Making Room by Gather
Hospitality. What do you think of when you hear that word?
For some it's old school 'stuffy' entertaining for others it's something to do with the hotel industry. One thing is for sure, as a culture we're not talking about it much.
Food * Design * Relationships have seemed to have taken a back seat to what our culture focuses on and values yet...we find ourselves in the midst of a loneliness epidemic. Something has to change, it's time to get back to our tables, and we're making room for it!
Making Room by Gather invites you into a new conversation on everyday hospitality. One that rewrites the way we approach opening your doors and filling your tables. Shifting the narrative from 'how does this make me look' to 'how does this make you feel' these buildable conversations aspire to inspire connection through everyday gathering.
Kayty's chic and a little quirky interview style will make you feel like you're sitting with a friend talking about how to grow in confidence as an everyday host. You can expect conversations from navigating challenging relationship dynamics to foundational cooking techniques and everything in between.
Whether you are a seasoned host or looking to develop new friendships and grow in your skills for the first time, there is a seat at the table. Join us weekly for new conversations with expert guests and with Kayty in her beloved Date with Kayt episodes. Continue the conversation @gatheritentionalliving
Making Room by Gather
Well Lived: Write a Beautiful Story with Your Life w/ Sally Clarkson
I've you've ever felt like your stuck in a season of surviving instead of thriving- this conversation is for you. Sally Clarkson, a best-selling author and celebrated speaker, offers her wisdom on crafting a plan of action to navigate the heaviness with grace and resilience, drawing from her experience of mentoring women to live purposeful lives.
We also explore the profound theme of living a legacy. Her new book, Well Lived inspires women to shape their own narratives and craft meaningful legacies, even amidst life's chaos. Through personal experiences, she highlights the beauty of preparing for dark times by making choices that light our paths, sharing her journey of raising children overseas and imparting timeless values that transcend circumstances.
Our conversation weaves through the intricate fabric of community relationships, reflecting on how modern life has disrupted traditional support systems. With stories from abroad, we illuminate the richness of everyday interactions and the need for intentional connections to cultivate a sense of belonging.
Join us for this relatable, inspiring, actionable conversation with the well loved Sally Clarkson
Buy your own copy of Well Lived here!
This Episode is Sponsored By:
Feast & Fettle get $25 off your first week of hand crafted, flavor packed meals delivered straight to your door so you can soak up the season with code GATHER25 at checkout
Watch our Youtube episodes here!
Okay, everyone, welcome back to Making Room. I am so excited that you're here. Goodness, this season of fall and winter, there is so much going on all the time, right, it's hard to get a breath of fresh air and, if you are anything like me, it feels a little bit like the world and those around us are just carrying a unique heaviness. I don't know if it's just because I'm getting further into adulthood or if it is the time and culture that we're in right now, but it just feels heavy. There is this sadness and I want to talk more about it. I want to understand it more and learn how we can thrive in this season and live intentionally. You know, intentionality is a huge part of my heart and what I want to invite us all into, and I invited our friend Sally Clarkson today to talk about that a little bit further with me and help me understand what's going on and the invitation that we have in front of us. Well, again, I want to help us to live this season well, and part of that is, we know, kind of having a plan for things, knowing our plan of action, knowing how to ask for help, and one of the ways we could do that is with our friends at Feast and Fettle. Feast and Fettle wants to help feed your family, intentionally, with good ingredients and little to no prep. This is not a meal service that you need to rip open packages and cook. It is like having a personal chef delivering food right to your door and you get to feel good about it. So, whether you are looking for help packing your kids' lunches or feeding your family when everyone is finally home after holiday parties and sports games, they want to come alongside you and make your load a little bit lighter. So head on over to feastandfettlecom and use code gather for $50 off your first week. Now Sally Clarkson if she is new to you I know she's not new to a lot of you, but to some of us she is here is a little bit more about her. Sally Clarkson is a best-selling author, renowned speaker and beloved mentor who has dedicated her life to inspiring countless women to live for Christ. Her podcast At Home With Sally has over 28 million downloads. She's been married to her husband, clay, for 40 years. They've raised four adults and today Sally lives between the mountains of Colorado and the rolling fields of England. And, goodness gracious, does that sound like a dream? Well, let's not wait any longer. Welcome to Making Room longer. Welcome to Making Room.
Speaker 1:Hi, I'm Katie, a hospitality educator and the host of Making Room by Gather podcast. I am set to see our communities get back to the table through hospitality, but it wasn't always this way. My husband and I moved to Thailand and through it I experienced some loneliness and with it I was given a choice to sit back and accept it or to do something about it, and for me that meant two things that I needed the healing to learn how to accept an invitation and the confidence to know how to extend one. Through this process, I developed some of the richest and deepest relationships of my life. Through Making Room by Gather, you will hear conversations from myself and experts in the areas of food, design and relationships. You see there are countless things trying to keep us from the table.
Speaker 1:But can I tell you something? Take a seat because you are ready, you are capable, you are a good host. Okay, oh goodness, what is going on here? Oh, there, you go there. He's there, sally. So my listeners know this batch record is our first time switching the video, and a lot of my listeners also know that my husband is my tech guy, so I am still learning and having griefs myself. But welcome to the stage, welcome to the conversation. We're so happy to have you here. Thanks so much for inviting me. Of course, goodness Well, your latest book. We are going to dive into it and a very important topic that it talks about, but I want to learn a little bit more about you. So we were chatting before because you are new to me and I would love to share with the rest of our listeners what do you want them to know about you if you're new to them too?
Speaker 2:Well, it's interesting as I was watching your prelude to this. I wrote a book called the Life-Giving Table, wrote a book called the Life-Giving Home, and I have lived overseas for about a quarter of my adult life. So we have some things in common that way. But the things I want them to know is I have four adult children and they're my best friends. They are kind of amazing. They're my legacy. I would say that the hardest work I've ever done, and we're all writers. All of us are writers my husband, me and all my legacy. I would say that the hardest work I've ever done, and we're all writers. All of us are writers my husband, me and all my children. So we are a family of words. I love to drink tea. I talk about it a lot, I am a walker and a hiker and I love international life and we have golden retrievers all the time. So those are just a few little fun things about me. Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 1:Well, this book is very specific in its theme and topic. I'm curious what led you to this topic, Because I know that there must have been a lot of heart and a lot of reflection, a lot of conversation leading to it. So talk to us about that lot of conversation leading to it.
Speaker 2:So talk to us about that. Well, I really love women. I think they are civilizers. They're built to be people who create beauty. They have the ability to be articulate and academic and to really be light spreaders, so to speak. I mean, I look back on my life and I think how did I get to live such a life? And when I see women today, I've worked with women all over the world and we hosted many conferences for about 23 years until COVID hit and so I kind of fell in love with these precious women with capacity and I thought I need to write a book for some young women who follow us to say how are you going to live a good story?
Speaker 2:I was about to turn 70. I'm now 71. And I thought I have been blessed to be able to leave a legacy. I haven't lived a perfect life. No one does. I've had lots of ups and downs. We've moved 24 times, nine times internationally, and so I just thought I would love to give a book that would say who you are is beautiful, and no one has the same DNA, no one has the same fingerprints, and I want women to understand that they are quite free to live their own story. They don't have to be subject to all the peer pressure, to everything that's online, but I wanted the book to really communicate to them. Live a legacy, live a story worth telling. Let me tell you how to do it, and feel free to live within the confines of your own personality, your preferences and your backstory. Who you are is a great place to bring light into your world.
Speaker 1:Goodness. Well, that is a powerful backstory, powerful topic for a book that so many of us are needing right now and, like I referenced in the intro to the show, I feel like actually let me start with this question. I feel like lately I found myself saying it feels like people are carrying so much sadness right now, life is so heavy. Would you say that that is just because I'm stepping further into adulthood, or is that a change of the times? What's your perception?
Speaker 2:No, I don't think it's a change of the times. I think that we just didn't understand, we just didn't know. I wish that I had known. I'm a person of faith and it's a change of the times. I think that we just didn't understand, we just didn't know. I wish that I had known. I'm a person of faith and it's been so foundational for me.
Speaker 2:But I wish I had known how chaotic the world was going to be, how difficult sometimes relationships with people would be, that illness happens, car wrecks happen, all these different things wars happen, political craziness happens, and I think I would have been more prepared for life to take it on if I had understood the implication of a chaotic world.
Speaker 2:But I also do talk in the book a little bit about what it looks like to prepare delight for the dark times, to know that dark times will come, but to really understand that you don't have to be a victim of your consequences. I really believe that, at least for me and for many people that understand these faith concepts that we were entrusted with this time. In other words, this is the time when my story is best going to be told, because this is when I was born, and so I did write a bit about that, because I think that the choices that we make, I think that the choices that we make, the ways we choose to believe about life are going to influence if we walk continually in darkness or if we light a candle in the darkness.
Speaker 1:So I know we just talked about this a little bit. I'm curious if you had more, you'd be comfortable adding People listening. They're like no, no, no, but life does feel heavy right now. Things do feel chaotic. That is the reality that I'm living in. What does it look like for them to write a beautiful story despite what's happening in their world and in life?
Speaker 2:Well, I think one of the lessons I learned. I raised my four children. Of course, they went with us everywhere in the world and I realized that they were watching every step of my life. I even realized that what an incredible opportunity I had to live. A legacy in front of them. And this is just a partial answer.
Speaker 2:I have many answers to this question, but one of my children, three of my children, live in Oxford or in the UK. One's a professor in London and two more live in Oxford and the other one lives in Manhattan and does acting and all. And they have said to me you know, mama, you may not have known what you were doing at the time, but we saw you walk through so many difficult times. But because you chose to cultivate joy, to give us hope, to love people when they didn't deserve it, to learn these lessons of perseverance and fortitude, we find our lives easier because we know the steps to take. Wow. And I think sometimes we don't understand that, in a chaotic, fallen world, that we are kind of warriors, so to speak, for goodness and light and that we have a choice to make.
Speaker 2:I often talk about women having both capacity. I think that women at least I've learned in my own life. I had far more capacity than I knew. I was probably pretty lazy when I first started out, but I ended up writing 32 books and people said how did you do it? I just kept having one more quiet time and thoughts would just spring to my mind of what people needed to hear. But so we have capacity in areas we never knew about. I never knew that I could do what I've done in my lifetime. It just kind of unfolded little bit by little bit.
Speaker 2:As I would walk through another door of faith, I would find, wow, I didn't know I could do that, I'm going to try more. Another door of faith, I would find, wow, I didn't know I could do that, I'm going to try more. But the other thing is we have agency and women have the ability to make decisions. We aren't thwarted by the circumstances of our lives or limited by those. We need to see them as the story that is going to provide us the foundation of bringing beauty into darkness, of bringing love into difficult relationships, and we have the agency to determine that we will be those kind of people who leave a legacy of virtue, of goodness, of hope, because, yes, it's a hopeless world for many people, but I can bring hope to their lives if I live a life that is filled with wisdom and with goodness, and if I plant a flag and say I will not be daunted. I will live by faith.
Speaker 1:I remember I had a mentor still is, but we don't talk as often. It was when I was living in Thailand mostly, and she's told me so much over the years. She was like Katie, you are so much stronger than you like. Let yourself believe you are so much stronger.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you are so much stronger. And I remember in a lot of these seasons I was just a total basket case and I was like what are you talking about? Do you not see right now? I'm not, I don't, I'm not strong in appearance right now, but she was able to see something, recognize something that I was not seeing. And I remember over time I was like I better put. The only way to test this is like to put it to the test Right. And I was like wow, okay, I really do have this capacity that it's like a muscle that just needs to be exercised for me to start to believe it for myself. But it is amazing, it's not. You know, throughout life and learning some of these things, we can't always rely on the affirmations of others, but sometimes it was like your kids saying wow, mom, you modeled this and you're able to see, oh my gosh, wow, I really did. Or for me, that strength.
Speaker 2:It gave me purpose for me. Now I realized oh my goodness, it did matter Wow.
Speaker 1:Right, but sometimes it affirms something right or it allows you to put certain things into check. That's definitely what it did for me. I'm so thankful for community when things are hard to be able to point those things out. I had a friend the other day and we recently had a life I'll be a little bit vague some change that we were expecting in life. That fell through and I was pretty heartbroken over it and I was processing it with a friend and she said Katie, you, what word did she use? She was like you have a way of just kind of like finding contentment and kind of like making it work when life has thrown me all these curve balls. And I was like, wow, I haven't seen it that way, but I'm so thankful that my words, my actions, have communicated that to those around me. It's just yeah, I don't know, there's a lot there, that's great.
Speaker 2:You've lived in Thailand Something that I talk about in the book a little bit because it kind of has to do with what you're saying. But I learned how to bring resources of delight into my life on a regular basis because I knew that all of us are being taxed and drawn from and taken from on a regular basis and we can be empty pretty quickly. And a story I told that was from my past I used to work in communist countries when they were still communist behind the Iron Curtain, lived there, trained people, was a part of smuggling Bibles into the countries and so on. Wow, and my roommate and I a single woman that was when I was single and we had decided that we needed to go on a vacation to London. We were living in Warsaw or maybe in Krakow at that point and so we went to London. But anyway, we took a vacation to London and when we got there we were staying with some friends and it ended up that we had taken that was before charge cards I'm very old, we had taken about $750 with us in pounds and when we got there she had emergency dental work that she needed to have done. That was $725. And we still had three and a half more weeks to be there because we were also attending a conference, and so we stayed with our friends and they were very gracious to feed us.
Speaker 2:But my birthday came and she said I want to take you out for tea on your birthday and we'll have treacle tart. And I said we don't have any money. She said we have enough money for that, and so as we're sitting in this restaurant, all of a sudden I hear this. You know this little alarm. And she went oh, it's present time. And so she had set her alarm. But what you don't know is she had set it for eight times that it would ring, and every time that it rang oh, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2:We both had our phone calls come through.
Speaker 2:It was a scam likely. She gave me these lovely little gifts that were delightful to me and I said how could you afford this? We don't have any money and we're just at our limit right now. And she said because I prepared for delight ahead of time. She said I've been shopping for you for your birthday all these months and I just hid it in my suitcase and that caused me to realize that there's rhythms that I put in my life.
Speaker 2:I drink tea every morning, I light candles, I put on music, I eat a piece of dark chocolate caramel before I go to bed at night. It's just so much fun. I walk about three to five miles a day. It just helps calm me down and it also is a good health plan for me. I have music wherever I go To make a long story short. I have music wherever I go To make a long story short. I have rhythms in my life. I have resources in my refrigerator. I have coffee shops and cafes where I will go when I need a break that keep me going forward, because I think one of the things that women need to do is to understand they are human and they have needs both physically, spiritually, emotionally and in order to last well, they need to plan to fill those needs. They need to make time for friends that call them to their best selves. They need to sleep. They need to put rhythms in their lives that will give them a long-term legacy to stay alive in every way.
Speaker 1:It's beautiful and I think that's going to take some personalization for each of us as we think about our own circumstances, right, but so good, so good. Yeah, I'm okay sharing a little bit. I'm sure my followers have put two and two together. We were potentially going to be moving to a bigger house and we live in a very tiny cottage right now and I have my first son, and that was fine for the summer because we were outside a lot.
Speaker 1:I was like, oh my gosh, I don't know how to parent a very active, almost toddler indoors with no space. There's just hazards everywhere. And we were preparing for his first birthday and the wishlist I made for him was for this new playroom that we were going to be having, and found out we weren't getting it and I was like, oh my goodness, what do I do? And so my whole perspective shift and I started just asking for memberships to different places for us to make memories out in the public during the winter months when we won't be able to be outside and we're going to get stir crazy. And so, like you were saying, it takes some intentionality, it takes some thought, but there are ways to find delight.
Speaker 2:There are ways and there is purpose in our seasons and make a commitment to be a person of delight, it kind of opens up opportunities.
Speaker 1:It's really good. Well, I love intentionality. Our listeners know that. Okay, so you have said that roughly half of Americans are not thriving right now. This, actually this, really hit me. I'm a little bit of a statistic geek and love people. My background is actually social work. A common expression that we hear in culture right now is surviving, not thriving. There's Christian songs about it. We hear it everywhere. So we've said that it's not necessarily a change in culture. But why do you think that people are not thriving right now? What's the cause of this?
Speaker 2:just so we can understand this a little bit further, you know, I think there are several causes, but I'll tell you a couple I've been thinking about lately. For one thing, I think COVID threw a wrench into things because it encouraged people to stay home. It closed down a lot of different places and I was living in the UK where it was very stringent, and so I think there was kind of like a break in some of the community, some of the public things that we did. But I also think culture has taken a different twist. But I also think culture has taken a different twist.
Speaker 2:It used to be that and this is really relevant to me and maybe to some people who are listening but in this time people are getting jobs all over the world, be able to stay in their hometown or know people that they've grown up with, or have relatives who would help take care of those babies, or know their neighbors, be able to have a commonality with the people that they grew up in their hometown and hopefully maybe even getting a job there.
Speaker 2:But now, if you looked at the percentage of people, compared to even 50 years ago, who still live in the same place where they grew up, many people don't even know that they were supposed to have a grandma, an aunt, cousins to play with their child, people that knew them, that would bring them food when they needed it.
Speaker 2:There was a commonality to people's neighborhoods for centuries where they naturally had support, and now it's rare. Sometimes we move around, we don't even know our neighbors, as a matter of fact, we might be afraid to know our neighbors, and so I think that there is some lack of emotional support that has been thrust upon us by the times we're living in that people haven't even thought about and we were made to have close relationships. As a matter of fact, all these studies that they've done for people who live a long time, like over in the Mediterranean, they say that one of the most important factors I think it's the top factor is that they know neighbors, that they have community, that they live in reference to other people, that they don't feel alone. And there are all these surveys that they've done that have talked about how many people it's a huge percentage of people that would say I am a lonely person, I don't even have one friend, and so without more community, more support systems, people don't even know that they're missing what they were created to have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, oh goodness, that's so good. So when we lived on the field in Thailand I'm not sure if your experience was the same, but we were in a very large city, but the missions community itself was quite intense in a positive way. We were desperate for each other, we needed each other. We showed up fiercely and we were so desperate learn our surroundings for the sake of survival, and so we very quickly knew the people at the local pharmacy, we knew our doctors and we formed very intentional community very fast, um, but again, it was like it was a for survival we needed to.
Speaker 2:Well you're so into a community of like-minded people who had the same needs as you. Yeah, sometimes it's hard to same needs as you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sometimes it's hard to find that Totally, totally. And so we've been back five-ish years COVID made it kind of a blur, but five years. And I told my husband recently. I said you know what I really miss? I miss getting my lunch at the local place, and they know me, they know me and I miss delivering my mail.
Speaker 1:And there's like some, you know, like there's there's history almost, and so I've made it a point to be very intentional. And this is a silly example I don't mean to make light of it because it's really profound to us, but for a long time we had an online shop and we were making a lot of shipments at our local UPS store and it was around this time that I made this decision and there were three women that worked there and I was like you know what I'm going to befriend these women. I see them a lot, I love them and they have, since we're on a text chain. They're older, they're later in life than me, we are so close.
Speaker 1:They came to my son's my baby shower. They're coming to his first birthday, they are family now and I was just like thank you, jesus, for that really unexpected gift and it makes I don't know, it makes community feel I don't know that safe is the right word, but there's a different level of belonging. That happens when you're right. I'm so thankful that you brought that up because I think we dismiss that. We take those relationships for granted. But there's treasure there.
Speaker 2:I so agree I, one of the things I I have written about a lot just because it's on my mind in my journal and so on. But yeah, in Oxford we lived a walking lifestyle. We didn't have a car and there were a ton of coffee shops and restaurants and bookstores and things within a mile radius of my home and so I would go every day. I thought I want to know people and there is sometimes an English reserve and so I would go to my little coffee shop and I would say to my barista you make me happy every day, you have the best coffee in all of Oxford. And then when my neighbor walked out the door I would say what a darling dog. Tell me the story of your dog.
Speaker 2:Five or six places that I frequented all the time. I had a really fun relationship with this sweet younger Middle Eastern man who ran a little grocery store near our house and I would say how are you? And tell me about your family and what's going on today in your world. And we just became friends. I'd walk in the door and he'd say hello, hello. But I think you know two things we need to put ourselves in places where we can know even just normal people in our grocery store or bank or whatever.
Speaker 2:But we also need to be the people who take initiative. Absolutely. We need to be the ones who say come over and have a cup of tea or whatever it is. And I feel like, even though we didn't have the quantity of people in the UK because we had just moved there and all we had some really quality relationships because we ran into people on a regular basis and we needed one another so much and we all mutually needed each other, so we had a lot of fun making friends that way.
Speaker 1:A few things are coming to mind, typing them out as you're talking. We use this phrase when I do public speaking or when I talk about this more in depth. It's not weird to initiate relationship in our community. Our culture has told us that if you make some kind of connection with the barista, it is the. Our culture says it is super weird for you to say, hey, do you want to get coffee sometime? Like, let's go try a different coffee shop. You seem super fun. I'd love to hang out, um, but there's hidden treasure there that we are not giving ourselves permission to pursue. Um. Also, I heard someone a few years ago I think it was Bianca Altoff, I think that's how you say her name. She was talking about the taxi sign that says available, vacant, yeah, and she said that so many of us have the taxi sign that's just off, kind of like through our attitude, our persona, our wording, and so we are communicating to people around us like, hey, close for business, like I'm not open to relationship.
Speaker 2:But I think what I'm hearing you say what happened in my experiences when we flip that switch, it's um, people pick up on it, and so we need to be emotionally available for that kind of connection and, um, you know, I think that, uh, because I've moved so much and our children moved with us, obviously, um, we've had to learn how to initiate and my daughter and I, every Saturday morning for a couple of years, went to the same coffee shop downtown and we always ordered this wonderful thing called cheesy eggs, quesadillas, and they were great and we had strong coffee, and this girl had waited on us for so long. So all of a sudden, the Lord put it into my mind to invite her to my house. You know, and just what you're saying and I said you know, sweetie, I don't have tons of time, but I would love to have you come over and find out more of your story.
Speaker 2:Well, ends up, I found out that she was very lonely, that she said this is the first time I've ever been invited in my whole life into somebody's personal home. And we ended up befriending her, spending some time at Christmas with her, and she was just lovely. But she had the saddest background and I didn't know anything about it and as she was opening her heart to us, she was the most grateful person in the world that we had initiated this friendship and I regret that she moved to another city because I would love to see her again. But I just had no idea that for those two years she was bearing such difficulties that I didn't even know about and no one had ever pursued her. And I feel like the more times I'm learning you know, maybe my frontal lobe is going I'm learning more and more that people are of such great value and everyone has a story that's worth listening to.
Speaker 1:And I think God makes it so clear whether you're a person of faith or not. I do really believe that God makes it clear who the people are that we are supposed to initiate relationship with. Like you were saying, that waitress you were there for such a time as that right and the UPS workers they have sent you earlier.
Speaker 2:You know I could have asked you ahead of time.
Speaker 1:I know, but I think that we are if we really stop and think about it. We know those nudges, we know who those people are, those faces, those places. It's just a matter of that. I call it. You go first, hospitality, that relational initiative. I think that's going to transform so much of this. And even talking about sadness, heaviness, thriving I mean the blue zones. You were talking about all those Mediterranean communities. They've shown this is the key and I think so many of us feel victim of loneliness, but we also have the ability to change it quite radically.
Speaker 2:It takes a step.
Speaker 2:You know it's scary right, introverted by nature, nature. But I have needed things, and one of my goals that I wrote down in life was I want to become a lover of people as much as possible, as many times as possible, and um, so I've written in my journal what would it look like to love people in my life? And for some people, it it's a meal, some cookies. For some people, it's a message or a note or an email, but that is something that I wanted to write as a legacy and it's been such a good goal for me, because, instead of judging people, I give them context. Wow, yeah, yeah. Well, what made you the way that you are? I want to know and I want to be sensitive to that but that requires a choice and it requires a time commitment.
Speaker 1:It's a necessary one for this time and culture. Well, you just referenced the word legacy and the girl that I work with, aaliyah. I talk about her quite a lot in this community. She does our graphic design, our website, all of it. Her company is called Legacy Branding Co. And I remember working with her.
Speaker 1:So much of the process of design and development brand strategy was surrounding the legacy you want to lead and I was like goodness, I've never stopped to really think about that. Life was so fast paced. As a new business owner, you just want to start profiting and building your community, all of those things, and I was so grateful for um for her pausing for that. Oh, you're fine, um. But I want to talk a little bit more about legacy, cause I I truly think if it wasn't for Aaliyah, I wouldn't have stopped to think about it, because culture is not really talking about it right now. So you could take this really any direction you want. I had a few questions kind of surrounding it. The first was what do we lose by ignoring it? How do we get it back? What do you want us to know about legacy?
Speaker 2:That's what actually the subtitle of my book is Shaping a Legacy of Gratitude and Grace. A legacy of gratitude and grace. And I think one of the things I realized is that, because I was challenged at a very young age, I was in college when I had said God, if there's a God in the universe, can you let me know you? And I didn't tell anyone. I lived on the 10th floor of a dorm room at my university and literally this very shy woman came to my door one day in the middle of the afternoon. Nobody else was on the floor, I don't know why and she said I just would love to ask your opinion about some questions and she took a religious survey. Well, it ended up that she really was the person who introduced me to God's love. And, as I look back, soon after that I met some people who spent time teaching me from the Bible and just reading lots of different books. We had meals together and one of these women said to me and she was so cute, she was from the South and my name is Sally and she said Sal, and no one ever called me Sal before. You know, she called me Sal and she said I think that God has great plans for you. You're going to change your world. And even just that. Her words gave me such encouragement. I'd never thought about that.
Speaker 2:I'm probably the type that loves being purposeful, but then I wasn't trained. I looked for books that helped me to decide. What does it look like to live a purposeful life? One of the first words out of God's mouth. He said he blessed Adam and Eve. He said Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. And the word subdue is this huge picture we were designed. We were actually designed to be fulfilled by our work. The word subdue means not just to conquer it, but to cause something to be productive, and so we have this opportunity to look at our own story.
Speaker 2:None of us have the same fingerprints or the same DNA. We can do it individually. We don't have to copy anyone. Our circumstances, our background, our backstory go to create for us the platform upon which we get to write a story for our lives.
Speaker 2:We can choose to love instead of hating. We can choose to forgive instead of being bitter. We can choose to really educate ourselves so that we can have all sorts of encouragement that we took initiative to build into our own lives, and I realized that we do have this agency to be able to make these decisions, and so I think that nobody nobody that I've ever met has a hopeless story. They all have an arena in which they can choose to shape their lives by their own decisions, in such a way that they can turn their lives around, they can choose to have hope and they can learn how to build deeply by loving people, by initiating to people, which ends up encouraging them as well. The legacy is something that we shape in our own way. We look at our circumstances and we build a legacy by the decisions that we make.
Speaker 1:I love that we shape it. That's empowering in a very sweet and profound way. Well, goodness, we end each of our conversations with the same three questions and don't worry, listeners, I'm going to attach the link to Sally's platforms, her books. You can get your own copy and learn more as well there. But I would love to hear your answer, sally, to these questions. The first one is something that you have eaten recently and loved.
Speaker 2:Oh, all of us in our family are hobbits. We love to eat, let me think you know I hate to say it, say it it's the same cooking my husband loves. You know I don't have to cook for a thousand people like I used to, but I did have a very hot quiche this morning that I got from my local store, but last night I ended up making some wonderful. It was actually really good some homemade bread and some navy bean and ham soup. It ends up that it was 40 degrees here last night, kind of one of the first really cold days. I live in the mountains in Colorado and it was kind of a perfect thing. I love salmon. I had that last week. Anyway, I could go on about food, but those are three things that come to mind.
Speaker 1:I love all of those. Yeah, I've been on a, so I'm gluten-free. I've been gluten-free for a long time for health reasons. And a holistic practitioner recently said hey, katie, why don't you just give like a good quality sourdough a try? And there's a farmer's market in town and I just kind of like closed my eyes, gave them my debit card, didn't want to look at the price and I took it home. I digest it perfectly, it is so delicious, it is so delicious, it is so phenomenal. And my husband was like did you just spend $9 on a loaf of bread? I was like you know what? Yes, yes, I did. Where do you live? We're coastal Connecticut.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's the whole farmer's market scene. I'm sure I did it.
Speaker 2:I'm a natural, at least 75% of the time, oh goodness.
Speaker 1:Well, okay, the second one is a gathering you attended that made you feel a strong sense of belonging and, if you could pinpoint it, what it was that made you feel that way.
Speaker 2:I have a number of women that work for me assistants and I determined several years ago that we would meet somewhere in the United States every year. They're all over the United States and so we have a new one planned for going to South Carolina, to Charleston. But every year I would every other year at least they would come to my house and I would pick the best restaurants to go to and topics we were going to talk about, pick the best restaurants to go to and topics we were going to talk about, and we just spend all weekend being friends. Come on Thursday, leave on Sunday. But because we have built like-minded values by being together significantly over many years, we are close, we accept one another's weaknesses and failures and we laugh. We're safe with each other so we can laugh at things we couldn't talk about online. I would say that just being with them and it's coming up really soon, it's exciting time is really wow.
Speaker 1:I love that, and that's kind of building with what we're doing here at gather and making room. I have a part-time assistant and my website designer graphic designer and goodness. It is so amazing when, again, you work together, you grow together, and it's so sweet when it works personality wise because that's not everybody's work culture and so I'm thankful that you have that and I'm thankful we have that here too. Last but not least, this is a fun. So I'm thankful that you have that and I'm thankful we have that here too. Last but not least, this is a fun one. I'm not sure if you have anything for it, though. Something you've discovered recently that you think everyone should know about a random TV show, an Amazon purchase, a funky gadget.
Speaker 2:I'm sure that there are a lot of things because I require adventure in my life. Well, I think that everyone should, if they can, fly to Oxford and walk on the cobbled streets and sip some strong tea and go with a friend so they can take time away from the busyness of life and enjoy this incredible city. And so I would say that I'm on my way there. Pretty soon, I go there. I spend a lot of time there. So I would say you can't live without these trips that take you away from life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have such a longing, just lately, to go to England for the first time.
Speaker 2:There's a slowness that I sense about it, that I think I'm craving, I know, and yeah, it's just nice to get away to a whole new place and have a new perspective, even if it's just for a week or two.
Speaker 1:Oh goodness, this is so silly. What is that? There is a show there, older gentlemen, there's three of them. They talk a lot about cars and one of them has a Clarkson's farm.
Speaker 2:And that's my last name, but I don't watch the show, that's right.
Speaker 1:Why is people listening? Or probably like shouting it at me? Cause they could think of the name grand tour, grand tour, yes, the grand tour guys. So my husband's a huge fan and one of them have since created a farm, and so my husband, we watched the show and so I think he would agree to go to England with me if we can go to the farm.
Speaker 2:Well it can be anywhere, but just getting away sometimes is really a good good for the soul, Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Goodness. Well, this was rich and sweet and grace-filled, and I'm just so thankful that you took the time. We appreciate you and I'm so glad we're connected. Oh, me too. Thank you so much Best friends. Well, guys, thank you so much. We will see you next week.