WEBVTT
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She is sure, she is sure, she is strong, she
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is true, is true, she is brave, she is she
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is you, is you, she is she is sure, she
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is true, she is strong, she is straw, she is true,
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is true, she is brave, is bray, she is she
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is you.
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Hello, everyone, welcome to today's Word of Mom Radio. Here
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on the Word of Mom Media Network. I'm your host,
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Dory Di Carlo, and you know we are here week
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after week, show after show, breaking those myths that morepreneurs
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and business women, especially those of us building our businesses
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from home, that we're just dabbling in between bake sales
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and getting our nails done. We're not. We are smart,
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we are savvy, and we are sharing the wisdom of
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women in business and in life. And I'm looking forward
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to bringing today's guest into our author's ali. Ronnie Robbins,
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a published writer for thirty seven years, is a freelance
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health reporter for The Atlantic Journal, Constitution and Medscape WebMD.
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She was an editor at Medscape and a previously associate
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editor of the Atlanta Jewish Times. Hands of Gold won
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the twenty twenty three International Book Awards Multicultural Fiction and
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the twenty twenty three Global Book Awards Biographical Survival. The
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book was a finalist in the twenty twenty four American
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Legacy Awards Multicultural Fiction, twenty twenty three Reader's Choice Book
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Awards Best Adult Book, and twenty twenty two American Fiction
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Awards Family Saga, and a lot of awards went to
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this book. With all that being said, Ronnie, welcome to
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Word of Mom Radio.
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Thank you appreciate it, love being a part of her
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mom group.
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You know what, it's a lot of fun. So I
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would love for you to take us on your journey
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as a published right or all of the different things
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that you have done that led you to write Hands
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of Gold.
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As you said, I've been a published journalist for thirty
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seven years. I started in high school. I took a
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journalism course and wrote the opening copy for my school
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yearbook in high school, and I wrote also the program
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for the graduation commencement exercises. And so I was already
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starting and being known for my writing. In high school.
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I wrote the opening copy of the yearbook, but I
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also wrote most of the copy in the yearbook and
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was in charge of all the writing. And I went
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on to get a journalism scholarship in South Carolina from
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New York, so I checked off some demographic boxes for them,
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I believe, but they gave me a journalism scholarship, and
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I worked on the school paper, worked myself up to
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be editor in my senior year, and then I went
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out and was writing for newspapers, daily newspapers to begin with,
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then weekly newspapers or weekly publications, and developed some specialties
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along the way, in health care and environmental writing, Jewish writing,
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and women's issues, so all of those and probably a
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few others, and now I'm a healthcare reporter. I'm a freelancer.
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I was an editor for a while, but I took
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some time off of full time journalism to raise my children,
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and during that time I freelanced, including health care, but
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other specialties. And my mom gave me cassette tapes that
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my grandfather left the family, and I had decided that
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when I was going to stay home to raise my children,
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because I didn't think I could do it all as
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we're supposed to do it all, as women raise children
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and also be career mind. I was hoping I could,
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but it didn't quite work out. My children were getting
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second class treatment, and I didn't think that was right.
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So I stayed home and I worked on this book
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while freelancing for some pretty big publications. So it worked
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out well to get my articles in Forbes and Huffington Post.
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They picked up some of my mother Nature Network stories.
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And raised my kids and wrote this book, so I
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wasn't in any huge rush to get it published, which
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is good because it took me some twenty years while
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raising them until I went back into the workforce as
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a journalist and got the book published. So it all
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worked out. I guess I could say I did it all.
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I did what I was intended to do. But it's
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hard to be a career mom. It's hard to raise
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your children the right way or whatever that was it
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would be would be not by other people, and women
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find a way to do it. Journalism is not nine
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to five, so it made it much more difficult for that.
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So I will I will give you that. It took
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me a long time and and but yeah, I've got
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a book published, Hands of Gold, based on my grandfather's
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life and his adventures.
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It's interesting to me, and it may seem an obvious question,
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but what is the difference between being a journalist and
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a novelist? Probably a simple or a complicated answer, but
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it should be obvious.
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One is based on facts and one is based on facts,
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and then you have more freedom to make up and
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go off facts, so you can expand upon the facts.
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You can play with the facts. You can you can
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make up whatever you want. You can't do that in
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journalism or your credibility gets shot. You know, you you
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are held to a higher standard. I would say so.
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It allowed more freedom literary license than as an author.
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I had more literary license than I had as a journalist.
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Everything has to be backed up. I use many of
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those skills to keep things credible in in the historical
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authenticity of the novel, but I had much more freedom
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to go off track.
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Did you get held to a higher standard as a
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journalist because you were writing for medical journals and WebMD
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and medscape? Because it's kind of hard with what's going
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on in today's world, people stop at the headlines, and
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when we were growing up, anything that was on the
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news had to be verifiable three different ways, whereas now
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they market news is entertainment, so it doesn't have to
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be truth based. How is that for you as a journalist,
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How does that kind of you know, weave its way in.
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So as a trained journalist in the same vein as
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a Walter Khonkite or any number of other respected journalists,
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whether I held myself to a higher standard or my
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editors did. I never work for a place that didn't
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hold me to that higher standard. So I will say
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that I tried to work for publications that did back
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up what they wrote, and if it wasn't in that way,
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then it was an editorial or an opinion piece and
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it was labeled as such. I did write for a
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publication that aggregated information from other sources, but it still
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had to be credible. So I think there is a
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lot of aggregating information that wasn't available when I started
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my journalism career. But it depends what you think is
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news and what the source is if it's a credible source.
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So I would argue that you have to know the difference. So, yes,
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everyone is a journalist. Everyone claims to be a journalist
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or a reporter or an editor. But I went to
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journalism school and that's the way we were trained, and
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anyone I've ever worked for has that background. Most everyone
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I've ever worked for has that background, or I held
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myself to that higher standard because I wanted to be
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legitimate and credible and you know, have high values in
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that way. So you have to know what is opinion.
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You have to know what is You have to check
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your own information or trust or trust the source. And
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there are still those that are trusted in those that
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are not. I can only pull from from trusted sources
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in my articles. And if I do pull from trusted sources,
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I have to say where I got the information from.
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So I think I back up my information a lot.
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It's too Hopefully I'm considered a reliable source and an
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a credible source. But if you're getting it on the
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if you're getting your news on the internet, on Facebook,
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on social media, or a certain publication has a certain bent,
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then you know you need to be aware of that.
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It's very important that you say that. So I have
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to ask, how was it for you listening to your
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grandfather's tapes throughout the years to develop this and create
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this wonderful story.
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So I didn't listen to the tapes out. I listened
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to them, you know, once or twice through wants to
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listen once to as I was transcribing the tapes, and
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then the rest of the time I was massaging the
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information and building upon the information. So how is it
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like to hear my grandfather's voice. It was a little sad,
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but comforting, and I felt like he wanted somebody to
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write the story his story or and he said so
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on the tape, So I felt like that was me.
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It might not have been me, he could have been
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somebody else, but he said, if there's a writer who
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wants to do something with this, so be it. So
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I took that as a personal calling. It was comforting
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in the way to be able to hear his voice
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and try to capture his voice in the novel, which
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I'm told I have done proficiently. So I needed to
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hear it to be able to do that. Some people
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will say it's sad, that it should be sad for me,
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and yes, but if it was sad for me, then
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I can call upon that emotion in a way to
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let the reader also feel like this is their grandfather
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and this is something that they're listening to the story directly.
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So that's all I tried to create. All of that.
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If I felt emotions, I wanted the reader to feel
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those emotions, because to me, that was powerful. That was
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really giving his memory a voice, which is a title
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of a column that I wrote originally about listening to
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the tapes, giving memories a voice, leaving a legacy to
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those you leave behind, well that repeats itself, but leaving
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a legacy behind for your progeny. So and we can
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all learn from some of the lessons that are in
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the book about experiencing life's hardships and not letting it
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get you down.
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I have to agree with you. I actually kicked off
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twenty twenty five. My mother was a singer and this
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was her thirty first year racing heaven with her presence.
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And years ago my brother found a snippet of five songs.
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She was at Les Paul's house. They were hanging out
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and a couple of musicians, and they decided to do
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some recordings. And I initially had brought it back to
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the air and people were calling in and things like that,
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and I repurposed it for this new season and just
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created a little mini concert that's about seventeen and a
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half minutes long. And I just introduced it and everything
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talked about what was happening on word of Mom this year,
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and I said, and I'd just like you to enjoy
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listening to my mom, and so there is so much
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comfort in getting to hear that again and then that sadness.
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And it was amazing to me that as many times
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as I had listened to those songs and everything else
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still choked me up. But it was so wonderful. And
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my brother once asked me, what's in it for me
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having a Word of Mom Radio? And I was trying
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to explain to him all of the wonderful things in
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sharing these women, and I realized that that was what's
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in it for me after twenty one years, because at
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that point it was twenty one years. So yeah, it
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was ten years ago that we found them that she
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had been gone, that I brought her back to the
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airwaves and said, if I never did another radio show
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as long as I lived, that was what was in
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it for me. So it kind of makes me identify
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because you brought your grandfather back and his story and
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told his story because you were called to do it.
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So who does to you? Thank you, You're welcome. Really,
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we're going to take a quick break, say thank you
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to our sponsors, and we'll be back here in just
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a moment. On Word of Mom Radio, she is brave,
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She is bold, she is you, and we want to
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tell your story. Are you ready to share your journey
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with us on Word of Mom Radio. Go to wordomomradio
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dot com and register as a guest. We want to
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tell your story, because when you win, we all win.
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In twenty seventeen, Unsilenced Voices was formed to help survivors
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of domestic abuse and gender based violence worldwide. The organization
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currently serves Siri Leone, Rwanda, Ghana, and the USA. In
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twenty twenty two, Unsilenced Voices gifted over thirty three thousand
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dollars to survivors in the USA and in sierri Leone,
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there are over twenty six young girls who have been
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rescued from sex trafficking and domestic abuse and now going
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through vocational training school in order to better their lives.
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We need your help. Donations are critical in order for
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us to continue our work. We also need volunteers to
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help with research and development. Please visit Unsilenced Voices dot
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org for more information.
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And we are back here on Word of Mom Radio.
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We are talking with Ronnie Robbins, published journalist and author.
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And I had to just stop there because it really
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just all hit me the significance of keeping someone's memory alive,