Show Transcript

0:00:01 - (Laura Broome): Because one thing we can count on in life is not only death and taxes, but we can count on change. Change is inevitable. And it's like the weather. If you don't like it, wait a little bit. It'll change. Well, so can our circumstances. So we might have to make a decision we don't really like, but something better will come along. But at least moving forward.

0:00:29 - (Kevin Lowe): What's up, my friend? And welcome to Grit Gracelet inspiration. I am your host, Kevin Lowe. 20 years ago, I awoke from a life saving surgery, only to find that I was left completely blind. And since that day, I've learned a lot about life, a lot about living, and a lot about myself. And here on this podcast, I want to share those insights with you. Because, friend, if you are still searching for your purpose, still trying to understand why or still left searching for that next right path to take, we'll consider this to be your stepping stone to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

0:01:08 - (Kevin Lowe): What's up, my friend? And welcome to Episode number 235. Have you ever found yourself lying awake at night? It's 03:00 a.m. And you're thinking to yourself, man, there has got to be something more to life than this. Well, maybe there is. Maybe for you. That means that you need to figure out what the heck your life's purpose is, what is the point to it all? What are you meant to be doing? And then figure out a way to make a business around it.

0:01:37 - (Kevin Lowe): I invite you to sign up to do just that. It's the unleash your purpose driven business. It's a free audio training that I have made specifically for you. Head on over to gritgraceinspiration.com business. That is gritgraceinspiration.com business to sign up today. So, ladies and gentlemen, how are we today? Hopefully, you are feeling good, looking good, and all fired up for another amazing interview here on grace and inspiration.

0:02:15 - (Kevin Lowe): Today I am in the studio with Laura Broome, a woman who is going to be a reminder to us all that is never too late to reinvent yourself. Sometimes we have to start over, even when we're not ready for it. Because sometimes life throws us curveballs that we don't see coming. But it's up to us to pivot. It's up to us to figure out how to make the most out of it and to not give up on life. And I feel like that is such an important message that I hope comes across through this podcast is the message to never give up on life, even when it may feel like life is giving up on you.

0:03:01 - (Kevin Lowe): Our guest today, Laura Broome. You could say that she had many opportunities to say that life was giving up on her. We're talking about breast cancer. We're talking about the loss of a son. We're talking about divorce, all within a very short period of time. And as I said, you could say that her world was falling apart, but yet Laura figured out how to put it together, how to make something beautiful.

0:03:31 - (Kevin Lowe): And that is what makes her story so remarkable. My hope is that today's episode is the thing you need to hear. If you are at a point in your life when you feel like it's all falling apart and you don't know what to do, I hope that you listen. I hope that you hear what Laura is able to do in her life to inspire you to do the same in your life, my friend. This is Grayson. Inspiration. Episode number 235.

0:04:04 - (Kevin Lowe): Turn up the volume. Lean a little bit closer as I introduce you to today's amazing guest. Enjoy today's episode.

0:04:17 - (Laura Broome): It is really going through the fire and finding new purpose and meaning and just rediscovering joy again. And I like to think of it kind of like a butterfly coming out of a dark, confined cocoon and just getting released from that cocoon and just flying over a beautiful field of colorful flowers. In fact, that's the COVID of my book, is I just want that freedom of being just in just that dark, confined space.

0:04:56 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, I love that. I love that so much. So, Laura, I want to unpack your story for my listeners today, and I know there was a time period in your life when so many things started happening, negative things that started occurring, but take me back to kind of life before that. What was life like for you? What was going on in your life prior to that five year span? What were your hopes, your dreams, ideas for the future?

0:05:30 - (Kevin Lowe): Give me an idea of life for you at that point.

0:05:33 - (Laura Broome): Prior to my five year period of a bunch of stuff going on, I was busy running my husband's business, and we were a couple of years into the business, and we had two locations, and I was also homeschooling our two sons. It was a busy time for me. I was just kind of go, go doing my duty, just going through life, I guess, kind of existing in a way.

0:06:05 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. Now. So where were you living? Where have you grown up at?

0:06:11 - (Laura Broome): Growing up, I'm a native Houstonian, and I lived in Houston for most of my life. The last 1617 years I've been in San Antonio. Growing up, I had just a wonderful childhood, very close family. We have a wonderful sense of humor, and life was pretty good. And got married in my right around 30, kind of ten years after all. My friends did, started our family at age 35. So I was really independent when I got married, and that probably helped when I started going through some challenges along the way during the marriage. And there was a TV show called Happy Days, and I used to just say I had a happy days kind of life. Everything was good and happy and really not any challenges along the way.

0:07:12 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, I love that. Now, you talked about the business that you guys had, you and your husband. What kind of business was that?

0:07:20 - (Laura Broome): The business that he wanted to get into. He was in the Army National Guard, so at the time, he decided he wanted to go into drug and alcohol testing for employers and family law. And so we started that business. I learned that from scratch. I did not have any background in that area, but my background is in accounting and running an office. So I came at it from that perspective and learned the business from scratch.

0:07:57 - (Laura Broome): And we had two locations, and I ran the office and trained our employees. And it was a busy time.

0:08:07 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, I love it. Basically, as you kind of alluded to, is this life was going really good?

0:08:15 - (Laura Broome): Yes, it was. It was busy, but it was good.

0:08:20 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. So what was the moment when things started to change?

0:08:26 - (Laura Broome): Yeah, it's always when you least expect it, when things happen. About three years into the business, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. So that was not good timing. And I remember sitting in my oncologist office, and she's explaining the type of breast cancer I had. And it was just, I was hearing, but I wasn't listening until she got to the point where she said, laura, your breast cancer is curable. And I just perked up real quick, and I said, it is.

0:09:00 - (Laura Broome): And I was like, great, just tell me what I need to do and I'll do it. I'll be your best patient. So the best thing that came out of that was being able to receive half chemo treatments instead of the full chemo treatments over three months. I was able to get half treatments over six months, and that allowed me to keep working in the business and start training my employees to take over some of my duties.

0:09:28 - (Laura Broome): And so I just plugged away at that. It was rough in the beginning, being nauseous, and then the nausea medicine made me nauseous. But there was a sign in the chemo room that said, stay positive, things could be worse. It was so true. That kept me going, just seeing that sign every time I went into the chemo room.

0:10:00 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. During that time, what kind of support did you have to get through that? Friends, family, support groups. Was there anybody in particular that you really leaned on?

0:10:11 - (Laura Broome): My sister. I have a twin sister, and she was living with us at the time. We've always been close. We call ourselves the giggle twins. And she did. She helped me find the humor and losing my hair. You know you're going to lose your hair, but when it actually happens, it's like, oh, my goodness, I'm looking at my hair on my pillowcase, and it's like, oh, my gosh, it's happening. I really do have cancer.

0:10:43 - (Laura Broome): We came up with a lot of fun stories about the wig, because when I had cancer, it was in the summertime, and you being in Florida, Florida and South Texas are very similar weather, and it would just be so hot outside, and I would think, My goodness, I hope my wig does not catch fire, because I'm just burning up. So we had a lot of fun with coming up with scenarios, using my wig, like a baseball cap, if I got mad, throwing it down on my feet and say, now, listen here.

0:11:26 - (Laura Broome): You just had to find the humor in difficult situations to make it more manageable.

0:11:33 - (Kevin Lowe): Oh, my goodness. I love that so much because that is so true in my own life, is that you have got to find stuff to laugh at to keep from crying. It's like, just start laughing, and that will stop you from crying.

0:11:50 - (Laura Broome): It is. And it's really hard to do. When I lost my hair, I started crying because it's like, it was really a rude awakening. But then I thought about that time. I think GI Jane had come out with Demi Moore, and there's a scene where she's shaving her head. I never saw the movie, but I just saw the trailer, and I thought, you know what? If she can do it, so can I. And I got the Clippers out, and I just shaved my head. It's like, just get it over.

0:12:23 - (Laura Broome): And I cried. But then I thought, it's going to grow back, Laura. It's going to grow back. Just get on with it. And I just started to focus on what I could do. So I got my wig, and it took me two wigs to find one that I liked, but then we had fun joking around about that. How many wigs can I get? What colors do I want? It makes it more tolerable knowing that this, too, shall pass.

0:12:53 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. Now, at the end of the six months of treatment, was the cancer gone?

0:13:00 - (Laura Broome): It was. I mean, I was so blessed. God really was with me during that time. And, in fact, I finished my last treatment on December 31, and so that was a wonderful way to bring in the new year.

0:13:16 - (Kevin Lowe): Yes.

0:13:17 - (Laura Broome): But a couple of months later, my oldest son, whom we had adopted, died by suicide, and that was very difficult. I was in the hospital getting ready to have my double mastectomy, so that was really a tough time for me.

0:13:37 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. Okay. We've just entered the second massive blow in this time span. We've talked about breast cancer. Now, literally, that happened while you were having that procedure done is when he told us.

0:13:57 - (Laura Broome): Unbeknownst to me at the time, when the chemo stopped, it turned on a marker that I had for congestive heart failure. And so I was retaining a lot of fluid, and my breathing had gotten a little cumbersome, and I just was in the hospital to try to get rid of some fluid before my surgery. And when that happened, I just was kind of in shock. And then when my husband came up, my husband had brought our son up for me to talk to him. He just recently was going through. His behavior had changed, and things were going on with him that we just couldn't find out.

0:14:44 - (Laura Broome): I knew he was hanging around some different people because his best friend had told our son, I can't hang around with you if you can hang around these people. But I didn't quite know that at the time, but I knew something was going on in between the business and my breast cancer, and just I couldn't keep up with everything. My husband had taken our son home. Fortunately, the hospital was just a few minutes from the house, and then my husband came back a couple of hours later to tell me that our son had died by suicide.

0:15:20 - (Laura Broome): And the nurses were like, do you want to postpone the surgery? And ready with the sedative. And I just was in shock, but it's like, no, I was dreading the surgery anyway. It's like, let's just get the surgery over with. And our pastor from our church, he and his wife came up to visit us. They had gone through very similar situation a couple of years prior, and it was so comforting to hear them give us support and encouragement.

0:15:50 - (Laura Broome): And being a Christian, I had to trust in God's promises. And I knew I would see our son again, and I can't bring him back, but I can have the hope of seeing him again, and I can honor his memory. He was a good kid. Something happened the last couple of months prior to all this happening, and I won't really truly know, but I can't do anything about that. And I choose to focus on the good. And he did a lot of good things prior to that time period. And both our boys were Eagle Scouts.

0:16:32 - (Laura Broome): And my son, who died, also helped other kids move towards getting their Eagle Scouts. He was a good kid. It's just something was going on at the time that was a difficult time period. But the good that came from that is I became a mentor with foster Youth who age out of the foster care system and go into adulthood living on their own. So I'm able to mentor them and teach them some life skills and resilience.

0:17:08 - (Laura Broome): So that's how I choose to honor my son's memory, is to help foster youth.

0:17:14 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. Well, I applaud you so much for really using what your son went through. What happened to now be a benefit to others in the way that you're able to be a mother, to keep being a mom. But can I just say that the fact that you were told this right before surgery, I can't imagine what it was like for you coming out of surgery. I can't even imagine.

0:17:48 - (Laura Broome): Well, just the process with the double mastectomy was involved, too. And I've just come to realize when you're facing some just difficult decisions and difficult situations, it's just best to keep moving forward. Adversity makes you bitter or better. And I just started coming to the conclusion, God's going to get me through this, so I need to try to make the best out of a bad situation. And God has been there. He was with me through the breast cancer.

0:18:22 - (Laura Broome): He was with me through that difficult period. And you really have to hunt the good stuff. That's part of my mantra that I came up with Going through this five year period of major life events is I would just tell myself, hunt the good stuff, find the humor, stay positive, and focus on your blessings. I honestly say I had just wonderful doctors. The nursing team and the medical team took care of me.

0:18:56 - (Laura Broome): Other than the big stuff, I really can't complain. It's like, I'm not a sickly person. I just go big or go Home. But I have a lot of inspiring stories of other people who have gone through hardship that I would focus on, and I would tell myself, if they can go through that, I can get through this. And I can't imagine going through anything without my faith, for sure. And the good Lord has really blessed me through all this hardship.

0:19:28 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. I love it so much. While we're on this train ride of these five years, you mentioned that they had found out that you had congestive heart failure. Talk to me about what that led to.

0:19:45 - (Laura Broome): Yes. So after my breast cancer journey, I was struggling with trying to breathe and my heart. I thought it was the chemo, because you hear all these horror stories, what chemo can do to your body. And I just figured the chemo had given me congestive heart failure, but my sister also had it. And so, fortunately, I was able to get into her cardiologist to see him. And so he came to the conclusion that we needed to go see a heart specialist because he thought it might be the fact that we're twins and we both had congestive heart failure. He thought it might be genetic, which it was.

0:20:27 - (Laura Broome): And so it took a while to get the diagnosis. But in January of 2020, I was told by the heart clinic that I was going to need a heart transplant. And that kind of caught me off guard. And it's like, wow, I really go big or go home. And so I thought, at this point, it's like anything would be better than what I was going through, because honestly, I didn't realize at the time my heart was giving out, and it was getting so hard to breathe, and the fluid would build up around my heart, which was causing the breathing problems.

0:21:06 - (Laura Broome): So I was at the point where it was a bittersweet to hear, and it's like, I'm not looking for, I don't know anybody who's ever had a heart transplant, but I know I can't continue trying to. It was even so difficult to try to take a deep breath. I mean, things that we take, like, to yawn, you do that, and you don't even think about it. But for me, I would have to concentrate on just relaxing all of my muscles, closing my eyes, and just concentrate on taking a deep breath.

0:21:36 - (Laura Broome): And if I didn't get it the first try, I would have to just tell myself, don't panic. Just try again. And it's really difficult being a shallow breather and trying to take a deep breath. In January, I had a heart transplant. I mean, in January, I was diagnosed with the heart transplant, and they moved me up the list pretty quickly. And so April, I went into the hospital at the end of April, and a week later, I received my new heart.

0:22:10 - (Laura Broome): And this is when COVID had shut everything down. So I was prepared not to find a heart that quickly. But the doctor ran into my room, and he said, I think we found a heart. I'm off to the airport to go make sure everything is good. And if so, then you're going to get a new heart tonight. And I was just shocked. But I was so happy because there was another patient waiting to receive a heart that was already in the hospital. And after about four weeks, they sent him home.

0:22:43 - (Laura Broome): And this was like his second attempt at trying to find a good match. So again, the Lord just blessed me with a wonderful medical team and a strong new heart. And I was in the hospital for just two weeks after the surgery and everybody was just amazed at my progress. And I didn't even have to take any pain meds. Can you believe that? I mean, after major heart transplant, I didn't feel any pain and I do not have a high tolerance for pain.

0:23:17 - (Laura Broome): I'm a weenie when it comes to pain. And I just felt like the Lord was just really looking out for me. So I went home. Mother's Day weekend had a wonderful time. I was so excited to be with my family and with the new heart. And the doctors told me I was going to have to quarantine at home for a year to make sure I did not have any infections with my new heart. And a month later, I found out that I was going through a divorce.

0:23:52 - (Laura Broome): My husband had been in another relationship for over a year and so we had been married 27 years. And that was harder than my heart transplant taking that. I mean, I was devastated. I felt betrayed, I felt abandoned. That was probably the lowest I had ever been. I mean, COVID shut everything down. I was to be quarantined for a year with my heart. And now I'm looking at a divorce and it's like, who's going to take care of me?

0:24:29 - (Laura Broome): They told me I needed 24 hours care for the first couple of months. And so I moved in with my twin sister and she was working remotely during COVID And surprisingly, once again, the good Lord was really looking after me because I was not as convalescent as I thought I was going to be, which was a good thing because it's like, what am I going to do with my life? I'm 58 years old. I'm not going to be another statistic of a middle aged divorcee.

0:25:09 - (Laura Broome): I thought. I feel like I'm younger and I feel like I've got a lot left. I've got a new, strong heart. What am I going to do with my life? It was a really rude awakening of, what are you going to do now, Laura? How are you going to move forward? And that's when I realized radical acceptance is when you have to accept things out of your control and you don't have to like it. You don't have to agree with it, but you have to accept it. You have to acknowledge it. It is what it is and move on.

0:25:49 - (Laura Broome): And once I went through the grief stages and I got to the anger stage, I got really angry and I really got angry with myself because I realized God gave me a new heart. A new, strong heart is the words the doctors used. Why am I feeling sorry for myself and being bitter over a choice my husband made? What am I going to do to move forward with my life now? And that's when I came to the acceptance stage and I'm like, I'm going to do something with my life. I've got a lot of years to live, and I'm going to do what I put off doing all these years.

0:26:33 - (Laura Broome): And so that's when I started looking at what do I have to offer? What's my experience, what are my strengths, what are my passions? Because I have what I guess at the time, it was like eight months that I still had to quarantine at home. So it's like, okay, I know how to run a business. I've got experience being an entrepreneur. I will start an online business. Well, what am I going to do? And I realized, well, everybody tells me, gosh, you're so resilient.

0:27:07 - (Laura Broome): You have such a good attitude when you go through difficult things. So I thought, that's what I'm going to do, is I'm going to teach other people how to do this. So all that happened three years ago. I established my three step resilience framework. And this framework can be applied to any type of circumstance. It doesn't have to be major life events like I went through, but it can be just simple things.

0:27:37 - (Laura Broome): What I find is it's a wonderful way to learn how to make decisions and to accept change and to practice gratitude and think outside the box to find opportunities. And there's no reason that, in my opinion, that anybody needs to feel stuck or feeling like their life is out of control or that they have no options. We always have choices. It's how we choose to look at things. And developing a growth mindset is a wonderful way to start.

0:28:16 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Okay. You have unpacked a lot, and I have to just go back and just recognize again how incredible you are because you have unpacked so much on us of just one domino falling after another all the way up until then. You get out of surgery, you've got this new heart, you've got a new chance at life, and then all of a sudden, another domino drops by your husband leaving. You said at that point you were 58 years old.

0:28:59 - (Laura Broome): Yes.

0:29:00 - (Kevin Lowe): So you're 58 years old, and you're faced all of a sudden with kind of a reinvention, a choice of, what do I do now? The fact that you continued to press forward, the fact that you continued to see the positives, continued to see the blessings that God was giving you, instead of just looking and falling into just deep, dark depression and anguish over all the negative, you focus on the positive, and then you figure out, okay, if what worked for me, maybe it can work for other people.

0:29:41 - (Kevin Lowe): First and foremost, you are amazing.

0:29:46 - (Laura Broome): Well, thank you, Kevin. So are you with your. I said, you know, when adversity hits, you have to decide if it's going to make you bitter or better. I felt like I was still, too, even though I'm 58, I'm still just too young to give up hope. We have another son. Our sons were three months apart. And it's like, I've got to live for him, too. And my family life goes on. And that's A hard thing to accept when you go through adversity, especially when you lose somebody.

0:30:29 - (Laura Broome): But you got to make the best and the most of the life we have here on earth. And like I said, I'm thankful for my faith because I couldn't have gone through all this without knowing that God, he sees everything and he knows everything, and he has a purpose for me because otherwise, I would have died on that table. And so it's like I have to live my purpose.

0:31:00 - (Kevin Lowe): Yes. Oh, my gosh. You are amazing. You're amazing. Now, you said that you moved in with your twin sister.

0:31:10 - (Laura Broome): Yes.

0:31:11 - (Kevin Lowe): So the twins are back together at this point in the story, yes.

0:31:15 - (Laura Broome): The twins are back. We went full circle. We went from being married to living our own lives to having kids to getting divorces and moving back in together.

0:31:27 - (Kevin Lowe): You know what that says to me is it goes back to something in my own life is family.

0:31:33 - (Laura Broome): Yes.

0:31:34 - (Kevin Lowe): Family is everything.

0:31:36 - (Laura Broome): Yes.

0:31:38 - (Kevin Lowe): And what I love about you, what I love about your story is it mirror is mine. Of the two pillars of faith and family.

0:31:46 - (Laura Broome): Yes.

0:31:48 - (Kevin Lowe): So you were walking us through everything you're going through. You've started this kind of coaching. You've started a coaching business. At some point, you decide to write a book I don't even understand. This woman is like, you know what? Let's just keep charging forward. So talk to me more about the book, your framework for just everything you do. I'm still just kind of blown away. I kind of glossed over a lot that you said earlier, because I was still stuck on the part of, like, can we just back up? And what about the dude who left her after heart surgery?

0:32:28 - (Kevin Lowe): Can somebody just put a pause and represent what the heck just happened?

0:32:34 - (Laura Broome): It's a lot of shock and awe, right? I laugh because it's like, tell me your story. And it's like, well, you want the brief version? Yeah, it's a lot to unpack. Well, the reason why I wasn't planning on writing a book, honestly, but there was so much that I wanted when I was going through my stuff three years ago, it was really tough because COVID had shut so many resources down. So I had to find a way to keep moving forward.

0:33:14 - (Laura Broome): So I thought, I bet there's other people out there, like, you just wish you had a manual. How do I get through this? Because, like I said, I love stories of other people who have been through hardship and how did they get there? I thought, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to write kind of a manual, so to speak. So my book, like you said, is called Flourishing after adversity. And it's a three step manual, a three step action plan, actually, on how to transform pain into purpose so you can rediscover joy.

0:33:57 - (Laura Broome): And it's exactly kind of what I went through. And so the first step is conquering the fear of change. And I think that's the hardest thing, is that developing a growth mindset and radically accepting your circumstances and just making a commitment to focus on what you can do. And I think that's so important because when we go through difficult times, we tend to focus on what we can't do. We look at the roadblocks and we start to feel helpless and hopeless.

0:34:32 - (Laura Broome): And if you can accept the things that are out of your control and focus on what's in your control to move forward, it starts to give you a little more empowerment. And one of the phrases I love to say, and I said this during my recovering from the divorce, is, I can't do that, but I can do this. And I'd look for something to do. And maybe it was a phone call or it was research or just sometimes it was just I made myself get out of bed every morning and make my bed so I wouldn't stay in bed all day.

0:35:11 - (Laura Broome): And you start focusing on baby steps of what you can do to keep moving forward. And then the second step of my framework is discovering your superpowers to overcome challenges. And this is such a powerful tool because you kind of take stock of what are your personal assets? What are your skills, your talents, your character strengths, and then available resources. Who are people that support you or who are people that can maybe know somebody or you can network or ask questions about, maybe they're doing something you'D like to get into and just use your support network.

0:35:58 - (Laura Broome): Use the Internet for research. My son laughs at me now because I used to ask him questions starting a business and learn. And I know some technology, but some of this computer stuff, I'll ask him. He's my IT guy. And now I find stuff on YouTube and he laughs at me because, wow, mom, you know how to set up a QR code. I'm kind of hip. I'm learning. I said, thank goodness for YouTube, but it's utilizing your resources that are available to you, even resources in the community, and your superpowers can really help you to move forward in situations. And it was very helpful for me.

0:36:46 - (Laura Broome): And so when you take stock of what all is available to you, you start kind of realizing, I can do this, I'm going to get through this. And then the third step is uncovering opportunities. So when you can think outside the box and use your superpowers and your resources in different ways, in new ways, and just look at all the possibilities, you realize you have a lot of choices. You might not like some of them.

0:37:22 - (Laura Broome): In my case, I was very limited options and I didn't really like a lot of them. But I had to choose something to keep moving forward. Because one thing we can count on in life is not only death and taxes, but we can count on change. Change is inevitable, and it's like the weather. If you don't like it, wait a little bit. It'll change. Well, so can our circumstances. So we might have to make a decision we don't really like, but something better will come along.

0:37:55 - (Laura Broome): But at least we're moving forward. And that's scary because getting out of our comfort zone, that's why it's called a comfort zone. It's comfortable, but stepping out of your comfort zone, just managing a little bit of risk can really open up doors and opportunities, and it's just like an endless world of possibilities.

0:38:20 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Oh, my goodness. I love this so much. Where is your book available at?

0:38:26 - (Laura Broome): It's going to be available in November. And the best place to keep up with what is going to be going on around my book, because I've got some special packages and special opportunities to get the book for free is to go to my website and it's icoptohope.com. And it's iCope, the number two hope.

0:38:55 - (Kevin Lowe): Okay. I will be sure that that website is inside of today's show. Notes for easy access for anybody interested. I think your book, it's an incredible, as you said, not just a book, but a resource.

0:39:11 - (Laura Broome): Yes.

0:39:11 - (Kevin Lowe): And that is just incredible.

0:39:14 - (Laura Broome): I did not want to write a memoir because there's so many memoirs out there, and I'm kind of like, that's kind of boring. Even though I've got a shocking off story, my book is designed. I designed the chapters to where I talk about some of my hardships, the ones we've talked about here and some other ones, surprisingly, not as shock and awe, but some other situations that I've been through and just a little bit about that situation.

0:39:45 - (Laura Broome): And then I talk about the concepts that I put into place that I didn't know at the time, but resilience concepts. And then I finish with the rest of my story. And then at the end of each chapter is a list of. Is it like an exercise? It's just some self reflecting questions so that the reader can implement the concepts in that chapter in their life right away. Or if you're not going through anything, then it's kind of like a reference manual.

0:40:20 - (Laura Broome): It's something that I'm so passionate about. It's like I really want parents, grandparents to learn the framework and teach their children and the next generation so we can just keep it going. There's always hope, and you always have choices, and I just don't want anybody to feel that they're helpless or hopeless.

0:40:47 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. I love it so much. My last question for you today is for the person listening, the woman listening, who is maybe you in that five year period, and right now she's struggling. And right now with what she's facing, she can't help but not have hope. What do you say to her?

0:41:09 - (Laura Broome): I would say as long as you're breathing and living on this earth, you have a purpose. And you're put on this earth to help others and to be a light to others. And whatever circumstances you're going through, you can find a way to transform that pain into purpose, because somebody needs to hear your story. And just like I've heard people's stories that inspired me and kept me going through tough times, if you're listening to this, there is hope and there is purpose, and you can get through the fire and you can learn to find the joy again.

0:41:58 - (Laura Broome): And practicing gratitude is just a wonderful way to get the joy back in your life because things could be worse.

0:42:06 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. I love that. And I feel as though gratitude, it summarizes everything you're about, because as we've listened to you today, Laura, you have been through so much, and yet every time you come back to gratitude.

0:42:22 - (Laura Broome): Yes, it is. I mean, to me, gratitude puts everything in perspective. With your story. You just exude happiness, joy, and gratitude. And faith. And family is important to you as well. And family doesn't have to be blood. It could be whoever you feel close to and who you connect with and we're made for.

0:42:50 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Laura, thank you so much for being here. It is just an absolute joy to me to have you on my podcast, to share your story with my audience. And I want to just thank you so much for being so open and honest and real and sharing the good times and the bad and the mindset. Just thank you so much.

0:43:14 - (Laura Broome): Well, thank you for allowing me to share my story of hope. And I just want your audience to know if I can get through this, they can, too. I'm just an ordinary person who's been through extraordinary things, but just don't ever give up hope. Just keep pushing through.

0:43:32 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. So powerful. So powerful. Thank you and for you listening today. Again, I just echo exactly what Laura just said, is to use her story as, literally the fuel you need to inspire you to overcome your own obstacles. Because we're all going through stuff in this life. That is for certain. Your challenges are no less or greater than anyone else's. So don't ever listen to anything on this podcast and think to yourself, wow, well, they can do it, but I can't.

0:44:07 - (Kevin Lowe): That's where you are wrong, because I'm telling you, you are capable, able and deserving of having everything that you can imagine in this life. Sometimes you just got to fight for it. You got to have gratitude. You got to get your priorities in check, and you got to know what you're chasing after. My name is Kevin Lowe. This is Grit, Grace, and inspiration helping you to take on the day, every day, no matter what challenges or obstacles stand in the way.

0:44:36 - (Kevin Lowe): I'll see you next week!