Today's Heartlift with Janell
Sometimes the story we tell ourselves is not really true. Sometimes the story others tell about us is not really true. On "Today's Heartlift with Janell," Author, Trauma-informed, board-certified marriage and family specialist, and Professional Heartlifter, Janell Rardon, opens conversations about how emotional health and mental fitness effects absolutely every area of our lives. When we possess and practice healthy, strong, resilient emotional health practices, life is so much better. Read Janell's newest book, "Stronger Every Day: 9 Tools for an Emotionally Healthy You."
Today's Heartlift with Janell
323. Grandmothers, Mothers, and Mentors: Why Women's Influence Matters
So proud to be in Feedspot's Top 100 Mental Health Podcasts: https://podcast.feedspot.com/mental_health_podcasts/
Today's Heartlifting Episode:
Something is stirring in the hearts of women across generations. That quiet voice urging us toward purpose beyond ourselves—toward becoming maternal presences in a world desperately needing wisdom, nurturing, and light.
In this soul-stirring conversation, Leslie Means (founder of Her View From Home and author of "So God Made a Grandma") joins Janell to unpack what happens when women fully embrace their capacity to nurture those in their spheres of influence. Leslie's journey from Nebraska farm girl to creator of a platform reaching millions of women reveals the mysterious way divine whispers guide us when we're brave enough to listen.
"I just felt something else," Leslie shares, recounting the moment she left her broadcast journalism career despite its outward success. Through financial uncertainty, a third pregnancy, and moments of questioning, she followed what she describes as a "gut feeling"—that internal knowing that something more awaited. What emerged was a platform where thousands of women's stories have found a home, including one that literally saved a reader's life.
The conversation takes a powerful turn when Leslie emotionally acknowledges what grounds her work: "I know that God loves me...if it all fails and goes away, I will be okay." This foundation of secure attachment—something Janell notes many women never experienced in their formative years—becomes the launching pad for authentic service rather than validation-seeking.
Whether you're a grandmother, mother, or woman seeking to understand your unique influence, this episode illuminates the extraordinary impact of maternal presence. Through stories of intergenerational influence, Holocaust survival accounts preserved through storytelling, and research confirming women's unique role in family systems, a compelling invitation emerges: What would happen if women fully grasped their value and stepped confidently into their calling?
As Janell powerfully concludes, "Watch out when women grasp that truth that they're loved, because a remarkable revolution will happen in all the right ways."
Visit Leslie's community home: Her View From Home
Order Leslie's books: So God Made a Mother and So God Made a Grandmother
So proud to be in Feedspot's Top 100 Mental Health Podcasts: https://podcast.feedspot.com/m
Begin Your Heartlifter's Journey:
- Visit and subscribe to Heartlift Central on Substack. This is our new online coaching center and meeting place for Heartlifters worldwide.
- Download the "Overcoming Hurtful Words" Study Guide PDF: BECOMING EMOTIONALLY HEALTHY
- Meet me on Instagram: @janellrardon
- Leave a review and rate the podcast: WRITE A REVIEW
- Learn more about my books and work: Janell Rardon
- Make a tax-deductible donation through Heartlift International
As I've listened to the stories of thousands of women of all ages in all kinds of stages through the years, I've kept their stories locked in the vault of my heart. I feel as if they've been walking around with me all through these years. They've bothered me, they've prodded me and sometimes kept me up at night. Ultimately, they've increased my passion to reframe and reimagine the powerful positions of mother and matriarch within the family system. I'm a problem solver, so I set out to find a way to perhaps change the trajectory of this silent and sad scenario about a dynamic yet untapped source of potential and purpose sitting in our homes and churches. It is time to come to the table, heartlifters, and unleash the power of maternal presence into the world. Welcome to Mothering for the Ages, our 2025 theme here on today's Heartlift. I'm Janelle. I am your guide here on this heartlifting journey. I invite you to grab a pen, a journal and a cup of something really delicious. May today's conversation give you clarity, courage and a revived sense of camaraderie. You see, you're not on this journey alone. We are unified as heartlifters and committed to bringing change into the world, one heart at a time. I'm so happy to have Leslie Means here with us today to talk about her brand new book. So God Made a Grandma yes, you knew I had to have her. Caring, faithful, creative, devoted, wise, generous, resilient, just like you. We don't have to be a grandmother to really glean from these essays that Leslie has put together in this beautiful book. As we are focusing this year on just being a maternal presence, on mothering those in our spheres of influence, that doesn't necessarily mean you have to be a grandma or even be a mother, a mama, because I feel in my deepest part of my spirit that this is a time in our history, part of my spirit, that this is a time in our history, especially in our culture today, where we need the maternal presence. We'll be talking about it all year.
Speaker 1:I believe that means nurturing and all of these beautiful qualities that Leslie is talking about in this book caring, faithful, creative, devoted, wise, generous, resilient. Yes, just like we are heartlifters. And when we are wholehearted, emotionally whole, mentally strong and spiritually vital, we walk into our spheres of influence with a luminous presence. I choose that word luminous on purpose, because we embody God right, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and, all throughout the teachings of Jesus. He is telling us we are light. We are light. We are not to hide our light under a bushel. We are the light of the world and it is our privilege and our honor to be this light and to point others to our one true light, who is Jesus himself.
Speaker 1:So let's welcome Leslie to the show and enjoy this conversation about becoming this maternal presence in the world. Leslie, thank you so much for being here. I have bragged about you already and introduced the community to the fine work of your hands. It reminds me of Proverbs 31 and how her hands were filled with the law of kindness in her mouth. And you just exude a woman who seems to be doing life well, and I'm grateful for that.
Speaker 1:But, we just welcome you here as a luminary in our lives. Thank you.
Speaker 2:This is an honor. This is going to be fun. I already know. So many questions, so exciting. Can I just say it's like such a gift to be introduced. You're like, oh, you sound so amazing but really I'm a hot mess behind the scenes. But thank you, Thank you, I know.
Speaker 1:Aren't we all? I know we're. So Instagram pretty, aren't we? I know it. I always want to like when I put something up on Instagram, go well, do you know the fight that happened five minutes before Always world, and it is everything everyone promised me. Everyone it's. It's too much, it's just over the moon, even today just trying to repair. I have two granddaughters in Belgium and so there's six hours ahead, and so typically they call in about the four o'clock hour. You know, that hour of the day that an almost three year old and one-old, or like mom's, had enough. Mom's got a cold, you know, and so she calls Nona because I'm called Nona by them, and just to get her through that hour, you know. And so today they FaceTime in and I can hear the almost three-year-old in the back going no, no, no, no, no, no. She was really having a mood today, like really you know like today, not today, not Nona day, not Nona.
Speaker 1:And so I go. That's fine, but I just thought, of course, my daughter is like help and I said, elena Rose, I have a new book, would you like to read it? And she pokes her head in there and then she pokes it back out, and this is just the best. I love that. Now, you yourself are not a grandma yet, no, but you have this incredible platform, her view from home. You have this incredible platform, her View From Home. I know it's so pretty, isn't it pretty?
Speaker 2:I don't have it yet I have.
Speaker 1:So God, made a Mom, but I don't have that one, you know yet, because it's coming out, but you can preorder it. You can preorder it. It's so lovely and it matches the other one, which now you have a set.
Speaker 2:That was planned, obviously, obviously.
Speaker 1:I've had those sets planned, and then the publisher sells their company and you know, so I'm just always you got your set, you got my set. Company wasn't sold nothing, you didn't lose it. You got it. That's in the author world. That's a big deal. So her view from home. It's so incredible, it's so necessary. But why? You have a lot, you have three children, and why did you decide to start Her View From Home? And where did you get that name? I'm so curious. Her View From Home.
Speaker 2:I love this story. Well, I love you so.
Speaker 1:I want to hear.
Speaker 2:I could go off on a tangent. I mean I I love you so I want to hear I could go off on a tangent. I mean I could talk to you. I've been trying to. You know, in the 13 years now that I've been doing Herbie from Home, I've been trying to shorten it up. So I know let's see how this goes. The whole thing I start with this is such a God thing, because you look at everything on paper and what I'm doing should have failed from the beginning. Really, Really, Leslie, why? Yes, yes, I'm curious. That's not a good, I know I'm like you're not supposed to say that about yourself.
Speaker 1:No, you are no, no, because this is what I really, as I told you before we hit record. I want to know your journey. Yeah, you know, so many women, especially in my community, in my age bracket, feel purposeless. We've raised our kids, mine are all over the place. Nobody lives near me, so there's such a void when you have raised your children and they're gone. And yeah, you want that, yay, woohoo, you know empty nests, yay, but no, no, no, for me, it wasn't that, it was. It's a shift, right, I mean it has to be I it was for me.
Speaker 2:I can't speak for all, but I love being a mama. It's change right. All of that change Okay so, um, okay, so I am this old broadcast journalism girl. I used to do TV and I so I grew up on a farm in central Nebraska and, um, I grew up in the house that my, my great grandpa lived in, and then my grandpa, and then my dad, and then I grew up there and now my sister and her.
Speaker 1:They live there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's. We didn't have. We didn't have money. Growing up Like many farm families, especially in the eighties, mom went back to work to, or mom went to work to be a nurse and helped dad on the farm. I have three older sisters, so I, we didn't have a lot of of money, but we had a lot of love and I always felt love. You don't know that until you're older of of the love that you feel, cause mom and dad didn't really. They weren't talkers like their daughters. Um, they grew up on a different generation where they didn't do that. No, we're felt. You know I'm in small town, Nebraska, but I never felt small.
Speaker 2:I always I don't know what it is, Cause I certainly didn't we didn't have internet yet, obviously. And so I'm 43. So I I'm in that Oregon trail generation with the video game, where I feel like I lived all of my life through college and then we got the internet. So I had a very different childhood than, obviously, my kid, so I feel like. And then dad, dad was a busy farmer but he read to us every single night, always. He never missed it Wait a minute. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I know, leslie Huge, your dad read to you every night all four girls.
Speaker 2:Well, my two oldest sisters are 13 and 11 years older than me.
Speaker 1:So Lindsay and I yes.
Speaker 2:Every night. I can remember poker guys being downstairs waiting to play and he had to read to us first before he could go play poker. And now and I, I made my love, my dad, my dad, he's such a gift, but also I think it's my mother making my dad read. You know, the older you get you're like and mom. Mom held that together Because she knew she wanted us to spend time with dad.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:I'm like I just never felt. I just felt like there was so much more to the world and I always wrote. I wrote stories from like third grade on. Mom got us a journal and I went. I would go to the barn and I would talk to my cats Like I just always had this. What a childhood. I know this storytelling vibe and so I knew I would go. Actually, I remember specifically sitting on the end of my mother's bed being like what am I going to? What do I want to do? In college, because I hated math and she actually was the one who said I think you should go into some kind of journalism. And so this is the long story short. I majored in broadcast journalism met my husband in college.
Speaker 2:He moved to Houston Texas right after we got married after college and he worked for his dream gig in the NBA. He was like working for the Rockets, yeah, like dream gig. Here's his wife, though and this is 2005 living in Houston Texas. This like small town, nebraska. Girl Couldn't find a job anywhere because in journalism at that point it's, but at that point you couldn't go to one of the major networks yeah.
Speaker 1:You had to no't go to one of the major networks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you had to work.
Speaker 1:No, no, you had to start. Yeah, yeah, I started in that and then switched, don't know why.
Speaker 2:Oh, because it's a beast. So I was driving an hour and a half each way, morning and night, to Beaumont, texas, for my first TV gig Beaumont Wow Kindest. They were so kind to this like naive Nebraska girl who had no idea, thought she knew what she was doing but didn't.
Speaker 1:And then I was, so you have the TV. Look, though you know you do. Oh, thank you.
Speaker 2:I, I was so Lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, because lonely lonely Because again there was no internet yet, Like there was.
Speaker 2:I was writing every day. I was already writing and journaling every day to friends and family, but I was missing that, and so my husband bless him. He was like we should go back to I'm in Kearney, nebraska is where I'm at and there's a TV station here and he said we should go back there and work your way up. So he left his dream gig in Houston, came back to Nebraska, couldn't find a job and had to rogue cornfields.
Speaker 1:Are you serious? I would say he's a good guy. We've been married for three years. That's why you say he's a very patient man named Kyle Kyle.
Speaker 2:Kyle when is your book coming out Supporting your woman, I know.
Speaker 2:So I feel like all of these things led to where I'm at today, because I had so much support and love along the way. And then I was at TV for a lot of years and we were only going to be here In TV. You think you're going to be here for two years and then you're going to move on to the next bigger market. I got a chance in 2007 to start a talk show called MTV's Good Life. I love this. It was supposed to be about the people and places of Nebraska and it was. It was amazing At that time.
Speaker 2:Then I had two babies my daughter was two and my other was six months old and and this schedule was much better than the early morning Cause I actually started anchoring there first before I did the talk show and I was going in at one in the morning. I mean, it was just oh yeah, wow, you make nothing like you could nothing, yeah, and felt this I'm back, I'm at the talk show, the hours are better, my girls are really really little and I felt this calling that was like I was supposed to be doing something else. I really I was, and I couldn't explain it because on paper it looked amazing For TV. You actually had good hours. I was there from like what six to two and the pay was always kind of garbage trash TV. But it was fine, right and so you hit the big market right.
Speaker 2:Right, right. And I just felt something else. And I actually got a call one day from a woman that I had known. You know cause we would come in, we'd interview people all the time.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:He left a message on my work phone and said hey, leslie, if you have a minute, give me a call. I have something you want to talk I want to talk to you about. And I, before I called her back, I thought wouldn't that be cool if she had a job for me? I mean no, this sounds like I'm.
Speaker 1:I called her back. Is that We'll talk about whispers in a minute. She had a job for you.
Speaker 2:What At the local chamber of commerce, which is business and I jumped, I left. Here is this journalism girl leaving. I caught the first day I started working for the chamber. I had to call my husband in tears because I didn't even know how to do an Excel spreadsheet. I'm like what am?
Speaker 1:I doing, somebody else does that for you in TV.
Speaker 2:But then it all. It's just God. He's working it all together because because of the chamber, I um, actually, when I was there, I loved the business aspect, but I really missed the media.
Speaker 2:And so that's when I started Herbie from home. I actually remember hanging around in my kitchen thinking about the title for weeks because I felt like it was going to be big. Did you, god does this. And then I actually won a grant through the chamber of commerce, a $10,000 grant, which helped get everything off the because I had too many. And then I also was going like business to business, asking these advertisers that I knew through TV if they would advertise on the website and they did and I just I haven't told this story in a long time.
Speaker 1:It's so profound.
Speaker 2:I am just, it is. It is God in it over and over and over again. Right, I was working at the chamber working on her view and it was about four years in and the website is. It was supposed to start.
Speaker 1:That would be the beginning of blogging. It really was.
Speaker 2:It was 2012 is when it started, and it was fine. It was enough to pay writers a little bit, but it wasn't, you know, really making much money at all, really making much money at all. And there actually came a time year four, um 2016, that summer that, uh, my husband and I we like went out to dinner and he said this is you know, we have to decide what you're going to do. You need to be all in or not. And so I went all in and about that time also is when it's like had like a month, I had like a month left of income coming in and if it didn't work, we would shut it down. We refinanced our house that month, so we had a month of mortgage payment. Isn't that the best month?
Speaker 1:ever I, I know it's like I always love refinancing.
Speaker 2:I know. And then, no joke, within a couple weeks of this, I got an email from a woman and this is the story that I've told on the national TV spots An email from a woman who said Leslie, I've been praying about it and I want to share my story on your website. And her view at that point. You know, we're like one point. We have like 1.8 million now followers on Facebook. We were like 20,000. We were pretty small and she said she had found us and she'd been praying about it and she wanted to share her story. And it was um. I was so honored to share it. It was actually a piece that her, her friend, had died from. Um died by suicide because of postpartum depression.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:She wanted us to share that Mm-hmm and that story just completely took off. And we received an email not long from after that of that said thank you for sharing that story. It saved my life and that was it. I mean that was it, and I forgot to tell you in this whole thing I was pregnant, we were pregnant.
Speaker 1:I was going to say you have a third one coming along, Keithen.
Speaker 2:Yes, At that point I really was like I need to either get a real job or do something here. And this the site just completely changed. Okay, and so I feel like I'm like, when you look back at it, it's like that is. I know that God has given me the talents and the staff, the talent and everything, but also he keeps leading us in this direction, to keep doing it which is just kind of real to me.
Speaker 1:And I feel like doing that now.
Speaker 2:It's almost it's year 13.
Speaker 1:That's crazy, and now it's three books.
Speaker 2:And it's all I don't know. It's it's so much bigger than us and it's it's such it is so much bigger than you, but I.
Speaker 1:It's such. It is so much bigger than you but I. I just watched. It makes me think. My daughter and I just watched the Martha Stewart documentary.
Speaker 1:Oh that's so interesting. And then my daughter read Ina garden's book. I have not, but I think what I got from Martha Stewart's story, regardless of what you think about her, and I think it's what's kind of stirred me to know more about, like the stories of women who are doing things outside of their comfort zone but she was so prepared for each phase I had forgotten that she was in finance. So that made you know. So your story reminds me of that. And then what I want so desperately for heartlifters here to do is to lean in Because I'm leaning in Leslie to hear okay, you walked around the kitchen weeks and weeks coming for a name, you really leaned in to whispers and you have a very supportive husband. Not everyone has that, but even outside of that there was something like can you help us really understand what you followed? Like so much in our Christianese we drop God led, god led. Okay, I know he does, I know he does, I know he does.
Speaker 2:And it's so hard to like be like. Explain that right.
Speaker 1:What is it Embody like? Can you put yourself back in? Okay, I'm third pregnancy, you're at dinner with your husband because I'm living. I'm right here again, so I'm being selfish in a respect, but I also know there are many, many, many women out there going do I or don't I? And how do you persevere? How do you embody, okay, this? I'm thinking of that script. This is the way walkie in it. Now there's another scripture that says there'll be a voice behind you saying walkie. What is that Like? How, if you can put it into a term or a feeling that we can go, oh yeah, I know that feeling. Okay, is that what a whisper is? Because right in the beginning of the book you talk about this whisper that you heard. What is that Like impression? Am I gut? I don't, I don't.
Speaker 2:Gut Feeling. It's a gut thing, I think, for me and why it's so important and thank you for asking the backstory, because why I think it's so important for women to hear this is that it can look one way, but behind the scenes, I need people to know that I, I, I feel myself getting teary. Oh, what are you doing to me today? I know who I am, I'm sure. So precious.
Speaker 2:Even though I struggle, like everyone with you know knowing really who we are and what value we bring. I know that I am loved by God. I know that I have a family who loves me and that if all, if it all fails and goes away which, by the way, social media can go away like that in a minute I will be okay.
Speaker 1:Bit fearful right now.
Speaker 2:I'm just like man, teared up about that. But I I feel like that's um, to be grounded in that and you and you don't need, you don't need money and accolades and all those things to know that and that's what the gift of aging has taught me is. Then I feel like, okay, if, if God wants me to keep doing this, then I'm going to keep figuring out a way to do it until it doesn't work anymore. And if it doesn't work anymore, maybe he wants me to go in a different direction and lead in a different way.
Speaker 2:But for now, for 13 years, we've been sharing these women's stories and I tell these writers all the time I'm like you guys have no idea the impact you are making on women just by sharing your story and you'll never know, because it's strangers who are reading it, but that can literally change their life, because they are reading it from you, from your mouth, reading your words and knowing that they're not alone, and that is very impactful and huge.
Speaker 1:And as you said, you were lonely. You were very lonely.
Speaker 2:You know and someone you know through these interviews someone had said do you think you were creating her view, also because you were so lonely?
Speaker 1:And I think that's a good question.
Speaker 2:I think I was, because in TB, you, you work, you work and then you go to bed and then you work, and I had such little kids and I was just this, I'm going to make it happen. And then I was missing out on all these friendships in the meantime. Yeah, so, did that answer that? Thanks for making me cry.
Speaker 1:No, I didn't want to make you cry, but I want you to acknowledge like it's so powerful. But I but when I saw you get emotional was when you mentioned you know that you're loved, yeah, and that just takes me right back to daddy reading you a story every night. Well, I had an alcoholic father. So that didn't happen in my life, not at all. And you know whether your mom made him do it or not. You know he could have said I ain't doing that, it's not important. Not, you know he could have said I ain't doing that, it's not important.
Speaker 1:And I just think a huge part of the work that we do here, that I'm trying to do is is in that whole world of attachment. And so you know we would say you have secure attachment, because someone who has had that, you know I was just. I mean downloading article after article and reading for you the effects of received grandmother's affection on adult grandchildren's health behaviors. You know affection exchange theory. I'm like, are there really these things? Because in the world of psychology there's just theory after theory after theory. But you received affection, yep, and I I'm digging deep into it. It's hot up the press for me that I'm. I didn't know there was something called affection exchange theory and when you have received that, of course you're going to get secure attachment Right and the cue of knowing you have that is that it can all go away and you still know you're loved Me. I do it so that I will feel loved because I have a boy in attachment, you know, in my life, so I had to work really hard.
Speaker 1:You can feel that, feel the applause, feel at a girl, but you're not doing it for that reason, and I love that. I think it's an important distinction. But you can also speak into us that, at the core of anything that we want to do or need to do, we need to know foundationally that we are loved and, as I say here, I have value, I have worth and I have dignity. Anything that comes to me from outside is a bonus because I have it from inside of me. So her view from home. You just felt those words come from God and you're walking around the kitchen and-.
Speaker 2:Which sounds really hokey, by the way. Can we just talk about that?
Speaker 1:It's not hokey, though it's not, it does sound like it right, it just sounds like yeah, but you can't.
Speaker 2:It is hard to explain that. How you remember that moment.
Speaker 1:Right, but you're being in the presence of God, you are availing yourself. You don't know any other way to do it Like. To me it's just okay. Well, I don't really know what you want to call this book or that book, or how this you know, but for anybody it's, it's a constant communion, constant dialogue, and the more you practice that the more you can identify the whispers.
Speaker 1:How has uh we're really going to get to the grandma part of this conversation how has collaboration with writing like you're primarily editing the book, in a sense, because it's collaboration how has that enriched your life? Because I'm an author who's you know, I've written my own. I am in a collaboration coming up which is so fun, and so I'm curious because I said to one of my daughters I'm like I don't know why I'm enjoying this so much, Like it's almost like you're going backwards, in a sense, when you're a traditional author and you publish your own books, but now I'm in a collaboration like that's traditionally where you would start and but it has been life giving. So I'm wondering what it has done for you as a woman.
Speaker 2:Uh, it's first of all, very humbling because these women are incredible authors and you read their words. I think a couple of times that I'm doing the audio book. I'm like the guy who was doing it, you know recording it for me. I'm like I'm not going to let. I don't know what this word means. Will you tell me? You know what I mean? Like there were several times.
Speaker 1:Oh no, I did it yesterday on a podcast. I'm like, oh, I don't know what a paragon is. I'm like I'm not sure what that is.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, oh wow, these women are incredible. Now, and that doesn't take away from my own gift, but it does show you how many different gifts we all have, and it is it. It's really an honor. It's just such an honor to be able to, to be a part of their stories and to help them come together and I lead each reader through of each section, which is really fun for me too, but I it's.
Speaker 1:It's just cool, it's it is well, this book is, I mean, number one. It's just cool. It is Well, this book is, I mean, number one. It's just so cool to be a grandma. I mean you just people tell you. But it's how I felt when I became a mother, because I didn't necessarily feel like I would want to be a mom. Like it was like I was a teacher. I love my life, I love teaching. I had lots of students. Like it was like I was a teacher, I love my life, I love teaching. I had lots of students. They were like my little first grade babies. And then when my first child was born, I was born, you know, a mother was born. So they say and I feel like the same as with the grandma.
Speaker 2:I was like I was good.
Speaker 1:I wasn't one of those moms you know like oh my God, you have to have a baby you know, I'm just doing my thing and having life and getting selfish again. Basically, you know, and then now I cannot be that anymore.
Speaker 1:Now I'm back to the holy interruptions of FaceTimes and connections, one of my daughters on a plane, with her five month old going to California, so walking her through that, praying her through that first time traveling alone with a baby, you know. And so obviously this book was a natural progression from so God Made a Mom. What about so God Made a Grandma has perhaps surprised you in this.
Speaker 2:Like this. So God Made a Mother was again our book baby, and it's so beautiful. But the book is even more in depth If that, like the stories, are really rich. I mean there and there are. There are stories written by grandmothers, but there are stories written by women about their mothers or about their grandmothers and some of the historical pieces. There's a piece in there about her grandmother living through the Holocaust.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Just some powerful pieces in there and actually I don't have the facts in front of me. I tried to find it. You know how you find something on Instagram and then you'd watch it, and then you want to share it, and then you can't find it again.
Speaker 1:Oh yes.
Speaker 2:There was a CBS video that I just saw today. Something about 50% of Americans can't name a concentration camp.
Speaker 1:Yes, because we just had the massive Holocaust celebration. It was on CBS Sunday morning. I guarantee you that was just on.
Speaker 2:Yes, and that like in five to seven years, all of these Holocaust survivors will be gone. And they were talking about Jeepers. I'm getting kind of teary at this too.
Speaker 1:No, it was impactful. Impactful, they put the pictures up on a big screen. Yeah, it's CBS Sunday morning. I'll put the link in the show notes.
Speaker 2:Yep. So they were talking about how important it is to continue sharing those stories and I thought, oh my gosh, we have an author in our book.
Speaker 2:You do who shared her grandmother's story of the Holocaust. I thought that is exactly what. It can be big, it can be little, but those are the things that we have to keep doing so we can teach future generations. And then we also notice. What I have recognized is that we are very much the same, even though we're going through very different times. They'll talk about their grandmothers and what it was like raising kids in the 40s and 50s and I'm like, oh no, they had the same mental health, they just didn't know how to describe it exactly, but we were all going through the same things, even though time has changed us all. So I just think by writing those stories and sharing that information, we all become better, well-rounded people and we learn and continue to grow. And the importance of that For sure.
Speaker 1:It's oral storytelling. We have to pass these stories down and you are pretty privileged, you know. You have created this incredible platform and space for women to tell their stories. It's enviable. I love it. I'm like I would love to.
Speaker 1:I have, I have decades of women's stories inside of my heart as a counselor, you know, and it's like it's just such an honor. I just call it the vault. You know, it's the vault and I think that you're absolutely right in it, because we don't live intergenerationally anymore either. Like you know, your grandparents lived and moved to Nebraska. You grew up with, around them, you grew up in, you know, so you had such a distinct honor in that and, like you said, didn't really think it was cool until much later in life. Yep, you know, but intergenerationally.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking of this 95 year old woman I was in a Bible study with you know, cornelia, and I think of her all the time. I just think of you know she's since passed, but I mean this woman was just incredible and she would sit there with us young women and go. Well, I dealt with the same thing, you know. I think when you find that symbiotic, like, oh, I get it, yeah, I get it, and hearing a story of a Holocaust survivor can then infuse courage and bravery, because certainly that woman did not expect for history to turn and for her to have to go live.
Speaker 1:Nobody knows, we don't know, we're in a sobering time and so we do not know. And so by reading these stories like, and so God made a mother, so God made a grandma, it's, you know, it's like that ivy of faith and courage, bravery. I want to read the chapter titles because I wonder how hard it was for you to choose. Uh, condense so.
Speaker 1:God made a grandma gentle. I love that. That's first. So God made a grandma wise. So God made a grandma redeemed. So God made a grandma wise. So God made a grandma redeemed. So God made a grandma creative, so God made a grandma faithful. God made a grandma graceful. God made a grandma generous. God made a grandma resilient. God made a grandma devoted. And God made a grandma to leave a legacy. How hard was it to choose? Did you obtain the stories and then fashion the?
Speaker 2:So when we opened the submissions for our writers, we kind of told them the vibes that we were going for Kind of starts with the pieces that I write and how it leads through, because I introduce each section, so that's kind of how we get a vibe. What we wanted in here is that we wanted to make sure people know that grandmas aren't perfect either and a lot of us didn't grow up with that. And in fact there's a piece my what I have learned is that my mother and her mother-in-law didn't really they didn't really get along so well Stories that I thought you know what? It's not my place to share their stories, but I did a few things in there because I do want people to know that they're not alone in the fact that maybe they didn't have amazing grandparents, in the fact that maybe they didn't have amazing grandparents. But a lot of them then will will share how they want to then raise their children and help with their grandchildren in the future.
Speaker 2:So it was, it was. It was hard to.
Speaker 1:I would say I would think so. To knock it down to just those attributes.
Speaker 2:Right, right. And to come up with so many, yeah, and the stories all fit within those categories it's phenomenal. But I think we haven't done that.
Speaker 1:You know, we did that a year and a half ago, or whatever but I think what is most important for me and why I really for there were many reasons I wanted you here, but what I have found not having been raised in a home that was, you know, where I received secure attachment my husband wasn't either. Both of our fathers were alcoholics, both very trauma-filled in different ways. And so then you're trying. We were committed to Christ when we got married. I was 20 when I became a follower, a real follower. I was Catholic up until that point was 20 when I became a follower, a real follower. I was Catholic up until that point. But I think we were so committed, we had such a vision to have what you would say a first-generation Christ-following faith.
Speaker 1:Not that I didn't grow up with my mother's Catholic faith I did. I received quite a bit from it. But you know, really embracing the gospel, and then you become a grandparent and adult children. It's a whole different ballgame and we didn't do things perfectly because we were conflict adverse and so we didn't teach our children. We didn't handle conflict, you know.
Speaker 1:So what I'm saying in all of this is I think there does need to be a manual and you're giving us stories to teach those of us who have not, I didn't grow up around grandparents. I mean, it's another story, but when you have a dislocated family, well then, I had a dislocated extended family and I didn't really grow up around cousins. We didn't grow up close. It wasn't important to my mother, you know, and I saw my maternal grandmother once twice once at 12 and then once when I was had my firstborn two times, and then once when I was had my firstborn, two times, yeah, and then my paternal grandmother. You know, we all have a story and I think what I'm yearning for is I just now.
Speaker 2:I want to be the best grandmother, right, right, but I don't want to put too much pressure on yourself either, because you already are, just by showing up, I know, just by being there, and that's what you teach us a lot about. Like, I love this. This is and I don't think my husband would mind me telling this story Very patient man named.
Speaker 2:Kyle. His parents divorced when he was 12. Okay, and he will tell you now cause he is. I mean, truly, he's such a good man, he's just, he's just, really he's just and he helped his mom. He's really good, like, he does laundry and we all do the cooking together and all that because he always had his mom when she left.
Speaker 2:But he will talk now about the fact that he saw his grandma and grandpa, his mom's parents, and they were just loving and how they cared for each other. And then his uncle and his wife, how they were together and how they took care of each other and he recognized that and he will say at 43, that that really made a big impact on his life. His uncle was a best man in our wedding.
Speaker 2:So I think, it so interesting and that's not to take away from his mom and dad. They're both wonderful, fabulous, of course not.
Speaker 1:No, but it's a jarring thing at 12 years old.
Speaker 2:Right, and it's so interesting to me now that you brought all that up, like I mean this fascinating of how people have impacts on us. And it doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be a grandparent or a mother, it can be someone who is a mentor. There's a story in our book of how a woman had a mentor from her church who would have been a grandmother's age. Help her, and that's the cool thing that we can do that Even when my kids are grown and gone, we can be mentors to people.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, I've been a spiritual mother to so many.
Speaker 2:Will you be a spiritual mother for so many you know? I mean, will you be a spiritual mother for me? Yes, I will.
Speaker 1:I would love that. It would be an honor. No, but I know that I have, you know, and it's like I just I have I don't know how I have this innate. It's like you said, it's just a calling to to mother and that's. You know, the project I'm working on it is about mothering. You don't have to have birthed a child, you know. It's just about that nature and nurture of mothering and I mean I just, yeah, I could go on and on.
Speaker 2:You have to right, especially for the people who don't have that growing up. So that's why teachers can be so impactful and coaches oh dance teachers, you know, I mean it's just so.
Speaker 1:I love that your husband you know, and I love that you're calling me back to the fact that I cannot be perfect. It's not important that I be perfect, but it's important what I feel and tell me if you think this is an accurate statement to be continually developing, to become as wholehearted and as emotionally and mentally and relationally and spiritually healthy as I can be. Because I have these little faces now and it is a it's just. I don't know, when you see your kids have kids, it's just a whole thing. The whole thing is just how do I get so old so soon, as Dr Seuss says, and it's just like okay.
Speaker 2:So you're telling me that doesn't change Because I really. It is just in the last few years I'm like what 43? What happened to the last decade?
Speaker 1:And then you've been building a platform and raising children, yes, no, I think. Well, I love to be enamored by life, so I think it's also a part of that. You know, I'll never want to stop learning and stop growing, but I think the power of I do hope that so God Made a Grandma will be a gift women give to everybody in their life, every woman. The research is really heavy on grandmothers. Huh, interesting. It's very heavy because it says that grandmothers and this has kind of proven my hypothesis for this book that I'm working on or even the calling I feel to call for women to rise up and take their maternal presence into their spheres, to rise up and take their maternal presence into their spheres, because men will tend to talk about their old jobs, their stories of their old life like they're not. They're not there to nurture, right, they're not really there to.
Speaker 1:Oh, honey, tell me, you know it's not a strong of a empathic, cognitive empathy they call it, and that's where I'm just beginning to like go, oh, that's why the grandmother is more important, because sometimes, like my grandkids, you know, only one of them can really talk, talk, you know. The next one's coming into talking, but she'll be like Nona, nona, but won't mention Grandpa Rob. Yet she loves him and thinks he's amazing. Yeah, but I'm I'm just have my own little pot of research going on, like why did they do that? Yeah, you know, it's just. It's just something that a woman brings to the relationship that, um, I'm grateful that you are strengthening women, because that's what we need to do.
Speaker 2:Thank, you for this. I feel like it's a learning. I'm like, oh, I am doing, I am. So when the Internet says smoggle, I can be like smoggle.
Speaker 1:You're like get rid of the smoggle baby. I am doing important work. I mean you are embodying tend to not like to use the word empowering, you know, but helping women embody their value, their worth, their dignity. And, as you said, I know I'm loved, I'm gonna.
Speaker 1:I'm just want to close with that because, goodness, leslie, if I tell you I've just had so many clients and women speaking events for decades and decades who just weep because they feel invisible, they feel unseen, they're not heard. You know, and it is time, and you have built a table, very, very, very, very big table for women to pull up a chair and and just share their story and feel loved and watch out I'm saying watch out when women really grasp that truth that they're loved, because I just think a remarkable revolution will happen In all the right ways. You give me chills, you give me chills, you give me chills. So, thank you, you will hopefully have many heartlifters joining her view from home and contributing their stories to whatever you have projects for them to do. But thank you, leslie. May you continue to find great meaning and purpose in every sphere of your life.
Speaker 2:Thank you, this was such an honor.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening today, heartlifter. Be sure to hop over to Substack at Heartlift Central, stack at Heart Lift Central. Instagram at Janelle Rairdon and, if you would be so kind, make a tax deductible donation to keep this podcast ad free and spreading its influence all over the world. You can make that donation on my website, janellerairdoncom. On my website, janelleraritancom. Heart Lift International. Everything you need to know is right there. Remember, heart Lifter, you have value, worth and dignity.
