Worth the Walk Podcast
Stories of Courageous Motherhood
Worth the Walk Podcast
I Should’ve Listened | Ep. 3
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There are certain things you hear growing up that don’t fully land… until they do.
In this episode of Worth the Walk, we reflect on the advice our moms gave us — the kind that felt repetitive, unnecessary, or easy to ignore at the time. But somewhere along the way, those words start to make sense.
Motherhood has a way of bringing those lessons full circle.
Because sometimes, you don’t understand the advice… until you’re living it.
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So my daughter-in-law will tell you, um, I've never seen you get mad, Claudette. You're always so calm and put together.
SPEAKER_00I love that for her. I love that for her.
SPEAKER_02Welcome to a space where we talk about the journey. Every twist, every triumph, every moment that shaped who we are today. Here, we explore the paths that women walk on their journey to motherhood, identity, and everything in between. These are the stories that change us, the moments that ground us, the truths we don't talk out loud nearly enough. If you're searching for connection, comfort, conversation, a couple of good laughs, you're in the right place. This is worth the walk. Let's begin. Well, here we are once again. I am just so excited. We're starting episode three, Sherry. Happy to be here. I know, I bet you are. You've just had the best, let's say, one month in one week type of thing. Sure have. That's great.
unknownThat's good.
SPEAKER_02I I know. I bet it was great. So for everybody, welcome to This Is Worth the Walk. I am so excited to introduce once again my little sister do. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_03Hello, everybody. Sherry here, and yes, I turned the big five. Oh, oh gosh, it'll be a couple weeks ago now. And then took an amazing trip. And now we're filming. I feel like we're on location.
SPEAKER_00We are on location.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I packed up the old equipment and here we are. I came out to Sherry's. Worth the walk on the road. That's the road show. Sounds pretty good. I like it. It's good. Yeah, come on, give us a little bit of the insight of the journey you took to enjoy your fabulous vacation.
SPEAKER_03But we knew before we left we needed to have some patience. But I mean Charles just slept at Toronto Pearson on the way back. On the way down, it was pretty smooth. Rental car was involved, and and I ended up at one airport and Charles at another. And oh gosh. Anyway, look, we got to where we needed to be and had an amazing time. So And you got home again. And I eventually got not together at all. No, but but you did get home. We had a great vacation, not all of it together. Oh my gosh. But anyway, no, it was good. Yeah. Traveling right now is uh it's a challenge, and we were facing we were up against March break, travelers, and weather delays. So and the TSA and the states with their challenges too. So thoughts go up to those folks working without a paycheck right now. But we did get home and look, we I have a great tan. You do, and I do look that healthy. I mean, look, I did nothing except lay in the sun, have a great cocktail. All the things I wanted to do on my birthday.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah, and I was gonna talk about uh maybe we should start doing YouTube because you're looking so good. And then I sat back and thought for a moment. I am in track pants, an old sweater, no makeup, have had two cups of coffee, and I don't think anybody on YouTube needs to see.
SPEAKER_03Oh, you're gorgeous. Inside and outsweet.
SPEAKER_02More inside today than outside.
SPEAKER_03A little of us all. That's all right. All right.
unknownIt's all good.
SPEAKER_02All right, everybody. We're so happy to begin today's journey uh with our conversation. Now, before we begin, because it has been brought to our attention, how much we sound alike. And um I really going to be honest with everybody, I didn't really hear it or know it until we had a gathering on Friday evening. And the key game was who can guess who's Sherry and Claudette if you turn your back?
SPEAKER_03I went, oh my god, we do so. Yeah, they were so into it. Everybody was like, This is the best party game ever. And then we had the most crazy words that we were just having like random sayings. We would people would turn their back to us, or I was suggesting blindfolding them, but they actually just turned their back to us, and then we would say a phrase, and they would have to guess one or two. I am shocked at the people who got it wrong. Wrong. And but in all fairness, the your penalty for getting it wrong was getting a shot. So there was more people may bored than got it wrong to get it wrong. I mean, I think we probably could have set it up differently. So we were like, I'm getting a shot on this one, so I'm gonna I'm just gonna blow my answer.
SPEAKER_02So I I don't know if we uh need to identify Claudette's gonna talk now.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I mean, I think it's pretty I don't know, I don't hear it. So just send us an email if you really think we need to start. I mean, maybe I'll use I'll auto-tune my voice if you need me to. I'm happy.
SPEAKER_02Or maybe it's just better out there if the entire world thinks that Claudette's sitting here talking to herself, asking the questions, and then running she records a separate track with all the responses.
SPEAKER_03That's a lot of work.
SPEAKER_02It is fun. All right, we'll get back on track though. But we've had a a great week. Um I want to tell everybody how grateful I am when I saw that we were up to 293 downloads. And for me, I was just holy cow, I was so excited. Really, really excited. I don't even know half those people. I don't even know, I don't know 200 people, I guess is what I'm gonna say. So, and but and the nice part was we did get two emails. Um, now one of them, I'm gonna be honest with you, I was reading through it and I thought, well, these are very strange questions. I don't get it. And the more I read through, I thought, ooh, I I don't think I like a lot of his questions. So I copied and pasted and put it into my lovely chat person, and I said, Is this a real email? And she said, It's phishing block, hurry. This is not a proper conversation. Oh my gracious. So yeah, we we've now fixed our email for the content. I'm I'm wiser, much wiser than I was a week ago. And not for the good end of it, because I learned some stuff that in my mind I just didn't need to know. It was it wasn't knowledge that needed to be shared with me. I never thought of that question before. I don't need to be there that I just never I want to erase. So if there was an erase button in the old take care of it, we fixed our email so there'll be no more impropriate, inappropriate um emails floating their way through to us. And we did get another one that was quite true. So we're gonna talk about that in a little while. Um and our today's conversation or journey is words I wish I had listened to my mother. So the reason I thought of this particular episode, because we do have many laid out, just so everybody understands that, but I got distracted. So I saw a meme, is that what you call this right here? A meme? Okay. So I don't we're gonna call it a meme, everybody. So I saw it and I thought, oh my gosh, this is just the God's honest truth. So I'll read it to you now. If I could leave my kids with one truth, it's this life isn't always fair, and people won't always treat you the way you deserve. But that doesn't mean you have to play their game. You can choose how you show up, choose kindness, hold your head high, and never compromise who you are. That's where real strength lives, and no one can ever take it from you. So when I read this, I had these flashbacks of my mother wanting to give me advice. And let's say I was twelve, or maybe I was sixteen, or maybe I was twenty five giving birth. And all of these things I just did not absorb. I I put them in my back pocket as one of those things. Well, maybe I'll ask my mom later.
SPEAKER_03In all fairness, it could have been her delivery.
SPEAKER_02Oh sorry. Again, God's honest truth, okay? So I try to give advice to my children, and I am at times given the blank stare, or the okay, thanks, or the that was good, and they wander away. And I always think I wish my uh just so everybody understands, our mother passed away two years ago.
SPEAKER_03To May 2023.
SPEAKER_02May 2023, yes. And we I can't go back now and say, deliver that again, mom, or anything along those lines. So I repeat myself constantly to my kids so that maybe at some point when they trip or fall or think that they require support, some voice will whisper in their ear and say, You're amazing, you're great, you're super, and they actually hear it. So, with that being said, I think Cher's gonna share a good little story.
SPEAKER_03Maybe one of the reasons moms didn't stick. So I think here's the thing, it did stick. So when she when she passed, of course, you go through so many emotions when you lose a parent, but what happens is when you find yourself in certain situations, you uh pull out these memories of like, oh my gosh, she did say that, or I remember this moment, I learned it, and then it comes up later. So even though in the moment it feels like our children aren't absorbing what you're saying, actions speak louder than words. I will say that, even though the words are important to say, so I think you should be saying those mom tips all the time, it's those moments later on when you least expect it where it's like, oh, mom told me this, or I had remember in this situation I should do this because mom said this. I remember mom telling me that. So even though our mot our mother and our father both had very different communication styles, and mom, frankly, used to yell a lot. So like her delivery, and I that's why I laugh about her delivery, is she had a ton of insight, but you almost had to read between the lines a little because she also used words like, you're gonna drive me to drink, or you do don't make you getting on my last nerve, or you do that again, I'm gonna crack it in the head. So honestly, those are things you cannot say now, but you did learn quickly as a child, like, I better not do that because mom will crack me outside the head. So, I mean, and not to make light, I don't mean to make light of like a physical type of you know, altercation or any kind of abuse on the guy. I don't mean to make light of it, but there's certain things from her culture that that's how they spoke to one another, or there were terms of endearment of uh, you know, the way the way she showed her affection and the and the way she uh gave advice was a little unconventional, I would say, and we did have to grow up in a way that we thought we're reading between the lines of what mom's affection is, so I won't just lay that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And that's another great conversation for us because it is so different today, right? But I'll I'll tell you, I didn't want to talk back. And one of those funniest stories, right, is when we got our very first color television and we were sitting on the couch uh in Sydney, and uh Tammy, uh our middle middle sister, got up to uh change the channel, and I remember it vividly, as if I could see Georgia the Jungle is playing on TV, and I'm sitting on the couch, and she changed the channel. Uh back in those days, you literally had to get up, walk to the TV, and you had to physically turn the channel. And I said, get your goddamn hand off the TV. First of all, you weren't allowed to say God in our house, you weren't allowed to swear. And I was very young.
SPEAKER_03Damn it's bad. Oh, all but put the two together, and you've got a perfect storm.
SPEAKER_02Perfect, it was a perfect storm because I got up and ran as fast as I could from the couch to the laundry area, and in Sydney the couch was here, then you did through the kitchen, and then you turned to your right, and there was this laundry room, and there was a washer and dryer. And when I was like, I'm gonna say maybe nine, maybe I maybe I was less than that, and I made maybe 80 pounds. Oh, skinny little thing. I squeezed between the washer and the dryer with the fear of God that oh, they've heard me. I swore, and I swore at my sister, and I swore on a television, and I'm not even allowed to say half those words. So I just didn't know. We did not. Yeah, so that was not a word you said.
SPEAKER_03No.
SPEAKER_02But going back to the how we parent different, how the words are different, uh, how we want our words to stay with our children. Today the words are very guarded, and I get that. I'm I'm not a a fan of a very, very light discipline, as in allowing anybody to do everything, and then take them to the side and explain how it was different. So my my mindset's not quite there, but I know that how we speak is how they learn. And you have to ensure that the words you say are genuine and not filled with the wrong type of emotion.
SPEAKER_03But it's hard too, because I mean, kids are kids. They just uh they don't you don't think they're listening. Obviously that they are because they absorb everything, they're little sponges. But when you're in that moment and you're trying to either redirect or correct, or you're trying to impart wisdom or tell them how to do something properly, it's like, yeah, that's just there's nothing going in. I can see it, it's traveling right out the other side. It's not fair. So you're either you're repeating yourself, or you say it louder, or you say it with more emphasis to get so this is where I mean I I very much was that way. It's like, uh, I yelled. I mean, I yelled, I did. Um I've I've tried to do the moments of, well, you know, let's let's have a learning experience. And I I didn't, I'm gonna be honest, I didn't have a ton of patience for the let's have a learning level learning moment here. Charles, on the other hand, oh my gosh, that guy has so much patience, and he had so many ways to teach the children, all our children, and frankly, all the neighboringhood kids, of you know, why you shouldn't do something. Or if you did this, think about the repercussions. I mean, he was he's got a bucket full of his patience are oh yeah, he's got a toolbox full of stories and lessons. And I'm like, just stop now. No, don't do it, stop doing it that way, do it this way. And story. I had a lot of because I told you so. Because I told you so. That's why. Yeah. I can make you listen if you want me to. So here's the best part. Now that I have adult children, this is uh this is great because we communicate in memes and little videos with each other. A lot of times we'll we have a little group chat, we'll send little things to each other because there's so much out there that is just hilarious. And one of the big ones is it's like mom was right, we do have food at home.
SPEAKER_02I like that one. That's good. Yeah, it's so I mean, with mine, I've changed, right, in in each decade 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. I can keep going if you like. And I'm just not that person anymore. I think I said this in episode one. I'm just a different person than I was when they grew up. So my daughter-in-law will tell you, um, I've never seen you get mad, Claudette. You're always so calm and put together.
SPEAKER_00I love that for her. I love that for her. Now I can't finish my story. What a great memory.
SPEAKER_02What a great version of you to having some versions I have of me, right? Stop. Okay, I got it, I got it. So she would say that, you know, you always step away, you get yourself together, and then you talk. But that's what I know you do, you do. It's what I do now. I did not do that when my son was very young, and I caught him smoking marijuana. Oh, I I I was up one side, down the other. I grabbed a hold. I was given lessons, I was losing my mind. I all the things. I was not a sit back and let's talk a code kind of mom. Absolutely. What's the word? Bed shit, crazy. Lost it.
SPEAKER_03I just lost it. But I think they I mean, that's a moment where you thought, oh, I I need to show them how serious I really am. Yeah, this is not my regular mad, this is the next level. We all have a next level. We all have that. There's moments I can think where I I mean, I I think I threw a hockey stick.
SPEAKER_02Well, I'm gonna tell you the story about John and his brother, his oldest brother, and his mother. And she bought John's brother, Paul, a set of drums. I wish John was telling this story. Every time he says it, I literally I I'm crying, I'm laughing so hard. So Goya bought Paul's set of drums, and I can't remember what Paul did, but he upset her to the next level. And she was so angry with Paul. He was going to sell the drums that she bought him for Christmas. So she took the big bass drum, turned it over, stood on it, and was drumping up and down on it to go through the bass drum so that he couldn't sell it. But she's so tiny she couldn't break it. So Paul and John are laughing their heads off at him, and it didn't break anyway. Yeah. But that was another one of those moments where you think, I'll show you, except it didn't quite work out the way she actually envisioned it.
SPEAKER_03Oh, and I can't tell you how many times when I've been, I've been so so frustrated, and I want to so badly discipline, and I just look at mostly with my boys, both of them. I try to look at them and I can't, I just a smile comes out, and I just start laughing, and then they start laughing, and then I get mad because I can't stop laughing, so I actually have to leave the room. I've laughed many times when I've tried to discipline in a very serious moment, too. Like, how do you think there's a medical nothing? I think there is.
SPEAKER_02There's a gene, and think about Matthew. Try to discipline Matthew as he got older and more sarcastic, and his wit is his wit is a twit.
SPEAKER_03It's very it's it would be very difficult to be angry. I could see it being very hard to be angry with him.
SPEAKER_02I I tried. Yeah, and it's just not possible. And he would make me laugh so hard, and then I didn't want to laugh because I really wanted to be angry. Yeah. And I think maybe that's what I learned to walk away. And I'm saying that's a great lesson.
SPEAKER_03That's a great lesson.
SPEAKER_02Look, no more lessons. All right, we got distracted once again. But the the underlying story for today was if there was any advice that you know you've been given from your mother in particular that just stays with you, and if you could leave one.
SPEAKER_03Piece of advice that what would it be?
SPEAKER_02So for me, I really want my children to know they're brilliant, right? And it's all there, it's all inside, right? And I think you and I both have the same saying we always say, right? You know, believe that inner voice. It's real. It's it's that that voice is real. Let's not pretend, it's not your mom's voice whispering to you.
SPEAKER_03Don't trust yourself. Don't do what you think you should, do what you know you should. I like that one. That's a sherry.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I got a sherry ism. Yeah let's start a little library of sherry-isms.
SPEAKER_03Oh sure, I got some good ones.
SPEAKER_02We got some good ones.
SPEAKER_03I'm saving them for future episodes. Tune in. Tune in.
SPEAKER_02Sherry's got an ism. Really? No, I is that what you want to call this? No. I mean, no. Don't do it. Don't we're gonna go down and I'm not gonna be able to stop laughing. So I'm gonna change that with Sherry. Okay. Sherry does not have. Okay, stop, okay? My gosh. I mean, I'm not upset about that at all.
SPEAKER_00Really not.
SPEAKER_02Stop. Okay, now I'm crying. And this is.
SPEAKER_00I got an older version of it.
SPEAKER_02Of whatever the is and is. Okay, so um, so I want to I want to thank you for sharing that bit about mom. And um I have tried very hard to give a lot of life lessons to my kids, you know, but um I I I love how my daughter-in-law is is working through her uh journey for learning and teaching and and showing, you know, how to teach her children how to do things. So one of the things I've been watching and learning from her is how she teaches, you know, her son, you know, how to do something. She doesn't do it for him. And I love that. And it's hard for me because I want to jump up and get the block or fix the puzzle or or uh you know butter the bread or whatever. And she just lets him learn it all on his own from like good or bad or indifferent. And I love that. But that's not me. I'm uh I can fix it for you. Give it to me and I'll fix it. But I love how smart he is at two and a half because his sits there and she just lets him do it.
SPEAKER_01Great way to teach. I love it. Yeah, definitely hard to do.
SPEAKER_02Oh, it's very hard to do. I mean, uh my oldest grandson Joshua, uh, Samantha, of course, lived with us when when raising Joshua, and I couldn't do enough for that boy, to the point where it was like, if mom won't, Granny will, because uh no, I just have to walk upstairs. And it's it's not good. I mean, we're laughing and joking, but the journey to make a really strong child is let them find out how.
SPEAKER_03Oh that love though, like that love is so important.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it is, right? And there should be a little bit of let Granny do it. But when you share the same house 24-7, and someone says, No, you can't, but he knows a couple of steps up, and it's a yes. Yes, yes, you know, and I try, but man, he looks at me with those eyes and just asks, I'm a puddle, and I can't help it, and I'm thinking, okay, just say no.
SPEAKER_03And that's where me living here in Nova Scotia was. That because that was a factor in me raising our me, Charles and I, raising our four children, is that our parents were a huge part of our our life, and and honestly, I couldn't have worked full-time all these years, almost 30 years I've been working full-time out of the house, that uh my my parents, our parents could um be part of that. Like they they came down and uh right, they basically helped raise all four of our children. They and our mom would have given more of her life advice and definitely delivered in a softer, more uh retainable, gentle way than with us, but honest, that's not different than any mom and dad, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_02But grandma, our mom, too, my children gave a lot of life advice, a lot of pieces of um, you know, lessons and um recipes and how to do certain things and maybe it's the one of the things I would say that just uh I was gonna say I was jealous, but I think I envied, I I I I wanted it so bad as you would say, well, mom's at the house doing my laundry for me and getting supper cooked, and I'm thinking, I got Matthew in the car, Samantha's over here, John's working afternoons, and I got a double shift. I'm gonna go from here and work my second job. I'm just like, okay, that's so beautiful, Sherry. I know. I love that, Sherry. And in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, oh my god, I want that. Yeah. So I mean, and now here I am down in Nova Scotia, and I'll start crying any minute now, just so you know that. And I can't jump in and help my children with what they need and uh not there to do the laundry or take a walk or whatever. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So it was we were so grateful for that. We we've been and my mother and father-in-law, same, same. They drop everything in the in our moment to without much warning, they would drive from River Bougeois to Enfield to give us a hand. Well, River doesn't have a million people there, so they could just fare them away for a week if they needed. Yeah. No, we've been we've been extremely fortunate. And um, I think one of our other episodes as we get further into our podcast is talking about that village. So for me, that's you know, it's my my village. It's yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's beautiful to have the people around that you need. So and it's important. It is very important.
SPEAKER_03But I think mom, so when you think about life advice and all the experiences, when you would come home with Matthew and Samantha for visits in the summer, I feel like mom wanted to squeeze in everything.
SPEAKER_02Every word she could squeeze in.
SPEAKER_03Because she's like, you need to remember if you're gonna remember me, this is what you're taking away. I'm gonna give it to you.
SPEAKER_02She just endlessly. And she could not physically get enough of the of Matthew and Samantha. Yeah. It was that constant touch. She just, it was like she had to need to absorb them for the six or seven days we were there until we left again, you know? So yeah, that was that was precious. So I was gonna tell the audience a little bit about me. I'm great. So when people feel that they say, you're so strong, you like you you're always so confident in what you do and you deliver really good. Like I cry at the drop of a hat, which people don't actually know that.
SPEAKER_03She's holding it back right now.
SPEAKER_02So I mean, I cry at commercials. Uh oh shit. Can your mic pick that up as you're I cry at commercials, I cry at songs, I cry when I look through old pictures. I read memes and I start bawling my eyes out. Oh, I gotta get that to the kids so they know how much I love them. It's just, you know, and I the older I get, honestly, the tears are like, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know why I cry so much. I have no idea, but that's okay. You'll all get used to it here. Sometimes I cry and sometimes I don't.
SPEAKER_03I know why I cry. Yeah, my kids are all I cry, I know why I cry. My kids are all, you know, gone out doing things in the world, and that makes me cry, and then they all come home and that makes me cry too. I'm joking. I love when they all come home and I'm just being I'm just being silly about that, but no, I do. I do find it emotional thinking about the next stage of things now that they're all moving on and doing their life, which is exactly what they're supposed to be doing.
SPEAKER_01Um yeah, no, it's all good. Yep.
SPEAKER_02And then you can give them more advice that I know they'll want um when they get older. And they'll they'll call you and say, Mom, help me do A, B, and C. And it really feels great when they're older and they ask for it. And you know it means something. So I think we brought it round circle, have we? Have we looped it up now? And uh next week we would like to kind of wander into the journey of the email that we got. And it'll be a little more, I guess, adult conversation. Yeah. Well, the question was about uh when to begin making love again with your partner after the delivery of the babies. And how wonderful it feels for a young woman to experience love making again after having a baby. Right into that, right into it, baby. We're just gonna dive in, Edgar.
SPEAKER_03People really want to hear that?
SPEAKER_02Well, somebody does that. It's all about your body, it's all true conversation. We don't make this stuff up. It's real. So I can't appreciate I cannot thank you enough, Cher, for being with me today. It's been another lovely day in the neighborhood. A couple of technical glitches here and there, so hopefully we can blend it together with our great producer Dan, who can fix everything for us. And a happy birthday to producer Dan. That's right. Happy birthday, Dan. I know. He's our savior to make us sound as good as we do, and hopefully makes Claudette sound like Claudette.
SPEAKER_03And Sherry sound like Sherry. Maybe the roadshow wasn't uh such a great idea, but it worked. We did, yeah. It was okay. We're gonna make things work. Well, thanks so much, everyone, for tuning in and listening again. We appreciate all your feedback. Please send us an email to worth the walk podcast at gmail.com. Please find us on Spotify or Buzzburg, wherever you get your podcast, please join us, log in, follow all the good things, and send us your your feedback, your comments, and things you'd like to hear us chat about. We want to hear from you.
SPEAKER_01All right.
SPEAKER_03Don't forget we have socials now.
SPEAKER_02We do. We have Instagram, we have Facebook, the Bookface, the book face. Be kind.
