Quote: “My mindset is that I’m there for somebody. Maybe not everybody, but I’m there for somebody, and for that person, I can’t be afraid anymore, because that person needs me to show up.” Julie Henry
If the past few years have taught us anything, it’s how to be resilient. But how do we navigate change when the worst imaginable thing happens in our world? On this episode of The Wealthy Speaker Show, I am happy to welcome my client Julie Henry to share her experience about how her life and business have evolved and how she kept going when tragedy struck her family.
Julie is an outdoor explorer and animal lover at heart who is continually learning and sharing leadership lessons inspired by wildlife and wild places. A former zoo and aquarium senior leader, Julie is president of Finish Line Leadership, a strategic facilitation and panel moderation services company, and has worked with over fifty-five organizations across corporate, non-profit, government, association, and community sectors. She was selected as a Fellow of the Toyota TogetherGreen program of the National Audubon Society, chosen for Disney’s Animal Kingdom/World Wildlife Fund Biodiversity Leadership Institute, and a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar to New Zealand.
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Jane Atkinson: Well welcome everyone to the wealthy speaker. Podcast Today we're talking about reclaiming your life and your business really after tragedy, and I have my client with me, Julie. Henry. Welcome to the show, Julie.
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Julie Henry: Thanks, Jane. It's so great to be here with you Now i'm excited to talk to you a little trepidacious, maybe, too, about the whole process that you've been through. But we've been together for some of it, and let's talk
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Jane Atkinson: that current, and then we'll circle back and walk through what's gone on in your life. Talk to me about what's going on, what your business model looks like today.
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Julie Henry: Yeah. So Today I am an author, speaker, facilitator, panel, moderator. Um. Just all things. Speaking as it relates to interacting with people, and it's built on the foundation of a book that I just published. Ah, in January. So it's all based on helping people drive and survive change. And I use animals as a hook and a way to level the playing field when it comes to talking about leadership,
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Julie Henry: um drive and survive change. And i'm thinking you know something about this. So let's
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Jane Atkinson: back to the beginning and talk about you. Well talk about how you got the animal angle. In the first place, what was your day job all the way back to probably just before we met.
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Julie Henry: You know it's not lost on me the irony that my whole business and life and passion is built around change, and that not where you just talk about greeno people. But you know the reality is, I've already been super comfortable with change. I'm the person that you either love or be to work with, because i'm like, Let's try something new and let's try something different, and and then you know, from the very beginning. I was working at Zoos in a
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Julie Henry: aquariums, but my dad was a leadership development. Guru, my mom, was a teacher and I was teaching people, but I was teaching people about, you know, standing in front of the Beluga whale habitat at Shed Aquarium, or teaching people about elephants at bush Guard is down here in Florida, and it was super awesome. But I was always interested in the corporations because I was always saying every place I worked. You know the Xyz Corporation is going to need some place to have a retreat, to do a team building to do a a leadership development session, and they can
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Julie Henry: pay thousands of dollars to the Hyatt, or they can pay thousands of dollars in us
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Julie Henry: far more interesting and practical, in my opinion, to stand outside of coral reef tank and talk about differences in communication and assumptions they make um than it is to go to the Hilton. So it takes people into a completely different setting, and maybe their armor comes down because they're running in front of whales or something cool, and that's a great way to. So you started promoting corporate work while you had your day job.
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Julie Henry: Yeah, I was twenty, two years old and no, this so called. They have a huge, you know plant outside Chicago, and I was just the loud, you know, Squeaky Wheel, if you will. So someone passed the phone call to me and the Nabisco person's like. Well, what could you do for us? And I'm like Well, here's all my ideas that they had been a college project I worked on, and we booked it. And then I
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Julie Henry: Okay? Well, you know, probably I should get some other people involved, because i'm only twenty two, and I got a lot of ideas, but not a lot of street credit yet, so I needed some help. But yeah, every place I went, you know we had
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Julie Henry: ah corporations, government groups, everybody wanting to come to us, and then I jump ship and did the opposite. You know. Once I left that world, I was out in the corporate world working with my clients. But if I could tell you a story about cheetahs and naked bull rats, you know you're paying attention
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Julie Henry: all right. I'm definitely paying attention because i'm very interested I love. Uh, and sometimes when you and I are talking you have a cat stroll across it. I'm like, Yes, that's so perfect, It's so apropos. And I hope it happens when you're actually delivering core work because it's
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your mind.
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Julie Henry: Yeah, Um.
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Jane Atkinson: Okay. So you had these jobs for how many years, and at what point did you decide to leave and pursue speaking as
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Jane Atkinson: uh your full-time gig
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Julie Henry: So I worked for ten years inside zoos and aquarium. Most of that was non-profit, but I did work for bush gardens, which was owned by Anheuser Bush, which was a fortune one hundred company so that's significant, because I understand both sides of the point. Um, when it comes to doing, consulting and training and speaking, but in two thousand and eight, you know quite honestly, two things happened. I had a baby, and I was commuting fifty, nine miles to work each way, and I had, you know, kids from all over the world staying in, you know, On-site Dorm. So I was responsible
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Julie Henry: for people all the time, and I was bored
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Julie Henry: it was hard to get board working at a place with a roller coaster, but I just didn't care about someone Else's budget numbers anymore. I wanted to flex my own creativity muscle and try new things, and when you're the child of two entrepreneurs, you know you're bound to try that. So in two thousand and eight. It was like i'm just ready. We're just going to try it.
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Jane Atkinson: I was like that. Tiny was right on the money. Not so, Ok. So you go out and you say, Tada, I'm, Julie, Henry I'm. Here, and I've got all kinds of lessons that I can bring you from the animal world, et cetera. And what happens?
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Julie Henry: Yeah, Ah kind of the exact opposite that I thought was going to happen. So the people who were really interested like Southwest airlines, you know, they would come to push gardens and do things at our park. And now, of a sudden, i'm Julie Henry on my own, and they were like,
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Julie Henry: Yeah, we don't know if we want to work with you, because we don't know if you have the right experience like what
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Julie Henry: i'm the exact same person. I was two months ago. I just have a different title. So it was jarring. I I just lost. I didn't lose it. I just didn't have the same credibility that I did when I was ironically working with the title that someone else gave me at a brand that someone else created. But it was super jarring. I was it was It was gut-wrenching. How did it affect your confidence?
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Uh
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Julie Henry: oh, gosh! I mean you'd feel like you're gutted right like your knees are swept out from under you. You know I had people tell. I had just as many people tell me. Um, you know we don't think you have enough experience. We don't think you know what you're talking. And then, on the other side of the coin, I would have people saying, Well, you've got too much zoom aquarium experience. You don't have this kind of experience and this kind of experience. I'm like well,
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Julie Henry: and so I just now that's to be fair. I had some clients along the way.
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Julie Henry: I didn't. I kept looking around everybody else like, Why is everybody else succeeding? And i'm not. That's how it feels sometimes. You know, having this daughter and then a son eventually looking at me like Gosh, I just It's hard to define right now. I'm a mother. Now i'm in a different area, and we weren't it wasn't Covid. Yet we weren't, being super transparent about all this difficulty, so I was hiding everything like I have a beauty like shoot. Nope, I have to get my kid down for an app, you know, so I didn't have anybody to to like. Bear my soul to ahead.
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Not you yet, Jane. I needed your help.
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Jane Atkinson: Come along somewhat later, but I think it's just really helpful for people we're talking about really kind of coming back from anything difficult. It could be a disruption in your business. It could be losing your Mojo,
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Jane Atkinson: and I think that that happens to people on the regular. I've had it happen to me, and I've worked my way back up to where I know I definitely had it at the beginning of Covid.
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Jane Atkinson: Um. Okay. So you're moving along in your business, and you're starting to see a little bit of traction. I think we probably started to work together, and leadership becomes the umbrella under which you put everything, and when I first met you
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Jane Atkinson: your husband had already been diagnosed with cancer, and you were in for quite a journey. Talk a little bit about that and the result of the journey.
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Julie Henry: Yeah. So to give some context, I left my business in two thousand and eight, and I left my job. But the job I left was at a marine laboratory in an aquarium here in Sarasota, Florida, at which my husband That's where I met him. And so he had been there for twenty five years at that point. And so I had worked with him for five years. So our work in our passions were always intertwined, and by last of two thousand and eight we had two babies, and then in two thousand and eight
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Julie Henry: and thirteen in February. So this is two years before I started working with you in the span of three days day. One my husband gets a call from the doctor that says they found a soft ball size mass in my lung, and they're worrying about it.
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Julie Henry: Day two. The executive director at the Marine laboratory decides he's going to retire. So now his job is up in the air, and our health insurance is up in the air, and day three we get a letter in the mail that says we're taking your house in imminent domain, and you have thirty days to bake it
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Julie Henry: so literally everything you know. What about Maslow's hierarchy, like everything was like,
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Julie Henry: you know,
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Julie Henry: and so I then had to figure out. Okay, I have a three and a five-year-old. I have a husband now going to battle cancer, and I don't know where we're going to live, and he may have a job, and my income's not at that point steady enough to for him to leave. So it was like
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Julie Henry: it was the beginning. It was ten years ago like, and as i'm talking to you now I can feel it. My heart rate increases, and I can feel the shortness of breath because it was
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Julie Henry: the idea of running your own business is super exciting, and then the reality sets in. I can't tell you how many times, Jane, I would go to some speaking event or something, and it was like.
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Julie Henry: Gosh! You know he's in the hospital getting surgery, or we're setting up for another clinical trial, or we're flying to Seattle tomorrow to go to some blah blah blah blah! You know. I was speaking in Orlando, and he was in the hospital, and someone was supposed to pick him up for me after whatever procedure, and
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Julie Henry: this person called me like, Are you done speaking because my cousins are coming over for dinner, and so I can't pick up your husband, and i'm like
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Julie Henry: i'm literally two hours away. I'm working, and I have to bring in this income. And so my poor husband almost had to take an uber home from the hospital, because I couldn't get him a ride so like all of the like realities of life. Just hit um just at a very basal level.
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Jane Atkinson: I can't even imagine layering on the imminent domain thing and the job and the insurance, and it's so frightening. I live in Kennedy. You live in the United States, and it's so frightening when you think about all of those things combined. So the battle with cancer was a rough one for how many years and talk about Yeah,
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Julie Henry: Yeah. So um. So he ended up battling for five and a half years. And so the reality of that is that many. Like many of your listeners. Probably, Jane, you know the way I connect with my audiences and my clients is by telling stories about my family, about my experiences, and many times i'm in front of
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Julie Henry: technical audiences. So i'm joking like, hey? I'm married to a scientist. I get it. I've got to ignite your right brain or something like that.
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Julie Henry: But I started to hit Walls in that Either a would be a long-term client and they would. Say, Hey, how's your husband doing like right before I went on stage right um or B. I was really hyper-aware like you know some speakers or even when I was, you know. Next on the agenda there were multiple speakers. Inevitably someone from the stage would say something about, and then my mom had cancer, and I rediscovered my purpose in life and that, and like
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Julie Henry: gosh, I just boom! You know I I can't. I? I gotta get back into the game, mindset, if you will. And so I started to try to figure out like I don't even know how to talk about myself anymore. I don't know how to talk my family in five and a half years.
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Julie Henry: Let me think May, of two thousand and eighteen. It's when he passed away, but I I had work, you know, set up like two months later, and my dear clients were like, you know you don't have to do it. I'm like well, I have to, not only for the income, but, like
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Julie Henry: I have to figure out what to do like. I have to get one foot in front of the other. Because if I don't I I don't know if i'll speak again honestly. It was like it was like that.
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It was like learning. It was like learning a whole new language. That's the only thing I can equate it to like. I've moved to France, and I got to figure out how to speak in French. That's what I felt like that.
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Jane Atkinson: Wow! And
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Julie Henry: you also had to still be out there, and you also had to really navigate the landmines that you might have stepped on which would turn into what? On stage, like panic attacks and various things that I mean when you're in the thick of it,
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Jane Atkinson: you really don't know what your emotions are going to do. Right? You're probably writing a roller coaster.
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Julie Henry: Yeah. And i'm a really go with the flow. Speaker, trainer, facilitator.
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Julie Henry: The whole background is in basically facilitation and and on my feet. And so I don't memorize what i'm going to say right like I. I have my idea in my script, and even if i'm giving a keynote for five thousand people, I have my direction, and then I have. Oh, this story comes up because I can feel it in the audience. So that's what happened Like Who this to be? A great story? Oh, shoot it's about my husband!
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Julie Henry: But I would say something like Well, my former husband like Gosh, that sounds weird, or I would say something, and then I would just that i'm off into some hole i'm like, What was I talking about? I was talking about the process of change. Well, how did I get back there? So yeah, it was total landmines,
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Jane Atkinson: the and he had such a connection. He worked in the business with you right for a period of time.
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Julie Henry: Uh, and so he had such a connection to all things business for you that uh? And so now, how do you handle that? Do you want to tell? Share how you handle it today, and kind of talk about someone that was really saying it's, you know.
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Julie Henry: Yeah, and I can also share. You know he was. He was technically my business manager, and So I had all these emails that he'd sent. And now I have to go back and like, figure out. Oh, you know, michael's not in the business anymore, and
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Julie Henry: well, it's not because I fired him. He was my husband. He still is my husband, but he's passed away, and here's the thing I know. I'm not directly answer your question. But while i'm thinking about it, it's like, here's the thing: If something changes in your life like, let's say I showed up, and my husband's not working with me anymore because he's divorced. I'm divorced like chances are
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Julie Henry: people don't typically say like, Oh, gosh! What happened? Did he cheat on you like. Did he meet somebody else like they don't ask the details. But when you, when you show up, and if you have to decide what story you want to tell? Because as soon as I say,
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Julie Henry: oh, he passed away. Well, then, very it it goes from Gosh, i'm so sorry. Can I ask why, and like what he died from like. Well, no, you can't. Well, I've got to say that you know. So you end up in this like. Well, now i'm down, because then what happens? It's like being pregnant like. Oh, he died of cancer. I know somebody else who has cancer, and now we're off on all these like.
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Julie Henry: Oh, my gosh! I just wanted to book my speech so I can pay my bills. You know where I can have my impact, anyway. So it's It's um, it's part of that journey. So I've had to re-figure out, like, you know how to. Oh, and
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Julie Henry: yeah,
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Julie Henry: I think a lot of what I was getting at was when you're telling stories from the platform.
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Julie Henry: Yes, and so there was this friend blah blah blah! You'll refer to him as a friend. So you don't have to go down the big rabbit hole and explain
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Jane Atkinson: or say anything about being a widow, or what have you and and I think that we just find our way. We just try to figure out how to manage in a difficult situation, and that's what works for you right now. Who knows what's going to work for you later on? Right?
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Julie Henry: Yeah. And I didn't figure that out until I wrote the book, and when I wrote the book I thought I have to. He has to be in here because my stories are in here, and when I finally figured out, landed on my friend um that worked for me, and so I just had to embrace it for the time being.
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Jane Atkinson: So
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Jane Atkinson: I have a hard time imagining i'm not even going to say to you. Oh, I can't even imagine, because it's not even enough. It's a silly
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Jane Atkinson: a kid.
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Julie Henry: I don't. I have no clue what this feels like. But I will say that for the first three years of my husband and my relationship I hung on for dear life because he had had a heart attack for years before he met me, and so I know what that feels like. But I definitely I I can't even go there on my mind. So,
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Jane Atkinson: Ok. So how many years beyond? Obviously you said two thousand and eighteen.
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Jane Atkinson: We are four years down the road,
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Julie Henry: and do you feel like you're starting, I mean, I've watched you evolve because you sort of go back to me in the last year, and I have watched you get your name on, and I just want to say what a pleasure it's been to see the badass come out and play. I don't know that I ever really met that as before,
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Jane Atkinson: you kind of have. So let's go back to When you first published your book. I remember one of our meetings where you were like
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Julie Henry: this isn't working. It's not happening, and i'm like, Wait a second. Your book was published. What? Three weeks ago. But i'm not. Let's just talk about this. So talk about. Let's go from the book forward and kind of who you belong to me.
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Julie Henry: Yeah, and I and i'll, you know. So he passed away in May of two thousand and eighteen, and I can't say enough about my National Speakers Association families, especially the Central Florida chapter, because
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Julie Henry: Holy Cow did they show up for me like I would like. It took me months before I could go back to a meeting, and then it was because someone picked me up in my house, and I sat by the door, and I was like trepidacious right. And so that happened, and then people would like pay for me to come it like you know, the administrator would say, Hey, someone pay for your registration next month you should come.
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Julie Henry: Yeah, and it's all those little things that are not little, but it's little. And then you know what happened is there's a a man, a mentor in my chapter, so any of you who are involved in the National Speakers Association, Barry Vander, who is past chair and the Board, you know he's down here.
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Julie Henry: Yeah. And he and he had met my husband because we'd gone out to a winter conference in San Francisco in two thousand and sixteen, so he met him, and Barry is a a gem of a person, and he came up to me after a meeting. This was in summer, so been a year, and he came up to me, and he said, Please let me know
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Julie Henry: how I could help you
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Julie Henry: and him saying that to me I just got all a teary item like very.
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Julie Henry: I don't know what to do, and he was like, You need to call me, and we're going to have coaching. And so I went to California that summer. Um. My kids went to a camp, and I'm sitting at a little cottage, and I called him. This is July of two thousand and nineteen, and I would say, Barry, I just I want to talk about animals. I want to talk about animals and change. I've been doing this since one thousand nine hundred and ninety six. It just has to do it. I don't know how, and i'm going on and on and on, he said, Well give me some examples. So I started talking about naked molarants and all this stuff, and he cut me off,
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and he was like Julie.
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Julie Henry: This is a book you have to write this book, and I was like,
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Julie Henry: okay,
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Julie Henry: like no, and I I have a picture of the table with all my note cards, although I still have my numbers. They're right outside the the view of this lens here in Zoom, and and I was like, Oh, my gosh! And he said, Nope, I'm going to connect you with my Publishing Company Green Leaf Book Group. I want you to connect with them. See It's the right. See if it's the right fit. So one month later
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Julie Henry: I was like, you know. What if Barry thinks I can do it? I'm going to try it, because Mike would be like super on board, and Mike was super. My husband was super practical, right scientists. And so i'm like, Okay, drink a glass of wine. I'm just going to like try it. So I put together this, you know,
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Julie Henry: proposal, and I'm like, Okay, i'm going to hit. Send,
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Julie Henry: and then in the September, you know two. It was supposed to be four to six weeks, and two weeks later they called me, and they were like, you know what. Thank God, someone put a new spin on leadership because we've published so many leadership books. We're kind of getting sick of it, I mean, not really. But you know it's something.
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Julie Henry: So that was two thousand and nineteen,
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Julie Henry: and and then Covid hit, which happened to be a breeding disease, and my husband died of lung cancer. So all of the panic came back in. So now, you know, I thought it would be really quick, and so I hit another year and a half of panic attacks. Um, because people would say like, Oh, you know, I'm watching people not be able to breathe. I'm like, Yeah, I know about that, You know. I slept next to somebody for four and a half years, five and a half years I could dream. Oh, geez,
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Julie Henry: it took me a long time. So uh, so go through Covid
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Julie Henry: book.
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Julie Henry: Okay, just figure it out. Just just try it. Just try it and um. And then once it got out there in the world, and once I felt like my stories wanted to replace, and I felt like my husband was, you know, releasing me a little bit like It's enough. It's enough. It's enough. And then I think you know what I told you, James. I have a steer man in my life who I've known for twenty five years, and he was like tools.
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Julie Henry: You just don't have to prove anything anymore.
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And that was it. That was one of the lightning switches. I mean, there's been a lot, but that one in particular I can think about a couple of months ago.
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Julie Henry: Okay.
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Julie Henry: So you took on a new attitude.
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Julie Henry: That's whether or not we say what it's called. That's a gru it attitude. But you all can imagine that we're in a much stronger. Use your imagination. And so you took on this attitude, and
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Jane Atkinson: you started to. You had been doing a lot of things, or in your business. I think we decide, or we here. Oh, you've got to do that you've got to do that. You've got to do that, and you're really gotten focused on what you actually want to do.
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Jane Atkinson: So what did you let go of in the process of adopting the screw? It attitude?
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Julie Henry: I remember a really formative conversation with you, Jane. I'm sure you'll remember this as well. This was almost almost a year ago now, and I had given a keynote address, a keynote slash training, and there it was, small. It was like fifty people, and one of the feedback
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Julie Henry: people I received feedback from. They said, Well, it was way too much about you. It was. It was too much, and I took that so personally like it set me back for months months.
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Julie Henry: Um, and well number one. Now I realized that was really important feedback to get, because I Haven't retooled it. But i'm just aware of of different things. But as I've taken on this new screw at attitude, I just am so driven by the fact that
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Julie Henry: now understand, i'm not there for everyone,
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Julie Henry: and it's not just about whether or not to be liked or not, or whether or not. Everybody wants to give me some information, or whether it's what or whether it's where i'm worth my money or whatever it's just more about like there's like my My mindset is like I'm there for somebody, maybe not everybody. But i'm there for somebody and and for that person like I can't. I can't be afraid anymore, because that person needs me to show up just like my husband needed me to show up, and if I can, if I can walk next to him as he like,
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Julie Henry: you know, literally's bedridden for months, and I can be the caretaker, and never ever call it home health. Gosh! I can stand up in front of an audience and talk about change and help people think about it in new ways and be okay with the fact that Maybe some people
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Julie Henry: don't really get much out of it because someone did.
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Julie Henry: That's perfect. That's perfect, and it's so interesting how the brain works. You get ninety nine positives.
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Jane Atkinson: I'm. Forms. But if there's one negative which one
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Julie Henry: or the one negative, the brain is a funny, funny creature, and I love this idea of i'm not there for everybody. But I am there for somebody. Somebody needs to hear what I have to say today,
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Jane Atkinson: and I think that the lesson from
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Jane Atkinson: making it about yourself, and then always having a counter with it to make it about them. I think that's just something that you tweeted and massaged over time to be like. Yes, it's about me. But here's how it responds to you, because everybody goes through some version of change,
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Julie Henry: right? Mhm
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Jane Atkinson: I just Well, I have loved watching your evolution, and I think that this is a terrific um for somebody who is in year one of what you've gone through. And now you're in your four, and what advice might you give to somebody who is in the thick of it? It might not be a husband, but it could be a parent dying it, you know some for some of us, and I have a feeling that i'll be one of them. My dad
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Julie Henry: that's passing was something, but I think my mom's been so hyper-focused on her for so many years. I'm kind of scared about it. To be honest with you, I worry that i'm going to fall apart.
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Jane Atkinson: What advice do you have for someone who is in? I'm not even there yet, and i'm asking for advice. What advice do you have for someone who's in year one of something tragic?
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Julie Henry: I would say that Number one. You don't have to accept the labels that everyone else gives you.
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Julie Henry: So you know, all of a sudden people wanted to call me a widow, or people who wanted to call me single, or they wanted to um. Just define me in certain ways, and I didn't accept those labels, and I didn't want to go down that road and the associated point with that is, that not everyone deserves to hear your story that you know there are times when i'll say, you know. Yes, my husband used to work in a business, or tell a story about him, or say something. But there are times when I will not, and I know that there's questions. You know one of the things that I
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Julie Henry: I hate the most is that people assume i'm divorced, you know. I'm i'm relatively young. I'm forty seven years old. He got sick when I was thirty, seven, thirty, eight, and he passed away when I was forty, three, and so typically, stereotypically, if you meet a forty, three year old. The assumption is going to be that they're divorced rather than you know just the way that the cards go, you know,
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Julie Henry: and I hate that. And so sometimes I have to just check my eagle at the door, like i'm willing to let this client this audience member this, Whoever Just think that, and make an assumption rather than
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Julie Henry: directing them. But I get worried right. It's hard to figure out how to honor our story. My husband and my story, our family story, my children. It's hard to figure out how to honor them. So that's the first big point, and the other thing I would say is that
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Julie Henry: there's no magic bullet. There's no course. There's a lot of support for grief,
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Julie Henry: but there's not a lot of support in my experience with how to redefine and chart your course.
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Julie Henry: That's the whole
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Julie Henry: I can like. My grief is different, especially for any of you listening who've been a caregiver for anybody in your life, your best friend, your neighbor, whichever you know, your your caregiving and your and everybody talks about like you have to take care of yourself, you know. Put your own oxygen mask on. First. All of those are true statements, and then there's grief. Okay, fine. Yes, it's terrible. But like when you have, when you're caregiving for a long time. You're sad for a long time, so like the death is not the sad part
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Julie Henry: that's like.
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Julie Henry: Oh, thank God, he's not suffered anymore. I'm sad, but i'm not as sad as when I was literally wiping his butt because he couldn't do anything in the bed.
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Julie Henry: So, recognizing that there's not a There's not an easy fix, but you take as much time as you need, and you make your baby steps, and and you just let people around you um support you, and you tell them in whatever way you need to. I need you to walk next to me.
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Julie Henry: I don't need to to solve my problems. I don't need to support me. I need you to sit down next to me while I cry. You say nothing. That's what I need, and that's the best thing, and and that is uncomfortable, especially in the States, maybe in Canada. But in these cultures that we live in, at least over the Western cultures We're super uncomfortable. We want to solve. We want to make it better. And I say it off time like my kids are sad, and you know what fine. Let's lay on the floor, and we're going to all cry together
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Julie Henry: again. We're going to get up, and we're going to walk outside, and we're going to live another day like That's why he fought so long for. So if you can keep that mindset that you just need people along next to you. I think that will help you feel like you are going at exactly the speed you need to go for you.
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Jane Atkinson: It's so important. What you said about
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Jane Atkinson: the grief being in the caregiving phase. I mean you're watching someone who you knew as this decline in, and they themselves physically, and that is so painful to watch as well. And so I I think that's really interesting. Okay. So redefine and chart your course is the goal and bring people onto your team who will walk beside you.
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Right?
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Julie Henry: Sorry. Sorry. Yeah, he said. Hello. I know. Sorry. It's the hurricane breath that you know. And can I say one more thing really quickly.
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Julie Henry: A dear friend of mine, who is Buddhist at Mike's celebration of life, My friend came up to me, and he said. You know, in the Buddhist space we believe that if all of our all of us who loved your husband can embody one characteristic of his, and live that out in our own life,
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Julie Henry: and he never truly dies.
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Julie Henry: And I have taken that heart in many facets, and that's how I comfort others, because half of Ah, caregiving has been comforting others because they're like, you know. They feel sad, too. But that's why I continue to tell stories about him, because I feel like every time I can tell a story that he's a part of, even if the audience doesn't know it's him. Then he lives on, and it becomes about his life and not about the death, and so that, I think is another way. The tragedy can fuel you
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Julie Henry: as a speaker, and you can honor their it's not their legacy, and it's not their memories. It's their life, it's them living through you.
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Yeah.
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Jane Atkinson: And I just want to say for those who might be curious that you will likely start to talk about him
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Jane Atkinson: a little more easily over time, and maybe he'll become a more central focus of your stage, I mean, that is something that is an evolution that needs to happen on your timeline. So, Russia don't run don't rush it. So I guess what i'm saying?
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Julie Henry: Well, and then Julie Henry Rock, the Star. How do? How would you like people to connect with you? What's your best uh connection? Medium like Lincoln or your website, Julie C. Henry Dot, Com. Do I have that right?
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Julie Henry: Yeah, yeah, Julie C. Henry, Dot Com. I'm really active on Linkedin and Instagram. Um. I have a personal page on Facebook people, I reckon. Welcome to connect there. But um, yeah, I would say, linkedin Instagram or shoot me an email, and i'd like and and please, however, I can be of support, like if I can walk next to any of you. Oh, my gosh! It would be my greatest honor
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Julie Henry: to say that. Um, I want to say thank you so much for showing up today, and for kind of putting it all out there on the table, because it's not easy to talk about, and I'm very grateful for you to talk to us about it, and i'm hoping not showing up for everybody today. But there's somebody out there who really needs to hear this message, and needs to hear that. You know you have. You have come through the fire, and you have. You merged a total bad out in my mind,
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Jane Atkinson: and I just want to say congratulations to you, and hopefully we'll hear some people talking about how this has landed with them, and for those of you who are tuning in. Thank you for being with us today, and with that we'll see you soon won't. We speakers bye, for now.
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Jane Atkinson: Well welcome everyone to the wealthy speaker. Podcast Today we're talking about reclaiming your life and your business really after tragedy, and I have my client with me, Julie. Henry. Welcome to the show, Julie.
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Julie Henry: Thanks, Jane. It's so great to be here with you Now i'm excited to talk to you a little trepidacious, maybe, too, about the whole process that you've been through. But we've been together for some of it, and let's talk
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Jane Atkinson: that current, and then we'll circle back and walk through what's gone on in your life. Talk to me about what's going on, what your business model looks like today.
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Julie Henry: Yeah. So Today I am an author, speaker, facilitator, panel, moderator. Um. Just all things. Speaking as it relates to interacting with people, and it's built on the foundation of a book that I just published. Ah, in January. So it's all based on helping people drive and survive change. And I use animals as a hook and a way to level the playing field when it comes to talking about leadership,
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Julie Henry: um drive and survive change. And i'm thinking you know something about this. So let's
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Jane Atkinson: back to the beginning and talk about you. Well talk about how you got the animal angle. In the first place, what was your day job all the way back to probably just before we met.
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Julie Henry: You know it's not lost on me the irony that my whole business and life and passion is built around change, and that not where you just talk about greeno people. But you know the reality is, I've already been super comfortable with change. I'm the person that you either love or be to work with, because i'm like, Let's try something new and let's try something different, and and then you know, from the very beginning. I was working at Zoos in a
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Julie Henry: aquariums, but my dad was a leadership development. Guru, my mom, was a teacher and I was teaching people, but I was teaching people about, you know, standing in front of the Beluga whale habitat at Shed Aquarium, or teaching people about elephants at bush Guard is down here in Florida, and it was super awesome. But I was always interested in the corporations because I was always saying every place I worked. You know the Xyz Corporation is going to need some place to have a retreat, to do a team building to do a a leadership development session, and they can
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Julie Henry: pay thousands of dollars to the Hyatt, or they can pay thousands of dollars in us
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Julie Henry: far more interesting and practical, in my opinion, to stand outside of coral reef tank and talk about differences in communication and assumptions they make um than it is to go to the Hilton. So it takes people into a completely different setting, and maybe their armor comes down because they're running in front of whales or something cool, and that's a great way to. So you started promoting corporate work while you had your day job.
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Julie Henry: Yeah, I was twenty, two years old and no, this so called. They have a huge, you know plant outside Chicago, and I was just the loud, you know, Squeaky Wheel, if you will. So someone passed the phone call to me and the Nabisco person's like. Well, what could you do for us? And I'm like Well, here's all my ideas that they had been a college project I worked on, and we booked it. And then I
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Julie Henry: Okay? Well, you know, probably I should get some other people involved, because i'm only twenty two, and I got a lot of ideas, but not a lot of street credit yet, so I needed some help. But yeah, every place I went, you know we had
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Julie Henry: ah corporations, government groups, everybody wanting to come to us, and then I jump ship and did the opposite. You know. Once I left that world, I was out in the corporate world working with my clients. But if I could tell you a story about cheetahs and naked bull rats, you know you're paying attention
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Julie Henry: all right. I'm definitely paying attention because i'm very interested I love. Uh, and sometimes when you and I are talking you have a cat stroll across it. I'm like, Yes, that's so perfect, It's so apropos. And I hope it happens when you're actually delivering core work because it's
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your mind.
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Julie Henry: Yeah, Um.
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Jane Atkinson: Okay. So you had these jobs for how many years, and at what point did you decide to leave and pursue speaking as
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Jane Atkinson: uh your full-time gig
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Julie Henry: So I worked for ten years inside zoos and aquarium. Most of that was non-profit, but I did work for bush gardens, which was owned by Anheuser Bush, which was a fortune one hundred company so that's significant, because I understand both sides of the point. Um, when it comes to doing, consulting and training and speaking, but in two thousand and eight, you know quite honestly, two things happened. I had a baby, and I was commuting fifty, nine miles to work each way, and I had, you know, kids from all over the world staying in, you know, On-site Dorm. So I was responsible
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Julie Henry: for people all the time, and I was bored
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Julie Henry: it was hard to get board working at a place with a roller coaster, but I just didn't care about someone Else's budget numbers anymore. I wanted to flex my own creativity muscle and try new things, and when you're the child of two entrepreneurs, you know you're bound to try that. So in two thousand and eight. It was like i'm just ready. We're just going to try it.
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Jane Atkinson: I was like that. Tiny was right on the money. Not so, Ok. So you go out and you say, Tada, I'm, Julie, Henry I'm. Here, and I've got all kinds of lessons that I can bring you from the animal world, et cetera. And what happens?
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Julie Henry: Yeah, Ah kind of the exact opposite that I thought was going to happen. So the people who were really interested like Southwest airlines, you know, they would come to push gardens and do things at our park. And now, of a sudden, i'm Julie Henry on my own, and they were like,
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Julie Henry: Yeah, we don't know if we want to work with you, because we don't know if you have the right experience like what
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Julie Henry: i'm the exact same person. I was two months ago. I just have a different title. So it was jarring. I I just lost. I didn't lose it. I just didn't have the same credibility that I did when I was ironically working with the title that someone else gave me at a brand that someone else created. But it was super jarring. I was it was It was gut-wrenching. How did it affect your confidence?
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Uh
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Julie Henry: oh, gosh! I mean you'd feel like you're gutted right like your knees are swept out from under you. You know I had people tell. I had just as many people tell me. Um, you know we don't think you have enough experience. We don't think you know what you're talking. And then, on the other side of the coin, I would have people saying, Well, you've got too much zoom aquarium experience. You don't have this kind of experience and this kind of experience. I'm like well,
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Julie Henry: and so I just now that's to be fair. I had some clients along the way.
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Julie Henry: I didn't. I kept looking around everybody else like, Why is everybody else succeeding? And i'm not. That's how it feels sometimes. You know, having this daughter and then a son eventually looking at me like Gosh, I just It's hard to define right now. I'm a mother. Now i'm in a different area, and we weren't it wasn't Covid. Yet we weren't, being super transparent about all this difficulty, so I was hiding everything like I have a beauty like shoot. Nope, I have to get my kid down for an app, you know, so I didn't have anybody to to like. Bear my soul to ahead.
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Not you yet, Jane. I needed your help.
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Jane Atkinson: Come along somewhat later, but I think it's just really helpful for people we're talking about really kind of coming back from anything difficult. It could be a disruption in your business. It could be losing your Mojo,
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Jane Atkinson: and I think that that happens to people on the regular. I've had it happen to me, and I've worked my way back up to where I know I definitely had it at the beginning of Covid.
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Jane Atkinson: Um. Okay. So you're moving along in your business, and you're starting to see a little bit of traction. I think we probably started to work together, and leadership becomes the umbrella under which you put everything, and when I first met you
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Jane Atkinson: your husband had already been diagnosed with cancer, and you were in for quite a journey. Talk a little bit about that and the result of the journey.
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Julie Henry: Yeah. So to give some context, I left my business in two thousand and eight, and I left my job. But the job I left was at a marine laboratory in an aquarium here in Sarasota, Florida, at which my husband That's where I met him. And so he had been there for twenty five years at that point. And so I had worked with him for five years. So our work in our passions were always intertwined, and by last of two thousand and eight we had two babies, and then in two thousand and eight
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Julie Henry: and thirteen in February. So this is two years before I started working with you in the span of three days day. One my husband gets a call from the doctor that says they found a soft ball size mass in my lung, and they're worrying about it.
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Julie Henry: Day two. The executive director at the Marine laboratory decides he's going to retire. So now his job is up in the air, and our health insurance is up in the air, and day three we get a letter in the mail that says we're taking your house in imminent domain, and you have thirty days to bake it
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Julie Henry: so literally everything you know. What about Maslow's hierarchy, like everything was like,
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Julie Henry: you know,
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Julie Henry: and so I then had to figure out. Okay, I have a three and a five-year-old. I have a husband now going to battle cancer, and I don't know where we're going to live, and he may have a job, and my income's not at that point steady enough to for him to leave. So it was like
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Julie Henry: it was the beginning. It was ten years ago like, and as i'm talking to you now I can feel it. My heart rate increases, and I can feel the shortness of breath because it was
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Julie Henry: the idea of running your own business is super exciting, and then the reality sets in. I can't tell you how many times, Jane, I would go to some speaking event or something, and it was like.
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Julie Henry: Gosh! You know he's in the hospital getting surgery, or we're setting up for another clinical trial, or we're flying to Seattle tomorrow to go to some blah blah blah blah! You know. I was speaking in Orlando, and he was in the hospital, and someone was supposed to pick him up for me after whatever procedure, and
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Julie Henry: this person called me like, Are you done speaking because my cousins are coming over for dinner, and so I can't pick up your husband, and i'm like
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Julie Henry: i'm literally two hours away. I'm working, and I have to bring in this income. And so my poor husband almost had to take an uber home from the hospital, because I couldn't get him a ride so like all of the like realities of life. Just hit um just at a very basal level.
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Jane Atkinson: I can't even imagine layering on the imminent domain thing and the job and the insurance, and it's so frightening. I live in Kennedy. You live in the United States, and it's so frightening when you think about all of those things combined. So the battle with cancer was a rough one for how many years and talk about Yeah,
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Julie Henry: Yeah. So um. So he ended up battling for five and a half years. And so the reality of that is that many. Like many of your listeners. Probably, Jane, you know the way I connect with my audiences and my clients is by telling stories about my family, about my experiences, and many times i'm in front of
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Julie Henry: technical audiences. So i'm joking like, hey? I'm married to a scientist. I get it. I've got to ignite your right brain or something like that.
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Julie Henry: But I started to hit Walls in that Either a would be a long-term client and they would. Say, Hey, how's your husband doing like right before I went on stage right um or B. I was really hyper-aware like you know some speakers or even when I was, you know. Next on the agenda there were multiple speakers. Inevitably someone from the stage would say something about, and then my mom had cancer, and I rediscovered my purpose in life and that, and like
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Julie Henry: gosh, I just boom! You know I I can't. I? I gotta get back into the game, mindset, if you will. And so I started to try to figure out like I don't even know how to talk about myself anymore. I don't know how to talk my family in five and a half years.
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Julie Henry: Let me think May, of two thousand and eighteen. It's when he passed away, but I I had work, you know, set up like two months later, and my dear clients were like, you know you don't have to do it. I'm like well, I have to, not only for the income, but, like
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Julie Henry: I have to figure out what to do like. I have to get one foot in front of the other. Because if I don't I I don't know if i'll speak again honestly. It was like it was like that.
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It was like learning. It was like learning a whole new language. That's the only thing I can equate it to like. I've moved to France, and I got to figure out how to speak in French. That's what I felt like that.
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Jane Atkinson: Wow! And
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Julie Henry: you also had to still be out there, and you also had to really navigate the landmines that you might have stepped on which would turn into what? On stage, like panic attacks and various things that I mean when you're in the thick of it,
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Jane Atkinson: you really don't know what your emotions are going to do. Right? You're probably writing a roller coaster.
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Julie Henry: Yeah. And i'm a really go with the flow. Speaker, trainer, facilitator.
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Julie Henry: The whole background is in basically facilitation and and on my feet. And so I don't memorize what i'm going to say right like I. I have my idea in my script, and even if i'm giving a keynote for five thousand people, I have my direction, and then I have. Oh, this story comes up because I can feel it in the audience. So that's what happened Like Who this to be? A great story? Oh, shoot it's about my husband!
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Julie Henry: But I would say something like Well, my former husband like Gosh, that sounds weird, or I would say something, and then I would just that i'm off into some hole i'm like, What was I talking about? I was talking about the process of change. Well, how did I get back there? So yeah, it was total landmines,
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Jane Atkinson: the and he had such a connection. He worked in the business with you right for a period of time.
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Julie Henry: Uh, and so he had such a connection to all things business for you that uh? And so now, how do you handle that? Do you want to tell? Share how you handle it today, and kind of talk about someone that was really saying it's, you know.
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Julie Henry: Yeah, and I can also share. You know he was. He was technically my business manager, and So I had all these emails that he'd sent. And now I have to go back and like, figure out. Oh, you know, michael's not in the business anymore, and
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Julie Henry: well, it's not because I fired him. He was my husband. He still is my husband, but he's passed away, and here's the thing I know. I'm not directly answer your question. But while i'm thinking about it, it's like, here's the thing: If something changes in your life like, let's say I showed up, and my husband's not working with me anymore because he's divorced. I'm divorced like chances are
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Julie Henry: people don't typically say like, Oh, gosh! What happened? Did he cheat on you like. Did he meet somebody else like they don't ask the details. But when you, when you show up, and if you have to decide what story you want to tell? Because as soon as I say,
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Julie Henry: oh, he passed away. Well, then, very it it goes from Gosh, i'm so sorry. Can I ask why, and like what he died from like. Well, no, you can't. Well, I've got to say that you know. So you end up in this like. Well, now i'm down, because then what happens? It's like being pregnant like. Oh, he died of cancer. I know somebody else who has cancer, and now we're off on all these like.
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Julie Henry: Oh, my gosh! I just wanted to book my speech so I can pay my bills. You know where I can have my impact, anyway. So it's It's um, it's part of that journey. So I've had to re-figure out, like, you know how to. Oh, and
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Julie Henry: yeah,
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Julie Henry: I think a lot of what I was getting at was when you're telling stories from the platform.
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Julie Henry: Yes, and so there was this friend blah blah blah! You'll refer to him as a friend. So you don't have to go down the big rabbit hole and explain
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Jane Atkinson: or say anything about being a widow, or what have you and and I think that we just find our way. We just try to figure out how to manage in a difficult situation, and that's what works for you right now. Who knows what's going to work for you later on? Right?
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Julie Henry: Yeah. And I didn't figure that out until I wrote the book, and when I wrote the book I thought I have to. He has to be in here because my stories are in here, and when I finally figured out, landed on my friend um that worked for me, and so I just had to embrace it for the time being.
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Jane Atkinson: So
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Jane Atkinson: I have a hard time imagining i'm not even going to say to you. Oh, I can't even imagine, because it's not even enough. It's a silly
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Jane Atkinson: a kid.
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Julie Henry: I don't. I have no clue what this feels like. But I will say that for the first three years of my husband and my relationship I hung on for dear life because he had had a heart attack for years before he met me, and so I know what that feels like. But I definitely I I can't even go there on my mind. So,
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Jane Atkinson: Ok. So how many years beyond? Obviously you said two thousand and eighteen.
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Jane Atkinson: We are four years down the road,
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Julie Henry: and do you feel like you're starting, I mean, I've watched you evolve because you sort of go back to me in the last year, and I have watched you get your name on, and I just want to say what a pleasure it's been to see the badass come out and play. I don't know that I ever really met that as before,
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Jane Atkinson: you kind of have. So let's go back to When you first published your book. I remember one of our meetings where you were like
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Julie Henry: this isn't working. It's not happening, and i'm like, Wait a second. Your book was published. What? Three weeks ago. But i'm not. Let's just talk about this. So talk about. Let's go from the book forward and kind of who you belong to me.
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Julie Henry: Yeah, and I and i'll, you know. So he passed away in May of two thousand and eighteen, and I can't say enough about my National Speakers Association families, especially the Central Florida chapter, because
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Julie Henry: Holy Cow did they show up for me like I would like. It took me months before I could go back to a meeting, and then it was because someone picked me up in my house, and I sat by the door, and I was like trepidacious right. And so that happened, and then people would like pay for me to come it like you know, the administrator would say, Hey, someone pay for your registration next month you should come.
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Julie Henry: Yeah, and it's all those little things that are not little, but it's little. And then you know what happened is there's a a man, a mentor in my chapter, so any of you who are involved in the National Speakers Association, Barry Vander, who is past chair and the Board, you know he's down here.
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Julie Henry: Yeah. And he and he had met my husband because we'd gone out to a winter conference in San Francisco in two thousand and sixteen, so he met him, and Barry is a a gem of a person, and he came up to me after a meeting. This was in summer, so been a year, and he came up to me, and he said, Please let me know
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Julie Henry: how I could help you
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Julie Henry: and him saying that to me I just got all a teary item like very.
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Julie Henry: I don't know what to do, and he was like, You need to call me, and we're going to have coaching. And so I went to California that summer. Um. My kids went to a camp, and I'm sitting at a little cottage, and I called him. This is July of two thousand and nineteen, and I would say, Barry, I just I want to talk about animals. I want to talk about animals and change. I've been doing this since one thousand nine hundred and ninety six. It just has to do it. I don't know how, and i'm going on and on and on, he said, Well give me some examples. So I started talking about naked molarants and all this stuff, and he cut me off,
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and he was like Julie.
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Julie Henry: This is a book you have to write this book, and I was like,
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Julie Henry: okay,
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Julie Henry: like no, and I I have a picture of the table with all my note cards, although I still have my numbers. They're right outside the the view of this lens here in Zoom, and and I was like, Oh, my gosh! And he said, Nope, I'm going to connect you with my Publishing Company Green Leaf Book Group. I want you to connect with them. See It's the right. See if it's the right fit. So one month later
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Julie Henry: I was like, you know. What if Barry thinks I can do it? I'm going to try it, because Mike would be like super on board, and Mike was super. My husband was super practical, right scientists. And so i'm like, Okay, drink a glass of wine. I'm just going to like try it. So I put together this, you know,
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Julie Henry: proposal, and I'm like, Okay, i'm going to hit. Send,
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Julie Henry: and then in the September, you know two. It was supposed to be four to six weeks, and two weeks later they called me, and they were like, you know what. Thank God, someone put a new spin on leadership because we've published so many leadership books. We're kind of getting sick of it, I mean, not really. But you know it's something.
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Julie Henry: So that was two thousand and nineteen,
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Julie Henry: and and then Covid hit, which happened to be a breeding disease, and my husband died of lung cancer. So all of the panic came back in. So now, you know, I thought it would be really quick, and so I hit another year and a half of panic attacks. Um, because people would say like, Oh, you know, I'm watching people not be able to breathe. I'm like, Yeah, I know about that, You know. I slept next to somebody for four and a half years, five and a half years I could dream. Oh, geez,
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Julie Henry: it took me a long time. So uh, so go through Covid
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Julie Henry: book.
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Julie Henry: Okay, just figure it out. Just just try it. Just try it and um. And then once it got out there in the world, and once I felt like my stories wanted to replace, and I felt like my husband was, you know, releasing me a little bit like It's enough. It's enough. It's enough. And then I think you know what I told you, James. I have a steer man in my life who I've known for twenty five years, and he was like tools.
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Julie Henry: You just don't have to prove anything anymore.
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And that was it. That was one of the lightning switches. I mean, there's been a lot, but that one in particular I can think about a couple of months ago.
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Julie Henry: Okay.
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Julie Henry: So you took on a new attitude.
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Julie Henry: That's whether or not we say what it's called. That's a gru it attitude. But you all can imagine that we're in a much stronger. Use your imagination. And so you took on this attitude, and
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Jane Atkinson: you started to. You had been doing a lot of things, or in your business. I think we decide, or we here. Oh, you've got to do that you've got to do that. You've got to do that, and you're really gotten focused on what you actually want to do.
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Jane Atkinson: So what did you let go of in the process of adopting the screw? It attitude?
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Julie Henry: I remember a really formative conversation with you, Jane. I'm sure you'll remember this as well. This was almost almost a year ago now, and I had given a keynote address, a keynote slash training, and there it was, small. It was like fifty people, and one of the feedback
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Julie Henry: people I received feedback from. They said, Well, it was way too much about you. It was. It was too much, and I took that so personally like it set me back for months months.
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Julie Henry: Um, and well number one. Now I realized that was really important feedback to get, because I Haven't retooled it. But i'm just aware of of different things. But as I've taken on this new screw at attitude, I just am so driven by the fact that
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Julie Henry: now understand, i'm not there for everyone,
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Julie Henry: and it's not just about whether or not to be liked or not, or whether or not. Everybody wants to give me some information, or whether it's what or whether it's where i'm worth my money or whatever it's just more about like there's like my My mindset is like I'm there for somebody, maybe not everybody. But i'm there for somebody and and for that person like I can't. I can't be afraid anymore, because that person needs me to show up just like my husband needed me to show up, and if I can, if I can walk next to him as he like,
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Julie Henry: you know, literally's bedridden for months, and I can be the caretaker, and never ever call it home health. Gosh! I can stand up in front of an audience and talk about change and help people think about it in new ways and be okay with the fact that Maybe some people
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Julie Henry: don't really get much out of it because someone did.
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Julie Henry: That's perfect. That's perfect, and it's so interesting how the brain works. You get ninety nine positives.
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Jane Atkinson: I'm. Forms. But if there's one negative which one
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Julie Henry: or the one negative, the brain is a funny, funny creature, and I love this idea of i'm not there for everybody. But I am there for somebody. Somebody needs to hear what I have to say today,
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Jane Atkinson: and I think that the lesson from
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Jane Atkinson: making it about yourself, and then always having a counter with it to make it about them. I think that's just something that you tweeted and massaged over time to be like. Yes, it's about me. But here's how it responds to you, because everybody goes through some version of change,
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Julie Henry: right? Mhm
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Jane Atkinson: I just Well, I have loved watching your evolution, and I think that this is a terrific um for somebody who is in year one of what you've gone through. And now you're in your four, and what advice might you give to somebody who is in the thick of it? It might not be a husband, but it could be a parent dying it, you know some for some of us, and I have a feeling that i'll be one of them. My dad
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Julie Henry: that's passing was something, but I think my mom's been so hyper-focused on her for so many years. I'm kind of scared about it. To be honest with you, I worry that i'm going to fall apart.
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Jane Atkinson: What advice do you have for someone who is in? I'm not even there yet, and i'm asking for advice. What advice do you have for someone who's in year one of something tragic?
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Julie Henry: I would say that Number one. You don't have to accept the labels that everyone else gives you.
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Julie Henry: So you know, all of a sudden people wanted to call me a widow, or people who wanted to call me single, or they wanted to um. Just define me in certain ways, and I didn't accept those labels, and I didn't want to go down that road and the associated point with that is, that not everyone deserves to hear your story that you know there are times when i'll say, you know. Yes, my husband used to work in a business, or tell a story about him, or say something. But there are times when I will not, and I know that there's questions. You know one of the things that I
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Julie Henry: I hate the most is that people assume i'm divorced, you know. I'm i'm relatively young. I'm forty seven years old. He got sick when I was thirty, seven, thirty, eight, and he passed away when I was forty, three, and so typically, stereotypically, if you meet a forty, three year old. The assumption is going to be that they're divorced rather than you know just the way that the cards go, you know,
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Julie Henry: and I hate that. And so sometimes I have to just check my eagle at the door, like i'm willing to let this client this audience member this, Whoever Just think that, and make an assumption rather than
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Julie Henry: directing them. But I get worried right. It's hard to figure out how to honor our story. My husband and my story, our family story, my children. It's hard to figure out how to honor them. So that's the first big point, and the other thing I would say is that
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Julie Henry: there's no magic bullet. There's no course. There's a lot of support for grief,
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Julie Henry: but there's not a lot of support in my experience with how to redefine and chart your course.
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Julie Henry: That's the whole
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Julie Henry: I can like. My grief is different, especially for any of you listening who've been a caregiver for anybody in your life, your best friend, your neighbor, whichever you know, your your caregiving and your and everybody talks about like you have to take care of yourself, you know. Put your own oxygen mask on. First. All of those are true statements, and then there's grief. Okay, fine. Yes, it's terrible. But like when you have, when you're caregiving for a long time. You're sad for a long time, so like the death is not the sad part
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Julie Henry: that's like.
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Julie Henry: Oh, thank God, he's not suffered anymore. I'm sad, but i'm not as sad as when I was literally wiping his butt because he couldn't do anything in the bed.
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Julie Henry: So, recognizing that there's not a There's not an easy fix, but you take as much time as you need, and you make your baby steps, and and you just let people around you um support you, and you tell them in whatever way you need to. I need you to walk next to me.
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Julie Henry: I don't need to to solve my problems. I don't need to support me. I need you to sit down next to me while I cry. You say nothing. That's what I need, and that's the best thing, and and that is uncomfortable, especially in the States, maybe in Canada. But in these cultures that we live in, at least over the Western cultures We're super uncomfortable. We want to solve. We want to make it better. And I say it off time like my kids are sad, and you know what fine. Let's lay on the floor, and we're going to all cry together
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Julie Henry: again. We're going to get up, and we're going to walk outside, and we're going to live another day like That's why he fought so long for. So if you can keep that mindset that you just need people along next to you. I think that will help you feel like you are going at exactly the speed you need to go for you.
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Jane Atkinson: It's so important. What you said about
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Jane Atkinson: the grief being in the caregiving phase. I mean you're watching someone who you knew as this decline in, and they themselves physically, and that is so painful to watch as well. And so I I think that's really interesting. Okay. So redefine and chart your course is the goal and bring people onto your team who will walk beside you.
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Right?
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Julie Henry: Sorry. Sorry. Yeah, he said. Hello. I know. Sorry. It's the hurricane breath that you know. And can I say one more thing really quickly.
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Julie Henry: A dear friend of mine, who is Buddhist at Mike's celebration of life, My friend came up to me, and he said. You know, in the Buddhist space we believe that if all of our all of us who loved your husband can embody one characteristic of his, and live that out in our own life,
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Julie Henry: and he never truly dies.
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Julie Henry: And I have taken that heart in many facets, and that's how I comfort others, because half of Ah, caregiving has been comforting others because they're like, you know. They feel sad, too. But that's why I continue to tell stories about him, because I feel like every time I can tell a story that he's a part of, even if the audience doesn't know it's him. Then he lives on, and it becomes about his life and not about the death, and so that, I think is another way. The tragedy can fuel you
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Julie Henry: as a speaker, and you can honor their it's not their legacy, and it's not their memories. It's their life, it's them living through you.
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Yeah.
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Jane Atkinson: And I just want to say for those who might be curious that you will likely start to talk about him
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Jane Atkinson: a little more easily over time, and maybe he'll become a more central focus of your stage, I mean, that is something that is an evolution that needs to happen on your timeline. So, Russia don't run don't rush it. So I guess what i'm saying?
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Julie Henry: Well, and then Julie Henry Rock, the Star. How do? How would you like people to connect with you? What's your best uh connection? Medium like Lincoln or your website, Julie C. Henry Dot, Com. Do I have that right?
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Julie Henry: Yeah, yeah, Julie C. Henry, Dot Com. I'm really active on Linkedin and Instagram. Um. I have a personal page on Facebook people, I reckon. Welcome to connect there. But um, yeah, I would say, linkedin Instagram or shoot me an email, and i'd like and and please, however, I can be of support, like if I can walk next to any of you. Oh, my gosh! It would be my greatest honor
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Julie Henry: to say that. Um, I want to say thank you so much for showing up today, and for kind of putting it all out there on the table, because it's not easy to talk about, and I'm very grateful for you to talk to us about it, and i'm hoping not showing up for everybody today. But there's somebody out there who really needs to hear this message, and needs to hear that. You know you have. You have come through the fire, and you have. You merged a total bad out in my mind,
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Jane Atkinson: and I just want to say congratulations to you, and hopefully we'll hear some people talking about how this has landed with them, and for those of you who are tuning in. Thank you for being with us today, and with that we'll see you soon won't. We speakers bye, for now.
Highlights you won’t want to miss:
- Getting comfortable with change. [1:30]
- Not experienced enough or too experienced. [4:30]
- A journey no one wants to take. [8:00]
- Staying on track. [13:00]
- Putting it on paper. [18:00]
- The “screw it” attitude. [22:00]
- Finding comfort in the uncomfortable. [26:00]
Julie has presented to over one million people across thirty-two states and six countries, in on-site and online settings ranging from auditoriums and ballrooms to boats, beaches, forests, theaters, boardrooms, and even underwater while feeding sharks and moray eels. She has yet to see a wolf in the wild, snorkel with whale sharks, or visit Antarctica, but she continues to dream about those moments! She lives in Sarasota, Florida, with her two children, whom she lovingly describes as her “zoo animal” and her “wild animal” due to each child’s natural inclination toward life.
If you could use some inspiration on how to keep moving forward in your life and your business, you simply can’t afford to miss this episode.
I hope you’ll download and learn.
Links
Julie’s website
Julie’s email: julie@juliechenry.com
NSA
Julie’s book – Wisdom From The Wild
Julie’s LinkedIn profile
Jane’s LinkedIn profile
The Wealthy Speaker 3.0 waitlist
Jane’s Private Coaching Options
The Wealthy Speaker School
