Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Hi, everyone. This is Dawn Klem, and you're on my podcast, Milkweed and Monarchs.
[00:00:07] I wanted to take some time today to talk about inspiration and who actually inspired me to do this podcast.
[00:00:19] So, as you already know, inspiration can come from a variety of things.
[00:00:27] It can come from nature.
[00:00:29] It can come from your parents.
[00:00:31] In the first episode, I told you how my dad said, nobody helped me and I'm not going to help you. That actually was inspiring to me to get. To get on with my life.
[00:00:46] It can come from your siblings, your friends. It can come from nature. It could come from church.
[00:00:53] There's so many things. A song, a great book.
[00:00:58] But what happened to me is I'm gonna tell you a story now. I. My oldest daughter was turning 30.
[00:01:08] She is a recruiter for a Catholic college, and her assignment for recruiting students is in various different states, and one of them happens to be California.
[00:01:24] So she was going to be going to California during the time that she was turning 30.
[00:01:31] So she was going to be out there by herself on her 30th birthday, and she didn't want to be by herself on her 30th birthday.
[00:01:41] I was recently retired about a three weeks, and so I did have an opportunity to be able to go with her.
[00:01:52] I had lived in San Diego all that time, which I had told you about previously, so it was a chance for me to go back and relive some of my memories from when I had lived out there and had been in the Navy.
[00:02:10] So I decided to join her out there.
[00:02:14] And it was a great thing, really. It was just a spectacular vacation.
[00:02:20] But the first thing that happened is she picked me up from the airport, and like typical tourists, we went out to eat, did a little shopping, went back to the hotel.
[00:02:34] The next day we got up, and she was concerned because she knows I like to walk, that maybe she didn't have a comfortable enough pair of shoes with her.
[00:02:47] So just down the road from our hotel was a Marshall's store, which any woman that's on this podcast knows that Marshalls has great deals and it's a great place to shop.
[00:03:02] So we finish eating breakfast and we decide to head down to Marshall's.
[00:03:08] We're in this shoe section looking for a pair of shoes. Even I was looking for a pair of shoes. You can always use another pair of shoes, ladies.
[00:03:19] And I saw this woman kind of lurking around. I didn't think much of it.
[00:03:25] I've already told you that I'm short, so.
[00:03:29] And I think I must have, like, a welcoming personality. I do Smile a lot, so that could be it, too, But I'm not very intimidating.
[00:03:39] And this woman, she was just kind of lurking or hovering around us. And I was thinking to myself, what is this all about?
[00:03:47] Finally, she walks up to us and she starts talking to us.
[00:03:53] And she introduced herself right away. Her name was Karen, and she was in her 70s, so it wasn't somebody that, you know, I would feel afraid of.
[00:04:06] She said, oh, what. What brings you into Marshalls today? I'm here, but I don't know why I'm here. I already have so many pairs of shoes and clothes. I just like to come in here and look around.
[00:04:20] So we explained to her that we were basically tourists, and we were in here to get a pair of comfortable shoes so we could sightsee and walk around.
[00:04:32] Then at that point, she launched into, really, the story of her life. She told us an amazing story.
[00:04:43] I remember I just stood there captivated for, like, 20 minutes while she was telling us the story of her life.
[00:04:51] And I.
[00:04:55] I really thought about that story. After that encounter, I actually took her phone number and gave her mine and told her that she would be hearing from me again. I didn't know what I was going to do with that. I thought, well, maybe I. I will just call and check on her, you know, just see how she's doing in her life.
[00:05:18] I really didn't know.
[00:05:20] So anyhow, we proceed through the next five days of our vacation. She's working, I'm vacationing at a fabulous time.
[00:05:30] And in the end of the vacation, when I'm back on the plane, all I could think about was this woman's story.
[00:05:39] First of all, just to let you know, her name is Karen.
[00:05:43] And I know that doesn't necessarily have a good connotation right now, but she was anything but what they talk about when they use Karen in a negative terms now.
[00:05:59] She was wonderful.
[00:06:01] And I just kept thinking about her story the whole time I was on the plane. I'm like, what am I going to do with this information?
[00:06:07] I feel like I need to do something with this information.
[00:06:11] I thought about it, and I thought about it. I started thinking about things like Profiling Courage from John F. Kennedy. I started thinking about other books and stories that I had heard in my life. And I just was so convinced that this was a story that needed to be told, and I was going to be the one to tell it because she wasn't going to tell the story.
[00:06:41] I think most. Maybe that's why she came into my life, because I was supposed to tell her Story.
[00:06:48] So I got home and I'm telling my husband the whole story. My husband's like, oh, my gosh.
[00:06:55] I mean, he already kind of knows that I'm, you know, a talker and that I talk to everyone. So he wasn't surprised that somebody came up and started talking to me.
[00:07:06] And I'm like, I can tell her story.
[00:07:09] Should I write a book? What should I do? I'm gonna write. I really wanna tell her story.
[00:07:14] I think there's so many people out there right now that are hungering or wanting stories to inspire them, to keep going or make them have feel good moments.
[00:07:30] And we, because we know we're in challenging times right now.
[00:07:36] This is nothing new. We've been in challenging times before, but I think because we hear about it so much, it feels heavier.
[00:07:47] So I wanted to do something that would get an inspirational message out.
[00:07:55] And of course, then I started thinking about, well, I have had all those patients. I'm telling you, the last job that I had as a brain tumor nurse navigator, I had so many inspiring things happen to me while I was doing that job.
[00:08:15] And that inspiration is what kept me going for such a long time. So I thought about them, I thought about my own life. I thought about all my friends and their lives because all, all of us have had that point of inspiration that really changes the way you feel or really, more importantly, lets us know that we are all interconnected, we are all part of this giant team here.
[00:08:48] And I think that's something that maybe we need to hear more often.
[00:08:54] Maybe we need to start sharing these stories.
[00:08:57] So I started talking about writing a book. I've always talked about writing a book.
[00:09:04] And.
[00:09:05] But you know, I, I do have a lot of energy, so trying to get me to sit down to write a book was going to be a challenge.
[00:09:12] And then my husband, who was an engineer, thankfully, he.
[00:09:19] He really thought, you know what? I don't think a podcast would be a bad thing for you.
[00:09:24] I really don't think a podcast would be a bad thing.
[00:09:27] I went to a counselor and I talked to her and we worked through the whole thing about writing a book versus doing a podcast.
[00:09:37] And she really, with my husband are the ones that inspired me to do this podcast, besides Karen, because this is the drop off story right here. This is the story that actually got me going.
[00:09:52] So I'm going to tell you her story. First. I want to tell you that I did call her. I called her so many times and we talked on the phone a lot.
[00:10:01] And then I actually did tape her and, and the unfortunate part is I got about halfway through taping her and I was new to the equipment, so this is all new to me. I'm a nurse. I don't know how to talk into a microphone and most of the time I have a loud voice anyway.
[00:10:23] I wouldn't really need a microphone. Maybe that's another thing from being short. You talk louder because you want to make sure you're heard.
[00:10:31] People look above you or over your head, they don't look down at you.
[00:10:36] But anyway, the other thing is I wasn't really ready to do the podcast. I think I was just so excited about her story that I wanted to get it on tape.
[00:10:48] I have half of it on tape.
[00:10:50] But I'm going to tell the story anyway because the other thing is I really should have gotten a consent from her. At the time, I didn't know I was going to do a podcast, so there was no consent.
[00:11:02] And so I, I think I can do her story justice.
[00:11:07] And once again, I'd love to hear from you. Any feedback would be wonderful.
[00:11:13] So, so here we go.
[00:11:14] Karen was born in Chicago, in the Chicago area.
[00:11:20] It was her parents and six children.
[00:11:23] She was one of the middle children, I think she was third actually.
[00:11:30] And they lived in a one bedroom apartment, if you can imagine that. She said that every night they would get their cots out, the kids, and they would sleep in the living room and the parents slept in the bedroom.
[00:11:45] Her dad was a salesman, so he was gone a lot during the day and the mom was a stay at home mom with the kids.
[00:11:55] After a while it became obvious to the dad, oh, and just to let you know, they were of Polish descent and that's an important thing to remember.
[00:12:07] So after a while when the kids were, you know, getting towards 10, the oldest ones, he decided that this one bedroom apartment wasn't really going to work for them. So he got another job.
[00:12:19] And the job was still in the Chicago area, but they lived in a bigger house.
[00:12:28] So it was the first time the kids actually got to share bedrooms. And they were all so excited about it.
[00:12:35] Their dad was a hard worker, but he was a drinker.
[00:12:41] And she said she always felt sorry for the oldest two children because he could be violent with them. So he took out his frustrations mostly on the two older children.
[00:12:58] One day he had gone to work and later that night they get a knock at the door and it's a policeman telling them that their father had been in a car accident and he was killed. So their dad died.
[00:13:16] The mom was like oh, my goodness. What am I going to do now? What am I gonna do?
[00:13:23] I have no idea how I'm gonna handle these six children alone.
[00:13:31] I think one of her sisters lived near her. And one of her sisters lived in California at the time.
[00:13:42] So she decided that she was going to go out to California and leave the children with her sister.
[00:13:49] To see if there was a way that she could move her family out there. And she'd be able to get work and be able to take care of her family.
[00:13:59] One of the things that Karen told me many, many times.
[00:14:04] Is that they were always called Pollocks when they were in school in the Chicago area. And they were told time and time again, you're a Polack, you're not smart. You're never going to go anywhere.
[00:14:18] So I just wanted to mention that because I think, you know, we hear so much about racism now. But racism has been going on for a very long time. It just moves from different factions or religions or, you know, cultures.
[00:14:39] And really, we could do better. Yeah, we could do better. We could be nicer. I don't have to single out thing. People like that.
[00:14:49] That weighed on her a lot.
[00:14:52] She never thought she was smart enough. She never thought she was good enough.
[00:14:57] She didn't, when she was telling me the story, she didn't feel sad about.
[00:15:02] Was just a fact that influenced her in her life.
[00:15:07] So, anyhow, back to the story. Her mom flew to California, Southern California, actually, the Arcadia area.
[00:15:17] And she ended up finding work. And so all of the kids ended up going out there with their mom.
[00:15:25] Karen was going to be a freshman in high school when she got out there. And she actually did start to school.
[00:15:31] But it was obvious to her that her mom was going to need help.
[00:15:35] So she quit school in the ninth grade. And she started working as a housekeeper in hotels. To help her mom make sure that they had money to take care of the family and all of the kids.
[00:15:50] So from there, she wanted to get a job in Woolworths. She thought she could make more money.
[00:16:00] And they did hire her. And she went to work in Woolworths behind the counter, waiting on people.
[00:16:10] And when people would come in, customers, she would start to notice them.
[00:16:17] So pretty soon, people were. Women were coming in that were dressed very nicely. And Karen would strike up a conversation with them. And they would tell her that they were bank tellers at the bank there.
[00:16:32] So finally one day she had the courage to say, well, how can I become a bank teller?
[00:16:38] So they asked her questions about herself. And then they told her, in order for you to become a bank teller, you're gonna have to get your ged.
[00:16:48] So she went back to school, she got her ged, and then when she graduated, they hired her to work at the bank as a bank teller.
[00:16:59] So that was a really good thing for her. She ended up meeting her husband while she was a bank teller. He was a sheriff in their local town. They ended up getting married, and then from there she still was meeting people all the time coming into the bank, and she ended up meeting a woman who worked for a skincare company similar to a Mary Kay.
[00:17:28] And so she talked to her and she started working part time selling the products.
[00:17:35] And she really, really loved doing that. She would go into people's homes and do demonstrations. She felt like she was going into homes where the young ladies and the mothers would never have an opportunity to understand beauty and try to improve themselves if she didn't go in there. So she felt like she was doing a really great service to people.
[00:18:05] And even when I was talking to her, she said, if this podcast gets out there and it changes any one person's life, I will have done my job. So that's the type of person that she is. She. She just wants to do good and to help people. But every step along the way, she would ask the question, well, how can I do that? And every step along the way she would get instruction and then she would take the direction and then she just kept moving forward.
[00:18:38] I mean, from a family where they told you, you know, your dad's an alcoholic and your family was ridiculed for being Polish, she ended up living an amazing life.
[00:18:53] So she continued on with this.
[00:18:56] She worked at the bank for 10 years as a teller, and then she decided to go out on her own and just be a skin care specialist for this company.
[00:19:08] And when she did, she became the number one seller of the the year.
[00:19:16] And they had a big, huge celebration. And she actually got a fur coat at that time for a mink coat before PETA to celebrate her success.
[00:19:32] She told me when I walked across that stage, dawn, that was my prom for me, because she never went to high school, so she never got to go to the prom. She never felt like she really fit in. But she didn't let that stop her in her life. She never let it stop her.
[00:19:54] And even now, she's still part time, works with the skincare company.
[00:20:01] She's just the most amazing person.
[00:20:03] It was, it just was like a story of, you're not going to, you don't have to give up in this life. You can be told that you're not worth it, but you can rise above it. And that's what Karen did.
[00:20:20] It was.
[00:20:22] I mean, I'm always going to think about her. I'm always going to think about her. And she is very, very spiritual herself.
[00:20:32] So she feels like she didn't have a father growing up because her father was in Jesus Christ.
[00:20:41] So she's very spiritual, a good Christian. She has all that that just kept her going. She had a lot of faith. And I think we could all have a little Karen in us, couldn't we?
[00:20:58] So that's the end of this episode. I hope you enjoyed my story about Karen. I'm gonna try to contact her again and see if I can just tell some parts of her story or have her re record. Because just hearing the story from her is an amazing thing.
[00:21:17] But I wanted to let you know how I started, what inspired me to get going, and her story definitely inspired me because I wanted to get that story out.
[00:21:33] I will put this podcast out I'm trying to do every other week. It may end up being weekly. I'll let you know if that happens. I hope you enjoyed the story today. Your feedback is always welcome.
[00:21:49] So thank you for listening and I hope you join me again next time.
