Latest / Where We Rise / 15 | "I Think You Should Get a Dog" | Unexpected Life Lessons

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15 | "I Think You Should Get a Dog" | Unexpected Life Lessons · Where We Rise

0:00
Khalila McCoy: Carmen, how are you today?
0:02
Khalila McCoy: I am great.
0:04
Carmen Leal: I am warm.
0:04
Khalila McCoy: I have heat.
0:05
Khalila McCoy: Yes.
0:06
Khalila McCoy: That is a good thing.
0:08
Khalila McCoy: Right now it is.
0:09
Khalila McCoy: I think it's negative seven here in Ohio.
0:11
Khalila McCoy: What's your temperature?
0:12
Khalila McCoy: I'm sorry.
0:14
Khalila McCoy: It's three, but it feels like negative seven.
0:16
Carmen Leal: Oh, we're gonna have an old wave, baby.
0:18
Carmen Leal: Let's see what ours.
0:19
Carmen Leal: Oh, yeah, right.
0:19
Carmen Leal: Ours is well, it's not bad.
0:23
Carmen Leal: It's negative five, feels like negative eighteen.
0:25
Carmen Leal: That's a huge bad.
0:27
Carmen Leal: That's bad.
0:28
Carmen Leal: That's way better than it was.
0:31
Khalila McCoy: Do you have a giant parka?
0:34
Carmen Leal: No, you know, I am one of these weird, weird people that I not really get that cold.
0:42
Carmen Leal: Lucky.
0:43
Carmen Leal: And I do not own I do not own a pair of pants.
0:47
Carmen Leal: I do not wear shoes.
0:49
Carmen Leal: I wear bare legs the whole winter and usually sandals, and people freak out when they're sick.
0:58
Carmen Leal: Maybe snow on the ground.
1:00
Carmen Leal: Yeah, if it's if I'm walking the dog and I know he's probably gonna poop on that hill, there's snow on it.
1:07
Carmen Leal: I have these little tennis shoes I'll wear, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.
1:13
Carmen Leal: Once it didn't work, because I went up there in my little shoes, so I could add like a normal person, you know, not sandals.
1:19
Carmen Leal: And when I went up to, you know, retrieve the prize on Mount Everest, it felt like it was snow.
1:24
Carmen Leal: I fell through.
1:27
Carmen Leal: And when I pulled my foot, my shoe landed.
1:29
Carmen Leal: It left there, and I'm barefoot now on one foot.
1:32
Carmen Leal: So then I have to go retrieve the shoe and the poop.
1:35
Carmen Leal: So I go back up, and then the other shoe went off, and I was literally barefoot.
1:40
Carmen Leal: So I walked home with a bag of poop, two little shoes full of snow, barefoot on the ice, and I went, What's the point?
1:48
Carmen Leal: Oh my god.
1:49
Carmen Leal: And I lived, I lived.
1:50
Carmen Leal: So I mean, I do have coats.
1:53
Carmen Leal: Um, I'm highly claustrophobic.
1:56
Carmen Leal: When I was liking, I had my thyroid removed, and I woke up during surgery and I got to watch them sew me up and I had a panic attack.
2:05
Carmen Leal: It was like a graze, a graze uh anatomy moment where I hear them, but I can't talk because I'm sliced open and I hear she's crashing.
2:15
Carmen Leal: And oh my goodness.
2:17
Carmen Leal: But so I have this hot anxiety, so I don't wear scarves, I don't wear hats, I don't wear okay.
2:23
Carmen Leal: This is like a real, you know, amazing that I have that shirt on.
2:27
Carmen Leal: But usually I don't, so yeah, but I you know, you survive, you survive, but it is pretty funny to get people's reactions.
2:36
Khalila McCoy: Hey, I'm Khalila McCoy, and this is the show that will have you laughing, crying, and feeling everything in between.
2:45
Khalila McCoy: This is where we rise.
2:48
Khalila McCoy: You must always ask this question when you buy a house.
2:52
Carmen Leal: Okay.
2:52
Carmen Leal: Is there heat in the bathroom?
2:54
Carmen Leal: I would not have thought that.
2:56
Carmen Leal: I would not have you don't have heat in your bathroom.
2:59
Carmen Leal: Well, I do now, but it was September, and there was a uh, you know, they had a little grape.
3:04
Carmen Leal: If there's a grape there, there's heat, right?
3:07
Carmen Leal: No, no, no, no.
3:09
Carmen Leal: It wasn't connected.
3:10
Carmen Leal: So we could hear and we had the wavy glass windows and they wouldn't open, you know, they wouldn't, they were painted shut, and and oh, it was, yeah, it was a hot mess when we moved in there because it was so cold.
3:26
Carmen Leal: But we now have windows that we have a furnace that works, and we the heat in the bathroom is getting better, and um, our house is the reason why God made throws.
3:38
Carmen Leal: So we have many, many throws.
3:40
Carmen Leal: Bundle up.
3:42
Carmen Leal: It's actually colder inside than outside someday's.
3:47
Khalila McCoy: Okay, I had to give you a few clips to start just because I needed you to feel how much fun I had with today's guest.
3:55
Khalila McCoy: Carmen Layell and I talked for 45 minutes before I even hit record.
4:00
Khalila McCoy: And then we talked for another hour afterward.
4:04
Khalila McCoy: I really enjoyed her humor, her honesty, and the way she effortlessly flowed from one story to the next.
4:12
Khalila McCoy: Carmen has lived a big life full of joy and full of pain.
4:18
Khalila McCoy: And today she shares the unexpected life lesson she learned from a dog.
4:23
Khalila McCoy: And don't worry, you don't have to consider yourself a dog person to enjoy this episode.
4:29
Khalila McCoy: Carmen doesn't either.
4:31
Khalila McCoy: But sometimes the things we least expect end up shaping us the most.
4:37
Khalila McCoy: So let's fully jump into this conversation.
4:41
Khalila McCoy: Right about now, Carmen was telling me about another experience she has had, but in a different country.
4:48
Khalila McCoy: That was the third time she mentioned moving since we had started talking.
4:54
Khalila McCoy: How many times have you moved?
4:57
Khalila McCoy: I don't know.
5:00
Carmen Leal: No, I don't know.
5:00
Carmen Leal: Too many to count.
5:01
Carmen Leal: Now, I've lived in I grew up in Kansas, and then I was in Brazil as an exchange student, and then I went to college in Kansas, and then I went to Brazil for two, I mean, um, Africa for two years, where I taught in the Peace Corps English in South in West Africa.
5:18
Carmen Leal: Then I lived in Chicago for four years, and I think I lived four places in that time, and then Hawaii, where I live multiple places, and then Florida, where I live multiple places, and then back to Hawaii where yeah.
5:32
Carmen Leal: This is actually the only place that I've ever only lived in one house.
5:38
Carmen Leal: And it's been now interesting, it'll be nine years in March.
5:41
Carmen Leal: It's the only time I've been.
5:43
Khalila McCoy: Now, do you do you look forward to moving in the change, or was it just more it's a necessity, so I'm gonna get up and go?
5:49
Khalila McCoy: It's always a necessity.
5:51
Carmen Leal: Okay.
5:51
Carmen Leal: Because, you know, no matter where you live, there's things you don't like about it.
5:55
Carmen Leal: And wherever you live, you can find things you love about it.
5:59
Carmen Leal: And so I don't ever move because it's a bad place, it's because something happened in my life that caused it.
6:09
Carmen Leal: Right.
6:10
Khalila McCoy: So, you know, in this case isn't necessarily that you're restless and you're ready to move.
6:15
Carmen Leal: It's no, no, I'm not restless at all, really.
6:18
Carmen Leal: I mean, there is enough of wherever you live to keep anybody busy if they want to.
6:22
Carmen Leal: You know, your life could be so full and rich in the smallest of towns, but it's usually something that precipitates it.
6:30
Carmen Leal: So, Hawaii, that move came because my husband got a very good job offer.
6:35
Carmen Leal: He worked for United Airlines and he got a promotion, and the where he got moved to was Hawaii.
6:43
Carmen Leal: That's a really good reason to move.
6:45
Carmen Leal: Um, we lived in a town called Kailua.
6:49
Carmen Leal: Most of the time I lived there, and that's where President Obama bought his place.
6:54
Carmen Leal: He would always vacation there, so you know it's a great thing.
6:57
Carmen Leal: So, yeah.
6:57
Carmen Leal: So yeah, it was very blessed.
7:00
Carmen Leal: But normally all the moves were because of an opportunity like fulfilling my dream of being an exchange student or teaching in in Africa with the Peace Corps, or something really bad happened, like being an abused spouse and being a single parent, and you know, those things happen.
7:19
Carmen Leal: And I think for all of us, and bad things happen to good people sometimes because we were just plain stupid, and we made choices we shouldn't have made, whether it's drinking and driving, or whether it's not marrying the right person, or whether it's you know, we all make choices, and sometimes those choices aren't the right ones, and we have to to use that horrible word from COVID pivot.
7:46
Carmen Leal: And oh my goodness, yeah, anyway.
7:49
Carmen Leal: Remember that?
7:49
Carmen Leal: Pivot.
7:50
Carmen Leal: Oh yes, like how to remake ourselves, but often it's because things happened to us that were totally outside of anything that we did.
8:01
Carmen Leal: We there was nothing that we did wrong, and you know, we have so many topics we're bouncing around, and one of the topics that we talked about, our main topic is life lessons learned from a dog, which sounds like a really happy topic, but it started off not happy, and it was in Hawaii, it was um in 2015 in June, and it was a day off for both of us.
8:25
Carmen Leal: So we went to the beach because what is more cliche than going to the beach in Hawaii?
8:29
Carmen Leal: And we just had a lovely time, and it was I had a book club that day, and so uh we decided to take uh the scenic route that we never take because we're always rushing, and take the really the pretty route and enjoy nature, and we're just at a stop sign, just loving everything, and then bam! And this woman was driving a borrowed, uninsured SUV, and it was the biggest SUV of the class or whatever, and she just slammed into our little bitty Subaru, and we slammed into another SUV and then two other cars, and so I didn't do anything wrong, I just sat there and I was texting as a passenger to get an address to the book club, and because of the way I was sitting, which was angled my head down to do that, that caused, you know, the whiplash, it caused the tear of the muscle of my neck, the tear of the muscle of my back.
9:27
Carmen Leal: And with the force, my hand flew up and the cell phone hit me in the head.
9:34
Carmen Leal: So think blood course trauma.
9:36
Khalila McCoy: Yes.
9:37
Carmen Leal: So I have a hole in my head from that.
9:40
Carmen Leal: And I walked away not knowing I had an injury.
9:45
Carmen Leal: And if you look at the car away from that accident, you would we both got out and it didn't look like we should have died from the back and the front, right?
9:56
Carmen Leal: And so we were like, wow, we're alive, and I called my son and they cut to pick us up, and the car is totaled, and and I woke up the next day and I felt but that's to be expected.
10:09
Carmen Leal: And I worked at Expedia, so I was the person who made all your dreams come true.
10:14
Carmen Leal: I was at the desk of the hotel, and there's my tides over there, and there's a beautiful pool on the beach, and aloha! Is this your first time in Hawaii?
10:23
Carmen Leal: How can I take all your money from you booking all these wonderful tours?
10:28
Carmen Leal: And I did, I made I made your every wish come true.
10:32
Carmen Leal: I was a concierge, and I was very good at what I did, and I love Hawaii, I love everything about it, the weather, the mythology, the just everything about it.
10:45
Carmen Leal: And so I really would engage with my customers, and it was one of my favorite jobs I've ever had in my whole life, and that works really well until you have a headache.
10:55
Carmen Leal: Yeah.
10:56
Carmen Leal: And I had a headache, and I know I've had 10 years of every day is a headache.
11:02
Carmen Leal: It's just a matter of how bad is it.
11:04
Carmen Leal: And I really had a tough time, and I didn't understand concussions.
11:10
Carmen Leal: I didn't follow because I didn't know concussion protocol.
11:15
Carmen Leal: Right.
11:16
Carmen Leal: Um, which I have the kind of concussion that NFL players have where you can't really see it until you're dead.
11:23
Carmen Leal: So um I was very lucky to walk away.
11:28
Carmen Leal: And um, but it was really hard.
11:32
Carmen Leal: I had to teach myself to read again.
11:35
Carmen Leal: I couldn't sing, and I am a vocalist, and I sang in a wonderful um choral group and I couldn't do that.
11:43
Carmen Leal: I had a really hard time with conflict, and when you're working with people, either it's conflict.
11:51
Carmen Leal: If it rains and your luau rain is rained out, whose fault is it?
11:56
Carmen Leal: Mine.
11:57
Carmen Leal: I sold you that I should have known.
11:59
Carmen Leal: You know, it's just ridiculous things.
12:00
Carmen Leal: And so dealing with conflict when you have concussions and you have severe intractable migraines, they are not good combinations at all.
12:11
Khalila McCoy: So at this point, had you seen the doctor and they told you you had the concussions, or you're just you just walked away from the accident and you tried to keep living?
12:18
Carmen Leal: I saw my doc just my regular doctor a few days later, and he's an osteopath, and it was really, really more working on the muscles in my neck and my back, and trying to get me not to hurt.
12:33
Khalila McCoy: And um so did he even realize you had the concussion?
12:38
Carmen Leal: No, because that's not really what he does, right?
12:42
Carmen Leal: You know, and he and I mean he did ask three questions.
12:44
Carmen Leal: Did you black out?
12:45
Carmen Leal: No.
12:46
Carmen Leal: Did you fall asleep?
12:47
Carmen Leal: No, did you throw up?
12:48
Carmen Leal: No.
12:49
Carmen Leal: So he asked all those preliminary questions.
12:53
Carmen Leal: Okay.
12:53
Carmen Leal: And to your listeners, you don't have to do any of those things to have a concussion.
12:57
Carmen Leal: We see on the movies, right?
12:59
Carmen Leal: Stay awake, don't throw up.
13:00
Carmen Leal: Well, that's what we see.
13:02
Carmen Leal: The reality is you don't have to have those symptoms.
13:04
Carmen Leal: Not every disease or every injury progresses in the same way for everybody in the same timeline.
13:13
Carmen Leal: And so as my headaches kept getting worse and it became harder for me to do my job, and I was not getting support at work.
13:25
Carmen Leal: Um, I mean, I know now that they really thought I was a liability.
13:29
Carmen Leal: Because when you're on commission and you gotta hustle, and so I was still the top producer, but what it cost me to hustle just about destroyed me.
13:38
Carmen Leal: And now I know no job was worth it, but I was so scared of going back into poverty.
13:46
Carmen Leal: Prior to that, as a single mom with kids, and then caregiving for my second husband, who was traumately ill, sadly, early on in our marriage, and losing my home and going bankrupt.
14:00
Carmen Leal: I had clawed my way back.
14:02
Carmen Leal: And you didn't want to lose-I just couldn't, I just couldn't.
14:07
Carmen Leal: I could not give up my job, which I love, and you always think I will get better.
14:13
Carmen Leal: So then became take this drug, take that drug, do this therapy, do that.
14:20
Carmen Leal: And it got to the point where all I did was go to doctors.
14:23
Carmen Leal: I had six doctors' appointments a week.
14:26
Carmen Leal: Um, I had a couple massages, and then I had acupuncture, and then I had a therapist, and then I had the neurologist, and um I had a psyche vow with one of the top neurologists there, and he said to me afterwards it was a nine hours stretched over three days, and they get a baseline for you, and then they are able to figure out who you used to be in your brain and who you are now.
14:52
Carmen Leal: So he said to me, you know, you must have been very um smart or intelligent at one time.
15:00
Carmen Leal: I said, must have been.
15:01
Carmen Leal: I mean, he said, he said, you probably lost about 30 IQ points because of this wreck.
15:15
Carmen Leal: And personality changes, I didn't know me anymore.
15:22
Carmen Leal: Um, I didn't, you know, it's it's interesting.
15:26
Carmen Leal: People will be there for you for that initial, oh, I'm so sorry.
15:31
Carmen Leal: And I don't care whether it's cancer or it's this or it's loss of a spouse, whatever.
15:36
Carmen Leal: But honestly, people get really tired of you, and but they also don't know what to do for you, and so there's there's the guilt that your friends have, and I had no family there, I had uh one son, but I didn't have siblings and parents and and all that, and so I just I found that my friends just left, and now I I work really hard at being a friend when people are having the disaster of their life, and as we get older, we all have more and more disasters, and so I try and be that friend that is always there.
16:20
Carmen Leal: I'm the one who's going to cook for you, I'm gonna sit with you, I'm gonna I'm gonna be there, I'm gonna send you funny memes, I'm going to, but it's hard.
16:30
Carmen Leal: Life goes on and people have their life, and right, so I found that I didn't get really even from my husband, I didn't get the support I needed.
16:40
Khalila McCoy: What did you feel you needed most at that time?
16:46
Carmen Leal: You know, I I think I needed people to accept that I was never gonna be the old me again.
16:55
Khalila McCoy: How had your personality changed?
16:57
Khalila McCoy: Oh, my personality changed.
16:59
Carmen Leal: Oh my gosh.
16:59
Carmen Leal: Um, I became more blunt, which is hard to believe.
17:04
Carmen Leal: The filter, oh my gosh, I had no filter left, and I didn't have much to start with.
17:09
Carmen Leal: And so we all have a situation where we know what we want to say, but we know there are inside voices and outside voices, and I did not have an inside voice anymore.
17:20
Carmen Leal: They were all outside, and I probably hurt people, and I um was demanding and try keeping inside voices when you're dealing with a conflict, a conflict situation at work.
17:36
Carmen Leal: And I worked for Air Canada before, and I was the conflict resolution person, I was a complete person, so I was good at what I did, but I knew how to do it, done it for years, won awards, owned a company where I trained people how to do it.
17:51
Carmen Leal: All bets are off.
17:54
Khalila McCoy: When that filter left, was it like after you said it, you're like, oh crap, I said that out loud, or was it just like I said what I said?
18:01
Carmen Leal: Um, both times.
18:02
Carmen Leal: Uh give an example.
18:03
Carmen Leal: This is the day that I knew I could no longer do this.
18:07
Carmen Leal: So it was in it was in December, and this one was from Minnesota.
18:12
Carmen Leal: Sorry, Minnesota.
18:13
Carmen Leal: You're getting a rough one this week, but there's another one.
18:15
Carmen Leal: So, Minnesota, and they were there on their 40th wedding anniversary, and this woman was annoying.
18:22
Carmen Leal: So she'd come to the desk and picks my brain, and I give her all the different options.
18:27
Carmen Leal: We price it out, and I'm on commission, lady.
18:31
Carmen Leal: Now you don't know that.
18:32
Carmen Leal: Okay, I get it.
18:33
Carmen Leal: However, she says, This has been very helpful.
18:37
Carmen Leal: I'm just gonna take these brochures and then I'm gonna go on the internet and book it because it's cheaper.
18:41
Carmen Leal: And I said, Yeah, you know, I understand Hawaii is not an inexpensive destination, but please understand if you book it yourself, I can't help you.
18:53
Carmen Leal: So if it rains, I can't change things.
18:55
Carmen Leal: If there is a wreck and you can't get to your destination, you I can't touch any record that I didn't make.
19:03
Carmen Leal: But you know, mostly things don't go wrong.
19:07
Carmen Leal: So feel free, okay.
19:09
Carmen Leal: Sau like a little pissed because people had left and gone somewhere else because they couldn't get me this whole week, like four days.
19:17
Carmen Leal: She's whining, she's coming to the desk, asking men's questions, sucking up my time.
19:23
Carmen Leal: I'm trying to be nice, trying to be nice, but it's raining.
19:28
Carmen Leal: Now remember, it's December.
19:30
Carmen Leal: We do have a rainy season, and it's December.
19:33
Carmen Leal: Did you not do any research before you chose this?
19:36
Carmen Leal: Well, I don't always rain, and it was oh I go, you know what?
19:42
Carmen Leal: It's it's an acting in the shower, it cleanses the air, it's so sweet.
19:46
Carmen Leal: Your lua's not till 5 30, and you're on the dry side of the island.
19:50
Carmen Leal: Don't worry, I'm doing everything right.
19:52
Carmen Leal: Right.
19:53
Carmen Leal: And inside is a different story, but I'm holding, I'm I'm holding it together.
19:57
Carmen Leal: And she won't stop.
19:59
Carmen Leal: And then she's in front of me, and I have this long line of people trying to spend money.
20:03
Carmen Leal: I'm they can't do it, and they're leaving.
20:05
Carmen Leal: And my paycheck, I can't pay my bills, I'm getting all stressed, right?
20:09
Carmen Leal: So she starts again.
20:12
Carmen Leal: Why is it always raining?
20:13
Carmen Leal: Blah blah blah blah blah.
20:14
Carmen Leal: Well, if it wasn't rain, there wouldn't be rainbows.
20:17
Carmen Leal: Look how great it is.
20:18
Carmen Leal: I mean, I'm doing and she was like, Okay, get this picture, and we're talking like 20 minutes of this.
20:25
Carmen Leal: I'm not gonna be able to do it.
20:26
Carmen Leal: People in London are probably getting impatient, and people are impatient, and I have real problems to solve, like rebooking stuff, whatever.
20:32
Carmen Leal: And so she goes off.
20:33
Carmen Leal: I'll look at this woman and I said, You know, you know why it always rains in Hawaii?
20:39
Carmen Leal: She goes, Why?
20:40
Carmen Leal: I said, Well, it depends upon how bitchy someone is, and I said it, I said it, and then I went, oh no, they didn't say that, they just didn't say that.
20:53
Carmen Leal: So I quickly said, but that's not you.
20:57
Carmen Leal: It was me.
20:58
Carmen Leal: There was a my last guest before you.
21:02
Carmen Leal: Oh, she was such a witch.
21:04
Carmen Leal: She made it right.
21:06
Carmen Leal: Now you just brief deep things with thoughts and the rainbow came out.
21:13
Carmen Leal: She thought she stopped the ring.
21:15
Carmen Leal: Oh my goodness.
21:16
Carmen Leal: And she left.
21:17
Khalila McCoy: You gave that woman so much power.
21:19
Carmen Leal: And I picked up my phone and I called my manager and I said, I'm done.
21:22
Carmen Leal: Two weeks' notice because I cannot be trusted.
21:26
Carmen Leal: If I can't have a discussion about the weather without calling someone a bitch, no, I am no, I'm done.
21:33
Carmen Leal: I'm done.
21:33
Carmen Leal: And so that was that was the day I gave my notice.
21:37
Carmen Leal: So, and that's, you know, yeah, I could have been fired for that.
21:42
Carmen Leal: You could have got me fired.
21:44
Carmen Leal: And there were other things I know I said that I should have been fired.
21:48
Carmen Leal: And the stress of holding everything in and having this headache and not knowing what's wrong with me, and knowing there's no fix, and there were other like I had.
21:59
Carmen Leal: I don't know if you can see this eye.
22:02
Carmen Leal: My right wing, you can see it isn't symmetrical.
22:04
Carmen Leal: It's it droops.
22:06
Carmen Leal: So I've had I don't know, four eye surgeries to fix this.
22:09
Carmen Leal: When the phone that hit me, it severed the muscles that hold up the eyelids, so it dropped.
22:16
Carmen Leal: So I have this terrible fear of driving anyway.
22:19
Carmen Leal: I had no idea I was driving with no peripheral vision until I got here.
22:22
Carmen Leal: I thought people were all gunning for me and trying to kill me.
22:24
Carmen Leal: And so you're like, oh, it's me.
22:26
Carmen Leal: No, and then I was so suicidal, which I am a happy person.
22:33
Carmen Leal: And it was so I couldn't read anymore.
22:37
Carmen Leal: I couldn't sing anymore.
22:39
Carmen Leal: Um, my whole life was nothing except working and medical and changing drugs with all the different side effects that made me not me.
22:49
Carmen Leal: And there was just no end.
22:51
Carmen Leal: And we were talking, I don't know, two years of this.
22:55
Carmen Leal: And my son had just moved to, he had just graduated from law school.
23:01
Carmen Leal: He went to U Medicine Law School, married a girl from Wisconsin.
23:05
Carmen Leal: It's the whole story how he got involved in Wisconsin.
23:07
Carmen Leal: And they had just moved to Oshkosh.
23:09
Carmen Leal: And and so they lived his he and his son and wife for two years.
23:14
Carmen Leal: She did not like humidity.
23:16
Carmen Leal: And so she, you know, there there was no chance of them staying.
23:19
Carmen Leal: He wanted to.
23:20
Carmen Leal: She didn't.
23:21
Carmen Leal: He she won.
23:22
Carmen Leal: And they went back.
23:23
Carmen Leal: He was there during the wreck.
23:25
Carmen Leal: He picked me up.
23:26
Carmen Leal: And but I don't ever remember he or his wife saying, Is there anything you need?
23:32
Carmen Leal: And so I take responsibility for the fact that many people weren't there because they didn't know how to be there, because I didn't give them express instructions.
23:46
Carmen Leal: Like when I was a single parent and you know, raising my, you know, trying to care for my second husband, and people say, I am so sorry if there's anything I can do.
23:56
Carmen Leal: Yeah, you don't mean that.
23:58
Carmen Leal: You don't mean that.
23:59
Carmen Leal: I mean, you mean it when it comes out of your mouth, but most people aren't going to follow up.
24:04
Carmen Leal: You've said that before.
24:06
Carmen Leal: Yeah.
24:06
Carmen Leal: And how many times did you follow up?
24:08
Carmen Leal: I am so sorry if there's anything I can do.
24:10
Carmen Leal: You don't follow up.
24:11
Carmen Leal: I don't follow up.
24:12
Carmen Leal: That's just the world gets in the way.
24:14
Carmen Leal: Right.
24:15
Carmen Leal: So I got these three by five cards that I would write.
24:19
Carmen Leal: Pick up boys from soccer Monday, Wednesday, Friday, four o'clock.
24:24
Carmen Leal: Need a dinner on Friday.
24:27
Carmen Leal: This is what I want.
24:28
Carmen Leal: I mean, I was that specific.
24:29
Carmen Leal: If this is anything you can do, I'd say, thank you so much for asking.
24:35
Carmen Leal: These were the things I want.
24:36
Carmen Leal: What would you like?
24:37
Carmen Leal: People would take their card, and nobody never didn't show up.
24:44
Carmen Leal: Everybody that's really good.
24:48
Carmen Leal: Life hack, do that.
24:50
Carmen Leal: Yeah, that's a really good idea.
24:52
Carmen Leal: People want to help, they truly do.
24:55
Carmen Leal: They just don't know what to do.
24:58
Carmen Leal: And you need to tell them what would be helpful.
25:02
Carmen Leal: If there's anything I can do, I am so sorry.
25:05
Carmen Leal: You know, I need a prescription picked up.
25:07
Carmen Leal: And I don't like driving after dark because it's hard for me to see now.
25:11
Carmen Leal: If you could go to Walgreens and pick that up and then maybe go and pick me up some chicken soup at Panera and bring it back to me because my husband's working late tonight, I would love that.
25:25
Carmen Leal: Is that something you can do?
25:27
Carmen Leal: You're not gonna say no.
25:28
Carmen Leal: Right.
25:29
Carmen Leal: Because I'm not gonna ask you if I know that you're not off work.
25:33
Carmen Leal: Now you have the right to say, oh, I already made plans tonight.
25:37
Carmen Leal: I can say that's fine.
25:39
Carmen Leal: That's fine.
25:40
Carmen Leal: But if you haven't made plans, you're gonna say, yes, I can do that.
25:46
Carmen Leal: And you will do it.
25:50
Khalila McCoy: You say I can do anything.
25:51
Khalila McCoy: And so I just tell you what to do.
25:53
Khalila McCoy: I give you up.
25:54
Khalila McCoy: But I didn't do that.
25:56
Carmen Leal: I didn't do that because I was in so much pain, both emotionally and physically, and I just didn't revert back to all the lessons that I knew.
26:10
Carmen Leal: I mean, I wrote books about this stuff.
26:12
Carmen Leal: I traveled around the world speaking on this stuff, telling people this.
26:16
Carmen Leal: You would think I, of all people, would practice what I preach, but I didn't.
26:22
Carmen Leal: And so I will accept that.
26:25
Carmen Leal: So I was 60.
26:27
Carmen Leal: We we moved here when I was 62.
26:30
Carmen Leal: So it was almost two years of this.
26:34
Khalila McCoy: What do you think it was that stopped you from that practice, what you preach?
26:39
Carmen Leal: I have never in my life been in so much pain.
26:43
Carmen Leal: And pain changes everything.
26:45
Carmen Leal: Like I don't remember ever having a headache.
26:47
Carmen Leal: And I am genuinely a very healthy person.
26:51
Carmen Leal: My mom had eight kids, and she said, You don't get to be sick.
26:55
Carmen Leal: You can get to sick one day a week, one day a year.
26:57
Carmen Leal: Sorry, one day a year.
26:58
Carmen Leal: And my little brother said, Mama, because you're the mama, do you get two days to be sick?
27:03
Carmen Leal: I had a perfect attendance record, K through 12.
27:08
Carmen Leal: Now I may have to throw it up on the way to school.
27:10
Carmen Leal: So I I just didn't understand what pain does to you.
27:19
Carmen Leal: Okay.
27:19
Carmen Leal: And I know you have listeners who probably have chronic pain, and they're saying, Oh, Richard teacher, I know, I know.
27:26
Carmen Leal: I mean, it's just you become a different person and everything goes out the window.
27:32
Carmen Leal: And the focus on I just need to get up and make it through this shift without throwing up because my headaches hurt so much.
27:41
Carmen Leal: I just need to figure out how to do this job without insulting somebody, even though they deserve it.
27:48
Carmen Leal: I just I need I mean I cussed out a coworker and it was bad.
27:55
Carmen Leal: And she deserved it.
27:58
Carmen Leal: But you don't get to do that.
28:01
Khalila McCoy: Right.
28:01
Carmen Leal: Not in you can't do that.
28:03
Carmen Leal: And so I was holding on so tight just to survive that you can't think of anything else.
28:15
Khalila McCoy: Is that where the idea of suicide kind of started to creep in?
28:17
Khalila McCoy: Yep, it did for me because I didn't it wasn't a life.
28:25
Carmen Leal: I wasn't me anymore, and I wasn't living a life of joy.
28:30
Carmen Leal: I wasn't serving because I was used to being that person who volunteered.
28:36
Carmen Leal: I think that all of us are put on this earth to experience what we have so we have empathy and compassion and we can give away.
28:45
Carmen Leal: That's my philosophy on life.
28:48
Carmen Leal: I couldn't do that anymore.
28:50
Carmen Leal: I couldn't be the giver anymore.
28:53
Carmen Leal: That was such a core of who I was through all the ups and downs in life.
28:58
Carmen Leal: That was still me.
28:59
Carmen Leal: That was the hallmark of the character that God put in me, and it was gone.
29:05
Carmen Leal: If that's gone, why do I exist?
29:09
Carmen Leal: You know, like my mother, people, you know, they say, what is one thing that someone told you that made a difference in your life?
29:16
Carmen Leal: And people all will maybe speak to a president or an actor, or you know, somebody famous.
29:22
Carmen Leal: And my mind is always my mom.
29:23
Carmen Leal: And my mom always said, be the best you you can be, and then help others be their best selves.
29:30
Carmen Leal: That was our that was our family mantra.
29:33
Carmen Leal: Yes, that was ingrained in us.
29:35
Carmen Leal: I could not be the best me anymore, and I sure couldn't help anybody else be their best self.
29:43
Carmen Leal: So if I am not me anymore, and I'm not helping anybody, why am I on this earth?
29:51
Carmen Leal: Why am I why am I there?
29:53
Carmen Leal: Because if I'm not there, I don't have to deal with this pain anymore.
29:58
Carmen Leal: And even though you're hurting the people that you leave, at that point maybe you feel like you're hurting them more by staying.
30:09
Carmen Leal: That's and I never told anybody.
30:16
Carmen Leal: I didn't tell my husband, I didn't tell friends, I didn't tell co-workers, I just kept everything inside, and that's a really bad thing to do.
30:25
Carmen Leal: There's a reason there are suicide hotlines, there's a reason why people say be honest and open, but I was not.
30:31
Carmen Leal: My doctor knew, but I never told him.
30:35
Carmen Leal: And he asked me about a year after this whole started.
30:39
Carmen Leal: He said, And he was just a saint.
30:42
Carmen Leal: And he said, Do you know why I saw you so often in the beginning?
30:48
Carmen Leal: And and I said, Yeah, because I was all jacked up.
30:50
Carmen Leal: He said, Well, yeah, that's true.
30:53
Carmen Leal: He said, But your insurance only paid for one 30-minute appointment a week.
30:59
Carmen Leal: And I saw you for three one-hour appointments.
31:01
Carmen Leal: And I said, Why?
31:03
Carmen Leal: And he said, You're the always you're the person who would always show up.
31:07
Carmen Leal: And if you showed up, I knew you were alive.
31:10
Carmen Leal: You were so suicidal, and you didn't know it or you wouldn't accept it.
31:14
Carmen Leal: And so I just kept you going to all these different places.
31:18
Carmen Leal: And if you came and saw me three days a week, I knew you were alive.
31:22
Carmen Leal: And I said, Well, who'd you bill?
31:26
Carmen Leal: And he goes, No one.
31:27
Carmen Leal: He saw me for two and a half hours for free.
31:30
Carmen Leal: He never billed anybody.
31:31
Carmen Leal: That is awesome.
31:33
Carmen Leal: Mm-hmm.
31:33
Carmen Leal: What a big guy.
31:35
Carmen Leal: The best doctor.
31:37
Carmen Leal: And in fact, after we moved here, he was originally, again, from Minnesota, and he had to go to a conference in Wisconsin.
31:45
Carmen Leal: So he flimsied in Minnesota, saw his mom, picked up her car, drove, and said, I'm gonna stop.
31:53
Carmen Leal: I want to make sure you're okay.
31:55
Carmen Leal: And so he came and saw my house, and he met my dog, and we took me to lunch.
32:02
Carmen Leal: And only then, because I had him as my doctor for a whole year after I moved.
32:09
Carmen Leal: So we did everything FaceTime, and that was mainly so we could continue my disability, you know, so I had insurance.
32:16
Carmen Leal: And he was, he said, I won't sign off and give you a different doctor until I am there and I can see with my own eyes that you're the person I used to know.
32:26
Carmen Leal: And he did that for me.
32:28
Carmen Leal: Isn't that amazing?
32:29
Carmen Leal: That is, yeah.
32:31
Carmen Leal: And he was also the doctor who said, I think you should get a dog.
32:34
Carmen Leal: And I said, I can't, no, I don't do dogs.
32:38
Carmen Leal: Don't do dogs, and I can't even keep myself alive.
32:43
Carmen Leal: I I can't do dogs, and uh no, but no, I said, they won't he go, no, no, well, it's an emotional support dog.
32:50
Carmen Leal: I'll make sure you get it at work and I'll do this.
32:52
Carmen Leal: I said, no, no, I can't.
32:54
Carmen Leal: I don't I no, I'll make sure you're land or land, and I said, no.
32:58
Carmen Leal: And I look back and I really wish I would have listened, and then I would have gotten the dog.
33:04
Carmen Leal: If I could do anything different, I would go on disability immediately.
33:10
Carmen Leal: I would have worried less about money, I would have been content to go on social services if I needed to, to get on food stamps or section eight.
33:24
Carmen Leal: Um, I would have moved to a tiny studio and I would have gotten a dog.
33:29
Carmen Leal: And if I did all those things, I think I'd still be annoying.
33:34
Carmen Leal: I think that because that dog saved my life when I finally decided to do it.
33:46
Khalila McCoy: What changed?
33:48
Carmen Leal: Oh, you know it's not a good story.
33:50
Carmen Leal: No, I know it's not a good story.
33:52
Carmen Leal: We moved here in March, and it was not an easy entry.
33:57
Carmen Leal: And my husband worked at night um at 10 o'clock.
34:03
Carmen Leal: So I didn't know anybody except my son, and he was busy with his little family and working, and so here I am, just dropped from outer space into this thing called Wisconsin, where I didn't know anybody.
34:13
Carmen Leal: And moving is hard at any age.
34:15
Carmen Leal: Moving as a senior is super hard.
34:17
Carmen Leal: It's so hard because we don't have um we make friends through connections like work, your kids' school, church, all those things.
34:33
Carmen Leal: I had none of the above.
34:35
Carmen Leal: So I didn't make any friends.
34:38
Carmen Leal: I didn't have anybody.
34:39
Carmen Leal: I mean, I saw people and I'd say hello and walk down the street, whatever.
34:43
Khalila McCoy: But and then true connections.
34:45
Carmen Leal: Yeah, no, no connections.
34:47
Carmen Leal: And then I we bought this house that it was it wasn't a money pit by any means, but it was a money drainer, for sure, because there was lots to do on this, which is the good news, bad news, and then the yard from hell and the flooding and you know, all those things, and you know, I'm I'm making it through, and I am still I don't know, I'm just foot in front of each other, but I still was always thinking, well, I had too much alone time, and I was always thinking about you know killing myself.
35:24
Carmen Leal: And we I had bought these knives and I cooked, and so people, you know, my hands, oh you deserve these knives.
35:31
Carmen Leal: No, no, no, those are my suicide knives.
35:34
Carmen Leal: Well, that's I mean, I had a plan and I was alone a lot.
35:39
Carmen Leal: Well, I made it till July.
35:42
Carmen Leal: And it was hot that day, and in Oshkosh, we have something called the EAA, which is the Experimental Aircraft Association, and it's the largest air show in the world.
35:54
Carmen Leal: It happens for a week.
35:55
Carmen Leal: Uh, this past year we had almost 700,000 people come through.
35:59
Carmen Leal: It's the busiest airport in the world that day, that week.
36:02
Carmen Leal: Yeah, it's crazy, crazy, and it's loud.
36:05
Carmen Leal: And uh my my my migraines are noise-induced.
36:09
Carmen Leal: Oh, yeah.
36:11
Carmen Leal: And I had never heard of this little EAA thing, and so I decided to walk downtown, which I live right off downtown.
36:20
Carmen Leal: We had a book, and I'm gonna go to a coffee shop and act normal and order something and read and suck off the air conditioning, you know, and like a real person.
36:31
Carmen Leal: So, you know, I'm walking and I'm right in front of the post office, and I hear, I hear this noise.
36:39
Carmen Leal: I mean, it was a flyover like five, whatever you call those, you know, fighter jets.
36:46
Carmen Leal: It was so noisy, so loud, and it was shaking, it was so unexpected, and I stood there and I didn't know what was happening, and in my mind, I was being blitzed, and I really thought that people were trying to kill me.
37:01
Carmen Leal: I thought there were bombs.
37:02
Carmen Leal: And it was just my brain was so broken and so tired, and I I started crying, and I stood there and I shook, and then I fell on the ground, and I sat on the hot pavement crying, and people drove by and people walked by and walked around me, and they went in the post office and nobody stopped.
37:24
Carmen Leal: No, I didn't have one person.
37:26
Carmen Leal: No one called 911, no one said, Okay, I mean, maybe I look like a homeless person.
37:32
Carmen Leal: I mean, they didn't even try to give you a dollar though, but you could still call the police something, and I cried.
37:42
Carmen Leal: Oh, that breaks my heart.
37:44
Carmen Leal: It was horrible.
37:45
Carmen Leal: Yeah, it it took me a long time.
37:48
Carmen Leal: In fact, I didn't share that story until I wrote my second book.
37:51
Carmen Leal: I would just kind of gloss over what happened.
37:54
Carmen Leal: And so I get up and I walk home, and the movers had lost or broken everything.
38:01
Carmen Leal: It was a horrible move, and the sofa was missing one leg.
38:04
Carmen Leal: So just imagine me on my little sofa with leaned over, leaned over, and I'm all cried out.
38:12
Carmen Leal: And all I can think of is okay, if I get up, I can get to the kitchen, I can get these knives, and I can kill myself.
38:19
Carmen Leal: I mean, I'm I wasn't even making light of, and I that was my plan.
38:24
Carmen Leal: And I got in there, and there were boxes that were not unpacked, and I'm frantically going through the boxes.
38:30
Carmen Leal: The move was it lost the box where the knives were.
38:33
Carmen Leal: Well, good.
38:37
Khalila McCoy: But sorry.
38:38
Carmen Leal: And I'm like, well, I had words I'm not gonna share here because they're inside words, and um so I go back to my little couch and I thought, you know what?
38:48
Carmen Leal: I'm gonna get a dog.
38:49
Carmen Leal: It's not gonna work, but I've tried all these drugs, I've tried so hard, and I know it won't work, so I'm gonna name this dog Xanax.
38:58
Carmen Leal: He'll be like all the drugs I threw away because it didn't work.
39:02
Carmen Leal: But my husband has always wanted us to have a dog, and I've always said no, he was a dog person.
39:07
Carmen Leal: And I said, So at least when I die, my husband will have the dog and he won't be alone.
39:14
Carmen Leal: So that was my big plan.
39:16
Khalila McCoy: Okay.
39:16
Khalila McCoy: So you were still thinking about taking your life, but you're just thinking a dog would be okay for that work, but at least he would have that.
39:25
Carmen Leal: That's pretty logical, right?
39:26
Carmen Leal: I mean, come on, Mr.
39:27
Khalila McCoy: I mean, that's that was nice of you, I guess.
39:31
Carmen Leal: It took a couple months, and we finally went, and we went to the only shelter that was open.
39:36
Carmen Leal: It wasn't rescue independent.
39:38
Carmen Leal: Yeah.
39:38
Carmen Leal: Um they have a little website where they have dogs, the bios, and my husband had pre-picked the ones he wanted to see, and he was excited, and I'm not.
39:47
Carmen Leal: And we get in there, and you can imagine how enthused I was.
39:51
Carmen Leal: And every dog came to him.
39:53
Carmen Leal: That's great.
39:55
Carmen Leal: And they treated me like I was a chopped liver.
39:57
Carmen Leal: Like, I'm like, if if this is my emotional support dog, shouldn't a dog come to me, or at least know I'm in the room.
40:06
Carmen Leal: So the owner said, Well, what do you want in a dog?
40:10
Carmen Leal: I said, Well, I want a dog that doesn't jump, don't bark, don't lit, don't get on my furniture, and is not a pest.
40:18
Carmen Leal: That's what I want.
40:19
Carmen Leal: And I want no knowing dog.
40:21
Carmen Leal: And he said, Well, I have the perfect dog for you.
40:23
Carmen Leal: You want a stuffed animal, right?
40:24
Carmen Leal: I said, Yep.
40:25
Carmen Leal: He goes, No, I have a great dog for you.
40:26
Carmen Leal: I know.
40:27
Carmen Leal: So he goes back and he brings in this little brown nothing of a dog.
40:34
Carmen Leal: He's like a mutt.
40:35
Carmen Leal: Like it didn't, it wasn't like, ooh, look at those blue eyes.
40:37
Carmen Leal: Ooh, you're a this.
40:38
Carmen Leal: No, it was just nothing.
40:40
Carmen Leal: It was a mutt with a long tail.
40:42
Carmen Leal: Had no idea what he was.
40:44
Carmen Leal: It was like, I don't know, he was really underweight.
40:46
Carmen Leal: Turns out he was 12 hours underweight, and he'd been astrayed.
40:50
Carmen Leal: And the dog didn't notice my husband was in the room.
40:54
Carmen Leal: He came straight to me and he sat in front of me.
40:57
Carmen Leal: He just sat there and he just stared.
40:59
Carmen Leal: And the owner said, Why don't you give him a treat?
41:02
Carmen Leal: And I held it out, and he was so gentle eating it from my hand.
41:05
Carmen Leal: So I could you could tell he had been trained to some degree.
41:08
Carmen Leal: And then I took him on a leash and we walked, and um so we adopted this dog that day.
41:16
Khalila McCoy: Did you start to feel a connection in those moments with them?
41:19
Carmen Leal: Or no, no, not even no, I did not, and it went then it got really bad.
41:25
Carmen Leal: It got really bad because I had finally made a couple friends from book clubs that I had started going to.
41:35
Carmen Leal: So I made I had plans to go to the theater, and I didn't want to cast my plans because I might never get friends again, right?
41:43
Carmen Leal: So I thought, well, how bad can it be?
41:46
Carmen Leal: I got hardwood floors.
41:48
Carmen Leal: He'll just poop and then I'll just come pick it up.
41:50
Carmen Leal: It's only a few hours.
41:52
Carmen Leal: Oh no, no, no.
41:53
Carmen Leal: That is not what happened.
41:54
Carmen Leal: I walked in and to utter destruction of my house.
41:59
Carmen Leal: My 106 cents drapes that we negotiated for, the silk drapes, never gone.
42:04
Carmen Leal: Just torn down.
42:05
Carmen Leal: I had the the curtains upstairs and the blinds I had bought that week torn down.
42:11
Carmen Leal: The bathroom we had the bedroom.
42:13
Carmen Leal: Got into the pantry, knocked over the shelf, destroyed everything, ate the macadamia nuts.
42:18
Carmen Leal: I think I was most mad about that.
42:20
Carmen Leal: And uh, there's supposedly a poisonous knot for him.
42:24
Carmen Leal: And of course, there was a lot of things.
42:25
Carmen Leal: I was gonna say, did he get sick?
42:26
Carmen Leal: Nope.
42:27
Carmen Leal: Did not.
42:28
Carmen Leal: What he did though is he couldn't stand.
42:31
Carmen Leal: He couldn't walk up the stairs.
42:33
Carmen Leal: So we had to carry him up the stairs, put him in his little bed, and he couldn't stand.
42:39
Carmen Leal: And I said, we have a problem.
42:40
Carmen Leal: If you can't stand, you can't poop, and if you can't poop, we got a problem.
42:44
Carmen Leal: So I we ended up having to go to the emergency vet, and no, the cost, the cost was ridiculous.
42:53
Carmen Leal: And I didn't even want this dog.
42:56
Carmen Leal: And I told her, I said, we need to, I don't want any fetal exams, I don't want any, I don't want nothing except tell me what's wrong with his knee or whatever it is and fix it.
43:10
Carmen Leal: Because he's already been to a vet within 30 days.
43:13
Carmen Leal: I don't need none of these tests.
43:14
Carmen Leal: They came back with every test known to man.
43:17
Carmen Leal: $1,700.
43:20
Carmen Leal: Wow.
43:22
Carmen Leal: And I said, no, I'm not paying that.
43:24
Carmen Leal: And she goes, Oh no.
43:26
Carmen Leal: I said, no, listen, I told you.
43:28
Carmen Leal: Uh first of all, get the manager so the vet comes out.
43:31
Carmen Leal: I said, first of all, I want to thank you for hiring the hearing impaired.
43:35
Carmen Leal: Because that's the only reason this happened.
43:37
Carmen Leal: Because I was very specific.
43:39
Carmen Leal: And I'm a very good communicator.
43:41
Carmen Leal: I told you what not to do, and they did it.
43:43
Carmen Leal: Right over arguing with these people.
43:45
Carmen Leal: And I said, no, I'm not paying for it.
43:47
Carmen Leal: And I wrote a number down that I would pay for, which was $500, which was more than the adoption fee.
43:54
Carmen Leal: But I said to her, This is what I'm offering you.
43:57
Carmen Leal: All he had was a sprain.
43:59
Carmen Leal: I could have given that dog baby ass one and it would have been fine.
44:03
Khalila McCoy: That was it?
44:04
Khalila McCoy: It was it.
44:05
Carmen Leal: Oh my goodness.
44:06
Carmen Leal: I was but that I call that my stupid tax.
44:10
Carmen Leal: Okay, that was my stupid tax that I had to pay.
44:12
Carmen Leal: But I said, I'm not paying a penny more.
44:14
Carmen Leal: And she says, Well, that's n I said, look, I'm not paying this.
44:18
Carmen Leal: I'm not paying this.
44:20
Carmen Leal: And I said, here's here's you're either gonna take $500 or you can take the dog.
44:26
Carmen Leal: Because the dog was $300, and I can go get another dog.
44:30
Carmen Leal: There's a lot of dogs out there.
44:31
Carmen Leal: So you got a dog.
44:33
Carmen Leal: So she took the money.
44:36
Carmen Leal: And I go home.
44:37
Carmen Leal: And I'm not gonna say it was instantaneous at all.
44:45
Carmen Leal: But I am going to tell you when you have a dog, unless you like cleaning up poop in the house, you must take them for a walk.
44:56
Carmen Leal: Okay, yes.
44:57
Carmen Leal: Because we did not have a dog-proof fence, I found out.
45:01
Carmen Leal: Lots of stories about runaway dogs, but you must walk them.
45:06
Carmen Leal: And if you walk them, you must get sunshine.
45:10
Carmen Leal: And you're gonna get this healing vitamin D.
45:14
Carmen Leal: There's something about being outside that will help whatever ails you.
45:20
Carmen Leal: And then you have to see people, and dogs are people magnets, and they have maybe passed you a hundred times, but they won't pass you with a dog.
45:30
Carmen Leal: Oh, he's so cute.
45:32
Carmen Leal: What's his name?
45:33
Carmen Leal: Pretty soon you're having conversations.
45:36
Carmen Leal: Oh, where do you live?
45:37
Carmen Leal: Oh, I live in the brick house.
45:38
Carmen Leal: I love that house.
45:40
Carmen Leal: You're doing such lovely work there.
45:42
Carmen Leal: Where do you live?
45:42
Carmen Leal: Oh, I thought you know, all of a sudden, you're part of something, and that dog is the reason why you cannot have a dog and not.
45:55
Carmen Leal: He just walked in, he knows he's being talked about.
45:58
Carmen Leal: You can't have a dog without people wanting to interact with you.
46:05
Carmen Leal: They're a chick magnet if you're a young kid, if you're a young, you know, 20-year-old or a chick magnet, they're it, you know, and so that helped immensely.
46:15
Carmen Leal: Immensely.
46:17
Carmen Leal: The other thing is dogs when you he when you just touch their fur, there's that calming, but it's scientific that it's it's creating oxycotin, the still good drug.
46:32
Carmen Leal: That's what dogs do when they connect to.
46:34
Carmen Leal: And that need that we all have, whether people want to accept it or not, we all have that need to help somebody.
46:45
Carmen Leal: If I can't help people, then I could help this little dog.
46:50
Carmen Leal: And so it helped me to start gaining some of me again.
46:56
Carmen Leal: And dogs are just flat out funny, they just do funny, funny things.
47:01
Carmen Leal: They are, you know, and it's just they're just they're just fun.
47:05
Carmen Leal: Um, they're conversation points, and so it didn't happen overnight, but I would tell you probably the number one thing that helped is realizing you can have all the drugs you want in the world, but the biggest drug is having purpose in your life.
47:22
Carmen Leal: And all the purpose in my life had been stripped out.
47:26
Carmen Leal: And I said, I I don't think I'm ready to work, I don't know what I want to do, but I can't just feel sorry for myself, and I can't just focus on this pain.
47:36
Carmen Leal: So I went back to the shelter.
47:38
Carmen Leal: It was about two weeks, and I had so oh man, I had so many mistakes with this dog, and I he was so helpful.
47:45
Carmen Leal: I'd go back in or I'd call him and you know, he'd help me.
47:48
Carmen Leal: And I said, you know, you're really good at dogs, and you really suck at marketing.
47:52
Carmen Leal: I'm looking at your website and it's awful.
47:55
Carmen Leal: And I do marketing and I'm really good.
47:57
Carmen Leal: How about I volunteer?
47:59
Carmen Leal: People don't willingly volunteer, but I said, No, I'm not gonna be like in the shelter because I don't do dogs, but I can do fundraisers and I can do websites, and so I started with bios and I increased their visibility, and then we I helped design a new logo and I got someone back home to do it for free.
48:23
Carmen Leal: And then my husband rebuilt their website and as a volunteer, and then I started, I just did more and more.
48:31
Carmen Leal: I did grant writing and I did fundraising.
48:34
Carmen Leal: And in the four years before they closed because of COVID, I wrote 6,500 bios for 6,500 unique dogs at all-town homes.
48:43
Carmen Leal: I changed the lives of 6,500 families, is what it comes down to, and saved the lives of these dogs from Kentucky where they brought these dogs in, because there were so many homeless dogs there.
48:56
Carmen Leal: And it gave me a purpose, it made me feel good about myself, and in the process, it kind of put me on the map as the dog person, which is highly ironic because I'm not.
49:10
Carmen Leal: Because you did not want the dog.
49:12
Carmen Leal: I'm not a dog person, I'm not a dog person at all, which is really funny because I write books about rest of dogs and speak about it.
49:19
Carmen Leal: And but I think God has a great sense of humor and he uses whatever he needs to use.
49:25
Carmen Leal: And in this case, it was the seed that that doctor planted and said, I think you should get a dog.
49:31
Khalila McCoy: Yeah.
49:32
Carmen Leal: And I did.
49:33
Carmen Leal: And and so he he did, he saved my life.
49:37
Carmen Leal: Coconut, I mean his name is Coconut because my grandson said, You should name him coconut.
49:42
Carmen Leal: I said, Why?
49:43
Carmen Leal: Well, duh, his mommy and daddy are from Hawaii, we didn't get a name I'm pineapple.
49:48
Carmen Leal: So coconut is the perfect name.
49:51
Carmen Leal: He's he's brown and he curls up a little ball, he looks like a little brown coconut.
49:55
Carmen Leal: And it's also a conversation starter because you can't hear my dog's name without saying, Coconut, why?
50:01
Carmen Leal: Hawaii, right?
50:04
Carmen Leal: And it just sort of blossoms into conversations, and this dog truly, truly saved my life.
50:11
Carmen Leal: Uh on more than one occasion.
50:14
Carmen Leal: There was another near suicide, even after I had him, and he saved my life again.
50:19
Carmen Leal: And so we learned so much from dogs, um, from nature, from animals.
50:26
Carmen Leal: I was never a big nature person.
50:28
Carmen Leal: I always grew up in the city.
50:30
Carmen Leal: Uh, moving to Hawaii certainly made me more in tune with nature, but it still kind of wasn't my thing.
50:37
Carmen Leal: Um, I just kind of I accepted it and I loved it, but it wasn't me.
50:42
Carmen Leal: But as I get older and as I'm in this environment, you know, we change.
50:48
Carmen Leal: And so I am more in tune with nature.
50:51
Carmen Leal: My yard is all native plants, and I'm helping the environment.
50:54
Carmen Leal: And I watch out in the summerners and like, you know, monarchs and hummingbirds, and it's beautiful.
51:01
Carmen Leal: And it sounds beautiful.
51:03
Carmen Leal: Well, yeah, but the weed part isn't, and you know, I'm not a big gardener, so I'm like, I call myself the reluctant gardener, but I was on the garden walk, so you know, obviously I did something right.
51:15
Carmen Leal: So you just never know what doors are there for you to go through.
51:22
Carmen Leal: Um I was a real stubborn person, didn't want to.
51:28
Carmen Leal: Um, I'm I'm I love this dog.
51:31
Carmen Leal: Will there be another dog?
51:32
Carmen Leal: I don't know.
51:33
Carmen Leal: I mean, he's he's almost 10 now, so yeah, yeah.
51:37
Carmen Leal: You know, he was not a puppy one we got him, and he was the really perfect fit for me.
51:43
Carmen Leal: And so, you know, I wrote, I probably because I'm such a great marketer, should mention that I wrote two books, and one of them is called I Chose You, um, Imperfectly Perfect Rescue Dogs and They're Humans.
51:55
Carmen Leal: And the second one is called When Love Wags a Tale.
51:58
Carmen Leal: And both of these are compilation books where I tell my story and I weave it into each chapter, and then I interview people from all over the country and I tell their rescue dog stories because I felt like I haven't earned the right to write a book about dogs because I've had one dog.
52:17
Carmen Leal: I mean, we had dogs growing up and whatnot, but really I'm a one-dog person.
52:21
Carmen Leal: What I can't tell you what affected for a three-legged dog or have your dog die, or he'd get in a car, or be epileptic, or any of those things.
52:31
Carmen Leal: I've I can't tell about having a puppy.
52:34
Carmen Leal: But I know people, so I kind of think a mini memoir means chicken soup for the soul.
52:41
Carmen Leal: That's what folks are.
52:42
Carmen Leal: And then I started that.
52:43
Carmen Leal: I'm getting asked to speak because I was a professional speaker for a long time.
52:48
Carmen Leal: And so I have a talk that I give called um Life Lessons Learned from a Dog.
52:53
Carmen Leal: And, you know, God gives us lessons and to learn, and and we can learn them from people, from nature, from dogs, from cats, from experiences.
53:06
Carmen Leal: And so for me, um, I think the biggest lesson to learn is that dogs wake up every morning happy and excited to start the day.
53:17
Khalila McCoy: Yes.
53:17
Carmen Leal: Do you wake up every day excited and happy to start the day?
53:22
Khalila McCoy: No.
53:23
Carmen Leal: No, not every day.
53:24
Khalila McCoy: No, I need to work on that.
53:25
Khalila McCoy: Yes.
53:26
Carmen Leal: And I think that when, you know, every single, hi, hi, hi, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here.
53:30
Carmen Leal: They're just happy.
53:32
Carmen Leal: I think that that's a huge lesson that I learned, and I have to be very specific about saying, I'm gonna wake up tomorrow and be happy.
53:41
Carmen Leal: What is the one thing I'm looking forward to?
53:44
Carmen Leal: And I think that's important.
53:45
Carmen Leal: The other thing is dogs were so loyal.
53:48
Carmen Leal: And after having people not be there for me, probably because I didn't ask them to, or because their life got busy, not just after the wreck, but after being, you know, getting divorced or caregiving or all those different times.
54:04
Carmen Leal: I always have felt so often I felt left down, let down.
54:09
Carmen Leal: I felt like I'm doing the heavy lifting on this friendship.
54:12
Carmen Leal: The friendship exists because I'm doing it.
54:16
Carmen Leal: And I know you've had those friendships, and you have family members like that, and you're wondering why do I keep doing this?
54:23
Carmen Leal: But with a dog, they're loyal.
54:26
Carmen Leal: That dog will never ever not be there for you.
54:30
Carmen Leal: Right.
54:30
Carmen Leal: Even dogs who are beat, even dogs who are treated horribly, yeah, they'll still be loyal.
54:36
Carmen Leal: They love their owners, then there is connection.
54:40
Carmen Leal: Dogs really are one person dogs.
54:45
Carmen Leal: Like, Coconut likes my husband, he enjoys him, but Coconut loves me.
54:50
Carmen Leal: I am his, I am his world.
54:53
Carmen Leal: I don't know why he chose me, but he did.
54:56
Carmen Leal: I can't, if I go upstairs, that dog's right behind me.
54:59
Carmen Leal: If I go to the bathroom, he peeks in to make sure I'm okay and he goes away.
55:02
Carmen Leal: I mean, this dog always wants me.
55:05
Carmen Leal: And if I go on a trip or I'm sick, he he mopes until I'm better, until I get better.
55:12
Carmen Leal: So, you know, I want to be, I want to be that loyal dog to my family and friends and the people who need me.
55:19
Carmen Leal: Um, I've learned to treasure the close friendships that having dozens and dozens and dozens of friends doesn't matter.
55:29
Carmen Leal: What I want is that small circle.
55:32
Carmen Leal: A dog circle is real small, they don't need anything else.
55:36
Carmen Leal: Now they'll enjoy it when all these people come and say, Oh, Richie's so cute, let me patch you in a pelly roll.
55:41
Carmen Leal: So I like that.
55:42
Carmen Leal: And I do like all the people that come my path and I interact with them and I have random conversations with strangers and it's it's uplifting and it's fun.
55:52
Carmen Leal: I I do like that.
55:54
Carmen Leal: But when it comes to those deep, enduring friendships, dogs have very few.
56:01
Carmen Leal: I have very few.
56:03
Carmen Leal: I don't need more.
56:05
Carmen Leal: And when one friendship falls because of death or moving or whatever, I I'm gonna trust there's gonna be another person.
56:13
Carmen Leal: A really cool story about this move is you know, we bought this house basically long distance.
56:20
Carmen Leal: I never met the owner, and so we moved here and everything's horrible.
56:25
Carmen Leal: And about a year, no, I mean it, there's not enough time on this clock to tell you how bad it was, but about a about a year after I met her, I was on a social media site called Next Door.
56:39
Carmen Leal: And so those ladies kept asking, Does anybody have a good plumber?
56:45
Carmen Leal: And I'd say, Oh, I do.
56:47
Carmen Leal: I just had some plumbing work done.
56:49
Carmen Leal: Go to this guy.
56:50
Carmen Leal: Oh my gosh, we need an electrician.
56:52
Carmen Leal: I have one.
56:53
Carmen Leal: And it turns out I saw her name and saw my private messenger.
56:57
Carmen Leal: I said, Are you the Angie who used to live on Otter Avenue?
57:00
Carmen Leal: She goes, Yeah.
57:01
Carmen Leal: I said, Oh, I bought your house.
57:03
Carmen Leal: Oh neath.
57:05
Carmen Leal: She bought another fixer-upper, and I was just ahead of her fixing up this house to another level that I had all the resources she needed.
57:16
Carmen Leal: And so we decided to have lunch.
57:19
Carmen Leal: And then I invited her and her husband and daughter over, and then her life fell apart because she missed had a miscarriage and her husband cheated on her and divorced her.
57:29
Carmen Leal: And I was there for her, I cooked for her, I loved her.
57:33
Carmen Leal: She's about, I don't know, 12 years younger.
57:37
Carmen Leal: I don't know how old she is.
57:37
Carmen Leal: No, 20 years younger, whatever.
57:39
Carmen Leal: We became really close friends, and she's now my best friend, and we go to her house for Thanksgiving, and her entire family from California and Ohio and Milwaukee, everybody comes to my house for dessert.
57:52
Carmen Leal: And they all get to see how the house has evolved.
57:56
Carmen Leal: And she is truly my best friend in Oshkosh.
58:01
Carmen Leal: And isn't that a great story?
58:02
Carmen Leal: That God will give you the friendship that you need.
58:06
Khalila McCoy: Because and it's probably not what you expected, or it's certainly how you expected.
58:11
Carmen Leal: I mean, come on, as awful as social media can be, that's what got this real life trend.
58:19
Carmen Leal: So anyway, that's just you know, so I I you know that loyal and she's my ride or die.
58:24
Carmen Leal: And so dogs are loyal.
58:27
Carmen Leal: Um, I've also learned from dogs that there is a joy in learning new things, and I think as we get older, we start to doubt our ability to learn new things or the need to learn new things.
58:43
Carmen Leal: We get stuck.
58:45
Carmen Leal: And if you can teach a dog to do all the outrageous things that people teach dogs to do, you know, I think I'm a little smarter than a dog in some ways.
58:56
Carmen Leal: I if he can learn it, I can learn it.
58:57
Carmen Leal: So, you know, you you say you can't, you cannot, you cannot teach a dog new tricks, but you can, and you can teach me a new trick.
59:08
Carmen Leal: And I think that's really important that learning of the new things, because learning of the new things opens up new paths of your brain and it makes your brain work hard.
59:18
Carmen Leal: And I will always have deficiencies, I mean I always will, but I've learned workarounds, and I part of those are because of learning new things, and I think if you you you use it or you lose it, and the dog has taught me that.
59:34
Carmen Leal: Um dogs are super good at self-love.
59:38
Carmen Leal: Yeah, I never are.
59:41
Carmen Leal: I mean, when we see them looking themselves like, hey, little dog, quit looking at yourself.
59:44
Carmen Leal: Well, he's he's loving himself, he's self-soothing himself.
59:51
Carmen Leal: No, really, you know, dogs are so good at self-love.
59:56
Carmen Leal: They know when to ask you, rub my belly, they know when to um ask for treats.
1:00:03
Carmen Leal: I mean, they just love themselves, and they're not ashamed of loving themselves.
1:00:07
Carmen Leal: So I don't wear anything except sandals, even in the winter, which is very bizarre.
1:00:13
Carmen Leal: But if I'm gonna wear sandals, I'm gonna have pretty feet.
1:00:18
Carmen Leal: I'm gonna have a pedicure.
1:00:20
Carmen Leal: I'm gonna budget for this pedicure because I am wearing these claws, and they're gonna be pretty polished too in the middle of winter, right?
1:00:27
Carmen Leal: You know, that sounds really so ridiculous, but it's not the pedicure, is that somebody's doing something for me?
1:00:33
Carmen Leal: It's I'm sitting in a chair for 45 minutes keeping that foot rum and feeling special.
1:00:38
Carmen Leal: You know, I'm relaxing.
1:00:40
Carmen Leal: So dogs teach you how to love yourself, so love yourself like a dog because they know how to love, they love that.
1:00:53
Carmen Leal: That's a lesson of I've and um you know dogs enjoy long walks, and we don't take enough walks.
1:01:02
Carmen Leal: Do you take enough walks?
1:01:03
Carmen Leal: Do you do you?
1:01:04
Carmen Leal: No.
1:01:05
Carmen Leal: We get in our car, we drive here, we drive there, we're inside building, we're in our people, we get in our car, we drive.
1:01:10
Carmen Leal: And when you walk, you get to see spring happen.
1:01:14
Carmen Leal: Right.
1:01:15
Carmen Leal: You get to see fall happen, you get to see the faces of people, new people every day.
1:01:21
Carmen Leal: You get conversations, you get a more relaxing pace.
1:01:25
Carmen Leal: Dogs, when you take them for a walk, I'm like, but I thought when I got a dog, oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna get this fat off me.
1:01:31
Carmen Leal: We're gonna go fat.
1:01:32
Carmen Leal: No.
1:01:33
Carmen Leal: You gotta meander here and there, and you smell this.
1:01:38
Carmen Leal: Yeah, no, no, no, no.
1:01:40
Carmen Leal: It is not about it's it's it's the journey.
1:01:44
Carmen Leal: And I learned that from my dog.
1:01:46
Carmen Leal: It's not it's not a race, it's just appreciating everything that's around you, and dogs are so good about that, and we need to do that for ourselves because that's part of that self-love.
1:02:01
Carmen Leal: We have to take care of ourselves, and then dogs understand the joy of play.
1:02:07
Carmen Leal: My grandson is eight, and he was almost eight, and he came over and cooking it was playing with the ball, and he's still on the ball, and the dog's racing, and he's and he and he jumped up and he rolled over, and it was it was like, wow, dude, your arthritis medicine's kicking in, ain't it?
1:02:24
Carmen Leal: You know, you roll.
1:02:25
Carmen Leal: But it was so we're all laughing at this dog, and and it was just so much fun, and just the sheer joy of play.
1:02:34
Carmen Leal: When was the last time you played?
1:02:36
Carmen Leal: I don't mean going to the gym and getting on the stairmaster or a spin class or just play.
1:02:44
Carmen Leal: Our bodies need it, our souls need it, our minds need it, and play is different for different people, but that dog has taught me that I just need I need to play.
1:02:57
Carmen Leal: Um, you know what dogs know?
1:03:00
Carmen Leal: They know the value of a really good nap.
1:03:03
Khalila McCoy: Oh that's something I need to work on as well.
1:03:07
Khalila McCoy: And I I don't nap.
1:03:09
Carmen Leal: I don't ever nap.
1:03:10
Carmen Leal: And me either.
1:03:13
Carmen Leal: Sometimes your soul just needs to nap.
1:03:17
Carmen Leal: And so when I say they need to nap, it's not necessarily I need to close my eyes and snore and be gone for two hours in the afternoon, like my husband does.
1:03:28
Carmen Leal: I need, no, true story.
1:03:31
Carmen Leal: I I need my soul to nap.
1:03:34
Carmen Leal: I need to let go, I need to be nourished.
1:03:39
Carmen Leal: And that might mean getting a nap and closing my eyes, but often to me, a nap is just relaxing and not worrying about anything and just being.
1:03:54
Carmen Leal: And dogs can do that.
1:03:56
Carmen Leal: And I think we need to do that, and we don't do enough of that because our lives are so hectic and everybody's so angry these days.
1:04:06
Carmen Leal: And I don't want to ever say that what's happening in this world is not scary and and stressful, and the anger that people have and the fear they have is real.
1:04:16
Carmen Leal: Correct.
1:04:17
Carmen Leal: But still, take some time to take a nap.
1:04:23
Carmen Leal: Give your soul time to take a nap to find some peace.
1:04:28
Carmen Leal: That's otherwise, you know, it's just not it's not all well.
1:04:34
Carmen Leal: Um you know what dogs love?
1:04:37
Carmen Leal: They love routines.
1:04:38
Carmen Leal: I said I would never have a dog that sleeps in the bed.
1:04:42
Carmen Leal: Well, he does.
1:04:44
Carmen Leal: So this dog never say never.
1:04:46
Carmen Leal: Oh, I know that.
1:04:47
Carmen Leal: Uh this dog has a routine.
1:04:51
Carmen Leal: He has to come upstairs, jump on the bed.
1:04:56
Carmen Leal: My side has to be my side.
1:04:57
Carmen Leal: And then we're in the bathroom, brushing our teeth, blah, blah, blah.
1:05:01
Carmen Leal: And then I come in, and he goes to dad's side of the bed.
1:05:08
Carmen Leal: I get in the bed, and then my husband gets in, and then he sleeps, he starts off in between us, and I say, coconut, coconut, come up, come up.
1:05:21
Carmen Leal: He can't do any change of routine.
1:05:24
Carmen Leal: He won't do any change.
1:05:27
Carmen Leal: And so if it so he'll come up and then he stays there till I go to sleep, and then he goes to his bed or whatever.
1:05:34
Carmen Leal: But the routine is always, always, always the same.
1:05:37
Carmen Leal: And I'm not saying we have to be regimented like that, that we don't, we can't be flexible, but I am saying there's value in routines, in consistency, in knowing what comes next.
1:05:51
Carmen Leal: We live in a world that feels like it's nothing but chaos.
1:05:55
Carmen Leal: And so when we can create some routines at our life.
1:05:59
Carmen Leal: That make us feel safe and secure.
1:06:03
Carmen Leal: It's not that you don't work around those routines, but it they matter.
1:06:09
Carmen Leal: And I never knew that.
1:06:10
Carmen Leal: And I didn't have routines.
1:06:12
Carmen Leal: And so having his routines has really helped me become grounded.
1:06:17
Carmen Leal: And I learned that from my dog, just watching him, all the different ways that he has to have things exactly this way.
1:06:26
Carmen Leal: Even eating.
1:06:28
Carmen Leal: He wants me to be there watching him eat.
1:06:31
Carmen Leal: Oh, come on, fools.
1:06:33
Carmen Leal: Just eat the darn stuff.
1:06:34
Carmen Leal: He's the same today as it was yesterday.
1:06:36
Carmen Leal: Nope, gotta watch him.
1:06:37
Carmen Leal: So it's kind of funny.
1:06:38
Carmen Leal: And then um, the last thing is, and I think it's the most important thing in our world as it is right now.
1:06:45
Carmen Leal: Dogs give everyone a chance.
1:06:47
Carmen Leal: Yes.
1:06:48
Carmen Leal: Until it's obvious they don't deserve a chance.
1:06:54
Carmen Leal: Because dogs will always give you a second and a third and a fourth.
1:06:59
Carmen Leal: You know, I might step on your foot and you will forgive me, and you will come right back to me and let me do it again.
1:07:08
Carmen Leal: Now, if it continues to happen, he's not stupid.
1:07:12
Carmen Leal: But dogs will always, always give everyone a chance.
1:07:17
Carmen Leal: Everyone this dog meets has the possibility of being his friend.
1:07:21
Carmen Leal: Whether it's a dog or whether it's a person, I have to be the one to check the boundaries.
1:07:29
Carmen Leal: It's my job to say, okay, coconut, let's sit and let's wait.
1:07:33
Carmen Leal: We don't know if this little boy likes dogs, so let's wait.
1:07:37
Carmen Leal: You can just see him ready and his tails.
1:07:40
Carmen Leal: He wants it so excited.
1:07:42
Carmen Leal: But I have to, I have to make, I'm the one who has to make sure that everyone in his orbit deserves a chance.
1:07:51
Carmen Leal: Because I, if I can read the body language of this big dog that's unleashed, no, this dog doesn't deserve a chance right now because his own is not there.
1:08:00
Carmen Leal: We don't know if he's trained, he's bigger than you.
1:08:02
Carmen Leal: He does, I just know it's not gonna end well, so let's not do this.
1:08:06
Carmen Leal: Right.
1:08:06
Carmen Leal: But dogs give everyone a chance.
1:08:08
Carmen Leal: So, you know, those are the lessons I've learned from my dog, and I'm there's so many more.
1:08:12
Carmen Leal: But I think that those are the ones that have helped me literally stay alive.
1:08:17
Carmen Leal: Those are the ones that have helped me understand I have to have a purpose.
1:08:23
Carmen Leal: That I may not be exactly the same as I used to be, but the core of me is who God made me.
1:08:31
Carmen Leal: And I've had to learn new things, I've had to learn to be comfortable with taking a break and saying, I'm canceling this because I have a headache.
1:08:42
Carmen Leal: I'm not joining this.
1:08:44
Carmen Leal: I've I've learned the art of no.
1:08:46
Carmen Leal: That's hard.
1:08:48
Carmen Leal: That's a hard one.
1:08:49
Carmen Leal: And dogs definitely have the art of no.
1:08:52
Khalila McCoy: Oh, yeah.
1:08:52
Carmen Leal: They definitely do.
1:08:53
Carmen Leal: So I've really had to learn that was a super hard one for me.
1:08:57
Carmen Leal: Because I struggle with that.
1:09:00
Carmen Leal: I, you know, because I'm really good at lots of things, and I'm and I like to be involved, and I like helping people, and so learning how to say no has helped keep me alive.
1:09:14
Carmen Leal: It really has.
1:09:15
Carmen Leal: And so this has been like a whole mishmash of stuff, and hopefully there's something in it that.
1:09:21
Khalila McCoy: Oh no, I love talking to you, it's been great.
1:09:25
Khalila McCoy: I do want to know about your life lessons of dogs.
1:09:29
Khalila McCoy: Like, what made you, because you're not a dog person, you said you don't really like that.
1:09:34
Khalila McCoy: What made you decide, okay, I'm gonna sit down and write this and start sharing what I'm learning with others?
1:09:40
Carmen Leal: Um my son calls me Oshkosh Famous because I post a lot.
1:09:47
Carmen Leal: I do a lot of social media.
1:09:49
Carmen Leal: I don't get paid for it.
1:09:51
Carmen Leal: It's not an influencer.
1:09:53
Carmen Leal: I just I love marketing and I love helping small businesses.
1:09:57
Carmen Leal: So when I buy something or I eat out, I never give a bad review, but I'm very vocal and now people follow me.
1:10:05
Carmen Leal: And I get very involved in local politics, not running because I can't run because I don't want to muzzle on me, but I've been very um aggressive about helping candidates or um, like we had a referendum that I felt we weren't getting transparency.
1:10:25
Carmen Leal: So I went out and found answers and then shared it.
1:10:28
Carmen Leal: I didn't take sides, but I said, I need they're not transparent, I need to be.
1:10:33
Carmen Leal: So as a result, I have many, many, many, many followers.
1:10:37
Khalila McCoy: Okay.
1:10:38
Carmen Leal: And when people learn my history of of having owned a firm, marketing firm, and being a professional speaker on all these different topics, I get asked to speak a lot.
1:10:52
Carmen Leal: So uh the university uh here, it's University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, has something called Life Lifelong Learners Program.
1:11:02
Carmen Leal: And so people can pay a very nominal amount.
1:11:05
Carmen Leal: I mean, they can go to all the workshops and presentations for free, they can audit classes, and I mean it's a pretty cool thing, it's for seniors.
1:11:13
Carmen Leal: And so they asked if I would speak, and I said, sure.
1:11:16
Carmen Leal: So because I have written books for and about caregivers and grief and all these really ugly topics, and when you're a senior, they had me speak at the big retirement home here, and so I thought, well, I'll I will do something called I have a talk called the um how to be the joyful caregiver.
1:11:38
Carmen Leal: Because you don't think of joy and caregiving, they don't fit at all.
1:11:41
Carmen Leal: And so that was the whole talk, and it was very popular.
1:11:46
Carmen Leal: So the next season they said, Would you come back?
1:11:49
Carmen Leal: I said, sure, I'll come back.
1:11:50
Carmen Leal: What do you want?
1:11:51
Carmen Leal: And they said, you know, you write, we know you have a dog.
1:11:55
Carmen Leal: Can you write something about dogs?
1:11:57
Carmen Leal: And we know you have this dog book, so maybe you can do a book signing.
1:12:00
Carmen Leal: I said, sure.
1:12:01
Carmen Leal: So I came up with my life lessons.
1:12:04
Carmen Leal: I just thought about what people who are seniors might need to hear from me that involve dogs.
1:12:12
Carmen Leal: I'm not gonna teach you about training your dog, I'm not gonna talk about vet health, I'm not gonna talk about fundraising, I'm not gonna talk about the things that I've learned.
1:12:23
Carmen Leal: What do seniors specifically need?
1:12:26
Carmen Leal: And I came up with my life lessons.
1:12:28
Carmen Leal: And so I that's how that happened.
1:12:31
Carmen Leal: And then the next one, because I got invited to be on the garden walk, because now my house is very famous, despite being a reluctant gardener, then I created life lessons learned from the garden.
1:12:46
Carmen Leal: Yeah, so I now have this series of life lessons.
1:12:49
Khalila McCoy: Yeah, and they're always where's our next life lesson coming from?
1:12:52
Khalila McCoy: Do you know yet?
1:12:52
Khalila McCoy: I don't know.
1:12:53
Khalila McCoy: I don't know.
1:12:54
Khalila McCoy: You know, you name it.
1:12:55
Carmen Leal: I always tell I do a lot of podcasts and I just tell people, you choose.
1:12:59
Carmen Leal: I, you know, you live long enough and you have enough horrible things happen and you're trying to rebuild your life.
1:13:09
Carmen Leal: That means I have a lot of life lessons.
1:13:11
Carmen Leal: And um, you know, you I'm gonna do one on parenting.
1:13:18
Carmen Leal: My mother had eight kids, and then when we were gone, my mother um was a foster mom for almost a hundred boys.
1:13:27
Carmen Leal: And so I learned a lot from my mom.
1:13:30
Carmen Leal: So I'll probably do something on parenting, particularly teens.
1:13:34
Carmen Leal: I was gonna call it what mama did.
1:13:36
Carmen Leal: So these are the things that mama did when it comes to driving and uh discipline and you know, education, all those different teen things that are so hard, and then interview all my siblings.
1:13:53
Carmen Leal: And what did you do?
1:13:55
Carmen Leal: And how does it differ?
1:13:58
Carmen Leal: And kind of looking that generational, how most of us raised our kids the way mama did.
1:14:05
Carmen Leal: And when we were very, very poor, um, you know, welfare food box poor, single mom, and all four graduated from college, and all four homeowners, and all four, I mean, all eight sorry, have made it through life and are have purpose in helping other people and the legacy and all those foster kids.
1:14:26
Carmen Leal: My mother's the reason that we are, and that we're leaving this legacy.
1:14:32
Carmen Leal: I mean, just so many people of influence in their little community.
1:14:36
Carmen Leal: There may not be anybody like, yes, my nephews are known worldwide, but and my uncle and different people, but most of us are not legends anywhere but our own little community.
1:14:49
Carmen Leal: And we don't feel we don't feel like we're legends, we're just doing what we do.
1:14:54
Carmen Leal: Um I don't know, like I'm a real big movie person, and I love Mr.
1:14:58
Carmen Leal: Holland's opus.
1:14:59
Carmen Leal: Yes, that's a good one.
1:15:01
Carmen Leal: And that last scene when he thinks his life is a failure because the little red-headed girl comes back and help with the with the flute or clarinet, I guess clarinet, and she went on to be the governor of the state, and she comes back and he's lost his job and there's no hope.
1:15:21
Carmen Leal: And he says, she says, you know, rumor has it that you are gonna be a big star, you're gonna write your opus, and you're going to make lots of money and be rich and famous.
1:15:33
Carmen Leal: And you are famous, but not beyond this town.
1:15:36
Carmen Leal: And I cry when I think of it because he just feels so shattered.
1:15:42
Carmen Leal: He's gone through this whole life, walked into a career he never wanted.
1:15:48
Carmen Leal: That was a short gig until he had enough money to tour.
1:15:54
Carmen Leal: Right.
1:15:55
Carmen Leal: And he went kicking and screaming, and at the end, you couldn't pull him out.
1:16:00
Carmen Leal: He loved it so much, and he influenced 30 years of kids through Vietnam and through so much, and then off you go, go bye, go lead your life.
1:16:11
Carmen Leal: And she says, You probably think you're a failure, but there isn't a life here that you have been touched.
1:16:20
Carmen Leal: And then unbeknownst to him, he's gone to his wife, who's got his legacy, and the curtain is open, and there's all his students from the past and the present, and they play Mr.
1:16:34
Carmen Leal: Holland's opus, and that's the legacy we all need.
1:16:39
Carmen Leal: I would like to think that all of us, when we die, there's this group of people that say, You influenced my life.
1:16:49
Carmen Leal: I'm the reason, you're the reason I did this and went there and helped that person.
1:16:55
Carmen Leal: We're all interconnected, right?
1:16:57
Carmen Leal: Yes.
1:16:58
Carmen Leal: So my mom was such a legacy when I went to her funeral, and I'm sorry for crying, it's just planning on that.
1:17:05
Carmen Leal: So when I went to her funeral, there were a lot of faces I didn't know.
1:17:09
Carmen Leal: And I realized all these people were foster kids I'd never known because I was already gone living my life.
1:17:15
Carmen Leal: And they heard and they drove and they flew and they made sure they could be there to pay tribute to this woman.
1:17:26
Khalila McCoy: That's beautiful.
1:17:28
Carmen Leal: And isn't that the life we're supposed to live?
1:17:30
Khalila McCoy: Yes.
1:17:32
Carmen Leal: It may be you're chosen to be a worldwide icon and everybody mourns you in the whole world, or it's just your little town, it doesn't really matter.
1:17:44
Carmen Leal: That's what you're called to do.
1:17:46
Carmen Leal: And those are things that I've known throughout my life, but this period with the headaches and the suicidal, and what things should I live, and what purpose do I have?
1:17:59
Carmen Leal: That's when it's really come home.
1:18:02
Carmen Leal: And I'm not doing the big things I dreamed of.
1:18:06
Carmen Leal: I'm not commanding a world stage.
1:18:08
Carmen Leal: I'm not, I haven't written a bestseller.
1:18:10
Carmen Leal: Um, it's it's not the life I dreamed of living.
1:18:15
Carmen Leal: Trust me, Oshkosh Wisconsin.
1:18:17
Carmen Leal: I dreamed of living, but but it's the life I have.
1:18:23
Carmen Leal: And it's my dog that's helped me to learn these lessons and be able to help teach other people.
1:18:31
Carmen Leal: And people say, Why do you do all these podcasts when you don't make any money?
1:18:34
Carmen Leal: I go, because I like talking to people and I like sharing, and it's giving me the stage I used to have when I flew around the world and I did this.
1:18:44
Carmen Leal: I don't do that now, but it still gives me a chance to share.
1:18:48
Carmen Leal: So anytime you want me back, uh the answer is yes.
1:18:51
Carmen Leal: Oh, yes.
1:18:52
Carmen Leal: The answer is yes.
1:18:53
Khalila McCoy: I cannot wait.
1:18:54
Khalila McCoy: Yes, thank you so much.
1:18:55
Khalila McCoy: I'm over here crying now, too.
1:18:59
Khalila McCoy: Yeah.
1:19:00
Khalila McCoy: All right, Carmen, you've said so many things, so many great things.
1:19:05
Khalila McCoy: And I know this will be hard in the grand scheme of things, but what is the one thing if you if our listeners could take away just one thing today, if they heard nothing else, how would you encourage them to rise to trust that inner voice because it's there, and I think that not trusting ourselves and what God has planted into us is that's just a trick of Satan.
1:19:41
Carmen Leal: It just is, and you know you've had so many times you didn't trust, and then you say, Oh, if I would have, and the opportunity's gone, and then your self-esteem goes lower and lower because you see other people having opportunities that you didn't have, and it can make you start being jealous, it can make you start being feeling just bad about yourself.
1:20:09
Carmen Leal: So I would I would say trust.
1:20:10
Carmen Leal: I didn't trust myself, I didn't I didn't do everything I should have done because I didn't trust that voice.
1:20:19
Carmen Leal: I didn't ask for help, I didn't quit working, I didn't trust that I wasn't gonna be homeless.
1:20:28
Carmen Leal: You know, I didn't trust.
1:20:31
Carmen Leal: And if I would have trusted, I would I wouldn't be here.
1:20:36
Carmen Leal: And obviously, I wouldn't have my good friend, I wouldn't have my dog, I wouldn't have my house.
1:20:41
Carmen Leal: It doesn't really matter.
1:20:42
Carmen Leal: This is where I'm at, and this is where.
1:20:45
Carmen Leal: And I I can't go backwards and say if I would have done this then, but trust yourself.
1:20:54
Carmen Leal: That's what I think.
1:20:59
Khalila McCoy: Well, thank you so much for your time today and your story.
1:21:04
Carmen Leal: Oh, you're a good interviewer, you're so gracious, so thank you.
1:21:07
Khalila McCoy: Oh, I appreciate it.
1:21:08
Khalila McCoy: I am honestly, this is the easiest thing.
1:21:10
Khalila McCoy: I just listen and enjoy.
1:21:12
Carmen Leal: Wow, you did a great job.
1:21:14
Khalila McCoy: I really appreciate you.
1:21:15
Khalila McCoy: And tell us where we can find, like if they want to find you on social media, find your books, where so I have a website, cartmanleal.com.
1:21:24
Carmen Leal: That's c a r-n-e-n-l-e-l.com.
1:21:28
Carmen Leal: It always needs updating.
1:21:30
Carmen Leal: Uh, and I don't work on it as I should, but it's I'm easy to find.
1:21:34
Carmen Leal: And then my books are readily available on Amazon.
1:21:37
Carmen Leal: I only have two that are in print right now.
1:21:40
Carmen Leal: I have the rights back to the other ten that I've written, and I have to figure out what I want to do with them if anything.
1:21:47
Carmen Leal: But right now, I'm just focusing on my doggies and seeing what is my next chapter.
1:21:53
Khalila McCoy: What else do I do?
1:21:54
Khalila McCoy: Yeah.
1:21:54
Carmen Leal: So I'm really easy to find.
1:21:56
Khalila McCoy: Okay, we'll link that in the show notes, and every I'm sure everybody will be following you to see your next steps and waiting for your next book.
1:22:04
Khalila McCoy: I'm really grateful I had the chance to record with Carmen.
1:22:10
Khalila McCoy: There are so many moments in her story where life could have taken a different turn, moments that could have kept her from even being here today.
1:22:18
Khalila McCoy: But even in all that struggle, there's this thread of joy, humor, and hope that shines through her.
1:22:26
Khalila McCoy: Carmen covered so much ground in our conversation, and I encourage you to go back and listen again.
1:22:33
Khalila McCoy: What stood out to you?
1:22:36
Khalila McCoy: What lessons can you take from a dog and actually apply in your own life?
1:22:42
Khalila McCoy: Who is shaping you and helping build your legacy?
1:22:46
Khalila McCoy: And what gift do you carry that the world is waiting for?
1:22:51
Khalila McCoy: As you sit with those questions, Carmen leaves us with one final message of hope.
1:23:00
Carmen Leal: We have so many good people on our earth, and we just need to not get discouraged.
1:23:07
Carmen Leal: And you can give of yourself and you can give of your talents and your time, and you can make so much difference.
1:23:15
Carmen Leal: It's so much more than money.
1:23:17
Carmen Leal: It's just being you and trusting that there is something in you that God only put in you, He only made me just like me.
1:23:28
Carmen Leal: And even with this brain damage, and even with my not feeling like I used to feel, not having some of the gifts I thought I used to have, it's okay.
1:23:41
Carmen Leal: God will work with what he has in you.
1:23:44
Carmen Leal: Yes.