The WAY to WOW Shows
Remember to Nuture Yourself
May 2, 2022
Automatically generated from YouTube captions; names and wording may contain errors.

[0:02] good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us on this awesome thursday afternoon with bounce back my name is leah siegel i want to thank our producer rabbi kevin bemel and we have a special guest today some of you may have noticed if you've joined us in the past that i'm taking a little bit of a pivot i'm changing a little bit of who i interview who i spend time with who i really bring to you as a community to really learn from and what we're going to do is we're going to start talking about how to look at life differently looking at set

[0:37] packs looking at challenges that we may face adversities we all have them right so how do we overcome them what do we do when life smacks you in the face right so i am so excited i can't even contain myself because the person we have on our show today is not just one of my best friends in the world this woman actually is the person that changed my life on a few different setbacks that i've had personally but we're not here today to talk about me we might sprinkle in a few details of how awesome java is but today we have have lauren and this is a woman who i've known since her bot mitzvah okay even

[1:14] before that we share so much she's like a sister and she has changed my life on many levels and i'm so excited to bring you her she is a singer songwriter play writer and she's uh wrote some books she is um the producer and she is the creator of the nurture series podcast there is nothing this woman can't do but java you know i can't ride a horse i cannot ride a horse i'll take you horseback riding no i can't i i get too terrified

[1:50] really i fell off the worst ones but i would love to hear why you don't want to ride a horse for that reason for that reason i live to tell but you know i was thinking the other day what was the first profession i ever saw you really think about and we were in high school and i remember you sharing a secret with me really and you said i am getting a degree in gemology i'm going to be a gemologist yeah that was my that was my first endeavor it's true i was in i'm like

[2:27] gosh he's so ambitious and then i remember you got your hands on a 90210 script also same year in high school yeah i was in 10 i was in 10th grade you were in 11. so let's talk about that because was that script something that propelled you to start writing your own scripts i want to know where this all began that's that's so funny that you remember that because i remember that so clearly we had our standing thursday night teenage you know soirees with like potato chips and coca-cola and 90210 we could not do it any other way

[3:02] um and i remember i don't even know who gave it to me your mother got her hands on it somehow it's always my mother she's always the mastermind of the whole entire situation my life and yours but she um yeah somehow or other she got this script from 90210 and i was like oh my god the holy grail of a script of what's to come so we got to see a preview of like what was happening the next week but what was exciting to me was i got to read um luke perry's role i think that was like the sexiest moment of my whole teenage

[3:37] years especially because we both went to a high school with no boys i'm like that was like the biggest turn on ever but um so definitely it's you know reading that script really shaped me because it was like this is so exciting to see the back and forth to see how characters come you know come alive um and like you said at 15 years old my mother was like you need to have a career are you going to go to college and i was like i don't know what i want to do and then that summer my grandparents were in the jewelry industry for it actually the store is in its 60th year um is it still in san bernardino it's in

[4:13] ontario actually and i worked there this past year a few times and i get to work there the whole month of november and december this coming year it's kind of exciting and so my uncle now runs the store my grandparents have since passed away but i used to go work there in the summers and i ended up going to the jewelry diamond show in las vegas with my with my grandpa and i had the best time because i love beautiful things and my grandfather was the president of the jewelries associate association and so jewelers association so he was like you

[4:48] really should just do you know get in the jewelry business with me and i was like okay like that sounds like so much fun but he was like no no you have to do it i'm going to pay for you to get the course it was at the time correspondent there was no internet back then so you didn't have a computer to learn from they would send you like the books and then you would read them and then you would send in the tests that you had to fill out with a proc you know a proctor or whatever and um yeah as soon as i graduated high school i was already like a certified gemologist and i went and worked in the

[5:23] diamond district like right after that i love it i remember those days you know speaking of correspondence i did that when i was pregnant with my oldest isaac i was in school to be an interior designer i remember and i did it i had to mail in all my projects my teacher would send me back recordings on a cassette him grading my work talk about snail mail but you and i have i think because we're both pisces we're both born a week apart in march and we both have had like nine lives like we both have had so many different interesting weird things that we just

[5:58] were like okay we'll try it let's try that let's try that right we're both like um extremely hard on ourselves we have to be the best at whatever we choose to do it's a gift and a curse right yeah i always say i'm like a jack of all trades master of nothing this is why i wanted you on the show because i think you're a master of so many things thank you you know and maybe before we dive into some of the things you've had to challenge maybe this is an appropriate time for me to just kind of share what you've done in my life and why i know you can help so many people you

[6:34] know i've been through a lot of challenges and i remember one of my biggest challenge was about 10 years ago financially and you said something to me that woke me up that no one else on this planet could ever say to me and i would hear it i cried to you literal tears and i said you know i can't afford rent i'm struggling financially being a single mom for kids and you know this isn't working and that i gave you a whole list of things that aren't going right and instead of giving me the pity party that i wanted you said

[7:09] get your together and you don't need anyone else you got this you have everything in you to be financially independent stop relying on this and that and you you got this when are you going to take responsibility and i woke up that day i couldn't have just said that to anyone by the way like i'm not the kind of person who just like tells people to just like get a life you know i know you well enough to know that you were looking for someone to tell you that you know thank you you were at that point in your life where

[7:45] you were you know you were like at the edge of the cliff and you just needed that little push to jump off like you were already there you just didn't know you were there you know wow i guess you saw it from the outside i was in it you know yeah um let's also tell the audience that about a year before that you also had the honor of making my shiddah you introduced me to my husband because husband and jay were working together at the jewish federation and you know that jay tells everyone that we met online and i said what do you mean we met through java he says yeah but she

[8:22] emailed the two of us and introduced us in an email oh i have i have words with him no i remember um robbie and jay have their own little love affair going they love each other so much and um every day when robbie would come home from work and he'd be like i have the most amazing guy that i go to work with i love jay we're such good friends and then i'm like well invite him over and it had been like a year i had still not met this famous jay seagull and he came for dinner and within minutes i was like oh my god you're you're leia's husband i just had this feeling so and i said i'm like hey would you um have any interest in dating like

[8:59] a habadnik girl from a very orthodox family and she he was like um i mean like but like like why would you think that yeah but why would you think that's a good idea and robbie's like this is not a good idea they're way too different and i was like no it's actually a brilliant idea they're way more similar than you realize you know they just they had you both have the same um infectious energy and i just knew that you both would be amazing for each other i'm so glad that that you guys took the plunge makes me happy

[9:34] well that's a little plug for this for the matchmaker here java but um i'm matchmaker business like i say you're gonna you're gonna if you're listening in on this or you're watching it on youtube later i'll tell you you're gonna learn a lot about the style that i bring is someone's going to learn something and walk away with something good java has so much to share you know she looks like everything's perfect and always everything went smoothly but this is a woman who had to endure a lot and so i'm gonna tell you what how i see the timeline and this is where i want you to fill us

[10:09] in on what did you do when that didn't continue or when that didn't turn out the way you thought because i remember going to see you perform you were singing you were songwriting you were amazing amazing performer i went to see some of your shorts you wrote some scripts and and we were in the theater together and you collaborated with so many individuals that are well known in the industry and so what pivoted you to do a podcast i know you have a book coming out i'm going to let you share with us how you see the timeline because from the way i look at it you are a woman who's good at

[10:45] everything you put your mind to and you can do it all so what choose how do you choose different things to focus on um adhd firstly severe adhd i don't think i'm excellent at everything i think i'm really good at knowing what i'm not good at and what i need to ask when i need to ask for help and um i'm really lucky that i surround myself with like people way smarter than me that's like the real key to success i think and to overcoming like your own like getting getting in your own way but take notes there people surround

[11:21] yourself with people that are smarter than you and more talented and and also just incredibly you know they had the first thing is they have to have amazing integrity for me to work with you like you have to have really excellent integrity and um so i'm i'm really lucky i've gotten to work with really special people um but in terms of um i i you know i don't know how far you want me to go back i can just back about yeah i mean we could go way far back like you know from the diamond days but i don't want to go i don't want to bore everybody with the longest story ever but um i guess it would be um my turning

[11:58] point was very connected with you too leia really um yeah i was about probably 28 years old and i woke up in a sweat um crying you know with a really bad nightmare and were you in pittsburgh at the time where were you i was in pittsburgh i think you know the story and um i really was shaking and robbie was like what's wrong and i'm like something happened to leia and i couldn't even say it out loud but i had this feeling like you had had a miscarriage i just felt it

[12:33] in my whole body and i didn't want to call you the next day because if i called you the next day my fear was i would learn the truth and about four months later i wound up going to new york and you and i met each other at a wedding and i gave you a really big hug and i remember saying too i actually just told the story last night at a class i gave i i told i think i remember saying to you like are you okay did you have a miscarriage and you said how did you know nobody knows this and it was an ectopic um pregnancy yeah it wasn't a normal

[13:09] miscarriage it was yeah an ectopic pregnancy that ruptured yeah that i didn't talk about with people right so nobody well now everyone knows i'm sorry i want to talk about it because okay yeah i'll tell you how this is 22 years ago yeah it was 20 this is 22 years ago and this was really a turning point for me because somehow or other i felt like our souls were like so divinely connected that i would feel that that happened to you and wildly enough the exact same thing happened to me two years later i was 30 years old sitting on an or table bleeding out

[13:45] in severe pain thinking like this this is it like i don't know if i'm gonna make it through this and i remember feeling like my whole life had flashed in front of my eyes and all i could think of is all my regrets like what i haven't done yet and i on that table like before they even like put the you know the anesthesia in my veins i remember thinking like there's three things i need to accomplish if i wake up one is i'm gonna write a script i'm gonna make a movie two is i'm gonna write a book and three is i'm gonna record a song i just that

[14:21] was in my head i was like this has to happen because it's in it's been in me since i'm a little kid so i knew i had to do it in some way or some fashion and then when i woke up i remember like um it was a seven or eight hour surgery i had to have several blood transfusions i mean i was sick i they i really almost lost my life i could feel it slipping out from underneath me and this wasn't your first run-in with health issues no i had had other near-death experiences but this one was like the most significant because it felt so acute like it was

[14:56] slipping you know whereas like when i was 17 i had a um a lump in my breast and i thought i was dying and i thought i had cancer and i remember where i was sitting when you shared that with me in your living room i i thought it was a lie i'm like this doesn't happen to us in high school like no it's so lying and back then it was like you know if you took if you um had the surgery and you did a biopsy it's not like today where it's like there's like a 24 hour turnaround it's two weeks of wondering do i have to go on chemo or not and at 17 years old that was like so daunting it was like the first time you don't think you have to really think about you

[15:31] know your mortality at 17. so that was thank god it wasn't and it was a benign tumor but um and then again i had a near-death experience when i was 21. i was it was my first pregnancy and it was a molar pregnancy and again um i was told that i might have to go on chemotherapy that it might be a malignant pregnancy it turned out that it wasn't but again had to wait two weeks wondering you know and so those kind of things definitely shape you in terms of like decision making and like the way that you're gonna tackle life and um but that the event that occurred when i turned 30

[16:07] two years after your topic was by far the one of the most like defining experiences for me and i remember when i woke up on one side of my face was my dad on the other side of my face with my mom which was really significant because they had not spoken in like three years because they were in the midst of a very very very torah divorce and i remember opening my eyes and looking at them in the same room going am i dead why are you both in the same room what's happening um and in some ways that event really began the healing i think in some ways

[16:42] of you know some of the difficulty that my parents had weathered and there was some you know like newness that occurred and i think that that's you know if there's one message i could give in terms of like adversity coming your way there's always a silver lining to something really devastating happening always you may not see it right then and there but that's very much like the theme of the book that i'm that i've written over the course of the last two years which is that like actually the the title of my book is everything is going to be okay how to nurture yourself during the storm and

[17:18] the reason why i chose that title i could have really chosen any title but that title meant something to me because when i was a kid my father used to say you whenever things were going a little off he'd look at us and he'd say edbach everything's gonna be okay and was actually something that had been created by uh two radio hosts years ago i think it was like on k rock or something like that so um and he used to say it to us and it didn't make sense that he would say it for many reasons first of all he wasn't pollyannish about difficult things he had lost his father at nine years old

[17:53] in a tragic way he had a massive heart attack leaving my grandmother a widow at the age of 36 with three small children so my father knew that things don't always turn out the way you want them to so he didn't say everything's gonna be okay because everything turns out rosie all the time i think he said it because of the key word in that phrase things are not okay right now but they're gonna be okay later and not okay yet it means it's not you're not done yet you're not done

[18:28] exactly you're just not done yet that's such a beautiful way of saying it and i i think that for me um you know in all the experiences that i've had they may be like the most painful the most difficult but when you're sitting in the mud when you're sitting in the pain and then the suffering um that's not the time to sort of you're not done so you have to give yourself that you know uh generous um i guess love to say like i can get through this and there there is gonna be a day that i

[19:04] wake up and i'm out of this really difficult spot wow to trust in that you know i this wasn't part of what i was going to talk about today but i feel compelled because you're mentioning your father and your mother and it would be so crazy not to mention the amount of love that they have shown personally to me what's really crazy is razie's on this call and razie and i both experienced what it was like to live in your house and be a part of your family i'm sorry [Laughter]

[19:41] we were definitely a crazy bunch you know my best memories are the fact that your parents treated me like like their own and they would not even take any money from my parents to have me live with you for my entire senior year in high school yeah my 18th birthday was my parents showing up at your parents door with roses for my 18th birthday in your brother's bedroom and raising live downstairs i remember this and your parents always had an open door policy full of love always giving us what they gave you yeah and i learned so much about work

[20:17] ethic from your mom you know she's always been a mentor to me and your father working hard at the hospital and he'd come home with his crazy funny stories that's another setback i've watched your family really be in pain from losing him yeah and the struggle i remember you sharing with me in roxbury park you said i'm going to take you for a walk i have to talk to you and one of my children how old were they at the time maybe two and you shared with me about that they're getting divorced and i i couldn't wrap my head around it yeah i don't think any of us could really wrap our head around the fact that it had actually ended

[20:53] because there was so much love and in all of that love there was almost there was so much pain and they themselves had had so many setbacks that were just not even in in their control and sometimes when you go through like a lot of continuous setbacks um you don't have any more oxygen to fill your tank for the other person you know i i definitely saw that firsthand and that's definitely i would say kind of for sure has driven my um

[21:29] my you know inspiration to create the nurture series because so the reason why i created the podcast is because it was 2020 march 2020 everybody had gone into lockdown i was actually slated for two television shows um i was so excited i was like i made it into the big leagues right and um through warner brothers um both kind of talk show style shows and they were gonna be under the same auspices so that would have meant there would have been cross you know marketing and breeding and i was just going to be like this like really excitement a lot

[22:04] of excitement i had just finished shooting a pilot that we were already about to go and um pitch and another pilot that i had just finished i was i had just finished working on a documentary that had just had its debut so there was so much happening and like my life was like really full and i was super excited about all these amazing opportunities and then code hit and everything stopped like everything production stopped decision stop pitching stop you know and i was and no one knew how long it was going gonna be

[22:39] was it gonna be three months four months two years five years like and um i was just like i gotta do something and at the same time that this is all happening we're all trying to like figure out you know whether the world's coming to an end or not trying to you know contend with all of the uncertainty um my husband run is the rabbi of a young professional um congregation here in beverly hills about jacob with like 650 young professionals that we interface with on a weekly basis and suddenly we can't see them every week and so now we have to figure out ways to be innovative and teach them and see

[23:15] them and so i just went into like rebecca mode you know rabbi's wife mode i just went into okay i'm going to start teaching classes i'm going to engage i know how to engage you know on screen in an an interesting dynamic way because of my background in film so we started just creating like a ton of content and engaging constantly and the calls started coming in of couples who were really struggling with staying together during that time you know being locked in the same house kids being you know most of these are young couples you know in their late 20s early 30s some of them are singles who all of a sudden found themselves unable to date and um so the the the loss of

[23:53] this um that that everybody was feeling of you know how to really tune in to their vulnerability i myself was going through my own chaos in my own marriage with my children about to empty nest the pandemic looming now stuck in the house you know like couldn't find a spot for myself to like even breathe because every corner is with every human and so yeah we fought a lot and i was just like miserable and i realized i had not dealt with a lot of my own grief that i had just compartmentalized over the years and um at the time um one of the

[24:29] programs that we set off was called the nurture series and we invited all of our young couples to tune in on a zoom i sent them dinner and wine and um someone said to me oh would you do a class on you know sean bite on helping people um with their marriage and i was like what the hell do i know i've had one like i don't i'm not an expert i'm not a therapist you know so i said i'll tell you what i will do i'll create a zoom that like this kind of event and we'll invite the couples to come for date night and i will interview the experts and i will get the best experts the people that i know how to couple well how to nurture relationships and

[25:06] how to be nurturing parents and how to be nurturing to oneself because i knew what was on the line i had lived through it with my parents divorce and um that began like this it was super successful we had i think four really fantastic speakers um and it launched itself into um i just wanted more i wanted more information i started reading like four books a week on the subject on all different kinds of like you know gaining access to overcoming adversity to overcoming trauma to um coupling better like anything i could get my hands on i read

[25:42] i watched every podcast on the issue i mean i was like drinking as much information as i could and then i was just bringing it to our congregation in a podcast form and after um i had gone through all of this work i ended up deciding i have to actually get better so that was 2020 and then 2021 it was like okay i was continuing on with my podcast but i really wanted to get my own together because i was not doing great and i realized that so i hired a therapist i had a performance coach uh hi i'm on love you

[26:19] um all the way in he was a monk all he lives all the way in amsterdam i found this guy on a television show by the way but whatever that's a whole other story um i had my own energy healer that i met with every weekly um my massage therapist weekly um literally i i like called in the cavalry i was like i've got to get myself in order here my kids are about to leave my son was about to leave and i have to get i have to be okay with empty nesting and it's no joke okay it is like the hardest thing you know right leia you know

[26:54] and so uh i wound up um doing the work and it was harder than anything i've ever done in my whole life and then june 15th came and i had my last session with amman my performance coach and he was just not he wasn't just my performance coach he was like a little bit of everything oh plus i had my therapist who i met with every single week also um and we had our family our like our family therapist that we met with so there was a lot of healing going on going around you know it's like a full year of like super highly intensive and um june 15th came 2021 and i'm like i'm

[27:30] good i am flying i mean i felt like the world was at my you know like was just like i had the world in my hands i was ready to roll in life june 15th was also the day that all the masked mandate was lifted in los angeles and in las vegas my husband and i traveled there with our family it was going to be the last trip first trip in many years you know since pandemic but also the last trip before my son went off to college and my daughter left you know finally and my son moved out of the house and we were stoked about this trip because we had a

[28:05] granddaughter the first granddaughter of our family getting married robbie was gonna officiate the wedding and then on june 16th um i rushed robbie to the hospital with um acute sepsis um they told me he had leukemia and he had a heart attack and that he was dying and um after 21 hours in the er with an er that was so short staffed they wanted to just put him in the lobby and let him just basically wither away and me running around like a maniac figuring out ways

[28:41] to get him the care he needed um and and doing everything i could no short of like going to the chaplain at the hospital and basically maneuvering my way under you know the current of that hospital administrative you know hierarchy and craziness um so much so i even called like the you know the the uh the ceo of the hospital and i was like what the hell is this craziness you know one nurse to like 12 patients no doctors on staff it was really bad

[29:16] and um i basically like begged the nurse to give him an iv and i knew that when a patient is sepsic septic you have 48 hours before a patient can not no longer you know have a turnaround they die that's it and we were now in hour 36 and he had not been treated so i knew the clock was ticking and um thank god the nurse was kind of in her own way kind of looked around and just like literally ignore protocol i'll forever be grateful to her and she basically just said

[29:51] eff it and hooked him up to the right thing what conspired from there was he actually did not have um leukemia he had a heart infection he had um endocarditis and um many different things wrong with his heart so his heart was working at like 20 and basically after two weeks of me living at the palazzo and him living at sunrise hospital in las vegas the doctor said okay you have four hours to get him home you have to drive him there and within four hours because he needs his next dose of antibiotic if he doesn't get it he will go and become septic

[30:26] again his heart's working at twenty percent just don't die don't do anything don't move don't get your heart rate above anything there's no sex no walking no joy you just don't move and i looked at robbie and i'm like oh dude you're not going to make it i mean i was so terrified i was like see especially the doctor's like um whatever you do don't get him upset i'm like you're definitely not gonna make it but um we drove home in a frenzy um you know white-knuckled it all the way in time for his next dose and then from then we kind of figured okay like after

[31:01] three months we'd be out of the woods um six weeks later we went to the uh doctor you know the cardiologist who said no actually you have a very serious issue and you have to have open heart surgery so i was not prepared for any of this on the night before my children were leaving for college and you don't think about your mortality um at a young age i had to think about mine at a young age but i never had to think about my husband's and that threw me for a loop i just was not prepared for any of this you know i wasn't prepared for a lifelong um

[31:36] living of with you know hospitals and forever he'll be a cardiac patient and even though he's doing wonderfully right now and he had a really miraculous turnaround we're still he's still a heart patient you know there's there's still always that wonder like when will it happen again you know wow um and but at the same time had i not done that work before there is no way i would have handled the summer and i and i listen there were moments that i i definitely didn't handle it

[32:11] well but i think for the most part i handled it pretty damn well and i there's no way i would have handled it well or recovered well had i not had that year of like real intense therapy and help to get over trauma and one of the things i recognize the turning point for me was a week before his surgery um everything went back to craziness again with the uh you know with the pandemic and the delta variant was going crazy was going strong so they wound up um making a rule at his hospital that no one was allowed to come with him

[32:47] when he had his open-heart surgery and i lost it i just could not get past that at all it was like the last straw so what did you do i did something i've never done before and that is that i totally and completely surrendered and it was hell because surrendering is not something that one does with peace and harmony they surrendering is something you do yelling

[33:22] and screaming and crying a lot and telling god that you know get your act together this isn't working you know um but i had to learn the art of surrendering and um as a result of this experience one of the things that i came to realize was that you know i don't think that anybody ever really figures out the true art to letting go we all want to hold on to a little piece

[33:58] of our power thinking that we're in control and when you're at that place where you're like i am not in control of any of this stuff and you finally kind of let go there is something very freeing about it and when i finally actually did let go like i just allowed myself to do it i gave myself permission i felt almost like i was in this blissful hazy state it was really weird i think that's what happens when you finally have this like aha moment when you're like at the precipice of something huge that it's actually it

[34:35] ends up becoming easier it doesn't become harder to get to that place it actually gets easier if that makes sense but i shut my phone off to do this i told every person in my family i was not going to be available my no one was allowed to call me i had to go into my own chamber and i had to figure this out on my own how i was going to like get through that experience i didn't want anyone's noise i didn't want anyone telling me it's going to be okay i didn't want anyone telling me how to do it i wanted to listen to the reverberations of my own soul and my own story telling me what to do

[35:10] wow i can imagine that was the hardest thing because you have so many people in your life who lean on you who love you you're the oldest yeah you have children and you have nieces and nephews and siblings and their spouses yeah best friends i mean you're always the strong one for everyone and we were all going is she okay because she's always there for us who's there for her because we want to be there for you and i remember you saying you can't come over leia because in case they're gonna let me go to the hospital and in case you give me something i can't be around anyone right

[35:47] i like and robbie couldn't be around anyone because i couldn't risk him getting covered with his heart working at 20 and the other thing that i also recognized why i was having such a rough time is this is three generations of trauma around heart disease my grandfather died of a heart attack my father had a heart attack and had open heart surgery at the age of 52. that summer i ended up taking care of him i was his caregiver because shortly after that my mother and father separated so a lot of his recovery was on me for three months and so here i am back where i started

[36:23] and my grandmother told me a story my entire childhood my whole life which puppy shirley baby my dad's mom um the one who was a widow at 36. you know she every time he's your world i just think leisure world yeah and every single time she would talk about my grandfather she would literally just tear up and one time i said to her like when i was much younger and i heard the story again a million times but what was it about this that really brings you the tears and she said you know that night i ended up going to visit your grandfather in the hospital

[36:58] and my grandparents were very physical with one another and my grandfather even after his heart attack said to my grandmother stay stay the night and lay dead come to bed with me and she said you just had a heart attack can't have sex with you um plus i have to go home to the children i'll be back right in the morning and he died that night and she could never forgive herself and so here i am about you never heard this story my god yeah and here i am about to send my husband to the hospital on the biggest surgery that anybody could possibly go through i mean open

[37:34] heart surgery is harder than brain surgery to be honest you know they completely rip you completely open and there were all these variables that they told us we should be expecting um that were not great and we were just like i was just like well see you later i guess like i don't even know how to say goodbye so i put all my energy into every day during that week i wrote him a letter i wrote him like these love letters and i wanted him to have a letter because they told me originally he'd be in the hospital for up to 10 days so i wrote him 10 letters and i didn't think

[38:09] he'd read them during the time he was there but i'm like well maybe he might who knows if he feels better if he feels okay i don't know i didn't think he would but i wanted him to have like something to take with me you know to take with him i wanted him to feel like i was right next to him and i felt like that my words was where all i i could give him and in the tenth letter i had actually completely forgotten what i had even written in that letter i like completely forgot and on day like i think it was like i don't know like three weeks after his

[38:44] surgery he actually did come home after five days and they had told us he was gonna need a um a mitral valve replacement which was really a tough surgery in terms of the recovery and what your life is like afterwards it's not a great outcome it's the best outcome it means 10 more years of your life not much more than that um so i decided i was going to just write the letter as if it already came to pass and i said you didn't need a valve replacement you need a register of valve repair you are doing better than anyone ever

[39:20] expected you left the hospital after four days or five days and i literally wrote everything that i wanted to happen you're amazing and um three weeks later when he read the letter he was just in tears he's like how did you predict all of that and i'm like i don't know i don't even remember writing that letter i don't even know and every one of those things came true and it taught me something a lot about surrender it really did it taught me that when you surrender from something you need to

[39:56] write your story now that doesn't always mean that your story is going to come to pass the way you wanted to but but but it also doesn't mean that it won't you know what i'm saying like i know people who are like they believe with all their heart they were going to have a different outcome it didn't happen then they're disappointed um and there's there's not always the outcome that you want and and and i don't know why we had that outcome i don't i don't think i have more power than anyone else has power in terms of their prayers you know no one's prayers are more than somebody else's i i can only say that that was my experience and

[40:32] it was um miraculous and i'm beyond grateful for it wow you know god puts you in situations where you're wearing many hats at different moments i mean you literally can be in a medical setting you don't have a medical background or degree but you've been in so many situations where you literally could be a nurse today you you know it all um i don't think there's a field that you're not familiar with what pic pick a field you know it well you can carry yourself in in that setting and it's a

[41:08] really big gift hub and i think back to that vegas those those 30 hours and how you were that advocate and if not for you putting up a fight and a fit and a tantrum let's call it that even though you weren't on the floor screaming like a two-year-old but getting on the phone with the oh no at one point i think i was i actually think at one point i actually was and the hardest thing in all of it honestly was my husband because he is such a passive and sweet guy and he wants to be so compliant especially in the medical community he's

[41:44] not used to the medical world because he didn't grow up in it like i did so he just wants to be like just let them do what they need to do and i'm like oh i'll wake up i'm like no they are not doing what they want to do if they do what they want to do you will not be here tonight you know like and he just yeah you have to claw your way into you can't just take everything face value you know just because someone's wearing a uniform and they tell you to do something you don't always have to comply if you have a sense that something is off you have to speak your mind you it's your body you can wow take control of it you know

[42:21] well before we get into some questions from our audience because if you showed up for in live person you get to talk to hava i i just want to ask you share with us what's next for you um well i i'm really figuring that out and i'm being really open to the universe and i'm like so excited because this is the first time that i don't really know yet like there are some things that i know but there are other things that i'm like something's good it's cooking i just know it um right now i have a book that's coming out um again can't give

[42:57] you the date because um my my editor is still working on it but i finished my part of this yeah put it in the notes in the footnotes yeah youtube channel we're gonna have um the name of your podcast is there and the name of your book this way people can get in touch with you if you have a link to it you can send that over to kevin and he'll put that there as well so people can reach you find your website your social media um yeah and i i'm so grateful for our friendship our lifeline journey together and and it's not even all written yet that's what's so amazing you know we

[43:33] know you were at my daughter's birth i have a 26 year old that java was there and ravi and her mom for me can i just tell them can i just tell that story because it's actually my favorite story of all time i had not had kids yet and it was my first birth i had ever seen and witnessed and at one point first of all your ex was sitting there eating like pastrami sandwiches because of course i brought him those and then robbie's sitting there like just trying not to look because he's just like what the heck is this and my mom was your coach it was a whole party in your room of course it's the one birth that i had with aaron epidural and that's the one she right

[44:08] yeah and so she's in the middle of pushing and sh and at one point i said i say oh my god i'm like i'm so sick i'm gonna be sick and so the the doctor turns to us and goes are you gonna be okay and i'm like i don't know i think i have to sit down and she he goes i was talking to leia [Laughter] oh yeah yes as you were i'll never forget that i love you so much well i wanted to give anyone a chance if they have a question or a comment or an inquiry um i'm so glad we have mark with us i haven't seen you in so long and fred

[44:44] from our community in santa clarita it's so nice and of course razie who i've known since i'm even younger than ten we were probably two years old uh growing up in the same community and so very crazy yeah so this is a time if you want to ask tom any questions maybe kevin has a question and if not i have plenty so java um in in the the work that you do with with other people how do you

[45:22] how do you get people to open up to you when it's not their natural inclination to do so but but you you may sense that there's they need some kind of release or they need to talk or something how do you how do you deal deal with that that particular issue funny i just had this exact thing happen last night so i'm i started um 15 years ago i developed this program called mission possible and it's about i basically teach people how to find their own personal mission it's really grounded in like jewish

[45:58] torah and thought but it's also grounded in pop culture you know pop psychology and um i literally i take a little bit of everything um it's like a six parts five or six part series depending on and i can break it down i've done it in a three part series but um so i'm starting it again and i have a cohort of like um 10 or 15 women who are working on this over the course of the next few weeks and um there was one person in our group who you know shared with me after that she like doesn't really want to share what's going on with her she has a really hard time she's really you know she's been through trauma and

[46:35] um and so it's been on my mind that question has actually been on my mind and the thing that i find is the easiest way to get somebody to really open up when they have like something going on where they just can't is to ask a lot of questions because most people really want to talk about themselves and most people really want to answer those questions for themselves and if you just say curious if you stay curious in the question then a lot of times those answers will arise years ago i got the opportunity to work on a project called the search it was a series like um of

[47:12] like snackable cute little uh like it was a web series snackable content for a production call company called the nation uh nationwide productions the goal was to ask people what is the meaning of life and we i got to interview like really interesting people celebrities and writers and authors and um the one thing that um probably like one of my favorite interviews with an actor named corbin bernsen who i had met at a um at some sort of uh like film festival and i asked him if he would be so kind to you know come on and do it do a web a series with us and he took us um he took me to his like

[47:48] his office and in his office it was it used to be his first house now he lives in a big brand or house but he turned his first house into his office and then in the back was this like she shed that was filled with like hundreds of thousands of snow globes of every single kind and i was it was like one of the most like memorable conversations because i was like okay dude what's with the snow globes and he's like because i believe that every single one of us are in our own little tiny world in our own little tiny like universe and we forget that there's like a much bigger universe out there and so he became like really obsessed with collecting snow globes and

[48:24] but that was just one of the examples of you know what it's like to to ask people these really meaningful questions but i don't know if that's something he necessarily thought about but when you asked because i asked the question why where did that come from what is this obsession it made him think more deeply about the question about you know what drives him i think questions are the most important thing when it comes to like really connecting with people it's crazy you're saying this i know the question was aimed towards java but as you're saying something i was about to type in the chat be curious and you said

[49:01] the word curious yeah i just had um the honor of having i don't know if you ever heard of barry ryan he is the creator of selling through curiosity and he's a professor at harvard and he brings his curiosity courses to corporate um all over corporate you know different organizations all around the country and he came and taught us and we had to take the course with him graduate and become a teacher so i took his course and then i taught his course and it's called selling through curiosity and the number one thing that

[49:37] he says is exactly what you said it's not about asking questions that are yes and no stay away from close-ended open-ended questions would be something as simple as tell me more yeah tell me you don't ask someone are you married or do you have kids tell me about family yeah the word tell me or oh wow how so right it whatever they're going to be comfortable to their limit and and as papa said the people do like to talk about themselves the most important name in the the most important word in the universe is what someone likes to hear their own name yeah yeah yeah absolutely yeah

[50:13] using their name and wow that was a that was a great question kevin and great even greater answer it's so true and speaking of snow globes um our son bibi also collects snow globes oh really that's cute now i'm going to look at them differently yeah they're not just toys now i'm like they're humans in their own world yeah wow that's really powerful yeah thank you for sharing that that's what i loved about the um the name of our show the search because we were constantly searching you know it's it was really about staying curious and

[50:48] searching for answers you know and i say that to my kids all the time we had this amazing existential conversation around the seder table where i have one son who's a bit of a cynic in terms of like he just doesn't he he doesn't take anything for face value like explain to me why you believe this is you know the basic question and then another son who thinks so deeply that he just believes so much that it's overwhelming and then my daughter who just like takes everything at face value and it just has no problem with faith it's like yeah this is just i could feel it it's in my body i just know it and so the conversations around the table are

[51:23] always like but how do you know but you know and i always tell my children when you know when you can stay curious and you continue to ask these questions that itself is a spiritual experience the people who don't ever ask the questions are the ones who really suffer right powerful yeah you know that commercial stay thirsty my friends yeah curious my friends you gotta stay curious and and actually it's funny then you hear the flip side of that is like curiosity killed the cat

[51:58] the truth is it's being curious to the right people in the right setting with and there's a very delicate way to do it without being nosy it's showing you care because people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care and how do you show genuine concern imagine this you're going on a date and the guy just talks about himself he doesn't ever ask you any questions right and you're like he doesn't even know anything about me he's not taking the time to wonder there's no wonder and there's no curiosity we as women and i'm sure men are like this too

[52:33] we want someone to be into us and how do we know it's because they want to know yeah and they ask good questions there's a really good uh source for this in the torah um there's uh the story of rebecca and eliezer uh eliezer was uh abraham's servant and sent him on his way to go search for a wife for his son isaac and he gets to the um the watering hole and rebecca feeds his camels and there's a sentence that says that elias are wondered and the word for wonder is mishta

[53:09] which also means thirst la i just got chills right it's the first time we ever see somebody in the torah really being curious and staying in the curiosity and in the second part of the of the verse it says he wondered in silence because when you're wondering in your deepest place in their quiet place that's when you have great you know articulation of your aha moment you know you can't wonder in the noise and that's one of

[53:44] the reasons why i turned my phone off that week um when i had to surrender because i needed the quiet to feed my soul to give me the answers why did that i love how we are wrapping this up because it's giving me so much to take away and think about as i'm sure all the listeners that are with us live and that will replay the things we talked about there's so much there yeah and i'm so grateful that i i have to tell you if not for you hob i would not have even made this

[54:19] kind of pivot or change in how i'm gonna bring information to the masses right i called you we were talking about what i was what was coming up for me and you're always hashem gives you this wisdom in which to impart on others at the right time that they need to hear it i i've never been in a situation where you didn't help me through something thanks and you have that gift well thank you so much for bringing me on you're a fantastic interviewer i always knew that you had this gift by the way i'm not surprised at all that you see

[54:54] that you're so flawless at this so this has been really enjoyable thank you for including me in this new pivot it's exciting of course and if you want um you can say out loud if there's any um talk about your social media while we wrap up if anyone wants to jot down how to find yeah so um i i go by my my first hebrew name and my middle english name that's kind of my pen name is cavaflorin even though my last name is tomboski so um so javaflorin.com has all of my content on it and you can read blogs and watch my nurture series podcast on there i'm

[55:30] also on spotify and itunes and of course um twitter and facebook and instagram and all the good stuff that you have to do but that i hate doing but i do do you know that sort of thing i love it yeah well khaba tsapara faga how many people will say that to you and know your full name yeah that's right not everybody knows my full name massive identity crisis here people fixed names will do that to you i am excited for what's to come i know that we only touched upon a little bit the tip of the iceberg of what impact you

[56:05] make on people's lives and you know one of the things you also got me to do that i've never done before was run my first half marathon because that's right i had just gotten married three years ago it's almost four years and you said you're running the marathon with me because we're raising money for yitzi now our best friend from high school her husband has als yeah and we were running for collecting money and raising money for yitzi hardwoods together we raised over a hundred thousand dollars with the team and we went to miami and we run them we ran the miami marathon i in a i wasn't a runner i i said i'm not a runner you said don't worry we'll

[56:40] we'll walk it we'll figure it out and i ended up hiring someone to coach me and train me how to run but you always okay break out of my comfort zone in crazy ways but not only did you hire someone to teach you how to write this chick ran faster than all of us this little brat okay i'm like uh i'm walking because i can't run worth anything because i i just can't and she's literally like you know she's speedy gonzales on the on the field it was really wild but i have to give a shout out to bracha our good friend bruce who really was um the brilliance behind the run for efc marathon it's going on strong she

[57:15] started with one person she called me one day and she was like i think i'm gonna do a marathon and raise money for etsy what do you think about this idea i'm like i think it's a ridiculous idea why would you do this why would anyone run um and she started with one person this year i don't know how many years later maybe it's eight or so a hundred runners they had on their team and they raised how much over a quarter million yeah it's unbelievable this year they did yeah yeah so we have amazing friends one of our class one of my classmates who graduated high school with me i've known since seventh grade she lives out in miami we really

[57:50] we were small but mighty graduate five girls in our class yeah and we're still you know all close and touched some of us are grandparents some of us still i'm still the younger one i didn't graduate with you i know she's a year younger i get to get to say that for the rest of our lives that i'm the younger one i used to hate that now i love it now you love it and we give you permission to keep saying it no problem we get to say it we're good right so thank you all next week guess who i get to have on i'm actually going to be interviewing my very own husband rabbi j siegel

[58:26] coming from the depths in the depths and um his his journey of being a rabbi and other things that are more personal so i'm excited to bring that all to you so make sure to subscribe to the way to wow show or join us live even better next thursday one o'clock p.m have an incredible rest of your week thank you for having me thank you guys