Latest / I Choose Me with Jennie Garth / I Choose ... MORE with Joan Lunden
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Girl. Welcome
- 0:09Speaker 1: back to I Choose Me, where we talk about choices
- 0:12Speaker 1: big and small that help us improve our lives. I
- 0:17Speaker 1: wanted to spend days with Joan London, trailblazing journalist and author,
- 0:21Speaker 1: soaking in her incredible stories and lessons. Here's some more
- 0:26Speaker 1: of our conversation.
- 0:28Speaker 2: Oh, I love the title of this. I love I
- 0:30Speaker 2: Choose Me. Obviously, I choose.
- 0:33Speaker 1: Me, Yeah, over and over on.
- 0:36Speaker 2: The entire journey, again and again and again. So of
- 0:39Speaker 2: course when I heard the title of your podcast, I
- 0:41Speaker 2: was like, I love that. Yes, you're like women, child
- 0:45Speaker 2: do it?
- 0:45Speaker 1: No, and we're not taught to choose ourselves.
- 0:49Speaker 2: Men are taught at a very young age choose you
- 0:52Speaker 2: go out on that football field, you show them whose
- 0:54Speaker 2: boss you do this like? And you know it's getting better.
- 1:00Speaker 2: But I just think almost inherently, women don't think that way.
- 1:05Speaker 2: Maybe it's because certainly as life goes on, you have
- 1:09Speaker 2: you have children and like A, I don't. I don't
- 1:13Speaker 2: mean it's done a great men, but I mean men
- 1:14Speaker 2: get up in the morning and they think what am
- 1:16Speaker 2: I gonna wear to the I have a big meeting today?
- 1:18Speaker 2: What am I gonna have for breakfast? And then I
- 1:20Speaker 2: got to get in the car and leave now because
- 1:21Speaker 2: I don't want to be late for that meeting. Women
- 1:23Speaker 2: get up and say, did I buy the ice skates?
- 1:26Speaker 2: Do I have the hot right hockey stick? Oh my god,
- 1:29Speaker 2: I've got this? Have a parent teacher meeting. You we
- 1:34Speaker 2: juggle so much, shoes, your children over yourself. And it's
- 1:38Speaker 2: a completely different mindset. And that's not to say that
- 1:41Speaker 2: a lot of men are doing a lot more these days.
- 1:43Speaker 2: And I have a great husband who's been, you know,
- 1:47Speaker 2: very hands on, not like a mother. He's not trying
- 1:51Speaker 2: to remember if you bought the hockey stick or not,
- 1:54Speaker 2: but he's been very hands on. But it's it's a
- 1:57Speaker 2: real Oh, it's just such a I always felt like
- 2:00Speaker 2: you're walking like this tightrope. And as you're walking this
- 2:04Speaker 2: type rope as the working woman, every time you kind
- 2:08Speaker 2: of fall over to one side and think, oh man,
- 2:10Speaker 2: I should have been at the office. And then I'll
- 2:11Speaker 2: run this say oh god, I should have been with
- 2:12Speaker 2: the kids. Yeah, And it's just this emotional things. It's
- 2:18Speaker 2: like torture. We torture ourselves. Yeah, we torture ourselves.
- 2:23Speaker 1: I know, and I love spreading the message of how
- 2:26Speaker 1: important it is to choose yourself, even to you know,
- 2:30Speaker 1: especially to younger girls. My daughters are you know, young
- 2:34Speaker 1: women who they live their life by this now, and
- 2:38Speaker 1: they they comprehend it on a level that I never did,
- 2:43Speaker 1: and I'm sure you never did either, we as women,
- 2:46Speaker 1: and I just get a little bit upset that we were,
- 2:49Speaker 1: that we've had to work this hard for so long
- 2:52Speaker 1: to come to this magical place where we allow ourselves
- 2:57Speaker 1: to choose themselves, to love ourselves.
- 2:59Speaker 2: Only Mike in our fifties or sixties, right, But I
- 3:02Speaker 2: mean I saw a picture of your daughters. You have
- 3:04Speaker 2: such beautiful daughters.
- 3:06Speaker 1: Oh my god, gosh, thank you.
- 3:07Speaker 2: So how many daughters do you have? I only have three?
- 3:11Speaker 2: You have three?
- 3:12Speaker 1: Four or five daughters?
- 3:13Speaker 2: Five daughters? Yes, and they're just awesome. And you know,
- 3:18Speaker 2: the older ones, of course, lived through all those years
- 3:22Speaker 2: with me on GMA. They came into the studio, although interestingly,
- 3:26Speaker 2: as each one has finished the book, reading the final manuscript,
- 3:30Speaker 2: they said, wow, I didn't know this or I didn't
- 3:34Speaker 2: know that, and like I was there with you, but
- 3:36Speaker 2: I didn't know this. And then there's my younger girls,
- 3:40Speaker 2: because Jamie's forty five, Sarah's, Lindsay's forty two, and Sarah's
- 3:46Speaker 2: thirty eight. How do you remember all the ages? And
- 3:51Speaker 2: then the twins Kate and Max are twenty three, and
- 3:57Speaker 2: Kim and Jack are turning twenty one. They're twenty months apart,
- 4:00Speaker 2: are turning twenty one. So those two young girls, they
- 4:05Speaker 2: are going to be reading a book about a person
- 4:08Speaker 2: that they don't know that much about. In a way,
- 4:12Speaker 2: it's it's really weird to me. They're going to read
- 4:16Speaker 2: it completely different than my older girls. And I'm so
- 4:21Speaker 2: cognizant of that that they don't. They were never around
- 4:25Speaker 2: with me when I was riding around the limousines and
- 4:28Speaker 2: you know, on red carpets every year other day. They
- 4:31Speaker 2: didn't live that life and the older girls did. But
- 4:36Speaker 2: to my younger girls, I'm just kind of a normal mom.
- 4:43Speaker 2: So it's going to be really interesting to hear their take.
- 4:47Speaker 1: Yeah, what advice would you give to us to help
- 4:54Speaker 1: us all believe in ourselves the way you have?
- 4:58Speaker 2: Oh? I think that, you know, I just saw this.
- 5:01Speaker 2: It's ironic. I just saw this, not a meme, but
- 5:06Speaker 2: this little video yesterday on my feed, one of my
- 5:09Speaker 2: social media feeds that showed if you have an ant
- 5:12Speaker 2: on a piece of paper and you draw a circle
- 5:14Speaker 2: around it, the ant won't go out of the circle
- 5:18Speaker 2: the drawing the drawn circle around it. Like I'm dying
- 5:23Speaker 2: to like try this, Oh, I want to try this.
- 5:24Speaker 2: Give me the same with the same with like a spider,
- 5:27Speaker 2: Like if you draw this line, but once if you
- 5:31Speaker 2: keep drawing the lines, this guy showed if you draw
- 5:33Speaker 2: the lines smaller and smaller so that pretty soon any
- 5:37Speaker 2: movement lets them go across the line, then then they'll
- 5:42Speaker 2: never be they'll never have a line hold them in again.
- 5:49Speaker 2: So now just think about this in terms of us.
- 5:52Speaker 2: We inherently draw lines around ourselves, like we all do.
- 5:57Speaker 2: Like I'm sure you've had a fitness trainer that says,
- 5:59Speaker 2: do as many sit ups as you can, and you
- 6:02Speaker 2: do twenty, and they say, why did you stop at twenty?
- 6:05Speaker 2: I don't know, because I thought that's how many I
- 6:07Speaker 2: could do. I mean, we all make boundaries, and so
- 6:12Speaker 2: I think what I was learning, just like that ant,
- 6:16Speaker 2: or just like that spider that crossed over the line
- 6:19Speaker 2: and then no line could hold them back, is I
- 6:21Speaker 2: learned pretty early on that I crossed those lines and
- 6:27Speaker 2: like Okay, I can do whatever whatever I want, and
- 6:30Speaker 2: if you can kind of have that concept as a
- 6:33Speaker 2: young person, or is anybody any age that feels like
- 6:37Speaker 2: they just are limiting themselves? And I say that because
- 6:42Speaker 2: that's actually exactly what they're doing. They're limiting themselves by
- 6:46Speaker 2: their own boundaries, and we almost can't help it. But
- 6:50Speaker 2: to make those it's like kids. You say, oh, the
- 6:54Speaker 2: kid needs boundaries, and it feels safe to have. It
- 6:57Speaker 2: feels that circle. But you know, I always use the
- 7:01Speaker 2: example of the show I did Behind Closed Doors where
- 7:04Speaker 2: I jumped with the Golden Knights and on an aircraft
- 7:09Speaker 2: carrier and an F eighteen and all these things, and
- 7:11Speaker 2: people are like, oh my god, you just like you have,
- 7:14Speaker 2: you know, balls, You're not afraid? Do you think that?
- 7:17Speaker 2: Every time I drove out of my driveway with yet
- 7:20Speaker 2: another uniform packed in my suitcase to go off and
- 7:25Speaker 2: go through training so I could do what my husband
- 7:29Speaker 2: refers to as my stupid human tricks, No, I felt
- 7:37Speaker 2: cautious and am I really going to be able to
- 7:39Speaker 2: pull this off? Like I probably thought that before almost
- 7:42Speaker 2: every one of those stories, But then I just said,
- 7:46Speaker 2: but I'm going to do it anyway. That's pretty much it,
- 7:50Speaker 2: and that's you know, I just think that people hear
- 7:54Speaker 2: opportunities all the time, Like somebody will be You'll be
- 7:57Speaker 2: with a group and somebody will be talking about something,
- 8:00Speaker 2: and people tend to think, oh, that's so great, Wow,
- 8:04Speaker 2: that's gonna be a great opportunity for someone. Why not you?
- 8:08Speaker 2: Why not yea? Why not you? And I've always kind
- 8:13Speaker 2: of lived my life that way. So I've snatched onto
- 8:16Speaker 2: every one of them. And consequently, I have a memoir
- 8:19Speaker 2: that was really hard to do because I had to
- 8:22Speaker 2: figure out what things am I going to actually use
- 8:26Speaker 2: because at first I wrote like one hundred and eighty
- 8:28Speaker 2: thousand page memoile, Well, you can't go over one hundred
- 8:32Speaker 2: thousand words. Nobody wants to read over one hundred thousand words.
- 8:34Speaker 2: So I'm like, what am I going to let go of?
- 8:37Speaker 2: And what am I going to leave in? And then
- 8:40Speaker 2: I also decided I'm a voracious reader. I love reading books.
- 8:45Speaker 2: I love books, And what do I love about them? Well?
- 8:51Speaker 2: I love reading novels and they take you into their world.
- 8:55Speaker 2: They with adjectives. They they define what the what the
- 9:00Speaker 2: area is like, and what the person is like, and
- 9:02Speaker 2: what's happening. Don't you want to write a book like
- 9:05Speaker 2: the books you like? And that's when I decided that
- 9:09Speaker 2: it shouldn't be an autobiography, which was the first draft
- 9:12Speaker 2: I wrote, and I decided it needs to be a memoir.
- 9:16Speaker 2: You can't just say and so then you know, the
- 9:18Speaker 2: first time they offered me that job, I had to
- 9:20Speaker 2: turn it down. Uh uh. I was writing up in
- 9:23Speaker 2: the elevator that day. I knew I had to meet
- 9:24Speaker 2: with the executives and tell them I wasn't gonna How
- 9:27Speaker 2: am I going to tell them?
- 9:28Speaker 1: Oh?
- 9:29Speaker 2: There they are? Is I get off the elevator, They're
- 9:30Speaker 2: already at the table. So now as the waiter is
- 9:33Speaker 2: unfolding my napkin, like, get your get the words in
- 9:36Speaker 2: your head, Joan, how are you gonna do this? That's
- 9:38Speaker 2: what they want to hear. They want like a like
- 9:41Speaker 2: all the novels that we all read and that we love.
- 9:43Speaker 1: They want to be inside your head. Yeah you did that.
- 9:47Speaker 1: I did you did because I can feel myself and
- 9:51Speaker 1: I'm sure everybody that reads this book can feel themselves
- 9:55Speaker 1: in those scenarios that you found yourself.
- 9:56Speaker 2: In that moment that oh my god, yes, that terrifying moment.
- 10:02Speaker 1: Yeah, you really broke some major ground in your career,
- 10:13Speaker 1: I mean left and right, but also as far as
- 10:17Speaker 1: what women were allowed to do in the East in
- 10:20Speaker 1: the workplace. You brought your newborn daughter to work at
- 10:24Speaker 1: Good Morning America in the early eighties.
- 10:27Speaker 2: Which was the most cacamaming thing that I could.
- 10:29Speaker 1: Yeah, because I know what that's like. You get you
- 10:33Speaker 1: wake that baby up at three am to get to
- 10:36Speaker 1: the set. Yep, it's just a different, you know, a different.
- 10:42Speaker 2: I would do everything ahead of time, Jenny, and I'd
- 10:45Speaker 2: have my bag that was my work bag, and then
- 10:47Speaker 2: I would have the diaper bag. I'd have it already
- 10:50Speaker 2: and i'd have like a little you know, I forget
- 10:52Speaker 2: what those things bunting on top of the changing table.
- 10:55Speaker 2: And at three point thirty, I would get up and
- 10:58Speaker 2: I'd get myself ready, and then I'd go and i'd
- 11:01Speaker 2: scoop her out of the crib. She was seven weeks old,
- 11:04Speaker 2: and I started as gently as I could and put
- 11:07Speaker 2: her on the bunting and ant I always put her
- 11:10Speaker 2: in one of those nightgowns that like open at the
- 11:12Speaker 2: bottom so I could try to make her stay atsleep
- 11:15Speaker 2: while I oh put on a fresh diaper. And get
- 11:18Speaker 2: her into the bunting, get in the back of the car,
- 11:20Speaker 2: and this was before the car set days. I'd have
- 11:24Speaker 2: her in my arms in the back of the limo,
- 11:27Speaker 2: breastfeeding on one side, breastfeeding on the other side, reading
- 11:30Speaker 2: the first eighty pages of the script, and then the
- 11:33Speaker 2: second eighty pages, and then she'd be conped out and
- 11:36Speaker 2: I'd go and put her in her little crib, which
- 11:39Speaker 2: they gave me a little They gave me the dressing
- 11:41Speaker 2: room next to mine. We'd put a crib in there
- 11:44Speaker 2: and a rocking chair, and she would go to sleep.
- 11:47Speaker 2: I remember Barbara Walters came in one morning and she
- 11:50Speaker 2: came into the makeup room and said high and then
- 11:53Speaker 2: she turned around to go down the hall to get
- 11:56Speaker 2: coffee to the coffee room, and she walked by the
- 12:00Speaker 2: open door and she stopped and she turned around. She said,
- 12:05Speaker 2: I don't even believe what I'm seeing, Like I really
- 12:08Speaker 2: can't get over this, that your baby is sleeping there
- 12:12Speaker 2: while you do hair and makeup, and you're going to
- 12:15Speaker 2: go down and do two hours of live television. Like
- 12:18Speaker 2: I can't imagine what they would have said if I'd
- 12:20Speaker 2: asked to bring my young daughter to work with me,
- 12:25Speaker 2: and it was unprecedented. Isn't really a word? Is sufficient? Right?
- 12:33Speaker 2: I got to hand a DABC. They let me, They
- 12:35Speaker 2: said yes. But frankly, there had not been a lot
- 12:39Speaker 2: of camaraderie on the show. How do I delicately say
- 12:45Speaker 2: this between the co hosts that came before me and
- 12:47Speaker 2: David Hartman?
- 12:48Speaker 1: Right?
- 12:49Speaker 2: And so she'd been she had left, and they wanted
- 12:54Speaker 2: to get my tush in that seat and put the
- 12:58Speaker 2: team back together as the fall lineup. And that was
- 13:01Speaker 2: August twenty seventh, and they said September they announced all
- 13:04Speaker 2: the shows in the fall lineup. I think they just
- 13:07Speaker 2: felt like, just say yes to her, like, you know,
- 13:10Speaker 2: whatever it takes, well, keep it to be the best
- 13:12Speaker 2: kept secret. I don't think they had any clue at
- 13:16Speaker 2: all how the audience was going to react and how
- 13:21Speaker 2: it would have a ripple effect across industries, across other corporations.
- 13:26Speaker 2: I don't think that they had any idea that it all.
- 13:29Speaker 2: Did you?
- 13:30Speaker 1: Did you realize at the time how radical that moment
- 13:33Speaker 1: was or were you just doing what you had to
- 13:35Speaker 1: do as a mother, what you felt I.
- 13:36Speaker 2: Was taking a young woman who got a great job
- 13:39Speaker 2: and got pregnant at the same time, and I was
- 13:41Speaker 2: putting one foot in front of the other, and I mean,
- 13:45Speaker 2: I asked my Remember this was nineteen seventy nine, you
- 13:49Speaker 2: couldn't say the word breastfeeding on television. Unbelievable. That was
- 13:53Speaker 2: one of the words that you could not say on television.
- 13:57Speaker 2: And so I asked my agent, will you go ahead
- 13:59Speaker 2: and ask them that if I can take my baby
- 14:01Speaker 2: to work because I'm breastfeeding. He was like silent for
- 14:04Speaker 2: thirty seconds. I said, I'm really serious, like, just go
- 14:07Speaker 2: ask them. And I would love to have been a
- 14:09Speaker 2: flying on that wall, right and uh, you know, everybody thought, well,
- 14:14Speaker 2: we'll just you know, we'll just keep it mum. But
- 14:18Speaker 2: that didn't happen. You know, I talk about in the
- 14:20Speaker 2: book how they staged this beautiful, big press conference after
- 14:24Speaker 2: my first day and invited all the press and we
- 14:27Speaker 2: had this amazing turnout, like more than they expected, and
- 14:33Speaker 2: little did we know why. And you know, David Hartman
- 14:37Speaker 2: welcomed everybody there and introduced me, and I opened it
- 14:41Speaker 2: up to questions. First question Time magazine we heard you're
- 14:45Speaker 2: bringing your baby to work. How did you work that
- 14:47Speaker 2: out with ABC? And like you, I remember, my eyes
- 14:50Speaker 2: darted to the back of the room where all the
- 14:52Speaker 2: executives were and all the pr people who had pulled
- 14:55Speaker 2: me aside like moments before, I walked out and said,
- 14:58Speaker 2: what have you do? Do not say you have baby upstairs.
- 15:01Speaker 2: These are critics. They will chew you up and they
- 15:03Speaker 2: will spit you out and everything you can do your job.
- 15:06Speaker 2: I was like, okay, I didn't really plan on bringing
- 15:08Speaker 2: it up. And second question, Newsweek, the show travels, how
- 15:13Speaker 2: are you going to deal with that? And I said, well, actually,
- 15:16Speaker 2: ABC contractually has given me the right to take the
- 15:20Speaker 2: baby with me as long as i'm bricet feeding. You
- 15:24Speaker 2: print that.
- 15:27Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that was out.
- 15:29Speaker 2: Of the bag. But that became the story of the morning,
- 15:31Speaker 2: and you know, that's why they had all heard it
- 15:33Speaker 2: and they were all there. It wasn't because ABC was
- 15:36Speaker 2: announcing the new star on GMA. It was because a
- 15:40Speaker 2: major media corporation had given a woman the right to
- 15:44Speaker 2: bring her newborn baby to work. That was the breaking
- 15:49Speaker 2: news story of the day.
- 15:50Speaker 1: Well as it should have been. It changed the times,
- 15:52Speaker 1: It changed the trajectory of everyone's you know, experience being
- 15:56Speaker 1: a mom and having to work.
- 15:58Speaker 2: So that's what I was not a flag waving feminist.
- 16:02Speaker 2: Remember I my mom didn't want me on a college
- 16:05Speaker 2: campus in America because I was so young, so she
- 16:09Speaker 2: sent me on world campus Afloat. Now it's called Semester
- 16:11Speaker 2: at See. Best thing ever because we went around the world,
- 16:14Speaker 2: visiting fifteen countries. That probably went a long way to
- 16:18Speaker 2: me getting my first job in broadcasting. And then one
- 16:22Speaker 2: of the shipmates said, what are you going to do
- 16:24Speaker 2: when you get back, and I said, well, I've applied
- 16:26Speaker 2: to you know, I was accepted at UCLA and U
- 16:29Speaker 2: SEE Berkeley, and now I'm going dating a guy that
- 16:31Speaker 2: goes to University of Texas, so I'm also applying there.
- 16:35Speaker 2: She said, well, I'm going to go to Mexico City
- 16:37Speaker 2: because there's this university down there and I'd love to
- 16:40Speaker 2: have I want someone to go with me, we go
- 16:42Speaker 2: with me. I was like, okay, and so I went,
- 16:47Speaker 2: but I got My mom actually flew down from Sacramento, California,
- 16:51Speaker 2: to La so we could meet her in LA and
- 16:53Speaker 2: fly on to Mexico City. And when I called her
- 16:56Speaker 2: to tell her I'm here, I'm ready for the flight tomorrow,
- 16:59Speaker 2: she said, oh, I'm really sorry. I've decided not to go. Ah,
- 17:04Speaker 2: and my mom is like, so what are you going
- 17:06Speaker 2: to do. I said, I'm going to Mexico tomorrow morning
- 17:09Speaker 2: by myself. That's my gosh. So I didn't know. It's
- 17:13Speaker 2: so wonderful. I went for three months and I stayed
- 17:16Speaker 2: three years. And again that all played into why this
- 17:21Speaker 2: news director. Why I walked in off the street at
- 17:25Speaker 2: a time when no women were coming in and applying
- 17:27Speaker 2: for a job at a TV station and sat down
- 17:30Speaker 2: and said, you know, one of your salespeople here told
- 17:33Speaker 2: me that you're going to be hiring more women because
- 17:36Speaker 2: the women's movement is going to force you to do that.
- 17:39Speaker 2: So tell me about this job. Tell me you know
- 17:42Speaker 2: what's the future for women, you know, how's things going
- 17:45Speaker 2: to change. And he looked at me and he said
- 17:48Speaker 2: that salesperson told me I'd be impressed with you, but
- 17:51Speaker 2: he did know how to write an interview, because you're
- 17:53Speaker 2: interviewing me. Yeah. He took me into the studio and
- 17:57Speaker 2: sat me at that news set. I mean, it was
- 18:00Speaker 2: just something I used to see every night on that
- 18:02Speaker 2: on my television at home, and I read copy and
- 18:06Speaker 2: he said, you've got something like I think that you've
- 18:11Speaker 2: really got what it takes me in this business. But
- 18:13Speaker 2: I don't have a job, but I'll keep you in mind.
- 18:16Speaker 2: But fortunately the weatherman was back behind the set and
- 18:19Speaker 2: he saw the audition and he followed me out into
- 18:22Speaker 2: the parking lot and he said, there are a few
- 18:25Speaker 2: stations around the country that are hiring weather girls, and
- 18:29Speaker 2: I'd like to make you Sacramento's first weather girl.
- 18:33Speaker 1: And you were getting paid what, thirty dollars a week?
- 18:35Speaker 2: You said, thirty dollars a week. No, it was like
- 18:38Speaker 2: a supposedly like a paid internship. I mean it was.
- 18:41Speaker 2: It was nothing. And thank god my mom taught me
- 18:46Speaker 2: to recognize an opportunity. When I heard it, I said, okay,
- 18:49Speaker 2: oh my gosh, be at the station at five o'clock
- 18:52Speaker 2: on Monday. I was like, five am. Yes, I start
- 18:57Speaker 2: drive time radio at five am. I want you there.
- 19:00Speaker 2: That was kind of like the beginning of my early
- 19:02Speaker 2: morning life.
- 19:04Speaker 1: For the rest of your life, for the rest of
- 19:06Speaker 1: my life. I want to talk about one little thing
- 19:15Speaker 1: before we before we go. In your book, you reflect
- 19:19Speaker 1: on a time in your forties where you were faced
- 19:21Speaker 1: where you face the crossroads of midlife, and you didn't
- 19:24Speaker 1: recognize yourself or your body. And I can definitely relate
- 19:28Speaker 1: to that. We both grew up in front of the cameras.
- 19:31Speaker 1: I recently saw TikTok actually from a woman named Susie
- 19:34Speaker 1: Trigg Tucker, who resonated with me so much. She said
- 19:38Speaker 1: that sometime in her mid forties, she started looking in
- 19:41Speaker 1: the mirror and feeling ugly, like the beauty that she
- 19:44Speaker 1: had always seen and been rewarded for was melting away
- 19:47Speaker 1: in fine lines and gray hair. In your experience, what
- 19:52Speaker 1: did it feel like to look in the mirror at
- 19:54Speaker 1: that time of your life, in your forties.
- 19:56Speaker 2: It happened to me at the age of thirty nine, actually,
- 20:00Speaker 2: and I picked up a magazine at the time, Charlie's
- 20:02Speaker 2: Angels was on television, and it was like the three
- 20:04Speaker 2: Charlie's Angels and is said fit forty and fabulous, And
- 20:10Speaker 2: I was like, I want to be fit forty and fabulous,
- 20:14Speaker 2: but I'm not. And I literally made a decision that
- 20:20Speaker 2: I had to do something about it. I was turning forty,
- 20:23Speaker 2: I had had three children, continued on the fast pace.
- 20:28Speaker 2: I was probably forty five fifty pounds more than I
- 20:32Speaker 2: should be, and thank God for you know, big shoulder
- 20:35Speaker 2: pads and big hair back in those days. But I
- 20:39Speaker 2: knew I had to do something about it. And I
- 20:41Speaker 2: also knew that twenty years from then, I still wanted
- 20:44Speaker 2: to be able to run in a race and not
- 20:46Speaker 2: just like watch from the sidelines. I knew that I
- 20:49Speaker 2: had to change my life because I looked in the
- 20:52Speaker 2: mirror and I was like, you're not that attractive anymore.
- 20:57Speaker 2: Like you know, you can't you can't wear the clothes
- 21:00Speaker 2: that would look really good on you because you've got
- 21:02Speaker 2: so much extra weight on you. You're lethargic, you're tired all
- 21:06Speaker 2: the time. I wonder why you got to do But
- 21:10Speaker 2: I mean, but I took that on, Jenny. It's like
- 21:12Speaker 2: a second job, because when you take it on as
- 21:17Speaker 2: a second job, that means that the appointment with the
- 21:22Speaker 2: trainer or the appointment with the nutritionists is just as
- 21:25Speaker 2: important as the interview with the president or the interview
- 21:29Speaker 2: with the major star. I tried to make them be
- 21:31Speaker 2: equal that they couldn't be. I couldn't not show up.
- 21:36Speaker 2: I couldn't they they had. I had to make them
- 21:41Speaker 2: omni important like they that I had to do them
- 21:45Speaker 2: and I worked really, really really hard for a year.
- 21:48Speaker 2: I mean, it didn't happen anything overnight, but but when
- 21:52Speaker 2: I turned forty, I had dropped forty five pounds. And
- 21:56Speaker 2: it's not just a matter of dropping the weight. Come
- 22:00Speaker 2: this effusive, energetic person that had started playing tennis again
- 22:09Speaker 2: and started, you know, doing things with girlfriends and that
- 22:13Speaker 2: I hadn't been doing because all of a sudden, I
- 22:15Speaker 2: mean it literally like transform me quite frankly into a
- 22:18Speaker 2: different person, to the point that I think it completely
- 22:24Speaker 2: changed my life trajectory for the next ten years, because
- 22:30Speaker 2: when I was forty five, like five. So now I'm
- 22:35Speaker 2: like forty five, I've had like five Oh. I also
- 22:38Speaker 2: knew I had to leave a bad marriage, right Admittedly
- 22:43Speaker 2: this all was also part of that, knowing that I
- 22:46Speaker 2: was going to come out on the other end and
- 22:48Speaker 2: have to be attractive, its vibrant, and have to be
- 22:52Speaker 2: able to start a new life. And by the time
- 22:57Speaker 2: I was forty five, I met my who was thirty five.
- 23:03Speaker 2: I don't know if that would have happened that way
- 23:04Speaker 2: if I hadn't changed the course of my life. In fact,
- 23:07Speaker 2: you probably can pretty data proof say that wouldn't have happened.
- 23:14Speaker 1: But it sounds like it was. It was all because
- 23:17Speaker 1: you started choosing yourself.
- 23:19Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and that was probably the first time in
- 23:22Speaker 2: a long time, because you know, when I was growing up,
- 23:25Speaker 2: we weren't told to choose ourselfs. Then you have children
- 23:28Speaker 2: and you really don't choose yourself and then so that
- 23:31Speaker 2: really it was at that fortieth birthday they're like, wow,
- 23:35Speaker 2: look what you can do. Look what happened to you
- 23:37Speaker 2: when you choose yourself. It literally transformed my life. And
- 23:42Speaker 2: women out there you can do this at any point
- 23:46Speaker 2: in time, any point in time, and it's never, never,
- 23:50Speaker 2: never too late to do it. And you're so it's
- 23:53Speaker 2: just not a matter of like, oh god, now I
- 23:55Speaker 2: fit into a size eight instead of fourteen. It's that
- 23:58Speaker 2: you are energyche and you have an exuberance for the
- 24:03Speaker 2: day and.
- 24:05Speaker 1: You get that zest for life, but zest.
- 24:07Speaker 2: For life and that and if you're out there and
- 24:11Speaker 2: you're divorced and you haven't been married, am I ever
- 24:14Speaker 2: going to meet someone again? Or have you never married?
- 24:17Speaker 2: And am I ever going to meet someone? Do this
- 24:20Speaker 2: for yourself because that inner effusiveness, that zest in your
- 24:27Speaker 2: eyes and you're a smile, that's what attracts a man.
- 24:32Speaker 1: You got it, the right kind of guy, the right one.
- 24:35Speaker 1: Oh incredible, Thank you, Joan Joan Life Beyond the Script
- 24:40Speaker 1: is available now wherever books are sold, and of course
- 24:43Speaker 1: you can hear her read the audio book as well,
- 24:46Speaker 1: which I love so much, and I'm very excited to
- 24:48Speaker 1: share that my book I Choose Me Chasing Joy, Finding
- 24:53Speaker 1: Purpose and Embracing reinvention is coming April fourteenth, and it
- 24:58Speaker 1: would mean the world if you would pre order a
- 25:02Speaker 1: copy or the audiobook wherever you get your books. And yes,
- 25:06Speaker 1: I am definitely narrating the audiobook, so it's going to
- 25:09Speaker 1: be so fun.