Motivational Leadership Speaker, Bestselling Oprah Author

Archive for the ‘Fawn’ Category

My Uncle Chuck is my touchstone. He has been there for me since the day I was born, and now we are having conversations about his Hospice care and what the future holds. Facing this goodbye is one of the saddest experiences of my life. He means so much to me.

I grew up in Michigan, surrounded by the coolest set of aunts, uncles and cousins a kid could want. We saw each other all the time. My grandfather died when I was in grade school and Uncle Chuck took over as patriarch of the Himelhoch clan. He was there for band concerts and bat mitzvahs, family gatherings and quick stopovers. When my pharmacist father was shot and wounded in a holdup, Uncle Chuck was already waiting for us at the hospital when we arrived.

He has always been a remarkable man. His wife died when he had three small boys, but they were his most important priority. He raised them to be good, honorable men. My uncle has always been a compassionate, understanding role model for all of us, telling us that nothing matters more than integrity and truth.

Mom and Dad moved my family to Florida when I was 15. As I graduated high school, then college, I built a life that didn’t intersect with my Michigan family very often. I moved to Jacksonville, then the Miami area, then to Colorado, then back to Florida. My relatives meant a lot to me, but I didn’t see them or call much.

That changed a year ago when a painful situation arose with my sibling. When my aunts, uncles and cousins found out about it, they circled around me and wrapped me in support and love. I used to fear that I’d be alone once my parents passed away. I now know that I will never be alone. I have a huge family that is there for me now and always.  And I will be there for them.

I wanted to send Uncle Chuck something that would tell him how much it meant to me that he’d come to my rescue in such a dark moment. “Just call him more often,” my friend Pam suggested. I said, “Yeah, but I haven’t been doing that all along. Wouldn’t that seem odd?” “It’ll mean everything to him,” she said.

It has meant everything to me. I started calling every week or so, and he called me, too. Now it is almost every day because he is so homebound and I want as much time with him as I can have. He’ll hear my voice and say, “Hello, Sweetheart? Fawn?” Our relationship has deepened and grown so much that I feel like I truly know him now. He gives me unconditional love and is a big part of my life. We’ve talked about ethics and politics and family history and the Hereafter. We’ve shared so much that we never discussed before.

Why didn’t I have conversations like these with my dear Uncle Bob and Uncle Hank before it was too late? They were such great men, and I know I had a lot to learn from them, too. The lesson for me has been that family matters. Grab it while you can. And grab it where you can.

Every time we talk, he says, “I’m going to give you an assignment. You know what it is, don’t you?” It’s to give my sweet mother and father hugs and kisses from him. Now that he is feeling so ill and speculating that time may be short, I am giving him an assignment: to tell all my loved ones who have passed on to the other side how much I miss and love them. And to give them hugs and kisses from me.

This world is better because he’s been in it, and heaven will be brighter when he goes. I will miss him so much. My sweet, sweet uncle.

I am going out of my mind being trapped inside by a merciless sinus infection.

I joke about it, but it has really made me think about what my mother has been through in the eighteen years since a stroke left her disabled. Although there were many years when we could take her out for activities, she was largely homebound. When Alzheimer’s showed up in 2001, it got worse. She’s been in a nursing home for the last three years and I don’t know how she’s coped with it, except that she has.

These days, she doesn’t talk. The only thing I’ve gotten out of her is a “yes” on three occasions when I repeatedly asked if she was happy.

What is she thinking? I really wonder that. With so many endless hours in bed or in her wheelchair,  what is she thinking? Until the last six months, there were moments when I suspected there was more happening inside her mind than she could convey, and in one of her more lucid moments, I asked her about it. I said, “Is there more going on inside your head than we think?” “Yes,” she said. I asked her what, but she didn’t answer. I knew from the way she looked at me that she was right there with me, so I shared something with her that I had wanted to tell her for a long time. I knew she understood me because she reached her arm to me and drew me to her. She hugged me tight. I knew she’d heard and understood everything I’d said, yet she couldn’t acknowledge it verbally.

Day after day after day after day. Hour after hour after hour after hour. She is there, in the same place, locked in a body that can’t walk or stand or eat or communicate. I do think she means it when she tells me she is happy. I just wonder how she finds that happiness. I know there is some sort of profound learning that has happened to help her to cope with her disabilities and continue to live and find joy. I want to know what she’s learned, how she’s learned it.

A couple of years ago, there was an episode of Grey’s Anatomy where Meredith’s mother “woke up” out of her Alzheimer’s and Meredith could have clear, the deep conversations that she needed to have. The clarity didn’t last long, but there was that window. There isn’t much documentation to back up that kind of recovery, but the fantasy is powerful. I wish that I could have a day of clarity with Mom. Or even an hour.

I would tell her how much I love her. How proud I am of her courage. I’d hold her. And love her.

Which is really what I do now.

As I think about all the things that I’d love to tell my mom, it hits me that I really don’t have anything more to say. I’d just like to hear back from her. I miss singing with her. I miss her sense of humor. I miss the sound of her voice. I miss her advice.

But everything is trapped inside.

My old friend Billie just moved in her mother’s home so she can keep her real house in pristine condition while she tries to sell it. The home is worth a fortune, and it must sell because she is a single parent who was laid off — another victim of the demise of daily newspapers.

I’ve known her for more than two decades, and I reminded her of the filthy apartment I helped her clean at the beach before she moved in. We were both in our 20s. She was my editor, mentor and friend. We made no money. But, we lived at the beach. We didn’t go to fancy restaurants or take expensive trips. But, we lived at the beach. We drove old cars and didn’t have any expendible income. But, we lived at the beach.

At the time, I was making $15,000 a year. I remember going out for payday dinner to Quincy’s steak house and ordering the hamburger because it was the cheapest thing on the menu that came with the salad bar. I remember countless camping trips to the barrier islands in North Florida and South Georgia. I remember walking over a beach dune on Cumberland Island one night as the wild horses ran through the water, silhouetted by the heat lightning. And boating on the Okefenokee Swamp, surrounded by a million alligators. And tubing on the Ichetucknee River. Plus so many nights of youthful revelry with our cohorts.

Those were truly happy and fun times. I had so little money and so few things, but I had so much fun. I know I laughed more in those years than any since. We were so young and carefree.

So, here we are. Years later, with nice houses and nice things, eating in fancy restaurants and enjoying the “best” of life. Looking at it now, I realize that we had the best of life when we didn’t have very much at all.  

Granted, Billie’s situation is challenging because she is so devoted to her daughter and wants the best for her. It’s so unfair — she’s truly brilliant. But, she’ll get through this. She just will. And, if she scales back, maybe she’ll remember how much fun it was when we didn’t have so many “things” to worry about.

Last night, she reminded me how I once “punked” her when I sent her a letter  that I’d forged on our publisher’s letterhead. The letter told her that he’d heard she was complaining about her low salary and, while he couldn’t give her any more money, he did want her to have a small token of his appreciation. Inside the envelope was a round button that had been wrapped in paper. Billie felt that package, figured it was a make-up compact, and the publisher’s allegedly sexist gesture infuriated her. But, when she unwrapped it, she discovered a button that said, “POVERTY SUCKS.”

She found the letter recently — and the button. About “POVERTY SUCKS,”  she wrote: “I’m beginning to get the msg. ”

Maybe the message is that the poverty of our early years didn’t suck all that bad. When did we get so grown up that we forgot how rich we already were? I don’t think I have ever been as rich as I was, way back when I was poor.

What I want to know is, who changed the rules? I had a lot of time to think about this as I sat in a Tampa courtroom waiting for the judge to consider my case.

Granted, I was guilty. I’d been going 68 in a 50 mph zone, but to my credit, I truly didn’t know I was speeding. I was driving in an unfamiliar area on a six-lane highway in a rural area that was virtually empty on a Saturday afternoon. I assumed the limit was “fast.” Apparently, not that fast.

In my rear-view mirror, I saw a late model, brown Mustang with a Harley Davidson plate on the front speeding up behind me. What happened next was something out of a science fiction movie.  That Mustang morphed into a light-flashing, no-mercy-whatsoever Florida trooper.

You know what a stop sign looks like, so you know when to stop. You know what a yield sign looks like, so you know when to yield. You know what a state trooper looks like and you know when to slow down and pretend you are going the speed limit. How unfair it is that the state I love would betray me by using decoy cars to trap me, a loyal taxpayer. Shouldn’t we have a fighting chance, especially since the cost of tickets have skyrocketed as the state seeks more sources of revenue?

I asked the trooper to consider my good driving record and he said, “I don’t even look it up. You can go to court and try and work it out there.” I live more than an hour away, but the ticket was in excess of $300 and I was ticked off that I’d gotten it. I had visions of standing up and protesting on behalf of all speeders betrayed by decoy troopers, but I sold those principles right out when the the judge told us that, if we had no tickets in the previous two years, he’d withhold adjudication, erase the points, make sure the insurance company didn’t find out and reduce the fine. Just for showing up.

Sold.

I spent last week on the legendary cycling adventure, the Bicycle Ride Across Georgia. I can’t tell you how much fun I had — but, I can show you.  The good was that I had seven days of hard cycling. The bad was eight nights of sleeping in a tent. That may have been easy in my early 30s, but in my 40s? I was ready for my bed about halfway through it. Anyhow, enjoy these photos. And, if you cycle, check out this great trip!

I have never understood the workaholic mindset, and now that I have slid into it, I am even more bewildered.

I haven’t lived this life since I was a 23-year-old, fresh-out-of-college newspaper reporter working an 80-hour week on a series. One night, a friend stopped by the newsroom to pick something up.

“Why am I still here?” I asked.

“Because your life is meaningless and this is all you have,” she laughed.

Days later, when I turned in my timecard, Joyce Duarte, the assistant to the managing editor, took one look at the hours I’d worked and asked, “Gosh, Fawn. Is it worth it?”

I knew it wasn’t. That was the last time I drove myself that hard. If I worked overtime, I took comp time instead of cash. Always. Time was worth more than money.

Imagine my surprise when I went to bed last night and realized that I am right where I was all those years ago. I am working too long and too hard. I have a purpose! I have a new book coming out! We are setting up multiple websites as part of a new marketing strategy! I am learning the insanity of Web 2.0 and I am trying (and failing) to keep up with e-mail! Isn’t that exciting?

No! For those of you who come to my website looking for the daily dose of optimism, hang with me. It is coming.

It is coming because I am having an awakening.

If you are working so hard that you aren’t living a full and meaningful life, you are not living. It doesn’t matter what you do to drive your success — you are not successfully living because work is not enough. It isn’t. It’s a challenging part of your life, but it is not your life. Not if you are getting the deluxe tour.

I only get to live once. You only get to live once.

I don’t know about you, but I am going for a very long bike ride. What are you going to do to live right now?

Fawn Germer is the best-selling author of four books. Her fifth book, Finding the UP in the Downturn, will be released in April. She travels internationally as a keynote speaker who works with organizations and companies that want more courageous and creative performance.

It’s been a week since the Rocky Mountain News published its final edition. Some of my old colleagues have forged on, using the Internet to keep the Rocky’s spirit alive at www.iwantmyrocky.com. This is pretty revolutionary stuff.

It reminds me of the time the IRS shut down a Popeye’s Chicken franchise in Denver. The next morning, the employees opened up and cooked and sold the remaining chicken so they would get paid for the week. Granted, they got in a lot of trouble, but I really loved that they banded together and carried on.

That is what these former Rocky staffers are doing. They can still do great journalism without the hard copy of the newspaper. Instead of surrendering, they are fighting back with their talent. I’ve always said, your job may not last but your talent does. This website is proof.  I hope it will become profitable and a template for other reporters who find themselves losing out in this economy.

Please visit their site and click on their ads to drive up revenues and support these swashbuckling reporters. And, pass on the word.

I felt so bad that the tradition of Rocky founder William Byers was dying with that last edition, but it’s not. This is exactly what Byers would have wanted.

Again: www.iwantmyrocky.com!

This is going to be quite a month, and a real endurance test. I am off on a marathon speaking run that will give me only two breaks at home. It culminates with a two-week run to Portland, Or., Chicago, Miami, Bentonville, Ar. and San Antonio. I will come home and have less than 24 hours to recover before doing the 3-day, 60-mile walk for breast cancer.

I’m not complaining. There was a time when I griped about the rigors of the road travel I had to do and, guess what? Business dried up. I have learned that the magic (and my income) is out there on the road, so I have this mantra that I embrace wholeheartedly: I LOVE TO TRAVEL. Bring it on. Book me some more. 

Seriously, I can’t believe I get paid to have this much fun. I go out there, I stand onstage and feel beloved, I meet all kinds of great people, then I get to come home and live in Clearwater, Fl. This is a good life.

Anyhow, the point of this blog is that I will do my best to post while I am out there. But, if I miss a few days, don’t kill me. It’ll slow down after convention season ends.

Fawn Germer is the best-selling author of four books, including an Oprah pick. She speaks to corporations and organizations on courageous and creative leadership strategies taken from her interviews with the best-known leaders of our times.