Latest / The Other 22 Hours / Amy Grant on unexpected healing, the invitation of aging, and craftopia.

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Amy Grant on unexpected healing, the invitation of aging, and craftopia. · The Other 22 Hours

0:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I found myself in the workout room and Sicily Tyson came in.
0:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I grew up with her acting career.
0:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I would know her anywhere.
0:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, it's just the two of us in there.
0:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I was just so curious about her life.
0:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just having to get my guts up.
0:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And finally, it's just the two of us in there.
0:19
[SPEAKER_00]: The TV's not on and I said, this Tyson, you mind if I ask you a question or two.
0:25
[SPEAKER_00]: She was hesitant for me and she said,
0:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I mean, it was just, oh, and what I thought is, it takes bravery to put yourself out anywhere, but you have to be willing to get whatever response you get.
0:48
[SPEAKER_03]: We often define artists by their output, their records, books, movies, and the times they're on stage.
0:54
[SPEAKER_01]: But the art is made in the quiet, the struggle, and the mundane, the hours that no one sees.
1:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm McKayla Ann.
1:01
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm Aaron Kray for his.
1:03
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the other 22 hours.
1:04
[SPEAKER_03]: An exploration of the creative life lived in between.
1:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Today we're on a feature our conversation with Amy Grant, who for most of you probably needs no introduction, but for the rest of you, she's somebody that we could probably use the name icon for she is Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum, multiple number one hits, cross-over, superstar between pop music and contemporary Christian music.
1:40
[SPEAKER_03]: She's been releasing music since
1:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Finn Skill and has just recently released her first new music in over 13 years.
1:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and as you will hear, this is a dream come true conversation for me, Amy Grant's CD in the early 90s was my first purchase of my first CD ever in a jewel case.
2:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Her songs are kind of etched in my heart and soul, but this conversation did not disappoint.
2:12
[SPEAKER_02]: It was really soulful.
2:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the through line throughout could be continually coming back to complete acceptance and presence to all that is in life.
2:24
[SPEAKER_02]: and career and aging and response and really being in your body as it is.
2:33
[SPEAKER_02]: That was a big takeaway, I think, especially towards the end of the conversation.
2:36
[SPEAKER_03]: With that, please enjoy our conversation with Amy Grant.
2:42
[SPEAKER_02]: How are you?
2:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's a how are you really?
2:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Question, how are you today?
2:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And where are you physically and creatively?
2:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Are we all going to answer that or just me?
2:51
[SPEAKER_00]: We do join.
2:52
[SPEAKER_00]: We do join.
2:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we say this is a conversation more than an interview.
2:55
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you want us to answer, we're happy to, but let's start with you.
2:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
3:00
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
3:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I woke up in Los Angeles in a hotel I've never stayed in before and I've been coming out here for 40 years to work.
3:07
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's lovely.
3:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I walked to the kind of restaurant area where the free coffee is as soon as it opened in my PJs with the bathrobe on top.
3:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Because my feeling is, in the best hostiles should feel like you're home.
3:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I did that twice before I got dressed, because to me, just waking up to a great cup of coffee.
3:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Wherever you are, I used to tell my kids when they were younger.
3:33
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, good cup of coffee.
3:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I've sort of pegged at the thrill meter.
3:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So what else?
3:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Like girls happens today.
3:40
[SPEAKER_00]: It's good.
3:41
[SPEAKER_00]: He's going to be.
3:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a big planner.
3:43
[SPEAKER_02]: What's your go to coffee in the morning?
3:45
[SPEAKER_02]: What kind of coffee?
3:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually purchased a few years ago a Nespresso coffee maker and I never heard one of those.
3:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I know there are some real coffee officials, you know, and they do it all everything on their own.
3:58
[SPEAKER_00]: But when vents started touring with the eagles, just the upgrade in their hotels was substantial.
4:04
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you're not about Mahaladean.
4:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I was like, man, what, I mean, that was nine years ago.
4:12
[SPEAKER_00]: But I was like, this coffee maker's amazing.
4:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have my favorite pods over the almost ten years.
4:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to get that out.
4:19
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's a good cup coffee.
4:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Michaela's first purchase during the pandemic was in a spresso machine and I like to say that that would have been It's really April of 2020.
4:28
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think I blinked until at least talktober.
4:30
[SPEAKER_03]: I had to figure out.
4:32
[SPEAKER_03]: I did perfect my espresso and Okay, a lot of it.
4:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and right now I'm doing a lot of publicity for a new project
4:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Really, like, from COVID on in our live shows, we stopped having an in-person meet-in-greet for the most part, just because nobody wants sick.
4:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, I've actually never quit touring, but I've had a very active home-life personal life and not as much interfacing with people I didn't know.
5:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And so now, got new music for the first time in 13 years, and I'm like, oh, man, I've got a whole lot about yourself.
5:10
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, so, but at this stage, you know, I'm 65 and almost everybody I and interviewed by I'm looking at the two of you and you are right at the really the physical prom of your lives.
5:23
[SPEAKER_00]: You look somewhere between 35 and 50.
5:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm turning 40 in a week.
5:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
5:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I was a kid, my mom would say, because I had such bad agony in high school, and she'd say, hey, don't sweat it.
5:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And women's most beautiful years are 35 to 45.
5:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Just get some wisdom and life experience, and your body is still capable of everything.
5:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't sweat it.
5:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And now I'm like, everybody I talk to is in that beautiful, really, the crest of their becoming, awakening, parenting changes, how you look at everything and it's just not me, me, me, what's piano player, what's that note of death, me, me, me.
6:02
[SPEAKER_00]: it's beautiful and I just feel like I've enjoyed all the conversations.
6:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not looking for a big spotlight.
6:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I just want to make music from this perspective and all fine.
6:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It or not.
6:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that.
6:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm preparing for today.
6:15
[SPEAKER_02]: I was looking at some of your other interviews you've done and particularly around this record that you were saying you never stopped touring and you were doing a lot of catalogs stuff and then you had a moment when you were like, wait, I need some songs that reflect this time in my life.
6:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to hear you share more about that because I'm turning 40 and I feel like the last several years of my life becoming a mother and everything so much has changed and I've already started to grapple with the age thing as a woman in the music business.
6:44
[SPEAKER_02]: You're not immune to it if you got to a certain level of success before a certain age.
6:48
[SPEAKER_02]: But I feel like it's just such a conversation in my head and with my peers and this fear of
6:57
[SPEAKER_02]: commodity anymore, but at the same time on like the art that I am craving to consume is personally from women and women who are older than me, who are writers and musicians who are reflecting in their work their real lived experiences that only happen middle-age onward.
7:16
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's so crazy to me that typically in commercial realms the art that we elevate are only romanticizing or platforming youth.
7:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I'd love to hear you share more about your relationship with that.
7:29
[SPEAKER_02]: On the creative side as well as the business side.
7:31
[SPEAKER_00]: My relationship with making music currently came from to me a very unexpected place.
7:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And it just happened because of a lot of very personal things that happened in me and to me since COVID.
7:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And so just in a nutshell, I had unexpected open heart surgery the summer of 2020.
7:53
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a great time for major surgery because the whole role was shut down and then two summers later I had a bike accident that really threw me on a different track that was a lot of private recovery and so much quiet and then just sort of grappling with changes within myself and so it was two years after that accident that I
8:14
[SPEAKER_00]: was ready for the testing that I knew Vanderbilt Hospital wanted to do.
8:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess they always try to create a baseline.
8:21
[SPEAKER_00]: After two years of recovery, so I went to see the neuropsychologist, and I had my own things that I was dealing with and wanted to talk to him about, but you know, it was a whole day of testing.
8:31
[SPEAKER_00]: and then I went back for the assessment of my tests and what he told me was eye-opening and it was nice to have someone have actual data that confirmed some of my frustrations where I found myself in life.
8:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, how do you feel like you're slowed down processing?
8:50
[SPEAKER_00]: It's affecting you and I said, I feel myself pulling back.
8:53
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I don't have the quick one liner.
8:55
[SPEAKER_00]: If somebody says a joke, like my mind, initially tries to process the literal words that they're saying.
9:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just like, I was two years into this recovery.
9:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, I just feel slow and uptake, all that.
9:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And the test score reflected that.
9:09
[SPEAKER_00]: But at the end of our conversation, he said, can I give you my medical advice?
9:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, yes, and he said, Amy, don't pull back.
9:17
[UNKNOWN]: Linia.
9:18
[SPEAKER_00]: lean in to everything, lean into life, lean into creativity, lean in.
9:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was contrary to what I was finding myself doing on the interior.
9:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And I went, okay, within a couple of weeks, I had cleaned up and created that creative space for me in my home inspired by our youngest daughter.
9:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And she said, I call my space craftopia, it never has to be clean.
9:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I can be doing a project with my hands, there can be chaos, which is a great backdrop for
9:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought, man, I'm going to create my own craftopia.
9:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And the day I finished it in this room, there was just only one place to sit in this room on the floor.
9:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I was a child's chair and I sat down in that chair.
10:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought, I've got to wrap my arms around my own life and welcome it.
10:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And top to bottom, I wrote the lyric for the song, The Me That Remains.
10:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Amazing.
10:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, at that time, I was not enamored with any music ideas I was coming up with and so I reached out to MacMackanale, have got a lyric, no sacred cows, you want to put some music to it.
10:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And, and he said, I'm so busy, you know, in the wake of Jimmy Buffett's passing and the coral reefer band and all of his work.
10:29
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, it was for several months, but my thing.
10:32
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I just leaned into creativity and that led to recording, but I didn't have a recording contract.
10:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything came out of pocket.
10:42
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just one random day at a time in the studio and it was Mac.
10:47
[SPEAKER_00]: We recorded one day in January of 25, one day in March, one day in April, and then Mac said, hey, we've got 10 songs.
10:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Just saying, if you wanted an album, we've got an album.
10:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, well, I don't have a contract.
11:00
[SPEAKER_00]: How crazy to create without the pressure of anybody's expectation.
11:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And so now I'm taking my 65 year old self and talking about these songs.
11:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And to me, so much of it felt like, part of my healing journey and witnessing life around me and that feels like a pretty typical stance of somebody in their mid-60s.
11:24
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I'm doing.
11:25
[SPEAKER_00]: There were specific things that I was grappling with or recovering from, but there's not anybody who's lived decade after decade that isn't in recovery of some kind.
11:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we're all just like, woo, you know.
11:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody is just trying to figure out, what do I have today when I wake up?
11:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And where do I go from here?
11:46
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what my life looks like today.
11:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Hey, just a quick pause from this conversation.
11:51
[SPEAKER_03]: The other 22 hours is an independent production built entirely on the idea that these quiet, honest conversations matter.
11:57
[SPEAKER_03]: The best way to support our work is simply to share it.
12:00
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you can think of one person who would appreciate this show, please pass it along.
12:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And if you haven't yet, please follow our show on your listening platform of choice or subscribe to our channel on YouTube.
12:09
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a small action that we say massive difference for us.
12:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for being here.
12:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's get back to our conversation.
12:17
[SPEAKER_03]: At a question from your book cover story and returning to making this record here, if being in relationship with your creativity felt different to you after your accident.
12:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Or was it the same?
12:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Was it like reconnecting with the same old friend?
12:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Or was it a new relationship in a new person you were getting in a...
12:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm not a prolific writer.
12:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I seemed prolific when I was younger because I was always keeping up with a contract.
12:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just like, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up.
12:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I just used my creative resources in other ways that had nothing to do with music that were actually very satisfying.
12:52
[SPEAKER_00]: We hosted a day camp that's
12:55
[SPEAKER_00]: have scholarship, people from different cultural, racial, ethnic backgrounds.
13:01
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called Barefoot Republic and it's an order for kids first experience with somebody that's different from them to be positive.
13:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a faith-based camp, but just everybody's welcomed, nobody's required to be the same.
13:13
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just kind of celebrating our differences and coming together in a community of love and acceptance.
13:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And even though it was only a
13:22
[SPEAKER_00]: two week time period in the summertime.
13:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a month of setup, a month of clean up, and then also all year long, trying to get volunteers to help.
13:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I mean, I don't have a lead on my fan base and I think if you want to come have an experience, come to Nashville and help these kids.
13:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
13:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And so everything kind of got cleared from the table.
13:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And to me, I really was kind of rediscovering because we all, you just have limited resources.
13:51
[SPEAKER_00]: You only had so much time.
13:52
[SPEAKER_00]: You only have so much resource and for all that to be taken away.
13:56
[SPEAKER_00]: because after that accident, I had a 10-year commitment for the day camp, and immediately I felt a very changed capacity to participate.
14:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I had always taught something before I taught archery.
14:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I taught hiking.
14:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I taught, and I was like, I'm just gonna be here.
14:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Bye.
14:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't teach anything, and when that responsibility ended, I felt the choice before me with what to do with my time and my creativity.
14:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I just chose to be intentional about songwriting.
14:27
[SPEAKER_00]: There were a couple of times I had something I wanted to write about, and I thought you are not fast, and you're slower now than you used to be.
14:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And two different times I had two very specific songs I was trying to
14:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna sit in this chair until I have something.
14:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was hours.
14:46
[SPEAKER_00]: What about if I approach the chorus from this angle?
14:49
[SPEAKER_00]: What if I approach it from that angle?
14:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Songs don't just appear magically.
14:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if you're trying to figure out something you wanna say and to be sort of surprised by how to say it, you have to give yourself fully to a lot of blank airtime.
15:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I loved rediscovering how intentional one must be to create and that felt new.
15:15
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that.
15:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And the patients that you then have to practice, especially with essentially a different brain in a lot of ways.
15:25
[SPEAKER_02]: When you've had an injury,
15:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And I love how your song, the me that remains and the message of that song, is coming from your personal experience as a 60-some-year-old woman who went through an accident, but then it translates to so many other ways I have a text thread with
15:46
[SPEAKER_02]: three other girlfriends who are all singer-songwriters and everybody's in their 30s.
15:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And one of them sent a clip of you talking on NPR's wildcard about the song and your experience of accepting who you are and not trying to always look at your younger self.
16:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And that message is felt deeply by a 30 summer old woman that are starting to grapple with these feelings.
16:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And then my mom had a stroke at age 63, she had a hemorrhage stroke, and it's been five years.
16:20
[SPEAKER_02]: She lost her entire right side and lost her ability to speak, so it's been devastating and also incredibly beautiful experience to
16:30
[SPEAKER_02]: watch her recover.
16:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, she's not fully recovered and she most likely will never be fully recovered.
16:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And, your song, I sent it to her.
16:40
[SPEAKER_02]: I texted it to her and she texted me back and said, thanks for the good cry.
16:46
[SPEAKER_02]: I was so, and I had talked her on the phone today and she was like, yeah, especially that part and she was like, looking in the mirror where I'm like, who is that?
16:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's one of the many lessons or deepenings that I've experienced in witnessing my mother, the relinquishing this attachment to our physical selves.
17:08
[SPEAKER_02]: she has had to.
17:10
[SPEAKER_02]: The vanity as well as the practical aspect.
17:14
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, when she was 63 and had the stroke, she was looked like you, like beautiful, fit, young, active, and in an instant that was gone.
17:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And she's had to grapple with not being able to do her basic care and her basic things, like drinking a glass of water, taking a shower.
17:32
[SPEAKER_02]: She can't do that stuff on her own
17:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, my body looks different.
17:39
[SPEAKER_02]: My face looks, her face doesn't look that different anymore, but she looks different to herself.
17:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that.
17:44
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a lot of surrendering that I think we all have to do at some point to different severe degrees.
17:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think aging just in general, even apart from something as dramatic as a stroke, I now see aging as a continual invitation to let go.
18:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not that you're abandoning yourself, but you're letting go of how it was, and saying, what is now like?
18:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, just the challenge to live in the present, that challenge is for every person that is no longer a child.
18:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Have the money that every day.
18:22
[SPEAKER_00]: That my bags a couple nights ago in my hotel room in L.A. And I just went, okay, I got in a tube, a metal tube, and I flew over 2,000 miles, and if something happened to all air traffic, I would spend the rest of my life trying to walk home to Nashville, and I may get there, and I might not.
18:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think I would have ever taken time for any of that kind of practice, but to go, hey, I'm the only one of my family occupying this space.
18:53
[SPEAKER_00]: So I just want to recognize where I am.
18:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sleeping in a bed by myself in a place I've never been.
18:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm missed the familiarity of reaching over and touching vences are in the middle of the night.
19:06
[SPEAKER_00]: But here I am.
19:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm gonna wake up tomorrow and
19:14
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's like, I do think, welcoming yourself or at least being attentive to being the witness to your life, which is unique to you as my life is unique to me.
19:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Every one of us, the only opportunity to live that each of us has is in the skin suit that we have.
19:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, I think that part of healthy self-acceptance and a healthy self-love is giving yourself a minute to go,
19:45
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, just taking stock.
19:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
19:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I just want to say out loud that this wouldn't have happened a hundred years ago.
19:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I wonder what it would be like a hundred years for now.
19:54
[SPEAKER_00]: But here, I feel changed in a beautiful way, because my kids, they've all launched, you know, their grown.
20:02
[SPEAKER_00]: They range in age from mid-20s to early 40s.
20:05
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a blended family of five kids.
20:07
[SPEAKER_00]: The oldest I inherited when I'm here to her dad.
20:09
[SPEAKER_00]: But even still, it's just like where you guys are in life.
20:14
[SPEAKER_00]: You just never have that kind of solitude when you have children.
20:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you wake up at your needed.
20:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It is drinking out of a firehouse every day.
20:23
[SPEAKER_02]: I know I said this morning, I was like, I don't think I've used the bathroom once in privacy today.
20:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
20:31
[SPEAKER_00]: No, you have it.
20:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Our kids are four and one.
20:34
[SPEAKER_02]: We have a girl and then the one-year-old is a boy and we're like, every day we're like, he's getting crazier and crazier.
20:40
[SPEAKER_02]: This is so intense.
20:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So my daughter, the middle of our five kids has a four-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son.
20:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, wow.
20:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
20:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll go buy her house and she's like, it's trash.
20:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything's trash.
20:55
[SPEAKER_00]: My, hey, when you're 65, you can have a clean house.
20:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
21:00
[SPEAKER_00]: But everybody's fed.
21:01
[SPEAKER_00]: They have on clean clothes.
21:03
[SPEAKER_00]: They've had a bath in recent history.
21:05
[SPEAKER_00]: You're giving your best energy.
21:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And plus you have a full-time job.
21:09
[SPEAKER_00]: So the challenge of your life, my Kayla, is unique to you.
21:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And it says unique and one of a kind as the obvious example of every tree doesn't matter what the species is.
21:23
[SPEAKER_00]: There's not one tree that's similar to any other tree, even if the leaves are ish the same.
21:29
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just like how we grow and occupy the space that we're in.
21:33
[SPEAKER_00]: It's truly unique to every one of us.
21:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And you said something when you're talking about your mom's
21:40
[SPEAKER_00]: you meant that clearly the tragedy of losing all the capacity that was so much a part of her vibrant life in her early sixties, but then you use the word beautiful.
21:51
[SPEAKER_00]: There's something beautiful as well.
21:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's just part of the mystery that in every fantastic, good thing, there is a hard element.
22:01
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of a bad side to every great thing.
22:04
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a beautiful
22:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's just what are we capable of looking for in the moment.
22:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know in a big family, they're 70 of us that gather for major holidays.
22:18
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I've got three older sisters.
22:20
[SPEAKER_00]: We've all had a bunch of kids.
22:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Now they all have kids.
22:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And we don't cater.
22:24
[SPEAKER_00]: We all cook it.
22:25
[SPEAKER_00]: We all bring it together.
22:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And my oldest sister was the first to tell me, Amy, we help and hurt our children.
22:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we're human.
22:34
[SPEAKER_00]: We do the best we can.
22:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when we all gather, we all look at each other and say, no guarantee that next time we gather, we're all going to be here.
22:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's just look at each other.
22:42
[SPEAKER_00]: We're here right now.
22:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And be grateful for the presence of each other.
22:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And then also in those gatherings to go, somebody is at the top of their game.
22:52
[SPEAKER_00]: They're at the best place in their personal relationship.
22:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Or they just got the job and somebody else.
22:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe has one last role above water.
23:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And being part of a big family, you know, who just got out of rehab, who needs to go to rehab, and it's just like all their generational.
23:11
[SPEAKER_02]: That's life.
23:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's a really beautiful practice.
23:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a big family, and I think about how chaotic the gatherings are and how rare it is to take a moment and look around at each other.
23:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, when you mention the beautiful aspect of the heart things, I saw on somewhere on the internet, you mentioned about the experience of your grown kids helping you in your recovery and taking care of you.
23:37
[SPEAKER_02]: In our age group, we have a growing number of friends who are grappling with care taking and aging parents and losing parents and nobody wants to be doing that.
23:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I certainly did not want to be in that position, especially I was five months pregnant when it happened.
23:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And wow.
23:55
[SPEAKER_02]: But that is the beautiful part.
23:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Getting the experience of taking care of my mom is I'm going to try and ask a cry.
24:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but it's such a blessing.
24:05
[SPEAKER_00]: It is, yeah.
24:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And it forces a connection to each other, a connection to ourselves, a connection to a bigger experience of love.
24:14
[SPEAKER_00]: You know all that?
24:16
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the stuff that you don't age out of.
24:18
[SPEAKER_00]: It's what really matters.
24:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, as the observer of this Michaela and her mom during this experience, it was very interesting to watch a very tangible marker of when their relationship became reciprocal.
24:32
[SPEAKER_03]: It finally became a two-way street when it had been 35 years of being a one-way street.
24:38
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm like, oh wow, here it is.
24:39
[SPEAKER_03]: And now it's a reciprocal relationship and being able to bear witness to your relationship that has grown from that now as a two-way street is a really beautiful thing.
24:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Did you feel something like that with your children after they were carrying for you after your accident?
24:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Several of us are also in therapy and so I'm not sure what all part, you know, the gift that all of us just because you're born into a family or just because you birth a lot of children.
25:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I think what we've all come to accept is it's not your birthright to have relationship
25:18
[SPEAKER_00]: As a parrot, I wanted my children to all be equally close and I had to let go of that and say, they're wired differently.
25:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And these two might be closer at this time in life.
25:30
[SPEAKER_00]: This one right now wants nothing to do with anybody right now.
25:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And just having to acknowledge that everybody's life is unique, it's so important to wrap your arms around your own life.
25:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever that means, you know, to try to see yourself, to have a healthy relationship with yourself, to forgive yourself, to not over-expect, but just to be realistic about your gifts, your shortcomings,
25:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I was invited by one of my daughters to come to a therapy session with her.
26:03
[SPEAKER_00]: We had a family event that threw us all into therapy and then that event actually rided itself a few months later I had a bike accident and then by Christmas the next year I had really very little capacity to create what I always loved doing at Christmas which was it felt kind of magical to be very intentional about.
26:26
[SPEAKER_00]: not a volume of gifts, but specific gifts on out gifts, and my text to the family was, I want to wrap something for you that matters, and so if you'll tell me one or two things, I'm going to try to get one.
26:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, I got, I have no guess, the tank.
26:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And the majority of them said, can we continue therapy?
26:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, since then, my gift to my children has been, they said, oh, we quit talking about that thing a long time ago.
26:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Every one of us just tried to understand ourselves, understand relationships, understand how we operate in the world.
27:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And that has been stilled all of us with a respect for each other and everybody's individual journey because everybody sees life through a different lens.
27:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Your birth order, who your parents were in those growing up years for you, were a blended family.
27:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's just like, well, no one is reading from the same script.
27:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, thank you.
27:24
[SPEAKER_00]: However, this looks, we're all in the same room, and we are all having a different experience.
27:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think just to look at it that way is free.
27:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And brave, because I think about we're early in parenthood, but we each have parents and like, becoming a parent makes you view your own parents so differently.
27:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I think in my experience, it's increased my compassion and understanding of, oh yeah, they were just people that didn't know what they were doing, but had to act like they knew what they were doing.
27:53
[SPEAKER_02]: us and every decision we make for our kids.
27:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, I don't know if this is the right one and it might even if she's upset what's going to be the better life-building skill and then to be adults and be open and willing to have those conversations and try not to be defensive or take it personally and that's a really brave and beautiful thing to do.
28:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think about, you know, to connect to your
28:21
[SPEAKER_02]: career and your creativity your CD was the first CD that I bought with my own what I'm quote own money I think it was like it was my parents money obviously but I think I was like first grade or kindergarten or something that you were wearing that velvet like your early 90s.
28:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah baby baby I loved that record and it was so special because it was my first CD and the power that song I think.
28:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And I didn't grow up in the Christian community so I didn't know you as a contemporary Christian singer, but as I've learned more about you over the years, the word brave just keeps coming up because you've also faced what I see as unfair, ridicule criticism, expectations, and certain spheres.
29:06
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm curious if you can speak to the bravery that I see as an observer of just continually showing
29:16
[SPEAKER_02]: fully as you and doing what you know, staying in line with your integrity, your beliefs, with an open heart as a full human, and continuing to create from that place, as well as continuing as a business commercial endeavor.
29:31
[SPEAKER_02]: When it's not always the kindest or more holistic viewing or reception.
29:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know why this memory came to mind.
29:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I was listening to everything you were saying, but when you said brave, I remembered being in a workout room in Washington, DC, and I was part of a huge entourage with a symphony celebrating the Fourth of July.
29:57
[SPEAKER_00]: on the lawn of, I guess it was the capital and this was the year that Ray Charles had died.
30:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd have to look that up on my phone, but Sicily Tyson was going to do a tribute to Ray Charles.
30:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I found myself in the workout room and Sicily Tyson came in.
30:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, the first mini-series ever was called Roots, else before you were born.
30:20
[SPEAKER_00]: But Sysley Tyson was a predominant character in that I grew up with her acting career.
30:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I would know her anywhere.
30:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, it's just the two of us in there.
30:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I was just so curious about her life.
30:35
[SPEAKER_00]: So many things, and I'm just having to get my guts up.
30:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And finally, just the two of us in there, the TV's not on, and I said, let's tie some, would you mind if I ask you a question or two?
30:46
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we're both on treadmills.
30:48
[SPEAKER_00]: She was hesitant for a minute, she said, yes, and I went, okay.
30:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
30:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I mean, it was just so, and what I thought is, it takes bravery to put yourself out anywhere in a song, in a conversation, that involves other people, but you have to be willing to get whatever response you get.
31:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought, I'm so glad I asked her.
31:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so, she said no, because we just both continued what we were doing and how does this take several deep breaths?
31:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, I mean, I guess later that night, she knew I was part of the entourage that was on the stage, but none of that mattered.
31:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I asked and she said no.
31:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if I get criticism for a decision I've made or something public, I just go, well, they would do something different had they been in my shoes, but they weren't in my shoes.
31:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I was in my shoes.
31:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, I just feel very fluid in all that, whatever it is.
31:52
[SPEAKER_00]: The framework of our lives is as children truly established by the family into which we are born.
32:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Norms are established for us.
32:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just the norm for your family.
32:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's partly getting out of the world you go.
32:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody sat around on our dinner table, whatever's normal to me is not normal to anybody else.
32:12
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, just kind of realizing how unique everybody is.
32:15
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I realized especially yesterday because I'm asked about criticism all the time and I guess I've got my fear amount.
32:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not curious about it so I don't go down rabbit holes when it used to be rag magazines.
32:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I never bought one.
32:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why I do not have a natural curiosity to pursue that, but the family I grew up in, my father was a radiation oncologist and he helped start Tennessee oncology.
32:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it was whole life he was dealing with people battling cancer.
32:44
[SPEAKER_00]: He would always say to me, don't use the phrase someone's dying of cancer.
32:48
[SPEAKER_00]: He said someone's living with cancer because we all live with all kinds of things.
32:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And somebody can actually live with cancer for a long time.
32:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And he would say, in my lifetime, the curate for early detection has gone from 5% to 95%.
32:59
[SPEAKER_00]: The way he framed things.
33:05
[SPEAKER_00]: was he was not a big talker, but I watched that framing of really weighty matters.
33:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I watched that from the time I was a little girl.
33:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And that coupled with, I never heard my father say one negative thing about another human being.
33:21
[SPEAKER_00]: My parents did not sit across the dinner table, and I don't know another phrase to use, but talk shit, I can tell somebody else, or can you believe they
33:34
[SPEAKER_00]: whatever that built or didn't build in me kind of the way I have always felt about my own energy and resources is everything takes energy.
33:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It actually takes energy to grind your teeth, take energy to be judgmental about what somebody else is doing.
33:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And my feelings always been, look, I barely have energy to get through my day.
33:56
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and so I remember when I hosted my niece's wedding to her wife and Franklin Graham said something critical about that and his interpretation of scripture and all that.
34:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm rehearsing that.
34:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't even think about my father, but I just went, he's doing good work in the world.
34:18
[SPEAKER_00]: We see this differently.
34:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And I called my business manager and I
34:24
[SPEAKER_00]: because he would have made a different choice and my manager and my booking agent came back to me and said, okay, we just made a difference.
34:35
[SPEAKER_00]: But to me, I'm not saying any of that except for to say, we all have the freedom to respond to anything.
34:43
[SPEAKER_00]: That is our freedom.
34:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I can respond anywhere I want to what's coming at me.
34:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Victor Frankle, concentration camp survivor,
34:53
[SPEAKER_00]: who is in recovery and now she's a therapist and gosh, she's so great.
34:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And she said, you've got to have this quote visible every day.
35:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And these are Victor Frankl's words between the stimulus and the response, there's a space and in that space lies our freedom and our power.
35:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that every day, in a vacuum, you think the perfect version of a day would be to use your freedom and power in a way that you would become the person you want to be.
35:20
[SPEAKER_00]: But then life every day presents us with opportunities to use our freedom in our power.
35:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, I'm as rag-legged as the next person.
35:29
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't anymore look at other people to change the world, I just go.
35:33
[SPEAKER_00]: We all have a lot of agency.
35:37
[SPEAKER_00]: over the world we live in, and anyway.
35:40
[SPEAKER_00]: That's feeling like the grandmother, who won't get that far from me.
35:46
[SPEAKER_02]: No, we're like, also hanging on everywhere.
35:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we're right here with you.
35:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I can't tell you something because I was told that I was going to be asked about the 22 hours.
35:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't want our time to run out.
35:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
35:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to tell you something that has changed my life.
36:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So last September 10th, I was on a walk with a fellow bandmate, Jean Miller, great singer, great guitar player, and we were in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
36:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, let's just get out, let's move our bodies.
36:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I've never been able to sing like I could when I was younger and it's been frustrating, but after that bike accident, the trauma that happened to my body caused a rapid growth of our pre-existing cyst.
36:26
[SPEAKER_00]: But all that to say, I wound up having throat surgery, which is the hardest thing I've ever done, and it was a long surgery, and they actually took out a growth in my throat that never would have been discovered without that bike wreck.
36:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And afterwards, Dr. Jim Netterval came in and he said, there's nothing wrong with your vocal cords.
36:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I took out something the size of a quail egg.
36:46
[SPEAKER_00]: There was infection.
36:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I had to take out part of a bone.
36:49
[SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing wrong with your voice, and you're going to have to learn it all over again.
36:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Now's light.
36:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I'm a kind of good news bad news and so not even a year ago, but September 10th, Gene and I took a walk and he said, take off your shoes.
37:03
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to stand in the grass and I want to show you there's so many of these different movements and he was showing me all these Tai Chi movements and I couldn't stop smiling and I said, this isn't even exercise.
37:13
[SPEAKER_00]: This is just fun.
37:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I bet he put us through 15, 20 movements, and I walked back to my hotel room.
37:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, I have always been compelled to be in good shape because my life is on a stage.
37:20
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I was making videos six weeks after the birth of my third child.
37:22
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just like this.
37:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
37:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I've always ridden bikes, sometimes 25, 30 miles before a show.
37:39
[SPEAKER_00]: My latest craze was swimming, and I'd swim for a couple of miles on a showday, but so much, and I just went, is health only possible if you have membership to a YMCA, or a piece of great exercise equipment?
37:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what if the best things in life were accessible to everybody?
37:56
[SPEAKER_00]: But you had to put in the time.
37:58
[SPEAKER_00]: because you think sunshine, relationship, even sexual pleasure.
38:03
[SPEAKER_00]: If you are willing to put in the time to win the trust of someone, to build love, to create intimacy, everything is free, but it's not without cost.
38:14
[SPEAKER_00]: the sun's always shining, but you actually have to go out in it.
38:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just looked at health differently, and I thought, could somebody in a prison cell be in good health?
38:24
[SPEAKER_00]: If they just took the time to take care of themselves, and so all in out of sales, I felt led by my curiosity, and I went, what if I picked seven of these movements?
38:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And I tried them a hundred times a day for a hundred days.
38:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I wonder if I would be healthy.
38:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that enough?
38:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And like, even the word enough was kind of made me lightheaded because there are nothings enough.
38:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I picked the seven exercises, but they didn't even feel like exercise.
38:49
[SPEAKER_00]: They felt like movements and the first day I couldn't do them all in a row.
38:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And the second day I split them up into two halves and it was still too much.
38:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the end of the week, I was doing 25 before I first cup of coffee, 25 before I laid my head on the pillow.
39:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And then two times during the day.
39:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't call it movements or exercise, I called it child's play because I couldn't help a smile.
39:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to tell you this when it's like the 22 hours because that experience of child's play for me.
39:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And doing it four times a day changed my life for one thing, I got my balance back.
39:24
[SPEAKER_00]: That was three and a half years after something that I thought I will never be able to wear shields again, I'll never be able to ride a bike again, two months ago I got back on a bike.
39:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean I was talking about Charles play that for somebody who's ADD like me about a task in front of me that I felt overwhelmed with.
39:42
[SPEAKER_00]: If I would just have to take eight minutes and do Charles play, it put my head and rhythm with my body.
39:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I was like, oh, just I'll give it ten minutes.
39:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll just do 10 minutes of cleanup for that thing.
39:54
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was like self-regulation.
39:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And if I were tired and had to go do something like I've been a walk into a meet and greet, or I have to.
40:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I was part of an American Red Cross fashion show.
40:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that was in January.
40:08
[SPEAKER_00]: We were having an ice storm in New York.
40:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I get there and I go, I got to walk a runway.
40:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh.
40:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And I...
40:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was so nervous in my dressing room.
40:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And through dress rehearsal, the actress next to me said, your face looks like I feel on the inside.
40:23
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, God.
40:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And instead, I just went, I'm going to get out of my head.
40:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And I took eight minutes.
40:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I did child's play in the bathroom.
40:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just walked out there and just showed up and acted silly.
40:35
[SPEAKER_00]: But it wasn't anything I practiced.
40:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't even know what to call it, except I got out of my head.
40:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I share it all the time and I'll tell somebody, hey, I know you're on meds right now, but you might try this, it's true help to me.
40:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's interesting now that practice has changed my life.
40:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the biggest thing when I started writing again, my core had returned and you can't sing without a sturdy core.
41:03
[SPEAKER_00]: All I did was last September 10th, I just felt compelled by curiosity.
41:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why I even did it.
41:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, what if I did this one thing differently?
41:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's changed my life.
41:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can't imagine ever not doing it.
41:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It makes me want to say to every person, if something occurs to you, listen to your gut and do it.
41:28
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't know the adventure that awaits.
41:30
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't wait for anybody else's input, but I don't know.
41:33
[SPEAKER_00]: It just requires at least a minute to listen to your gut.
41:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
41:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you're a talkstress.
41:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Even with two witnesses while you're sitting on the toilet.
41:46
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know how it works.
41:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Do some arm movement.
41:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think about when Henry's throwing food, if it's just the two of us, I'm not distracted with other stuff.
41:55
[SPEAKER_02]: All like, trying to get his attention, and like, I'll do ballerina dance moves, and he thinks it's so hilarious.
42:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, oh, it's actually, feels really good trying to do like a pirouette, or a leap like that.
42:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I wouldn't typically be doing this but I love all of that and I also am like maybe we need an Amy Grant body movement YouTube series.
42:19
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so funny because an old friend of mine is like, monetized this.
42:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, no, that I think means to be a monetized person.
42:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I know well.
42:27
[SPEAKER_00]: It's funny because a friend of mine is a pastor.
42:30
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a woman.
42:31
[SPEAKER_00]: She's a pastor in South Nashville.
42:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And through a set of circumstances, he's a little bit older than I am.
42:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And she became legal guardian for her two-year-old son.
42:42
[SPEAKER_00]: She was walking with a cane and I said, I'm just gonna send you this child's play that has really helped me.
42:48
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to do it like I'm doing it, do what matters to you.
42:51
[SPEAKER_00]: But because I recorded it for her, I shared that with so many people.
42:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I never would have filmed it except for, I have so much respect for this woman, and she's got...
43:02
[SPEAKER_00]: a lot on her plate.
43:03
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm so intrigued and using your word curious about habits like that.
43:07
[SPEAKER_03]: When you make just one tiny shift in how that radiates, then through your whole being and your whole life and your whole existence, just because you chose to do this child's play, like, intentionally four times a day and it's now radiated into this whole other blossoming of this.
43:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
43:23
[SPEAKER_03]: It's such an amazing part of life.
43:24
[SPEAKER_03]: We like to wrap our conversations up the same way.
43:27
[SPEAKER_03]: When you've given us so much wisdom, but it's kind of a choose your own adventurer.
43:32
[SPEAKER_03]: There's an either or.
43:33
[SPEAKER_03]: One is something that someone has told you or something that you've read or heard along the way of saying a quote that continues to resonate with you and keep you inspired and fill your cup.
43:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Or conversely, it could be something that you wish you knew when you were just starting out to build a career on your creativity.
43:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I would have to think about that second one longer.
43:54
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a layered response because, I mean, there's things I wish I had known then.
43:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not even sure what all those things would be.
44:02
[SPEAKER_00]: But I guess my response to that is I just have to trust that I was right on time at every stage in my immaturity, in my whatever, like at every point you're sort of right on time in your life, or what you're going through at the time.
44:19
[SPEAKER_00]: and that's a different place at 65 than it was 40 years ago.
44:22
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a long, long, so just just the right on time.
44:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And also, I mean, that Victor Frankle.
44:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I love that.
44:30
[SPEAKER_00]: That has been a game changer.
44:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was, it was, it was, you have to given to me in a collage, but that's affected my life.
44:37
[SPEAKER_02]: I just heard the writer Suleka Joude, she shared that quote as well, and it struck me because I feel like one of my personal challenges is not being so emotional.
44:47
[SPEAKER_02]: When we react to that space, I'm just circling back to when you first shared it, and you were kind of response that you were sharing to the world around you and criticism in different ways is that you try to meet it with love by example, that we all have our different
45:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And what I was hearing is that your intention is to try to just meet it with love.
45:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
45:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I was in my late teens, and I was traveling with my brother and law, who's my manager, so it's just me and a guitar.
45:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's so simple.
45:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I was playing high school, somebody had said something ugly about me, and it hurt my feelings.
45:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember I told Dan Harrell, who was my manager for years.
45:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And Dan said, Amy, don't waste time defending yourself.
45:37
[SPEAKER_00]: There's always a little truth in every lie.
45:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, just learn.
45:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think anybody's opinion about how you may or may not have navigated to situation, even if you disagree with them.
45:48
[SPEAKER_00]: There's probably some
45:54
[SPEAKER_00]: and just can't go with you.
45:55
[SPEAKER_00]: We're all life's a steep learning curve for everybody.
45:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Definitely.
46:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, thank you so much.
46:01
[SPEAKER_02]: This was such a very me a dream come true conversation.
46:05
[SPEAKER_02]: So we really appreciate you spending an hour with us.
46:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm picturing your little six-year-old self.
46:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
46:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
46:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I bet my parents still have that jewel-case CD, because it was very important to me.
46:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Mm-hmm.
46:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, thank you.
46:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much for sharing your experience and your wisdom.
46:26
[SPEAKER_00]: My part is for the conversation.
46:31
[SPEAKER_03]: We know your time is valuable and we're grateful you chose to spend this hour with us.
46:35
[SPEAKER_01]: If this conversation resonated with you, know that it is just one of many.
46:39
[SPEAKER_01]: We have an archive of over 140 conversations.
46:41
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46:56
[SPEAKER_03]: This shows produced by me, Mary Shaffer-based, with help from a Kayla and all the music he hears written, performed and produced by me as well.
47:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Our show is edited and mixed by Leeland Holden at Pod Punch, and we are proud members of the Bluegrass situation podcast network.
47:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for being here.
47:12
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll see you next time.