Podcast Episode - Starting The Year With Grace

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For the first episode of 2022, we’ll hear about correcting unspoken hurts from our past and how we can be in the right place to start a new year.

Podcast Transcript:

January 2, 2022. Hi everybody Robert here, today KT and I will be serving as a vocal conduit to Suze and I'll start out by reading you a message from Suze. It is more important than ever that we start this year off with facing personal truths before we face financial ones. So many times I have asked far more of you than to just make the correct or wisest financial moves. Even more importantly, I have asked all of you to make this world a better place. To take a look into your own life and do what you can to correct the unspoken truths of the past. What can you do to always be kind, compassionate, honest, caring, and loving? I've always said that the most compassionate, kind, caring, and loving act in the cycle of life is to take care of our parents as they age. I really believe it is our duty. And when we live life being there when duty calls, grace, which cannot be bought or sold at any price, truly shows up in our very own lives. To start this year off, I want to share an email that I received which is filled with the spirit of grace and how you may want to begin your new year ahead. I hope it touches your heart as much as it touched mine. So here is KT to read the email I want you to hear. Dear Suze, I'm just turning 70 for widowed since February 2020 after my husband's long painful illness. We were always a team as far as our finances and investments were concerned. But after he passed, I realized I had to really get into the weeds. Today I am super confident and I feel secure. One of the books I'm listening to right now on my phone is your Ultimate Retirement Guide for 50 plus. I'm on chapter two and you're talking about family. You related the story of your mom who lived to 97 as did mine. The responsibility for whose care you took on for about 10 years. You mentioned the responsibility fell to you even though you have two older and capable brothers. At the end of that vignette, I put my phone aside and I thought about my own parents’ later years and my much younger sister Barbara. In 2011 both my mom and dad were 92 in April of that year while they were wintering in cocoa beach Florida and preparing to drive back to Fort Wayne Indiana, my mom fell and broke her hip. Thank God both myself and my husband who were there helping them to pack up were able to stay for several more weeks. We stayed with dad while mom struggled to recover in June of 2011. It was going to be their 70th wedding anniversary. Barbie who lived 180 miles away from our parents in Bloomington Indiana planned a huge party because of mom's hip. They no longer could drive back to Indiana. So Barb flew to Florida. She got mom and dad on a flight back to Indianapolis the day before the party and then drove their car back for them overnight. I still don't know the details but miraculously barbie made it all come together for a joyous celebration of more than 100 friends and relatives and of course all their kids. Over the next several years, dad became very ill and passed and then mom in 2016 after suffering a stroke, died at the age of 97. Every time mother or dad needed something during that period of five years, from 2011 to 2016, be it a serious cold a fall another fall, it was Barbie who dropped everything work included and drove to their aid. My siblings and I were always grateful and called her angel and Saint Barbie. In 2014, Barbie arranged for mother to move into a tiny but beautiful apartment in an assisted living residence in blooming tonight. We helped with the move, but it was Barbie who did the heavy lifting Barbie visited her as often as she could and then she took a management position at the facility and saw a mother every day over those years. Barbie never complained not once. Barbie didn't shoulder a specific financial burden during those years, but she was always there when they needed someone. She was there. She gave of her time. God knows her energy and her emotional strength and Suze. After hearing your story, I realized how thoughtless I have been toward the sacrifices made by my sister for the well-being of our parents. Yesterday I sat down and wrote her a long letter of apology and a very large check. She's 58 of all of mother and dad's kids probably has the least saved for her retirement. I hope my contribution can work for her, but she can do whatever she wants with it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Suze for waking me up. I'll be forever grateful, Love Candy. Suze hopes that this podcast has inspired you to take time and to write to those in your life who means something to you, who have touched you in ways that are priceless and hopefully that simple action will complete the cycle of unspoken truths that will finally allow you to be more and in the end have more as well. From Suze's heart to yours, she wants you to know that in silence, that's when the real truth can be heard. All you have to do is listen. Happy New Year everyone.