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On today’s show, I sit down with Image & Brand Advisor Lauren Solomon. After uprooting her life from west coast to east to support her family and then staying to help her mother regain her health post covid Lauren will tell you she nearly lost her mind. Join us as we discuss better living thru friends, family and pharmaceuticals. Join us live for this intimate conversation! There is no shame in asking for help. #caregiver #family #makeachange #mentalhealth
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after uprooting her life on the west coast to move to the east coast to support her family and then staying to
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help her mother regain her health postco my guest today is going to tell you she nearly lost her mind stay tuned we'll be
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right
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back welcome to the show Lauren did you find thank you so much I
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have found it I have found it in Mexico Mexico well at least it was somewhere at
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least it was somewhere I am delighted to welcome you to the show I was just on your show a couple of weeks ago we've
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been trading shows back and forth i' like to call you the hostess with the mostess I am delighted that you're on
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today you are the host of good day Orange County TV and you've been doing that for years right and when you moved
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moved over to the east coast and are still there you changed the way you did your show
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right well I did the studio closed everybody changed right the world changed so the studio was closed the
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studio is in lagona Woods Village and everything was closed I moved to the east coast and we all went to zoom and
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went fully remote and the beauty is that now my guest list includes people from
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all over the globe I'm not limited to people who are willing to drive the 405 to get to me exact exactly and I drove I
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think I drove the five or the 405 to get you if you're just tuning in right now we are talking to Lauren Solomon and if
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you have something you want to ask her make sure you put it in the comments we will put it up there that she can answer
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yes everything changed I mean everything changed but you pivoted and in pivoting
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it allowed you to continue doing what you do right because you were busy on
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the East Coast losing your mind and I say that tongue and cheek because this is all about taking care of our folks
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and it's all about caregiving and it's all about staying healthy and you and I have very similar stories and that's
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what we're going to talk about today how do we control if we can keeping our mental health sane when we're caregivers
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and when everything around us appears to be I don't know not the same falling
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apart falling apart right so let's talk about how this happened you packed up
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right and you literally I mean you took everything you moved across the country
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to where it's cold cuz you were in Southern California in San Diego area it was or Dana Lagoona I guess area
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beautiful right right beautiful warm sunny and the whole thing and you moved to the east coast
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and I I love that you did that I I love that you did that
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because um at the end of the day our parents raised us they borned us they
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they raised us they were there for us they took care of us and we're there for them right well that was that was the
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story I mean at least that's the story I told people but really it started you
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know my dog and I were working in Utah and um and that was when everything shut
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down it was a Friday my brother called and said hey kids are home alone at that time he had two small kids and uh his
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wife and he are both doctors they had to keep working and said Mom and Dad who are in their 80s are no longer Plan B uh
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welcome to co what's on your calendar and we literally never went home we got
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lit I got literally fitted for a hazmat suit from the hotel because nobody knew
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what was going on and my dog and I flew we flew to Washington with the suitcases
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that we had I had one suitcase for her and what we had been in Utah for 10 days for work and fortunately she was a Freer
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range flyer and so we got on the plane instead of going back to Orange County
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we were living in Newport Beach Paradise in other words and um and we wound up
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flying to Washington DC and then we actually didn't go home for over a year
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um and that was what started so my parents who live 15 minutes from my
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brother were always you know the drivers and the babysitters and the on call
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people that was just no longer an option so a year later when I realized that my mom
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was not going to make an easy comeback from the year first year of covid uh I found an apartment in their building
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actually so that I could get to them so I could get to them I to your point
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Karen they have weather on the East Coast we didn't at the time have weather on the west coach so I had to think what
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if I have to she was falling a lot and what if I have to get to her I can't have to go outside and so that was the
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big the pivotal decision was to take a place close
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enough to them that I could be in my jammies and just run down the stairs and down the hall um and that's what I did
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so if you're just tuning in right now we're talking about Lauren Solomon's Story how she went from the west coast
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to the east coast in the middle of covid and with her parents uh taking care of her parents have you EXP expence
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something like that if you're tuning in let us know put it in the comments if you have a question to ask uh Lauren
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we've got quite a few people on right now so make sure you ask a a question let's have some engagement let's have a
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conversation about this so you you have a say saying that you like to say and
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that is Better Living Through friends family and pharmaceuticals and I agree with you
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100% but how did you come up with that well I am the daughter of a
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pharmacist and the granddaughter of a far phist so I spent a lot of Summers working at
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Hoffman L Ro Pharmaceuticals are in our blood um interestingly enough though I
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was always the homeopathic girl and I was the one who was the naturalist and I never wanted to go down that road and I
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fought it but the reality is there's only so much your girlfriends can take
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yeah and you could you don't want to push them Beyond but then you realize that your girlfriends are taking stuff
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too that you didn't know about right because we don't talk about this stuff
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right we don't talk about it and and I think if you can say there was a blessing in covid I don't know if we can
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say that but it brought people together in a way that we had never been together
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and you're right you know you don't want to wear out your girlfriends you don't want to wear out you know the other members of the family you don't want to
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do any of that so Pharmaceuticals are are next and they work I mean they they
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work my husband likes to say Better Living Through Chemistry he's a retired psychiatrist and he also has suffered
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very serious health issues and I am his caretaker I'm very fortunate I my
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parents are older they're 88 and 90 still working full-time but I don't live near them my brothers live near them and
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so they are effectively the caretakers and it's unusual normally it's the female right
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it's normally the daughter that does this but you have a brother who who does it as well um and I always feel I feel a
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little guilty that I'm here but you know what are you going to do did you feel did you feel like I mean
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you were telling me you're in Mexico right now and you decided you're staying because they needed some help do does
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that is that does that rub on you like okay should I go should I stay how do you make a decision like
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that well the first decision we made was um a number of years ago seven eight
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nine years ago when both of my parents had a Health crisis they were living in New Jersey my brother was living in the
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DC area I was living in Newport Beach and I moved in with my
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parents they each had a help us within two weeks of each other and so I was there for two months working with both
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of them one was in a hospital in New Jersey one was in the hospital in Manhattan every day I would go back and
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forth that was a little bit of insanity my brother to your point he's a great team mate and we're great Pals thank God
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because he was commuting on the weekends his wife who was an angel on this planet said I'll take care of the kids you take
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care of your family she said honestly it could be my parents so right who am I to say right and I appreciated that more
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than anything so that's where this started because we gave them an option you can move near the
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grandkids and go be full-time grandparents or you can come to California weather's great I travel 75%
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of the time um you'll to Tool around but you'll be you don't know anybody there so so they
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decided they made the right decision then they used to come to me in the winters they would come to Mexico for a month and come to me for a month and get
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out of the winter that was how this whole thing started that's that was how it started got so that so at that point
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my and I said to my brother before they moved are you sure this is going to be okay for you he said honestly you've
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been the local sibling because I was living in Manhattan most of my life they were in New Jersey and I saw them a lot
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he said I haven't had time with them like you have and I would like that time wow so with that understanding I didn't
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have any guilt initially Y and and I could drop in because the beauty of
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working for myself has always been that I can work from anywhere and they used
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to call me parachute Auntie that I would literally just drop in when they needed me for a week and drop out
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which is why I could only have a dog who could travel free range with me right well you so you you have been working
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remote even before it was a thing right I mean you would you could work absolutely almost anywhere as can I and
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I I totally get that I'm laughing because suan said I may as well be the only child when it comes to caretaking
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brothers who LOL so suanne you're you're the only one and do you think I'm just
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curious and if you want to put an answer in there do you think it's because you're the woman you think that your brother just you know maybe you don't
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want to talk about it maybe your brother just doesn't have the capabilities or maybe you didn't ask him I don't know
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sometimes it comes down to I need help and that's the next thing that I think it's really important to talk about you
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have to be able to ask for help there's no shame
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right well and you have to know it's different when you're asking for help for yourself right in this case over the
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last year um I had a so it turns out that moving out there did not hurt my
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business I actually had my probably one of my best years ever in 2020 because everybody was working remote right 2021
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brought interesting New Opportunities 2022 um brought me an amazing amazing
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project on the East Coast which I could not have accepted right if I had still been on the west so yes there were
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blessings in all of this and because as I mentioned the family had not lived in proximity for many many years this was
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cool because I've got a now teenage niece and nephew and um and my dog had
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her cousins and you know there's a lot lot more love in the space so all that was fine but then last February my mom
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had a stroke while we were sitting talking I was we were sitting talking the three of us she my dad and me and
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she was talking to me and all of a sudden the only word she could say was dementia it had nothing to do with our
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conversation oh wow and it was the only word she could say and I looked at her I
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quick called my brother doctor said um I think mom's having a stroke he told me
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how to do the Cincinnati test she was in fact having a stroke immediately 911 half a block from our
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house they were there in three minutes and she was in the hospital and in the
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scanner within 20 minutes because timing is everything but that was the first
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moment right right and then she seemed to be doing better and in the summer her
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cardiologist put her on a series of meds that it was one
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bad one worse reaction each was worse after after the other and in September I
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thought we lost her she collapsed in my arms so two incidents there where I am
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on the scene while this is happening I'm grateful to be on the scene because
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time is of the F Essence but my dad's 91 yeah my mom's 86 and there's you know my
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dad is amazing he's like a miracle man yeah and he everything and doesn't take
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any drugs nothing um my mother on the other hand had had some stuff so okay
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but but my I could see at that moment you know my dad having support was
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really critical right and of course you know we got that we got the Medicine
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stuff handled we're chirping along right we have her birthday with all her cousins and the next week I get a call
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and on the other end of the phone I hear Mother can you hear me and I
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literally put on slippers and run downstairs to find the emergency Squad going into their apartment my brother on
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his knees on the floor and my mother in a pool of her own blood so she had fallen she had gotten
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the her cane stuck between her feet or something she had tripped over the cane landed on her head on the cement floor
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my dad had gone literally less than 10 seconds to the other room to turn the TV on for her wow so all of this happened
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in a split second's time and we spent Thanksgiving week in the hospital with a traumatic head
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injury back to back every time I started to PE pop my head up it was like whacka yeah
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ex that's what it sounds like and and I mean I'm just feeling you right now you know you think what does this do
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to our mental health how do you keep yourself sane beses I walk the dog I walk the I
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walk the dog I literally I walk the dog um I I play lots of lots of soft music
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that helps the dog too I mean she's now a working dog right she knows that she
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so the joke was I got her trained and reg legit uh support animal emotional
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support animal in fact I was her emotional support human everybody knows
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it and now she is now she is my parents emotional support animal so she knows
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she's a working dog she spends her days with them she comes home to sleep
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sometimes sometimes she'll just say I'm exhausted I'm going to bed and she puts herself to bed at their place um you
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know you watch you kind of have to work with what's in front of you my biggest
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challenge was that I couldn't work that on one hand I was grateful
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that I didn't have a lot of work going on on the other hand I desperately needed to have something going on that
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gave me structure but the part that took me down was that I wondered if this was
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my forever now is this what was going to so you're not alone right you are not
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alone when you say that because even to this day I will sometimes say is this
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how it's going to be forever and I need to then really have
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to rework that and say I'm I'm I'm happy I'm joyful and and turn it around so if
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it is my forever it's okay I what do you I mean that's a scary thought right is
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this going to be my life is this going to be my forever and what happened when my mom had her stroke
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within 10 days I put on 10 pounds like my body just went
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into crisis mode because at that time I also was in this big business project
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that we hadn't yet wrapped up so I had six weeks left on the project and I was at the highest stress point there so
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just when I thought I was at my Peak stress I took it a step further and you
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think you can't handle it and sometimes honestly you can't and my body just went poof we need more
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protection and I um and I was trying everything I knew to you know bring down
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the inflammation and calm myself and stop the cortisol dumping which at night you have no control uh but this went on
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for months and finally I found a therapist yeah I needed someone
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to guide me and the gift of my therapist was that she has worked with people like
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me and you don't have resources right on how to to handle what you're going
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through ex exactly and are you a private person I mean do you talk about what's
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going I mean we're literally on live right now talking about it publicly but generally in your life do you walk
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around telling people what's going on in your personal life I know I don't and I'm G of course not and I host I host a
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TV show I host a TV show but we don't talk about me right exactly Robin Saul
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says hey Robin good to have you on the show today uh this is beautiful and such a gift for all of you I've been through
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this with my grandmother and grandfather these conversations are so needed for so many of us remembering we're not alone
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is important thank you thank you because we're not I mean we're not alone um
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so you are you you're obviously are working you are still working um in between not working in between taking
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care care of your family um you've got projects that you're working on why do you continue is this just to keep you
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going why do you continue doing this uh why do I keep doing what taking
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care of them no not your I know why you take care of your parents why and I know why you take you're a caregiver uh why
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do you keep pursuing being a brand and image advisor
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do you do you look at yourself as your job that that defines you I'm always
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interested do jobs Define people or or do people Define people so do you
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continue to work because your job defin you no I believe I continue to work
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because I love to work I love my work and I love the people I come in contact
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with the one thing that stayed consistent through all of this was my hosting good day that was really uh a
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lifesaver for me because it kept me in contact with amazing people it gave me
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something that I could control and do it in my own time and and that was that was
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important I think we all need to feel productive and it's not that what I'm doing with my parents isn't productive
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but there are other people like to some to some degree I need to let my father
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you know control part of what they're going through I need to tell my brother
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when he needs to come in I need to tell my niece and nephew you need to come spend some time with them right I mean
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it's only because I'm Hands-On every day and I live so close like my sister-in-law when I chose that apartment my sister-in-law said are you
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sure like really I get I get that you're moving to the area but are you sure you want to be in the building no I I I get
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I get that so yeah and and it she was real it was very real but I I think
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number one I appreciate you when you opened this you said I'm grateful you did what you did and I will never it's
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like staying down here in Mexico I mean it sounds like you know we're at a fabulous Resort um and I you know
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jokingly my brother said what you're calling this taking the bullet for the team but then on the other hand he heard
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my mother going off on the other end of the phone and said okay you're taking the bullet for the team this time okay
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Chris I'm I'm chuckling this is his hi from Belgium Karen Lauren and suanne when I was caring for my mother my cat
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was my caretaker I love it oh my God how many of you listening and tuning in right now your pets are your support
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your pets are your caretakers we all I mean I have a dog and and I he's all over social media because he makes me
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smile and he takes me out of that space of being sad basically of being sad I
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don't know about you Lauren um none of us until we get to that age right none
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of us until we get to the age of our parents and what's going on there know what it's like to be towards the end
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part of our life we don't because either you just die because you have an illness or something or you get old and you die
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of old age and so one of the things I've done with my parents and I've been very vocal about it is I want them to talk to
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me about what it's like being them right now at this time in their life because
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it teaches me how to to be and I want to pass that on to my kids as well I think
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that if we were better equipped I think if we were all better equipped to deal with death now of course I come from I'm
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a caner I'm a retired caner I dealt with death almost every single day I mean I I must have done thousands of funerals and
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for me I still don't deal well with death because it was death over there and so for me right now I am literally
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thank you Robin I am literally learning how they are doing this are you learning from your parents right
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now I'd like to be able to say yes but I'm not really
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sure I I learned from my father my father well my father and I have always
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been closer um and I learn from him
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through his storytelling now like he'll say to me you you the way you see Mommy
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now it's not really that different than the way she was before we would go on vacation she didn't go in the pool you
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know or we would go out to dinner and she would start up conversations with
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anybody who walked by you know and he's sharing he's sharing things that I
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wouldn't normally know uh I mean we vacationed as a family for a very long
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time all of us the four of us with my brother sister-in-law then added the
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kids it's only recently that we haven't been taking these complete vacations but
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I realize that um you know it's it's been different when they go alone and so
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now my dad and I are having these conversations and also at home because I struggle with some of her behavior is it
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cogn is it cognitive dissonance is it failure is it is there something we
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should be paying attention to and and really um you my father's just really
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realistic he says look neither one of us expected to live live this long he said
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so but for you that's kind of the lesson but for you and your brother I'm sure you're saying how lucky are we to have
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our parents still and I like to say because my again I I come from good stock my parents are still working both
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of them you know even in in their old age and I and I look up to that and I
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think because of that I am who I am today which I don't think I was really
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aware of it until they got to this age that I mean I should be we should all be aware we come from our parents we learn
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from our parents we you know that but I don't think I really understood how much my parents have taught me just by being
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yeah just by doing where have you been or where do you want to go that inspires
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you or motivates you when you're not at home with your parents or sitting in Mexico do you have a somewhere a desire
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you want to go so it's very interesting coming back
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coming to Mexico uh really reminded me of how much i l living in Southern
25:04
California there's an energy there that is very much in sync with my heart and
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my spirit being close to the water being able to end your day by walking on the
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beach um right literally uh just and the resort we're in I lived in Newport
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Bluffs and it looks like this Resort would be like Newport Bluffs if it grew
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a couple feet would be this Resort got a little bit bigger so it does feel like it does feel
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like coming home which is interesting because I hadn't thought about that I've been back to California a few times
25:40
since for work um and for friend occasions and things like that but I
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hadn't I've been so busy being in the thick of doing what I'm doing right that
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I hadn't really thought about how it has impacted my energy my
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spirit and all that and and down here I've kind of been reminded so at some point I knew I've always known that this
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is not you know the DC area is not my last stop and that I will get back to
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that softer gentler energy I mean I grew up on the East Coast so I lived in New
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Jersey I lived in Manhattan more of my life than anywhere else and um and then
26:21
Southern California now back to DC and I I know that I can I can very happy
26:29
anywhere but energetically I I need to go to places like this to rejuvenate and and get
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myself re-energized um the one thing I really do miss is travel and I have
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friends you know with with covid we all kind of scattered right um there was a time when the core of my people were in
26:51
Southern California now we're all over the world right and so now I'm actually
26:56
with my mom um and my dad feeling a little more confident in management and
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also um just you know my brother's life settling in a little bit I will travel I
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will travel more again and um and I'm working so it there
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is an energy of just being engaged with people from outside and I think that's
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the key to the question that you asked me earlier friends and family and pharmaceuticals are one subset but
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having people to talk to every day who have nothing to do with any of that right I think is really important too I
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agree with you 100% which leads me to the last question I want to ask you and I actually want to ask our viewers as
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well if you want to share with us um how do you want to be
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remembered I would like to be remembered well and as kind and
27:56
loving I've asked my niece and nephew funny enough I recently we were driving
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and they were in the back seat and I said so not in a gross weird kind of way
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but if I die what will you remember most about our time together and once they
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got over the weird question from crazy Auntie they they they were good with it
28:20
um and they they I could see in the rearview mirror they kind of looked at each other and then they looked back at
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me and they said all the amazing places you've taken us like everything we you
28:31
every time you were here we did cool stuff every time we came to you we did all kinds of cool stuff um the
28:40
experiences the experience yeah the experiences and I I think that is so
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cool because it's not a thing it's not a it's not like you gave them something a
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gift it's the experiences that you gave them by all the places you took them
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what a wonderful Legacy to you la oh my gosh that is so cool so I'm good I'm
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good with that I feel like I'm okay and I want to drop in one little note because you talk about learning from
29:06
your parents now my mother's brother died last January he was 96 my father's first cut my father's an
29:14
only child his cousin his closest cousin died last year at 103 and her sister at
29:20
98 still plays Bridge every day so to say that I come from long lived people
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right and I don't if I don't think any of them grew up in a Blue Zone I don't think any of them would know what the
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blue zones are but but yes I come from long lived good stock My grandmother
29:38
used to say peasants never die good thing we're peasants and
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so well okay there's always a positive spin on everything I love that um for
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those of you who want to know how you can stay in touch with Lauren and also go check out her website at Laurens
29:56
solomon.com what are they going to find there Lauren when they go over there they're going to find my journey a story
30:02
the story about me and what I've done what I'm doing now and if there's something in there that's interesting to
30:08
you then hop along drop me a note and let's let's be in contact I love that um
30:13
and on LinkedIn they would go to LS image Lauren Solomon image on Facebook
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it's Lauren Solomon and on Instagram I like to say you're everywhere LS image
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as well any last thoughts for our audience who participated lovely today thank you guys I really appreciate you
30:32
joining in on the conversation any last minute thoughts for you you know I hope everyone has an
30:40
opportunity to to feel like you've
30:45
contributed to an elder um I really do I feel like the choices that you mentioned
30:53
earlier one of my my best friend from the seventh grade her mother and my mother had strugg within days of each
30:59
other two weeks later her mother passed my mother continued as we see um and you
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don't know why and and there is no there is no explanation in the end but you
31:11
realize that there is nothing um there is there's nothing we
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can do to make it different than it's going to be except for the time that we have right now so I don't get mad yeah I
31:24
don't get frustrated maybe that's the Zoloft speaking
31:31
maybe yeah I you know what I've learned I've learned what I
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need to be the kind of person I want to be in order to contribute to whatever
31:45
time they have left and make it better I really do wish everyone could kind of
31:51
adopt that perspective when it is insanely frustrating and all you want to
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do is just Le them then and there but take a deep breath go into the other
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room pet your dog pet your cat do not kick the cat do not kick the dog do not
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kick your mother do not kick your father go in another room and take a breath but
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you know what I'm we're laughing we're making a joke about this but it's really really good advice because sometimes a
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lot of times we're all in situations where what the best situ what the best thing for us to do is just take a breath
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and remove ourselves right because because we'll just leave it at that because I want to thank you for joining
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us today um I I just love talking with you I I give you a as I said at the very
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beginning I I'm just so grateful that you did what you did and you are such a good example for all of us
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um thank you for tuning in everyone you have a choice as to where you spend your time you chose to spend it with Lauren
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and I I am very grateful I know that Lauren is great ful as well go out give
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somebody an awesome day and we'll see you next time on Karen Glasser live goodbye everyone
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