Latest / Stories That Live In Us / Live Undaunted (with Lisa Valentine Clark) | Episode 48

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Live Undaunted (with Lisa Valentine Clark) | Episode 48 · Stories That Live In Us

0:02
Lisa Valentine Clark: it changes you fundamentally, where there are so many things that I don't care, who cares, that doesn't matter, and I mean it like you know.
0:09
Lisa Valentine Clark: And then the other things that do matter, like our relationships, the conversations that I have with my children, how people, how I want to be remembered, the things that I say and and do or put down that that matters, it just does.
0:26
Crista Cowan: Stories that Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present and future.
0:34
Crista Cowan: I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist.
0:38
Crista Cowan: I've spent my whole life discovering the power of family history and I know that sharing the stories that live in you can change everything.
0:46
Crista Cowan: One of my all-time favorite movies is Steel Magnolias, and there's a line in that movie that says laughter through tears is my favorite emotion and that completely embodies my conversation with the amazing Lisa Valentine Clark.
1:03
Crista Cowan: She has been through a life, but it's a life that she's intentionally lived, and I am so excited for you to hear her tell her side of it.
1:15
Crista Cowan: Lisa is the host of the Lisa Show and I'll put the link to the podcast in the notes if you want to hear more from her, but right now, buckle up, you're in for a ride.
1:26
Crista Cowan: This is an incredible conversation, so I'm so excited to have this conversation with you.
1:31
Crista Cowan: You and I have never met in person before, but I've heard about you for years, and so I'm excited to hear your story directly from you.
1:39
Lisa Valentine Clark: Thank you for having me.
1:40
Lisa Valentine Clark: I'm super excited to be here, yeah.
1:42
Crista Cowan: So tell me a little bit just about your family of origin growing up.
1:46
Crista Cowan: I like that yeah.
1:48
Lisa Valentine Clark: I have a really fun family of origin.
1:50
Lisa Valentine Clark: I'm the oldest daughter but second born five kids to Robert and Shauna Valentine.
1:58
Lisa Valentine Clark: We all all of the siblings we grew up in a home, kind of like close together.
2:06
Lisa Valentine Clark: There's five of us within about 10 years and so we all have really great memories of growing up.
2:11
Lisa Valentine Clark: We grew up in Lincoln, nebraska, in the heartland, and my father originally came to Nebraska to be a Spanish professor.
2:22
Lisa Valentine Clark: That didn't last long.
2:23
Lisa Valentine Clark: He transitioned into international business and my mom was a schoolteacher elementary school teacher turned a stay-at-home mom and volunteer activist extraordinaire, yeah.
2:41
Lisa Valentine Clark: And we were raised in Nebraska in a close-knit family, a lot of humor and music and art and politics and all the things, and we're all still really close and, yeah, that's my family of origin.
2:55
Crista Cowan: I love that.
2:55
Crista Cowan: Now your maiden name is Valentine.
2:57
Crista Cowan: Yes, my maiden name, or my maiden name, my name.
3:00
Crista Cowan: I'm not married.
3:00
Crista Cowan: Yes, my name is Cowan.
3:02
Crista Cowan: Okay, and so you think, like all the ways that people make fun of children with the last name of Cowan, did you deal with any of like?
3:08
Crista Cowan: Cause you have kind of an unusual last name, right?
3:10
Lisa Valentine Clark: Oh yeah, it's like oh, happy Valentine's day Every day, every day.
3:14
Lisa Valentine Clark: Or what's it like to be a Valentine on Valentine's day?
3:16
Lisa Valentine Clark: Well, I'll tell you, if you don't have a boyfriend, you know growing up or a romantic interest, you're always like whatever.
3:22
Lisa Valentine Clark: It's so dumb, but then when you do, it's really fun.
3:27
Lisa Valentine Clark: But it's interesting because my ancestor that came over from Denmark.
3:34
Lisa Valentine Clark: His name was Valentine.
3:35
Lisa Valentine Clark: Valentine, so talk about a name, right, and so we talked a lot about that growing up.
3:40
Lisa Valentine Clark: But I love that everyone would assume that it was Valentine after the holiday and like when I was in my angsty teen years in the early twenties, I'd be like, they'd be like oh Valentine, is that?
3:52
Lisa Valentine Clark: Like like the holiday, and I'd be like like the massacre, like the Valentine's, like why did I say that?
3:59
Lisa Valentine Clark: Like like the saint, like the massacre, like the holiday, just depending on my mood.
4:03
Lisa Valentine Clark: So you know it's been a fun name to have because now I buy all the heart things, right, like it's a family holiday.
4:10
Lisa Valentine Clark: I get my kids presents.
4:11
Lisa Valentine Clark: My mom used to get us presents and about Valentine's, everything's hearts.
4:15
Lisa Valentine Clark: We had like a Christmas tree decorated with hearts.
4:18
Lisa Valentine Clark: Like I mean, everything's hearts, right, love that.
4:21
Lisa Valentine Clark: Now I've leaned into it.
4:22
Lisa Valentine Clark: It works for you, yeah.
4:23
Crista Cowan: I've come to peace with it.
4:24
Crista Cowan: Well, my family, we all dressed up as cows one year for Halloween.
4:27
Crista Cowan: Oh my gosh, it worked.
4:29
Lisa Valentine Clark: Oh my gosh, that's funny, right.
4:31
Lisa Valentine Clark: Yeah, you guys have a good relationship with AAA and things like that For sure Got it.
4:37
Crista Cowan: So there's this interesting statistic from a study that Ancestry did a few years ago that says that 56% of Americans cannot name all four of their grandparents.
4:44
Crista Cowan: Is that true?
4:46
Crista Cowan: Yes, wow, right.
4:48
Crista Cowan: So I'm curious Do you, did you know all four of your grandparents?
4:51
Crista Cowan: Oh, yeah, yeah.
4:52
Lisa Valentine Clark: Okay, yeah, I did, and I mean I knew of them.
4:55
Lisa Valentine Clark: So my my fraternal grandfather died before I was born in a tragic accident, but I did grow up hearing about him, which I really appreciate it.
5:09
Lisa Valentine Clark: Now it's funny because, like, I want to know more about him now that I know that that will be the experience for my grandchildren, who are non-existent they do not exist yet, but I think about them all the time because I really want them to get here time because I really want them to get here.
5:24
Lisa Valentine Clark: But and that's how it will be for my late husband, right, like having never known, and you're like, no, you have to know who these people are.
5:29
Lisa Valentine Clark: So, yeah, so, my four grandparents I knew each one of them Margaret and Marvin Bergen and Amy and Lee Valentine and their lives and their stories actually are really important and inform a lot of the way that I have parented or the way that I see the world, because I have found as I've gotten older that my life story has aligned with theirs in very similar ways.
5:53
Crista Cowan: That's now.
5:54
Lisa Valentine Clark: I wish I could talk to them because they've all been gone for a long time now and because time marches on.
5:59
Crista Cowan: It does.
5:59
Crista Cowan: Was that?
6:00
Crista Cowan: Were those stories stories you kind of grew up with and then figured out how to incorporate them into your parenting, or are they stories that you sought out when you became a parent and were more curious about that?
6:11
Lisa Valentine Clark: Oh no, they were just the fundamental stories.
6:13
Lisa Valentine Clark: This is what happened.
6:14
Lisa Valentine Clark: And I always thought, oh, that's interesting, that's weird, that's odd.
6:18
Lisa Valentine Clark: And then my life became weird and odd and then I was like, wait, what?
6:22
Lisa Valentine Clark: Maybe there's something you know.
6:25
Lisa Valentine Clark: When you go through hard things in life, you want to extract meaning in a way that is different than just reading a story about an ancestor, right?
6:35
Lisa Valentine Clark: And so, yeah, I wanted to hear more, and, in fact, when I was going through a really, really hard time, I remember asking my mom like no, this isn't hypothetical for me being a widow at a younger age Like I need to know what this was like for my great-grandmother.
6:50
Lisa Valentine Clark: Will you find her journals?
6:52
Lisa Valentine Clark: I need to read this.
6:52
Lisa Valentine Clark: And also from my grandma or from my other grandma, what did she do in this?
6:58
Lisa Valentine Clark: And it just made me ask different questions and look for different stories too, but the fundamentals were kind of the same.
7:05
Crista Cowan: Well, and because the fundamentals were there, you knew to ask those questions.
7:08
Crista Cowan: Yeah, which is important.
7:13
Crista Cowan: And when you think about how you pass stories on to the next generation, to even just give them that foundation so that, when they need it, they can come back to it.
7:17
Crista Cowan: Yeah, because you don't know.
7:19
Lisa Valentine Clark: I thought I knew.
7:20
Lisa Valentine Clark: Let me tell you this great story about your great great grandfather, or your great, great great grandmother, that will change your life forever.
7:29
Lisa Valentine Clark: You know like this is going to be the one, but that's the funny thing you don't know what's going to be important to your child, and so it does change the way that you think about stories.
7:37
Lisa Valentine Clark: Yeah, for sure.
7:38
Crista Cowan: So, speaking of stories, there's another study it was done years ago by Emory University that says children raised with a strong family narrative are more resilient, they have more self-esteem.
7:47
Crista Cowan: And one of the things that came out of that study was this thing called the Do you Know Scale, and it's a list of 20 questions you can ask your child and if they say yes, they know the answer to all 20 of those questions.
8:00
Crista Cowan: That's a good predictor of their resilience and self-esteem.
8:03
Crista Cowan: And the number one question on that list is do you know the story of how your parents met?
8:08
Crista Cowan: It is, and so do you know the story of how your parents met?
8:13
Crista Cowan: Yes, I do.
8:14
Crista Cowan: Can you tell it in like a sentence?
8:18
Lisa Valentine Clark: My dad saw my mom in the library in college and thought, wow, what a gorgeous woman, I'm going to find her.
8:29
Lisa Valentine Clark: And he did.
8:32
Lisa Valentine Clark: And he asked her out for ice cream.
8:34
Crista Cowan: That's adorable, that's super cute.
8:37
Crista Cowan: So I would love to hear the story maybe in a little bit longer version of how you and your husband met.
8:45
Lisa Valentine Clark: Oh okay, you know tale as old as time.
8:46
Lisa Valentine Clark: We were both students at BYU and there were auditions for an English society for English majors.
8:58
Lisa Valentine Clark: You know the English society play that they were doing called Mysteries, the Creations.
9:02
Lisa Valentine Clark: So they were little vignettes from the Bible, real knee slapper, like just hilarious.
9:08
Lisa Valentine Clark: He had recently returned home from a mission in Finland.
9:11
Lisa Valentine Clark: I was an English major in the in the English society.
9:17
Lisa Valentine Clark: We met at that audition.
9:18
Lisa Valentine Clark: He was with his best friend, who I had like gone on a double date with, or one of his friends, so we knew each other and we just became instant friends.
9:27
Lisa Valentine Clark: We did the play together, um, and we spent a lot of time together.
9:32
Lisa Valentine Clark: And how long did you date before you decided?
9:36
Lisa Valentine Clark: We were friends for a year before we started dating, which I think was really I might have dated the best friend for a little bit we don't talk about that and then after about a year we kind of looked at each other differently.
9:49
Lisa Valentine Clark: We were, I mean, we had the best conversations.
9:53
Lisa Valentine Clark: I always love to say we just started a conversation and it just never ended.
9:59
Lisa Valentine Clark: And then we dated for about nine months after that before we got married.
10:03
Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
10:04
Crista Cowan: I think that's a fabulous foundation for a relationship.
10:07
Lisa Valentine Clark: Yeah, it's really great to say he was cast in the play as Satan and I was cast as a chicken on Noah's Ark.
10:13
Lisa Valentine Clark: And so everyone's like, oh, was it love at the first sight?
10:16
Lisa Valentine Clark: And I'm like, oh, between Satan and the chicken.
10:18
Lisa Valentine Clark: Yeah, sure, okay, it was instant like, but it's, that's like what happened.
10:26
Lisa Valentine Clark: The devil and the chicken became really fast friends and then, after a year of sort of being really great friends and doing like going to 80s parties and dressing up and and like we, we just hung out doing the weirdest things and like it was never like dinner in a movie or whatever.
10:48
Lisa Valentine Clark: But then and then, yeah, one summer we just spent every day together, signed up for each other's classes and just didn't want to be apart from each other.
10:59
Crista Cowan: That's amazing, so I've never been married, so I don't know what this is like.
11:04
Crista Cowan: So what I love to hear about, though, is how people come together and make conscious or maybe unconscious, decisions about how to form a family and raise your children.
11:16
Crista Cowan: You have this Midwest background of this really close family.
11:19
Crista Cowan: What was Chris's family like?
11:22
Lisa Valentine Clark: So, yeah, I had this Midwest during five kids.
11:26
Lisa Valentine Clark: He was one of nine and in the middle and his family, um, just really very similar.
11:35
Lisa Valentine Clark: All the guys, all the and still do love to hunt and fish and they're like one's a football coach, super into sports and one one of his brothers, you know, like lettered in like three different sports and stuff like that.
11:49
Lisa Valentine Clark: And my husband liked to read Shakespeare and wanted to be an actor and a director and played the piano, like beautifully studied to be like a concert pianist for a long time.
12:02
Lisa Valentine Clark: In fact, there's a great family story about how the nine kids right Christmas morning and they know that they're getting a really big gift Everyone was so, so excited.
12:10
Lisa Valentine Clark: Christopher was the only one that really played the piano, okay, Out of nine kids, his oldest brother, in fact.
12:17
Lisa Valentine Clark: He just brought up the story the other day to me and it still makes me laugh.
12:20
Lisa Valentine Clark: He was like we're getting snowmobiles, like this is what it is, like.
12:23
Lisa Valentine Clark: They were so excited they come down and it's a baby grand piano.
12:27
Lisa Valentine Clark: Christopher is so excited.
12:31
Lisa Valentine Clark: He remembers that as like the best, one of the best days of his life, right, and everyone else was so mad.
12:37
Lisa Valentine Clark: So that's what it was like for him growing up in that family, you know they're all.
12:42
Lisa Valentine Clark: They were all very like, you know, supportive of it, but he was definitely the anomaly in that family.
12:48
Lisa Valentine Clark: It was just a little bit different.
12:50
Lisa Valentine Clark: So when we came together and I was like I want to have a lot of kids and I want to have this big creative life and stuff, and he's like, ooh, I don't want to have a lot of kids.
12:56
Lisa Valentine Clark: And I was like, oh, okay, well.
12:58
Lisa Valentine Clark: I was like, well, I want to have.
13:00
Lisa Valentine Clark: Like I was like, how many kids do you want to have?
13:01
Lisa Valentine Clark: And he goes like, oh, like only five or six.
13:03
Lisa Valentine Clark: And I was like, okay, cool, cool, cool, cool.
13:05
Lisa Valentine Clark: We're on the same page.
13:06
Lisa Valentine Clark: We're on the same page Like that's a lot of kids.
13:21
Crista Cowan: So coming together and like that we had a lot in common.
13:23
Crista Cowan: Yeah, yeah, and you both like clearly very creative people.
13:25
Crista Cowan: Was that an intentional choice to bring that into your children's lives?
13:27
Crista Cowan: Like, were there things you did to enhance their creativity, to build a storytelling culture in your family, or was it just a natural outcropping of who the two of you are as people?
13:35
Lisa Valentine Clark: I think both.
13:36
Lisa Valentine Clark: I think both, to be honest.
13:37
Lisa Valentine Clark: I grew up in a very creative home.
13:39
Lisa Valentine Clark: My mom's an artist.
13:39
Lisa Valentine Clark: I think both.
13:39
Lisa Valentine Clark: I think both, to be honest.
13:40
Lisa Valentine Clark: I grew up in a very creative home.
13:41
Lisa Valentine Clark: My mom's an artist.
13:41
Lisa Valentine Clark: My dad really encouraged us to not like work for anybody else, but work for ourselves.
13:47
Lisa Valentine Clark: You know like we had a lot of discussions growing up about like what kind of life do you want to live, not just what do you want to do for a living.
13:55
Lisa Valentine Clark: I was really raised with this idea of like what you do for a living will change.
13:58
Lisa Valentine Clark: It'll change through the course of your life.
14:00
Lisa Valentine Clark: So do something that like really feeds, like your values and like what you really care about, which you know, I have a.
14:07
Lisa Valentine Clark: I have a brother who's a professional musician and I have a sister who's a fashion designer.
14:14
Lisa Valentine Clark: I mean, we all like value, creativity in this way, and so Christopher had that as well.
14:23
Lisa Valentine Clark: And so we were like well, I just remember having conversations when we were newly married like okay, we want to have a lot of kids, but how are we going to support them?
14:31
Lisa Valentine Clark: Because we're not very good at traditionally like money-making endeavors.
14:37
Lisa Valentine Clark: In fact, there's a funny story about my husband going when we were first married, going to a career counselor you know to see what aptitude.
14:45
Lisa Valentine Clark: Because he was like, maybe I should go to law school I mean, I don't know, we're both English majors Like listen, we got to come up with a plan and he took a career test and it determined that his number one like job based on this was to be a circus performer and not a joke.
15:02
Lisa Valentine Clark: And we were like, oh, it's probably true, I think that's true.
15:05
Lisa Valentine Clark: Like it wasn't funny, like it was like.
15:07
Lisa Valentine Clark: And the second was like teacher.
15:09
Lisa Valentine Clark: And it was like, oh, what are we going to do?
15:11
Lisa Valentine Clark: And so it was a very conscious decision about like creativity and he, when we were first married, I was teaching school, teaching English.
15:19
Lisa Valentine Clark: I really loved that.
15:20
Lisa Valentine Clark: It was like I could be creative, I could use my artistic skills and music and everything to teach like the written word.
15:28
Lisa Valentine Clark: I really loved it and went on to teach online and things like that when our kids were little.
15:34
Lisa Valentine Clark: And Christopher was an actor for a long time but hated like waiting around for the phone to ring for an audition.
15:40
Lisa Valentine Clark: So he pivoted into directing and really found his passion and so we made all of our decisions like for our family based on like, how can I be a director?
15:52
Lisa Valentine Clark: And so it was more schooling and directing and and creating your own opportunities and getting more training and and so it definitely informed our choices for our family.
16:03
Lisa Valentine Clark: And, you know, I feel really proud that like we were able to do it, we were able to raise a family.
16:08
Lisa Valentine Clark: We never really had a lot of money, but who cares?
16:13
Lisa Valentine Clark: Like we had other things that we valued more, like a big, full, creative life and humor and good friends, and and we always had enough, you know.
16:22
Lisa Valentine Clark: So, yeah, how old are your kids now?
16:24
Lisa Valentine Clark: So my kids now are 26, 24, 22, 19, and 17.
16:31
Lisa Valentine Clark: So you're not quite an empty nester.
16:33
Lisa Valentine Clark: Almost I have one at home 17.
16:35
Crista Cowan: Weird, that is weird.
16:39
Crista Cowan: And tell us a little bit about Christopher.
16:42
Crista Cowan: Just about he got sick and you found yourself in this odd, weird life that you weren't expecting, that wasn't in the plan.
16:49
Crista Cowan: Tell us a little bit about that.
16:53
Lisa Valentine Clark: Well, christopher was amazing.
16:56
Lisa Valentine Clark: Everybody you know he just like gathered people, right, like everybody, I still have people he's.
17:01
Lisa Valentine Clark: He's been gone, he, he died, um about four and a half years ago.
17:04
Lisa Valentine Clark: I still have people go.
17:05
Lisa Valentine Clark: Oh, have you heard this story?
17:06
Lisa Valentine Clark: Have you heard this funny thing about Chris?
17:08
Lisa Valentine Clark: And I just like I eat it up.
17:11
Lisa Valentine Clark: Um, just great sense of humor.
17:12
Lisa Valentine Clark: Talented director, got a master's in staging Shakespeare, got a PhD in um theater and education and leadership, and was the chair of the theater department at Utah Valley University for many years.
17:24
Lisa Valentine Clark: Just had studied all over the world Globe Theater and Second City and he just had a lot of just ooze, creativity.
17:32
Lisa Valentine Clark: Gathered people, created a lot of plays that, in fact, just the other day, somebody from a different university in California had reached out to me hey, do you have Chris's notes for this theater?
17:43
Lisa Valentine Clark: Like it just had an impact and he would get such a kick out of that.
17:47
Lisa Valentine Clark: He always told really funny stories that he was able to embellish, I think, but also they were true and was just crazy about his kids and his family and that's what he was most proud of, and so that's a little bit about you know, christopher, in 2016, he was diagnosed with ALS, lou Gehrig's disease, he would always say, got a touch of the Lou Gehrig's and um, he lived with it for four years a little over four years since the diagnosis and um, in that time just really became the essence of who he had always been.
18:22
Lisa Valentine Clark: He was really just full of humor and love and a deep and abiding testimony of Christ and of his eternal place in the universe.
18:35
Lisa Valentine Clark: So that he was able to die with I don't want to say confidence universe.
18:38
Lisa Valentine Clark: So that he was able to die with I don't want to say like confidence, I guess, yeah, no confidence and peace that he didn't live a perfect life but he did his best and that he never intentionally tried to hurt anyone.
18:51
Lisa Valentine Clark: You know, which I think is has really informed the way that I have lived, moving forward, and he just was crazy about his kids and he was a really really good husband and he just left a legacy of you know, bad things happen all the time.
19:10
Lisa Valentine Clark: He was really at peace with like, well, why, like, a lot of people in a tragedy like this would be like why me, like, I'm just at, like the, I'm doing good, I'm living a good life, I just, you know, finish this and that and the other and I have more to do.
19:23
Lisa Valentine Clark: And he and I remember him saying to me like well, why not me?
19:27
Lisa Valentine Clark: Kind of thing.
19:28
Lisa Valentine Clark: Like like this is my life perspective.
19:33
Lisa Valentine Clark: That's also informed a lot of like how I see life, sort of going on and not taking bad things that happened to you that aren't your fault personally.
19:42
Lisa Valentine Clark: In the sense of this is some sort of punishment, but it reflected the way that like he saw life and his faith and his values and his creativity and talents of like maybe this is is what I can do, moving forward to to have an impact in a different way.
20:03
Crista Cowan: Yeah, that's beautiful.
20:04
Crista Cowan: Thank you for sharing him with us.
20:05
Crista Cowan: Yeah, you bet it's interesting, because I'm sure that ability to articulate his life in such a short, little, few words is something that you've come to over years of reflection and thinking about it.
20:20
Crista Cowan: But, as you think about going forward and how that story of him and who he is and how he handled that circumstance, how it affects your children, how you're going to share that with your grandchildren you shared earlier about wanting that from your ancestors so badly what does that look like for you, like?
20:41
Crista Cowan: How do you like, do you think about how you're transmitting who he was to them?
20:45
Lisa Valentine Clark: All the time, because I promised him that I would.
20:48
Lisa Valentine Clark: When he got sick, one of the first things that I said to him was you have to write your life story in your own words.
20:54
Lisa Valentine Clark: You have to.
20:55
Lisa Valentine Clark: You have to Because it's one thing for me to say.
21:00
Lisa Valentine Clark: I remember when your dad, your grandpa, used to always say that is one thing, but that's my interpretation of his life.
21:06
Lisa Valentine Clark: You know, there's something powerful about telling your own story and your own words, with the conscious choice like decision that, like this is what this is what you want to be remembered for.
21:18
Lisa Valentine Clark: You get to choose, because not everybody gets that, especially in a tragedy.
21:23
Lisa Valentine Clark: And we think we always have so much time Like.
21:26
Lisa Valentine Clark: I used to think that too.
21:27
Lisa Valentine Clark: Like, oh, when I'm old I'll sit down and write like what it all meant, what it all means.
21:31
Lisa Valentine Clark: But that's just not true.
21:33
Lisa Valentine Clark: And I grew up with a mom who wrote in a journal like religiously right, she has journals from like every day.
21:39
Lisa Valentine Clark: Like she can remember.
21:40
Lisa Valentine Clark: Like religiously right, she has the journals from like every day.
21:42
Lisa Valentine Clark: Like she can remember oh yeah, you guys were vaccinated on this day or you got sick on this day.
21:43
Lisa Valentine Clark: Like she used it sort of kind of as a medical journal or like to to to remember things.
21:48
Lisa Valentine Clark: But like I want the meat of how did that feel when XYZ happened so early on?
21:54
Lisa Valentine Clark: He had a really great he does still.
21:56
Lisa Valentine Clark: So early on he had a really great he does still cousin Jane Wells, who had written the history of their grandmother, marianne, and she had written it in sort of a question answer like book form, so it made her life really accessible.
22:13
Lisa Valentine Clark: So and when I said, chris, you've got to like write your own story in your own words, not knowing like when his voice would go because the progression of ALS you don't know if it starts in your legs your voice when you don't know how much time you have, it's really like horrible, because there's no like oh, after three years you know you can't, you can't decide.
22:32
Lisa Valentine Clark: And he said I want a book like Jane wrote about his grandma.
22:35
Lisa Valentine Clark: So like I sent her a text and I was like, hey, how's it going?
22:45
Lisa Valentine Clark: Cool?
22:46
Lisa Valentine Clark: So anyway, big favor, could you help us write Christopher's life story?
22:47
Lisa Valentine Clark: I know that this is like super emotional and it's like a ton of work and not just a casual favor, but hey, what do you think?
22:50
Lisa Valentine Clark: And we need it really soon.
22:51
Lisa Valentine Clark: Yeah, and we don't know how much time we have.
22:53
Lisa Valentine Clark: So, like, can you drop everything?
22:54
Lisa Valentine Clark: I know you have five kids, but like, what ups?
22:56
Lisa Valentine Clark: I mean, it was literally something like that, and she was like I'd be honored.
23:00
Lisa Valentine Clark: And so what she did is she came over once a week for about a year and a half and interviewed him on a recording.
23:07
Lisa Valentine Clark: So we have his we're in his own words, you know his story in his own word.
23:10
Lisa Valentine Clark: But she was able to give us something that we couldn't do.
23:13
Lisa Valentine Clark: I was completely overwhelmed.
23:14
Lisa Valentine Clark: We were completely overwhelmed with this task of how do you do it?
23:17
Lisa Valentine Clark: And she gently let him through, like, tell me about this, tell me about that.
23:21
Lisa Valentine Clark: And because she was his cousin, she also had, like she knew which stories to sort of coax out of him as well, and also, she's just like a brilliant writer.
23:30
Lisa Valentine Clark: It was really like a gift that I don't know how to thank her for.
23:34
Lisa Valentine Clark: Like then, after that was done, by the time they had finished the recordings, he had lost his voice or the ability to really speak intelligently.
23:41
Lisa Valentine Clark: So he was able then, for the next couple of years, to be able to edit it through some technology, kind of like a Stephen Hawking setup where he was able to move with, like glasses that have a sensor on a speaking device.
23:55
Lisa Valentine Clark: He was able to edit it, be like oh, actually, that that's not.
23:58
Lisa Valentine Clark: It's not that name, it's this name, you know, and do some minor corrections and things like that.
24:01
Lisa Valentine Clark: I also said to him I know that your children will look at this and read it a million times.
24:06
Lisa Valentine Clark: You better say the same number of pages for each child.
24:10
Lisa Valentine Clark: And because you better, which he did- I never would have thought of that.
24:17
Lisa Valentine Clark: And I'm like, yeah, I'm the mom and I thought about that.
24:19
Lisa Valentine Clark: So he did and, and then he was able to know what to include and what he wanted to and how he wanted to say it.
24:25
Lisa Valentine Clark: So now we I have a book that is printed.
24:28
Lisa Valentine Clark: Then the rest of that story is is that her husband, jed, who's a dear friend, also made sure that he edited it, formatted it in book form, made a beautiful cover with the right picture titled it.
24:42
Lisa Valentine Clark: We have a poem like.
24:43
Lisa Valentine Clark: Which poem do you think that he would want for the back cover?
24:46
Lisa Valentine Clark: You know, I added he wrote these Google reviews towards the end of his life of what it's like as a handicapped person that are so funny, so funny, they're so ridiculous.
24:57
Lisa Valentine Clark: Like he gives a review for like the sahara desert or like day's market, like all these as a as a handicapped person, it's so funny and I want.
25:06
Lisa Valentine Clark: So the book ends like with his testimony of like of of christ, of his religion, of like how he feels, of like the what he wants to do, and we left it in there and I was like, okay, actually I want to end with the Google reviews too.
25:19
Lisa Valentine Clark: I just think that is what he would want.
25:21
Lisa Valentine Clark: So we have all of that already done and I can't tell you like that book is like scripture to my children, I saw, like my kids, they underline it.
25:33
Lisa Valentine Clark: They say, oh, dad liked me for this, dad saw this in me.
25:36
Lisa Valentine Clark: It is You're killing me, me for this.
25:41
Lisa Valentine Clark: Dad saw this in me, it is, you're killing me.
25:43
Lisa Valentine Clark: So when you say our story is important, I'm like yeah, kind of sure, uh-huh, yes, uh-huh, and do you know how?
25:49
Lisa Valentine Clark: Like what a gift.
25:50
Lisa Valentine Clark: It's such a gift to have it.
25:52
Lisa Valentine Clark: And it has the story of how we met, of what he thinks about me, of how he feels about his siblings growing up, of the funny stories that happened to him as a kid, of what it was like to be a missionary in Helsinki, like all the things that you may or may not think.
26:13
Lisa Valentine Clark: And it's his personality, because it's in his own words.
26:19
Crista Cowan: Yeah, that's so important.
26:20
Crista Cowan: As a genealogist I do my best to tell their stories as best I can, but to have their words would be like.
26:29
Crista Cowan: I have one ancestor, third great grandfather.
26:31
Crista Cowan: He wrote a diary, he would cross the plains and he was the camp journalist and I treasure that because it's just this glimpse into his personality and it sounds like Chris created this I mean life, body of work, but now this very big treasure of his stories and his words.
26:51
Crista Cowan: That's amazing In that I don't know if this is too personal.
26:54
Crista Cowan: I mean, you know, it's all personal right.
26:57
Crista Cowan: But did he also look to the future, like, did he have words for your kids or for his grandchildren for what he wanted for their futures?
27:06
Lisa Valentine Clark: Yeah, I mean in that particular book he, or in his writings, it was like this expression of love that he wants to take them to take in the future.
27:18
Lisa Valentine Clark: You know we have these discussions.
27:20
Lisa Valentine Clark: I don't know.
27:21
Lisa Valentine Clark: I always want more, something dramatic.
27:25
Lisa Valentine Clark: I'm like do you want to like write a letter for them, like when they get married, when they have kids, whatever.
27:30
Crista Cowan: And he was like no, that sounds horrible.
27:33
Lisa Valentine Clark: I don't want to do that because I won't be there, and also like I don't know what they will want to hear that.
27:40
Lisa Valentine Clark: And so I think for him and I thought you know what that's fair, because it's one thing I mean, we've seen too many movies right when you're like play this video when you're going through a hard time, like whatever.
27:52
Lisa Valentine Clark: I would read all of them all at once anyway, and also people it it changes, you have to.
28:00
Lisa Valentine Clark: And also he didn't want them to live in the past, as if they were tied to this idea of who he was versus who he would be had he gone on.
28:11
Lisa Valentine Clark: So I think that's kind of tricky, but he did talk about the future and that of the things that he wanted for his kids, and what he did do, too, was to pull aside our kids and talk to them about what he wanted for me, for them, and have those conversations and have them take that as they would.
28:37
Lisa Valentine Clark: And so he did do that, and I think about that now, and I think people don't understand how hard that is to do that.
28:44
Lisa Valentine Clark: Because you're acknowledging that there will come a day that I won't be here, and nobody likes to think about that, yeah.
28:51
Crista Cowan: That's another interesting thing about family history, which is, the more you kind of look to the past and start to try to understand their stories and contextualize them and figure out what lessons you can learn from them.
29:02
Crista Cowan: Death becomes just like part of the story.
29:05
Crista Cowan: Absolutely it does.
29:06
Crista Cowan: And we spend so much of our life and so much of our time like fighting it and fearing it.
29:10
Crista Cowan: And we all walked through it.
29:12
Lisa Valentine Clark: Yeah, I have my own headstone you know what I mean With a name on it.
29:15
Lisa Valentine Clark: Yeah, but I'm but I'm being serious Like that will change how you see it.
29:27
Lisa Valentine Clark: And I have to tell you that seeing, like I feel an honor because I am the witness of Christopher Clark's life, I have seen his life in a way that, in an intimate way that most people don't, in the totality of it, like I know all those stories from when he was little and raising kids and how he died, and the things that he didn't want anybody else to know but me or that I saw.
29:45
Lisa Valentine Clark: So I've seen it and I tell you it's such an honor and a privilege and it really has changed the way that I've seen my life.
29:53
Lisa Valentine Clark: And you take a step back and you're like you guys were only here for a little bit.
29:57
Lisa Valentine Clark: Like the things we think matter do not matter, it's, it's what everybody says.
30:02
Lisa Valentine Clark: But like when you see it and really feel it, it changes the way that you talk to people, you treat people, the priorities in your life.
30:09
Lisa Valentine Clark: Like it changes you fundamentally where there are so many things that I'm like I don't care who cares, that doesn't matter, and I mean it like you know.
30:17
Lisa Valentine Clark: And then the other things that do matter, like our relationships, the conversations that I have with my children, how people, how I want to be remembered, the things that I say and do or put down.
30:30
Crista Cowan: That matters, it just it just does, but we don't get to interpret how other people interpret our lives.
30:42
Crista Cowan: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
30:42
Crista Cowan: As you kind of think about your own role going forward now as a mom, as a grandma, what do you hope for the future?
30:48
Crista Cowan: For your kids and your grandkids and this culture of story and legacy that you and Christopher created together?
30:55
Lisa Valentine Clark: Oh, you're going to make me cry.
30:56
Lisa Valentine Clark: Don't make me talk about my kids, I'll just cry.
30:59
Lisa Valentine Clark: I just have the most amazing children and my hope is that they will see the story of their father and their mother not as a tragedy but as an inspiration to move forward, that it is a story of triumph, of what it means to just suck the marrow out of life, like all the good stuff right and live with undaunted that, no matter what happens to them.
31:31
Lisa Valentine Clark: That they get to write their own story and they get to frame it the way they want, to, just like their dad.
31:37
Lisa Valentine Clark: And I hope that to frame it the way they want to just like their dad, and I hope that I mean it's not over for me.
31:42
Lisa Valentine Clark: That they see the same thing as me, you know, in my deepest moments of grief, like of just wanting just to disappear and be like this is too hard, like this is not the story I intended to write, this is not what I wanted for myself.
31:55
Lisa Valentine Clark: I hope that my kids see that from me, from their dad, as a way that you get to decide what this life is about.
32:04
Lisa Valentine Clark: It's not about what happens to you, what other people put on you, but what you make it and that there really is a way forward through faith and an internal identity and purpose, not just for this life, that this is a continuation, but what we do here really matters.
32:24
Lisa Valentine Clark: And that way in their family's life has been through creativity, through art, through expression, through people, through relationships, through love, through not holding back, through not like being measured, but being the one that loves the most and connects with people more than anything else, does what they can in their own sphere to make the world a better place.
32:48
Lisa Valentine Clark: I hope that they have that kind of like hope and and faith and optimism moving forward, that what they do really matters and that they can make an impact in a way that is hard to measure during their life and frankly, it's none of their business when they're, you know, alive but that if they just pour all of that into the world, that good things will will come, that that will be magnified in a way that they don't have to worry about.
33:15
Crista Cowan: I just want to put like a period on that Done.
33:19
Lisa Valentine Clark: I really thought about this.
33:20
Lisa Valentine Clark: Yeah, I don't want it to be as tragedy.
33:22
Lisa Valentine Clark: I say to them all the time, like I know, your dad died of a terminal disease and that things have been rough during a global pandemic and that it was really rough and we've all been to therapy and it's okay.
33:33
Lisa Valentine Clark: What I want that to be is that, no matter what his life, our lives are not a tragedy.
33:40
Lisa Valentine Clark: No, they are a triumph.
33:42
Lisa Valentine Clark: They're lives full of love, full of a lot of humor, creativity, fun, impact and change.
33:54
Crista Cowan: But you have to be intentional about that choice.
33:56
Lisa Valentine Clark: You choose it, you choose it and you have to choose it every day and it's exhausting.
34:00
Lisa Valentine Clark: But it's okay, yeah, because what's the alternative?
34:03
Lisa Valentine Clark: Well yeah, the alternative of like hiding, keeping your story, somebody else else's story, hiding behind someone else's story, is just using this, this power and influence, for good and just like wasting it yeah, you make me want to live with more intentionality and choice.
34:21
Lisa Valentine Clark: No, but I don't want to like underestimate that like you have to choose it.
34:25
Lisa Valentine Clark: I always, you know, at the end of that horribly cheesy movie, the Titanic I don't think people like realize this, but at the very or like I do, I don't know why at the very, very end, I think, even like the credits are going, we see the life that Rose who's had this tragedy, whatever she.
34:44
Lisa Valentine Clark: We can talk about the plot in that movie later.
34:46
Lisa Valentine Clark: It's not a great movie, but at the end I always roll my eyes because it pans across all these photos of her to try to give us a like after he died and after all these horrible things happened, then what did she do?
34:59
Lisa Valentine Clark: And she like flew an airplane and rode a horse and basically we're trying to get the idea that she lived a life that to the fullest.
35:08
Lisa Valentine Clark: They're trying to give us this idea in a little bit and I always kind of look, think about that now and roll my eyes, cause it's like so after all these horrible things and hard things and things that you can't even like really quantify or name happen, then you got to do more, you got to go live and now.
35:25
Lisa Valentine Clark: So I always think about like yeah, I got it, I got to live my life Like like Rose.
35:31
Lisa Valentine Clark: Now I got to go jump out of an airplane or something.
35:34
Lisa Valentine Clark: But, like I'm like not that, but like my version of that, that, that life it.
35:39
Lisa Valentine Clark: But the sentiment is true Life is meant to be lived.
35:42
Lisa Valentine Clark: These stories of our ancestors, of our loved ones, the essence of it shouldn't have us be like, brought down to tragedy, like nothing matters and no matter what.
35:55
Lisa Valentine Clark: everybody dies and bad things happen to good people all the time, and so who cares?
35:59
Lisa Valentine Clark: No, the message is yeah, and so we have a responsibility, then, to live our lives because we have that knowledge.
36:08
Lisa Valentine Clark: Like you, got to go out and live, yeah.
36:11
Crista Cowan: Yeah, absolutely For yourself, as you look back right now, like the whole story of Christopher's life.
36:19
Crista Cowan: But now you've got this looking forward.
36:21
Crista Cowan: But when you look back to your grandmother who lost her husband, right, like, does this experience change your perspective?
36:28
Crista Cowan: Yeah, I think about her all the time.
36:31
Lisa Valentine Clark: I make me cry because I've felt her in a way I haven't.
36:34
Lisa Valentine Clark: When she was late.
36:35
Lisa Valentine Clark: My grandma Amy Valentine, um, I spent a lot of time with her.
36:39
Lisa Valentine Clark: I knew her really well.
36:40
Lisa Valentine Clark: She was a widow most of her life.
36:41
Lisa Valentine Clark: Everyone was like, oh, how sad.
36:44
Lisa Valentine Clark: She was widowed in her 50s and then, when I was widowed in her fifties and then when I was widowed in my forties, I was like oh, how sad.
36:51
Lisa Valentine Clark: Oh, you know, in a different way, in a way that like, uh, you know, my parents don't understand, my children don't understand, most a lot of people don't Um, she was widowed Suddenly.
37:03
Lisa Valentine Clark: Her, my grandfather was killed in um after, uh, uh, a car accident.
37:09
Lisa Valentine Clark: Um, and now I think about all the things that she said.
37:14
Lisa Valentine Clark: Like he died and took that um PhD with him.
37:19
Lisa Valentine Clark: It was buried with him.
37:21
Lisa Valentine Clark: You know she says things like that.
37:23
Lisa Valentine Clark: Now I think, oh, I know what she means, because I buried a husband with his PhD that I sacrificed for too.
37:30
Lisa Valentine Clark: Oh, I, oh, wait, I need to talk to her about that.
37:33
Lisa Valentine Clark: Um, she took over teaching his Spanish classes less than a week after he had passed in order to support her family.
37:42
Lisa Valentine Clark: And she, she said, very matter of fact, she was born and raised in colonial Juarez, mexico, and they're very tough and emotional people, and so I think about that differently.
37:58
Lisa Valentine Clark: When she says the hardest thing I ever had to do was to move into my husband's office and take over his classes, you know, less than a week after he had passed away.
38:09
Lisa Valentine Clark: And as a kid I remember going oh, that's weird, I don't say that now and take over his classes less than a week after he had passed away.
38:14
Lisa Valentine Clark: And as a kid I remember going oh, that's weird, I don't say that now.
38:16
Lisa Valentine Clark: I go, wait, how did you do that?
38:17
Lisa Valentine Clark: What are you talking about?
38:18
Lisa Valentine Clark: Because she had a 12-year-old and she had other children to support.
38:23
Lisa Valentine Clark: So when I became widowed and had a 12-year-old, and my youngest was also 12 and had other women or other kids to support, I went wait, wait.
38:35
Lisa Valentine Clark: I have some questions for you.
38:37
Lisa Valentine Clark: You know, in a way, and I felt like we were connected in a way that I didn't, the similarities being so similar.
38:43
Lisa Valentine Clark: In fact, I was at dinner with some cousins not too long ago and they said something like oh, I remember your grandma and I just remember thinking I, now that I'm older, I can't believe it, I can't believe that she was alone for all those years.
38:54
Lisa Valentine Clark: I can't imagine what that was like.
38:56
Lisa Valentine Clark: And I said to my cousin oh, I can Just like.
39:01
Lisa Valentine Clark: And he was like.
39:02
Lisa Valentine Clark: He looked at me and he said oh my gosh, I'm so sorry.
39:04
Lisa Valentine Clark: Of course you can.
39:05
Lisa Valentine Clark: And I said, no, it's so weird because now I know, I can, I know.
39:10
Lisa Valentine Clark: And then it changed the way that we talked about our family history, just changed the way that we saw each other.
39:17
Lisa Valentine Clark: And not to say that you can speak for those ancestors, but when you feel it makes it alive in a way that, oh boy, I have some questions for her.
39:27
Crista Cowan: Well, do you ask her?
39:27
Crista Cowan: Yeah.
39:29
Lisa Valentine Clark: I do.
39:29
Crista Cowan: Good, yes, yes, good, yeah, I do.
39:32
Crista Cowan: I think we're so much more connected to them, not just through the fact that we exist because they existed, or that our family, lives and cultures and narratives are created because of who they were and the choices that they made, but I think they're nearer than we think I do too and I live with that assumption.
39:49
Lisa Valentine Clark: I tell my kids that too.
39:50
Lisa Valentine Clark: Let's just assume, whether we feel it or not, constantly or not, because I think the reason why we don't feel it constantly is a kindness, Because I think if we did that grief would be too heavy.
40:03
Lisa Valentine Clark: I say, let's just assume that they are and that they want to help us.
40:07
Lisa Valentine Clark: In a way it's different than saying, oh, my ancestors helped me, to say, my grandma, who I know, your dad.
40:13
Lisa Valentine Clark: That's different, that are helping us on the other side.
40:17
Crista Cowan: Yeah that's amazing.
40:19
Crista Cowan: Well, lisa, thank you for being here.
40:20
Crista Cowan: Thank you for sharing your story.
40:22
Crista Cowan: Thank you for sharing Christopher with us.
40:24
Crista Cowan: I'm excited to watch the way that you continue to move forward in the world with your children and, hopefully, some grandbabies someday.
40:32
Lisa Valentine Clark: Thank you.
40:33
Lisa Valentine Clark: I'm not jumping out of an airplane, but I do hope to be a very fun grandmother one day.