Latest / The Purpose and Progress Podcast Show / Life After the Spotlight: Turning Career Rejection Into a New Life Mission with Anne Montgomery

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Life After the Spotlight: Turning Career Rejection Into a New Life Mission with Anne Montgomery · The Purpose and Progress Podcast Show

0:00
Anne Montgomery:: I understand it. I do because if this is the
0:03
one thing you always wanted, and then you got it, and then it's
0:05
over. I would be a teacher, end up being a teacher for 20 years,
0:08
and I would talk to my students, I was a high school teacher,
0:10
about what they wanted in the future, and I can't tell you how
0:12
many young people, especially young men, boys, wanted to be
0:16
professional athletes. I said, that's great because I'll never
0:19
tell anybody that can't be something, even though I know
0:21
the chances of them being professional athletes are pretty
0:23
miniscule. I said, great. What do you want to do after that?
0:27
And they said, what do you mean? I said, well, those careers are
0:29
very short. And if you want to stay in sports, do you want to
0:32
be a sports journalist? Do you want to be a trainer? Do you
0:34
want to be a coach? Do you want to be a sports attorney? If you
0:38
want to stay in the game, you got to think beyond your playing
0:40
days.
0:45
Dr. Jim Price:: Hello, I'm Dr. Jim Price, and welcome to The
0:49
Purpose and Progress Podcast. This is the place where we
0:53
explore how purpose can guide our actions, and how growth can
0:57
become a part of our everyday lives. On the show, I talk with
1:01
amazing guests, from educators and creators to everyday people
1:05
with extraordinary stories about the challenges they face, the
1:09
lessons they've learned, and how to keep moving forward. My goal
1:13
is to share conversations that inspire you to live
1:16
intentionally, embrace growth, and take meaningful steps to
1:19
your own purpose. Let's get started.
1:26
Hello, and welcome to The Purpose and Progress podcast
1:30
show. I'm your host, Dr. Jim Price, and we're here again. We
1:33
have shared inspirational, motivational stories of amazing
1:37
individuals from different industries who are doing amazing
1:39
things, and influencing, impacting people from all walks
1:44
of life. And today's show is no different. We have a wonderful
1:48
guest here. She is a former television sportscaster,
1:52
newspaper and magazine writer, teacher, author, and amateur
1:57
sports official whose career spans broadcasting, journalism,
2:01
education, and publishing. After working for 5 TV stations,
2:05
including ESPN, where she anchored the Emmy and Ace
2:09
Award-winning Sports Center, and serving as studio host for NBA's
2:14
Phoenix Suns. She transitioned to teaching journalism and
2:17
communication for 20 years at the Title 1 High School, an
2:21
experience that reshaped her priorities and perspective. And
2:26
is an author of So today, we have an amazing guest, Anne
2:38
Montgomery. Nice to have you here. How are you doing?
2:41
Anne Montgomery:: I'm good, thank you. And I appreciate you
2:43
inviting me to join you today.
2:45
Dr. Jim Price:: It's such a pleasure. I think about in the
2:47
morning when I'm having my coffee and stuff like that, I
2:50
probably should be so. But sometimes, I take a peek at ESPN
2:54
in the morning and should be saying that my boss is all gonna
2:57
be like, yeah, that's what you're doing. But I definitely
3:01
admire all the work you've done in terms of all the things. I'm
3:04
definitely a sports person too.
3:07
Anne Montgomery:: And we'll have a lot to talk about.
3:10
Dr. Jim Price:: So for you, in terms of your journey to success
3:15
and stuff, where do you feel like it started? What influenced
3:19
you to go down that path toward success in that way?
3:23
Anne Montgomery:: Well, I've had a number of lives, so it depends
3:26
on what you mean by success. As far as sports broadcasting is
3:30
concerned, when I was 17, I was in a broadcast crew in my high
3:34
school. And accidentally one day, I got handed a sports
3:38
story. I went in and decided I was going to read that sports
3:41
story. We had a half hour show that we did, and the boys got
3:45
very upset. They said, you can't read a sports story. You're a
3:48
girl. And then the teacher, who was the head of the the group,
3:51
said, we got 5 minutes to air. If Anne wants to read the
3:54
sports, she can read the sports. And they got angry. But then I
3:56
did the same thing the next day, and I kept doing it. So they
4:01
gave me theme music. They played Mission Impossible, and then
4:06
they called me Big Anne with the sports up next. And they thought
4:10
that would offend me, but I liked it. So when my mother
4:13
marched up to me beginning of my senior year and said, we have to
4:16
pick a college. What do you want to do? I said, I'm going to be a
4:19
sportscaster. Now remember, this was 1972, and women simply
4:24
didn't do those kinds of things then. So it was quite an uphill
4:28
battle. I was 28 before I got my first job in television. Because
4:31
even in college, I went to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio,
4:35
which is a small school, but a big sports school. And senior
4:39
year, they said, you want to anchor this sports show on the
4:41
PBS station? I said yes, and I had a male co-anchor. And what I
4:46
didn't realize was that the football coach, the baseball
4:49
coach, and the basketball coach all refused to speak to me. They
4:52
wouldn't let me interview their players because they weren't
4:55
going to talk to a woman. And I was like, what am I supposed to
4:59
do now? I had this thought. well, wait a minute. They're not
5:02
the only sports on campus. There's ice hockey, and there's
5:05
archery, and there's swimming, and there's wrestling, and
5:07
there's all these other teams no one pays any attention to, and
5:10
they were thrilled. They didn't care that I was a woman. They're
5:12
like, you're going to do a story on us. And so that's what I did.
5:16
But I got out of college, and nobody would even talk to me. I
5:20
spent, I don't know, the next couple of years working in a bar
5:24
in Georgetown or Washington DC, late 70s, early 80s, and I will
5:28
say it was very much fun. I'm very thrilled that there weren't
5:32
people running around with cameras back then because I
5:34
wouldn't want the evidence of those years. But how sometimes
5:38
in life, some strange thing occurs that you didn't expect,
5:41
and it changes everything. I've had a couple of those moments.
5:44
This moment was a Washington Capitals hockey game. I was
5:49
invited to go. My aunt, who was more like a sister, said, come
5:51
with me. She had a date. He was an amateur ice hockey official.
5:56
Now, I had grown up ice skating. I was a figure skater and a nice
5:59
dancer. No talent, but I grew up in an arena. And he's bemoaning
6:03
the fact that there aren't enough officials to work kids'
6:06
games, or even high school, or whatever. And my aunt goes,
6:09
yeah, Anne can skate. And I said, yes. He goes, you want to
6:13
be a referee? And I said, sure. Well, I did that first game at
6:18
like 7:00 o'clock in the morning after working in the restaurant
6:21
till, I don't know, 3:00. And I don't remember much about the
6:25
game except it was the first time I ever put on hockey skates
6:27
in my life. I grew up on figure skates, and I didn't realize
6:30
that hockey skates did not have toe picks, and so I fell. The
6:34
first three times, I'm taking my face off. And they're these
6:37
little children, 6 years old hockey players. You know the
6:40
little tiny ones.
6:41
Dr. Jim Price:: Yeah.
6:42
Anne Montgomery:: Their jerseys are at their ankles, and they
6:44
have little sticks. And their helmets are all crooked because
6:46
their heads are so little. And they're all staring at me like,
6:49
what's wrong with the ref? I don't remember anything else
6:52
about that game, but I do recall the ride home. I realized that
6:56
because I grew up before Title IX, I hadn't played all those
7:00
sports. I didn't know enough about sports to be a competent
7:03
sports reporter. So I realized that after taking the hockey
7:07
test, and the classes, and learning about how to be an
7:11
official that the only people that really read rule books are
7:14
officials. And so I decided I would become a certified amateur
7:18
official in the 5 main team spectator sports, football,
7:21
baseball, ice hockey, soccer, and basketball. And I would do
7:24
that for 5 years. I worked in the bar to pay my bills, and
7:29
they were very kind and scheduled around all my games.
7:32
And I believe somewhere that there would be a forward
7:34
thinking news director who would give me a chance. And that's
7:37
what happened. And I ended up going from Columbus, Georgia, to
7:41
Rochester, New York, to Phoenix, to ESPN, back to Phoenix where I
7:45
worked for the Suns for a few years, and then my career was
7:48
over. I wasn't pretty enough to be in front of a camera anymore.
7:53
When you're pushing 40 as a woman, you know it's different.
7:56
If I had a gold medal in the Olympics, they wouldn't care how
7:59
old I was. But to be a regular sports broadcaster for all
8:03
sports, it's like if I played in the WNBA today, they'd go, oh,
8:07
yeah. Sure. You want to be a sportscaster? My age probably
8:09
wouldn't matter. Back then, it was all about what you look
8:12
like. The target audience was 18 to 34 year old males. So the
8:17
attitude was, once you're 35, you're over the hill. I couldn't
8:20
get a job anywhere. It was horrible.
8:23
Dr. Jim Price:: I would never have thought that that's the
8:25
thing. People will see success and what's going on, but they
8:28
never know what's going on behind the scenes. It's stories
8:31
like that, yours is a story, definitely of perseverance to
8:35
continued, to push forward in spite of everything that
8:38
happens.
8:40
Anne Montgomery:: You don't realize it's going to end. It's
8:41
kind of like a pro athletic career. You have football
8:46
players, guys who wanted to play football, wanted to be in the
8:48
NFL their whole lives. And then they get there, and the average
8:50
career is 3.6 years. So now you're 26 years old. Now, what
8:55
are you going to do? I was almost like that. I didn't
8:58
expect it to end when it did, and I was depressed. I was in
9:01
the middle of a what was going to be a bad divorce. I was in
9:05
debt because I had to live off credit cards because I now
9:07
didn't have a job. When I worked with the Suns, it was like just
9:11
the seasoned. I didn't have a full time job so it was very
9:15
difficult, and I felt very sorry for me. I didn't want to run
9:20
into anyone I knew. And one day, I went into a sports bar. I
9:23
figured they needed a bartender, and I went to the manager and
9:28
said, look, I can entertain your patrons with sports stories and
9:32
discussions, whether they're sober or not. And I can make a
9:35
great cocktail. And he looked me up and down like I was a piece
9:40
of meat. He said, I don't think so. And I realized that he
9:44
wanted a 20-something in a push-up bra and a short skirt.
9:47
So you know what I did? I went and pulled out all my
9:51
officiating gear because that was the one thing I could do
9:55
that someone would pay me for. I live in Arizona, and there's
9:58
sports year-round, constant. And so I put my umpire gear back on,
10:03
and I got my football officiating out. Those are the
10:06
two sports I did primarily, football and baseball. And I
10:09
went back to officiating, and I live. I hid behind my uniforms.
10:13
I didn't want anybody to see me. I didn't want anybody to say, so
10:17
what are you doing now? I'm umpiring little league in high
10:20
school, and I'm doing Pop Warner football. And not too long ago,
10:25
I was on national television. And then one day, I walked into
10:28
the grocery store. I really was trying to hide. I just umpired a
10:32
baseball game, and so my hair's in messy ponytail. I'm in a my
10:36
blue umpire shirt, and I'm all sweaty in my gray pants and my
10:39
plate shoes. And this man is staring at me, and he walked up
10:44
to me and he looks at me, and he goes, didn't you used to be
10:47
somebody? And I was horrified so I spent the next 3, 4 years
10:55
feeling sorry for me calling ball games.
10:58
Dr. Jim Price:: That is something. A lot of people just
11:00
don't understand how that feels. When you were talking about
11:04
athletes and how they go through that too, like it's only a shelf
11:07
life, it's only a small portion of that life that is dedicated
11:12
to that. Then after that, what are you doing for the rest of
11:14
your life?
11:18
Anne Montgomery:: They go through a horrible change, and I
11:21
understand it. I do. Because if this is the one thing you always
11:24
wanted, and then you got it, and then it's over, I would be a
11:27
teacher, end up being a teacher for 20 years, and I would talk
11:30
to my students, I was a high school teacher, about what they
11:32
wanted in the future. And I can't tell you how many young
11:34
people, especially young men, boys, wanted to be professional
11:38
athletes. I said, that's great. Because I'll never tell anybody
11:41
that can't be something, even though I know the chances of
11:43
them being professional athletes are pretty miniscule. I said,
11:46
that's great. What do you want to do after that? And they said,
11:49
what do you mean? I said, well, those careers are very short.
11:52
And if you want to stay in sports, do you want to be a
11:54
sports journalist? Do you want to be a trainer? Do you want to
11:56
be a coach? Do you want to be a sports attorney? If you want to
12:00
stay in the game, you got to think beyond your playing days.
12:03
Because I know what that feels like, and I wasn't planning for
12:07
that. I wasn't planning for life beyond sports casting.
12:10
Dr. Jim Price:: Even with myself, I played basketball too.
12:13
It's like once I got to the college and the season's over,
12:16
everything was done. It's like, hey, that's the last hurrah
12:19
right there.
12:20
Anne Montgomery:: How long did it take you to get over that?
12:22
Dr. Jim Price:: It took me a little bit of time. It's like
12:26
how they say the game passes you by. Now, you see the younger
12:29
people play and stuff like that, but you still support it. But it
12:32
will never just be the same.
12:34
Anne Montgomery:: And most people will never play after
12:36
high school. We have men's leagues. I've worked a lot of
12:39
men's and women's leagues, and that's cool. That's relatively
12:42
new, but it's very hard to give that up. All of us who
12:47
participated in sports, when I was an ice skater, I had these
12:50
ridiculous visions of gold medals in the Olympics. I was
12:53
not very good. But I'm guessing, maybe when you were playing in
12:57
high school, you were like, I'm going to be in the NBA. We all
13:00
did that. But even the ones that do make it, the minuscule number
13:04
of people that do make it, it's going to end. And we have to be
13:08
prepared for that. And most of us are not prepared.
13:12
Dr. Jim Price:: It seemed like you definitely went through a
13:13
lot of obstacles. How do you feel? I know you were talking
13:17
about dealing with the depression. How did you handle
13:21
that in terms of trying to pull yourself forward out of that?
13:24
Anne Montgomery:: I didn't handle it very well at all. It's
13:28
funny. Two things happened. One, because I was a woman official.
13:31
There weren't many women officials then either, so it was
13:33
just as bad as being a broadcaster. I didn't fit in. I
13:36
was always the only woman around, and men didn't want to
13:39
work with me. And both careers were very difficult in regard to
13:43
being a woman. Now, we see more women officials. But back then,
13:47
I was always the only woman on the field, and very often the
13:49
only woman in the room when we were having classes and that
13:52
kind of thing. So I walked onto a baseball field one day during
13:56
this period. And sometimes, you don't know who you're working
13:59
with. They just pair you up with somebody, and I walked towards
14:02
the field, and the game was finishing up. And this
14:05
white-haired gentleman with a beard and a very pronounced limp
14:09
saw me. I waited to the side to introduce myself when he was
14:13
done. He was doing two games, and he seemed thrilled to see
14:17
me. And I'm like, wow. Most guys don't really are look depressed
14:21
when I show up because I'm a really good umpire. But it
14:23
didn't matter I was a woman, right? So we ended up Don
14:26
Clarkson, and I ended up umpiring baseball for 5 years
14:29
together. We were partners, baseball partners. I don't know
14:32
if you've ever seen where umpires get to the game. We
14:35
dress out of the back of our cars. We have our folding chairs
14:38
and our water bottles, right? So we spent a lot of time together.
14:42
And what did I do? I bitched the whole time about, I couldn't get
14:46
a job, and my husband was an alcoholic. And poor me, poor me.
14:53
Well, Don was a Vietnam veteran.
14:55
Dr. Jim Price:: Oh, wow.
14:55
Anne Montgomery:: He limped pronouncedly because he'd been
14:57
shot. He was dying from Agent Orange poisoning, and had
15:03
terrible post-traumatic stress. I didn't understand any of these
15:07
things, really. I was so busy complaining. Yet, he would tell
15:11
me stories about Vietnam. He would tell me about how
15:14
beautiful the country was, and he was like an advisor. He was
15:18
in the jungle. He was in bad, bad situations, and he would
15:21
tell me some of those stories. But then he told me how
15:23
wonderful the people were, and how beautiful the country was.
15:27
And here was a man with 8 kids. He's dying, and he's being the
15:33
most positive person around it. And I did nothing but complain.
15:37
And slowly but surely, I started to think, hmm, maybe I've got
15:40
this wrong. Maybe I shouldn't be complaining about, poor me, I
15:45
can't be on TV. And poor me, my marriage is falling apart. And
15:49
poor me, I'm in debt. I'm not dying, and I'm not going to
15:52
leave 8 children and a wife behind. And Don kind of changed
15:57
my perspective to a certain extent. All during this time,
16:01
other people I knew kept saying, you should be a teacher. I'm
16:03
like, I don't want to be a teacher. They're going to hire
16:06
me back in TV. I know they are. So finally, like four years
16:09
later, I decided to go back to college. I had a journalism
16:14
communications degree, got me nothing. I went back two years
16:17
to college, became a teacher, and ended up being hired to
16:21
teach journalism and communication skills in a Title
16:23
1 high school. Title 1 means the vast majority of my students
16:27
lived in poverty. I'm a middle class kid from Northern New
16:30
Jersey. Both my parents had college degrees. I got my
16:34
college, got paid for it. I did not live in this world.
16:38
Dr. Jim Price:: Yeah.
16:39
Anne Montgomery:: And I went in as the biggest hard ass you
16:41
could ever be. They hired me to teach a number of things, but
16:44
one was a video production. We did TV show every week. My kids
16:48
screwed up constantly, and I was like, you got to be on time. You
16:52
have to do your work. This is the most important stuff. And
16:55
one day, a little girl stood up in my classroom, and she goes,
16:58
we don't like you. None of us like you. And I just paused. I'm
17:02
in front of the room. I didn't know what to say. And she said,
17:04
we're leaving. And every kid in that class walked out. And I'm a
17:08
pretty tough girl, but I stood in front of that classroom and
17:11
cried. I'm in front of an empty classroom, and all my kids left.
17:16
And another teacher, shortly thereafter, came up to me and
17:20
said, have you ever considered being nicer? I said, what do you
17:24
mean nicer? There's no nice in a newsroom. There's no nice on a
17:27
football field. What do you mean nicer? She said, these are kids.
17:31
I still didn't get it. I still did not get it. And then one
17:34
day, I dragged this kid out of class, 14 years old, late every
17:38
single day. And I'm just horrible. And he's looking at
17:44
his shoes, and he said, I'm so sorry Miss Montgomery, but I had
17:47
to sleep on my uncle's couch last night, and I don't
17:49
understand the bus system from there. And so that's why I'm
17:52
late, and I don't know where I'm sleeping every night. And I
17:55
went, holy. Oh, my God, this child is homeless. From that day
18:00
forward, I became nicer. That doesn't mean I didn't have high
18:04
expectations for my students. I did, but I made it clear. I made
18:09
it a priority to get to know them, and to know what they were
18:11
dealing with. We had kids who was abuse and neglected, and
18:17
drugs and alcohol, and gangs and guns, and foster care, all of
18:22
these situations. If a kid is dealing with all that, homework
18:26
doesn't matter. If a kid is hungry, we had kids who were
18:30
hungry all the time, and we would send food baskets home on
18:35
the weekends so they could eat. We had a room right off my
18:38
classroom that the social workers, other people, we put
18:41
together a room where any kid could walk in at any time and
18:44
get a shirt, a pair of pants, some shoes, a backpack,
18:48
toiletries, no questions asked. And it was eye opening to me. I
18:55
made it a point to get to know what they were dealing with. If
18:57
I could help them, I did. I couldn't always help them. I
19:00
tried, but it made me realize what a jerk I was. How I cared
19:05
so much about things that were not the least bit important,
19:08
like me being on television.
19:09
Dr. Jim Price:: And I think that's something a lot of
19:11
educators deal with. I'm an educator too. I counsel kids and
19:15
stuff, so I resonate with that idea. Sometimes, you don't know
19:18
what the kids are going through, and what they bring into school
19:21
with them, what's on their mind and stuff like that. That could
19:24
be something that could be profoundly impact their time on
19:27
learning, and their ability to focus, and a lot of other things
19:30
too. But I know you did publish some books too, and I wanted to
19:34
have you touch on some of the books.
19:39
Anne Montgomery:: It's funny, people don't understand that
19:42
when you watch a news show or a sports show, it's not like
19:45
you're calling a ball game, right? You're on an anchor desk.
19:48
You write all that. That's all written ahead of time. Now,
19:51
people can add a few things. But the bottom line is you've got so
19:53
many people working on that show, a director, producer,
19:56
camera people, and they need to know what you're doing. So we
19:59
write all these. Stories. Now, it's ironic that when I was in
20:02
my 50s, I found out I'm dyslexic, and I was just called
20:06
stupid and lazy when I was a kid. I was not a very good
20:08
student early on. It's very funny. I started writing sports,
20:12
thousands of sports stories. And when you're doing local news in
20:16
a small mart, or a Phoenix, even you did two shows a day, you
20:19
maybe wrote 25 stories a day. When I got out of television, I
20:25
couldn't. I mentioned that I couldn't find a job I did apply
20:27
for. I saw an ad in the paper, and it said sports reporter
20:31
wanted at the at the little newspaper. I ran over there.
20:37
Said, I like to be your sports reporter. And the editor went. I
20:40
gave him my resume of the 5 TV stations I worked for, and he
20:43
said, I don't think so. I said, what do you mean? He said, you
20:46
don't know how to write sports. I said, I wrote everything I
20:48
ever said for 10 years, everything. So he said, we'll
20:52
give you a chance. It was a 7-dollar an hour job, by the
20:55
way, and I started writing stories. So when you go from TV,
20:59
they're shorter. Then now, I've got a couple columns to write,
21:02
and so my stories just got longer, and they kept ending up
21:04
on the front page of the paper. So then another newspaper hired
21:07
me, some magazines hired me. I was a staffer or a freelancer,
21:11
but it was never a full time gig. But I was writing stories
21:14
now, and for magazines that might mean 2000 words. The jump
21:18
to novels was just a longer form of storytelling. So yeah, I have
21:23
six traditionally published novels. None are about sports.
21:26
Dr. Jim Price:: Oh, okay.
21:27
Anne Montgomery:: Almost all of them have children in them in
21:29
some capacity. Children that are struggling, and that's from, of
21:32
course, my time teaching. And I'm going to add that something
21:36
else happened while I was teaching that changed my life
21:39
completely. At the end of the school year, I worried about my
21:43
kids. Because you got 10 weeks of unstructured time for kids
21:46
living in very precarious neighborhoods, and I worried
21:48
about them. And sometimes, the kids took my classes over and
21:51
over. I was taught the newspaper class, and I might have a kid
21:54
for 4 years, so I got to know the kids pretty well. And I
21:57
would worry about them. So even though they said to never do
21:59
this, I did it anyway. I would put my phone number in the
22:01
board, and I said, look, if you get in trouble, don't know what
22:04
to do, call me. I will do my best to help you out. And one
22:08
summer, this young man called me. I really, I hardly knew him,
22:12
and he called me to chat. And I said, is there anything wrong,
22:15
Brandon? Can I help you? He goes, no, no, I'm okay. It's
22:17
fine. He was 14. And then I said, I put you in my newspaper
22:22
class, so I'll see you next year when you come back to school. So
22:24
we chatted a few times. I sensed something was wrong, but I
22:27
didn't know what it was. So school started, and he didn't
22:30
show up for two weeks. I'm worried, but I called his
22:33
number, and it had been disconnected. And honestly, in
22:36
that school, that happens frequently. Kids just disappear.
22:39
Then one day, I got a call at school, and it was him. And he
22:43
said, Miss Montgomery, I'm hungry. I said, what? He said,
22:47
well, I'm in foster care now, and they lock up all the food in
22:50
the morning. The school doesn't have my paperwork, so they won't
22:53
feed me lunch. I was so pissed. I said, honey, can I call you
22:57
back? This number is good. Yeah, I'll call you back. And I'm
23:00
lucky. I had no students in my class. I'm swearing like a
23:02
sailor, pissed off. And the teacher who told me to be nicer
23:07
wandered over, and she said, what's the problem? And I
23:10
explained. And she said, well, if it bothers you so much, call
23:13
the people at foster care and say he can live with you. And I
23:16
said, don't be ridiculous. I said, I'm 55 years old. I've
23:20
never had any children. I wasn't able to have any children, and
23:24
so that bothered me for quite a while. And then I put that out
23:27
of my life. I'm never going to be a mom. And she said, "Then
23:30
stop complaining. Well, two weeks later, that young man was
23:33
dropped at my doorstep.
23:35
Dr. Jim Price:: Wow.
23:35
Anne Montgomery:: I went to foster mom school, which is a
23:37
thing. 10 weeks of foster mom school. I ended up having six
23:41
young people live in my house. Not all were my legal foster
23:44
children, but two were my legal foster children. Two just
23:47
decided I was mom, and one was homeless. Later on, there were
23:52
two others. So six young people have passed through my home
23:56
needing a place to figure life out. And my oldest son, Brandon,
24:01
the first one who called me, he has a 9-year-old son. He called
24:03
me the hospital when that little boy was born, and handed him to
24:05
me. He goes, now you're a grandma, mom.
24:07
Dr. Jim Price:: Wow.
24:09
Anne Montgomery:: And none of that would have happened.
24:11
Dr. Jim Price:: Yes, yeah.
24:12
Anne Montgomery:: None of it would have happened if I hadn't
24:15
become a teacher, and if I hadn't changed my attitude about
24:18
what was important.
24:23
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blessed.
24:58
So in terms of the audience, I'm sure, they would definitely love
25:02
to get a hold of some of your novels. How can our audience get
25:07
a hold of your novels?
25:40
Dr. Jim Price:: So this is such an inspiring inspiration. I was
25:44
just a story of perseverance pushing through, and overcoming
25:48
obstacles and challenges. And it's just so amazing that you
25:51
were able to learned and grew from all those experiences. If
25:56
you were to give advice to the audience watching who are going
26:00
through depression, and going through their hardships and
26:02
stuff, what advice would you give the audience?
26:06
Anne Montgomery:: Don't be afraid of change. I didn't pick
26:10
what happened to me, and I spent way too much time feeling sorry
26:14
for me. I really did. The only thing I regret in my whole life
26:19
is that I waited a little too long to move forward. I don't
26:22
know if you ever saw Finding Nemo. I'm a scuba diver, so I
26:24
like Finding Nemo. Where Dory goes, just keep swimming. So we
26:29
have to just keep going, because life is never going to go the
26:32
way we planned. But those twists and turns might really surprise
26:37
you, and you might find something. Today, honestly, I
26:40
would change nothing. But going through it was extremely
26:44
difficult.
26:44
Dr. Jim Price:: Yes.
26:45
Anne Montgomery:: And I think we deserve a little time to grieve,
26:48
because losing a job is like a death in a way. But then we have
26:53
to find out what else we can do. And again, I think we just have
26:58
to keep moving forward. And I know how hard that is to do, but
27:02
I think we can do it if we just say, okay, change is inevitable,
27:05
and I'm going to embrace it.
27:07
Dr. Jim Price:: Wow, that is so amazing, and definitely words of
27:11
wisdom, nuggets of truth. Wisdom all rolled into one. All of it
27:15
is so inspiring, and you definitely been this guest
27:19
today. I'm just so blessed and happy that we are able to
27:21
connect and have such a wonderful conversation in this
27:25
way. But like I always say, we're always about motivation,
27:30
growth, expansion, understanding self, understanding self love,
27:35
self worth, and understanding that you can overcome obstacles
27:38
if you action steps into overcoming those obstacles. So
27:42
once again, great for having you today. And I always say, we go
27:47
through to grow to, and everything's like that. So the
27:50
audience, I know you've definitely pulled a lot of
27:52
wonderful things out of this conversation. And once again,
27:56
that's what we do. We look to inspire change through growth
27:59
and understanding of just not self, but the world that we live
28:02
in as well. So until next time, this is The Purpose and Progress
28:07
Podcast Show. I'm your host, Dr. Jim Price. I always say, stay
28:11
prayed up and stay blessed. Thank you.
28:15
Thank you for joining me on this episode of The Purpose in
28:19
Progress Podcast. I hope today's conversation gave you insight,
28:23
inspiration, or a fresh perspective to help you move
28:26
forward with purpose. If you enjoyed the episode, please
28:29
subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who could
28:32
use a little encouragement. You can also support the podcast
28:35
through the donation link in the show notes. Every contribution
28:38
helps us keep sharing stories that uplift and inspire.
28:42
Remember, your purpose is waiting, and progress never
28:45
stops. I'll see you next time.