of tricks of tricks that she taught me over the years um away with me. So there's so much to be learned in therapy, and I see nothing wrong with it at all.

Humor That Helps You Reset

Mary 21:33

Yeah. Well, I think it is changing now because I worked in college for a long time. And I think the younger set of people, especially with TikTok, you know, sort of normalizing the terms, the anxiety terms and the depression. And the only thing I would change is that people think anxiety is you're broken if you have anxiety, but we all have anxiety. We kind of need it to function at our highest level, as long as it's not in our way. Yeah. But one thing I Noticed about you is you really use humor as a tool. It seems like even if you're in one of those funks, like you're sort of like having a day, part of how you pull yourself out of that has to do with humor.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

Yeah, people say that to me, and I guess I don't really identify it that way. I don't know. I um when I uh first started writing on a regular basis, I wrote a slice of life column uh aimed at people in midlife who were single. I was a cheerleader. I know you don't want to be single, but I know you can handle it. I sent that to uh publishers uh of small newspapers, Jewish newspapers uh throughout the country. And so it didn't get published in St. Louis where my dad lived, but it did get published in Houston, where his cousin lived. And so his cousin would call him and read him my stories when they were funny. And my dad said to me, You should be funny more often. It's like, I don't know how to be funny, you know, if it comes out that way, okay. But I don't so yeah, I'm glad that it's humor.

Mary 23:08

Yeah, maybe even more than humor, you have a lightness, like you sort of have a light touch. It's sort of like, let's not take this so seriously. Let's use my granddaughter's name as an acronym to like remind ourselves to snap out of it a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that. Yeah, and uh I like the term snap out of it because my granddaughter Tilly, her mother is Shayna. And when Shayna was little, she used to instead of say uh the rice crispy said snap crackle pop, she said they said snap on a pippies. So whenever someone says the word snap to me, I'm right there with snap on a pippies. So yes, let's snap on a pippies out of it.

Mary 23:52

I want to talk a little about some of the favorite quotes that I found in your book. And you can tell us the story behind it or or just wax philosophical a little bit. But I just I just wanted this episode to just be something where we think about positivity and how we can make it a little bit more part of our life. So the first thing I think I came across was a little bit plus a little bit equals a whole lot, which is so true, but we don't think of it that way.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Well, that is really one of my very, very large beliefs, and it's a part of my uh I have a two-step plan for personal reinvention. It's part of that. Uh you know, I it it's just so true. It really is. So when I tell that story in the book, I talk about several different ways that a little bit plus, so for you to see a little bit plus a little bit equals a whole lot. But one of them is in a friend, his name is Mike Kahn. We went to uh high school together, and he uh, father of five, trial attorney, and yet he's written a lot of books. I think about a dozen of them were set in St. Louis with his uh detective, Rachel Gold, was her name. So, like a dozen, a series of a dozen books with a real publisher, you know, not self-published or anything like that. And how did he do that? Well, as the story goes, every night he wrote one page. He did this every single day, you know, 30, 365 days out of the year after the kids went to bed, after he helped his beloved Margie, his wife, clean up, he went and he wrote one page. And lo and behold, if you write one page for 365 days, you've written a book, because a book is three to four hundred pages. So that's how he did it. Well, that's astounding and amazing. And another story I use in there is about uh investing. You know, if you invest like in a mutual fund a little bit at a time, but you can't touch it, you just gotta let it roll, you know, and put it somewhere plus say if you don't know how to pick an individual stock, pick a, you know, a mutual fund and just let it roll over time. But uh I I list a website where you can go to see how that would compound over time and how you'd be a half millionaire if you just put$20 away a week starting at age whatever. A little bit, plus a little bit adds up to a whole lot in the same way. I haven't written this part of it, but if you own a house and the roof is leaking and the door doesn't close all the way and the toilet doesn't stop flushing, you also have to deal with those one by one by one, because a little bit but a little bit is going to add up to an entire mess of a house. So it works both ways. But um, as I said, I have a um methodology for personal reinvention. And uh there's two parts to it. But the one part is that get yourself an accountability log and do one thing a day in the direction of your new life because those things are gonna add up, you know, a little bit plus a little bit. And even in that scenario, sometimes you're gonna take a misstep, and sometimes you're gonna take a sidestep, and sometimes inadvertently you took a back step, but it doesn't make any difference. You just keep going and going and going, and it works, yeah.

Mary 27:35

Because anything is that, you know, any huge thing doesn't just, you know, magically finish or happen. You have to get there through steps. And I, you know, I think back to when it's a mental health issue. When you think, how am I going to get through this day? Well, you literally do it a minute at a time. And so I think it'll can apply to pretty much anything. Anytime you think about something, you know, that's overwhelming, how could I ever do this? It's just thinking, what do I have to do first? And then what do I have to do next? And try keep your eye out there on the horizon, but I think really manage what is happening right in front of you, because then you will be able to look backwards and be like, oh wow, like I'm not standing where I was. I moved.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

Simon.

Mary 28:21

That's why I really I like that because that is what everything is, and we forget that. We think it's linear, I'm just gonna get there, you know, quickly, and that's what everybody else does, and that part's very false. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:35

Yeah.

Mary 28:36

Yeah, I really like that.

Start Where You Are In Relationships

SPEAKER_00 28:37

I don't even know if it's in High On Life or if it's just in one of the stories I've written on my website. I'm not sure. But there's a book that I love about divorce called, I think it's called The Good Divorce by Constance Constance Ahrens, who is deceased now. But her, she talks about um five five different couples you could be, from fiery foes to perfect pals. And she says, you know, if there's a thousand steps between, you know, this and this, take one a day. And so um, I'm not sure that's exactly how it worked for my ex-husband and me, but we're we're pretty perfect pals right now. How could we not be with, you know, 10 grand quit kids playing uh basketball and uh having dance recitals and so forth?

Mary 29:29

It's it's pretty nice. So here's another one that I really like because so many times I have clients who are so focused on where they think they failed, they'll look back and say, but this happened and this happened. It's like, but that's done. You know, so anxiety lives in the past and it lives in the future. We worry about what happened, we worry about what's going to happen. So one of the things that you have in your book is you can't change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending. And I think that is a great frame to put on that type of feeling that, oh, I wish I hadn't, or I can't believe I did. It's like, well, where are you right now? You can change your ending.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

I agree. And I think that that goes perfectly with um personal relationships. That's exactly what I just said. So I'm actually saying it to any of your audience members who are divorced and are fiery foes right now, especially if you have kids. There's no, you know, oh, I don't want to put a I don't want to shame anyone, but it behooves everyone if you move in the direction of being pals. So I do think that works very well with personal relationships. And how many of us in my age group? So I'm in my, I'm some just had a 74th birthday. Um my kids are uh almost 50, almost 48, and some other age, I have to do the math to figure out. But um, I think I'm lucky. Again, I don't know what they'd say if they're sitting here. I think I'm lucky that we get along so well. Um, and not all of my friends can say that about their adult children. But start today. Start today moving in the right direction. And the only person I don't say that to is someone who's been in an abusive relationship. No, you got out of that, be done with that. So something like that, uh-uh, don't go there. But in situations, you know, you have no control over the other person, so you don't know how they're gonna respond. But if you send a text message once a week just to say hi or to send a heart or something like that, that's a little bit plus a little bit is gonna, it's it's gonna add out. So start where you are and and move a little bit in the direction of where you want to go. I I think it's very doable. And I think that it happens relatively fast, you know, sometimes uh especially in friendships, you don't exactly know why you're mad at each other, you know. And so if someone has the courage to reach out to say, I'm thinking of you, maybe the person will stew over that a little bit, but maybe the third time you send them that message, you know, two weeks later, maybe they'll say, Okay, wanna wait for a cup of chai tea.

Mary 32:28

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think women in midlife can feel like, gosh, my I'm I used to say I'm halfway to dead, now I'm way over halfway to dead. But you know, we we get to that point in midlife, and maybe we've had a long marriage, we've raised our children, and then the children are launched, or our marriage fails, and we think, what am I gonna do now? Well, you can write your own ending. You don't have to continue to be like, you know, you gave the example. You lived with your parents for 21 years, you were married for 20 years, then at 42, you're like, I got the rest of my life, and you did all of this really cool stuff because you're creating the rest of the life that you want. So that's really cool.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

Yeah, I I agree. And so I started this journey at age 42, and I felt kind of miffed that my ex-husband had had since his 20s to build a career, and here I'm thrown to the wolves at 42. But you know what? I'm 74, that was a long time ago. There was a lot of years in there to play catch up and and to achieve. But um yeah, yeah, but the quote about you know, starting where you are today and moving forward really came with a story that happened during the pandemic that um, you know, life had slowed down so much. And here was a picture on Facebook of me with my little grandson when he was a baby. And I was I was the grandma, my grandma's name is Marmel. I was uh not the grandma who babysat, but I I ran Marmal School. So on Monday, any grandchild who wasn't in school full time spent the whole day with me. So I guess that's kind of babysitting. But the picture that had been on Facebook was me babysitting for baby Dylan. And it was such a sweet picture of him asleep on my chest. And I didn't do that with a lot of the kids because I wasn't the babysitter grandma. And and I ached over that, but that didn't mean that I couldn't start then to make ice cream dates with the kids, you know, they were well beyond taking a nap on my chest. But there I could start then to do two things differently and one step at a time, you know, building, building memories, building, yeah, building.

Rest And Self-Care Beyond Scrolling

unknown 34:55

Yeah.

Mary 34:56

So the next quote is a little opposite of sort of moving forward, but I love it because so often we demonize resting. We think resting is laziness. Um, I have to be productive all the time. So the quote that you have is sometimes sitting and doing nothing is the best something you can do.

SPEAKER_00 35:18

Yeah, it is. Um I I think that I have a recipe for um a happy life, uh, and that it is uh, or it started off being do more of the things that make you happy and less of the things that bring you pain. But then somebody wrote me and questioned that, that her life was really terrible. And so again, then I okay, I'm gonna step back and I'm gonna say, maybe for some people you're doing too much. And so maybe you got to put the ball down, put a ball down. And maybe sometimes uh sitting and doing nothing is the best thing that you can do. And in that person, when I was responding to them because they had said their life was so horrible, in a response to, you know, an image I had put up on Facebook is like, okay, you know, forgive me for being Pollyanna, and especially if you're in an abusive relationship or you're depressed or whatever, you know, this advice is not for you. My advice is seek professional help. So yeah, but sometimes uh sitting and doing nothing is a great thing. And and I have several quotes in there about self-care, probably because I still haven't exactly learned that in life, you know. And so I'm still working on it. But, you know, like what if we don't devote the whole week to taking care of yourself? You know, what if you devote this whole week to taking care of yourself? And especially I think that there's giver and givers and takers in the world. Many women are the givers. Uh, you know, we give, give, give, give, give, and we give, and then we give some more. And we are running on empty. And there's lots of, you know, you can't bring a bucket to a dry well, all of those kinds of quotes that are just so true, you know. But yeah, uh, sit down, put your feet up. And um, and I don't know, a lot of people they're sitting down and putting their feet up these days. Seems to be social media scrolling through something. And I I don't think that's not it for me. And that makes my brain feel knotted up. And so I'm trying now. Again, we teach best that which we most need to learn. I'm trying to put my phone down at 9 p.m. and uh go do something else, read. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm trying to do sit and do nothing. Or well, not reading isn't nothing, but certainly trying to be away from everything that's online. Wow.

Mary 37:54

Yeah. Yeah, because scrolling is it's it's deciding what's going into your brain and it's not soothing. It's our brains aren't made to consume like that. But you know, when you talk about self-care and women being caregivers, if we did for ourselves, let's just say, no, I don't have my own children, but I've stepchildren, but if what we did when we raised our kids, let's think about it that way. So we made sure that they had clean clothes, that they were comfortable clothes, that they had a good meal, that they had time for a nap, that we, you know, did things that made them feel good, we might have rocked them or sang to them. So if we treat ourselves that way, or when we a friend is hurting, we make sure we talk to them or we send them flowers. What if we did that for us? So we don't think about that. We think, oh, self-care is I go get a pedicure every two weeks. Well, that's part of it, but it's not care. I think thinking about it like that, how would you care for someone else will do a little bit of that, that kindness for yourself. So yes.

SPEAKER_00 38:57

Yeah. I've been doing something that I think is silly, but um, in light of what you just said, I'm thinking maybe not. So when I buy something for myself on Amazon that isn't like toiletries or whatever, like I bought a new pen, a real pretty pen. I um send it with the gift option. I love you so much, baby doll. Have a good day. It's a gift I want to send myself. Yeah, yeah. So I've done that twice now and I've saved the messages. I read them from time to time. Yeah, and and that's one of my uh one of my things. I call everybody baby doll. So I call myself baby doll.

Journaling And Preserving What Matters

Mary 39:41

That's a day brightener. I love that. Okay, so I have too many more. So I'm gonna pick one more. When your heart speaks, take good notes. I think instinctively we know what we need, but we ignore it. So I like this idea. Your heart is speaking to you, take good notes.

SPEAKER_00 39:57

I do too. Um, and that goes along with the story about uh three reasons why you might write in a journal. And and that is your heart speaking to you. So I like to say that when I have a problem and I tell someone about it, that I give away a little piece of my pain. And that's the same thing that happens when I write my problem in a journal. So that's one reason to write in a journal is just to flush out all that stuff. Another is to weigh the pros and cons of something. And again, your brain's gonna speak to you. You think you're conflicted, but when you write it down, you've got 25 reasons why not, and one reason why, you know. So there it is to see. And the other is to remember wonderful things that have happened to you, wonderful things that people have said, that if you don't are done, that if you don't write those down, they're gonna be gone, you know. Uh, so one of them is uh my grandson, when he was little, came over and I was wearing an animal print shirt. And he said, Why is Marmal dressed like a zebra? Which makes me laugh every time I think about it. But if I hadn't written it down, I wouldn't not be remembering it all these years later. So yeah, your heart, your heart really does speak. I I do believe we have an inner voice and that we have to. My uh second book is called Get Quiet and Listen, that we have to get quiet and listen, whether it's meditation or just like you said, what if you uh sit down and you know, sometimes the best something you can do is to do nothing. Yeah, and let that let that inner voice speak to you. And sometimes, you know, when you're talking to a friend, their inner voice is speaking so loud that you can hear it. You know, you can hear that they're just shouting at themselves, quit this job or leave this marriage or end this friendship or quit school, you know. Um, but that's the same for you if you if you tune in and listen. So uh the probably the worst time in my life was when my father was in his final illness. I just felt all alone in the world. I I I just didn't think no one could reach my pain. Nobody nobody could reach it. And so I wrote a journal that said that was, you know, what my friend would say if I had a friend. And I wrote what I thought I needed to hear or wanted to hear, needed to hear. And I, of course, weighed all the options for, you know, his care and so forth. But I also recorded there, I put, you know, if someone wrote an email, I printed it out and put it in that journal or whatever. And when I got enough distance, I could see that really I did have friends through the whole thing. It was just I was in too much pain and that they had written some really beautiful things. So anyway, so I'm a I'm a big believer in when your heart speeds take good notes in the form of a journal. It doesn't have to be, you don't have to journal right all day, every day. You to do it once a month. You can do it whenever your grandson says something amazing to your husband or your niece, you know. Take good notes. Yeah. And as Simon and Garfunkel said, preserve your memories, they're all that's left you. So that's part of the note-taking, you know. Yeah, part of the note-taking.

Mary 43:21

Yeah, I I shared with you before we started that we're moving soon. So it's, you know, when you move, you touch every single thing you own, pretty much. So I have these boxes that I've saved from college of let when we back when we wrote letters, we couldn't text because you know, there was no texting. So I have these letters my friends wrote to me. And periodically I do, you know, I'll go to the closet to get something, and then, you know, 45 minutes later, I'm in the middle of the floor reading these letters that were written 20 or 30 years ago. And it's such a great feeling because it does remind you oh, I had this great relationship with this person. We're not really close anymore, but it was. Really great for that time. So I think saving those things sometimes, you know, it's that's not clutter, like save, you know, the pictures that your kids drew. You don't have to keep them on the refrigerator for, you know, 16 years, but keep a couple of them or a note that they wrote or the macaroni picture they made. You know, those are the things that I think remind us, especially when things are hard or we're struggling with that adult-child relationship sometimes. Like, oh wow, I remember when they would snuggle on my lap, and it can help you reaccess that feeling of maybe I want to reach out in a different way, and that go back to that idea of maybe create a different ending.

SPEAKER_00 44:40

So love it, love it, yeah. Yeah. I just um wrote about there's a desk in my basement that is storage, so all kinds of tissues and paper plates are on top of it. So I'm at the desk all the time getting things, but it had three drawers that I couldn't quite remember what was in it. And uh one was stuff from my much beloved dad, the second drawer was stuff from significant other who passed away 14 years ago, and the bottom drawer was pre-pandemic travels. And so there was lessons everywhere, you know. So I told a lesson from each drawer in the blog that I wrote. But in the thing with my dad, back to your letters, so he's deceased, and just seeing his handwriting. That was oh, that was so wonderful, you know. So yeah. Yeah, definitely preserve those memories, definitely.

Mary 45:37

And you know, I will tell you, my I was very close to my dad about a year and a half ago. Well, he he died in 2000, but um, he and my mom both wrote me letters when I was in college. So I took the words and when they signed the letters love, mom or love dad, I took those two words love in their handwriting and I've tattooed them on my arm. So I can see their writing all the time because Oh, I love it. You know, yeah, it might they were just yeah, it's just something I carry with me because it what sums up someone better than seeing the word love in their handwriting.

SPEAKER_00 46:10

So oh my gosh, that's beautiful. That's beautiful.

Where To Find Lori And Share

Mary 46:14

This has been such a fun conversation. I just really wanted to create something that is, you know, helps people to kind of relax. And I always I listen to podcasts when I'm driving. So I think of people just driving or cleaning the sink or whatever they're doing, and just kind of having a day where they can start to reframe whatever's happening and think of different ways to be positive. So thank you so much for sharing your stories today. Tell us a little bit where people can find you because I checked out your website and your blogs are so fun. So that's another thing that people can build in intentionally and read some of them. So where can they find you?

SPEAKER_00 46:52

Yeah, I'm pretty much Lori Kleiner Eckert everywhere. So my um website is Lori KleinerEckard.com. And if you want to write to me personally, I'm Lori at Laurie KleinerEckard.com. So uh so that's where I am. And the new book is available everywhere, books are sold, uh including Amazon, of course. And since I don't feel like I've cornered the market on wonderful stories, there's also now a companion journal to go with High On Life, so you can write your stories down. And I oh, and I also uh I am a prolific reader, so I have been writing book reviews also, all in an effort to get people to find me online. So uh mostly um uh contemporary fiction. And I think there's 250 of those reviews on my website, plus a link to my Etsy shop so you can see my quilts and stuff. So it's all there on lauriekleinercord.com.

Mary 47:48

All right, and I will link that in the show notes because you are also L-O-R-I-E. So, you know, we want to make sure people can find you, but I'll link it in the show notes. So thank you again, Lori. It's been a great conversation. Oh, thank you. Thanks for all you do. And I want to thank everyone for listening. If you know anyone who would love the fun reframes and positive messages from today's episode, please forward this episode to them. And until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant Violet that you are.