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Welcome to the Fire Inside Her. A brave space to share stories of navigating life transitions with authenticity. Using our inner fire to light the way and self care as our loyal travel companion. I'm your host, Diane Schroeder, and I'm so grateful you are here. Hello, friend. Can you remember what 17 felt like for you? Most likely, you were in high school. Maybe you were getting ready to take a gap year to travel the world after high school, or preparing to go to college, or perhaps you were already working. I graduated high school at 17, and I was ready to conquer the world, become a firefighter, and move out of my parents' house.

It was a blessing to have support for grandma, but that isn't always the case. My guest this week, Debbie Wise, was 17 when she became the primary caregiver for her father after he suffered a stroke. And that began her decades long journey of caring for the most important people in her life, including her son and her husband. Debbie is a resilient badass. She is courageous and a beautiful soul, who exemplifies resilience, growth, and after experiencing multiple life altering challenges. Her light still shines bright. She has learned to use the fire inside her to chase her dreams, write books, and demonstrate that you can create a beautiful life, and navigate the bumps in the road using what she calls the sprinkle effect. And one more thing.

This podcast is gonna take a little sabbatical. I'm not going anywhere, and I would love to stay connected through my newsletter. So head on over to the fire inside her dotcom/newsletter to be sure you don't miss a thing.

Oh, Diane, thank you so much for having me on the show. My story is that I have been a caregiver, a family caregiver for over 40 years. It started when I was 17, and my father who just turned 46 had a massive stroke and survived. But he did become permanently disabled, and my parents soon divorced. And I have one younger brother. He's 4 years younger. So I was 17, he was 13. And I became my father's caregiver for the next 30 years.

And so he lived from about 6 months to the day of that diagnosis, and the entire 6 months I was home taking care of him. It was a very, very rough journey, not just the physical, but, honestly, the mental illness side that really kicked in the last 6 months of his life was tough. My son is now 23, and it is still evolving. I think you're always right. You're always a mom, a parent. That never ends until the day we die. But, again, in his case, I still got a lot more parenting left to do.

Yeah. He's lucky to have a mom that is willing to do that, because not all children are lucky to have that with their parents.

And, you know, I think about that so often. I think about that not just in my son's case, but in my dad's case, in my husband's case, when you see just how much you have to advocate for that person that you're caring for, whether it's in the hospital, whether it's in a nursing home, because my dad spent the last 3 years of his life in a nursing home. And especially there, I thought to myself, those people who don't have anyone that are coming in on a regular basis. I mean, it's just my mother-in-law was in a nursing home in Las Vegas. We were in New Jersey. We weren't there. Mhmm. We didn't have that connection.

It makes all the difference.

Oh, yeah. Especially the mental illness system. That's a nightmare and a mess and needs a lot of help.

Absolutely. Do you think it's getting better? Because if your son's 23 now, 21 years ago, it looked really different for kids on on the autism spectrum and with mental health challenges with your husband. Have you noticed an improvement in the system, or is it still pretty has a long way to go?

So back then, I didn't really have much experience in the mental illness sphere. It wasn't until my son was a teenager that I started to get unfortunately too familiar with that. Mhmm. But certainly, in the field of autism, when I think of where we started when he was 2 and how the only guidance was, I remember when he was originally diagnosed with PDD NOS, which is something they don't use anymore in the new whatever book. But it stands for pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified. So if you're not classic autism, that's what it's like a catchall. And the doctor's like, yeah. He has PDD NOS, which I didn't know what that stood for at the time, and he literally handed us a pamphlet.

Wow. Good luck.

Yeah. Be on your way. It's hard. I don't have time for this next patient. Oh, man. So how did you rely on the kind of caregiving that you had learned over the years with your dad? And just is it a natural? Is it I'm curious because I think of not just my mom, but my mother-in-law and several women that I know just naturally fell into this caregiving. And I don't know if "naturally" is even the right word because I don't know that they thought they had a choice. How did you transition from taking care of everyone else, I'll get to my question, to taking care of yourself?

There we go. Well, one, I would say, I would never consider myself a natural caregiver. I'm shocked that this is who I wound up to be. But I think when it started with my dad, I had a really special relationship with my father. I was daddy's little girl. Like, I was a daddy fan all the way. And as a young girl, I had always been judged because I had had a lifelong weight problem. It started literally from the minute that I was born.

And so I was always teased. I was bullied. I had adults saying to me, oh, she has such a pretty face. Like, yeah, finish it. It's such a shame that her body looks like that. You know? And so I was always hiding. And I wouldn't go to a counter and, like, order a drink or ask a question. Like, no.

And so I think really that when my father got sick, it was different because now I could speak on his behalf. It was like I didn't have a choice. Even though I still didn't wanna speak, I did because I didn't wanna let my dad down. And so looking back, I got tremendous benefit and growth from being his caregiver at such an early age. But who knows if I was a natural caregiver? You know, I think I have in my mind, like, I am not what I would consider domestic. And I know one does not have really nothing to do with the other, but that's kind of where my mind goes. Because, like, I'm not the person who's great.

Like, if my kids got sick, it was always my husband who was much better at that than me. You know, my husband did the cooking. My husband did the food shopping. Like, that all wasn't me, but they're not the same thing.

Yes. You are absolutely doing exactly what you are meant to do because I think the universe works in mysterious ways that way. It's okay not to fit in the box that society tells you to fit in yet, you know, handling a lot of responsibility for your entire life. And then I'm gonna take the leap and guess that to really kinda heal is when you started to write it all out and process it. Or did the book come during kind of your caregiving your first book?

So no. Actually, my first book came a decade after the healing kind of started. Around the age of 50, I didn't realize. What happened was my I love my birthday, obviously, candy corn, October. Who wouldn't love their birthday? And my friends insisted when I turned 50 that we go away. Now my dad had passed away a year and a half before, so I no longer had that caregiving. My husband was still semi functioning, and I was petrified to lead them because how would they survive without me? But my friends convinced me, and we went away, and we had the most amazing time. And there I realized that that was the first time in my adult life that I didn't have anyone else to worry about except for myself.

And, you know, we had some deep conversations about what are your dreams? And I'm thinking, dreams? I don't have any dreams. I like them just trying to get through every day. And then there was something about the number 50. Turning 50 for me really made me take a hard look at my life and not that I would ever change the fact that I had cared for my family members. But it made me say that I don't wanna fast forward to the end of my life because it seemed like the first fifty went so quickly.

Mhmm.

And look back and regret that I coulda, shoulda, woulda, even though I didn't have any of those things. Like, I never wanted to be an author. I didn't have any dreams. I didn't know what that was, but I just felt like I never explored anything. Like, I don't know. I had 2 careers, and I stuck with them for a long time, and I did these things. I don't know. I think it was it scared me.

And I realized that none of this is gonna change in my future unless I made a change. And so I slowly started making small changes that began to add up and kinda catch steam.

Wow. I love that. I'm closer to 50 than further away as I creep up on. And what you say really resonates of, you know, like, man, it went by fast. I know I'm on the downhill slide. How can I find that meaning? No one's gonna do it but me.

It doesn't have to be 50.

For me, it was 50. It doesn't have to be the number 50. Like, for everybody, it could be something different. Hopefully, it's younger than 50. Right.

Right. What were the first steps that you took? Because I'm thinking for my listeners that, like, there's no way. I'm in I'm in this treadmill called life, and I don't know how to step off it to take myself. So what would you say would be, like, a simple a couple simple action steps of just to restart in, but to put yourself for yourself?

I think in my case, what I decided to do was let's face it. I mean, even though we don't wanna maybe admit it out loud, we all know the area of our life that needs the most work. And for me, it was my weight. At that point at 50, I was at least a £100 overweight. Mhmm. And it felt different than the 50 years of losing and gaining in the past because now it wasn't just about, oh, how I look and how clothes fit and all of that. It was more about, like, oh, I'm 50. And if I don't start taking care of my health luckily, I didn't have health problems.

But, you know, I wanna be there to see my kids grow up and hopefully my grandchildren and and all of that. And so I approached the idea of weight loss differently than I ever had because I was like, well, you've done it the same way your whole life, and clearly that's not working for you. So what can I do differently? And what I decided to do and I didn't realize that it had a name. I didn't know I don't know where I got the idea from, but I kind of changed my mindset. Not kind of. I did change my mindset.

Mhmm.

Because I knew I had to do something differently. And I realized that it's not a diet. It's a lifestyle, which is such a buzzword, which I can't stand. But it it it wasn't a buzzword then. And it was really about that because when I thought diet, you're on, you're off. You're good, you're bad. And there's no going off. Like, whatever this is I'm going on, I'm not going off.

And so that mindset shift made all the difference because that meant no more thinking, oh my gosh. If I don't lose £25 in 3 months or by the summer or by my birthday, it's a fail. I know might as well just digit and go back to the way I was doing it before.

Yep.

So I said, nope. I ice cream, pizza, and bagels are my favorite food. They are not forbidden foods. That doesn't mean, you know, I can't

eat them. I can't eat these other things. It's just I have to be normal.

Mhmm.

And I kind of started with just saying, for me, weight watchers, I've done every diet, but weight watchers have been nothing I've been more successful. But if I suddenly don't go back to weight watchers, I'm not going to count points. I'm not going to exercise. I'm going to worry about the scale. I'm just going every week because this isn't when I went in person. I'm just going to go every week. That's it. That's my run goal.

And that's what I did for about 2 months. And I didn't go to Zenbook. I just went. And we tweak, if you're ever on that, you leave with a little idea in your head. And after the 2 months where I was, like, comfortable and going every week, I added a little something else and a little something else. So probably about 3 years it took me to lose about £90.

And that was maybe 8 years ago, and it's the first time in my life that I've ever maintained it. I've actually lost a little more now than that 90. But in there, I did gain back 10. Oh, I gained back close to 15. But that's I stopped it there. So this is the first time in my life that I've ever been able to do that. Mhmm. And once I saw how those small changes were working there, you know, you start to kind of, like, gain a little bit of momentum.

So it doesn't have to be weight loss. It can be anything. The next thing I went to was my money issue. Mhmm. You know? So it can be any area of your life. It's just the idea of literally starting so small that you think, what good is this gonna do?

Yes. I love to hear you say that because I agree with that. I subscribe to that. I preach that as well. But it has to be tiny sustainable habits because this all or nothing mentality, we just set ourselves up for failure. And if you can just do 20 minutes, 3 to 5 days a week instead of 2 hours, you know, every day, that 20 minutes adds up or whatever it is. If it's just, you know, congratulations. That is a Thanks.

Huge accomplishment. So then you wrote your first book.

It was a whole little journey, but finally, I got to a certain point where I it hadn't been in my head and in other people's head telling me, this is what you need to do. This is what you need to do. I'm like, I don't write books. I don't know anything about writing. I like to read books, but I don't write them. I'm like a math girl, not a word girl.

Uh-huh.

And one day, I was listening to a podcast. This writing thing, you know, people were putting in my head, so it was on my mind. And I was listening to a podcast that I don't usually listen to, and she was interviewing a woman who helped first time authors get their stories out there. And I was like, seriously? Clearly, this woman is there speaking to me, so I better contact her. And I did, and I met her, and I really connected with her. And she was about to launch a 12 week course helping first time authors. And I was considering it, then my husband was diagnosed with the blood cancer. And I had been seeing a therapist at the time, and I said, I can't even believe that there's still a little something in the back of my mind that still wants to take this course after Gary, my husband, was just diagnosed.

It's ridiculous, and I know it's not the right time. And she said, no. I disagree with you. I think it's the perfect time because you're gonna need something completely separate from what is going on in the rest of your life to take you away from that. And I said to her, well, kind of like, you know, that same all or nothing perfectionist thing. Well, what happens if I can't show up every week because of what's going on? Or what if there's homework and I don't have it? And she said, who cares? I thought, oh, yeah. I guess so. Who cares?

Uh-huh.

And I signed up, and I loved it. I didn't love the writing. I couldn't figure it out. It was a real struggle. Once I had a much better framework of what I was gonna do, then it did get a lot easier. And it wasn't until I was probably at least a third of the way in that I actually thought I might do it. I really still was not thinking it was gonna happen.

Mhmm.

And once I had written, like, what I considered to be a lot, it wound up to be an eighth of what the book wound up being. I thought, oh, well, maybe I can. And I didn't have that title yet. It my book was is called On Second Thought, Maybe I Can. And what I did from there was make sure to write almost every day. I did not use the situation as an excuse. So if I got up at 5 o'clock in the morning and wrote at 5:30 before my husband woke up, or if he was in the hospital, I would bring my computer. And when he was sleeping or went for a test, I would write there.

If he was home in the afternoon, I would say, okay. Are you good? Because I'm gonna go upstairs for an hour. Don't bother me unless it's an emergency. That's how I did it. And when he died, I was 3 chapter shy of finishing.

It's crazy. The whole thing is so ridiculous. It's beyond. If you really knew how much, I would never have thought this would have happened to me. With that said, it never would have happened if I hadn't started exploring. I mean, that's really what it comes down to is that I started opening myself up to things that I always said no to. And I know I'm not answering your question, but that's what gave me the title. On second thought, maybe I can.

Because anything that was presented to me, I can't do that. I don't do that. Like I've said before, I'm a numbers girl. Nope. I don't do that. No. I don't cook. I don't knit.

I don't ski. Whatever it is, it was like I always had a reason. But what I realized was if you just kind of, like, wait a minute, a beat, and say, well, on second thought, why not? Why don't I do that? Challenge it a little bit. Challenge that thought. Maybe I can try that. That's where the title came from. So when I wrote the first book, I had to make a conscious decision, I found out. Was the book going to be a memoir? Was it going to be a self help book? So in other words, was I going to be specifically saying, here's what I learned from this.

Here's what you should do. Think about this, which it's not. I decided that it's just gonna really be a bunch of stories about my life that go kind of in order that show a progression that hopefully inspires the reader to realize that regardless of your circumstances, you can always change your life. And so that's what I went with. But then afterwards, it was like, well, well, what'd you do? You know, everyone's like, what'd you do? And so this is where it came from. It's not step by step exactly what I did. But what I realized was just like we talked about before with small little steps, it's all about little sprinkles. And since ice cream is my favorite food with rainbow sprinkles, That's where the title comes from, but it does also lend itself to the fact that if you just sprinkle in some of these things into your life, it will change, and your life will become more colorful and fulfilling.

What a beautiful description. So what are, you know, the small habits identifying, you know, everything that you talked about from, you know, how you start with 1 the one big thing. Right? Eat eat that first, and then you have the confidence to kind of, like, apply it to other areas of your life. What are 3 sprinkles that are your go to favorite, like, fall back to every time you get in that mindset of, no. Not gonna do it. Maybe I can. What are those?

The one that really has been the most life changing is a sprinkle of responsibility, which is for the majority of my life, I had a victim mentality, meaning I felt sorry for myself. Why this happened to me? Why do I have to be fat and all my friends are thin? Why, you know, why do I have to be the caregiver? Why do I have money problems? You know, everything. Like, we all have struggles. Right? And I just saw it as feeling badly for myself. And when I truly discovered that, really, I was not taking responsibility for my actions because I learned about this formula since I am a numbers girl. It comes from the success principles, the book of success principles. It's e plus r equals o, which stands for event plus response equals outcome. So the event, the circumstance, the challenge, you add that with how you respond to that challenge, and that equals the outcome.

But I was leaving out the r. I was leaving out that I had anything to do with that. That happened to me. I can't do anything about it, so here's the outcome. But the minute that I realized, oh, that's not so, You can. And for a minute, I looked back and thought, oh, gosh. It's been all my fault. But instead of looking at it like that, it's empowering because it's like, oh, well, that means I control what happens from here.

Yes.

And it becomes empowering at any time. Now I am so zoned into that and, you know, my kids don't like it because now I'm like, today, my son, my 23 year old said, well, it's not my fault. It's his fault. And I said, Sam, take responsibility. Mhmm. And like I said, I look at it as something empowering. So that's always a go to, especially when you find yourself feeling sorry for yourself or pointing fingers at other people or comparison, you know, the comparison trap that we all and I still am in, cut it out.

All the time. Yes.

Cut it out. The second I would say is mindset because, obviously, I just told you about that. Another revelation for me was that my thoughts aren't true. Who knew? I just figured if I thought it, it must be so. Yep. I mean, I never thought I never thought about my thoughts, which sounds silly, but think about it, and it makes sense.

Yep. Yep. Thoughts are not facts. You know,

you don't stop to examine it. Like, wait a second. And so, yes, I still go down. I just did it yesterday. Some I got some really bad news at work, and I was like, oh my gosh. I can't believe you know, I started spiraling. And then I had a friend who I got on the phone with who is kind of a coworker, does the same thing, and she's like, I'm freaking out. I'm freaking out.

And by the end of the night, I was able to say, okay. You had your fun. It's over. Now it's about this is the circumstance. What are you gonna do about it? So that wouldn't have happened before. I would have walked around in the pity party sharing with everyone how awful this is.

Mhmm.

Thank you.

Yep. And the 3rd, I think, would probably be action because you can plan, you can read, you can listen to podcasts. Right? I mean, we've all done it. And when I wrote the book, a woman, an acquaintance in an exercise class, she said, oh my goodness. That's so great. And she was telling me about some project of hers that she started 3 years before. And she said, I don't know what happened to it. It's just kinda still sitting on a shelf.

Mhmm.

You know? And the fact that you went and did this. And it's so easy to put something aside or not take action because we're scared. And fear has stopped me. Oh my goodness.

Mhmm.

My whole life up until, you know, recently.

Mhmm.

It's so powerful. I think confidence people mistake get it backwards. They think they have to have confidence before they take action, when in fact, you have to take action to get the confidence.

That just gave me the chills.

I get paralyzed by fear the same, and I'm sure people listening are like, oh, I could never do that because, you know, x, y, and z. But just those three simple sprinkles, be responsible, look at your mindset, and take action can make huge seismic shifts in your life.

Yeah. My life looks completely different than it did before I started sprinkling stuff in.

I love that, Debbie. Thank you

for sharing that with me. My last question as we kind of wrap this conversation up, and I will put all of your links to your socials, your website, you know, your books, and your launch day, and all that stuff. I would love to know what is your go to self care modality? What is the one thing you do to take care of yourself that is just like, for me, it's a bath. Every Sunday afternoon, my boys go away to watch football, and I just pamper myself for a few hours. Do you have something like that?

I have a lot of things like that. Even better. I would say meditating. And I want you to know, the first time I tried meditation, it was literally for 2 minutes, and I thought I would die. I would rather have died than had died through that whole 2 minutes. It was horrible. And to think that now, I'm like, oh, I can only do it for 15 minutes. That's not long enough.

Oh, I want it is amazing. And the days that I don't get to meditate in the morning, because for some reason and this is me. I could change this. It's like a morning thing. I don't dig like the end of night, like, night time. I don't know why. I like it first thing in the morning. And if I yearn for it, I really do.

And it is the time where I do catch myself. And by the way, my mind is racing. All those thoughts are going through my head, you know, when I realized that it's not about, like, not thinking at all. But it is really where you start to train your mind. And I think that that's why I like it so much. And I like now that it could be 5 minutes where I'm like, oh, boy. You just went down a rabbit hole and reel it back in there, Deb. But that's why it's a practice.

Absolutely. And that another great tool in the self care arsenal is meditation. And I'm the same way in the morning. If I don't get to it first thing in the morning, it's like a it just sets the day up for success. And to try to do it at night, I mean, my brain say will spin early in the morning. At night, there's no way I can, like, reel it in to focus and slow down.

I'm done by then. Yeah.

I'm I'm making grocery lists. I'm making plans for, you know, things 6 months down the road. The last thing my brain is like, nope. Not today. Not tonight. We cannot focus.

Definitely.

Well, thank you so much for sharing all your wisdom, and I just I have so much respect for your journey and your message that it's never too late to choose yourself, and it's never too late to rise above as you the that victim, you know, that things may happen to you, but you have a lot more power to control your response. It's really one of the few things in life you can control. Exactly. Exactly true. Wonderful. Debbie, thank you so much. And, everyone, check out all of her information and the sprinkle effect, which I just love the title of that.

Thank you so much, Diane. It's been great.

Thank you for joining us. I am grateful you are here. If you're curious about how speaking to ourselves is a form of self-care, head over to the fire inside her.com forward/audio for a free recording on self-care. Until next time. Be safe, be kind, and be authentically you.