Following Your Head, Your Heart, and Your Instinct

I dreamt about being a mother

When I was a child I dreamt about being a mother. I highly value nurturing others. I was a mother from the time I was a year old it seems.. I am the eldest of 5 children. I was helping my parents raise my siblings as long as I could remember so I always thought of myself as, somewhat of a caregiver for children and being a parent was a natural progression of that. I knew that I would have some.. career that I would love, and I didn’t know what it was. I knew those answers would come but the most important thing that I knew or that I dreamt about was being a parent, being a mother, and having my own children because I knew that I love children and that was most important to me.

The people around me inspired me to grow and evolve into the person I’ve become, and primarily it’s strong women in my family. They were all very different, but all very strong. I grew up observing these strong women and that was the norm for me; it was normal that women were resourceful, that women were independent. They weren’t the kind of women who would wait for someone as I said for a man to come and solve a problem for them they would just resolve the issue. So I had really strong women that inspired me and influenced me greatly while I was growing up. And really help shaped who I am in a huge way.

So who influenced me most, if you ask me to pick one person, it’s my grandma Ruth. She was the one I spent most of my time with. My grandmother was a woman who was way ahead of her time.  She was the owner of a nursing home and she was the only female owner of a nursing home in the state of Minnesota when she first started her business and for many years after she started her business, she owned her own 66 bed nursing homes for 41 years. She was an entrepreneur and was trying to fill a need in her community. She was very philanthropic and very generous. She gave away everything she had, if not to us kids and family members, to the residence in her own nursing home so she was incredibly generous and so caring. She cared about her community, she cared about her church, she cared about her family so so much and I grew up seeing that. She was very civic-minded. My mother wasn’t civic-minded, my stepfather certainly wasn’t civic-minded, but I watched my grandmother and I chose to adopt in myself the things that I learned from her, so what influenced me most most was seeing the way she was generous and kind and caring. The way she cared about her community. The way she cared about needs. She was a woman who did what she wanted because she believed in herself. {She} had self confidence and she believed in what was right, so she pursued those things. I very much resemble my grandmother. She was able to persevere through struggles and through hardships and she still managed to find the joy in life, and she had more than her share of concerns and struggles, but she taught me that.

I was the first woman in my family to go to college.

When she was having such financial trouble with her business – I didn’t have enough knowledge to help her. I couldn’t offer her any help so when I went to college I pursued a business degree because I felt like you can do all these good things in the world and then you could end up having a very huge hardship because you don’t know how to manage your business. I was the first woman in my family to go to college. I worked my tail off in college. If I could go back and do it again, you know what I would do? I would not work as hard for that GPA. I gave up a lot to maintain such a high GPA, and what I gave up was a social life which is just as important as what you're learning right now; and again, there is an opportunity cost for everything you pursue. It’s not about the degree. That’s not the value that you’re gonna get. Yes, there’s value to the degree you’re gonna earn and for God sakes, do not go to college and not finish. Finish it so that investment that you’ve made, that you have (made) goes.. The one thing about college is that they can never take it away from you. They can never take your college degree away from you. It’s about your journey. And it’s not just about a journey with your education, it’s about the journey of your life. And, you know, you’ve probably heard that so many times but I'm tellin’ you, there’s nothing more true that it’s about your journey and everyday and what you do with everyday, and, it’s about who you connect with, about who you choose to spend your time with. It’s about who you choose to invite into your world and who you choose to be a part of their world. And that piece of paper that’s gonna hang on your wall, it’s gonna be a relief, when I look at my master’s degree I think, ‘My gosh I’d thought I’d never get there.’ Writing my thesis, it was like climbing Everest for me. It was nearly impossible. I’d never thought of myself as getting a master’s degree. People use to ask me as a little girl what do you want to be when you grow up. My response was I want to be happy, well I realize now {it’s} kinda of an ignorant response because now your force to define happiness, and the most important lesson I have learn in life is that I really believe happiness is directly related to how thankful you are in your life, how appreciated you are, and how appreciated you are of the family you have. One day you'll say I have no idea what I had back then and I had all these wonderful things going in my life and I just took it all for granted and the truth is when you're appreciated about the little moments that is what is really fulfilling in your life.

What I'm learning as I get older in life is, the money isn’t as important as the joy that I experienced with my work. When you’re doing something that you love - the tough lesson is: where is that happy medium? Because we need money. We all need money to make life work. We all need to have an income in order to make life work and we all have a lifestyle that we want to live. There is that constant challenge of doing what I love and thinking about my future. It’s hard because the things we love to do rarely are things we get paid to do. Sometimes in the midst of it you don't realize what the cost is and how it benefits you but also how it hurts you in some ways and everything is gonna have a good and bad side to it. Be aware of the opportunity cost in some of the things that you do.

I can't think of a decision that was really really tough

I have an analytical mind so when I'm face with a challenge or a dilema I weigh things out in my head and I make a decision. If I had to choose one thing it would be a decision to get a divorce because that a very difficult decision to make because you go to something with so much hope and you have this idea in how your marriage is gonna be like and quite often is not gonna be what you think. You're gonna go into it and you're gonna realize this is a lot different than I thought and then you have to make a decision. Are {you} going to continue to embrace that and do you have that commitment that you're going to learn and grow together? It is either you grow together or you grow apart. It was still very difficult for me to decide that I, needed to get away from that and move on and because I knew it meant giving up on all the hopes and dreams and all the everything so it was a difficult decision. Most decision for me have not been difficult and I really believe because I understand process of deciding something. There are things to every decision that you consider. There is your head telling you the logic of things, there's your heart and what your feeling, and then there's your gut. And two of the three are pointing you in a direction, chances are, that’s the right decision. That's what I've learned.

{Lastly}, I am so glad to be in Minnesota. I love and appreciate every minute and everyday that I am healthy because I know way too many people that are very ill. If you are healthy, you have to wake up every morning feeling like you're the luckiest person you know. And life here is very good. It’s healthier, it’s safer; there’s so much more variety. You got all 4 seasons! Not just one that kinda changes a little bit like in Florida, and with the changing of the seasons comes change in each one of us and that change in scenery of life everyday. When you wake up, it keeps things interesting and exciting and fresh, and I think that’s why people in Minnesota are happier than people in some other parts of the world or the United States.

My greatest accomplishment?

I hope that I am a great parent. I have so much pride in my kids and now my three grandchildren, so it would be a great split that I'm a great parent and a grandparent. I love my grandkids. I adore my two sons, I have two boys. I love their significant others, my daughter in law, and my soon to be daughter in law. I What is most important to me at the end of my life is if they think of me as being a good mom, having done a good job, and they have fun thoughts of me and feel they were loved a lot. That's the most important thing in my life.