Are you ready to be inspired? We're thrilled to share a conversation with Ruthie Gray, published author of the book Empty Nest Awakening. Ruthie offers a raw and intimate glimpse into her journey of becoming an author and shares how accountability and trust in God have been her guiding lights. We tie in the importance of self-care, overcoming self-sabotage, and how you can apply these practical tools in your own life.
In an equally compelling segment, Ruthie takes us through her personal experience of caregiving for her parents while balancing homeschooling. The strength she found in faith is truly inspiring as she candidly discusses the overwhelming nature of her responsibilities.
The episode culminates in a discussion on Ruthie's book, guaranteed to offer you encouragement, hope, and a renewed sense of purpose as you navigate this new season in your life. Trust us, you don't want to miss this enlightening conversation and be sure to look out for Ruthie's book, Empty Nest Awakening.
Grab the book here: https://authenticonlinemarketing.com/book
Connect with Ruthie:
Instagram: ruthie_gray_author
Facebook: Authentic Online Marketing with Ruthie Gray
Thanks for listening in!
Follow the host, Mary
Social Media: @maryjohess
Are you ready to be inspired? We're thrilled to share a conversation with Ruthie Gray, published author of the book Empty Nest Awakening. Ruthie offers a raw and intimate glimpse into her journey of becoming an author and shares how accountability and trust in God have been her guiding lights. We tie in the importance of self-care, overcoming self-sabotage, and how you can apply these practical tools in your own life.
In an equally compelling segment, Ruthie takes us through her personal experience of caregiving for her parents while balancing homeschooling. The strength she found in faith is truly inspiring as she candidly discusses the overwhelming nature of her responsibilities.
The episode culminates in a discussion on Ruthie's book, guaranteed to offer you encouragement, hope, and a renewed sense of purpose as you navigate this new season in your life. Trust us, you don't want to miss this enlightening conversation and be sure to look out for Ruthie's book, Empty Nest Awakening.
Grab the book here: https://authenticonlinemarketing.com/book
Connect with Ruthie:
Instagram: ruthie_gray_author
Facebook: Authentic Online Marketing with Ruthie Gray
Thanks for listening in!
Follow the host, Mary
Social Media: @maryjohess
Hi everyone. Thank you for joining me for another episode of the Back 40 podcast. I'm your host, mary Hess. So today's guest is Ruthie Gray from Authentic Online Marketing. She was on earlier this year to talk about caregiving in the second half of life and we had a really great interview. And today I'm having her on because she has published her book Empty Nest Awakening and by the time this podcast airs, it will be available everywhere. So we're going to spend time today talking about her book, what she's learned in the process of writing the book, and then, obviously, the content all about waking up in this season and finding your purpose and living life to the fullest and navigating the hard things. All of these things we're going to be talking about today. So I want you to stay tuned. Ruthie Gray is up next. Ruthie, thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast. I'm so excited about this interview.
Speaker 2:I'm glad to be here with you again, Mary. It's always good and fun talking to you.
Speaker 1:I think by the time we finish this year out 2023, we will have gotten to be on three interviews together on the podcast. I'm not hating it. I'm not hating it, I'm not complaining about it all for good, different reasons. So I'm excited to have you here. I'm really excited and so thrilled for you because by the time this podcast airs so as of today, it hasn't, but by the time this podcast airs in a couple of weeks, you will have a new book out for the world to listen, to read and listen to if they have audio and all the jazz. So yeah, congratulations.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's so exciting, so exciting.
Speaker 1:Emptiness awakening. We were just chatting prior to hitting the record button. Such a timely book because our generation, gen Xers, we're all hitting this phase and we have lots of questions and, unfortunately, not everybody's parents were very talkative about these major milestones in life that we hit in the back 40, but you've put this book out and I have almost all the way through it. I am loving it. It is so good, it's so refreshing. I love your writing style. It sounds just like you. I feel like you're just sitting there at the table talking to me and I'm like that's right. That's right. That's how I felt, yay.
Speaker 2:That's good, that's good, so it's really good.
Speaker 1:So to get to this book. How did this happen? How did you decide to wake up and write a book one day?
Speaker 2:Well, that was always the dream for years, even when I was growing up, even when I was a kid, and so this is actually my third book. I released two books about seven or eight years ago on parenting for young moms related to. One is about mom anger and how we get frustrated with our kids, and the other one is mindsets for the mom who thinks she's failing at motherhood, and based on a passage in scripture. And so those were ebooks, though there was no hard copy and no desire, because after I'd done all the formatting and all that stuff, I was like forget this. And so I went on with my bad self and went on with life and built my business and I thought, well, you know, if there's going to be a book, it might be, you know, someday in my seventies or something like that, but I'm not concerned about that right now.
Speaker 2:And then I started looking at my friends who were really seeing books and it seemed like a lot of work, a lot of launching, a lot of travel, a lot of book signing and a lot of, just a lot of work.
Speaker 2:I thought, nah, I don't want to do that, that's, I don't need to do that. God, thank you for putting me where I am. So at the beginning of every year, god gives me a big project and I'm just kind of praying about my year, got my cultivate planner on and I'm like planning out my quarters and my months and my goals, and he had been nudging me that way since last fall and I knew that that was going to be the project for the year. So I said okay, but I don't know what it's going to be about. But the cool thing was when I announced it to my followers and my readers, they were like yes, yes, we want to read it. And I thought, oh, okay, well, I guess people are ready now. I've spent years building my platform, so I guess it's time. So that's basically how it started.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if I remember correctly I haven't gone back and listened to the interview, but I believe you said on my interview and I'm going to write a book this year, and I was like what? Oh my gosh, that's a big statement to put out there. Okay, yay, because that's I mean I do. I haven't published a book, but Shannon and I are in the middle of, and have been in the middle for a while. I've written a book and it is a lot of work. I don't think people realize it's not just the writing, it's then it's the editing and it's making sure your thoughts are cohesive and you're not repeating yourself.
Speaker 1:you know 10,000 words later and saying the same thing over and over again and having someone look at it and tell you to fix these things and update these parts, all of that, all the stuff. But you did it, it's here, it's coming out and it's releasing on October, the 17th. Next week, yes, next week. Yeah, it's so great. A double party yes, woohoo.
Speaker 2:You know, and one of the reasons yeah, yeah, we're definitely having a virtual but one of the reasons that I told everybody that I was writing a book this year was to keep myself accountable. Sure, and I wouldn't have done that had I not really believed that the Lord wanted me to do that, and so I knew that if he wanted me to do it, he would guide me and help me to know the exact topic. Know the exact topic and the route to go to write it and to have it edited. And I had editor friends, so I knew that I was going to have them. You know, look at it. But I also knew that I needed direction, I needed a developmental editor and I needed someone to format the book and make the cover, because I was not doing that and I was already running my business.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So I just, you know, prayed about every step, and the Lord just brought it all together. It was amazing.
Speaker 1:So good, so so good. Well, it's, it's. It looks beautiful. Obviously, I don't have my hard copy yet I haven't ordered but even just I love the formatting of it and I love how you make space at the end of the chapters for people to write their thoughts or to answer some questions that you ask. And just beautifully designed, it's just very comforting and soothing, which I think is really cool, because you're talking about emptiness, awakening, and you're talking about we're going through this big transition and you want to stir up hope and you know purpose and all those things inside of us as we're reading it. But at the same time, the book feels comforting and soothing and okay, we can do this that kind of atmosphere that it feels like it creates. So it's really really, really cool. I like the way you have it set up.
Speaker 1:So let's talk a little bit about what you wrote about. Let's talk about the phrase that you use, the sandwich season. Let's talk about that first, because that one's kind of near and dear to my heart. So what in the heck do you mean by the sandwich season?
Speaker 2:Well, you are squished in the middle. You're like the ham and cheese and the bread is kind of a little bit splattered. You know, the ham and cheese is just like spreading everywhere. Sometimes the bacon is falling out. The bread is the two ends. So the one end. On the one end you've got your adult kids and your grandkids.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Or if you don't have them, they're coming Right. And on the other end you've got your parents and caregiving duties. And the thing about the sandwich season is you get to show up for everyone's emergencies and joyous events. It's not all under your roof anymore like it used to be. For all those years when all the kids were home, you could manage the chaos. Then it was all under your roof. You get to, you got to call the shots, like if they were going to go to a birthday party, the basketball scene and the whole you know cycle of running here and there, with sports and music lessons and all that.
Speaker 2:But once you're in the sandwich season, things start happening beyond your control. Your kids are out, maybe they are in an accident, and you don't even know it because you don't know they're out because they're out, or your mom has a stroke, like mine did, and it's just. You know, all of a sudden, one day For me, I was an only child and I was thrown into the caregiving immediately because, not just mere months after that, my dad was in a terrible car accident and just one thing right after the other. So it's just, there's no controlling the chaos.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, a lot of. I have several friends who are in the middle of this right now and I watch because I realized that very quickly that's going to be me and my siblings in the middle of we. I still have one more child at home, so, but she's graduating high school this year, so we're right at the end of it and, of course, you know my parents are getting older and I was just in Kentucky my mom had a knee replacement, so the siblings, we were all taking turns, you know, being up there and travel and all the things you know. So it's an interesting. I just I like that phrase, that descriptive that you use. I thought it's very apropos. It definitely fits that it's not necessarily that you don't fit anywhere, it's that I don't. It's like you could be at any given time.
Speaker 1:You fit everywhere, yes, yes, you're the hub, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's really, it's really. It's really an interesting time of life when you are, when you're navigating, when you're navigating that season, you know, only to eventually be the parent receiving the caregiving. It's like this never ending cycle of just you know moving forward and all of that. So, yeah, how, if you had to kind of phrase our sum up in just a few sentences, what do you want people to grab from this book when they read it, when they pick it up? What should they walk away with?
Speaker 2:Ultimately, I want them to walk away with hope that there is purpose in their season, that there is purpose in the grief of an era gone by. There's purpose in the grief of the change of now. But it's not just grief, there is hope. There's hope of something to come, of grasping and embracing a new life for yourself and that you can fit in time for yourself and to explore perhaps old passions that are being uncovered, like my writing, or maybe they're new and maybe it's not. Maybe you want to start a business on the side or something like that. Or maybe you want to learn Zumba, or you know, I don't know learn to knit or balance, play, dance, or I don't know. But there's something there and I want to encourage moms in this season to fight for some time for yourself, so that you can find yourself again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so good. It's really hard to do that when you've been on autopilot for years of making sure that your children are taken care of, that all of the duties are handled and all the schedules are coordinated and suppers ready and lunches are packed and PTA meetings are happening and teacher conferences, and then all of a sudden you don't have that stuff anymore. You don't have to worry about that. So I find that it is.
Speaker 1:I was just talking about this in one of my last podcasts when I was covering going through menopause, how we have to advocate for ourselves. We have to take care of ourselves, because this season of life we have a lot of things that are changing all at once and it's easy to get overwhelmed and feel like no one's listening or is paying attention or sees. You know, all of this stuff, you're balancing new things in different ways and the things that worked in the last season don't work in this season. You know, like in menopause I was saying, the exercises you did back then aren't the exercises that you want to do now for longevity and health and those sorts of things. So it's the same kind of concept, right? We want to make sure that we're doing those things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a new. We have to figure out what the patterns are, and often there's no pattern. It's almost like it's not even controlled chaos because, like I said, you don't know when your parents' health is going to go south and you don't know how many times they're going to fall, and you just you can't control when the doctor wants to operate and you also can't control when a new grandson is going to be born or that your daughter that saw she was not going to have kids for at least two years after she got married ends up having a baby nine months after the wedding. You can't control any of that, and so trying to carve out a little time for yourself for just self care and some hope are definitely it's just so important and integral because you do end up being the hub and taking care of others.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what kind of? If you have some examples or some thoughts about what did that look like for you? How did you, how did you find that? How did you find ways to carve that out for yourself? What did that in the midst of all that chaos in your life? Obviously, you're writing from example and from having walked some of this journey and are still walking it, but what does that look like exactly?
Speaker 2:Well… First it looked like I just was trying to fix everything. I thought if I could fix this then I could go back to my life, because when my caregiving journey started, my kids were actually all still home, but two were in college, in local colleges, and the other two were homeschooled in high school. I had just pulled them out of school to homeschool them. Wow Now, we had homeschooled in previous years, but this was a family decision together. I knew it was of God. I knew that he had orchestrated that. And then everything fell apart. My husband had actually.
Speaker 2:The day that my mom had her stroke was supposed to be our first day of school and my girls were waiting in the hallway for me to tell them what to do. To start with, my husband was in the hospital. I had just followed the ambulance to the hospital the night before he had had an emergency. I'm getting ready to go see him at the hospital when my dad calls and says I think your mother's had a stroke. I was just so overwhelmed I just couldn't figure out what to do. I was running up and down the stairs crying, and my daughters were just like. I felt so bad for them. They felt bad for me Right. I was like what am I going to do? I called my husband and he said you're going to have to go and take control of that situation. I did. I called an ambulance and all that stuff.
Speaker 2:Then it just one thing built after another. At one point I was in the hospital and I had to go in the hallway because I wasn't getting the answers that I wanted from the doctors, because issues were melting and uncovering that my dad had that nobody knew because he hadn't been asking questions and telling his doctor about things because he wasn't paying attention to his body. And my mom hadn't really done that either. They were keeping up with their doctor's visits, but they weren't asking any questions or noticing anything. I knew that I was going to have to be the one to ask all the questions and go to all of the visits, and I just had a breakdown in the middle of the hallway one day and in the hospital I thought I can't do this. I can't do all of this. I just want to fix this and get back to my life.
Speaker 2:It was an impression of the Lord that he said this is the plan now. Oh wow. I finally came to accept that. It took me a while. But once I accepted that the plan was just going to be chaotic for a while but that God was in it, then I just learned to do the next thing and the next thing, and the next thing and figure out what the top priorities were and what the classes were going to be for my girls and what should they do today and tomorrow and for this week. And then I would carve time, I would take my gym bag to the hospital and just run over to the Y and just get on that elliptical and sweat it out for 30 minutes and come back and feel like I could handle the next emergency and the next. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's a. I was just thinking while you were talking. I was like, okay, how would I? I would just lay down on the floor and go. Okay, I quit tapping out. I'm tapping out right now. I don't know that I could. It's a lot. What did you find as far as your, your relationship with God during that time Were you? Was it easy to? Were you having to? Did it feel like I'm having to grab just moments, or could you just did you just know he was with you and that kind of helped you through the season? Like what was it like? Relying on him and, I guess, being able to recharge spiritually? The gym is great. I would be probably doing the same thing, but like what, what was that like for you in that season?
Speaker 2:Well, thankfully, I had cultivated that early morning hour for myself. That just works, yeah, and I had been fighting for that time for years. And so that was already in place and, even if it was just a short time, already knew what I was going to read. I already had my place, you know, and, and so On the days when an emergency happened, or I had to be at hospital at 6am to meet with, to chase down another doctor like a neurologist, I just knew that God was with me. I just would pray and I would pray scripture. I prayed scripture all the time.
Speaker 2:I had picked up Beth Moore's praying God's word years before that, and so I was already in the habit of that. And when I would have my devotions, I would underline verses and I would write them down on three buff off cards and I would take them with me and I would just keep praying. And I had praise songs on my radio and CDs and oftentimes I would just lift my hands while I was driving, you know, and worship, because I knew that I needed to worship, because if I didn't I was going to get caught up in, you know, self-sabotage and selfish thoughts. Yeah, and because I did that, it kept me on track so that I was able to hear the Holy Spirit's nudge, just like that day that I heard. This is the plan now walkie in it.
Speaker 1:I don't like that. Okay, but okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it wasn't easy to accept. None of it was easy to accept. It was a very uncomfortable time of life and it continued for I mean, I'm going on my 14th year of caregiving. My dad finally passed three years ago, in 2020, but it was real difficult tag teaming the both of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I cannot, I cannot imagine. I love what you said about grabbing those moments. I was just sharing on Sunday at church how I went through a season where I've self-sabotaged and it just felt like, you know, the enemy was really also coming at me and kind of adding fuel to the fire. But I would write down scripture on three by five cards, because we didn't have a smartphone at the time. No, no, no, no. But I would write them down on three by five cards and I had a little, those little metal rings that you could punch a hole in and keep them connected, and I'd be at a red light and I'd pull those three by five cards out and I would say I have the mind of Christ and you know all the scriptures that I would try to memorize and how it made such a difference being able to pray the word of God and just grab those moments, like you said, because he's always with us. But it definitely keeps our tank full so that we're not pulling on other things to try to fill us up and walking away empty-handed. That's, that's so good, All right.
Speaker 1:One more thing let's chat about. I don't want to keep you all day because I know you are just booked full of these interviews and I really appreciate you taking time. This is great. This is great. Talk about leaving a legacy. I've talked about that quite a few times this year in the podcast in season two, and I find it's been a really hot topic. Of you know, in our age, you start rethinking like okay, why am I doing this? What is, what is the purpose here? Is it, you know, just for me? Is it to so talk about leaving a legacy and what that looks like for you, and even in this book?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a. There's a chapter about what do you want your legacy to be. I refer back to that old pizza Tombstone Pizza commercial. What do you want on your tombstone? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was presented to me on a podcast, sue Donaldson's Welcome Heart podcast and she said what do you want your legacy to be, which is a question that she regularly asks her guests. And I knew she was going to ask me that because she sent me the questions and I was like, oh, what am I going to say? I better start thinking about this. But, and so it did really force me. And then I in turn asked some of my people in my community and my mentorship what do you want your legacy to be? And one of them said you're always pushing us to think, aren't you? Well, it's just because we need. We need those pushes, those gentle nudges, and I realized that truly, I wanted my legacy to be one of courage.
Speaker 2:I come from a long line of fear mongers and I talk about it in the book. My grandma was. She gave into fear and she never left the house. But my dad, who was a carbon copy of her, overcame fear and became a pastor and a public speaker and led many people to the Lord and that has had a ripple effect across countries and worldwide. As he's led even. There was an even an atheist in our little town that he would. He would follow every day not every day, but he would. He would meet them at his house and follow him to milk his cow after he came home from work and just sit there and just be with him and talk to him. And this guy came to know the Lord and became a missionary to Mexico. He's still there.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Um, many souls have been saved because of that, and so I wanted to follow in my dad's path, and I have, uh, as far as being public, but it took me a while, and you'll read in the book. It took me a while to face what God was asking me to do to go public and to build a platform, and it's scary for we women, but the thing about a legacy is, in this stage of life, we realize that we don't have much time left. We've lived likely over half of our lives. It's time to stop messing around. It's time to stop playing small. It's time to start doing whatever it is that God wants us to do next.
Speaker 2:And, honestly, it's not that hard to figure out. If you look at what the desires are, if you're meeting with the Lord, look at the gentle nudges that he's giving you and the desires that you already have, and a lot of times we just question well, why do I want to do this? Oftentimes, it's been put there because God put it there right and don't question it so much. So think about what do you want your legacy to be and how does that line up with your desires?
Speaker 1:That's so good. That's so very good. It's so important I use the phrase all the time what brings you joy, what makes you come alive inside when you start talking about things that you? Want to do, or gifts that God has placed inside of you. They're not there by accident. How can you use those in different areas? And what does that look like? What makes you just absolutely come alive and press into that? That's so, so very good, ruthie. Tell us how we can find this book, please.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, you can go to that. You can try two different things. One is easier than the other. You can either go to authenticonlinemarketingcom slash book that is my website or you can go to RuthieGraycom, and either way you will get to the book page and you can read all about it and you can order the book. It's everywhere. It's books a million, it's Target, it's, you know, walmart, it's Amazon, all the places, and you can get a digital copy or you can get a hard copy, which I recommend the hard copy because it's it's fun to hold and it's fun to write in, it's the answers to your questions and it's it's soft and it's got a nice little grippable mat cover and I'm holding it.
Speaker 2:I'm holding the proof. I'm holding the proof right now. So Mary is salivating as she sees me, I know.
Speaker 1:I am. I can't wait. I can't wait to get mine. It needs to hurry up and get here already. Oh, that's so good. Well, I will have all of that information in the show notes so everybody can just click right through and order their copy. Ruthie, thank you so much for being with me today and talking about the book. It was such an honor to have you on the podcast again. If I could have you on here all the time, I would. I love talking with you. You bring such life and joy and encouragement.
Speaker 2:I do too. We have, and your podcast is just. It's about all the topics that I'm living or have lived in the last 10 to 15 years, like menopause and all that other junk.
Speaker 1:Yes, all that other junk, all the other stuff, we really do need some kind of handbook, some kind of guide. I mean, you know, we just need some kind of guide for all of this stuff. Well, thank you so much for your contribution to helping all of us navigate this new season in the back 40, giving us hope and encouragement, pushing us a little bit to step out of our comfort zones and take chances and risks and think about what effect we are having on the generations behind us and what we're going to be leaving as we navigate the next season of life. So I really do appreciate you being here and thank you everyone for joining us for another episode of the back 40 podcast. I will have all of Ruthie's information, including links to the book, in the show notes. So y'all take care and we'll see you on another episode soon.