Absent, But Ever-Present

Losing a mother is difficult at any age but losing her as a toddler creates a longing that can shape an entire life.

In this episode, Nina Rivenburgh opens up about what it means to grow up without her mother, who stepped in to nurture her, how she found connection across the absence, and why the bond between a daughter and the mother she barely knew can still feel remarkably, alive.

Visit https://adaughtersinheritance.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

God puts in your path the people that you need to have there for you to grow, to continue, to help you on your journey. Embrace those people.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Hello, everyone, and welcome to A Daughter's Inheritance, a podcast about the relationship between mothers and daughters. I am your host, Susan Steele, and I have a special guest today. Nina Rivenberg is with us. Welcome, glad to have you. Well, thank you for having me here, and thank you for pronouncing my name correctly, also. Oh, okay, good. So I feel like for the most part, we have known about each other. We've been uh in in church together in a fairly small community, and our paths have crossed some, but I really didn't know your story that much until recently when we we kind of visited. Now, I have lunch with your husband every Monday. Now, before people are like, wait, what? Uh, we're in Rotary together, so uh our rotary meets every Monday, and so he usually I think kind of sits behind me. But what I have known of you is that I see you as having a gentle spirit, very deep and contemplative. Uh, and that's just kind of my from a distance how I've kind of seen you. Uh, and your story, I think, is unique and yet will be a story that can really people can connect with, uh whether it's their mother or somebody else, I think it will be something that they will that will really resonate with people. Uh but before we jump into that, tell us a little bit about Nina. Who who are you? Just uh your family, work, passions, whatever, so we can get to know you a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

All right. Well, my name is Nina Rivenberg. I was um born in Pennsylvania, so I'm basically a northerner, but have become a southerner because I've been here now for 26 years. And I have an older brother, nine years older, and an older sister, 12 years older. I lost my mother when I was three and a half. So my brother would have been nine and a half, and my sister, well no, twelve and a half, and my sister would have been fifteen and a half. The early part of my upbringing was rather tumultuous, but um, I'll get into that a little bit later. I uh grew up uh Roman Catholic, and uh I went to Penn State for college, married my high school sweetheart, and he also went to Penn State, but then after four years we were divorced. So for four um 13 years I was single and didn't remarry until I was 38. And this year we will be married 40 years. Oh wow. So that really is a milestone. Uh-huh. And absolutely, I'm I'm grateful um that my life took a good turn that way. Uh, I have no children. I have a stepdaughter in Colorado with two granddaughters who are 26 and 23. So basically, they've grown up without us. We've seen them, you know, we've made trips out there and whatever, but it hasn't been a real close time because of the distance. Maybe I'll just add in here while I'm talking about my stepdaughter. When I was a senior in high school when I graduated from high school, I decided I had been living with an aunt and uncle for a number of years. When my mother passed away, my grandmother came to take care of us for a short period of time, but that was rather difficult for her. And so she wasn't able to do that. And we had another lady come who was a distant relative, like a third or fourth cousin, come and stay with us to to help my father, who was a physician, and had was had was busy, you know, with his practice. And her name was Mary. I attached to Mary. I I really felt a bond with Mary because I was so little. My unfortunately, Mary started to have feelings for my father and wanted to get married, and my father did not feel the same way. So Mary had to go. And my father called his older brother and said, I'm bringing Nina and Vincent over, you know, for you to take. I I think my uncle was okay with that because he only had that my aunt and uncle only had one child. She was diabetic and had lost a child and they couldn't have any more. I'm not sure my aunt was totally thrilled with with this arrangement, but we went to live with them. When I was a senior in high school, I decided that I wanted to go live with my father. So I just told my father, I'm coming to live with you. I'm coming back. Here I come. And things, things were fine with that. And I'm very glad I did that because he he died at age 68, so I had some time with him uh alone. But the point that I'm getting to is that when my husband and I got married, he had a 20-year-old daughter, 19-year-old daughter, and she decided that she wanted to come and live with her father.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

And we'd been married about six months, and I don't know that I was totally prepared for her to come uh live with us. I was I was trying to adjust to being remarried and living with someone else again. And then uh her name was Lisa, is Lisa, and she came and it worked out okay. It worked out okay, but I don't know if I didn't have that experience of knowing that I needed to move in with my father, that I would have been as okay with her coming to live with us. It was a full circle mama thing. It was a full circle mama thing. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

There is a lot to unpack in what you just told us. And so we're gonna we're going to do that. Uh so your mother died when you were three and a half. Right. And when we first started talking, you said I don't I don't know if my story's gonna work for this because I was so young and I didn't have that long relationship with their mother. And as you started telling me, I'm like, there is so many things in your story that I think people are going to appreciate, are going to it's gonna resonate with them. It is it is unique in in in some in some ways, but I think there's just so many things there. So with your mother passing away when she was young, and and and you were young, what do you know about her just as a woman? I mean, even not necessarily just as a mother, but just as a woman who she was uh before she got married or as a uh a wife. Do you know much about that? I don't.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

I really don't. Um unfortunately, my sister and my brother don't talk about my mother very much. They they are uncomfortable with that. And I have little snippets from other relatives that I've asked, you know. Right. I think my mother was a beautiful woman. I believe that she had a big heart. She was a nurse. The one thing about my mother in pictures is that she is never smiling. She is never smiling. And that pictures of me as a small child with her, I am I am beaming all over. I'm just delighted, right, you know, to be with her. My mother did not drive. Um, she took care of my father's calls with people who would call in to make, you know, needing to see my father. As a doctor. As a doctor. She was a little bit homebound. Um I don't know very much about her.

SPEAKER_02 8:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

I I I do know that she does, she did have a gentle spirit, and I think I have that part of her with me. I remember one time I was visiting another uh aunt and uncle, who of course knew my mother, because my father came from a large family. Anyway, I was getting out of the car and walking into the house, and my uncle said to me, For a minute there, I thought that was your mother coming in. That made me feel wonderful. Oh, yeah. You know, uh I I um So there are so uh people see her in me, I think. People have seen her in me.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

Well she I mean, being a nurse, what what years what year was I mean that was a big deal. That would be that would be a big deal. Back then? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Yeah. So for her to have a career. A career. Yeah. And her sister was also a nurse. Okay. Both my aunt and my mother were a nurse. And I did not know my aunt very well. I did not know my mother's side of the family very well. I would have known them better if she had lived and I'd been able to have more contact.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

Do you have memories of you with her? I know you've got the pictures and you see those. And I for me, sometimes I look back at pictures when I was a little kid, or or people will talk about memories, and I don't know if it's a memory I had or if it's because I've other people have told me or pictures, you know. But do you have some memories when with her?

SPEAKER_01 10:29

I have a few, and one of them is from a picture, and we used to go to a pool, swimming pool, in the summer, and she's sitting on the edge of the pool, and she was tall, she was about five foot six, which I did not get, but um she's sitting in her bathing suit on the side of the pool, and I'm in the water, just kind of by her leg. And of course, I'm I'm smiling, I'm having a good time, and there's a duck, there's a little rubber duck. So we were having a good time. And I do remember, I remember combing her hair uh on the side of her bed. She would sit on the side of the bed and I would brush her hair with a brush. She had beautiful au-burn hair, and I remember doing that. And I also remember, I think I told you this earlier, we there used to be little loaves of wonder bread that they had back then. And she would make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches out of these little pieces of bread, and I remember her doing that.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

It's really interesting the things that we do remember. I mean, sometimes they're they seem so in insignificant, but for some reason, whether it's just the comfort of her fixing a peanut butter and jelly. I must have liked those, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

So yeah. It's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

When you lived with your father later, did he talk about her at all?

unknown 12:03

No.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Or just that was just something that was understood, we're just not talking about this, or just I think it was too hard for my father to do that.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

I really do. Um the person that I talked to a little bit more about my mother was my aunt, her sister's son, who lived um uh about an hour away from us, and I'd go visit him, and he remembered, he would tell me things because he lived in the same house where my grandmother and grandfather lived and where my mother was raised. So he remembers her in that home.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

Did she have a good relationship with her mother?

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Do you know? I I don't know. I don't know. I have a feeling I don't know. Yeah, and I wish I knew. See, there's so many things that I don't know. Um my mother my grandmother was a woman ahead of her time. She liked to drive. She lived in her car, she was very adventurous, was kind of a dominant woman where I think my mother was not. So I don't know what the relationship was there.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

So I mean you were three and a half, your brother was twelve and a half. And your sister and a half, yeah. And you said y'all didn't talk about they didn't talk about it much. That's a hard time. I mean, there's never a good time to lose your mother. But for a teenager and a preteen, it had to be really difficult. Did you all come together in this common loss and bond together, or teenage years are so awkward anyway, and sometimes you just turn inward, even in the best of times. Did each of you kind of have to deal with it in your own way?

SPEAKER_01 14:01

I I think all of us had to deal with it in our own way. I think that it affected each of us different very differently. I don't know the relationship of my sister and my mother. There might have been some friction there because of her age.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

If there wasn't friction between a 15-year-old and their mother, something was different. I mean, that's just a moral thing.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Yeah. Yeah. And I think my brother had the hardest time because my father was a little bit strict. And I think my mother was my brother's salvation, was was his safe place. Not that my father was abusive. I'm not, I'm not saying that. But I think I think I was so little, but I don't think he knew how to cope with this loss. And unfortunately, none of us got the help that we needed to work through this time. And my brother was sent off to military school. So it was, it was, it was hard for him.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Well, the people that would have been there for you were also having to deal with it. I mean, your older sister exactly, you know, that sometime is protective. Well, she's dealing with her own things. Your father lost his young spouse. Um, your grandmother lost her daughter at a young age. So everybody's that you would have depended on, and then here's this toddler.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

I I don't think any of us could help each other with their grief because they were too caught up in their own grief. Yeah. And I I remember I asked my sister, I said to her, Well, you know, you or she would say to me, You you would wonder where where did mommy go? Where's mommy? And uh she said, I didn't I didn't know how to answer you, but I finally had to say that God wanted mommy to be with him right now. I don't know what a child's brain does with all of that. You know, I know I'm I'm going off on a little bit of a different tangent here, a little, but it was very hard for me. I remember one time we were living in Ohio and I had a neighbor who had a a little girl. And um they were out there, I may get emotional here, they were out there planting flowers in the front yard, and it just made me very sad. I I wasn't able to do that. Later I thought, you know, uh there was an opportunity to work taking care of children in a Bible study type thing. And I I chose the three to five-year-olds because I wanted to see how I I wanted, I didn't know how three-year-olds were. And I started that and I I couldn't do it. I had to say I couldn't do that because when I saw the vulnerability of those little ones, it made me sad. So I just knew I needed to step away from that. How how how much they needed their mothers and their their mothers. Now my aunt, I know I remember this also, and that is that I guess I started to call my aunt mommy. And my brother, of course, was living with us. Well, I mean, he was there, and he said to me, because I've been told this, that he said, You don't call her mommy, she is not your mother, she's not your mother. So I didn't. I didn't have that closeness with my aunt that I would have liked to have had. She wasn't a warm, fuzzy person. Right. Uh she she did take care of us and did they did the best they could, you know. They here we were. The woman who sort of took that place was my first mother-in-law. Yeah. Um I bonded very much with her. I don't know if I married the person, my first husband, or I married the family, is what I did.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

And I think a lot of people do that too, probably, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

I I had a belonging feeling with them that I lacked a little bit with my own. So I even after my divorce from my first husband, I kept in touch with with Edith, my my first mother-in-law.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

So did she understand that she was filling that role? I think she did that for the first time in the world. I think she did.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

I think she did. Yeah. I would send her a Mother's Day card every year. Um I loved her. I was grateful, you know.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

So in between that b before, because that was when you were married, so from three and a half till married, you you said that you had the Mary, right? Who complications happened with that? Right. So you got some there for a little while, right? And then you got the you were taken care of, right, but not nurtured. Right. Not nurtured in that mothering way. Right. Uh, and then how old were you when you moved in with your father? Did you say?

SPEAKER_01 19:42

What was I, sixteen?

SPEAKER_00 19:43

Sixteen, okay. And he was a good father, but not the mother that you yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

My my whole story is is um intertwined with the spiritual journey, too.

SPEAKER_00 19:55

Um yeah, talk about that, because I know your your faith is very important, yeah. Um and it's just part of who you are. So, how has that woven in your life? The ups, the downs.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

Uh well, I I yesterday I remembered I I had been asked by um a minister here to give an experience of a time that I had of God. And she was writing a book. She was putting a compilation of stories together of people into a book. She asked me if I'd I'd do that. I thought, oh, I don't know. But I did. And so uh I did write something, and I'm just going to read the very first part of that because uh I think that says what I'm trying to say. It says, I suppose if I had to give a title to my life, it would be lost and found. You know, the place where things go that have been left behind either by chance or just abandoned somewhere. What I know through all my experience of life is that God is the keeper of the cosmic, lost and found. He will take what is there and find the perfect home for it. His heart. So that's beautiful. That is um, and when I look back, I see that you know, God was my mother. God was my father mother during that time.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

The nurturing that I needed. The nurturing that I needed.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

I may not have known it quite then, but um I certainly do.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

When did you know it? When did you look back and say, I got what I needed?

SPEAKER_01 21:48

You know, it wasn't until I was in in my forties, believe it or not, when I sort of had a transformational experience. And really accepted Christ as my savior. I was repentant and I was forgiven and knew I was just so loved and that he had brought me this far and would continue to do so. So yeah, it took a while. Sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

Um in your early years, but w when your mother was alive, was faith important to your family? I mean, were you chur you you said you were Catholic, so Well, we went to church.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

Um I went to Catholic school too, the first six years of my life. Okay. And so is that where you learned some of the contemplative practices and things?

SPEAKER_00 22:48

Not at all.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

Not at all. No. That came much later. Okay. That came much later. But I guess I had a a a good basic foundation. But God was there, but he was somebody far away at that time. I think, you know, and I don't know if there was the scorecard up there that I I thought. And um, you know, I think my early years oftentimes were I had to be good. I had to be a good good girl, or I'd I'd be left again. I mean, I would I would be um put out.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

Did you ever blame God for the loss of your mother?

SPEAKER_01 23:37

I think there was a time when I was angry. I mean, I would think Yes, I I mean I questioned why. Why? Because it has such an effect on your whole life. It does. It shapes your life, but I know now that that's what God really wanted for me is is to um shape my life through this.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

So You You were talking about a scorecard. I I had a friend one time, she said when she was a little girl, that you know, she read the the the scripture about to forgive 70 times seven. She said, Well, I was fairly good at math. So I knew that wasn't a an infinite number, uh, 490 times. And so she goes, I would keep up with how many times I felt like I had done something bad, uh, which was just amazing I mean, the mind of a child, but it said 70 times seven, so that's how many times I can be bad, and then I'm gonna be in bad trouble. Yeah, but that you know, the same kind of concept. It's interesting how the um young minds work.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

Well, I had the nuns too, you know. If you did done wrong, I did have my I think I had my knuckles wrapped by a ruler on occasion. You wouldn't think me. Yeah, but um uh anyway.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

Yeah, but the other day when we were talking, you um said something that I said, I really think that's going to resonate with people, that there are going to be some people who lost their mother when they were maybe not as young as you, but you know, young, that they're going to say, yes, that's me too, and nobody else understands that. When you said, I lost my mother at three and a half, and I miss her every day. Explain that a little bit. Because I think there's other people who feel that way that maybe people are going, well, how can how can that be?

SPEAKER_01 25:42

I think about her. I have a picture right in front of me right now, and I don't want to forget her. I don't want to have her be a part of my past. I want her to be part of my present. And I know she's watching over me. I had there are little things that happened during the course of a day that might remind me of her. I might hear a bird chirping in the trees at me, just just relentlessly um chirping, and I'll it it'll get my attention and I'll say, you know, that might be my mother there talking to me. Just little little things like that.

SPEAKER_00 26:31

So is it kind of a combination of missing her in that like when you saw the mother and daughter playing the flower, missing the things that mothers and daughters do, but also a spiritual connection uh as well that you feel?

SPEAKER_01 26:51

Oh, it's definitely a spiritual connection. You know, I I I do feel that she is she's watching over me, protecting me. She's she's fine. You know, she's fine, and I know she's waiting for me, and that will be a happy day. And I do believe that the first three and a half years I had with her, those are so important in the formative years of a child that she gave me what I needed because I could have gone another way. I I've been through depression, you know. Could have gotten into drugs, could have gotten into alcohol, could have could have taken a path that would have led me to try and soothe that pain of that, but I I I didn't, and and I thank God for that. She apparently gave me what I needed to continue on with life.

SPEAKER_00 28:03

Well, just in some of the things I've been reading, uh um it is amazing how much children learn uh and gain from just those first few years. Uh uh, so yeah, even having those uh few years that were did help shape who you are today.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

One other thing I wanted to mention I don't have any children, and I don't have any children. I didn't realize until I realized it that was an unconscious decision on my part. I think I did not get married, those 13 years I did not get married. If I really wanted to have had a family and children, I would have gotten married. I got married again at 38, and it was kind of late, getting kind of late, and the circumstances just weren't, but I realized it was a conscious decision, just then it became a conscious decision that I would not want to have a child, and something happened to me and leave them. Like I was left, and that was a big revelation to me when I consciously realized that, and that's okay. I mean, I you know, have two stepchildren, and not everybody has to have children. Sure, yeah. That hit me hard when I realized that fact.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

That part was just just a decision that was a decision, but you didn't really think of it as a decision. I really didn't think, okay, this is what Right. Yeah. So you've got this beautiful picture of your mother, and she is a beautiful uh woman, and uh you showed me this brooch that's just absolutely amazing, that's uh beautiful. So what you and you talked a little bit about that she was a gentle and you probab you got that from her, and you have these physical things. So what are some of the things and you can tell us about these or or or some other things that you have of hers or that she left that you inherited from her, whether it's traits or uh how you act or look or or actual physical things?

SPEAKER_01 30:38

It happened one day. I was looking in the mirror and I was putting stuff on my eyebrows, and I I have one eyebrow that just stuck out, and it was Auburn color. And I thought, oh, this is my mother. This is my mother, the color of her hair. And it was a little longer. I was thinking of getting, I thought, oh my no, I'm not getting rid of it. And I I look at it every day as I'm putting on my um uh eyebrow pencil or brush or thing, whatever I do, but I have an eyebrow that is the exact color of her hair, and my hair was I'm now gray, but it was brown with reddish highlights. So every day I see that. I mean, it's something so simple, but so powerful. Absolutely. So, anyway, that, and I I do think I have her her manner. I I think my sister is very different than me. Um, I think I have more of the character traits of my mother, maybe. Um, I think my sister looks maybe a little bit more like my mother. Uh, so does my brother, and he's tall, six, six foot, so he got the height. But I can look at that picture and just see the love in her eyes. I mean, I I can see that, and I I can feel that. I can feel that. So that's just very special. And I have it prominently displayed where I can see it every day. So, and I have her wedding ring that I sometimes wear with my wedding band. Of course, we have a couple wedding, not a couple wedding rings, but uh and it's very plain, it's very simple.

SPEAKER_00 32:37

You said you have your grandmother's house?

SPEAKER_01 32:39

And I also have my grandmother's, which is much more elaborate, but and the stones came from Africa because my grandfather worked in Africa for a this is your mother's this is my mother's mother. He picked the stones to have one as an engagement ring and one for earrings for studs, and my grandmother didn't want that, so she put the three stones. There's four stones, they had to add a stone, but in into the ring.

SPEAKER_00 33:09

So that's beautiful. We've talked a little bit about your siblings. Uh how is that relationship through the years? You said don't grieved separately. Um did that ever come back? Do you how is your relationship now?

SPEAKER_01 33:28

I have they're both distant in in um geography. My brother lives in Pennsylvania, my sister lives in California.

SPEAKER_00 33:36

Y'all are all spread out.

SPEAKER_01 33:38

We're spread out. Um I do go to California, and my sister has come here to visit, but my sister's gonna be 90 tomorrow. Oh wow. So she hasn't been doing much traveling. My brother, I don't see him too often, but I I do talk to him on birthdays. We have become closer over the years. Uh, that has happened. And my sister and I have traveled together a little bit. We took a trip to Italy and Sicily together, because that's part of my heritage. We've become closer. I I do remember my sister saying that my sister had to have a double mastectomy. My mother had a mastectomy also.

SPEAKER_02 34:29

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 34:30

This is before I think they knew that she had leukemia, which is what she died from. But my sister said I can so relate to mother now what she went through. But she never realized what she went through with that until she had to go through that herself.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Yeah. Well, that and that's interesting because uh in uh in another episode when we were talking to sisters, and uh uh you could see the the connection between where they are now and relating that back to understanding their mother better. You know, because when you're we're you when you're young, you you don't see those things, you don't understand those things until you get to be the age she was when you were, and so even something like that uh uh of understanding the illness that she went through. Right.

SPEAKER_01 35:27

Now, my mother, I don't know how I don't think my mother was a great cook. For some reason, I don't the first cherry pie she made this this was uh I was told that she left the pits in the cherries. Oh no. And my sister and I'll break a tooth on this. My sister and I are both good cooks, and so we've laughed about that, you know. Um but she could make a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She could make a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and then yep, yep. So anyway. That's also it's a shame, you know, that I we don't share uh as much as we could, or that maybe it's too painful. I think it's too painful for my brother to talk about my mother. It is too painful. Uh my sister, maybe I'm not asking her enough questions. That could be, but that's just the way it has been.

SPEAKER_00 36:24

And uh well, you know, the this podcast is about the the mother-daughter connection, but there's a a lot of things with siblings as well. Right. Uh the different relationships and uh throughout the years with with siblings.

SPEAKER_01 36:39

Somebody else can do that podcast, but I did grow up with my aunt and uncle had a daughter who was 10 years older than me. So I grew up with her. And she and I probably talk more than my sister and I do. She she was more of a protector of me than my sister. Um, and I when I lived in Pennsylvania, I did things with her family, my cousin's family. She had four children, and we did a lot of things together. So family connection was more with my cousin than it was with my sister. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:19

Because she wasn't having to deal with the great she could, she could be there somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

She could be there, right. And I live with her. Yeah. She was ten years older, I guess. She was out too going to college soon, but I had I was older when I had my time living with her.

SPEAKER_00 37:37

So, what advice would you give someone who in a similar situation, maybe lost their mother not necessarily at three and a half, but young, even teenage or whatever. What advice would you give them through their life or even as an older uh adult?

SPEAKER_01 37:58

Well, first of all, you're not alone. It is a substantial loss. I do feel that God puts in your path the people that you need to have there for you to grow, to continue, to help you on your journey, embrace those people. And to talk about it. I, you know, I don't talk about this very much. I I think people who have not suffered this loss don't and I think it's just with with everything. If you haven't experienced the death of a spouse or if the death of a child or a divorce or whatever, you can empathize with that person you and and be there for them. But you don't know exactly the pain that they're going through. But you can definitely be there for them. So just know that you're loved and that that person that parent still loves you from afar and to cherish the memories that you have of them and to find out as much as you can about them. Because I know I didn't find out quite enough from people who were who were still around that I could do that with. And that talk to your siblings.

unknown 39:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

So you you said you don't have children, but I think you've probably been a mentor to people for sure, and you've had influence on on others. What would you want them to inherit from you? What what would you want uh those people in your life or younger women or uh what would you want to give to them?

SPEAKER_01 39:48

Well, I don't know why that message from the help keeps it has come back into my mind. Uh, and I don't know it what it is exactly. You is smart, you is pretty, you is important. Because that's what you are. You truly are a beloved. Here's my spiritual part: you are a beloved of Jesus. To be courageous in your life, to uh step out, take the risk, don't be afraid of failing because we're all going to fail. We're we're all going to stumble, uh, but we're all given another opportunity to to try again, continue on. You probably are more than you think you are. Absolutely. And to reach out to others for help when you need it. Don't be afraid to ask for that because there are people that are willing to be there for you and and and and help you.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

Very good. Well, thank you, Nina. Thank you for for being here today, for having this conversation. Some people say it is uh therapeutic, although it it's difficult. It's hard to look back at some of these, uh, because we're talking to women who's have lost their mother, and so uh hopefully it has been uh good for you as well. But thank you for sharing your story. Difficult, but yet beautiful, uh nonetheless. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01 41:26

Well, thank you for allowing me to do this because it has been therapeutic and it's given me a sacred space to do this in. I guess uh yeah, and my message is you're not alone and that you're loved.

SPEAKER_00 41:42

Thank you. And thank you to uh our listeners for joining us uh on a A Daughter's Inheritance. I hope you found something in this conversation, whether it's comfort or connection, maybe recognition of uh some of your own situation, and you know, maybe even a laugh every now and then. If it's resonated with you, please follow the show so you don't miss the next daughter story. And uh, if you want to share your own inheritance with me, I'd love to hear from you. So, in the words of my own mother, similar to what you were just saying, be patient, be kind, and fairly.