Divas That Care Network
The #DivasThatCare movement is a dynamic force of positivity and progress. It's a collective of empowered women united by a shared vision: to pave the way for future generations. These women are not only breaking barriers—they’re also committed to equipping the next generation with the tools, resources, and confidence to lead with purpose.
By discovering and defining your purpose, you unlock the power to uplift those around you and contribute to a better world—every single day.
The Divas That Care Change Makers lead by example. They’ve walked the path, and now they’re using their voices to inspire others—one intentional day at a time.
Divas That Care Network
Mom Born, Birthed, Raised, Loved
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
For more Divas That Care Network Episodes visit www.divasthatcare.com
Well, hello everyone and welcome back to the Divas I Care. My name is Candice Gift. For all of you just tuning in for the very first time, a huge welcome. We've been doing this now for 13 years. We'll listen to over 30 countries around the world. And honestly, it's because of all of our great hosts, our divas that are our amazing guests, and all of our tribe around the world that we're able to do this. So, you know, thank you so much for joining us. I have an amazing show for you guys today. I'm really excited. We've been working on this anthology this last, oh my goodness, 12 plus months now on this specific one. And it's about mothers and daughters, and I'm so excited it's finally coming together, and we're doing these special interviews with our contributors for this book. Today I have the privileged Carol Koppelman, and I'm so excited because her story is so amazing, and I know that each and every one of you is going to love it. So, Carol, welcome to the Divas at Care. How are you doing? I am so excited that you've joined me today. This is going to be so much fun. Would you mind, you know, introducing yourself to our listeners today?
SPEAKER_02Um, Carol Copelman. I'm in uh Goodyear, Arizona. I've uh been I'm a um semi-retired technical writer. And uh I've uh been um I most recently was an author uh back in 2021. I pretty much that's all I can tell you. I can uh I'm doing l little side businesses here and there and keeping very busy in semi-retired life. I love it.
SPEAKER_01And I love that you're in such a nice area. We were talking about that before the program, and living in Arizona is just amazing because I I live up in Canada and I keep on laughing because I'm like, our weather is so crazy up here, and I would just love to be somewhere hot and just sit in the sun and just bathe in it.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm. No, yeah.
SPEAKER_01You're welcome anytime. Well, you know what, and I might just take you up on that offer. Well, I'm excited, Carol. You decided to submit your story to our anthology, and I was just beyond it grateful that you were able to do that. Would you mind sharing a little bit about what your story is all about?
SPEAKER_02Well, my story is about my now almost 95-year-old mother. Um she has had a very interesting life. Uh she she and my my dad are currently living in independent living right near us. And so uh before that they were in can uh Colorado for many, many years. But they have uh our world travelers. They've uh uh they brought us up in a way that um this wonderful upbringing where we were we moved about ten times during the time I was growing up because my dad was a an editor for um science magazine. So we if with every move he m he you know made a little more money. And we we traveled all over the country, live l lived in a lot of different places. It made us very, very adaptable and they introduced us to a lot of everything every every place we went had a lot of history. They took us a lot on a day trips, all of this kind of stuff. We had a very good education, musical education. Uh the the conversations at the dinner table were a wide range of topics. We were very very classical education even at home. And um so I really appreciate that a lot. Uh in my my father was about sixty, and he had an opportunity to go over to India and uh be a director of information services for an international uh organization there. And so my mother went there and my young youngest sister also went there at the time because she was a lot younger and so she was in high school there. And I was able to visit them um for about a month uh uh many, many years ago. But then as a result of that job, they were able to travel all over Europe and just have some wonderful experiences. At I think at my age, I'm 60, I'll be six sixty-seven this year, and my mother was in on on safaris, you know, doing all kinds of fun things. And so uh she's had a fun life. She has kids from age my age of down to uh 51, my sister's uh the youngest. Uh with the range of the Beatles down to the punk rock. And uh my story talks a lot about kind of her transition because I was an old old enough to observe my mother in various decades of her life. And I write about my perspective as an adult now as to her her journey and uh as well as all the adventures she had along the way and the different kind of uh decades she had to deal with with all these kids. And uh in particular I talked about a punk rock concert we went to and she was like the star of the show. She wasn't a punk rocker, but my sister was dating a punk rocker, was dating a punk rock fan guy, and the whole experience, my mother was the oldest person, and she was about my age, a little older than me. Uh probably in her early seventies when she went to this punk rock concert. And she took it all in stride. It was a fun it was a fun story. It's from my perspective of what I remember. And now and now uh so she's just really they've really had a very good full life. My dad is gonna be ninety-four, my mom will be ninety-five. Uh, we're glad they're close by. They're in they you could they still have wonderful stories. They're still very much uh very cog cognitively all there. But they have some physical limitations at this point. They're having a great time where they are because they they made a lot of friends who have had very interesting lives. And um actually after this we're we're going to a an Italian fest over there. And they have some of the best cooks of at these independent living places. So, um and it's it's it just it just talks about, you know, her her you know, she my mom's a a tough cookie. She she uh she was orphaned early. Uh her fa father died when she was only six months old, her mother when she was uh uh when her mother was forty-three. And she was, you know, raised helped uh also helped uh her uh grandparents almost help uh also helped raise her and everything. So um various influences and how she you know, she grew up there in the forty, you know, grew up there in the forties and all that kind of exciting time and just the adventures she uh what what made her who she is. She was very very independent. Her mother was a suffragette. You know, it was it was just a very um she's had a full life. She sometimes says, All I did was raise kids. I said, You raised kids and you you know, and that's like a big job. And you also had this extraordinary fun stuff you were doing in addition to all and um so I I always encourage her, you know, you you you've ha you have had and are still having a wonderful, wonderful life.
SPEAKER_01So Oh my gosh, I love that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah, she she really is. So and she she's uh uh has adopt well, adopted, you know, informally all my friends are like their fur faux kids. And and she was into interesting my sister I remember very vividly had a lot of punk rock friends during that time. She went now, my sister's a soccer mom now, right? But during that time she was a um not anymore. I guess she's past soccer mom, but but she went through the soccer mom phase. But she was a punk rocker at the time and you know all her k friends were all, you know, punk rockers and they were, you know, they're all the the nicest kids in the I I met all of them, the nicest, nicest kids, just like, you know, to wear, you know, different hair and all that kind of stuff. And I went through that as a p hippie. I was a hippie kid kid, you know. So and my mom was like really accepting and she was telling like it is about things, and they really loved that about my mom. And they still keep in touch with her to that day 'cause she was just like didn't treat them like they were kids, they treated them like they were just like people. And and um she's uh really good um I have a story I didn't put in there but and I don't know how much of a time we have but um I uh years ago I was able to uh hold babies at a Mother Teresa Infant's home up over in Friendship Hipes, uh Maryland. And my mom, um this is a story of somewhere else, but um my mom came in to visit me and uh the babies just were just attached attracted to her, just what her energy was just you know, just and he they treat she treated him like people. Your baby, you know, go, go, go, go, go, or something like that. And they could pick uh pick up on that, that she ri realized that they were beings of their own and they had their own you know, way of looking at things. Even even you know, they weren't like baby babies, but they were like I could say by the time she came there a lot of them were like one or two, so they were, you know, figuring things out. And she fell in love with this particular little boy immediately, and he fell in love with her. I they it was like instant. I watched this and and she s she proclaimed that he was gonna be to have this wonderful life. That's she just out of out of them. I'd never seen her do that ever. And and I was like, Wow, holy crap you know and a couple weeks later what she what she envisioned came true. Absolutely came true. Because I found out about, you know, he got ad he got adopted. He got adopted and it was like, Oh my gosh, my mother's like Christian But she it was just love at first sight for both of these guys. I had never seen that and that's um so uh you know, it's just this incredible life of incredible woman and and I I don't I think she gets doesn't always feel that way, but that's who she is. And so I I wrote about some of her adventures. Yes, she she really is. So so anyway, that's that's that's what I write about.
SPEAKER_01So Oh my gosh. I honestly think you should do a a complete memoir about her because she's the type of individual we need to have stories like that to inspire us. But you know, the real stories that so many people I think we lose that. And I love doing these anthologies because I I truly believe that we don't have enough of them out there because stories can change the world and stories like your mom's. I'm just so grateful, Carol, that you were able to be a part of this, just to share just a little bit about her life.
SPEAKER_02Well, thank you very much. If she's an incredible woman and a credible, incredible mom.
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh. Well, you know, and to all of our listeners today, I really and that's why I wanted the opportunity to interview Carol today, so that you can just get a little bit of a glimpse of what her story is going to be about in our anthology. You know, these all of these stories are so inspiring. But Carol, I know that I I know that I would love to have you back on on my program just so that you can share more of, you know, your life, but also the life of your mom, because there's just so much that we can we can do out there and how we can, you know, as I said before, just inspire other people from not just North America but around the world.
SPEAKER_02That's great.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_02Well, thank you so much, King. I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you too. This is so much fun. There's gonna be so much that you and I are gonna be doing. And to our listeners too, make sure you go and check out Kindle and Kobo right now. We have a special, a pre-launch special, because this anthology is gonna be coming out May the 9th. So we're so excited about that, and we're telling everybody about that. And then you can also get a paper copy right now for a pre-launch at our publisher, who is absolutely love publishing. And I'm gonna be posting all this information on our social media. I'm gonna be posting a whole bunch more stuff about Carol on our social media, so you want to go check her out. And she also has an amazing business that you can support too. So thank you, Carol, so much for being my amazing guest today.
SPEAKER_02Thank you so much, Cannes. Take care. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Take care. And thank you so much to all of our listeners. Until next time, everyone, make sure you check out all of our other podcasts that we're doing about our newest anthology, our mothers, our daughters, because there's a lot of amazing contributors that are a part of that, and you want to hear a little bit about what their stories are all about. So thank you again, Carol. Thank you to our listeners out there, and I hope that you remember to do something kind. Until next time, everyone.
SPEAKER_00And of course on Twitter.