Sandy Kate: Hi, my name is Sandy Kate. I am 73 years old. I'm from Grand Haven. The name of my conversation partner is Kym.
Kym: I'm 59 years old. I'm from a suburb called Jenison.
Sandy Kate: Kym, what did your childhood look like?
Kym: A very unique religious home. My parents were Seventh Day Adventist, so I didn't always feel like I fit in at school. I had one brother.My grandparents were close.I think fairly normal. I mean, it had its dysfunction, I think, like any family. I was a difficult child.I ran away from home several times when I was early teens and then left home when I was 16, which I feel so bad for my parents now. I love them so much. I'm sorry I put them through that, but I had this curiosity, I think, back then, and I wanted to be outside of the bubble that we grew up in.
Sandy Kate: That's why you ran away.
Kym: Yeah, I just felt very suffocated in our home and my parents did fight a lot and I'd made some poor choices by then. I started getting into drugs and alcohol and I thought I could find Nirvana on the other side somewhere.
Sandy Kate: Did you find it?
Kym: I did not.Well, I shouldn't say I did not. I did. I found it within me.
Sandy Kate: Good for you.
Kym: What was your childhood like?
Sandy Kate: I grew up in a very rural community on a very small farm. Did lot of work. A lot of shoveling. A lot of hauling hay. My husband and I were joking about that this time of year, we don't even like to think about it because we were always out in the hot fields hauling hay. It was okay because you learned that that's how you get your food. I mean, I'm not one of those people that has no idea where the canned food and the frozen food comes from, because I know exactly where it comes from. I was always a little behind because I started school when I was four and then I started college when I was 17. So, I felt a little bit like I'm not as old as everybody else, which now is fine. I had some people in my family that were pretty abusive, and I got away from that and a lot of therapy and I got myself through it.
Kym: Did you go a long ways away for college or did you stay fairly local?
Sandy Kate: I went away. I started at Ferris (State University). I didn't even last a term. I came home with a terrible stomachache, and I know now after learning to be a social worker and a therapist that you stick with what you know. Why would I have wanted to go home? But I did. Later on, I started college and finished and got my master’s degree. As a wellness coach, can you tell me about how you got into that and what your job encompasses?
Kym: I have had a lot of therapy and I've gone through a lot of stuff in my life and I'm really passionate about helping people find health in their mind. Then I feel like everything from there follows. So, I have this four-burner theory that all of us are like a stove top. So, you have friends, family, health and work. And most cooks will tell you, you can really only have one burner on high without burning things. But we know that people can have two, sometimes three, for short period of time. So, I like to start with my clients and say, what are your goals and what do you have going on in life right now? Because if you're starting a new job and you have a toddler, you have two burners on high already. So, we don't want your health burner to go off because we want your health to be as long as your life. That's my other big goal is that people tend to live to be 90, but they start to lose their health around 70. So, trying to bridge that gap between 70 and 90s. So, I get to spend most of my days coaching people to think about what's going on in their head and what truths they're believing and what they're doing that can affect their health of their body.
Could you briefly describe in your own words, your personal political values?
Sandy Kate: Oh man, I never discussed politics. I'm way over to the left. I'm really liberal.
Kym: And what do you mean by that?
Sandy Kate: I think that people should make their own decisions as far as their own bodies, their own choices, a lot of the rhetoric that you hear on television and so forth. My husband laughs at me because I go, thank God for the mute button. I'm real left-wing. How about you?
Kym: Well, so I don't have a TV and haven't for 10, 15, probably 20 years. I don't know when the last time…
Sandy Kate: Good for you.
Kym: I don't get to hear all of that stuff, but I made some wrong choices as a child. So, I have that experience that helps me shape my political beliefs. And my daughters and I were homeless for a year. I'm slightly left of center, but I guess I maybe don't know for sure. So, I wrote, I believe government is too large and too far from the problem. I believe we are called to take care of each other and that requires discernment that gets lost in the largeness. And so, I’m probably more liberal than conservative, but I believe they both bring something to the table because I do see on the conservative side, the responsibility. have a responsibility to do the right thing. And we do have the responsibility to do the right thing by those who can't do the right thing.But I also believe we do have to take care of each other and help each other. And I would be more than happy to take a little less health care if it meant somebody else got some health care that didn't have any. On that note, want that person to do the responsible thing, to do the right thing, to take some responsibility for their actions.
Sandy Kate: You're trying to find that balance kind of in the middle.
Kym: I find that we all kind of think the same and just what's important to us too, like different presidents have had, like I feel like different things that are important to them that they fought for, which then I feel like people would say, well, he didn't do this and he didn't do that. Well, he can't do everything. So, I didn't really even pay attention during the Obama era. Although I think for me personally, that was an era that made my life better.
Sandy Kate: How did it make your life better?
Kym: I didn't have healthcare before then.
Sandy Kate: Oh, yeah.
Kym: Has it been perfect? I don't think so, but at least it was a start in that direction. Do you believe in prayer? Do you believe in the God of the Bible, I guess?
Sandy Kate: I don't believe in the traditional God. I believe that there is something in charge, you know. There's no way that I can believe that this all just fell into place without something. I think I'm more on the scientific side that a friend of mine who was a very, very bright individual, we were talking one time because I worked for hospice so long and we were talking one time about what happens after you die. And he said, you know, the thing is energy never dissipates. It has to go somewhere. Just that has always stuck in my head. Do we come back as something else? Do we, I don't know. Who's the kindest to you in your life?
Kym: Boy, that is a tough one. It would come down to a tie between my ex and my best friend, my ex as well. He will do anything for me.He might make me crazy while he's doing it, but he will do it. But my best friend is one that I can be myself around and I can have the tears and the cry. And she's very different from me. She's probably much more conservative. She's straight arrow when it comes to the Bible.And she listens to all my like, this is sketchy to me in the Bible. Really? Do you think that? And then she doesn't like, she just loves on me. And so, she would be the probably one of my best friends.
Sandy Kate: My husband, he's hard to describe.I always think of him as like a tree or a rock or something. I mean, he's, you can depend on him. He can't remember what he went to the store for. There are some things that we're having issues with, but I can count on him. If I need something. And he learned a long time ago when I was in graduate school, he finally would say, do you want me to give you an idea of something to do about this? Or do you just want me to shut up and listen? And I would go just shut up and listen. And he learned to do that, you know, because guys are such fix-it people as a rule.
Kym: Yeah.
Sandy Kate: So, he's probably the kindest.
Kym: Okay. So Sandy, who's been the most influential person in your life and what did they teach you?
Sandy Kate: I had a really good therapist for quite a while and I would have to say that he helped me look at the things that were very difficult in my life, but he also helped me pretty much let go of them. They're not who you are now, they're who you were then.And I think he was probably the most influential. How about you?
Kym: Hail to the therapists. That's what I wrote too, my therapist for sure. I mean, there have been so many, but you're right. I actually just sent her my latest blog post and I'll see her Thursday. And I said, this is because of you. Thank you for helping me to learn to do life a better way. If you could talk to a younger version of yourself, what would you say?
Sandy Kate: That you're going to be all right. It's going to work. You can't see it now. It's going to be okay. Because I never would have believed it.
Kym: That makes me want to cry because I hope at 74, that is what this version would tell my 70-year-old self.But I would tell my younger self, it is going to be all right, but I would also tell her to seek out good friendships. That if I wanted to know what my life would look like, I would look at my five closest friends. I would have believed in myself and sought those good friendships and to read. What is something that you will take with you from this experience?
Sandy Kate: I'm glad I did it. I guess I wonder how it was that we got matched up. I don't think we're all that different.
Kym: I know it.
Sandy Kate: What about you?
Kym: What I'm going to take away is your comment about the energy.I'm really fascinated by that because I'm always like, where are we going after this life? Is there any place I'm going?
Sandy Kate: I don't know. I worked with a lot of people who were dying and who died and nobody has ever given me the answer. One of my very good friends who died a couple of years ago said that if she got to where she was going and she could send me a message, she would and she never did.
Kym: My ex is an electrical engineer. When I first questioned him about the concept of grounding he took me outside and stuck an electrical current meter to my finger and it did move while I had my shoes on. And then he said take your shoes off and I stood on the ground and the meter moved and he said everything is energy Kim. So of course, the energy from the ground is going to come up into you your heart is an electrical current.
Sandy Kate: Just be careful what you touch when you're out doing that.
Kym: I'll be looking for you now every time I'm out in Grand Haven.