How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S17, Ep4 Dr Gladys McGarey: a 102-year-old doctor shares the secret to health and happiness

Episode Date: May 24, 2023

The word 'inspiration' is bandied about with a bit too much alacrity these days, but Dr Gladys McGarey truly is one of the most inspirational women you'll ever meet.At 102 years old, she's still a practising doctor - she trained in conventional medicine but her innate curiosity led her to explore alternative healing therapies and she became the first physician ever to use acupuncture in the United States, where she is now known as the Mother of Holistic Medicine.She joins me to impart her considerable wisdom about how to pursue a well-lived life. We discuss the importance of gratitude, boundaries and being in alignment with our joy. We also discuss her dyslexia and how, as a child, it was left undiagnosed and made her feel that she was stupid. We chat about the long journey to find her voice - as a woman, as a wife and as a mother. She opens up about how she coped with the end of her marriage after 46 years and the shock she experiencdd when her then-husband asked for a divorce. And, in a particularly moving exchange, Dr McGarey talks about surviving the devastating loss of her daughter to breast cancer.But this is an interview which, overwhelmingly, gives us hope. As Dr McGarey says, we can all strive to live by her own mantra: BE GLAD.--The Well-Lived Life: A 102-Year-Old Doctor's Six Secrets to Health and Happiness at Every Age by Dr Gladys McGarey is a fantastic read and available to buy here.--How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted and produced by Elizabeth Day. To contact us, email [e-mail]--Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayHow To Fail @howtofailpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and

journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. My guest today is 102 years old, and yet, as you'll come to discover, her extraordinary longevity is quite possibly the least interesting thing about her. Because Dr. Gnades McGarry is an utterly unique and wildly inspiring individual. A conventionally trained medical doctor, her innate curiosity led her to explore different approaches towards healing. She was an early pioneer of natural birthing, was the first physician ever to use acupuncture in the States, and is now internationally recognised as the mother of holistic medicine. She has had a family practice for more than 60 years in Scottsdale, Arizona,

and alongside her work also found the time to raise six children. At the age of 84, she travelled to Afghanistan to teach rural women safer birthing practices, resulting in a 47% decrease in infant mortality rates. She is the daughter of two doctors who devoted their lives to treating underserved populations in India, where Dr. Gladys was born in 1920. As a child, she travelled through the Indian outback on medical safaris with her parents. And in 1935, she came to America to attend college and medical school. Her new book, The Well-Lived Life, reveals her six secrets to health and happiness at every age. It is an astonishing piece of work, containing so many light bulb

moments it could power the national grid. In it, Dr. Gladys writes, focusing on the positive does not mean denying the negative. We allow what hurts to hurt while continuing to search for the lesson in it and be grateful for the teaching. Dr. Gladys McGarry, it is my honor to welcome you to How to Fail. Thank you so much for being here. Well, thank you for letting me speak on these subjects, which I think are pivotal to all of our lives. I could not agree more. And that idea of focusing on the positive, not meaning eliminating the negative is integral to the whole premise of this podcast and to life really, because life is texture, isn't it? You can't appreciate the positive without the negative.

Well, you know, it's like if you have a scratch or something happened to your arm and you have a scab and you spend your time looking at that and saying, oh, that hurts good. It keeps on hurting. You have to stop scratching it and stop picking at it and just put it down, let it be. And then ultimately you'll look at it and say, well, hello, scar. I know who you are. It's our focus on what we want to focus on or what we need to focus on. And you write a lot in the book about this thing that you call juice, which is another way of explaining life force, energy, chi. And you also talk about the overriding power of love. And you start off with this extraordinary encounter that you had with Mahatma Gandhi. And I wonder if you could tell us that story. Yeah, you know, you have certain things in life that are pivotal, and somebody else may not

even understand them or even care about them. I was 10 years old. We were on the train leaving India for my parents were coming to the States for a furlough. They'd be here a year and a half and then come back. But as the train was going along, this happened so often in India, huge crowds of people gathered very quickly. And this was happening alongside the track as the train was beginning to slow down. And in front of this whole group of people, there was a man walking with his dhoti on and his staff. And I thought that could be Gandhi. And I'm staring out the window looking, and he bends down to have a little girl hand him a flower. And as he comes back up, he looks up and looks straight into my, I'm in the train,

I'm 10 years old, looks straight into my eyes and reconnected. Now, that means nothing to anybody else, probably. But to me, it was like a wow, what a wonderful thing. And it stayed with me. It was that light of love and acceptance. And, you know, I call it my spirit meeting his spirit. It was a connection. And these things happen sometimes in life when we're looking for them or when we're not looking for them. They do happen. But if they happen, recognize them and cherish them.

Yes. And a lot of your work does go back to this theme of transcendence, that idea that our souls exist again and again and again, and are brought into contact with other souls for a reason. Have I said that accurately? How would you explain it? You did very well. You did very well. Do you think that your soul and Gandhi's soul were on some level always meant to intertwine? Well, it happened, so I think it was meant to be. So when it started, and it hasn't ended yet. So take me back then, when you go to medical school in the United States, it must have been quite a culture shock.

I started medical school in September of 1941, and the war started in December. So my whole medical career was about war, our enemies, and the whole field of medicine picked up the theme of being at war. And we have since that time been at war with disease and with pain. And a lot of my work has been to take the concept of healing beyond just killing and getting rid of. Fascinating, because as you say, to this day, people talk in a slightly misplaced fashion about battling cancer, fighting cancer, the idea that somehow you're making an enemy of your own body and you stand absolutely in a much more holistic space. Can you define to us what holistic means to you? I could go on and on, but we started the American Holistic Medical Association because there were a group of us physicians who knew that

there was something missing. We were taught a lot about the body. We knew a lot about the body. We were learning a lot about the mind. But where was the spirit in all of this? It wasn't. That was considered woo-woo and who knows what. But there were a whole group of us who were beginning to communicate with each other about this essential part of medicine, which we knew in our hearts was the real healer.

Bill McGarry, my husband at the time, was writing a newsletter that went out around the world to people who were interested in this kind of thing called Pathways to Health. And so we shared a lot of different ideas and we came up with the understanding that there really was something missing and that we could do something about that. So we, a group of us, actually there were five of us, I was the one woman, but there were five of us who gathered one weekend and created the concept of the American Holistic Medical Association. Of course, it took us two years to decide how to spell holistic. We finally realized that the word we were looking for was the base word, was health, healing, and holy. So bringing that into it, it had to start with an H. So our use of the word holistic had to become one that was written with an H.

And this idea of your soul and your body being fundamentally connected, it's something that you talk about and write about not in a vacuum, because you are someone who has lived through two bouts of cancer. And there was a very interesting bit in your book where you talk about the second time that you had cancer and the visualization involving the suitcase. Will you tell us about that? Yeah, I am very aware of how important the total connection and it's how we use our mind in the whole process of healing. I had the diagnosis of this breast cancer and it was a lump. And I had the option to do a lot of great holistic things or conventional medicine. holistic things or conventional medicine. Well, I was really busy at the time and I really didn't have time to take time off and go into a sort of a retreat and to do the healing. And in this time,

the ability of the medical community to do some really amazing work. I thought I need to find out about that. So I went to the surgeon and we talked about it. And when I was finished with that, I didn't tell people I had cancer. Like I didn't say, well, I've got breast cancer. I said, well, I have a lump. And what I'm visualizing with that lump is that I'm going to have it removed. It doesn't belong in my body anymore. So I'm going to take care of the way in which it could be removed that would be most available and practical and so on. And in that process, I began visualizing a little suitcase that was hand tooled and it

was really cute, a little suitcase that was hand-tooled, and it was really cute, a little suitcase. And I talked to that lump, and I said, now, I want you to understand that there's going to be a time. You're going to have to pack your suitcase. You're going to have to get in that suitcase. But in the meantime, call any cancer cells that are in my body, and you have a family reunion, so that you gather up all of them. then you're going to have a while of the time and you're going to be sent off to a family reunion go and have fun but you need to leave my body and so I had conversations that went on like that and then so that when it was removed that was gone but then radiation in the early years breast cancer was a horrible thing the whole

process of medicine the way that the breast was removed the whole thing and then the radiation was so unsophisticated I guess I'll call it that way because it hindered other organs of the body and it was terrible. So my experience with the radiation from the work that I had done coming along was brutal. But I knew that progress had been made. So I researched it, went in and talked about it and found out that it was a completely different process. They can now pinpoint where the radiation is to the cells exactly and not do all the rest of the damage. So it's a whole different world when it comes to how it can be treated. So in my mind, it's not a matter of either conventional medicine, which is all bad, and holistic medicine, which is all good. I don't think of it that way. In fact,

I have a story about my eldest son, who is a retired orthopedic surgeon. And when he came through town to go to his practice in Texas, he said, Mom, I'm real scared. He said, I'm going into the world. I'm going to have people's lives in my hands. I don't know if I can handle that. And I said, well, Carl, if you think you're the one that does the healing, you have a right to be scared. But if you can understand that your training is so great in orthopedics to help people and you do your work the best that you can and then support the patient as they do their own healing with the help of the

physician within them. I said, that's the colleague that you look for within each patient. With each patient that we have has within them what I call the physician within, which is that healing power, which is that healing power, which takes over the work to make it real in the body. I can do all I can to bring things to you. But if you don't want to take them, that's okay. But if you do want to take them and you take it into your body, then I have no control over it. Then it's your job to do the healing with the work that I can do and that you can do. That's so interesting. And I wonder if I could ask you a question that comes from a very personal place, which is a question about my own recent history. I am someone who has tried and failed for 12 years to have her own baby. And I had an experience at the beginning of this year

where I have been working with an incredible therapist who you remind me a lot of actually. A lot of what she teaches me is what I recognized in your book. And she said, I think you should start talking to your body and having positive visualizations about receiving this embryo and it growing and it having a happy and healthy outcome. And I did all of that. And I felt so positive about it. And I felt all of the signs were there universally and physically. And then it didn't work.

And after that, I think I've come to the realization that perhaps it is part of my purpose on this earth not to have my own biological child for various reasons. And I suppose I just wanted to bring that to you and ask what you thought about that, that when these visualizations don't work, what does that mean? What does that mean? Well, it's part of our personal life story. And each one of us has a personal life story. And sometimes we aren't meant to do what we think we would like to do.

And sometimes we are. So sometimes you don't know what is really going to work at this point because it's maybe not the time. There's a universe of soul interactions. And maybe a soul that would come in at this time would be uncomfortable because it should be another. You know, we don't know about time and space and all of that. But it's part of what we deal with. But our soul knows and our body knows. I have so many questions I want to ask you, but I'm very aware we need to get onto your failures. And your first one is your dyslexia. So tell us your experience of dyslexia and why you chose it. Well, up until I started school, I thought everything was fine.

I knew the alphabet and I knew numbers and all that stuff. But when I was asked to read, I couldn't do it. The numbers didn't stay put. The letters went all over the place. For two years, I was the class dummy, really. The teacher thought I was stupid and just didn't understand and so the other kids thought I was too fortunately I had a home where I could go home and be the person I really was but school was horrible it was just a nightmare, and I fought all the time in school because they'd call me a name and I'd punch, you know, I didn't take it very well.

So that went on for two years. But in third grade, I had a teacher who saw something in me that the other had not. And so she appointed me class governor because she realized that I might not be able to read and write, but I could talk and I was organizing games and stuff and doing things. So she made me class governor. And so that was a starting point to realize that I had other attributes besides this. But the interesting thing, oh, there's so many interesting things about that. But one of them is that when we started the American Holistic Medical Association, and there were 10 of us sitting around the table talking about our ideas and concepts, and we realized that of the 10 of us, six of us were dyslexic.

Fascinating. And we looked at each other and we said, well, that's why we started this, because there's an alternative way of doing this, because I can't tell you how I learned to read. A lot of them can't tell you. Get it so that you can read, because you have to be able to read to be able to get through medical school. I mean, somehow I did it. And I learned and they said the same thing. I said, Well, how did you learn? Well, it's a very interesting thing. Do you think it's given you a different way of looking at the world? Yes. Yes, I think so. What do you think your unique gifts are? Because you encourage the rest of us to find out what our purpose is, what our unique gifts are to offer the world. What do you think yours are? very passionate about creating a village for living medicine, for this concept of life and love and working together with each person is part of the actual village that we have.

And it would include having a birthing center because I'm so concerned about the way we're birthing our babies. Part of the extension of that is what I'm calling aging into health. And that's the part that says to us, okay, well, now I'm five years old. I'm going to be seven. I'm going to be nine. I'm going to be 100. You know, it's part of the process of what am I going to do

as I'm going along here because every moment I have choices. And every moment, those choices are vital. And life has to live. It has to move. If it can't move, it dies. So we all have to have a purpose. And my purpose has always been to share whatever I could share with the people I'm with. And that could be a meal. It could be clothes or something. It could be anything. But the part that I really like is my understanding of how healing works. That phrase, aging into health, is such a powerful one because we have been taught for so long and particularly if we are women that age in some way diminishes our value and as someone who grew up

during the course of a century where there were so many embedded stereotypical notions of what women could and couldn't should and shouldn't be How did you manage to fight against that idea, that pervasive idea that age diminishes our power? Well, because I kind of didn't like to think about what was diminishing my power. I thought it was more important to put my energy into what was increasing my power. I mean, it was a conscious choice. If I was wanting to, I could sit down and say what a lot of my colleagues do. In fact, my son, who is 76 now, when he went to see his doctor, gave him a list of things that he would probably have going on in his life that would diminish him. And he let his doctor know that he didn't accept that. My parents were conscious and functional in their late 90s.

It's not just a genetic thing. It's also what you believe you still have to do. And I still have work to do. If there is still something there in our lives that have not been completed, then we'll get the energy and the strength to do it and go on until it's done. It's not something that is going to be depleted because we're going to be feeding that, not depleting it. and world-leading experts every week as we explore the incredible real-life history that inspires the locations, the characters

and the storylines of Assassin's Creed. Listen and follow Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest? This is a time of great foreboding. These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago. These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago, set in motion a chain of gruesome events and sparked cult-like devotion across the world.

I'm Matt Lewis. Join us as we unwrap the enigma and get to the heart of what really happened to Thomas Beckett by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. I read in an interview that you gave that you didn't really find your voice until you were 93. Yeah. Why did it take you that long? There's a concept now about ambiguous loss. Oh, tell me more. That's losses that you don't understand. You live past and so on.

You think you've accomplished that and it's all done. Well, this whole business of my dyslexia was one of those things because I wrote a book, but I had Bill actually go through and redo it. Your late husband. Yeah. The patient or somebody would say something to me, thank you for what you said.

And I would say something like, well, you know, so-and-so is really the one that came up with. I was constantly deflecting the words that were coming out of my mouth. And then when I was 93, I woke up one night in a dream and out of a dream. So it was, you know, there are times like that. I knew it was a Sunday morning and I knew that this dream was important because I was laughing and I was singing at the same time as I woke up. And what the dream was that I saw myself, I'm watching this dream. I saw myself as nine-year-old Gladys in the tent in the jungle where the family was.

And on Sundays, we were not allowed to sing anything but hymns or bhajans, which are the Indian hymns. As a nine-year-old, I thought that was stupid and I didn't like the rule. And I wanted to sing what I wanted to sing. But if my brother saw me, he would tattle on me and then I'd be in trouble. So I see myself looking out to make sure he's not there. He's not.

So I climb right up to the top of the mango tree and I'm sitting up there and I'm singing. I'm singing a caterpillar song. I'm singing anything I wanted to sing. And I thought I was, you know, just great. And every so often I'd look over my, and Jesus was up in the tree with me. And I look at him, and I say, Jesus loves the little children, right? And he's laughing, and he says, yes. So I go back to my singing, and all of a sudden, I think, I don't know, and I look again, and I say, Jesus loves the little children. I'm still a little children, right? And he says, yes.

And so I go back to sing. So that's when I woke up, and I realized that every time I diminished what I said, I was denying it. In reality, what Jesus was saying to me, you have a voice, reality, what Jesus was saying to me, you have a voice and no matter what other people say about it or who or what or where it came from, use your voice. And that set me free to begin to claim. And if a patient said, thank you for saying that, I would say, thank you. I'm glad that helped. And I think a lot of us have these ambiguous hurts and pains that we don't really understand. I didn't understand. I was 93 for crying out loud.

You know, I didn't understand how deep that was a wound until that time. In spite of the fact that I had American Holistic Medical Association and the other guys and all this, we'd all talked about it. Oh, gosh, I think that's so powerful for people to hear. Not only that someone as accomplished as you feels that sense of secret fraudulence, kind of imposter-like thoughts, but that you can get to a point in your life. It's never too late to get to a point in your life where you can claim your power and your voice. So thank you for sharing that. Your second failure goes back in time. And your second failure concerns a play involving a frog jumping over a pool. Can you tell us about that, please? Absolutely. And it fits right in with this other part. So I was in third grade now

and because I had been kept back I was bigger than the other kids so we had a play that we for the whole student body and it was a frog jumps over the pool and we had a pan of water on the stage and my mother had made me a green frog suit and she dyed it green and all that. So I stepped out on the stage with great confidence and I walk across, but my two older brothers were in the front row of the audience and I missed my step just a little because of that. And instead of jumping over the pond, I landed in it. So I'm standing in that pond. My suit is beginning to fade. I'm crying. I don't know what to do.

I'm totally disgusted. You know, I've ruined everything. And I just, everything was bad. And I'm standing there crying. And the teacher has to come and lead me off the platform. So we come home and we're at the dinner table. And my brothers are just having the best time telling my mother what happened. And I'm giving the death eye, you know.

Yes. And so finally, my mother says, all right, boys, now you've had your fun. What can we as a family do to help Gladys so that if this happens anytime in the future, she will have people laughing with her and not against her? And I can't tell you how many times that's helped me. How many times something has happened, and I've been able to start my lecture or do something with something that takes what happened and puts a twist on it so that it's not bad and it's funny. I mean, it's transformed my ability to give lectures. Will you also write about the importance of

turning your face towards love as opposed to fear? And in a way, it's very similar because when we're humiliated, there's a fear there, isn't there, that we've embarrassed ourselves. Absolutely. Well, let me tell you another story that fits right along this. I just had my 99th birthday. Oh, this is my favorite story in the book. Carry on. story in the book. Well, I went to the grocery store and I was putting things in my cart and getting ready to take them and put them in my car. And this elderly gentleman comes along and he says to me, oh, may I help you? And I said, oh, no, I can do it. He says, well, I'm 86. And I looked at him and I said, well, I'm 99. And I marched off and got sat in my car. And I said to myself, you nasty old lady. He was just trying to be nice. And that was a nasty

thing. And I'm chewing myself up. And all of a sudden I think, this is hysterical. This is a comedy scene. Two second grade kids trying to up something else. And I just could hardly start the car. I was laughing so hard. It's a very, very funny anecdote. But I wonder if the part that initially enraged you, was that because he was being a bit sexist? And you must have had to deal with sexism all of your life. What's your top tip for anyone who's listening to this and who is working in a very sexist environment or having to cope with people asking all sorts of questions about how

they quote unquote juggle their home life with kids and their professional life? What would you say to them? That that's not your problem. What I finally realized was he was really trying to do something and I took it like I wanted to take it, which was, you know, but it's the whole idea of whether we accept things and allow ourselves to be hurt by them, or we can just do a kuchipurvani, let it go, let life move. Things don't matter. There's so many things that happen that are just not worth putting energy into, but we get our feelings hurt or something really bad happens and we're in a tight place. But if we focus on that tight place, and not on what we're originally trying to do, or where our purpose was, or what we can look for and reach for,

which is light and love. You mentioned a Hindu phrase there. Can you repeat it for us? Kuch padwane. It doesn't matter. And what does it mean? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You actually use what you've just described there when writing about boundaries. And I found this an incredibly helpful and nuanced take on what a boundary is, because I think sometimes people confuse a boundary and believe it to be very cruel and very selfish. And your point is that setting healthy boundaries starts with knowing who we are and what we came to do. It's about directing energy, isn't it? It is. And it's about, am I going to eat that or am I not going to eat that? Basically, it's that simple when you get right down to it. Does that make my stomach feel

good or does it make it feel bad? These are choices that we make minute by minute by minute. And it's setting up boundaries. If you have a person who's making it difficult for you to live your life the way you want to live it, there are ways of trying to work on not what's wrong with that person and how they're hurting you, and trying to find something that is acceptable, maybe. Maybe not any more than acceptable about that person. Although there are people that you really sometimes need to just separate yourself from. Your boundaries are there and you can lovingly allow them to go on with their life while you go on with yours. I mean, there are ways of doing this,

but it comes from what it is within your heart that you're trying to do without condemning yourself for not being able to really reach out and love that person. Because there are some people who we don't work in synchrony with each other. Our connections are disharmonious. And we can live with that sometimes. And sometimes it's important. But sometimes it gets to the point where this disharmony is no longer acceptable. It's getting in the way of what disharmony is no longer acceptable.

It's getting in the way of what your life is really trying to do. So you need to just do something to change that. I think also what's important about that is that you're saying a boundary doesn't have to be binary. That actually one way of erecting a boundary is to say, well, I'll focus my love towards the positives that this situation can bring. And I won't focus my energy towards all of the negatives. I'm not going to take those on. And I thought that was so intriguing. I hadn't actually come across that way of expressing it before and I found it very helpful. So thank you. Your third failure is a really big one in terms of the profundity of it. And I'm so glad that you're going to talk about it.

And it's that after 46 years of being married to Bill, who you've mentioned a couple of times during the course of this conversation, and you raised six amazing children together and practiced medicine together and you wrote books together and lectured together. After 46 years, your husband filed for divorce. What was your first reaction when that happened? I couldn't believe it. I absolutely couldn't believe it. All the clues were there, but I wouldn't believe them, first of all. My grown children couldn't believe it. It was a complete what? But he had been struggling with this for a long time and hadn't brought it up to me. I was happy. I was doing what I was wanting to do. I thought we were great.

I was really doing what I wanted to do. And then this, I was broken, absolutely broken. I was out living in Casa Grande in the desert and I would get out and just howl with coyotes. I was absolutely broken. However, my youngest daughter had just joined us in our practice. And so she and I got together with a friend who was able to help us with this. And in two weeks, we started our own practice, which actually made me think about something beyond. In other words, this had ended. I'd gone off a cliff and it ended. Now I had to start thinking about something else. And as long as I could get up in the morning and go to the office and all of this, I did it. I dragged myself. The patients were wonderful. But at one point,

were wonderful. But at one point, I was driving home to my home in Casa Grande, and I was really yelling at God and telling him he just didn't understand how bad this was. And all of a sudden, I stopped the car, pulled off to the side of the road, and the hymn, or the thought, that this is a day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. And I thought, that this is a day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. And I thought, now what in the world am I supposed to do with that? And then I thought, you put it on your license plate. And I did. So all the time I was in practice, my license plate said, be glad. So that was a turning point, but it didn't still heal it. I mean, this was still deep enough that it was still going on until one night, and I don't remember which anniversary it would have been, but I was still carrying this load of pain and periodically, you know,

just opening up that bag and thinking about how awful it is. But this night, I thought, you know, this would have been our whatever anniversary. And I started out and thinking about what we wouldn't have. And then I stopped myself and I said, yes, but look at what you did have. And then I completely turned it around because, my goodness, we had these wonderful kids. We had grandkids. We had the practice. We had climbed the pyramid together in 1962. So the rest of the night, I went through the amazing things. We'd created the American Holistic Medical Association together, one thing after the other. And I realized that my choice at that point was either to keep suffering and glorying in the pain, which is what it kind of felt like,

you know, that feels really good because he was so mean and all, you know, or realize that what we had. So I finally have decided that I don't deny or regret one minute that I spent with Bill McGarry. But he took a vacation. Yeah. So he lost and he moved into dementia and ultimately didn't make it, you know. But what he gave me was the freedom to really pick up the load and become the voice I needed to become. And my daughter, too. So it was his gift. In fact, I wrote him a letter and said, thank you for giving me my freedom to go on and do the things that I need to do.

Remarkable. It's that idea of stepping into your story rather than allowing someone else to keep on telling it. You write in the book about the fact that he had proposed divorce many years earlier when you were parents to four children and you'd done intensive marriage counseling and you'd got through it. But one of the things that came up was this idea that you had internalized a lot of the submissive tropes of how a woman should be at that stage. And it was the 1950s, right? So, yeah. How much do you think that played a part? Do you feel that your soul at some fundamental level was too vivid, almost? It was too

intent on pursuing its own path as it absolutely should have been for him to cope with? No, because I think that was a lesson for him to learn, which he didn't learn, which is why he lost. I think in the long run, I gained because I gained my freedom and I didn't lose anything that I'd had before. I still glory in the fun that we had and the things that we did together and all of that. That makes my heart sing. We really had good times together. Rather than thinking about what I could build up and do stuff with, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to enjoy what I choose to enjoy,

which is the fact that Bill and I had a good time from my perspective. He may have been suffering with all kinds of, and he has contacted me since, saying that he was working with all kinds of karmic issues that he really didn't resolve. But that was his problem. Yes. My problem was finding out what I could do. You talk about the difference between running away from and running towards.

I wonder if there was an aspect of that. Absolutely, because when I chose that license plate, from that point on, when I was in my car, I was running towards. Because the license plate said, be glad. Basically, my soul was saying, OK okay you're in the right direction keep going this is where we need to be as someone who is 102 you have experienced loss in your life significant awful loss not just your marriage but the death of your beloved daughter and your siblings. I'm so sorry. No parent should ever have to outlive their child. I wonder if you could tell us what you have learned from your experiences with that kind of grief. Well, again, it's a matter of either hanging on to the grief of it or the glory of having had her for 58 years.

I mean, she was a force to be recognized. When I think of her, I have to laugh and smile because she was the kind of person, when she walked into a room, people would sit up and say, oh, hello, you know. She had that kind of energy about her that was always moving out. She took charge of her three brothers. I mean, I could tell you stories that are just wonderful stories that I have to live with. And they're there.

They're in my memory lanes. I desperately miss her. And I wish she was here. But it's not like I'm going to spend any time on what I lost. It's time spent on what I gained by having her as my daughter. And it takes some conscious work to do that. And it catches you periodically. You know, that's tricky about this.

You'll be going along, you think you've got it handled, and all of a sudden something comes up and it grabs you and you go through some sorrow and you have to work with it. Because see, I don't think you get over these things. I think you live through them. I agree. And if you can live through them, you get to the other side and you can go on. How do you feel about dying? Oh, I think it's a pretty interesting thing. I think that when the time comes, I'll move on and life will go on, but it'll be different.

And I have no idea what heaven is like, except I think that it's beautiful. And you know, it's full of love. And I think I don't put a timeline on my life in this dimension, and start in another dimension. I think it's going to be a flow. Somehow, the things that I'm doing here will get done. And then I can move on to something else and then something else and then come to the time when I've kind of finished that now I can step on and go on you say in your book that it's important for people to have a 10-year plan so in 10 years time Dr Gladys I would like you to come back on this podcast. Is that a deal? How lovely. Whatever dimension you're in, I want you to come back on How to Fail.

Right. And you can tell me all that you've done. I would love that. It has been a complete honor talking to you. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your humor with the listeners of How to Fail. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. If you enjoyed this episode of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, I would so appreciate it if you could rate, review and subscribe. Apparently, it helps other people know that we exist.