DEBBIE WILLIAMS's Podcast
DEBBIE WILLIAMS's Podcast
Living in Radical Uncertainty
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Kathy Izard is an award-winning author and speaker who has brought transformation to Charlotte USA in the areas of homelessness, housing, and mental health. Her memoir, The Hundred Story Home, has been featured on NPR and The Today Show, inspiring people to be change-makers in their own communities. Her latest book, The Last Ordinary Hour, was written to help others facing loss and uncertainty. Here she shares her journey of living through uncertainty.
Links:
https://www.kathyizard.com
debbiewilliamspodcast.com
Welcome to Storytelling. This week's guest is an award-winning author and speaker who has brought transformation to Charlotte USA in areas of homelessness, housing, and mental health. Her memoir, The Hundred Story Home, has been featured on NPR and The Today Show, inspiring people to be changemakers in their own communities. Her latest book, The Last Ordinary Hour, was written to help others facing loss and uncertainty. Here she shares her journey. Please welcome Kathy Izzard. Hello, Kathy, and welcome to the podcast.
SPEAKER_00Great to be here, Debbie. Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_01Kathy, what inspired you to write The Last Ordinary Hour about your husband's battle with a rare disease?
SPEAKER_00Well, I wasn't actually ever planning to publish this. I am an author and a speaker, but typically I write about homelessness and housing and mental health, and that's what my other books are about. And this really became a journaling or a writing project for myself to try and understand what happened when my husband, who was probably the healthiest person I knew, had a heart attack while we were out of town. It happened February 22nd, 2013. And fortunately, his life was saved that day. He had a major heart attack of his LAD, which is sometimes called the widowmaker. It's the main cardiac artery. Two stents were put in that artery, and we woke up not only he was grateful that he was alive, but we found out that it wasn't the average type of heart attack you hear about from cardiac disease. He was diagnosed with a rare disease called spontaneous coronary artery dissection. And that meant that not only was his cardiac artery at risk, but we found out it was every artery in his body, his carotid artery, his iliac artery, any artery in his body could split at any time for no reason, with no warning, and cause another heart attack, a stroke, or an aneurysm. And all of this was so unsettling, we couldn't figure out how this guy, who was so remarkably healthy, I mean, he helesed for fun. The guy was in phenomenal shape. And he got this disease that normally happens to women after childbirth. He was one of only 10 males known in the world at the time to have this disease. And we had to figure out, well, where are the answers? But we found out there were no answers. There was only one doctor in the country who was actually studying at the time at the Mayo Clinic at Rochester. So we went to try and find answers. And we found out there was no pill he could take. There was no tests that could be predictive. And frankly, there was no real prognosis. No one could tell him when it might happen again or if it would happen again. And that began our really having to confront this radical uncertainty that we were going to be forced to live in with no answers, no research, and no way to know when the next heart attack, aneurysm, or stroke might happen.
SPEAKER_01And how is your husband now?
SPEAKER_00Well, I'm happy to say we are 10 years since that day. And not that it's been uh pain-free or struggle-free. He's had multiple procedures and even open heart surgery since that. But as of this exact moment while we are recording this, he's actually playing golf. So at this exact moment and for today, he's doing very well. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01So, Cathy, you must have experienced a level of being uncomfortable with this uncertainty during the period when your husband was unwell. How can we learn to be comfortable with uncertainty?
SPEAKER_00I know that was my biggest struggle, Debbie. And I think that's why when the book, The Last Ordinary Hour, the subtitle is Living Life Now That Nothing Will Ever Be the Same. And I think that is what we're all trying to do, right? After these years of living with COVID and a worldwide pandemic, and everything has completely changed. And I think that's what we're all trying to do, live life now that nothing will ever be the same. So that's certainly what we were trying to do. I think before SCAD entered our lives, Charlie and I were both complete type A control freak type people. So I've had to laugh to say, what does God give to type A control freak type people, but a disease that is completely uncurable and unsolvable? So there was no way to Google our way out of it. There was no amount of hard work or persistence that could solve it. So we had to figure out how we were going to live in this daily discomfort. Charlie worrying about when he was going to die, and me worrying about, well, was I going to become a widow? And what was that day going to be? I remember lying in bed at night, afraid to fall asleep, and just watching his chest go up and down for signs of life, right? And wondering if tonight was the night that I was going to in the morning wake up a widow. And for me, that search really led to a spiritual search. For me, I put in the book, medical emergencies cause spiritual emergencies. And I think before this, any problem that I had, I could solve with hard work and persistence. And that was not going to work in this case. And that led me to read a lot of other people's work, a lot of other people's books. I quote in The Last Ordinary Hour over 35 poets, theologians, and authors who were grappling with this big decision and these big life questions, and trying to understand what life means and what should we do with this one precious chance we've been given. And I think while I'll never be grateful that my husband has suffered all of the medical procedures he's had or the heart attacks, I am grateful to SCAD for the way it woke us up in our life. I think we were sleepwalking through life. And the gift of SCAD was that it made us not only concede control, we do not have control in this life, but it also made us really start paying attention to how we were living, who we were spending our time with, what we were doing, and really questioning: is this the way we want to spend our lives? And if not, what should we do? What changes should we make?
SPEAKER_01But how do you go through the full process of conceding control, particularly as you previously described yourself and your husband as type A control freaks? What was that turnaround?
SPEAKER_00Well, you don't go down easy, right? Control freaks will continue to try to do what they think has worked for them in the past, which is to just lean into it even more and say, oh my, there's got to be an answer. I think we did that hard for three years of just really thinking, oh, somewhere there's a doctor, or somewhere there's a solution, or we just have to find some answers to this. And really, after a three-year struggle of realizing there are no answers and living very small and tightly wound lives, I think we had no choice but to concede control because there were not going to be answers that were found. And so I think each one of us started on our own search. To me, that really led on a faith journey of trying to believe instead of just myself, but believing in something bigger. I think I had always wanted to think that I could control any problem and most anything could be solved by hard work and persistence. Except SCAD is one of those diseases that it cannot be fixed no matter how much persistence or hard work you have. And so it started this change in myself of becoming more open to the fact that I am not in control. And that is across life. It's not if something's going to happen to you, it's when something happens to you. And something happens to all of us, whether it's unwanted diagnosis, an unexpected death, maybe even a divorce that you weren't expecting in your life, all of those things, they knock us off our feet. But to me, it's the beginning of really learning to live because it's the lie we tell ourselves that we can control life and we cannot control it. And it really, I think, broke us open to new ways of living, to finding empathy for things that we never imagined, to even helping with this disease. We're so frustrated that there was no research. We've really have come to start helping with the research and getting to know doctors across the country and being a part just this past weekend of a conference on SCAD, bringing together some of the best doctors to help solve this disease for patients in the future.
SPEAKER_01I really love when you said that it was a process of learning to live. And you talked about your faith journey as well. How did this change your faith journey or even enhance it?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think before it's really, I think for me, been almost a 15-year faith journey that started probably in 2007. That is what my first book is about, The Hundred Story Home, Finding Faith in Ourselves and Something Bigger. And at that time, I was working on a project housing people experiencing homelessness in Charlotte, North Carolina. And I was in charge of a very big project to raise $10 million to build an apartment building for people experiencing chronic homelessness. And again, I started that project believing that, well, I just had to work hard enough and persevere and I could make it happen all on my own. And I realized that was not true. It was just so much bigger than me. So through that process, I started my first shift and realizing I was going to have to ask for help, not only human help, but really kind of divine help. And I do believe through that process that I began to believe that there was a God who shows up for the miracles, for the sunshiny things in life for when we need help. And so I think I had a very sunshiny philosophy of God that I believed in the God of the miracles. And then through this, in the last ordinary hour, I realized I was really limiting God to kind of a one-panel view. I was only believing in a God that could show up for good things. But where was the God in the bad? Where was the God sitting next to me in what I felt was the worst thing that had ever happened to my family and in our lives? And through the process of writing and looking back on our story and realizing all the people along the way who'd helped us, our life didn't look how I thought it was going to look like, but it really had turned out so much better. There's a scene in the book where I'm talking with a minister at our church and I'm so frustrated, and I'm saying, oh my gosh, all these things have happened to Charlie, and I just feel cursed. I feel like, why is are all of these things happening one after another? And there were many more things from that one heart attack. And she really reframed it for me. She said, When I look at your story, I really see you sitting under a canopy of blessings and grace. And I think that really shifted something for me. I think we can look at our stories sometime and say, oh my gosh, look at all the bad things that happened and why is this happening to me? And she helped me shift my story to look at, gosh, look at the doctor 10 years ago who was on call in the right place at the right time, able to save his life that day. Look at the ambulance ride who that got us to the hospital in time so he didn't die. When Charlie needed open heart surgery, it was an impossible surgery. He was maybe not supposed to survive, yet he did. I mean, time and time again, there were just miracles in our story and people that we needed to help us. And so I think that's another shift that you can make. Where can you find the good? Where can you look for the miracles? Where can you see the grace? And usually it is woven throughout our story right alongside what we think are the worst things.
SPEAKER_01Thank you very much for highlighting that because we often miss those small miracles that happened every day because we're so busy focusing on not getting our own way in terms of what we wanted.
SPEAKER_00No doubt. I mean, we all have a script in our head of how we think this life should go, and we're not willing to let the script be rewritten in another way. And I think time and again, that's what I found is that when I concede control, somehow, someway, the story ends up so much better than I imagine. I mean, I think 10 years ago when I was trying to understand how does a guy get a disease that normally happens women in childbirth, how does that make sense? And then looking out at this conference this weekend, seeing all these doctors gathered for good, I thought, well, it makes perfect sense. It's so that we would care about this disease and that we would keep showing up with other people to try and find answers so that patients in the future will have answers when they wake up from their surgery. So it's taken 10 years for me to see the full circle of that story, but what a gift, right? To say, yes, we were given this crazy rare disease, but look at all the people that have been brought into our lives because of it. And what are we sharing with each other and sharing this walk together?
SPEAKER_01What would you say is the main message that you would like someone to get from this conversation?
SPEAKER_00I think what I would want anyone to understand who not only listens to this conversation, but maybe reads the last ordinary hour, that I used to think that the last ordinary hour was that hour before my husband had the heart attack when he was a Helliskier, when he was this healthy, athletic, confident, healthy guy. And now I realize what a mistake that was to believe that. What I've realized in this process is there are no ordinary hours. Each breath is sacred and each day is a gift. You don't have to have a heart attack or a cancer diagnosis or lose someone you love to understand that. That if we wake up every day in our lives just remembering what a gift it is to be here and waking up wondering, wow, what can I do today to really take advantage of this one day I've been given? How much different our lives will be and how much different this world would be if we approached it with grace and openness and joy.
SPEAKER_01Caffi, I just want to thank you so much for being a guest on this podcast.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I'm so grateful to talk with you, Debbie, to get the chance to talk with your listeners. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_01If you would like further details about Kathy and to order a copy of The Last Ordinary Hour, then please follow the link in the show notes.