Show Transcript

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What is your favorite birthday memory?

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Do you even have a favorite birthday memory?

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Because chances are, if you're like me, you probably can't actually remember many of your birthdays.

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I know for myself, I'm 37 years old, and there's probably honestly only about

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a handful of my birthdays that I actually remember.

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Well, today, it's all about kind of changing that.

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Because we're joined today by Stephanie McLaughlin, a woman who was getting

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ready to turn 40 years old, and she decided to set off on something that has

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turned out to be absolutely incredible.

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It was an idea to have 40 drinks with 40 different people from her past.

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She thought it was just going to be something fun, something lighthearted.

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But as I said, it turned out to be something absolutely incredible.

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As you listen to her story, I hope that you'll think about your own situation,

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about your own next upcoming big birthday, and how you might celebrate it in

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a little bit different way.

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Maybe a way just like Stephanie is talking about today.

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This is episode 288. This is the story of Stephanie McLaughlin,

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40 drinks with 40 different people to celebrate turning 40 years old.

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What's up, my friend, and welcome to Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

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I am your host, Kevin Lowe. 20 years ago, I awoke from a life-saving surgery

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only to find that I was left completely blind.

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And since that day, I've learned a lot about life, a lot about living, and a lot about myself.

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And here on this podcast, I want to share those insights with you.

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Because friend, if you are still searching for your purpose,

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still trying to understand why, or still left searching for that next right

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path to take, we'll consider this to be your stepping stone to get you from

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where you are to where you want to be.

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This week's prayer request goes out to a friend of mine, Jennifer.

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I would love to have all of us in praying for her for just helping her to get

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her some comfort and peace and just to let life be a little bit easier.

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I think all of us realize that life isn't so easy.

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It's not as grand as maybe we ever thought it would be. There's so many challenges.

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There's relationships. There's loss. There's heartbreak.

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There's medical issues. And I think we all get wrapped up in it sometimes.

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And I think we all just need to be there for one another.

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And today, I want to be there for Jennifer. So if you could join me in just

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saying a little prayer for her.

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A little prayer of encouragement for God just to show up in her life in a big, amazing way.

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If you have someone or something that you would love to have us praying with

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you for, please send it to me via text message.

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877-749-8178. Again, send your prayer request to be featured here on the podcast to 877-749-8178.

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I've been talking a lot lately about my love for the company MyPillow. Because why?

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of coffee. Thanks to MyPillow.

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I'm 39 and never married, single, never engaged, any of those things,

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and had been dumped by yet another terrible boyfriend.

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By text message at some point earlier in the year.

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Also, I'm a Leo, I'm an extrovert. I'm like all the things that loves a spotlight, right?

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But those two things that year was like, I just wasn't into the big party, the big four.

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Oh, you know, I'm the kind of girl who loves a good party.

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But that year in those circumstances, it just felt really kind of icky and gross

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to me because it felt like, you know, here I am turning 40 and this is what,

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like the wedding that I never had,

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you know, like you get to, you get to chat with people for, you know,

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five minutes, 10 minutes at a party.

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And, and, and it just, it just felt off for me.

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So I was trying to figure out something else to do for my birthday. And I did two things.

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The first thing I did was I went to Paris with some friends and my parents.

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And that was just as glamorous and spectacular as you would think it would be.

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It was fabulous. Trip of a lifetime.

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And then as my birthday came closer that year, I was trying to figure out what

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I was going going to do to celebrate.

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And the idea landed in my brain almost fully formed.

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And I decided that I would have 40 drinks with 40 people in 40 different locations.

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And then each drink that I had with somebody would have some sort of thematic

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connection to that person or our relationship that might relate to how we knew

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each other or when we were close or things like that.

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And I loved the idea mostly because it was ridiculous.

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Honestly, it was just the silliest thing.

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And listen, my birthday is August 1st. So for decades, I have been celebrating a birthday month.

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And frankly, I just think it gives me a great opportunity to say to friends,

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you know, who I don't see all the time, hey, let's have drinks.

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Let's, you know, let's have dinner.

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Like it gives me a great excuse to reach out to people. and so this was kind

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of that but on steroids and so my birth I could extend my birthday for as long

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as it would take me to have these 40 drinks.

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Yes. Incredible. So, so when did you actually start? Like when was drink one?

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Was it before your birthday or after? So drink one was about a month before my 40th birthday.

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I was out for dinner with my very best friend.

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We were going to a Red Sox game. I was in Boston and I hadn't seen him in a few months.

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So I was telling him about Paris and about, you know, the trip and that was was great.

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And then sort of turned the topic of conversation to this crazy idea I had.

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And my best friend Adrian is just always loves my crazy ideas and is always egging me on.

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So he heard the idea and he was like, I love it. You got to do it.

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And then a couple of beats went by, I don't know. And he, he just said, Steph, look at this.

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And he slid the cocktail menu over to me and he pointed needed something on the menu.

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And I had such like this like moment of like separation from everything.

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All I could think was, I wasn't really feeling like drinking rum tonight.

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And he was like, no, look at the name. And my friend Adrian is a journalist

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down in Boston, and the drink was called the Periodista.

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And that is a Spanish word for journalist list that sort of came to,

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I think in like the 1960s in Miami and Adrian is a native of Miami.

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So like all of a sudden it was like, it was like Tetris things just sort of

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like falling into place, click, click, click, click.

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And I was like, Oh, um, I think we're starting. I think we're doing this.

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Wow. Yeah. So it was kind of kismet though.

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That first one was just, um, you know, it was just kind of on a lark and it just off we went.

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Yeah. So was it after that? I'm kind of curious, like,

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Did you be like, okay, I'm going to get serious with this and try to write out

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your list of 39 more people?

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No. So, and that's the thing. Again, because this was sort of ridiculous,

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this was also a bunch of years ago now.

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So I like to say back when Facebook was fun.

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Yes. We all remember when that was, right? I also, side note,

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my day job is I own a marketing agency.

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And so I kind of had a little, a couple of resources. So I was like,

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Hey, listen, let's, let's build this little website and let me write blog posts

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about each visit and each drink.

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And let me, you know, then share each of these blog posts on Facebook.

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And again, when Facebook was fun, people would comment on it and,

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you know, so it turned into kind of a thing pretty quickly.

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But what happened was I had two friends, friends of my brother from high school,

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like I've known them since I was a little kid.

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They were home. They lived away and they were home like two weekends later.

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So it was like, well, I only see you guys a couple of times a year. Let's have a drink.

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And then the next week, same thing. Somebody else was home who I hadn't seen in a while.

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So I had a drink with them. And then next thing you know, it was like,

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oh, wait, I've had seven or eight drinks.

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I went out one night with friends of mine. It was three guys.

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And we went down to Boston for a big night out. And I ended up having a drink

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with each of them. We went to three different places, three different drinks.

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I had drinks with each of them.

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And so like very quickly, it's like, oh, wait, I'm like eight or nine drinks.

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And I know I want to have, you know, one with my mom and one with my dad and

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each of my brothers and like, okay.

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So all of a sudden it was like, you get to like 12, 13, 14. And you're like,

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wait a minute, this is not an unlimited runway.

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All of a sudden you have to, you do actually have to start thinking about what

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you, how you want to spend the rest of these slots.

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Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You know what? And when you put it that way,

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I guess it makes the whole idea of 40 people seem a little bit easier because

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at first in my head, I'm thinking, I don't know that there's 40 people from

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my past that I care to have a drink with.

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Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's interesting because, you know, first it's just who's nearby.

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And of course, there are people who raise their hand as soon as you say you're

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doing this ridiculous thing. And they're like, I want to be one of your drinks.

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So, you know, there's a handful of those.

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And then all of a sudden it's like, okay, well, these are all people that I,

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you know, see regularly. Or like I said, those few folks who were home.

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But what do I really want to do with this now that I'm starting to gain some momentum?

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I don't want it just to be like all the same people that I see,

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you know, within the course of a year.

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So I started digging through my brain and my history and my background,

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and I found people from grammar school, from high school, from college, an old boyfriend,

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people I worked at different jobs with.

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And so then I started really doing some outreach and kind of trying to like,

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you know, reconnect with some people I hadn't connected with in in sometimes 10 or 15 years.

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Yeah. And what a cool excuse to reconnect with somebody.

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Exactly. Well, and that's the thing. So for me, this air of ridiculousness was

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kind of one of the things that gave me cover.

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It gave me a reason to reach out to people that I hadn't talked to in 5, 10, 15 years.

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And I'll be honest, Kevin, I reached out to a couple of girlfriends friends

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who I had lost connection with, you know, over the, over time.

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And I really thought, you know, oh, I would love to reconnect with these, these women.

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I just, I adored them and, you know, friendships, you know, ebb and flow,

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as you know, and two separate women said, no.

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Hmm. They, they said, Nope, I don't think that's for me. I don't want to be a part of that.

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So it, you know, there, there was, you know, there were the,

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the wins and there were, there were a couple of losses.

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Wow. You know what? And you answered one of my questions I was going to ask

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is, is did you ever have anybody turn you down? And you did.

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Yeah. A couple of girlfriends.

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One of them said to me at the time, I just don't think I'm in the right place

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to to reconnect and to be a part of this.

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And, you know, you have to respect that. What can you say?

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And the other one simply just kind of said no.

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But strangely, she and I, not strangely, you know, in a lovely turn of events,

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she and I reconnected a couple of years later.

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And so, you know, life goes the way it goes. It's always, you know,

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wandering and meandering, and some people cross your paths, and then you separate,

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maybe you never see again.

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And then other people, you just sort of come back into their orbit again. Yeah, absolutely.

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I love it. So talk to me about when you look back on these 40 different people

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that you got to meet with,

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was there any that stand out that maybe, I don't know, for some reason,

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when you look back, that memory stands out more than any of the others?

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Yeah, there are a couple of drinks that... that I mean, I could tell you a story

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about every single one of them, but we probably don't have that kind of time

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because they were just, let me put it this way.

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Some people hear about this idea and they kind of recoil at the thought of like

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drinks and drinking and like, and it really turned out not to be about that.

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Although for many years was a person who was, you know, quite the party girl

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and, you know, always out at the bars and all of that stuff.

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But it, the, the project turned out to be not about that.

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It really turned out to be 40 visits with people.

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And if you go back to the concept of the big party, um.

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And only getting, you know, oh, I invited my girlfriends from grammar school, right?

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But I got to see them for five minutes or seven minutes or 10 minutes before

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I was pulled away or had to go visit with somebody else.

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Instead, I had, you know, a visit with them, just the two of them and me.

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So it was like, you know, I took this party and I spread it out among,

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you know, individual visits instead.

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So, so there were a number of, of stories that, that were just wonderful.

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One of them I'm going to tell just because I, I adore this. So the drink that

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I had with my dad, we had a drink called the creamsicle and we had this because

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when I was, I think I was 13 years old.

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My dad was a travel and salesman kind of guy, engineer, sales engineer kind

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of guy. So he was away, you know, several days a week.

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And And so it was some, I don't know, Tuesday or Wednesday night,

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he gets home, it's, it's eight o'clock, you know, my brother's,

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everybody's already had dinner.

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And so he says, he grabs me and says, Hey, let's go, let's go down downtown

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and just go out and get some appetizers.

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And so we, we go downtown, we go to this bar and I, sorry, not a bar. It was a restaurant.

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And I had been there with my mom previously for lunch.

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And I'd had this thing called a creamsicle. It's essentially like,

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you know, a, a, an ice cream shake kind of thing.

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So we order you know some potato skins and a

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i don't know mozzarella sticks and he gets

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a beer and i order a creamsicle and when

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the waitress brings the creamsicle i took a sip of it i said dad this tastes

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really funny and he took a sip of it and he called the waitress back over and

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he said um excuse me this has alcohol in it and she goes yeah and he goes she's 13.

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So, you know, I always looked a little old for my age and, you know,

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my dad looked a little young for his.

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So I don't know if it looked like we were out on a date or something. It was kind of crazy.

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So, you know, there were things like that. Like when I knew I was going to have

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a drink with my dad, I was like, it's gotta be a creamsicle.

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There's literally nothing else it can be.

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So that's just an example of kind of that thematic connection.

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But one of the really interesting stories about these drinks was the two girls

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I went to grammar school with.

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Karen and Ginny. And when I

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was young, we lived in this rural town outside the city where we live now.

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And I moved into town in second grade and I met Karen at school.

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And then in fourth grade, the summer before fourth grade, Ginny moved into town.

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And she lived up the road from me. Now, I don't know how a nine-year-old like

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hears town gossip or something, but somehow I found out that there was a family

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with three little girls that had moved in up the road.

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Well, down where I lived, I

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have two younger brothers and in the neighborhood, it was all little boys.

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So, you know, lots and lots of boy energy, football, riding bikes,

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snowmobiles, all that kind of stuff. So one day I created this ruse where I

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put our dog on a leash and I said, I'm taking the dog for a walk.

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And I walked up to this house where this family had moved in and essentially

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like loitered in the street until an adult saw me and sent the children out to meet me.

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So we're at this visit and Ginny says, do you remember how we met?

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And I said, no, I have no, I said, I was fourth grade, right? Did we meet at school?

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And she said, no, it was before school started. And so she tells me this story

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and I'm just, you know, we're all laughing. Oh my goodness. Ha ha ha.

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And on my drive home that night, I, I, I was, you know, relishing my visit with

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these these wonderful women.

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And then thinking, wait a minute, Ginny's house was, where was it?

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So I go home and I Google map it only to find out that Ginny's house was a mile

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away from mine. I was nine.

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I was nine. And I like created this ruse, put the dog on the leash and walked

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a mile up the street to make a friend.

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So I said to my mom, you know, told her, I saw her at some point after this

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visit and I, I said, ha ha, can you, can you believe this story?

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And she said, of course I can believe it. Why do you think we kept you on such a short leash?

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And it was like, oh, you know, a bunch of things started clicking into place

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for me again, more Tetris click, click, click.

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I knew as a as a as an adult, as a young adult in my 20s, in my 30s,

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I knew I was sort of a bold person, an adventurous person, kind of,

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you know, up for anything kind of thing.

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But I didn't know about myself that it was that innate, that it was really, you know, built in.

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This was not something I had picked up along the way.

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This was, you know, a real core level kind of thing for me. And so that was

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actually Karen told us a story, a very similar story at that same visit.

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She said one day she had come over after school for a play date and she and

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I went out into the woods behind my house and just went like adventuring out

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into the woods on our own, you know, sort of path.

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