The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Christine Handy – Motivational Speaker, Author, Survivor and More

Episode Date: June 16, 2022

Christine Handy - Motivational Speaker, Author, Survivor and More Christinehandy.com

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here to get podcasts who saw that coming after all these years another Another podcast. Who knew that was in the can? Anyway, guys, be sure to refer the show to your friend. His name is Reltz. We certainly appreciate

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chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. There you can get all sorts of coaching and speaking and all that sort of crazy stuff that we do on the show. Today we have amazing guests. And we only book amazing guests on the show. We have like a rule that we have amazing guests and they have to offset me because I'm not amazing. So I bring them on because they're smarter than me and they make me look good. Although, well, me and they make me look good. Although, well, they don't make me look good. I mean, have you seen me lately? They make me think good. I don't know what any of this means, but hopefully it's funny. Anyway, guys, Christine Handy is on the show with us. She is a national and international model, bestselling author of

the novel Walk Beside Me. She's a writer, motivational speaker, social media influencer, nationally recognized humanitarian, mother, student at Harvard, mentor, and board member of two nonprofits. Welcome to the show, Christine. How are you? I'm doing great. It's quite a bio. I'm just kidding. There you go. I aspire to all of that. Of course, I would never be able to become a mother.

So that's the one thing I'll have to skip out on. Well, with all of that, I don't have much of a social life. I didn't put that on there because, you know, I get a little busy doing those things. Well, yeah, when you're busy, you're busy. But it beats not being busy. So give us your dot com so people can find out more about you on the interweb. ChristineHandy.com. There's a lot of interviews and interesting stories on there.

There you go. There you go. So how did you get here? Well, do this, actually. What's an overview of what you do for people? And I know you do, we mentioned a lot of things, but I'll let you expand on a little bit. Well, I mean, pretty much from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed, I'm trying in some way to serve people. And the reason that I do that is because I lived quite a different life for the first 40 years of my life. And it really was so fleeting and empty for many, many years, even though from a society perspective, I looked like I had the perfect life. I was an international model. I had the perfect family. I lived on the great street, drove the right car. And then things started to kind of unravel. But when I was living that society's perfect life, I was really

unfulfilled and not sure where I was placed in this world. So, and then I had to go through a lot of fires to figure that out. You know, I went through the same journey as a male model, you know, my, my Spearmint Rhino actually was, I can't pull the joke now of, of what the male place is. It starts with a P I believe. Anyway, we all know that's a lie, but no, it's, it's interesting how we live. We can live, you know, that perfect life and sometimes challenges come to us. And that's when we sometimes really discover either happiness or who we are. And sometimes those, what's the word?

Dichotomy or not a dichotomy, but times where you're almost destroyed and that which can kill you makes you stronger. Yeah. Yeah. You go through cathartic times. That's the word I'm looking for, not dichotomy. Yeah. Yeah. You go through cathartic times. That's the word I'm looking for. Not dichotomy. Yeah. So tell us, tell us about what were some of the big changes that happened in your life that. And when you are solely dependent on society and what society thinks of you or your external value, but all of those things can be taken away, which in my case, they were not social media because it wasn't back then.

But my external value, which I was so heavily dependent on in the modeling world and in my personal relationships and also in the modeling world and in my personal relationships. And also in the modeling world, it's very transactional. And because I started at such a young age, that's just how I thought the world worked. But it turned out that when my beauty was stripped away with chemotherapy and I was pushed against the wall with a bad doctor and my arm was fused and now I was in chronic pain, I had gone from being like this thriving mother, wife, model to a woman sickly and needing constant care. And when you go from one extreme to the other, you have to make a really solid decision about where you want to go in the future. And I just decided in the very beginning of kind of chemotherapy that how I lived my life prior to this wasn't working for me.

And I needed to change that. And I had no idea how, but I spent 15 months, you know, literally sick on my bathroom floor, throwing up and violently ill from chemotherapy going, okay, how do I fix this? And I just had all of these like images of living a life of altruism and serving and helping other people. Cause I knew that the depth of my despair was so ugly that I didn't want other people to feel that way. And so now I wake up every day and if it's writing in a master's degree at Harvard and learning how to write better or promoting my book or speaking to people or through social media, influencing in social media or modeling, which I do now with a concave chest, all of those things are to help other people kind of learn that self-esteem is from inside. Self-worth, self-love, those are so critical to spend time on. But if we don't and we just take the accolades from society and think that that's what our value is, then when, when that gets taken away,

you feel kind of empty. Yeah. I mean, in an age that focuses on beauty and especially in the Instagram age where, you know, it's, it's not, it's not beauty. I mean, I'm a, I get all these dating apps and the filters they use to, to make people, and they can make me look like a super model. And of course we know I'm just a hair off, so it doesn't take that much. But I mean, they got filters that can make people look like complete supermodels that aren't. And you meet them in real life and you're like, oh my gosh, which is how people usually meet me when they meet me. They're like, you have such a sexy voice.

And I find it enthralling. No, they don't. Anyway, so how did you, when you first were diagnosed with cancer, what was that like? What was that experience like and how long did it take you to find your sea legs for deciding that you were going to use it to empower your life? Yeah, you know what? I was a victim for a long time. It was super comfortable for me. And I had just gone through an entire year of being bullied by a medical doctor which ultimately led to the fusion of my right arm which ultimately led me to be

handicapped and I was literally just trying to digest how do I live the rest of my life with a fused right arm how do I take care of my children how do I drive how do I whatever you you name it and I was trying to figure that out. And I was diagnosed with breast cancer, an aggressive form of breast cancer. And to be honest with you, they couldn't even start chemotherapy because they said the grafts, the bone grafts, the cadaver bones in my arm now that they just fully put in there would have dissolved. So now I'm faced with this aggressive form of breast cancer and I can't even treat it for a month because my arm is fused. And so that was total despair. Like victim, I mean that whole victim mentality, I was like stuck. I despair thing, this whole angry thing that I was angry at the doctor, I was angry at the world, I was angry that I was about to lose my beauty, which I was so

dependent on. And I thought, this is getting me nowhere. This is so, this despair is getting me nowhere. And so I just started to kind of like unpack all of those backpacks of disappointment and this isn't what I thought life would be. And now I'm in this position, I don't know how to move forward, but I'm going to figure it out. And so I just start, I kind of realized that I could be a vine or a victim. And so when I let go of the outcome, when I said to myself, okay, I have no idea how I'm going to deal with a fused arm. I have no idea whether I'm going to survive breast cancer or not, but all I know is today I can show courage to myself and hopefully to other people, including my children. And so when I start to show up for myself on a day-to-day basis

and stop the self-criticism and stop the self-hatred and stop the disappointments, then even though I didn't believe it at first, right? When I would call myself like a loser and you're going to lose your hair and you're going to lose your beauty, you have no worth. I believe that. But when I stopped those, when I took those thoughts captive and I stopped them and I replaced them, took a while for me to believe them. It's a long practice, but we have to practice that muscle. And I mean, and another way that I changed my life was after chemotherapy,

I had terrible chemo brain. I would literally drive down the street and I couldn't remember if I was taking a turn, which side to drive on. If there were no cars, I had no idea which side to turn on. And so I had no idea. And so I realized that it was my job to fix that. It wasn't somebody else's job. It wasn't the doctor's job. It wasn't my husband's job. It wasn't my kid's job. I had to fix it. And so I decided that I was going to go back to school. But by that point, I had rebuilt my self-esteem. I had rebuilt the self-care. And so I wasn't afraid of rejection. So I said to myself, okay, well, I'm going to apply to Harvard. And you know what? If they say no, they say no, it didn't matter. Again, I wasn't fixated on the outcome.

If you let go of the outcome, like on social media, if you don't fixated on the outcome if you let go of the outcome like on social media if you don't fixate on how many likes and how many comments you just do your thing you inspire people and and let go of the highlight reels man you're gonna have a much more peaceful life you know it's interesting how everyone goes through life and we build these identities like you mentioned where they're where they're you know built on social standards you know yes and and yeah we try and fit in and we go okay well these are the social standards and then life uh seems that way of everyone i don't know anyone who survives not going through a cathartic moment and whoever they are it's just screw those people anyway but and it seems like you know one of the problems we have, like I mentioned before,

with the Instagram thing, you know, I think we had someone on the show or a comedian, I think once, who said, you know, when the archaeologists dig us up as a society a thousand years from now, they're going to be like, these people smile like all the time according to all the photos they had. And even like you'll see movie stars and you'll think, wow, they must live the perfect life. Nothing happens to them. But we all go through cathartic stuff. And it's interesting how those cathartic moments will usually destroy that identity and bring us down to a core of finding who we are. I've been through a couple of cathartic

moments in my life. And I've always found that I've learned this the hard way, whether it's a cathartic moment, or sometimes I'm at a bottom for some reason, maybe for some reason, just nothing is working on something. Or if you financially go through a dry spell and you're like, what the hell's going on? Am I under a bad mood? And the best times to do and and maybe help rediscover yourself is to give back and gratitude so i've always learned that in my when i'm having the hardest time i i will i will give back i'll go find some way to help somebody else because at least i feel good gets me outside of me and i can go help somebody. And you do a lot of that now with your speaking and education that you do. Well, I think when we're pushed against a wall, right, or really brought down to our

knees, it's a choice how we react. And if you recognize that before you go through the painful moments, then you have an opportunity to learn how to, to react. Right. And so I think that there's three ways we all react. Pride and ego, which is like adhering to society, right? Malice, oh, I'm going to get him back. Or compassion.

And it's not just how we react to other people. It's how we react to ourselves and our circumstances. So if I go through today all day long and react out of compassion, that's a peaceful identity. That's a peaceful self-war. But if I react in pride, like, oh man, I don't have enough lights, or look at her highlight reel, or why did she get to go on that trip? Or man, she got interviewed by that person. That's pride. Or if I decide that I'm going to be angry at the doctor that destroyed my arm, that's malice. I'm going to get you back. And so I think we have to practice those things. We have to recognize them. And then we have to

practice them. And when we start to react in a way that isn't compassion, we can stop it because we've recognized it and we've learned. But those sorts of things like self-esteem and learning how to react, those sorts of things we have to practice, like the terrible thoughts that we call ourselves. I mean, you used to self-deprecated like three or four times on the show funny it's funny but if you do that all the time your self-esteem is coming down and those girls that you're looking at on the dating app they're not going to want to go out with you that's very you have to fix that yeah i just use my voice anyway jokes aside you know, so talk about what you do. You do motivational speaking.

You go out and talk to people. What are some of the different things that you use there? And give us some stories of how you've maybe helped or influenced people who you've talked to. I have two very interesting stories, and they're both in the prison system, which if you had ever said to me when I was going through chemotherapy that I was going to mentor prisoners, I would have thought you were crazy. When I started to speak, I started to speak to large groups of women. And then I was hired to do some prisons in the state of Florida and they did not want me to speak to women. They wanted me to speak to the men. So I would go into these prisons in Florida and I talked to hundreds of men and they did not look like me. And I think when I walked in, they were like,

how is this girl going to help us? How is this girl going to inspire us? And somehow, some way I did. And there was a couple of prisoners and here's the stories. One prisoner came out about four years ago and he reached out to me on social media and he said, Hey, you were in the prison that I was in and I'm out. And I'd really like to talk to you about starting a nonprofit. And my friends were like, do not go meet him. I mean, that's dangerous. And I said, no, no, I'm definitely going to go meet him. And by the way, it was like an hour away. So like when we do stuff for other people, one, it can never be transactional and two, it, it sometimes comes at a cost, but who cares, right? And so I went to the outside of Palm Beach to meet this gentleman, and he came in a full red suit, and he had a briefcase.

Wow. And he just said, he said, I have this amazing idea. I want you to listen, and I want you to hear it, and you have inspired me to do this. And I thought, wow, that must have been a really good speech. Actually, I had spoken at his prison like three times. So anyway, fast forward four years, this guy and I, I'm the president of that organization. We've started a nonprofit in Palm Beach, and we are changing the rate of recidivism in Palm Beach.

We have this spectacular board of people that have joined us and we are actually doing the work. These prisoners get out of jail. He goes and picks them up and he goes and we have clothing, brand new clothing for these inmates and anyway, we do a lot of different things. The second interesting story about the prison system is there is another

prisoner. When you go to the prisons, you have to go through all this red tape to get in. And the warden at this particular prison did not want me to come inside. He did not want me helping these people. He did not want me inspiring these people. And so he kept me in a back office for a while. And I knew exactly what he was doing.

And when I was in this back office, this young inmate who was like 22 was just in that office as well. So I was just talking to him, mentoring him. And you can email, prisoners can email you through this thing called JPEG. And I allow it, and I emailed them back. And this particular young man emailed me and he said, I wrote this book in jail. It's written, handwritten. Would you take, if I can get it to my sister, would you take a look at it? And I was like, of course. Long story short, he gets it to my sister would you take a look at it and i was like of course long story short he gets it to his sister his sister gets it to me i read this thing it's literally handwritten have you ever seen a 500 page handwritten anything in the last 15 years no wrote it with a pen long story short the book was fantastic and so i had it made into a pdf don't ask me how it was

very complicated and then i called the sister and i said this book should be published and she said well can you get can you get it published i said well i can but it needs to be copyrighted by your your brother and all of these other things and so that's still in the process but that kid's book's going to be published because i said yes right and if we and if we say yes to these things which by the way maybe we don't know how to figure it out i didn't know how to figure out how to put make a handwritten book into a pdf i had no idea but if we take the time to figure it out we can really impact a lot of lives oh yeah yeah well that's awesome and then you have your book that you have out that came out in 2017, Walk Beside Me. I guess it's a novel. Was there a little bit of your story in

there? Yeah, it's a fictional depiction of my life. It's actually being made into a film. Yeah, called Willow, the feature film. You know, it's a book. It is a book about my life. And it's really about the power of friendships and the power of, for others, because it's so simply that important that if we carry each other through trials, then that gives us power to encourage ourselves, encourage other people. And so I had a lot of people show up for me. But the book isn't just fluff. The book isn't just about, oh, look at all these beautiful women that showed up for me and got me through chemotherapy. It's about all the good, the bad, and the ugly. Because when I was going through chemotherapy, there wasn't really a novel about that. There's a ton of self-help books, but there wasn't really a book about like, this is the bad part. This is the good part. This is the story about it. Because through storytelling, that's how we really impact people's lives because then they don't feel so alone in their journeys. Cancer is the ultimate evil. It's one of the ultimate evils, I should say. And it,

it impacts so many people. Are there, you've been left with, with breast cancer, with what you call a concave chest and you've used your, I think, nonprofit or you make a bikini for it that helps women. How many will you, how many will you, how many. How many women suffer from breast cancer and these sort of conditions? Have you been able to help? And tell us a little bit about what you designed with the bikini. Well, one out of eight women will have breast cancer in their life. And the numbers are not going down. And younger and younger people are being diagnosed. I actually had breast cancer in 2012 and I had implants put in and I loved them. They didn't move.

They were perfect and I loved them. And then in 2020, when the whole world shut down because of COVID, I was in the hospital because I had a MRSA infection in my left implant. Oh, no. And so it was, well, really, the infectious disease doctors, they were super important. They had never been on the forefront of medicine ever, right? Infectious disease doctors, they were the shit, right, in 2020. And so I was in and out of the hospital for three months until finally the MERS infection kind of like exploded in my chest. And my chest became, well, they had an emergency surgery and that was it.

No more implants. I lost a lot of skin and the infection had really, it was terrible. So then I became concave and I had never been concave since I had breast cancer. And so after months of the victim and pity party that I had, and I finally went into my closet to see what I could continue to wear and what I had to get rid of. And when it went in my closet, I thought, you know what? I live in Miami. I can't wear any of these bathing suits. And I figured other people can't wear those bathing suits that are on the rack. So I guess I would have to do something about that. So I called up a bathing suit, a couture bathing suit line and said, I have an idea. I'd like to make bathing suits for women

who have flat or concave chest. And she said, I'd love to help you. And so we've been in production trying to do that. Now, I also am a model because I've been modeling for a very, very long time. And I went back to modeling after I had a concave chest. And the reason that I did that was because I thought, well, not I thought, I had been getting so many messages from women who have concave or flat chest saying, we feel alone in this pain. We feel different. We feel underrepresented. I can't even show this to my husband. This is what these women are saying.

And I think to myself, oh, my gosh, that's so sad. I have to help these people. So I basically called my modeling agent and I said, I want to walk in New York Fashion Week. And she was like, yeah, I don't think so. And I said, I think so. So I went up to New York Fashion Week last September and I literally pushed my way into as many shows as I could get in. I met the designers and I said, you know what?

I have a concave chest. I've been a model for 40 years. I think we can do something together. I'd love to walk in Fashion Week in February said, you know what? I have a concave chest. I've been a model for 40 years. I think we can do something together. I'd love to walk in Fashion Week in February. And you know what? Four people said yes. I've never walked in New York Fashion Week.

I put on heels for a month before New York Fashion Week because I wanted to be totally prepared. I killed it. And I've changed lives. And now, this summer, I'm walking in Miami Swim Week. So I'm getting in shape for that. I'm 52 years old. But you know what? I mean, but I'm a lifer. I'm a model.

I'm a lifer. And so I'm like, okay, well, every single platform that I have, man, I'm going to help people because I don't want people to feel as bad as I have felt in my life. You know, there's all sorts of inspiration that comes out of this. You're inspiring me to go back to my modeling career at Chippendales. Love it. That was the term I was looking for earlier. The callback jokes. So, but no, I'm 54, so I can make a comeback. I'm losing weight

to do that. Maybe I can get back on the swimsuit thing. Do you have the whole walk down? I do. I do. But you know what? Listen, I had never done them before. I was a print model. So I went on YouTube and I trained myself and I put those shoes on.

And man, I was in the gym with these red suede shoes, red suede, really high shoes. I was in the gym. I went to the grocery store in them. I went everywhere for a month. I even wore them to bed one night because I wanted my feet to be totally comfortable in them. And even when I got to New York Fashion Week, all the 18-year-olds that I was working with, they went on a lunch break and I was just walking up and down that runway. I did not take a break. I just went to practice because I did not want to fall.

That runway walk is like something else, like to learn and watch. Yeah. Yeah. So what are some other aspects we want to touch on that you do that we want to share out to people? Of course, they can go to your website and learn more about you. Anything more else we want to? I mean, I do do social media because it's the necessary evil, right?

For what I'm trying to do. If I'm trying to give people hope, I have to participate in what's out there. And so I do work with brands and I'm up in New York a fair amount. I'm trying to work with Victoria's Secret right now. I've been knocking on their door for a long time. I'm like, you have got to represent the breast cancer world.

It's the second largest brand in the world. And they actually took a meeting with me after I walked in New York Fashion Week. That's when they were like, okay, this woman's legit. And so I met with them in New York Fashion Week and then I met with them again. And they said, okay, we're just going to do Mother Day, and then we'll talk to you about breast cancer awareness. So I'm going to keep speaking to them. I'm just trying to represent the women that are in the same situation I am. I don't have a problem with my solid self-esteem, but I get the messages of people that feel less than, different, isolated.

And so I just want to be a champion for them. So in any regard, right? But I'm using all of the platforms. That's brilliant. That's brilliant. And of course, it raises awareness. You know, people have cancer. People survive cancer.

And, you know, people are still beautiful on the inside and out. And, you know, you shouldn't, you know, there needs to be a narrative, especially, like I said, in this world where everyone's super pretty. In fact, I need to come up with a filter for the show where I have like one of those fog filters. No more filters. No more filters. No highlight reels. No highlight reels. They're not true.

And it's like people are putting out this fake facade. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's the message of accepting yourself as you are and just being the best person that you can be is probably the best because those people are the most beautiful. I mean, I, I've certainly met a few models in my day that weren't the best people. Let's say not that I can throw any rocks either, but, but at least say my face matches my internal beauty or did it one time. I don't know what that means. Anyway, there's a joke in there somewhere. So it's been wonderful to have you on the show, Christina. Very inspiring. Anything more you want to touch on before we go out? I mean, I just would love for people not to focus on the outcome. Like if you, you know, money, cancer, illness, tragedy, the outcome is the outcome. You just, it's better not to focus on that. Every single day, show courage for people and that will help you. There you go. Give and don't expect to get back, but usually giving, you'll get stuff back. No, no, you don't expect to get back. That's transactional. No transactional. Just give of yourself and-

What comes back. There you go. Serve other people. So what's the best way for people to reach out to you work with you get to know you better etc i guess socials right website reach out to me and instagram the gram and just definitely follow people on instagram that inspire you all that other people forget it there you go so let's plug the dot com christine handy dot com you can go there and of course you can find all the links to all the shops she has her non you have two non-profits so we do we want to plug those to it all yeah so people of purpose is a non-profit that i started with with the other prisoner and we are literally changing the rate of recidivism in palm beach county and then the

other non-profit that i'm on the board of is called eBeauty. And eBeauty is a wig exchange program. And we have redistributed for women going through treatment over 50,000 wigs who can't afford them. Wigs are very expensive. And so if you lose your hair and you can't afford one, that's kind of tragic, right? Women, part of their identity is their hair. And so we don't want that to happen. So it's a free resource and you can get them by going to eBeauty.com. There you go. There you go. Check it out, guys.

Well, it's been wonderful to have you on the show, Christine. Thank you so much for coming on today. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Monix, for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortuness, Chris Voss. See everything we're reading and reviewing over there.

YouTube.com, Fortuness, Chris Voss. Hit the bell notification button, our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, all those crazy places the kids are playing, thanks for tuning in be good to each other, stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time