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Capturing Essence for Care: Storytelling that Promotes Personhood in Healthcare
Feeling overwhelmed by caregiving responsibilities? Struggling to stay present and patient when you're stretched thin? Transform your caregiving relationships in just minutes with evidence-based storytelling strategies that honour the whole person—not just their needs.
Listen for practical tools to:
- Open deeper conversations with aging loved ones, even when time is scarce
- Access life story approaches that reduce caregiver stress and burnout
- Hear real conversations with people with lived experience, including persons living with dementia
- Build meaningful connections that sustain you through the demands of caring
Host Lisa brings together personal historians, digital storytellers, healthcare practitioners, family caregivers, and seniors themselves. Each episode delivers actionable insights for anyone balancing multiple caregiving roles—whether you're supporting aging parents while raising children, managing care from a distance, or working in healthcare while caring for family.
Perfect for: The sandwich generation, family caregivers, adult children of aging parents, healthcare providers, long-term care staff, home health aides, personal support workers, memory care teams, social workers, activity staff, and anyone seeking to preserve dignity and connection in their caregiving relationships.
Join caregivers already transforming their relationships. Discover how small storytelling moments create profound connections—and give you the resilience to keep showing up with compassion.
Please join this community by following the show.
Capturing Essence for Care: Storytelling that Promotes Personhood in Healthcare
13. Beyond Self-Doubt: How Dr. Flora Brown Uses Guided Autobiography to Rewrite Limiting Beliefs Into Life Purpose
Dr. Flora Brown shares her journey as a life story coach and guided autobiography facilitator, revealing how childhood experiences eavesdropping in her mother's beauty shop shaped her passion for helping others capture their life stories. She discusses the transformative power of personal storytelling and how it helps people gain new perspectives on their experiences.
Discussion Points:
• Combining Digital Storytelling (DST) with Guided Autobiography (GAB) to create powerful personal narratives
• The importance of creating safe spaces for people to share their stories
• How childhood dreams can shape our adult lives and career paths
• Overcoming self-doubt and limiting beliefs through storytelling
• The therapeutic benefits of writing personal stories, even if never shared publicly
• Building community through shared storytelling experiences
• Dr. Brown's upcoming book "Beyond the White Picket Fence" featuring micro-memoirs
• The power of reflection in understanding our life journey
Check out Flora's Digital Story co-created with Lisa: The Impact of Stories
Learn more about Guided Autobiography
Connect with Flora:
- Website: florabrown.com
- Facebook group—Your Life Story Matters
- Substack: https://substack.com/%40florabrown
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/florabrown2u/#
Flora's books: https://amazon.com/author/florabrown
Download her free ebook to discover what's blocking you from writing your life story and surprisingly simple ways to topple every one.
Thank you for listening!
Do you have a question or a topic related to "capturing essence for care" that you would like discussed on the podcast? Send Lisa an email: awestruckaspirations@gmail.com
Interested in learning more?
Intro and outro music with thanks: Upbeat and Sweet No Strings by Musictown
Welcome to Capturing Essence for Care, where we discuss the importance of incorporating personal life stories into healthcare and share ideas to help you on your journey. I'm your host, Lisa Joworski. Welcome everyone to Capturing Essence for Care. I'm Lisa, and today I'm really excited. I have somebody who I've actually spent quite a bit of time with virtually, and it's for a few different reasons which we'll get into. But I have Dr Flora Brown with me today and she has her PhD and is a life story coach, guided autobiography facilitator, and she's an author of 15 books.
Lisa:A retired professor with a 40-year teaching career, Flora now helps memory keepers turn their life experiences into meaningful stories that become lasting family legacies. Her most popular book is called Color your Life Happy: Create your unique path and claim the joy you deserve. And, Flora, I'm really pleased that you and I are doing this. This, I'm just going to say it. This is take two, because of my own learning and popping and clicking sounds that was too hard to edit. So this is all still part of my learning curve with podcasting. But, Flora, you've always been, I feel, like a great support and you've helped me learn a lot through digital storytelling and combining the digital storytelling and guided autobiography world, so maybe we'll talk a little bit about that, but first of all, just thank you so much for being here and taking the time to join me.
Dr. Flora Brown:Thank you for inviting me again. I enjoy talking to you and this is an important topic. So I love talking about it.
Lisa:I'm glad. I'm glad you see it that way, and there were a few reasons that I wanted you to be on with me and have this conversation. Just a couple of things I guess that's helpful for listeners to know is that, like I mentioned when introducing you, I talked a little bit about you and being in the guided autobiography world, being an instructor and probably adding that to your repertoire of business experience and your services that you offer, and then also so through there, being willing to join me in learning about how to create a digital story, and so maybe we can start there on just finding out... We did it on your what I'll call branching point, so maybe you can elaborate a little bit on that and just briefly share about maybe what that experience was like between the digital storytelling and guided autobiography and joining those worlds together and whatever else you want to share.
Dr. Flora Brown:Well, it was a great opportunity to, of course, do my own story that I shared in the video we created, because it showed that you can include a lot of vital information in a short period of time, because the video, I think, was not even five minutes long, was it when we finished the whole thing?
Lisa:Good question, I'll have to look it up
Dr. Flora Brown:But anyway it's, what's great about it is that in the guided autobiography world, you're dealing with mainly participant students who take the classes, who want to write their stories to share with their families, and so, for the most part, they are not authors, they are not even aspiring authors, they're not even aspiring to publish a printed book, and yet they want to share their stories.
Dr. Flora Brown:So I like the digital story because it's a way of sharing your story that's not print, and that's one of the things I like to emphasize when I teach my classes is that there are many different ways you can share your story, so it can be digital, it can be photos with captions, it can be audio only, it can be written, so that there are many ways you can share, and I think that gives people a better feeling of relaxation when they don't perceive themselves as authors. But I enjoyed it for myself because it forced me to take a look at my beginnings, which you know, as you know, I talked about where I got started with all these ideas I have about my life. They started by eavesdropping in my mother's beauty shop.
Lisa:I love that I could just picture you under your mom's salon chair or dining room table.
Dr. Flora Brown:I'd have to hide in the corner because they didn't want me in there listening and they'd get busy in their conversations and suddenly notice there's a kid sitting in here absorbing all this. I couldn't take notes, I had to just listen. Absorbing all of this, I couldn't take notes, I had to just listen. So I'm glad that I got to do that, because that really became the start of my life, as it is now. My love of learning, my love of people and the value of people's stories and by listening to the women talk about, you know, like a beauty shop. You know is a therapy session, because women confide a lot of things to their hairstylists, and especially if they're in very restricted marriages where they don't even have their own money.
Dr. Flora Brown:Back in the old days a lot of women were housewives. They didn't have a job, they didn't have their own income. Housewives they didn't have a job, they didn't have their own income and they would rely on their husbands giving them X amount of money for groceries or whatever. And they were very clever some of them, because they would save a little money from the grocery money for themselves, but they couldn't keep it at home for fear their husbands would find it. So my mother became the banker. She became, you know, a go-between for all kinds of things, nothing illegal, but I just my, as a kid growing up, I kept wondering why, you know, these women, you know, weren't more independent. I didn't have the word independent in my vocabulary, but I just couldn't understand why they were restricted or felt restricted by their husbands and society. You know, because I was a kid.
Dr. Flora Brown:So, naively, I thought I'm not going to be like that when I grow up. I'm going to do what I want to do and I'm going to have my own money and I'm going to, you know, go where I want to go. And so I didn't realize how much of the way I live my life now, you know, came from those days, and so I value those days. So I'm happy that we were able to capture it and, of course, you know, I use it in my own program and sharing with other people that like um.
Lisa:So the branching point is one of the very first themes when we talk about guided autobiography, because that's writing two pages at a time and I can link to more information in the show notes about that. But why I'm bringing that up is because it's really your origin story when it comes to your business and it sounds correct me if I say anything that's not accurate with in regards to your story. But what really rang true was about you learning and always being a learner, always being a listener, taking in information and always wanting to be a teacher.
Dr. Flora Brown:Yeah.
Lisa:Right, right and then and taking that, and then you know, being the educator that you are and moving forward with your doctor title, which is very impressive and very respectable, you know. So I guess you have, you have the credentials and the qualifications that really make me want to tap into your mind even more on learning about, like why, yeah, she's pointing to her head right now that the brain's in there,
Dr. Flora Brown:people say pick your brain, I go,
Lisa:That's right, I'm gonna pick your brain here we go.
Lisa:Are you ready?
Dr. Flora Brown:What's important about what you're sharing is that, with branching points, it's could be, uh, considered turning points actually, because when people write about their branching points, we have, well, each of the themes, we have about 14 prompts. People can choose from within that theme, and so it doesn't have to be your origin story. You know it can be. You know, some turning point in your life along the way which, in a way, is an origin story because you're starting a new path. Yes, but for me it became more and I'm not even sure that that was a story that I used other stories, the power of a story to transform you, even after things have happened, to reflect on how you got to where you are, how that story shaped you. I see so many things you know, think about so many things I do and believe because of what happened in the you know, my early days. Of course, it helps that I was naive and young, because I didn't have any breaks in my head to say you can't do this and it's not possible. And that's very important, you know, because, speaking of the PhD, a lot of people can't believe, have asked me what made me want a PhD, and most people want a higher degree because they are in a career where it's going to be advantageous and they also will make more money to have that degree. I wanted a PhD because when I was a little kid, some of the adults in my church had the PhD and they were high level and I respected and admired them a lot. I loved school when everybody was asking pre-teens to talk about what you want to be when you grow up. I wanted to be whatever it would take the longest to get, because I wanted to stay in school as long as possible. That sounds awful to me, I know. Hey, my kids call me weird. They say you are weird, I'm serious.
Dr. Flora Brown:When we were talking about what you want to be when you grow up, some of the people, some of the kids, said you know, they wanted to be a medical doctor. They were thinking of prestige, or a lawyer or whatever. I was just thinking of. Hmm, what degree do you need to get to be able to be in school a long time? And because some of the people usually they were the men I don't remember for sure if there were any women that had PhDs in that circle but I asked you know which degree takes the longest, instead of PhD, which actually getting a medical degree takes longer, I think. But I just got it locked in my head because some of the people I respected had PhDs that it takes a long time and that just became a goal of mine. One of these days I'm going to get a PhD, not because you could make more money. I didn't even know about you know that part of it. I didn't think about what it was going to cost to get it in terms of money, time, sacrifice, but it was in my head.
Dr. Flora Brown:And once I got married, my husband used to have this thing about what's your five-year plan?
Dr. Flora Brown:That's one of the first questions he asked me when we were just getting what do you mean a five-year plan? So he was always talking about planning, you know, for the future and pushing me to plan more so than him doing it himself. Right, and I just sort of had in my mind every five to 10 years when I was young, I would reevaluate my life and say years when I was young, I would reevaluate my life and say, have you reached what goals you wanted to reach? And when I hit 30 and realized wait, I said I wanted a PhD, haven't started, even though I had two children, I said I've got to find a way to get a PhD, and so when people ask me about that, you know everybody else thinks it's for prestige, for money, for whatever. Now, for me it was a childhood dream, and that's just one that I promised myself I was going to accomplish, so how long it took and what it was going to cost didn't matter because it was a dream, and the same with writing a book or traveling to major continents.
Dr. Flora Brown:It was a dream. It was not for show, it wasn't for prestige. That's why I don't care about the PhD, and yet other people care a lot about it.
Dr. Flora Brown:You know I don't care if my. I really didn't care if my students called me Dr Brown or not. However, my friends and others around me urged me to insist that they do, Because it made they said it makes a difference in how they, you know, respond to you. I don't care about that, and so when I first got it, I used to tell my kids they were going to have to call me Dr Mommy, Dr Mom.
Dr. Flora Brown:But of course that never caught on.
Lisa:It didn't fly.
Dr. Flora Brown:It didn't fly, it didn't even try to fly. It didn't even have any. No momentum that's so funny.
Lisa:I love it. Well it's admirable, for sure, and I love it, thank you for sharing that. It all comes from your dreams, because that, I think, is the key to overcoming self-doubts and those, you know, false beliefs that we make up in our heads. That they're beliefs and I'm guilty of having them too, you know and like well, I don't have a degree or whatever it might be where those are just things that hold you back, but yet, if it's a dream and you really want it to happen, you can make it happen right yeah.
Dr. Flora Brown:Well, here's the thing that people don't realize anything you want in this world, it already exists. So you didn't have to create this thing. It exists, or else you wouldn't know you wanted it because you wouldn't have heard of it. Or you want like a scientist you know that there's a solution, there's a cure, there's a disease, so there must be a cure. And so they have it in their minds and somewhere out there in the atmosphere it does exist. So when you are wanting something, whatever it is, you don't have to create it. It's like if you want a lover, you want a husband, you want a home, you don't have to build the house, you don't have to. The guy doesn't have to be born, he's already born somewhere out there. So you just have to know. You want it so badly that you can't imagine your life without it, and you will. It'll gravitate to you. That's what law of assumption and law of attraction are all about manifestation. It's just about being open to what already exists so that you can invite it into your life.
Lisa:Wow, I love this conversation. I wasn't expecting it to go there! I love it!
Dr. Flora Brown:That's what it's all about, and once you realize that, it's really a relief, because we're not God, we can't create, we can just be open to accept. But you've got to want it and you've got to really release the. I have a bunch of stories about that. I'm going to have to do a program for that for my class about that, my class about that. Because that's part of the problem people have with writing their life stories is they have a story, all right, but their story says you can't write, you're not capable.
Lisa:Yes!
Dr. Flora Brown:people are going to worry about what you say, you're going to embarrass you.
Dr. Flora Brown:so they have a story, but it's not the story
Lisa:okay, how do you... this is I think this is a great place for us to talk about how do you help the people that you work with to overcome some of those beliefs that they have, or the you know, like, like, do you have uh, I don't know certain practices that you do, or questions that you ask, or conversation prompts that you encourage, Like, how do you start with somebody when they're like oh, I know I should tell it, my family wants me to, or whatever they might say, and yet they seem like they're not willing or not unsure?
Dr. Flora Brown:Well, a couple of things that I do, some things I've done in the past. I've have some new things I'm going to be doing with my upcoming classes, that the more and more I learn. But one of the things that I think happens is when a person joins a group of class and they know the purpose of classes write your life story, whatever, whether it's in person or virtual, they already have taken a step. That's a huge step for them to get into the class. Then, once they're in the class, it's important that they feel safe. And once they feel safe and they tell their stories, they write the story.
Dr. Flora Brown:As you know, how guided autobiography does you write your story for homework and then in the class you share your story. I think the very first time they share their stories and everybody in the class is listening and so enjoying what they shared or ask questions about it, not criticizing, just interested, engaged that's when they have just opened up a whole new world. Because think about this, Lisa, I don't know about your family, but most families you don't typically have family members that come in and say, mom, tell me about your life story, what was the first point in your life, do you
Lisa:please tell, and tell me more about that.
Dr. Flora Brown:Tell me more. N o.
Lisa:Sometimes, but not always.
Dr. Flora Brown:Sometimes.
Dr. Flora Brown:But most of us don't have that engagement from our family, right or friends about our lives. So when you get the rapt attention of someone and they are complete strangers, they don know you. But now you bond so fast. You know how fast you bond in a guided autobiography class. Yeah, now people can relax because you know the world didn't end. You know nothing fell apart when they told that story and, more importantly, I let them know that this is your story and, as one of the famous memoirs, anne Lamott, says, you tell it from your perspective and if people wanted you to tell a nice story, they should have behaved better. So you tell your story. But here's the other part people don't realize Writing your story is writing it. It's up to you if you want to share it with anybody else.
Dr. Flora Brown:You may not, and you may want to share this with your family. You may just want to. Once you write it, you have reflected, you have already changed because you've gotten out something that you've been holding in. You may never share it with anybody it's still valuable but once they realize it because when you say write your life story, they automatically think it means put it for sale on Amazon or someplace. That's not what it is. It's up to you how you share it.
Dr. Flora Brown:The funniest part to me is especially when I was doing in person. We'd get started and the beginning of the class. You know I'm introducing what we're going to be doing and I tell them this is up to you. Which story you tell? You know, here's some ideas, prompts, blah, blah, blah. And invariably someone would say well, you know what? There's a story that you know I just don't want to tell about. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Is it okay if I don't tell? Well, how would I not? I didn't even know that story existed before they said it. So I'd say, of course, I said it's up to you, whatever, and if you don't like one of the 14 prompts, pick something within that general topic. Right? What do you think they always wrote about. They wrote about the very story they said that they didn't want to write about.
Lisa:Oh, interesting.
Dr. Flora Brown:Once you start writing that story has been knocking at the door trying to get out and you start that pen because we almost always in person we're doing it by hand. I'm telling you that story spills out of that pen and they can't help but write that story that they just got through telling me wanted my permission to not have to tell that story.
Lisa:They just needed that. Yeah, they needed that permission in order to feel safe, in order to not feel pressured.
Dr. Flora Brown:Right, and every time. And then if it's a husband and wife, I had a husband and wife and that particular session we were talking about writing a story for Christmas, a Christmas, something about your family put in a Christmas letter because I'm big about writing Christmas letters and this husband and wife said, well, should we write a story together? I said no, you each write your separate story, your whatever you want to share about your life, for your Christmas letter. And of course theirs were different, they were husband and wife, but they were different people writing about the same you know, family experiences or whatever they were writing about.
Dr. Flora Brown:So once they get that feeling of safety, community, then they're off and rolling and they are so people almost never absent from those classes. Because where are you going to go every week to get somebody to not only listen to your story but value it? Because part of their fear is nobody in their family is going to value this story. Or they're going to say, like you know, my kids or other people say you've told us that before, we've heard that before, but these people in the class are not going to say that. Well, probably because you're writing a different story every week. But they get to know you and care about you and even ask questions, caring questions about you that you don't get from your family and other people. So it's very, I want to say, engaging. But it's kind of addictive to know you're going to be meeting with people who care about you.
Lisa:Who care and want to hear and ask questions,
Dr. Flora Brown:Who wouldn't want that every week? So it's a wonderful thing, yeah,
Lisa:and it's nice because it's those opportunities create community. They create a sense of connection and I don't know like do you find that after a sense of connection? And I don't know like do you find that after your groups probably have a beginning and an end, right, like if they're six to ten weeks or whatever do you find does it ever happen that people stay connected after your groups finish?
Dr. Flora Brown:Lisa, there are groups that... that hasn't happened to a group of mine that I know of, but there are groups that meet six to eight weeks, whatever, whether they meet in a library in the old days or meet virtually. That they became friends and after that class was over some of them still met on some kind of schedule that they set on their own. They no longer had a teacher coordinating. They were still writing their stories.
Dr. Flora Brown:And one of my friends that I met online it happened. It wasn't part of GAB program but it was the same concept. She met a group of ladies in a public library that started a you know storytelling and after the teacher was no longer teaching it, they continue to meet in that library and write their stories. So there are people that continue once they get rolling and some of them, you know, may publish them, quote unquote, put them in print and make them available to their families. Some may actually go all the way to printing them for the public, but I bet the most of them probably share them with their family and friends, make it part of their legacy.
Lisa:Yeah.
Dr. Flora Brown:And it transforms you. It's not just that you're telling your story. You're also getting a chance to see how you got to where you are and how you most likely change. You have new points.
Dr. Flora Brown:You have new viewpoints.
Dr. Flora Brown:You have a better understanding and forgiveness for yourself. It's really, it's a transformative experience.
Lisa:I love that. I'm glad you said that, because that was going to be my next question on, like, how do you find that people are after they go through this experience? But there is that. There's that self-reflection where people grow because you have this level of awareness and you're able to process those thoughts and emotions that you had in order to then, I don't want to say move past them, but be able to realize what you've maybe experienced good, bad, whatever and then see that for what it is and to grow from that experience that they're talking about
Dr. Flora Brown:yeah, well, you get a new view of yourself as someone um, you know who wasn't, wasn't a victim you are, you have, you're resilient, you have overcome something, you've gone through something yes, you see your growth and you also.
Dr. Flora Brown:m able to forgive yourself for you know, for whatever reason we think we should have been smarter or shrewder, when we weren't even the perpetrator of all kinds of things that happened to us. But we can kind of forgive ourselves and if you can forgive the people that you blamed, for whatever reason, it is freeing for you, because you're carrying it around within you, the person that perhaps hurt you intentionally or unintentionally. They're not feeling that pain. You're feeling it and you're carrying it it. Now you're able to, if not completely, let it go. You're able to be more objective and look at it differently and not let it dictate the rest of your life, how you're going to live the rest of your life and how you're going to treat other people
Lisa:yeah, wow, I thank you because we're talking about capturing essence.
Lisa:I think it's important to mention and I wish everybody could see. Sorry that it's not a video podcast, but Flora looks beautiful and has this red top on which I think is absolutely her color, and behind her she has her display of books and things, and I can see your Color your Life Happy book out there, as well as your Gratitude Journal, and I want to ask you I know that your Color your Life Happy book does capture your essence. I'm sure it does. So I wonder if you could share a little bit about your book and what's in it, if you don't mind.
Dr. Flora Brown:Certainly, I always have an origin story that goes with everything. When I retired from full-time teaching, I decided to. You know, of course, I was exploring what I was going to do and blogs were just starting. So I started a blog and I ended up.
Dr. Flora Brown:I used to listen to a pastor on TV every Sunday when I didn't go to church. One of my girlfriends and I we used to call it we'd call each other on Sunday morning to see who had gone to church. And we're at home, right. And I said so you didn't go to church today. Huh, she said I'm worshiping from bed. So we used to say we're worshiping from bed.
Dr. Flora Brown:So when we're worshiping from bed, I'm watching this particular pastor, and one Sunday he was talking about everything we needed to make our lives whatever we wanted. We already possessed and for whatever reason. While I'm listening to him, I had a box of crayons nearby Don't ask me why. And when he said that that we have everything we need to create our lives, I thought, yeah, it's like we have a box of crayons with all these colors and we can color our lives whatever way we want. And that just stuck in my head color your life, right. So after hearing him. I'd start. I just started this blog. I named it Color Your Life Happy, and it just so happened that around this time was when happiness was becoming a big thing, the American Psychological Association started um recognizing it, and so there became a whole field of positive psychology positive,
Lisa:positive psychology, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Flora Brown:So I jumped into that, researching, learning about it. I went to one of their conferences, but in my, my blog, every week I'm writing about different ways to become happy, blah, blah, blah. And people would that I knew in person sometimes would see me at church or wherever, and one guy one day asked me more than once I've been asked because I'm walking along minding my own business, smiling. He said are you always happy? And I said well, no, he goes well, you're always smiling. Well, I'm at church, why would I not be smiling there? I'm not at home looking at burnt rice or something.
Lisa:Why would I not be smiling right now?
Dr. Flora Brown:You you know, and you're just walking by down the hall or whatever.
Dr. Flora Brown:greeting somebody anyway, but people interpret smiling or whatever. As you're always happy, you never have any problems, right, yeah? So I thought happiness isn't about not having problems, and so I was writing about this in my blog and finally one day I realized wait, a minute, I had written so many blog posts about this topic. I thought I have a book here, and I think and so I decided because that was one of my goals was to write books in retirement. I had already co-authored some language arts textbooks and things, but you know, I wanted to write books in retirement. I had already co-authored some language arts textbooks and things, but I wanted to write something for the general public. So I took my original blog posts and created my first edition of Color your Life Happy.
Dr. Flora Brown:In the meantime, I have hired an audio studio for recording my book. Have not gotten the book edited because along came a new book. I did so anyway. The new book is taking all my attention now. Unfortunately, color your life happy has moved, gotten pushed. I'm in the up, you know, updated version, so I so I'll get to it, but right now the other book needs to be done.
Dr. Flora Brown:I had to do that,
Lisa:Wow. Are you going to share about what that book is, or would you like to leave that a mystery?
Dr. Flora Brown:I'll be happy. No, I'll be happy to, partly because I believe that almost every book we write is autobiographical in some respect, and you know there are a lot of people that believe that. So, no matter what you say your book is about, it's going to be autobiographical in terms of your stories. But mine, this coming book, started decluttering my house, because after you've lived in the same house for 30 years, you don't have to be there that long before you have so much clutter you need to get rid of. And as I started to declutter and run across things, all of a sudden things were triggering memories and so I started keeping a list of what memories were triggered and those will make up my book. So it'll be kind of like a micro memoirs, a collection of micro memoirs. And I was torn about what to name it. And I remembered from my childhood.
Dr. Flora Brown:I got criticized by my sister, my youngest sister in particular, all of my life. Well, it started in childhood, but she would say to me you know, the problem with you, flora, is you're trying to live a white picket fence life. And I used to go. What does that mean? And she used to tell me that periodically throughout my life. And I, you know, of course we know what a white picket fence life means, kind of like you know, especially in America. The American home to a husband, wife and two kids and a white picket fence was the standard.
Dr. Flora Brown:Everybody was aspiring to, but that was her favorite criticism. So when I was sharing, trying to decide what the title of my book is going to be because it's all about just things from childhood through adulthood. But they're all short, they're. They're little half page, two pages, they're just micro memoirs I was sharing it with the editor of the book and so she said I like that. She said but you went beyond the white picket fence, and so we're you went beyond the white picket fence, and so we're calling it beyond the white picket fence.
Lisa:Oh, I like that.
Dr. Flora Brown:For now, unless we come up with something else.
Lisa:That's cool,
Dr. Flora Brown:and I even hired someone from Canada to do the cover. So far, a grad student is in publishing, and so that's where it stands. But the story you and I have to finish writing a story.
Lisa:Well, I just want to end by saying that you constantly inspire me, and I don't know if I know anyone quite as driven as you. I don't know. Anyway, I'm blown away Every time we talk. I just have to take a moment to just appreciate who you are.
Dr. Flora Brown:Well, as they say, it's a gift and it's a curse, because there's a point at which you need to turn off whatever you're doing and go to bed and go to sleep. You have to eat, you have to take care of other things and some things. I get so determined to finish this tonight.
Lisa:Things like sleep don't happen very well. I refer to. I have an Awestruck Aspirations Facebook page and I don't know if people know, but the AWE stands for age, wisdom and experience and the whole idea behind the Awestruck Aspirations is really moments like this where I want to draw on people who have the age, wisdom and experience to share with their community and with the people around them, and I don't think that there's enough platforms for voices like that to be heard. So, thank you for sharing your wisdom with us and, yeah, it means a lot.
Dr. Flora Brown:You're most welcome.
Lisa:Well, that's a wrap on the conversation with Flora. Isn't she great? She shared so many great insights to help us overcome our self-doubts and limiting beliefs. I love the name of her upcoming book too, Beyond the White Picket Fence. Let's all strive to live beyond the white picket fence and boost each other up as we do it. Oh and, by the way, Flora's digital story that I helped her create is four minutes and 28 seconds long. In case you weren't going to be able to sleep without knowing that tonight. You can check that out in the show notes too.
Lisa:Lastly, I'd love to hear from you. Now that I have a few podcast episodes under my belt, I'd love to learn more from you. How have you captured essence when it comes to care? What does that even look like to you? What does the term mean to you? If you have ideas or questions that you'd like me to discuss on the podcast, please reach out. It's easy to do. Go to the show notes and click send us a text. It should work. If that doesn't work, you can also find me on that Facebook page I was mentioning to Flora, and that is AWE Struck Aspirations, so you can look that up under Facebook A-W-E-S-T-R-U-C-K. Aspirations, not inspirations. Anyway, I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you again so much for taking the time to listen in, to join the conversation, and I look forward to the next time. Take care.
