Interview with my Sister Mary

hey kids so uh my book's finally out today as you've seen and your support is incredible i saw that we were um it was number one i think on amazon and new releases and home improvement so thank you so much uh you know i i don't take that lightly so please know that i appreciate it very much um hopefully you saw me on the today show today uh you know this isn't what i i normally do um you know i'm not wasn't trying to be famous and i'm just doing my best with some of these interviews you know it was a little intimidating going live uh nationwide uh you know so i didn't sleep really well last night but hopefully i was able to convey uh what i think this is all about here the channel you know i i i do want people to feel loved and come in here and learn how to do some stuff more so than you know just showing you how to do stuff i want to walk alongside you and encourage you to be the best you that you can be so uh anyway so again thank you so much for your support i you know i'm humbled by the reception um and of of the book and looking forward to hearing what you think about it you know i did kind of pour my heart into it and um yeah so i'm looking forward to your feedback uh you know um if you've had a chance to read the book um right from the get go um you'll meet my sister mary uh and she's 12 years older than me um just a great woman and a good example and she's got a lot of good um character traits but i picked the one as you'll see in the book and so i thought it would be fun to introduce her to you and kind of get her take on things because again she is 12 years older than me and so by the time our family kind of moved around so when we moved to new orleans she was 12 when i was born and yeah it's just kind of interesting to get her perspective she also dives in a little bit more into the mental health part of it because i one of the things i do want to do with my channel is to make that you know take the stigma away uh of um seeking help if you're struggling uh i want to make sure that you get help and so i'm just trying to be vocal about that as well so mary is in is in laramie wyoming so her uh signal isn't great and so we kind of come in and out and i was going to edit it but i don't think i will i think i'll so i even say i think in the video i'll edit it but i think um you know i want to make sure that you it captures everything that would that happened in the interview uh with her i don't wasn't an interview i guess it was just her night talking and me kind of you know wanting to better understand things as an adult looking back on you know what we went through um i think it's uh good insight and she helped me with some of the specifics in my book because you know i was too young to know exactly what was going on so i i reached out to some of my older siblings to ask them their perspective on things so anyway uh before we do that i do have a dad joke for you uh this is actually an original too so so why was wyoming not invited to the party because it was too square anyway uh here's my interview with mary anyway thank you so much for uh for joining me i thought i thought it might just be kind of interesting mary to hear a little bit of your your input on the book and then also um like i've tried to share too um even in the book you know i didn't the last thing i would want to do is to air dirty laundry or say anything you know about our parents um but obviously since you got to see them um for the first part um maybe you could speak to that a little bit you know i i uh and i've had to piece kind of the story together a little bit based on your guys information because i you know i didn't get a c as much as you saw but i did try to also share you know dad um dad taking us camping and dad taking us fishing and playing football with us you know so obviously things started really well unfortunately um kind of went down a bad path but maybe you could share kind of the time in kansas or you know some of your memories i thought that might be kind of interesting yeah sure um i i think we started as a normal uh 1950s family and dad had a great job at boeing and he met this darling teacher who worked on a uh who grew up on a farm in pretty prairie and in wellington kansas and they met on a blind date with her twin sister and uh and he was the extra date and and it's it's a great story and and you know eight wonderful kids that came out of that union and uh a typical 50s post war you know they wanted uh kids and a little picket fence and to build their homes and build their lives and and you know mom was on the the cusp she was still mothers wearing aprons and donna reed you know and and raising all the kids and and he went to work and kissed her goodbye in the morning and he drove to wichita and uh worked for boeing and was he was you know you think about that in those days uh in a farm country he was an aeronautical engineer that was quite quite dashing and uh brilliant you know days and uh we always held him in high esteem and and the great thing about dad was that he was um he was fun he was fun and he liked to travel and mom was shire you know believe it or not she enjoyed a great joke and she was one of those 12 kids but she was the quiet one of the twins her sister kind of led the chart yeah it is she was the one okay sorry yeah no sorry sorry i'm talking over you i was just going to say from my perspective yeah i i didn't necessarily see that i always thought mom was an extrovert because of yeah some of the experiences that i experienced uh when i was growing up with mom so interesting i think she i think she grew into that she knew she had to she has five boys and three girls i mean really you gotta get a life you know gotta really be keeping up with oop and um and she did and uh she was great really think about twins she's the youngest set of twins in that family of 12. and and her twin ruth was uh the one who was more vocal and the one who designed what clothes they were and if you always look back on this and this is really kind of some great history on her because she was five foot eight and well built when they were sweater girls in the in the um post you know during the war when their brother went off to as a you know a pilot fighter and um and and aunt ruth was shorter and blonde so our mother was tall and and dark-haired and and well-shaped and her twin was half her size with blonde hair but she was the outspoken one who kind of railroaded what they would wear and mom oh i lost her now she's back i lost you i did lose you for a second i'm here and you you froze and then you went away so i'm trying to i can't see you right so maybe you can piece that yeah yeah i'll be able to i can see you you can see me i can't see you right now okay huh okay i can see myself so that's a good thing but uh anyway so yeah you're back um okay okay yeah so aunt ruth little mighty mo small little blonde mighty mo um kind of directed how they did things because mom was the quieter one and so my your our mom is tall and and lean and then um she's wearing little girl frilly dresses that a little blonde would choose and when they were twins they wore exactly the same thing she goes why did i not speak up and so that always kind of plagued her that she couldn't speak up so i think she did that as an adult as she raised her children she taught us to speak up and i know that she wrote a lot about that about wanting us to remember that phrase she always said always paddle your own canoe and different things do you remember that phrase that she used a lot i can't remember the whole thing now but but she had a lot of sayings that she obviously hung around and and told us because i think she grew into the person she wanted to be so so anyway she married this um dynamic boeing engineer and then she wanted to remain on the farm and i think she was torn that way because she was raising children like she always saw that she should she left her teaching job and and raised her children and she was expected to have supper on the table at five o'clock and and um when dad got home and and and men in those days did not necessarily pitch in on helping with kids but dad was great about um taking especially with all of his boys going camping and going on trips and he used to say that his mother uh was the great traveler she would when grandpa would work in the railroad she would take those those kids on trips so dad had it kind of in his blood and mom because she was kind of a home body and quiet she wouldn't go very often so she was torn a little bit that way and and we missed out on her fun personality on those trips because i think she had anxiety about it you know and you had mentioned the other night about um the buying a hat and you mentioned that in your book about that the um the doctor told her to go buy a hat um do you want me to tell a little bit about that if you could yeah your um signal is kind of going in and out but i can still hear you you're freezing a little bit at times but it's okay it's fine and i think what we may end up doing too so just so you know because i only have a free zoom so we might do this until it kicks us off and then we might have to just start over again and then i can piece it all together too because i think it's fascinating i mean even if it doesn't make it my into my channel i think it's nice to have this information regardless so if you don't mind yeah continue she had those she had four and five kids um who were you know six and under she had four five children and she was when she had her fourth child she was feeling very overwhelmed and we look back on it now and we know that um you know that's postpartum depression she also was loaded with kids you know and a husband who was away all day and a husband who was stern he was raised to that women were women they were okay they were to be respected as your mother the mother of your children but you know really that was a different era in the 40s and 50s and and she didn't have that great support system that that men give their wives nowadays i don't think and and um and so she was feeling overwhelmed she had these kids and and she didn't have a support system and he was rather stern with her and mean sometimes when he would come home and i remember she said that she went to the doctor and said i just don't feel good i feel like um i feel overwhelmed i feel sad i feel like i i just can't do all of this and i feel like nobody else is hearing me and i was i mean i heard this from her [Music] in the 80s and i was you know i was really discovering um mental wellness and how to take care of yourself and and i was taking psychology classes and i it was just so there and and um and i said what did you do she said i went to the doctor and i told him i felt this way and he said barbara you just need to just buck up go buy yourself a new hat and you'll feel fine and we never forgot that that's what he told her would be the solution that so then she took it back on herself that it's all about me and so um then i'm the failure here and and i think in your book when you talk about you know how the family kind of dismantled she had those four there was always the four upper ones of us and then the four second half and um i believe she was able to make it through those four older ones and then we would help her pitch in but i believe it was overwhelming i believe she had anxiety that you didn't talk about in the 50s and the 60s you didn't talk that you didn't feel well you didn't talk that you um that i you felt nervous going to a store you didn't talk about the fact that you couldn't handle it all because the other mothers who were handling it all is what she looked at and thought they were handling it all they probably weren't um and so i i believe anxiety got her i believe depression was overwhelming i believe that our mom had to self-medicate in different ways whether it was with food or eventually with some kind of alcohol because i know that there were some years there where dad tried to get her to a doctor and and she was on in those days they put you on just miserable psychotropics you know heavy duty heavy-duty things and and she took it and um and and we kids would look at her and go mom where are you you don't you're not acting like you what are you doing and and all she was trying to do was get a hold a grip on herself you know and um i so i think we were frustrating because we wanted her to be mom and she was feeling good so i don't know i've kind of got maybe gone off on a tangent but they started out normal i like every normal um newlywed wants to have this great family and then the real of life came at them yeah so yeah yeah i i i tried you know and i i compared notes a little bit with you and with rick and to try to because my perspective is a little you know fuzzy because i you know um and that's why i thought since because you're 12 years older than me and so so by the time we moved to new orleans you were already 12 and i think of myself at 12 i can i have a lot of memories of 12. you know i don't have a lot of memories i don't remember new orleans at all um and then we moved up uh in 66 right moved up to seattle in 66. so we're were you seeing mary do you feel like um in my book it accurately represents it i get i guess from from my perspective again trying to piece it together and trying to um fill in the holes the way i've been able to able to get my head around it is um and my heart goes out to mom you know as i um as i rethink it and i kind of live it as an adult and go okay this and i think of it from dad's perspective of having six kids and what am i gonna do you know i got six kids i got to think about i've i there's no work here for me i've got to make a decision and and then also mom thinking she's going to raise us in kansas and the kansas people are so loving you know um every time i go back there you're immediately welcomed in like you're part of this much bigger family even though i don't you know haven't really known them other than visits you know every couple years when we were little um so yeah piecing that together i think it kind of makes a lot of sense and then like you said with anxiety because i've uh you know i've struggled with anxiety myself um and uh you know even today today i think there's still a stigma about um sharing that because it's like i think people think that that's a weakness and i'm trying to actually help that on my channel so that people don't think of it as a weakness and i think on behalf of my mom i think that that you know i want um people if they're struggling i'd rather see them get help you know instead of and we've come a long way of course with mental health than the resources that are available um to people but over the years i've you know um talked about it's interesting because i'll mention it to somebody i go you know i really struggle with that with an anxiety attack or a panic attack because i got this thing coming and it's just building up in my mind and it's in my mind i'm freaking out and i would i shared that with one of my sales managers and he said you know i i deal with the same thing and i actually see a therapist but but he was you know he didn't tell me that on the front end he told me after he found out that i could relate and i was looking for some help and so i would rather it be out there that it's more normalized that people don't have to be ashamed to get help um i'd rather try to encourage people to get the help they need that's absolutely right and and and in fact that was why i went into the fields that i did with therapeutic um you know psychiatric uh therapeutic with therapies for recreation and things with people who are dealing with mental uh problems because i always wanted to know about what uh what mom dealt with what that felt like what that anxiety felt like and you have to go around acting like you're perfectly fine and and i do love i do love the um era we're in now where we're speaking about it and so many people are speaking about it and and we never talked about it we never there was never anything in fact i remember being in high school and i made my first chicken dinner because mom was gone and and she'd gone to a hospital and was never told to us why she went i believe look back on it now that it was a mental breakdown of some what they used to call mental breakdowns you know just so overwhelmed that you just couldn't deal and um but they were that was never told and i was a sophomore in high school and i found out i was supposed to be making dinner for dad and everybody and and i came with this chicken that i didn't know anything about and i'd love and i think it was raw i don't know but that's all i know but but you know um because it was never talked about and what a sad thing and i think when you talk about um you know dad sometimes when i think about your book and i think about uh how we all kind of got through i think sometimes it was like dad had to hold his watch up like saving the watch in the water when someone is dealing with mental illness or any kind of a anxiety ridden life you know the ones around you are kind of trying to just hold on and i oftentimes think that dad didn't know what he could do and and in the course of that it kind of just had to leave it all and and that's unfortunate um and but you know i mean there's some pretty great kids here so the legacy of them was early on and um and and the fallout for you and the and the younger ones was really hard um but i mean i mean looking at the man you are and the men that you are my you know my brothers i i i have you on pedals because somehow you had the basic foundation from those two people and from the camaraderie of the siblings that helped you lift and and become the man i mean you're where you are right now because you have that story to tell really important story to tell so i don't know it all works together for the goodness of all yeah well i mean that's i think that's a big reason why things um why my channel went to where it was because of the backstory and a big thing that i've tried to share because i you know the la again the last thing to your point too i'm kind of bouncing around here to your point about um you know the the amazing uh characteristics that our parents did instill in the older ones and then you guys um you know instilling in us too and kind of passing along that legacy i just think uh you know it's it's interesting because you know i was able to but but again so on the back story i think it's important for people to understand that if you're going through something you know time tends to move on and you can either keep bringing that into the future or you can say i gotta leave that back behind here i'm not it's not benefiting me you know and people have a legitimate victim card um but it really serves no purpose right i mean all it does is keep it keep bringing that crap into the future and and the main thing i always try to say is i can only speak for myself and holding against dad what um dad did uh wasn't good for me it was unhealthy i you know it was the whole saying of drinking poison and somehow hoping it hurt that other person and that's when that somebody said that to me that really hit home because i like to keep things as simple as i can so i can get my head around them and when somebody said that it's like ah it is in my best interest to forgive that and let it go and i shared that in the book of um you know sobbing and letting it go but man there's freedom in it in letting it go and so yeah again i don't so i when i talk about the past i don't do it in any hurtful way to the family it's more to try to encourage other people that if you've been through some something you know there's hope for you you can you know you don't have to repeat that yourself if you're you want to be a dad you know just because that maybe that's what you saw or whatever and so that's uh that's my hope for it it really is and i i use that line from uh the lion king i say that a lot are you familiar with lion king where rafiki hits symbol over the head and he says ah what was that what's that for doesn't matter it's in the past it's uh it's true though it's it's pretty profound because really the past you know we can learn from it but to keep dragging it into the future does nobody any good and so now it's been therapeutic to re to write the book too um because i've got a whole new uh respect and love for my parents that i didn't have before and then also for you guys the older siblings how you guys i mean i always respected you guys of course but when the reality of rick being 23 and karen 24 when they took me in 20 kyle's you know kyle's he'll be 26 uh on on thursday um and i can't imagine him taking in a 14 year old uh boy with that needed a lot of direction and that so yeah um pretty it speaks volumes of of our parents and so it's it's interesting though to again think uh and like mom you know um i wish i would have had a decent relationship with mom um as an adult and getting to see that you got to see that i you know i didn't it was more i was just trying to cope and the woman that i call my mom is letting me down that was my perspective you know as uh she i'm expecting her to and it's like this isn't happening what's going on and you know pretty selfish on my part but i wasn't you know so um she was hurting herself she literally was falling apart herself because her life you know as dad left then her life was where do i go and and you know if you were if you look back on that she was so into feeling miserable uh that she didn't reach out and have friends we kids were her support system and we kids were not i mean kids think about your kids if you were relying on your kids when they're growing up your support system difficult but i i guess i want to go back a minute and you said you were hoping that your book doesn't come across as if you're that you're in the past and you're kind of um there's nothing negative that i found in this book i found uplifting i found it just as you say as the back story and and we wouldn't be where we are now if we didn't have that back story and every little piece of it has made you who you are in fact an odd thing coming from your 12 years senior sister you know cruising to 70. um you do that but you know i was telling bob the other night um you know if i died now i would feel like um my life was full i have lived even when i was crying during parts of this and hurting and one of my big phrases growing up was why why god why why am i having to live through this why is this going on when mom and dad would fight when dad would be mean to mom when mom was out you know out of it i go why why and that led me into studies that were telling me more of the why but also into prayerful times telling me more of the why um and and i look back now and i wanted all those y's me at 70 looking back thinking cool how cool that i was able to experience that and that and that and that that hurt of me helped someone else when they came to me and said mary my dad's doing this my mom's doing this when i was able to give some insight um that was critical that i was able to have my own backstory to give some insight and there's just there's really something wonderful about that so as i look back and i don't want to die you know i'm just saying i feel that at this measure of my life i've lived a rich full life but i could have lived in victim mode and run my hands the whole time and going huh it could have been better it could have been better you know and and i could have done that but why i'm with you right you know use that trust point for what's the next thing um use that i believe that's what i mean there's so many in our family that have used that as their lift and and that's such an important thing so kudos on the way you wrote i i think you picked the best of the things amidst your hurt you picked some really great things to highlight that were your thrust yeah well thank you very much i appreciate that that means a lot to me i um you know i've also said when i talk talk about the character traits of my older siblings are you still there you're frozen hopefully you can hear me am i yeah your fro your yeah your picture's frozen it's okay um so hopefully uh oh now you're moving again uh but i was just gonna say you know i always say just because i picked out one character trait doesn't mean you don't have multiple obviously mary so i was trying to pick something that really stuck out to me because it did i think you uh wanting to keep us connected because you had the ties to the kansas folks that i you know really we saw him a couple times didn't really know him but they're uh such amazing people and so loving you know we go back there like i said you know and immediately your family they just bring you right in and hugs for everybody you know you're immediately they want to pick up and want to know how you're doing and sincerely care about you and that side uh is i'm so happy that we were able to because i you know at the time i was just trying to cope you know when i was little i was just like i just i'm trying to figure out you know to make sense of all this and trying to cope and i think i you know i do have some regrets with mom when mom was in the early 80s um you know i didn't i just honestly didn't have much love for her um and i i do carry a little bit of guilt around for that um but anyway i just yeah i want to make sure uh you understood i i there's so many quality traits in all of you guys and um you know picking out that one for you there's a lot of other ones you know you could have easily been the encouraging one too right along with uh lori i think you guys are both great cheerleaders you know you guys are big um yeah and you're good listeners too i thank you both and i think that's so important you know um we get this we get so busy doing things that and you're juggling a lot mary even still with your with all the things you're doing but you always um make time for people and i think how important that is so thank you yeah well yeah no i'm i i don't think just picking one thing i know i'm not just a one-dimensional good i mean i think pretty much all the all the character traits could be for every you know each uh sibling would carry those character traits and then some but yeah yeah you're right you're right i don't know what else are you thinking you want to talk about i don't know are you done well no i think we're good no i think it's interesting because it's uh you know i've always appreciated your insight into things and then plus the fact that you did get to see things that i didn't necessarily see uh you know and you've helped me um obviously you helped me with the book too trying to make sure i represent things correctly um because i think when when my channel went viral um i think everybody was a little oh my goodness you know what uh and i i've tried to be um sensitive to everybody so that i'm not airing dirty laundry um but trying to make sense of it and again trying to help uh anybody else that maybe is struggling that could use a little boost to say hey you know i can i can make still make something of my life i don't have to live in this victimhood so you're doing a great a great job and we're really proud of you and and everybody i mean you're taking us all with you on this ride and it's exciting and i can't imagine how daunting it must be but i'll tell you i'll tell you a fun story about new orleans since you don't remember about new orleans okay um you were born there and so dad and mom always said that they had a cajun baby you know because you were born in new orleans rather than the rest of us in kansas and then ange was born in seattle but so in new orleans in this mid early 60s i mean it was amazing uh that was really old new orleans and the mosquitoes lived everywhere you're a little teeny boy little you know brand new baby and and walking and and i treasured you i was you know 12 and 13 and loving this little boy who was just discovering in your red hair and you you're adorable all three of you younger boys were so great but every day and i say that because it felt like every day maybe it was three nights a week at five o'clock uh so mosquitoes are horrid wicked in new orleans mosquitoes are awful and you think about the old the old um you know use of pesticides and everything so at five o'clock between 4 30 and 5 this fogger truck would come down all of our streets a really great area of new orleans outside in new orleans gretna and it was a beautiful housing development and so in these new housing developments we got the latest of everything so we got these fogger trucks that were blowing fogging ddt in the air so it was just big cloud i'm not i tell this if somebody wants an excuse for when i act loopy this is it because this big fog would come and we kids would dart out of the house and all those kids and i can remember you with your little toddler thing and run that explains some things and we would until the fogger went on down to the other end of the block we would chase it as far as we could literally dancing in this block going oh it's so lovely and i look back now and i think just think how brilliant we would be if we had that's holding us back i mean we really had to have some great brain cells to withstand all of that every that's funny i don't think i've heard that story before yeah it sounds it sounds accurate yeah i mean we've learned a lot so but anyway i don't want to be tying you up with those kind of stories but that is fun i want everyone to be yeah i love it that's that's that'd be that's good so yeah i won't keep you merry i love you so much and thank you so much for your encouragement and for your help um when i was needing some help with this because all right so i hope you enjoyed that hope you stuck through the whole thing you know there were some glitches of course but um yeah i think there's some good content in there and kind of if you're wanting to know a little bit more about our family history i think it's uh it's uh pretty interesting stuff and then also want to encourage people if you're struggling with mental health issues please get help because there is good help these days um there wasn't wasn't so good back when my mom uh was struggling with some issues so anyway just want to encourage you and thank you so much for watching and god bless you