#178 The Hidden Cost of Being the Strong One

Today, I interview Shelly Grimm, who reflects on growing up alongside chronic illness and learning, from a very young age, how to take care of herself and others.

Much of Shelly’s childhood unfolded in hospitals, financial strain, and ongoing uncertainty. She learned how to manage, decide, and keep going without much protection or guidance. Confidence developed through necessity. Speaking up was less about expression and more about making sure life continued to function.

As the conversation unfolds, Shelly starts to recognize how much of her strength came from necessity. Naming this brings a new awareness to the cost of always having to handle things alone, and how that shaped her confidence and voice.

Today, Shelly’s work supports caregivers and families navigating long-term illness and responsibility. In this conversation, we explore how voice and confidence can form through lived experience, and what becomes possible when those early patterns are finally seen and understood.

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Shelly Grimm is the founder of The Perpetual Caregiver Collective, a national movement dedicated to supporting caregivers and those living with chronic illness through compassion, financial clarity, and renewal.

A former insurance executive with 27 years of experience in financial consulting, Shelly blends her professional expertise with deeply personal experience. Her mother was the first woman in the United States diagnosed with Crohn’s disease in 1956, an event that shaped Shelly’s lifelong empathy for those facing chronic illness and the families who care for them.

She is the author of her debut memoir Some Asses Just Need Wiping and the upcoming sequel Some Loves Just Need Leaving, part of her Some Just Need… book series. Shelly has been featured on Fox Business, Bloomberg, and Tom Hegna’s Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and was named by MSN as one of the Top 10 Most Inspirational Women to Follow in 2025.

Her work through The Perpetual Caregiver Collective bridges the gap between practical financial preparedness and emotional well-being, ensuring no caregiver—or care recipient—ever feels unseen or unsupported.
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Find Shelly here:
www.linkedin/in/shellygrimm/

www.facebook.com/theperpetualcaregiver/

www.instagram.com/perpetualcaregiver/

Transcript

Transcript of Interview

Find Your Voice, Change Your Life Podcast

Podcast Host: Dr. Doreen Downing

Free Guide to Fearless Speaking: Doreen7steps.com

Episode #178 Shelly Grimm

“The Hidden Cost of Being the Strong One”

(00:00) Doreen Downing: Hi, this is Dr. Doreen Downing. Welcome to the Find Your Voice Change Your Life Podcast. I am always so thrilled because usually what happens on my podcast is I get to meet somebody for the first time. My listeners get to listen to this interaction, this exchange, this getting to know this new person in my life and what her story is about.

Not having had a voice, her journey to find it, and what she offers now. I am really excited about sharing with you not only the journey, what she offers. There are a couple books she’s written, or at least one book, maybe two, and she’s got a whole series. So we have lots to explore in our short time together today.

First, let me just say hi, Shelly.

(01:00) Shelly Grimm: Hey, Dr. Downing. How are you?

(01:03) Doreen Downing: I am thrilled to be sitting down. It feels like I need a cup of coffee.

(01:09) Shelly Grimm: Coffee.

(01:09) Doreen Downing: We do great with this coffee conversation we’re having. Or you know, before I got married, I was in the find your boyfriend or find your mate, find your soulmate. You would go and meet him, sit down.

(01:24) Shelly Grimm: It feels like a little fascinating. But yes. I used to do trainings and I’d call them coffee and conversation if I did them real early in the morning. I would say, bring your coffee and come get on Zoom and we’ll do our training. It’s great to be here with you.

(01:40) Doreen Downing: You’re afternoon. We’re in the afternoon.

(01:43) Shelly Grimm: Cocktails. Wait, cocktails and conversation.

(01:46) Doreen Downing: That's an early cocktail.

(01:49) Shelly Grimm: I’m nearly 5 o’clock.

(01:52) Doreen Downing: I’m still in my tea. We’re off and running and people are going, wow, look at them.

(02:01) Shelly Grimm: We’re already fast brown, so we’re already on our way to the bar. I guess we better slow down.

(02:05) Doreen Downing: Let me read your bio that you sent.

(02:10) Shelly Grimm: Okay. Go ahead.

(02:12) Doreen Downing: Big breath. Shelly Grimm is the founder of the Perpetual Caregiver Collective, a national movement dedicated to supporting caregivers and those living with chronic illness through compassion, financial clarity, and renewal. A former insurance executive with 27 years of experience in financial consulting, Shelly blends her professional expertise with deeply personal experience. Ooh. Her mother was the first woman in the United States diagnosed with Crohn's disease in 1956, an event that shaped Shelly's lifelong empathy for those facing chronic illness and the families who care for them.

This is what I said earlier about her being an author of her debut memoir, “Some asses just need wiping.”

(03:11) Shelly Grimm: Quirky sense of humor.

(03:14) Doreen Downing: That’s already coming through. And the upcoming sequel, Some loves just need leaving, part of her Some Just Need book series. Shelly has been featured on Fox Business, Bloomberg, and Tom Hanas, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and was named by MSN as one of the top 10 most inspirational women to follow in 2025.

I’m so glad I got you before the end of the year because we’re still in 2025 just for about, we are.

Your work through the Perpetual Caregiver Collective bridges the gap between practical financial preparedness and emotional wellbeing, ensuring no caregiver or care recipient ever feels unseen or unsupported. That was really wonderful to slow down and read that.

(04:18) Shelly Grimm: It’s a lot. It’s a mouthful.

(04:19) Doreen Downing: It’s delightful.

(04:23) Shelly Grimm: It’s a lot of life.

(04:24) Doreen Downing: We live a lot of life.

(04:26) Shelly Grimm: People forget it gets in the way.

(04:30) Doreen Downing: We all start somewhere. That’s where I usually go back to in the podcast, early life, so give us a snapshot. I am a psychologist, so I’m always curious about some ways in which what you’re doing now relates to some of what happened then.

For my experience, my mother and father were divorcing and nobody was talking about it, but I knew. It feels like I developed early on a sensitivity to deep listening, which I bring to my work as a psychologist.

So that kind of what was difficult then often becomes what’s your superpower now.

(05:18) Shelly Grimm: Exactly. I don’t necessarily know that it’s a superpower. I will say that I’ve been conditioned. The early introduction to my mother being ill and my having to assume a lot of responsibility early on.

She and my dad divorced when I was three, and although I had an older sister, she lived with my grandmother. My mother and my father were the second marriage for both of them. My dad also had a son from a first marriage that he was also raising. Both of them were eight and nine years older than I was.

I was the only child between them. For me, and it wasn’t just me, I even put that in my book, nobody knew what to do, including the doctors. She was the first. In 1956, who had chronic illnesses back then. If you think about it, you either got better or you died.

(06:43) Doreen Downing: That’s true. Our life expectancy used to be early nineteen hundreds or in the thirties, so by the time we got into the forties and fifties—

(06:59) Shelly Grimm: You want me to tell you because I know because I was a life insurance agent. 52 your life expectancy in 1956.

(07:07) Doreen Downing: Oh my goodness, I’ve outlived that for sure. I’m in my seventies now.

(07:11) Shelly Grimm: It’s really scary. When Social Security got started, I don’t know if you know this, of course, like financial services, but when Social Security got started, the reason that they only gave it to people until they’re 65 is because the normal retirement age was 62. They thought you were only going to live until 65. I only had three years to pay you. I am not kidding you. This is not a joke. I’m not joking about that. I can show you where it’s written.

That is why we don’t fund it correctly now because it was never meant to carry us for as long as it has to now for our life expectancies.

My point to that is when my mother was first diagnosed and they didn’t have any idea what she had, the first thing they did was do a resection of her small intestine and then patched her up and sent her off to Temple, Texas, where they had Scott and White Hospital. She was eighteen.

They thought at first when they opened her up that she was having a female problem. They had no medicine for her to take for fourteen years. Somehow she survived. She was extremely healthy. She was very athletic. I think her total condition was why she did so well and she would just fight naturally. They didn’t expect her to live.

So she did. So now what. I think that’s really more of, while she was finding her voice, I was watching her. She was a dynamic individual. Not a very good mother, because when you’re fighting a disease all by yourself and nobody’s listening to you and they don’t validate you, can you imagine. They didn’t validate her then. Can you imagine validating her in fifty six.

(09:06) Doreen Downing: Shelly, what is Crohn’s disease? How did that show up in your family? How did it show up day to day?

(09:13) Shelly Grimm: Normally Crohn’s, there were only four men in the US that had it before her, so she was the fifth person. Only Jewish people had it. Actually Middle Eastern, I should say Middle Eastern. It had only been clustered in Jewish families.

They didn’t know any of this then. They didn’t call it Crohn’s because Dr. Crohn is where it got named from. They called it ileitis, and the part that was affected in my mother’s stomach was called the terminal ileum. That’s what it was called when she was diagnosed.

Your symptoms are chronic diarrhea, excessive gas, you can’t eat anything, you’re malnutritioned, you’re dehydrated. Your small intestine is what absorbs all of the nutrients in your food and it’s the most important place for you to absorb liquid. Your large intestine is really just filtering out the last of the waste to go to your kidneys and your bladder.

My mother, when I was still taking care of her until she passed at 64, she ate about five thousand calories a day and that wasn’t enough. They fed her with a total patient nutrition IV for the last four years of her life. They were giving her ten thousand calories a day, and that was just barely keeping her alive.

(11:05) Doreen Downing: But when you were young is when she had the disease.

(11:09) Shelly Grimm: She had the disease her whole life. You don’t ever get rid of that.

(11:11) Doreen Downing: I meant for you to have been observing and being somebody young, because I’m still thinking about you.

(11:19) Shelly Grimm: We’re still on that part. Yes. Sleeping in the hospitals and sleeping in the lobbies of a hospital. She didn’t have any health insurance, so they didn’t keep you. They would either give her something for pain and send her home or admit her and do surgery, and you could only do so many.

By the time I came around, she had had two resections. About four years after I came around, in 1969, when I was about five or six, no, when I was nine, they finally came out with prednisone.

That was the first thing they were able to give her. Of course, that created its own problems because they had to give her such high doses that she finally had a complete psychotic break.

(12:08) Doreen Downing: I’m thinking about you, this little girl growing up in this environment.

(12:13) Shelly Grimm: I was just bumping along.

(12:18) Doreen Downing: You had to be independent. You had to figure out how to make things work in your own life. You had to go to school.

(12:27) Shelly Grimm: I did laundry.

(12:28) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(12:34) Shelly Grimm: I put on a little happy face. I was a very happy child. My dad was physically around until he married my step monster. It was pretty good.

(12:46) Doreen Downing: I’m glad you said that. I’ve never called my stepmother a step monster before. That’s a great juxtaposition.

(12:57) Shelly Grimm: She mentioned my book a hundred, a 137 times. I don’t know that I ever call her by her name. Up until the time he married her, we were doing all right.

Then after he married her, there was just no. My mother spent most of that time doing the Dr. Maxwell Maltz confidence building kit, I’m okay, you’re okay, and Games People Play. I should have had a psychology degree before that. That was my mom.

She wanted to make sure that I knew she didn’t know how long she was going to be around. She knew what I was up against, not just with life, but no matter where I went. It was crazy. She was like, you’re going to have to fight these people your whole life. I can’t fight them for you if I’m gone.

So let’s just get you armored up. That’s what she did.

(13:49) Doreen Downing: Okay. So that’s the early part of your journey, and luckily it feels like there was attention to building some inner muscle for you.

(13:59) Shelly Grimm: Only for her to break them down. She was pretty much a narcissist.

(14:03) Doreen Downing: Oh wow. I know I’m going to be moving on, but I’m sure curious about where I’m going now before we move into how you started to really heal yourself, which is a lot of what I’m feeling you had to do, not only because of your situation. I just need to take all this in. This is huge.

This incapacitated by disease human who’s your mother, and then you being this little girl, because you’re alone. Your dad’s not there. You’ve got this older sister somewhere and this brother.

(14:50) Shelly Grimm: She’s at my grandmother’s. She can’t handle it. No one acknowledges that my mother’s sick. The only thing they think is that she’s lazy.

I’ll tell you. When you’re on the potty 25 times a day and in constant pain, I’m pretty sure that’s not lazy. And the worst thing with Crohn’s disease is you’re tired. The tiredness is unbelievable.

(15:24) Doreen Downing: That’s probably what they call lazy. But to come back to you, I’m getting a good sense of you being somebody who’s already figured out how to ride her bike.

(15:36) Shelly Grimm: She walked a lot.

(15:38) Doreen Downing: I’m talking about you. As a little girl.

(15:41) Shelly Grimm: Third person. Shelly walked a lot. We didn’t have any money. My dad was stinking rich. I just moved back to my hometown in 2021, and I live four blocks away from where he lived, same block. My mom and I lived across the tracks.

(16:07) Doreen Downing: What I meant by you getting on a bicycle was definitely metaphorical. I just feel like you put the wheels on.

(16:14) Shelly Grimm: I’m just saying we couldn’t even afford a bike. I got my first ten speed. My son lives right across the street from the place I got my first ten speed. When I bought the little condo there for them, I said, man, I got hills.

Sporting Goods is where I bought my first green. That’s all they had. A green ten-speed Schwinn. I was so happy. I was thirteen years old. My mom saved up for that. She had it in layaway. It was just crazy.

(16:37) Doreen Downing: Layaway. Remember those times?

(16:39) Shelly Grimm: I wish they still had it. I love layaway. I don’t have anywhere to put it now.

(16:46) Doreen Downing: Okay. So thirteen years old, you got your bicycle. We do know that you served as a caregiver through her life, but we’re also talking about voice. Did you have a voice. It seems like you did and you didn’t at the same time.

(17:13) Shelly Grimm: That’s very real. I was legally emancipated when I was thirteen. Most people, when I say that, they’re like, oh my God, things got so bad you had to divorce your parents. That’s what you’d think.

When my mom, I mean, it’s very cold here in the wintertime. The wind is unbelievable. They call Chicago the windy city, but this city is actually where the wind blows hardest all the time. Amarillo.

My junior high was not that far, but it was too far for me to walk in the winter. My dad would pick me up if my mom didn’t feel well and take me to school. He was never on time because he had been in the military. Once you get out of the military, you’re like, I’m not getting up at whatever time you tell me to before nine o’clock.

He was a late riser. He would always make me late for school. Finally, they called him and said, is there any way you could come sign her in because she’s got way too many unexcused absences.

He said, whatever. He owned his own company. He just didn’t want to do it. He told me when I came up to his office a day or two later, call Wayne, his best friend, an attorney. He said, find out from him what we have to do to let you sign yourself in.

So, I called Wayne. I was thirteen. I said, what do I have to do. He said, the only thing we can do is get you emancipated. I said, what’s that. He said, it’s getting a piece of paper signed by the judge that says you’re allowed to sign things on your own behalf. You’re of legal age to do that.

(19:02) Shelly Grimm: I was like, well, what do we need to do. He said, I need to draft a paper and your dad needs to sign it. I said, does my mom. He said, no. I said, just my dad. He said, yes. I said, okay, I’ll tell him.

When he came back in, I told him and he said, call Wayne back and tell him to get it done. Within probably two weeks I was legally emancipated. I was already really driving, but then you could get your hardship learner’s permit. They took me to get my learner’s permit, and then within a year, at fourteen, I had my driver’s license.

It was not for me to divorce my parents. It was, here’s more responsibility. I was driving myself to school. They gave me a checkbook, put the child support check in there, and I was paying the household bills by the time I was fifteen and eight months.

My mother had decided she was going to get out of the mental hospital and finally be a mother, because she didn’t remember anything. That was almost like a complete break from reality. She was there seven weeks.

She thought no one could see her if she didn’t have her clothes on. She smoked, but you couldn’t smoke in the facility. She thought if she didn’t have any clothes on and they couldn’t see her, she could smoke.

So, she took all her clothes off. She was sitting on her bed, smoking a cigarette, and her roommate came in and said, you can’t smoke in here. She said, what, you can see me. She got up underneath the bed. People had to come in and get her out from underneath the bed. She was so mad because they could see her. You’re not supposed to be able to see me.

The funny thing is my mother and I were very close. Even though we had this torrid relationship, it was really more like two best friends fighting all the time, because I was raising her. That’s really what it was.

When she came back, she decided she was going to be my mother. I was like, hold on, time out now. I have to tell you everywhere I’m going. I have to be home at a certain time. If I’m not, I have to call you. Are you joking. No.

She kept that up, and finally I called my dad and said, this woman’s driving me crazy. I’m moving out. He said, where are you going. I said, I’m going to get an apartment. He said, okay, tell me where you’re going to move. Try to get one under two hundred.

This was nineteen seventy-nine. He said, try to get one under two hundred and I’ll pay it. So that’s what I did.

(22:02) Doreen Downing: And still going to high school.

(22:04) Shelly Grimm: Yes. Went to high school and working.

(22:06) Doreen Downing: And working. My goodness.

(22:09) Shelly Grimm: I worked since I was probably fourteen.

(22:11) Doreen Downing: Grab the reins of life.

(22:14) Shelly Grimm: Actually, I worked at nine. I was babysitting the kids across the street so I could help with groceries. We never had any. We ate at my grandmother’s house every night because she couldn’t cook. She couldn’t physically stand up long enough to cook anyway.

(22:30) Doreen Downing: You certainly got some muscle to handle all of that responsibility.

(22:38) Shelly Grimm: I learned some muscles.

(22:40) Doreen Downing: I didn’t know they were muscles. Those of us listening have said that little girl had a voice. Calling the lawyer, calling your dad. It really feels like not backing away from what was right in front of you.

(23:00) Shelly Grimm: Wait until you hear the next one.

(23:01) Doreen Downing: You just opened your eyes and said go.

(23:10) Shelly Grimm: Somebody has to deal with it. I never saw the point in running. It’s going to get you, and it’s only going to be worse when it does.

(23:26) Doreen Downing: This is about the one hundred seventieth episode I’ve done on Find Your Voice, Change Your Life. There are a lot of stories of people who put the cover over their head or disappeared from life as best they could. But you did the opposite, Shelly.

(23:53) Shelly Grimm: I busted my dad straight. My dad had a saying. Also remember where I’m from. This is the Panhandle of Texas, where they had the Dust Bowl, the Depression, the stock market crash all at the same time. These are pretty tough people.

(24:16) Doreen Downing: Sturdy.

(24:17) Shelly Grimm: It’s a suck it up and get back in there kind of group. You aren’t really allowed to have a down moment.

I’m from the Grimm Brothers fairytale lineage. I finally got my family tree finished. They were pretty tough people. My other side of the family, my great great grandfather was first generation German and started dry wheat farming here. People came from all over the United States to learn how to do that because it had never been done here.

My grandmother was one of ten kids. She was the only one who didn’t work on the farm. She was a nurse. Just tough people. When you read my book, you’ll see that wasn’t always a great place for little Shelly to be.

(25:53) Doreen Downing: That’s not always a great place for little Shelly to be.

(25:58) Shelly Grimm: It wasn’t always the best place. My mother was definitely the soft spot to land, and that’s not saying a lot.

(26:21) Doreen Downing: Since this is a podcast about voice and having a voice, what I’m seeing so far is that because of what you described, your voice came from a survival instinct.

(26:44) Shelly Grimm: Exactly. I was just trying to make it. I didn’t know what I was trying to survive from. I didn’t know what or where the next stop on the train was. I didn’t know what was expected or anticipated. There was no plan. Tomorrow wasn’t even discussed. I was just running, just running.

(27:24) Doreen Downing: To come back to voice, but you were using your voice.

(27:27) Shelly Grimm: I was saying, I’m getting out of here. I’m getting out of here. I did the day they let me out. I ran as fast as I could and I never came back. I didn’t come back to Amarillo for fourteen years.

(27:40) Doreen Downing: You’ve written a book.

(27:45) Shelly Grimm: That’s a lot of voice. My mother was a writer too. She was a lifetime member of ASCAP. She wrote songs and books and poetry and all that. I’m sure I got a little bit of that from her.

I really enjoyed writing the book and I can’t wait to write the next one because it’s going to be my memoir all the way through. This one was pretty hard to write. I’ve been writing it for twenty years. I couldn’t get through those last years, fourteen through seventeen, without going into an unbelievably deep depression.

I started it three or four times over the course of about 25 years. This time I said, I’ve got to get through those last years. I hired a ghostwriter to help me with those last chapters and get through it. She was awesome. I still went through it. She was like, no, you’re good.

(28:52) Doreen Downing: What I’m also getting is that when the voice is hard to express, when the truth and the pain are there, having a listener or a witness, somebody holding it with you and listening it out of you, your voice was listened out in those sessions with her.

(29:22) Shelly Grimm: The problem for me is that there is still so much to uncover because the trauma never stopped. That’s why perpetual.

I went on to marry a man who had been sexually abused from the time he was three until he was fourteen. I had no idea about attachment disorders. I never had a long term boyfriend. I was too busy doing laundry and taking care of a mother who was dying all the time or myself.

I was married to him for eight years. Terribly abusive relationship. I had a neurodivergent son. He’s disabled. He’s thirty-seven now. I love him to death, but he can’t work.

When he got diagnosed at nine, they wouldn’t really diagnose him. Everything was generalized. Generalized anxiety disorder, generalized mood disorder. But what he really had, I would diagnose him with a personality disorder right now if I could.

I had to keep a lot of balls in the air for a long time to get him to where he is right now. He’s way further than anybody ever gave him a shot. Profoundly dyslexic and huge. He’s six foot four, two hundred fifty-eight pounds, nineteen-inch neck. He’s a little bitty guy.

Then I had another kid who was perfectly normal. He’s not now, but he was then. We ruined him. Dysfunctional family, you’re going to get ruined.

That’s what I try to put in my book. Don’t put kids in this situation. It’s imperative that they don’t get caught up in that responsibility cycle. They can’t distinguish between what’s responsibility and what’s not responsibility, because the praise sounds the same. Thank you so much for bringing that to me. It sounds exactly the same whether it was their responsibility or whether it wasn’t.

(32:09) Shelly Grimm: Johnny’s going to bring you that every single time from now on. Johnny’s going to be a good little boy. Okay, well, it’s not Johnny’s responsibility to do that. It’s okay occasionally, but you should not sit there and play Step and Fetch with Johnny. Johnny will play Step and Fetch for the rest of his life if you do that to him.

(32:32) Doreen Downing: Who is this book directed to.

(32:37) Shelly Grimm: I’m really writing it to anyone. I’m really writing it to everyone. With the level of chronic illness that we have now, I lump alcoholism, substance abuse, domestic abuse, mental illness, affluent keep up with the Joneses next door.

I’m pretty much saying everybody. Quit with all this stuff you’re putting on your kids. Let these kids be kids. You’re not their best friend. You’re their parent. Take on your own responsibilities or find other people to take on those responsibilities.

It was funny when I was writing that book. As I was reading it, I thought there are going to be so many young people that read this book and think, I do that every day.

(33:52) Doreen Downing: What I’m getting is that you’re going to help them wake up.

(33:57) Shelly Grimm: That’s what I hope. I saw a man write about a man who every month gets one hundred fifty school bags and puts all kinds of stuff in them. Snacks, bus cards, just all kinds of things, because there are that many homeless teenagers.

I know because I used to do work with Covenant House in his town. He lays those bags underneath the overpasses. He knows he’s not going to get them to come inside, but he can at least help them where they are. These kids are going to school.

The kids there make fun of them because they stink. So he put soap, wipes, deodorant. He used to be a teacher. That’s ridiculous. I would have been homeless if my dad hadn’t paid for that house for us to live in. I can promise you that.

These kids are leaving these situations because there’s too much responsibility. These adults need to wake up and say, what am I doing now. Is it chronic illness. Is it substance abuse. Is it alcohol. What is it.

We need to get to the root of that and recognize that we need help. I’m hoping that through the Perpetual Caregiver Collective, the thing I’m building, we can take some of those responsibilities off, at least for people who know they need just that much help, or maybe this much help, or maybe one day they need this much help.

(35:41) Doreen Downing: I love your stories about how people are coming to support services for those in need. You seem to have a real line into where those needs are and why. That’s what your book is about, why those needs are there.

Because we’re coming to the end, I want to make sure we’re talking about the Perpetual Caregiver Collective.

(36:16) Shelly Grimm: Yes. That’s why I call it a collective. We’re not a company. It’s a group of people I’ve collected over the years. We’re all over the place.

I’m getting it more organized under an umbrella through some funding. We’re in first round funding requests with some investors. I want to expand it by making it more formalized with a subscription service. I’ll call it a hotline, but it won’t really be a hotline.

Everything from when my dad was still alive in 2019. He passed away. He was 91, but he still loved to play on the computer. Computers get glitches. 85, 87, 89-year olds don’t know how to fix it.

He would call me wherever I was. I’d spend two hours on the phone with him. A lot of times I was driving because I had fourteen states in territory. I’d say, okay, what block’s blinking now. What’s that doing. Double click that. No, not triple click. Dad, stop.

I got him HP friend. He could click on that icon and they’d come on the computer and say, what’s wrong with the computer. He’d say, I don’t know. They’d buzz around and fix it.

(37:50) Shelly Grimm: Ten bucks a month. So things like that. I want that to be the base subscription. Seventeen bucks a month. Tech support for grandma, grandpa, whoever. That’s what they can do. I’ll get HP Friend or whoever to be, you know, and then put my monitor over it.

All the way up to, I’ve got seven securities licenses and two, three insurance licenses. People like me who over my career have gone in and said, you were in the hospital for four months. I know there’ve got to be some bills around here. I told you to just hold onto them.

I’ve got all your explanation of benefits because I might have been their insurance agent. I match those up, staple them, ones that don’t reconcile I take to the side. I say, okay, I’m going to go figure out what’s wrong with these. You take these and I’ll see you in a month.

So they can pay someone to do that. Or maybe I need to get on the phone with somebody or someone like me and wait for the two hours, the nineteen times you’re going to get switched to another line. Finally you get to the right person. I know that because I have the vernacular. I know what all those acronyms are.

I know what to say to get to the right person. Then I get to the right person and I say, hang on a minute. Because of HIPAA law, I have to get the patient on the phone. Hang on. Then I buzz that person and say, I’ve spent two hours on there. They’re finally on the phone.

(39:14) Doreen Downing: You are a master coordinator. It feels like you are in the middle of this grand network called life and what’s possible or what’s available for folks. You’re also networked into the need that’s there.

The image I have is that old switchboard operator.

(39:42) Shelly Grimm: Yes. That’s exactly it. I’m going to laugh. My first job in an office, you remember those old big phones. I was seventeen. Big phones. You didn’t have a thing but hold. I had an eight line with a hold button.

Renee and Charnay, could you hold please. Renee and Charnay, could you hold please. Thank you for holding. Can I help you. Thank you for holding. Can I help you. I swear that was my first job.

(40:14) Doreen Downing: That’s what’s coming through.

(40:17) Shelly Grimm: Yes. Oh my God. I swear.

(40:18) Doreen Downing: Shelly, we have to stop now. I want to appreciate you. I’m glad I got a window into you, and that the listeners are now aware of the service of you just being you.

(40:35) Shelly Grimm: I want it to grow. It’s going to grow. That’s my hope.

(40:39) Doreen Downing: This is part of helping you grow this vision you have. The vision is based on your own life that you’ve brought to it. It’s where we started today, taking something that was difficult and making something powerful out of it.

Like we said in the beginning, this is your superpower. Thank you.

(41:09) Shelly Grimm: You’re welcome. Thank you so much.

(41:10) Doreen Downing: You are welcome.