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146. Building Resilence- with Martie Smith
97 Plays2 years ago
Martie Smith, a bilingual Coach and Airforce Veteran was born in Colombia, South America but has moved 49 times in her lifetime. Learning from different cultures, surgeries and traumas obtained many life lessons. Now residing in North Carolina alongside her husband and partner of 40 years decided to share these tips to live a purpose-driven life journey with flexibility and resilience. Martie has rebuilt and transformed her life and adopted a mission and vision to leave a legacy of hope for those open to implementing her helpful tips. They have come in handy for her to now live a vibrant and joyful life. The people who learn from her see her as an example that others want to follow and be inspired. Learn more about Martie Smith https://martiemsmith.com/ Contact Kendra Rinaldi to be a guest on the podcast: https://www.griefgratitudeandthegrayinbetween.com
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Transcript
Letting Go of Limiting Beliefs
00:00:01
Speaker
But in that sorting of all those limiting beliefs, I started clearing them out. And I said, yes, let go and let God. I couldn't control what had happened. I couldn't stop that it happened. But now how was I going to carry it through my life? I carried it long enough for 60 years. It's like it's time to let it go, Marty. It hasn't served you a purpose. It hasn't done you anything but stir up more
00:00:29
Speaker
ill feelings about everything bad that happened to you. So that's just, it gets to be a monster. It gets to be luggage.
Introduction to Podcast and Guest
00:00:41
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray in Between podcast.
00:00:49
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This podcast is about exploring the grief that occurs at different times in our lives in which we have had major changes and transitions that literally shake us to the core and make us experience grief.
00:01:05
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I created this podcast for people to feel a little less hopeless and alone in their own grief process as they hear the stories of others who have had similar journeys. I'm Kendra Rinaldi, your host. Now, let's dive right in to today's episode.
00:01:28
Speaker
On today's podcast, I am chatting with Marty Smith. She is the author of Resilience Nourishes the Soul, How Overcoming Life's Speed Bumps Can Help You Bounce Back and Thrive. She is a bilingual coach and Air Force veteran. She was born in Columbia like me.
00:01:50
Speaker
And she now lives in North Carolina with her husband. And we've actually met a few years back at a health and wellness event, which that is also part of her journey, her health and wellness journey. And we met then, but we're so excited to now have you here as a guest, Marty. Bienvenida.
00:02:13
Speaker
Thank you, Kendra. It's an honor and my pleasure to once again join you on a professional level before we were just seeing ourselves in the conference and just bonding. But I'm very grateful to be here and however I can help you deliver a message, I'm here.
00:02:31
Speaker
Well, I'm happy that you reached out once I posted regarding having read so many books for all the authors I've interviewed on the podcast. You're like, me, me, I've got one. I've got a book. I'm like, send it my way. Let's do this. So it was a pleasure reading your book and getting to know you more in that book and your journey. And there's definitely been a lot of resilience and bouncing back in your life.
00:03:00
Speaker
So let's talk about you. Let's start off with sharing where, like you mentioned, you grew up in Colombia. So let's talk about your upbringing and what brought you to the US.
Marty Smith: A Life of Resilience
00:03:12
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I've had a very adventurous, dynamic life in 63 and a half years. I've moved 49 times in my lifetime.
00:03:22
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I have been to three countries, Colombia, Venezuela, and the United States. I am an ex-Air Force veteran. I'm a Jackie of all trades and mistress of none. I've done everything that is non-traditional for a woman, especially in Latin America to do. I've been a carpenter. I've been a mechanic on the airplanes.
00:03:50
Speaker
been a business owner and everything else. The one thing that I never did was write a book. And I always had that in my dreams that one day I would write a book. In a way it did happen to come true. It was a competition for poetry.
00:04:08
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and this was probably about 2007 so it's been several years and I just kind of entered a contest because it was like money and right and so I said okay but it was I had been to a retreat in the the church at the Catholic Church and they said we're going to do an exercise you're going to write a psalm and I said a psalm they've all been written in the Bible what am I going to write
00:04:31
Speaker
So they said, just write whatever comes to you. And then I threw down, praise thee for all things. And I started the poem and I entered the competition right after that retreat. And guess what? They delivered the book and I'm reading several poems in there and I'm reading the whole book and all of a sudden they didn't put my poem in there.
00:04:57
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The thing was I had my thumb over the first front page and that's where it was. And it's an international poetry competition. So I guess you can call me a Poet Laureate.
00:05:09
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Now, that was a taste of publishing, but it wasn't like, I just kind of put it aside. And then came the pandemic. And this is where things got really dicey because I've had, like I said, an adventurous life, but I didn't want to have flashbacks of some of the traumas I'd had in the past.
Healing Through Writing
00:05:28
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I'd been in a wheelchair. I've had 26 orthopedic surgeries. I have literally, God has taken me
00:05:36
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torn me apart and rebuilt me into a fresher, newer person. I want to say put a pause on that, but pin on that as they say. Let's put a pin on that because somebody listening to this doesn't know now that you are actually a coach. You coach people in their wellness journey. So you now at the age, a young age of, do you want to say your age? 63 and a half. 63 and a half. I'm very proud.
00:06:04
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that yeah and you became a coach recently and you now help people transform not only their bodies but it's also about mindset as well and this is from someone that physically was in a wheelchair and has had all these
00:06:20
Speaker
surgeries and now here you are building muscle and helping others strengthen their life so sorry for I'll take the pin off go ahead continue all this all this sitting at home and being locked in I just I couldn't stand the fact that I didn't want to watch TV I wanted to to learn and that's the one
00:06:43
Speaker
common denominator in my life that has been a constant. And I, it's so grateful and it's been a blessing because wanting to learn made me want to find myself. I just didn't know how. I didn't have the guidance or the purpose-driven plan to do it. But in that pandemic, they offered a book camp, a free book camp. And I went in there, I said, let's see what they said.
00:07:10
Speaker
I got in there and it was a three-day thing. I had my book cover, my outline, my whole theme of the book and everything. And I was like, it's happening. It's happening. And I still pinch myself because I can't believe it. I started writing the book in June of 2022.
00:07:30
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And I had written a whole bunch of stuff in the past and I just threw it down in like a diary or whatever, but never really focused on any particular theme. And then I said, wow, all these things that I have overcome.
00:07:46
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There's always been that reminder that God was there. I just didn't notice him or I was cocky and I'm going to defend myself and I'm the one that's going to manifest everything that happens to me. And so, no, I had it all in here, but backwards.
00:08:03
Speaker
So this book kind of started, which was really interesting because by the time I finished it, it was like a healing process. I was throwing down everything that had affected me and caused me to realize I was resilient. But at the same time, I started changing the perspective of the things I had complained about or felt hurt with or everything
Reframing Trauma and Finding Worth
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else. And one of the ones that really
00:08:30
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took off like a domino effect was when i was seven years old and this is the formative years i don't have to tell anybody that but when you're told you are a mistake we didn't want girls
00:08:43
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I was like, I didn't ask to be born, but at the same time, it was now that I see the change the perspective, they did me a favor because it instilled the fire in me to have passion to prove that I was worthy, maybe not to the rest of the world, but to me.
00:09:03
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And when I lost the weight, I lost 70 pounds, 70 inches. I started gaining muscle mass. My confidence started building. And I said, okay, now we got to go to, I got the body. Now let's go to the mind. And I started clearing all the junk and the trunk that I had put in there.
00:09:20
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All those limiting beliefs that, oh, woe is me. My life stinks. No one loves me. I don't know this. I don't know that. But I had not noticed all the miracles and all the blessings that were happening along the way.
00:09:35
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And so this book was a catharsis. It was a healing process beyond my imagination that I am so happy to share it with the world because that's what I want the world to say. Okay. Maybe you won't follow everything in the book. I don't ask you to follow a recipe. What I ask you to do is take a look at yourself. First of all, we are responsible how we react, how we
00:10:01
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develop a plan or don't develop a plan. And then when you when you get older, you start looking back and going, oh, I could have would have and should have, but I didn't. And now I will. And so that's where I find myself now. That's a little bit about how I've gotten to this point. That is amazing. And the word resilience definitely defines you resilient. You are resilient.
00:10:29
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Now, define what the word resilient means to you or when you read and why it is you chose that title for your
Understanding and Embracing Resilience
00:10:41
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book. When my life seemed to be crumbling and falling apart, when things really hurt deep and just took me to a different level of depression,
00:10:53
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Then I said, no, no, I got to I got to bounce back. I got to dust off, clear all this mess that I'm seeing, evaluate the situation and adjust, accept a lesson or or something. But don't don't let it affect me to the point that I don't want to move on. I don't want to progress. I don't want to do anything with my life because everything's the world shut down on me. So it's bouncing back from
00:11:22
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from anything that throws you out of the road. Yeah. Having a rubber butt, a rubber butt there. Yeah. Like I say in my book, it's for the speed bumps of life because we do have a roller coaster and some of it is pretty treacherous and we could just sit there in the ditch and forget we even exist or pick up and find your way back.
00:11:49
Speaker
So one of your chapters called, Let Go of the Luggage of Your Past, that's chapter five. And you start all your chapters with a quote by M. Smith. Ooh, I wonder, who is M. Smith? By you, which I love because that in itself is already having that little part of your poetry background there because you kind of get these little quotes. So this one is, the past is the master of pain and love.
00:12:18
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make sure you learn from them. So that in itself is a lesson then in resilience. You see it, you can see that the past is there and you can acknowledge that X, Y, Z happened to you or for you.
00:12:33
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and now what are you going to do about it, right? So that in itself. So talk a little more about this of the emotional luggage that we bring into our life and some of it that's happened to you and how you were able to master the letting go. Okay, so one of the major problems I had was holding on
00:12:57
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to things that were said to me and how i was affected by it and i didn't know perhaps my parents did tell me i was a mistake but i didn't give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe they were having a bad day or maybe they just didn't know they didn't have a manual to raise a child or or
00:13:16
Speaker
they weren't expecting anything to happen to their child because she got pulled out of one culture into another. And that was a lot of, I think that that was the behind the scenes cause of most of my parents upsetting. And so they didn't know how to, you know, take it out and they would just express things that really perhaps they never should have.
00:13:39
Speaker
But I don't blame them for it. And like I said, to me, it was something that made me say, okay, if I can't show them, I'm going to show myself that I'm worthy. Surely I had been a rebel without a cause in my family because my brothers were the favored ones. So
00:14:00
Speaker
In this thing about the luggage, I kept saying, well, I'm a girl and they were going to accept me. So I started going to things that were nontraditional. I said, OK, well, if I if I show them that I could fix a car and I could fix an airplane and I'm a carpenter, maybe they'll accept me. So I got I got a little bit of tomboy in me, but but I don't regret it because it's made me tough.
00:14:23
Speaker
But in that sorting of all those limiting beliefs, I started clearing them out. And I said, yes, let go and let God. I couldn't control what had happened. I couldn't stop that it happened. But now, how was I going to carry it through my life? I carried it long enough for 60 years. It's like, it's time to let it go, Marty. It hasn't served you a purpose. It hasn't done you anything but stir up more
00:14:51
Speaker
ill feelings about everything bad that happened to you so that's just it gets to be a monster it gets to be luggage and so when i lost the weight i said i'm making room in my body so now i'm gonna make room in my brain and in that i started to learn to focus better on what i really wanted out of life and i started seeing all the all the things that kept me
00:15:15
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from finding that clarity, from finding that focus and from pursuing whatever it was that I wanted to do, instead of worrying, complaining, criticizing, all the bad things that happen. And it's a wonderful practice because I do feel a whole lot lighter and I do feel like I have more room to grow and learn and
00:15:36
Speaker
and live in love and share. And that aspect of the transformation, the physical transformation, a lot of times we get so hung up thinking that it has to do with vanity. And it's so much deeper than that.
00:15:52
Speaker
Let's talk about, because you mentioned even the aspect of, again, allowing more room than for your own growth as well. In your story, was there also this dynamic of the respect and value of yourself as a spiritual being, having this, you know, as a child of God and that aspect of that in your transformation as
Overcoming Chronic Conditions
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well?
00:16:17
Speaker
Well I had had um actually this this part I do know it happened a little bit in the past when I got out of the wheelchair. They found I have a reflex sympathetic dystrophy which is also known as chronic regional pain syndrome. I didn't know what they were talking about when that happened and what it is is that when you reinjure a limb and I re-injured my knee and it caused a like a short circuit in my autonomic nervous system.
00:16:45
Speaker
So everything that should have hurt didn't really hurt and everything that didn't hurt felt like someone was injuring me. And it was really wild because even draping a sheet over me felt like someone was
00:17:01
Speaker
pricking me with glass or needles or something hot. I could sit by a fireplace enjoying the Christmas and all of a sudden I look at my leg, whoa, it's getting hot. So you didn't have that reflex to pull away. So I had a mass confusion in my brain. So they put this atrophied in my muscles and that's why I ended up in a wheelchair.
00:17:24
Speaker
But thanks be to God, I found a doctor that discovered what I had and he said, you are a perfect candidate for a spine stimulator. And I'm like, what is that? I don't know what you're talking about. He says, it's like a pacemaker. And I said, wait a minute, there's nothing wrong with my heart. He said, it's the size of a pacemaker. It's an implant that we put a wire through your vertebral column.
00:17:48
Speaker
and it's going to fire a signal from your brain stem telling your muscles to innervate and maybe that will get you out of that chair. And I was like, OK, it was either that or going to coma and I didn't feel like doing that. So they they did a massive amount of a battery of psychological and physical tests to see if I was a candidate for it. And they had just started this when I was going through all that. So that was kind of like I was an experiment, a guinea pig.
00:18:17
Speaker
They implanted me with that. I didn't really have any reaction until about a month after the fact and I started feeling like my muscles twitching and everything. I was like, oh, this is different because I had already gotten to the point where I was trembling so much I couldn't even hold my body up.
00:18:35
Speaker
And this spine stimulator started generating that innervation of muscles to cooperate with my brain signals to ask me to move and do everything that we take for granted. Because I promise you, from that point on, I have never taken it for granted. So during that time when I got up out of that wheelchair, that's when I reconfirmed my faith in God.
00:18:59
Speaker
And I said, God, wherever you want me, however you want me, I am yours. And I did, and in that, he started, and I was really hard on myself because I had become severely depressed about being in a wheelchair. So I started reviewing all those things that I was not good at. And one of them was,
00:19:19
Speaker
how could I have not had children for my husband? So I started, you know, just woe is me. That was the, I was very negative because I was raised in a toxic environment of negativity. So that's all I knew. But then I started saying, wait a minute, God started putting the replacement of what would have been my own children. And by his grace, I now have kids that were eight years old. They received their sacraments in the church. And now they're grown
00:19:49
Speaker
children married and have followed the footsteps of catechism and to me
00:19:55
Speaker
And that's fruits of labor that I never imagined. And in fact, the parents of these kids, I know the parents, they're like, they're more friends with you than they are with me. I said, because I'm their friend, I'm not their mother.
The Power of Community and Hope
00:20:08
Speaker
But to me, it's awesome that God showed me that just because I didn't have my own children didn't mean I couldn't have the glory of enjoying the youth. And that has been a driving force in me too.
00:20:25
Speaker
When you see the love that is not blood related, that's when God puts it all in perspective. We are here to coexist. We are here to help each other. We are here to pay it forward.
00:20:41
Speaker
No matter what we go through, we can help each other back up. And that's the mission I have now, to drive hope in people. I don't care if you're a teenager. I don't care if you're an adult. I don't care if you're an elderly person. We all have that moment in time when we say, ah, it's not going to get any better than this.
00:21:02
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but no no it can and it will if you drive yourself to do it and see the gift and the miracle you are in in this world there's no one like you
00:21:16
Speaker
I wish I could just go through and give you touches my love like one of my love like hugging you that I would in hugs are very I get a hug and that's my my my vitamin for the day because it is important.
00:21:35
Speaker
Yes, thank you for sharing that it was just so from the heart and it's it's so true because you you there was something that was sad for you the fact that the idea of your life of what it could have looked like you just didn't end up having children of your own to be given the opportunity to see
00:21:53
Speaker
other children, not only just grow and thrive, for you, the part of seeing their spiritual growth as well was so important, and you being part of that journey as well. It's very impactful to see that. And they tell me, Miss Marty, Miss Marty, if they hadn't been for you, I don't know where I'd be.
00:22:15
Speaker
If it hadn't have been for you, I don't think I'd be here. So it's really, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful experience. And I recommend that everybody take a look deeper at what they really, how they touch everyone's lives in their life.
00:22:30
Speaker
and they will notice and they will be grateful and they will see that there is a whole lot more that we don't hold ourselves responsible for that we do we do impact people everything we do in life impacts people around us not just us so that's why god put a whole bunch of us in here
00:22:50
Speaker
Let me ask you, just like you are being this guiding light for these young, you know, now adults, but that you kind of saw them as they were younger growing up.
00:23:05
Speaker
Who was someone for you that was that for you in your youth or were you able to find that was later on in your life? Someone that really did see you as more than as you said, your parents had said, a mistake. Who was that? Who were some of these individuals that were able to pour in that greatness into you, that belief into you until you believed in yourself?
00:23:33
Speaker
And some of those are really interesting because of Columbia having in Columbia, we had maids for every reason and season. But since I kept moving back to the United States, I kept looking for the maids because they weren't there. And I would love I would love to visit Columbia and see the maids because why they gave me they taught me tender loving care.
00:24:00
Speaker
They took care of me like their own children. And I was very grateful for that. And I didn't want to leave. And I always wanted to get adopted somehow or another. But I was a rebel because
00:24:11
Speaker
I was also raised in blue blood. And so you had to ring a bell. If you wanted a glass of water, you had to ring a bell to go get it. And I would go to the kitchen and pour the water and they would bust me and say, why are you serving your glass of water? That's what this little bell is for. And yet at the same time, we'd go back to the States.
00:24:31
Speaker
I'm looking for the bell. I'm like, I'm all confused. So all that stuff made me a mess. But I would see and in writing this book, I would see that those people taught me tender, loving care. My my grandmother, my grandmother, we would go see her once a year. And I wanted to just hide under her bed and and let my parents go and me stay with her because she
00:24:56
Speaker
She was always very loving, very in that touch, that hug, that I felt like a million dollars, you know, and things like that. But then as I got older, I went back to school after I was in the wheelchair. I went back to school.
00:25:16
Speaker
And the teacher, I went to tech school. I said, I'm going to do a two year program because I'm tired of watching Oprah on TV. I can't find enough channels on TV. I got to, I'm going to go learn. So I went two years to get a basic science, associates in science in this teacher, choose my math teacher. And I didn't know what they had done to numbers and why they threw formulas in there with letters and all kinds of symbols. And I was like, Oh, this is a corrupt, this is why I don't like money.
00:25:47
Speaker
Math is the root of all evil. I would tell my teacher that. And she just took me under her wing and she says, you're going to be a tutor. And I ended up being a tutor for algebra, for trigonometry, took statistics and all this stuff. Once you learned what all those letters mixed up with the numbers meant, then all of a sudden you're the one. She was so caring. And she's the one that told me, you need to go apply.
00:26:16
Speaker
for the medical university. I said, oh, this lady whacked her head. Why is she crazy? I'm too old. I'm older than most of the professors. Yeah. What is she talking about? She wrote a letter of recommendation, got a whole bunch of people that knew me, my teachers and all, and wrote letters of recommendation. I went to Charleston to the university, medical university, out of 150 people that applied. I thought,
00:26:41
Speaker
If that's how many people on the list, no, I got accepted and there was only 10 of us, 10 of us in the class. And what degree was that? It was for radiation therapy, treating cancer patients. And this is where
00:26:56
Speaker
God taught me how to live by taking care of people that were dying. So this is where I see all the blessings that God put along the way, all the angels that He was placing for me to open up my heart and my soul to what really mattered in life.
00:27:18
Speaker
it was the best experience in the world but then I got re-injured and that's when when I ended up I was a liability then because I was taking 14 medications that were making me total zombie I couldn't function and I didn't blame them if that they couldn't keep me hired so I got out of there and but very depressed very bummed out and then um
00:27:43
Speaker
I said, well, that's the end of that career. I don't know what to do. And but somehow or another, I kept persisting something's going to happen. Something's going to happen. And this is this is how it leads into all this new stuff. But it's little angels that came along the way and started teaching me the things that I didn't get from my own environment. And it was it was a very good experience because it kept me holding on to hope.
00:28:08
Speaker
It kept me holding on to love and the potential to be a better person than what I had been. So, so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. Now let's talk about having an attitude for gratitude. How does gratitude and having that attitude and gratitude fill
00:28:27
Speaker
play a part in your journey. Well, that that's where I started with the book. I started saying and I used to be grateful for good things, just good things, good things happen. And I said, but it would be short lived. You know, it's like I want more good things. And then I started seeing that that all those bad things that happened to me, I needed to be grateful for because they were lessons.
00:28:52
Speaker
They were lessons that were priming me to be more resilient, to be more strong-willed, and to be more determined, to overpass and succumb to better things instead of drowning in that sorrow of pit of, I can't do anything.
00:29:10
Speaker
So that's that's how I see that part. So in the little like having that attitude for gratitude, how do you make gratitude a daily practice? Like how do you switch your brain to making it be part of your daily practice? It's an ongoing thing all day long. The moment I wake up and I realize I'm alive, I'm grateful. I'm grateful to be alive.
00:29:35
Speaker
And then I start remembering I'm grateful to be walking. I'm grateful to be seeing. And then I go out to nature. I walk barefoot on the ground. And I just feel that connection with nature. And then I look up and I say, wow, God put all this free surround sound of beauty for me to enjoy. So it's just like little things. And I start noticing more of the blessings along the way.
00:30:01
Speaker
it's kind of like it fills that motor of gratitude that you're grateful for everything and then when something bad happens okay okay no worries what's this going to teach me what is this for not why me what the heck i'm not i don't deserve this no no it's like there's a reason and a rhyme to what's happening now i have to take the lesson from it and examine so it's changed my attitude completely
00:30:29
Speaker
Yeah, and sometimes we don't end up finding the
Coping with Loss During Milestones
00:30:32
Speaker
reason. Sometimes there's times in life in which something happens and we really may not find the reason of the why, especially when it comes to deaths of loved ones. Those are some that it's really hard to find the why. But it still is something that as we hold on to something, whatever it may be, just kind of shifts our way of navigating.
00:30:58
Speaker
So let's dive into the parts that they're not in the book because these happened right as you were writing the book. The grief that occurred then last year with the death of then your brother at the beginning of the year and then your father-in-law at the end of last year as you were about to publish and how were you able
00:31:24
Speaker
to navigate your grief journey at the same time as you were birthing this new phase of your life. It's really interesting because, well, my parents passed away, dad passed away in 20, 15, 2014. So it's been, it's been a while, but my brother, I had not seen either one of my brothers since then.
00:31:50
Speaker
Uh, mom had been placed on hospice and I think my brother went to the hospital for a little while, but I didn't talk to him and he was very jealous of me because I had been married for a long time. I just completed 40 years of marriage two weeks ago. So I'm very proud of that. But so my brother was always like jealous of me. He's the older one, but I always felt like he was the saint. He could do no wrong. So there was always some kind of rivalry there, but.
00:32:17
Speaker
All of a sudden a policeman came to the house looking for next of kin in January of last year. And I was like, what is going on? I had broken my toe so I couldn't talk to the policeman. My husband went out and talked to him. I was like, something's going on. Cause they were out there for a long while. He, my husband come back in and he says, you need to call, you need to call a hospital. And I say, what? He says, your brother. And he didn't tell me anything else. I called the hospital. My brother had, uh,
00:32:45
Speaker
contracted COVID in December and he had been in a coma. From December till they called me the end of January. Did he live in that area? Did he live in the same town? He used to. He used to and as far as I knew he was still around, we just didn't connect. But he ended up going to Arkansas. So I was in the other opposite end in Raleigh, North Carolina and I was like, ah.
00:33:11
Speaker
How do I get over there? I can't fly over there to see him. He's on his deathbed. Something's going to give. We are Catholic. So my first reaction was, I can't go see him. Let me go send a priest to see him. Another miraculous thing, because the priest called me while he was in the hospital, seeing my brother. He says, here's your brother. You want to say something? And I did.
00:33:35
Speaker
I said, I forgive you. I still love you. I'm sorry. We didn't work out. So that was like, we had closure, however it happened. And I was very proud of it because I was able to tell them things I hadn't ever told them before. So it was good. It was good. It was a good thing for me. And not only that, God gave me the ability to find a way to get them buried by the beautiful people that I now know they contributed money.
00:34:06
Speaker
And somehow or another, he got cremated and I ended up putting them right next to my father in the common bearing here locally, which is something else that I had done for my parents. My parents were on foreclosure. I had moved here from my paradise in Charleston, where I had graduated from medical university. I didn't want to move because that was our dream home. We rebuilt it, everything.
00:34:30
Speaker
And then I got a call from a perfect stranger that my dad was, had had a heart attack and I needed to come to Raleigh to see him that perhaps he was dying. And I was like, who are you? And why isn't my mama not calling me? But we had not spoken. My mom and I had not spoken for eight years because the psychiatrist that I had gone through for my major depression said, if you're going to talk to your parents, don't let them make you cry. And it was always very emotional, very,
00:35:00
Speaker
very ugly to receive a phone call. So I had to cut it off. So we didn't have a communication and I didn't know how to get back with it. So I just kind of let God go and let him do his thing. But with this grieving, I started realizing that God had put me along the way to help heal some of that. And he had got me to drive all my family back together. They're not here.
00:35:30
Speaker
But they're in heaven and I do feel blessings because this priest also said if your brother wasn't in the state of grace we can we can give him this ritual and I was like, okay do what you got to do and And that was that was it. But when he got put in that columnarium here locally after me What am I gonna do? I don't have the money to do it. It was like wow that was God that was God and everyone that that
00:35:59
Speaker
The care for me stepped up to the plate and gave me that oomph to keep going. So I'm eternally grateful to those people for having chipped in and got that because I couldn't have done any of it. It is so amazing how things like this, like what you're sharing regarding
00:36:21
Speaker
pieces of the puzzle coming together, that the hand of God is there, but also, Marty, not to take away the fact that you had, again, been a part of a community, of people's lives, and you, yourself, had touched other people's lives, and then these people stood up to then help you in that process.
00:36:46
Speaker
don't take away the, don't be so humble as, let me put it that way, and the terms of, of course, humbleness is important in our life, but the part that you played a part in that because of who you are and the people, the lives that you touched in order to be able to have that impact in those people's lives so that then you were able to then,
00:37:10
Speaker
get that help to then be able to kind of bring it full circle for your brother as well. I'm learning that and I think that's why I think my mission is to create a legacy of hope because I do have something to offer and I'm now realizing and recognizing something I didn't recognize before because of all the mumbo jumbo of life that I had made but
00:37:35
Speaker
But I think I'm starting to realize, and I do want to impact people in a positive way, however I can. So I appreciate you saying that. Thank you. Yes, no, it is true. And when I met you, one thing that characterized you and characterizes you is your incredible sense of humor.
00:37:54
Speaker
So I know that that is sometimes a way that a lot of us, especially with trauma, we sometimes end up using humor as a way of kind of covering, right? Especially as you were saying, if you grow up with insecurities, humor could become this shield, but it is also a way of connecting with others too. So I know that that's something you have.
00:38:16
Speaker
And we can talk about how that's impacted your life, how humor's played a part also in your journey. But I don't want to forget to also mention then, as you're kind of talking about humor, to make sure your father-in-law as well, because I had asked you that before. Okay. Now, my father-in-law was the one father figure in my life that I really connected from the day I met him. And I didn't even know he was going to be my future father-in-law. I had met him in a
00:38:42
Speaker
in a we're building a nuclear power plant here outside of Raleigh and I saw this gentle old soul and he just he just was so polite and so refreshing and in in this is a woman in a construction site where cat calls I mama sita benga benga you know and I'm like no no no and I had already been in the air force so I had really grown
00:39:06
Speaker
very accustomed to hearing it but dealing with it in a tough way so this this this man um kept giving me butterscotch candy and i didn't think anything of it but right before i got that job i had met what was my future husband at the bowling alley i used to work at a bowling alley he came from midnight madness the guys didn't show up that he was going to play bowling with or whatever and and um he gave he got my number
00:39:37
Speaker
And I carded him, but I didn't even read his name or nothing. I was like, just Google. And I had already been engaged twice, sworn off men and was going into the Peace Corps. OK, I'd had no plans or purpose to be married in my book. Well, I met him in May. And he lost my phone number.
00:39:59
Speaker
And I'm like, that is the lamest. Can you think of something more lame? Excuse. And he said, I promise you, I did. And I was like, you know, but when I met my father-in-law at the construction site, he and I went to meet him at the house, I was like, oh, wow, you too. What a connection. And he goes, he got a coincidence. I don't believe in coincidence. So he shows me this little water paper with half my name on it. And he goes,
00:40:29
Speaker
if you don't believe my son hears the proof and i was like i am so sorry and then we met in may got engaged in august and got married the following february this from a person that was going in the p score and didn't want nothing to do in relationships period but
00:40:48
Speaker
40 years, I say he was the prime candidate. And my father-in-law was very nurturing. He was that example living of a fatherly figure in me in my life. And so he passed away, but out of the blue all of a sudden.
00:41:07
Speaker
He, we saw him Thanksgiving. He had slowed down. He has a back injury, but he, I think somehow or another, the booster shot that he received created chaos in his body. And he didn't have a history of anything. And then a week before Christmas, he passed away. But he had gone to hospice and we were able to see him before he left. We had closure with him too. And the one thing he says, I want to see the book. I want to see the book. And I was like, oh, wow.
00:41:37
Speaker
But he went to hospice. He didn't last a day in hospice. On the day that I was publishing my book, it was going to go into Amazon for publication. At the same time I was pushing that button, I got news that my father-in-law had passed.
00:41:55
Speaker
And I was like, what a bittersweet thing to do in the middle of the best thing that's happened in my life since my marriage. And what do I do now?
00:42:08
Speaker
throw it all away, throw the book in Amazon and wonder what it's going to do, or do I become more resilient and share even more reasons why God has prepared me for this mess. And that's what I did. And within a month of him passing away, within a month of me publishing this book, I got an award
00:42:29
Speaker
for my book and and now I can write and I have another book coming and I can write award-winning author so tell me no one can tell me that I have not been blessed with everything that's happened to me no matter how bad it can be but it's part of life it's part of growing it's part of really holding on to those key figures in your life that make you and shape your soul
00:42:55
Speaker
I love you, Marty. I love you. Your soul just shines through in how you speak and how you share. And it speaks through in this book as well. And there are just so many aspects of your life that will bring someone else that aspect of hope of being able to keep going. And it's an easy read. So make sure to pick up this book. Let's share how people can find it, Marty,
Future Projects and Resilient Humor
00:43:23
Speaker
please.
00:43:23
Speaker
It's on Amazon. And if you follow me on Facebook, under Marty Smith, or on Instagram, the nursery, we can, I don't know how, but if they follow me on Facebook, they'll find my book. But Amazon and let's say the title again, Resilience Nourishes the Soul by Marty Smith. And I have a website, resiliencenourishesthesoul.com. Okay. They can order it straight to Amazon that way too.
00:43:53
Speaker
So Marty, since I had asked you about humor, humor us now and share a little bit of that part of you of humor and how you feel it's helped you in these moments of tough times. OK, one that really stands out in me is when they were they were.
00:44:15
Speaker
you know, checking me out to see if I was a candidate for the spine stimulator. And the doctor kept emphasizing, it's titanium. It's titanium. It's going to go on your butt. It's going to go on your butt. So I'm like, okay, Jane Fonda, Buns of Steel, I got Buns of titanium.
00:44:39
Speaker
Marty Smith, titanium, but buns of titanium. Now I see myself because I have to literally, I still have this implant in me, it's never going to go away and I am
00:44:53
Speaker
partly wired electronically. So I have to charge myself like the phone. And it's really, it's really, it's really cool. So I say I'm bionic with all kinds of hardware, but I'm also electronic because I could possibly pass for a robot come the day when machines take over. I could probably sneak past it.
00:45:14
Speaker
Did you watch the Bionic Woman? Yes, she was my hero. There you go. There you go. Was there like a ttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt
00:45:35
Speaker
Humor really does help a lot, especially if we're built with that chip, right? So in these kind of situations, it could be like a nervous reaction, like things like what you said, oh, I guess I'll have a bionic, a titanium butt. You know, it comes from that, but at the same time, it just helps shift your perspective as well. So thank you for bringing some humor into this conversation as well.
00:45:59
Speaker
So, how can people get in touch with you? You mentioned Facebook, again, it's Marty, M-A-R-T-I-E, Smith. And then also LinkedIn, if you want to look me up on LinkedIn, wherever you find me, you'll see the book because I am
00:46:17
Speaker
It's a big accomplishment for me. I'm very proud of it, but not only that, I want to pay forward everything that is good that's happened to me and share it with the world. So I appreciate all the people that have supported me and all the people that have read it. And I'm also in the process of translating it into the Spanish version. So that is definitely something that I have not overlooked. I just need the funds to get it, but.
00:46:42
Speaker
I promise you we will be out there. And then again, like I said, I'm also working on a second book and this one is really interesting as well because it's called Creative Chaos Warrior. So all that stuff that I lived through, how I became a warrior with the armor of God.
00:47:00
Speaker
Wonderful. Well, thank you once again, Marty, for sharing your journey here on the podcast, but especially through your book and inspiring others. For the listeners, go become the reader now of Marty's book. Thank you, Marty. Thank you for having me and thank you for all that are listening to this. And I hope you gained something fruitful and something good to share with the world.
00:47:32
Speaker
Thank you again so much for choosing to listen today. I hope that you can take away a few nuggets from today's episode that can bring you comfort in your times of grief. If so, it would mean so much to me if you would rate and comment on this episode. And if you feel inspired in some way to share it with someone who may need to hear this, please do so.
00:48:01
Speaker
Also, if you or someone you know has a story of grief and gratitude that should be shared so that others can be inspired as well, please reach out to me. And thanks once again for tuning into Grief Gratitude and the Gray in Between podcast. Have a beautiful day.