Amy Newmark, CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL 30TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION: Plus 30 Bonus Stories
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books.
[0:06]This 30 minute podcast features a new author interviewed by me every single day, 365 days
[0:12]a year for about 30 minutes.
[0:15]I am also the publisher for Zippy Books, which publishes 12 books a year in fiction and
[0:21]memoir.
[0:22]Our books are already out now.
[0:23]You can check it out on zippybooks.com.
[0:26]And we have a magazine called Zippy Mag where we have lots of wonderful essays and lifestyle
[0:31]features.
[0:32]That's at zippymag.com.
[0:33]We have classes, it's a B-Classist.com, and I recently opened a book store in LA called
[0:39]Zippy's Bookshop at 1113 Montana Avenue at 11th Street in Santa Monica.
[0:45]I hope that you are able to enjoy some of our other offerings.
[0:49]But this here podcast is the basis of all of it and started in 2018, and no matter what
[0:55]I do, this is basically my favorite thing.
[0:57]Enjoy.
[1:03]Amy Newmark is the author, editor-in-chief and publisher of Chicken Soup for the Seoul
[1:08]Book Series, which is turning 30 this summer.
[1:12]And in honor of the 30th anniversary edition, which I actually contributed to a whole
[1:16]essay about owning a bookshop, she launched a new anthology, formerly a Wall Street analyst,
[1:22]hedge fund manager, tech company executive, and public company board member.
[1:26]She found new purpose and passion at age 50 when she took over the iconic book series.
[1:30]Now instead of dealing with fear and greed on Wall Street, she has a front row seat to a
[1:34]whole panoply of human emotions through the thousands of personal revealing stories she
[1:38]has published.
[1:39]Amy is a graduate of Harvard where she majored in Portuguese and minored in French.
[1:43]She and her husband have four children and five grandchildren, and that's the best thing
[1:47]of all.
[1:48]Welcome, Amy.
[1:49]Thank you so much for coming back on mom.
[1:50]Don't have time to read books, to discuss your baby chicken soup for the Seoul and congratulations
[1:56]on the 30th anniversary.
[1:58]This is so exciting.
[1:59]I know 30 years, can you believe it?
[2:01]And what I can't believe is I've been part of it for more than 15 years.
[2:05]I mean, it was almost 16 years ago that I started working on my chicken soup for this
[2:10]old project.
[2:12]And I think I've put out 195 new books in the last 15 years.
[2:18]I know it's insane.
[2:20]It's really insane.
[2:21]It's been like one book of months for all those years.
[2:24]I never thought I would still be doing it.
[2:26]I'm 66 years old, and I'm still doing it.
[2:29]I know it's crazy, but the books are so helpful to me personally, and our whole staff
[2:35]feels that way.
[2:36]First, I just wanted to ask you, I just wanted it to thank you, actually, for your story
[2:40]for the 30th anniversary edition, because we did put out that revised original chicken
[2:45]soup for the Seoul with 30 new stories for the next 30 years.
[2:49]And your story was really great, and that book is really more about success and how
[2:56]you achieve success and how you build a business and stuff like that.
[3:00]And so your story about how your business came about was a really important part of that
[3:06]book.
[3:07]Because what I wanted to do with the book with the 30 new stories is put in 30 thought
[3:11]leaders from today, since the original book came out in 1993.
[3:16]So thank you for being a part of that.
[3:18]Oh, my gosh, I loved it.
[3:20]And just having followed chicken soup for the Seoul is forever.
[3:24]Right.
[3:25]I mean, I've been getting them, reading them just to be in one is such a, it's so exciting.
[3:30]It's just like, another one of these things where as a kid, I would have been like, no
[3:34]way.
[3:35]You'll never been one of those.
[3:36]And now here it is.
[3:37]So thank you for the opportunity.
[3:38]And it's just so exciting to see it in there.
[3:41]Yeah.
[3:42]I mean, this series is so close to my heart, and it's why I've been doing it for almost
[3:46]16 years now.
[3:48]It has changed me so much.
[3:50]It's given me so many tools for like my life toolkit, if you want to call it that.
[3:55]So it hasn't really felt like a job that much over these 16 years.
[4:00]That's amazing.
[4:01]And one book a month.
[4:02]That's what I'm trying to do with our publishing company and the thought that one day
[4:05]it would be 140 bucks.
[4:06]I'm like, oh my gosh.
[4:08]How do you do it?
[4:09]How do you make sure each book I want to talk about the toolkit and your own personal
[4:13]relationship to it?
[4:14]But how do you make sure that all 140 books get there a moment in the sun and enough
[4:19]attention and love and all of that?
[4:21]Oh my gosh.
[4:22]First of all, I choose the stories for each book.
[4:26]I have a team of readers who read the thousands of submissions for each book because the
[4:31]stories come in from the public.
[4:33]And then they narrow it down to about a thousand single space pages of stories that I have
[4:40]to read.
[4:41]I know.
[4:42]It's incredible.
[4:43]And then I pick the 101 story from those hundreds of stories.
[4:47]And then I have what I call my pre editor.
[4:50]She goes through and makes the dialogue work and does all the normal grammar and stuff
[4:55]like that.
[4:56]And then I go through and do my work as editor.
[5:00]And some stories need very light editing.
[5:03]Some stories need massive editing.
[5:05]But I go in there and I give everybody the chicken soup for this all treatment.
[5:10]And then we publish the book.
[5:12]And when we first started doing it, I was so excited.
[5:15]We would get a sample of the cover beforehand and I would take the cover, which was flat
[5:21]and I would fold it.
[5:22]And I would stick it up in the bookshelf, you know, like a fake book because I was so
[5:26]excited.
[5:27]And now I'm so, so hum about it.
[5:29]Oh, another case of books just arrived.
[5:32]But I have to say that as I'm working on each book, it's like my favorite.
[5:35]It's my baby.
[5:37]But then how do you promote them?
[5:39]Well, you know what?
[5:41]It's like you can get a book written and you can get it on store shelves that you have
[5:44]to get to leave the store shelves and that's the really hard part.
[5:48]So I guess I take kind of a venture capital approach.
[5:52]I give every book a big try, but then if a book just isn't clicking, it's the wrong
[5:57]time of year or I don't know.
[5:59]There was too much competition that week, whatever.
[6:01]It's kind of like a movie.
[6:02]It could be great, but it might still not get traction if a book doesn't get traction.
[6:08]I just move on.
[6:09]If a book does get traction, then I really keep going and keep promoting it.
[6:14]So we have some books that have sold, you know, 15,000 copies of books and then others
[6:19]that have sold, you know, 100 or 200,000 copies, and who can predict really which ones
[6:25]will be the winners?
[6:26]I mean, I would say 15,000 is also a winner, but you know, it is a winner like in the world
[6:33]of novels.
[6:34]But remember, we have very high costs for our books because we pay, it used to be $200
[6:40]and $250 for each story.
[6:43]So we're starting out with a $25,000 cost for a book.
[6:48]That's really, really high.
[6:49]You know that as a publisher.
[6:51]Well, I mean, you would have to pay an advance to an author if it was just one person.
[6:55]That's true, but for like an unknown, you might not pay that much.
[6:59]I don't know.
[7:00]I don't know your business.
[7:01]You don't know.
[7:02]I've never published a novel.
[7:04]No, but yes, you're starting out.
[7:07]Regardless of what format, whatever book there is, you're starting out with an expense
[7:11]to the author and expense to produce.
[7:14]And then the challenge of finding the audience for it.
[7:18]But you have an amazing brand that like anybody looking at any of your books feels that
[7:24]sense of trust.
[7:25]And that's because of all the work you've done to make sure that the quality is up to
[7:28]snuff and that people get what they came for.
[7:32]Yeah, and I really tried to pursue topics that are meaningful to me.
[7:37]For example, we've done two books on forgiveness.
[7:41]We've done a bunch of books about gratitude.
[7:44]We've done books about grieving, all these things that are so important in our lives.
[7:49]These things that we need to be good at in order to really be happy.
[7:53]I keep putting out books on those topics.
[7:55]So I'm trying to share this, this toolkit that I have found inside me from working on
[7:59]and checking super the salt.
[8:00]I'm trying to share it for these various topics with the public.
[8:05]And I think we've made a real difference to people.
[8:07]We hear that all the time in our fan mail.
[8:09]Totally.
[8:10]And I know that you've gone through your own sort of health challenges as you've been
[8:13]running this giant business, which also has a TV film component to it.
[8:18]I mean, it's a multimedia thing that you've created here, which is amazing.
[8:22]Tell me a little bit more about that and sort of how you're using the tools and how you're
[8:27]feeling and all that.
[8:29]So I was diagnosed with fallopian tube cancer.
[8:35]It's almost five years ago now.
[8:37]So I can't believe I've been doing this already for almost five years.
[8:41]And I went through surgery and then I went through chemo, but I had to say when I was diagnosed,
[8:48]I first thought wasn't to feel sorry for myself.
[8:51]It was just to think, okay, it's my turn now to go through it.
[8:55]Because when you are exposed, it's tens of thousands of stories from people who are sharing
[9:01]all of their personal traumas, their milestone moments, the ups and downs of their lives.
[9:06]It really puts things in perspective.
[9:08]So when my mother died, I thought, oh, it's just my turn when I got cancer.
[9:13]It's just my turn.
[9:15]So I think I approached it with a better attitude.
[9:19]And I went through the surgery then I went through chemo and then I finished chemo.
[9:25]This was four years ago and I said to the doctor, I'm having trouble with fear because
[9:33]the type of cancer that I have has an 80% chance of recurrence.
[9:37]So after you've gone through the surgery in the first months of chemo, there's an 80% chance
[9:42]it's going to come back.
[9:44]And if it does come back, it can't be cured.
[9:47]It can just be managed.
[9:49]So she sent me to a psychiatrist at Sloan Kettering.
[9:53]So I went to the psychiatrist and she said, why are you here?
[9:57]Do you want drugs?
[9:59]I said, no.
[10:00]What drugs? I didn't even take painkillers after the surgery.
[10:03]It took time at all. No drugs. I'm just here because of the fear.
[10:07]So then she started talking to me and she said, well, do you have unresolved issues with the
[10:14]people in your life? And so I said, no, in fact, my mother died two years ago.
[10:19]And I didn't really have any unresolved issues with her, even though she had her ups and downs
[10:25]in terms of how she dealt with her children, I totally forgave her and understood
[10:31]what was behind her actions. And I talked a lot about forgiveness because I've learned so much
[10:37]about forgiveness from chicken soup for the soul stories. So she said, well, I don't normally
[10:43]see people who are in such good shape in that regard. And I said, well, that's because of the job
[10:48]that I do. And then she said, well, what about gratitude? Do you feel that you are thankful for anything?
[10:54]And then I went on for 20 minutes, talking about all the things I was thankful for, my supportive
[11:01]husband, my amazing kids, the fact that my daughter was at OBGYN resident at that time doing a lot
[11:08]of work in oncology. And she, you know, had operated on patients with my kind of surgery. And she
[11:15]knew everything about what I had. And I mean, how lucky was that that I had her to help guide me.
[11:21]And I talked about my job and how my job was still there for me, even though I was
[11:26]incapacitated for a while. And I talked about my very good health insurance and how I didn't have
[11:32]any financial worries that, you know, would be layered on top of worrying about cancer. And so I
[11:37]just talked about all of these things for 20 minutes because we put out several books about gratitude
[11:44]and how powerful it is. And it's something I use all the time. I use it in my daily life. So anyway,
[11:50]we got to the end of our 50 minute hour, you know, the psychiatrist 50 minute hour.
[11:55]And she said, you don't have to ever come back. You're good to go. Like, oh my gosh,
[12:03]I passed the test one and done. But it's really true that I learned so much from these
[12:09]chicken soup for the soul stories. And I think the most important thing is forgiveness.
[12:16]And I think that's the hardest thing for people to handle. And so we focus on that a lot.
[12:22]I mean, we had two books specifically about forgiveness, the power of forgiveness and then
[12:27]the forgiveness fix. But then forgiveness appears in a lot of our other books too in stories,
[12:33]even though those books are ostensibly about other topics. So can we talk about forgiveness a
[12:38]little bit? Because I think this is like the best tool that I could give to listeners.
[12:42]Love to hear about forgiveness. But I also want to just go back for two seconds to the fear.
[12:46]So what did the doctors say about managing your fear? And how did you end up dealing with that?
[12:53]Oh my goodness. Well, the doctor is not great about dealing with fear. For example,
[13:00]when I was going through the chemo, you know, she would always come in during the chemo appointment
[13:04]to talk to me because you know, you're sitting there in that chair for hours hooked up. And
[13:09]she came in one time and I said something about fear of occurrence. She goes, well, 20% of patients
[13:16]don't have a recurrence like that was a happy thing. And she walked out and I just burst into tears.
[13:25]And all these nurses came in, you know, to help me. And they said, did she upset you? And I said,
[13:30]yes, she did. She said in her happy voice, 20% of patients don't have a recurrence.
[13:36]Well, it turned out, by the way, that two years after I finished that first round of chemo,
[13:43]I did have a recurrence. So I did go through chemo again in 2021. And now I'm waiting for the
[13:52]verdict. But I'm pretty sure I'm going back on chemo in the next few months because there's this
[13:58]number they measure in your blood. And the number in my blood is now up in the cancer zone
[14:03]instead of in the normal zone. Oh, and you know what? There's a nationwide shortage
[14:09]of the kind of chemo that works best on my cancer. But they tell me they have it and I shouldn't
[14:14]worry because I'm trying not to worry about that. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Very came back. I'm so sorry.
[14:22]Well, my aunt had it. She had ovarian cancer, which is related to fallopian cancer. So it's possible
[14:28]there's a genetic component, even though they can't find it using current knowledge of genes. But
[14:33]she lived 14 years from her diagnosis. And that was when they didn't have some of the drugs that
[14:38]they have available today. So I'm hoping that I have something that they will be, quote, managing
[14:44]for a long time. You know, because I have five little grandchildren. So I want to be around for a
[14:50]long time to be with my children and my grandchildren and my husband. I mean, in a way, not to minimize
[14:58]this because of course, the fear is in your face and you have to deal with it and make decisions and
[15:02]all that. But fear of death is something that we all every single human being shares in some way,
[15:09]shape or form. Right. We all have a terminal diagnosis that we just don't know when when it's coming.
[15:14]So how do we deal with that fear and does forgiveness help in managing it? Is there some sort of
[15:20]resolution we all feel before it becomes our turn because essentially not to be, you know,
[15:26]depressing about it. But I think acknowledging that death is just such a fact of life. And you don't
[15:32]know if it's going to be your cancer or you're going to walk out the door and get hit by a car
[15:36]or me too, you know, I could walk out the door here. So we all, none of us really know what are we
[15:42]supposed to do with that fear? What is chicken soup for the soul? Say about that.
[15:47]Yeah, because you're right. I mean, I mean, I'm five years older than I was when I was first diagnosed and
[15:52]maybe I would be experiencing fear of death anyway, right? Because at all around me, everybody is
[15:57]getting cancer and all kinds of tragic stories are happening. People are getting Parkinson's and
[16:03]ALS and all these different diseases, you know, in my, in my circle of friends and relatives.
[16:10]Um, yeah, I guess I just have a little more specificity about the way in which I might die,
[16:16]but I am hoping it's far far off and that, yeah, that I'm just as likely to get hit by a truck
[16:22]as I am to die of this cancer. We'll go with that. I think that one of the things that I've
[16:29]learned from all these chickens soup for the soul stories is how to live in the moment. It's so
[16:34]important to just try to relax and enjoy every day. And I think I am enjoying all those everyday
[16:41]pleasures more than I used to because I'm really focused on them. And, you know, every day that
[16:48]I get to sit at breakfast and do the New York Times spelling v and wordle with my husband.
[16:53]Every day is a victory. That's one more day that we get to do that fun thing that we do over breakfast
[16:57]every morning. And so those just keep adding up and seeing my grandchildren, those, those experiences
[17:04]keep adding up. So I do try to just relax and dive into those everyday pleasures. And, uh,
[17:13]I think that's what everybody has to do. That's another thing I've learned from chicken soup for
[17:17]the solace. How to live in the present. I love that. And go back now to forgiveness. And I hope
[17:23]by the way, I was not in any way trying to say that we all have the same as you. I know you're
[17:28]going through the, it's terrifying what you're going through. And I have, you know, a dear friend with
[17:33]breast cancer. And, you know, it's very different than the average person, right? With, I'm not,
[17:39]I was not trying to say that. I hope that was clear. I was just trying to extrapolate it so that
[17:44]everybody can get something out of it. But of course, when you're coping with a disease,
[17:49]they can be terminal. It's a total different ball of wax. So anyway, but you know what, when you
[17:54]have cancer, you just blame everything on cancer. So, you know, I, you're right, I can definitely
[17:59]be fearing death. He moves out cancer. But I right now, I blame cancer for my white hair,
[18:04]my wrinkles, my extra 10 pounds. It's all, it's all cancer's fault. Everything is cancer.
[18:10]I remember when my aunt had it, and she was like 78 years old, and she couldn't really run
[18:15]up to the tennis ball anymore. And she blamed the cancer. And I was thinking, you're 78.
[18:21]You know, it might be, it might be that. So talking about forgiveness. So they're,
[18:27]the first of all, did you know, this I did not know even though I was supposed to be a word person.
[18:32]Did you know that forgiveness doesn't mean that you are excusing someone's behavior or saying,
[18:41]oh, don't worry about it. It's really okay. That's not what the word forgiveness means. And
[18:46]the Mayo Clinic, I was looking up the definition of forgiveness the other day. And I came across
[18:51]the Mayo Clinic's definition. And it was just that forgiveness means that you are not reliving
[18:57]the emotions associated with whatever that bad thing was that happened, that insult, that hurt,
[19:03]that disappointment. That's what it means. It just means that you have decided to draw a line in the
[19:09]sand and you have decided that you are not going to let that person still live in your head
[19:16]and keep doing that thing to you over and over again. Yes, that thing happened, but it happened
[19:21]in the past. And that's where it belongs. And you're not supposed to bring it with you into the
[19:26]present or into your future. So you just have to say, I intellectually know that that thing happened,
[19:33]but I refuse to re-experience it emotionally. So that's what forgiveness is. And that's why
[19:39]you can do it all by yourself and you don't even have to tell the other person because you're
[19:43]just deciding, I will no longer experience the negative emotions that are associated with you or
[19:49]your actions, which is a very good way of looking at it. And there were a few stories about
[19:55]forgiveness in various of our books that really made a big impact on me.
[20:00]one was this woman who got divorced and then for the next few years kept talking about her
[20:07]ex-husband and everything he did wrong and all of her resentments about him and she would tell
[20:13]everybody, even strangers, everybody would hear about her ex-husband and finally her best friend said
[20:18]to her, you might as well still be married to the guy, you take him with you wherever you go
[20:25]and that was such an activity for this woman and she was like, oh my god, I can't believe that,
[20:31]I've divorced him and I kept him bugging me all this time and it was all in my own head,
[20:36]he's moved on with his life and I was sitting here stuck and so instantly,
[20:40]he shed him, she got him out of her brain and she was finally able to move forward with her life
[20:47]and I thought that was a really important, you know, I thought that story was great,
[20:51]another story we had about forgiveness, a woman was having trouble with her mother-in-law
[20:57]and her mother-in-law just kept doing all of these pasts of aggressive things like at a wedding,
[21:02]she didn't include her daughter-in-law in the family photos, it was just pretty unbelievable,
[21:06]but it was her mother-in-law and she was stuck with her so she needed to find a way to deal with it
[21:12]and not let this pile of resentments and hurts build and build and build and build,
[21:18]so she sat down at her computer one day and she started a list and it took her a few days to type
[21:24]up the whole list with many pages and she wrote down everything that her mother-in-law had ever
[21:30]done to her on purpose or accidentally and then once she had the list, she looked at each item,
[21:38]she highlighted it, thought about it and then she deleted it and she went through and deleted
[21:43]every single item on the list and when she was done she just felt so free and she was able to then
[21:53]renew her relationship with her mother-in-law without carrying all that baggage with her,
[21:58]she's made a fresh start and again it was something she did all by herself, her mother-in-law didn't
[22:03]even know about it, but that's what these resentments and disappointments and hurts and everything
[22:10]are. I mean I'd like to imagine you're wearing a cloak and you've sewn onto that cloak,
[22:16]little pieces of metal and each one represents one of those disappointments or hurts and now you're
[22:21]walking along but you're dragging this heavy cloak behind you and it's clanking and there's all
[22:26]these pieces of metal sewed to it, each of which represents something you haven't been able to let go
[22:32]and imagine if you could just shrug that cloak off and leave it behind you, all those things are
[22:37]in your past they're behind you, now you move forward, liberate it and free and that's really what
[22:45]forgiveness does for you and that's probably the most valuable thing I've learned from reading
[22:51]chicken soup for the soul stories. Wow, those are great actionable tips. So who did you need to do
[22:59]this sort of mental cleansing forgiveness exercise on for yourself? Well, I would say I had two
[23:08]relatives, one friend and one business associate who all required this treatment and yeah and I took
[23:16]care of all of them but out of course them even knowing about it and and that was one of the things
[23:22]I talked about with that psychiatrist and that was one of the things that oppressed her so much
[23:26]about you know about my ability to handle life. So yeah and the other thing and this is another
[23:34]thing that has come up in our chicken soup for the soul stories. It's a tip about how you deal with
[23:41]toxic people when that's you know very much adjacent to forgiveness. So the biggest lesson I've learned
[23:49]and I can't believe I didn't know this until I was in my 50s. I finally learned from reading
[23:56]one specific chicken soup for the soul story that you're allowed to basically weed the garden of your
[24:04]life and you're actually allowed to remove people from your life. Now you can't remove relatives.
[24:09]All you can do is use a strategy where you don't let them bother you anymore but you can remove
[24:16]so-called friends. So I have done that. You can remove toxic people from your life. Friends are
[24:23]optional. They're not mandatory. So if you have friends where you're saying well I have to go have
[24:28]lunch with this person. I really don't want to. She's so negative. She's always passive
[24:34]aggressive with me. She's an narcissist. Whatever your whatever your complaint is about this person
[24:39]you don't have to go have lunch with that person and if you don't want to just officially drop
[24:44]that person because it would be too obvious. You can just slowly subtly take that person off your
[24:51]A list or your B list and demot her to your C list or your D list and all of a sudden you're seeing
[24:55]her once a year. Not four times a year but you can do that. You're allowed to remove toxic people
[25:02]from your life. So that was a very valuable lesson for me because I have enough going on in my life
[25:08]without letting toxic people into it as well. I love that. Yeah I feel like that's one of those things
[25:14]that you have to get a little bit older to realize you have the option to do.
[25:21]Like I didn't realize that fully until I was maybe I don't know 40 or what I don't know.
[25:27]Maybe if I had heard it or maybe you have to live it yourself or come to some
[25:32]surrealization. I hope that people listening will just like take the advice and act on it no matter
[25:37]what their age is. You know I hope I hope but I don't know for me I had to come to this realization
[25:43]and I think it had to do with how people responded to me throughout my divorce. You know how some
[25:49]people were surprisingly nice or surprisingly not nice. Different people that I might have predicted
[25:54]and how I had to be like I don't necessarily need to consider them a friend or I don't know.
[26:00]Maybe something has to happen like you rethink your life or I don't know but I do think that it
[26:06]clears up a lot of time and I was telling another friend like who had a troublesome friend who I
[26:10]didn't even really know. And I'm like you don't have to spend an hour on the phone with her every
[26:14]day. Like why you get that time back? Why are you doing that? Like you don't that's a choice
[26:20]you're making. So I don't know. Yeah I didn't realize I could do it until I read a specific
[26:25]chicken soup for the soul story where there's there's one man who had cancer because cancer just
[26:29]gives you a lot of clarity. When she got cancer she got this person out of her life and I think I
[26:36]was 50 years old when I read that story and it was like a light bulb went on.
[26:41]So living with cancer now and living with the fear and uncertainty not only of what might happen
[26:49]but also of the intrusion of treatment constantly and the calendar I remember when we were
[26:56]doing a podcast this is like in 2021 I feel like when we were first getting to know each other
[27:00]maybe you're like well I might be doing chemo in October so why don't we do this in November and
[27:05]did it and I was like oh my gosh you know like even just having to put it as a matter of fact
[27:10]item in the craziness of life like how how do you deal with all of that? You know I went online
[27:16]and I found the interview I did with you in 2021 and I was on chemo at that time because I was on
[27:24]chemo at the beginning or maybe I was just about to go on chemo. Yeah I might have been just about
[27:28]to go on chemo when we did that gee what does that mean now? Yeah I'm worried about having to go
[27:35]on chemo too soon because we have a three-week trip to the Amalfi coast plant. It's one of those once
[27:41]in a lifetime trips. I really want to go on this trip and the first week of it involves heavy
[27:46]duty hiking you know and the Amalfi coast is so hilly and I really want to do this hiking trip I've
[27:52]wanted to do this forever so yeah I'm pretty worried about that but I'm just going to have to
[27:59]work my way through it and if I have to go on chemo and then go to Italy and be somewhat
[28:04]incapacitated I'll just have to do lighter hikes I guess. I mean you just have to work around it
[28:09]and call I'll just said you know we can work around your trip you could have a longer spacing
[28:13]between chemo treatments if necessary so we'll see what happens but on the other hand I have to use
[28:21]my gratitude and think how many people who have my cancer are also looking forward to a three-week
[28:26]trip to the Amalfi coast right that's pretty good that's good stuff so that's the other thing that
[28:32]you know I've really learned a lot about from chicken soup for the salt is the power of gratitude
[28:38]and I'm deliberately looking at all the good things in your life and and repeating them to yourself
[28:44]like maybe you write down three things every day you're grateful for and at the end of the month you
[28:48]have 90 things you've written down really helps you to focus every day and what's good in your life
[28:53]and when I read all of these tens of thousands of stories that people have sent to us and we
[28:57]would get stories from people who got flesh-eating disease and lost three of their four limbs you
[29:03]know there's people who have such hardship in their lives so my little problems don't seem that
[29:09]important compared to theirs. Well Amy thank you so much for coming on for sharing your story
[29:16]for being so such a warrior and such an amazing businesswoman and creative and contributor
[29:22]and inspiration so thank you. Well thank you for having me on I really admire what you've been doing.
[29:28]Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[29:34]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebioans and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[29:39]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebioans.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots
[29:44]of authors on zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact texture sound for
[29:49]the sound editing and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[29:53]now trim music.