Episode X: Honoring dreams. Healing grief. Living fully. With Laura Carney

In this episode of The Well-Tended Life podcast, I sit down with writer and bucket-list finisher Laura Carney for a heartfelt and inspiring conversation about saying yes to life—even in the wake of loss.

When Laura found her late father’s handwritten bucket list—left unfinished after his sudden death at age 54—she made a bold decision: she would complete it for him. What started as a tribute to his life turned into a powerful journey of healing, self-discovery, and joy.

Together, we explore the ways that tending to our own dreams can also help us tend to our grief, how rest and fun can be sacred acts of growth, and how surrendering to life’s callings can lead us exactly where we’re meant to be.

This episode is full of soul-stretching wisdom and reminders that living with intention doesn’t always mean doing big things—it’s about listening to your heart, choosing joy, and believing that you are worthy of both healing and happiness.

💫 Here are a few heart taps from this episode:

1️⃣ Laura shared vulnerably about fearing she was like her dad in the ways she didn’t want to be—until she realized she’d been seeing him only through the eyes of her childhood.

2️⃣ If you’ve forgotten that life is meant to be fun—pause and ask yourself: what are you even doing?

3️⃣ Your bucket list doesn’t have to be epic. Sometimes the smallest longings are the ones your soul most needs you to honor.

4️⃣ Don’t work for rest. Work from rest.

💛 So grab your journal and open your heart—this episode is an invitation to live more fully, tend more gently, and say yes to the life that’s calling you. Hit play now—you don’t want to miss this one.

Learn more about Laura here: https://myfatherslist.com/

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Transcript

Intro to The Well-Tended Life with Keri Wilt read by host: 

Hey friends. Welcome to the Well-Tended Life Podcast. What is a Well-Tended life? Let me start by telling you what it is not. A Well-Tended Life is not a set it and forget it life, nor is it a perfect life. It is though, a life that is worked on every day in the sunshine and through the storms. And the truth is what worked in our life gardens last year may not work in the next.

That's why here at The Well-Tended Life Podcast, we're interviewing people who have grown and bloomed true in a variety of seasons, and who are willing to share their well-attended wisdom and bead whacking advice with us. Listen in.

Episode begins...
 Keri, host: Hello everyone and welcome to The Well-Tended Life Podcast. I'm your host, Keri Wilt, a speaker, writer, and heart cultivator who is on a mission to help you and me grow through any season.

And I dunno about you, but I want to live with intention. I wanna tend to what truly matters, and I wanna make the most out of this one precious life I've been given. Today's episode is rooted in a powerful moment from The Secret Garden when young Colin hope declares. I shall live forever and ever. I shall find out thousands and thousands of things, and I shall never stop making magic.

But the truth is, we're not promised forever. We're not even promised tomorrow, and that's a reality. Our guest, Laura Carney knows all too well. At just 25 years old, Laura lost her father when he was tragically killed by a distracted driver. It was a loss that changed everything. But years later, she discovered something remarkable.

Her father's handwritten bucket list of 54 things he wanted to do in his lifetime. And instead of tucking it away, Laura made a courageous decision to finish it for him. In doing so, she didn't just fulfill her father's dream. She began to truly live her own life with more presence, purpose, and passion than ever before.

So if you're waiting for a sign to stop putting your dreams on the shelf, this is it. And I can't wait to talk to Laura and see what kind of well-tended wisdom she has to share with us today. So welcome, Laura. 

Laura Carney, guest: Hi. I what an honor to be here with you both because of you and who you are, but also your great-great-grandmother.

Oh , it's funny, we all have special people in our lives. , Actually growing up I made the assumption that everybody had a Francis in her life. My, my great for those who are just joining and have no idea what we're talking about, France Hodge Burnett, the author of The Secret Garden, is my great-great-grandmother.

And it never occurred to me that was an abnormal thing, but the truth is we all have really special people in our lives, , that come along and change our lives in ways that we never expected. I. Could never have told you that I would be doing anything connected with my great-great grandmother back then.

, Life is just clipping along , and then the stars aligned and the magic came and, , it connected me with her again. , But you too have a very similar story , and that you didn't know that your life was gonna change in the way it did and the way it did. , Why don't we start at the beginning.

Can you tell us a story, , about finding your dad's bucket list and just take us back there. Sure. Basically I was, , 38 years old. I had just gotten married. The year was 2017. And, , getting married was actually very complicated for me just because not the wedding itself.

The wedding itself was beautiful and many people have told me it was one of the most beautiful weddings I've ever been to, and not the groom who is one of the most amazing men in the world and who I was dating for 10 years before we got engaged. It was because I knew that my dad wasn't gonna be there to walk me down the aisle.

And I was really dreading that moment and I was very obsessed with this idea of everyone's going to feel sorry for me. Also I was 38, so I was obsessed with that idea too, which really I think is just a societal thing. Like you read all these magazines for brides and they're all like 25 and there they are dancing with their dad.

In my case, the reason that was happening was because when I was 25 years old about three months after I moved to New York City for an internship at a magazine that I was very excited about, I was a journalism major, just graduated college. My dad died because of a teenager who was making a phone call like at a red light.

I struggled a lot with what a stupid reason that was, that he had died, which is, it turns out is like an epidemic in our country. And then I struggled even more once I realized that I accidentally became an activist about it because my work at Good Housekeeping my internship, I stuck with it later became jobs.

Then I had basically a dream job working at a National Women's magazine as a copy editor. One day an article came across my desk that was about distracted driving and I had no idea what it was, but then I realized, oh, that's what happened to my dad. So I became an activist, but I just kept getting frustrated with my activism because I just felt they keep telling us you have to have a story to tell and people are really gonna connect with your story.

And every time I would tell my story personally, I felt like I wasn't telling the whole story because talking about my dad's death, even though I felt like that was important because I was educating people on what happened, it didn't ever feel to me like I was fully representing him because he was so full of life.

He was just one of those like larger than life people who, when he's in a room, it's difficult to see anybody else who's in the room. And I wanted to just better represent him and I didn't really know how to do that. And then finally when the bucket list appeared, it was like. And I tell people this all the time, I think I had reached a moment in my life where I was prepared to receive an idea, right?

Like I had taken on habits. And really that only started because around the time that my husband proposed, I wanted to invest in myself a little bit more than I had before. 'cause it like, we were together for 10 years and , he wasn't really sure that he was a big believer in marriage.

I, I was obsessed with like, why is everybody else getting married and I'm not married yet. And I needed to take a step back from that. And what I actually ended up doing was proposing to myself I had this little hand me down ring that my aunt had given me, and I just put it on my finger and I said yes to me.

And then I had what was what I like to call, like Shonda Rhimes. As year of, yes. Basically. Like I had a year of, yes, or anytime anybody asked me to do anything, I would say yes to it. And that included stuff like, as outrageous as being asked to put on a bathing suit and be on the Today Show for Good Housekeeping.

I did that. I was like a hand and foot bottle for the magazine then it became running five Ks. Whenever someone asked me to do that, I would say yes. Then that's, that gradually became training for a half marathon and then training for a full marathon. And now I was raising like $2,000 for safe driving for organizations that were trying to prevent distracted driving.

So I basically just had become oh. And then I took an art class, which I hadn't, I was, I used to be an art major. I hadn't engaged in that in years and years. Also I used to like just drink socially, but I take an antidepressant and those two don't mix very well. I just experimented with what if I just gave that up completely and then suddenly I had all this free time 'cause I'm not going to happy hour anymore, I just basically became a person who was way more engaged in life. Then, the stuff with the wedding and the planning, it, it was as difficult as you'd expect it to be with wedding planning. But it stopped being my main focus and I stopped being so insecure about it. And I really was just becoming someone who was basically like, I need to invest in me too.

And I really now think that's why when the list showed up, I was ready to say yes to it because I had become a person who does that. And I had become a person, not only who takes risks, but is true to my word, even if I'm just promising something to myself. So I do like to tell people that now, like how important that is.

And. The list was basically a list my dad had written when he was 29 years old. And I have to guess he also was in a place like that in his life when he wrote it. 'cause he had just had a baby. I had just been born it was 1978, which I'm aging myself right now for your listeners, but that's the year it was.

My mom did know about it, but they got divorced when I was six and she had no idea that he had kept it his whole life. And the reason my brother had it, we were visiting him and his new condo when he gave it to us. The reason he had it was because it was one of the things that my dad's brother had given him after the car crash.

And it was like in the car, like it was in my dad's wallet. So it's like a relic of the event in a way. But that's, I like that. Like I like that it has this survivor energy in a way to it. Like it's the only thing that witnessed it if you really think about it. 'cause I wasn't there. So it was this magical document in a way.

And it's funny 'cause to this day I feel like when people hold it, they treat it like, it's like the arc of the covenant or something in Indiana Jones. They're so afraid they're gonna drop it. And as soon as I saw it I knew I needed to finish it. , I was like, I have to do this. And I knew it was crazy just based on what some of the items were and the fact that there were 54 undone items.

He had done five of them, but. I also knew that this could help me solve a problem I had been dealing with for a little while, which was I wanted to tell my dad's story more accurately. And this could be something beyond giving a talk in a high school, running a marathon to raise funds like this could be something bigger than that.

And I felt like this would help me to actually know what the structure was of the story. Because, my dad was a writer too. So in a way it was like his spirit was saying, here are your chapters, just do these 54 items. It's so easy. Just do this. And it really wasn't easy at all. But my husband works in publishing and as soon as he saw it, he too was like, this is your book.

You have to do this. Which was lucky for me because he would be the one making sacrifices and investing in this project more than anybody else did.

Oh my gosh. I wanna go back to what you said earlier, which was that you felt like you were ready to receive an idea. A part of my mission here at the Well-Attended life is to help women clear away the clutter that is keeping them from growing.

That thing that I believe is already planted inside of us. Like that there are these ideas in these things that really only we were meant to do. But we get so caught up in like life, right? And our to-do lists and the past storms and all of the things. But what I also love is that.

What I heard you say, and whether you said this or not, was that like, it feels like yes, when you decided to turn it around and start saying yes, that yes is a habit, right? Just as much as like being open becomes a habit, right? But also being closed is a habit.

Yeah. Yeah.

And it's, for me, it's such a great reason for any of these list ideas or like the a hundred day projects where people are like, I'm gonna do this for a hundred days, is because it helps to retrain your brain.

And you said become that person, right? Become the person who finishes things, become the person who says yes. And you have to do that by tell, by doing it over and over. It was, do you feel like there was something in that repetition that changed you?

Yeah. It was making Mia more confident person because when you challenge yourself to say yes to things and then you actually do them and you're like, oh, whoa I could actually do this.

It's like you just become someone who can say it more and can say it like, without even thinking about it after a while. So it does change you. But I also wanna say though, I think that there's a certain energy about saying yes to things. If you make a declaration to yourself, like I did that year of, 'cause really what it was for me was I felt like I really wanna be the subject of my life.

Like I'm learning from everything around me that women are the ones who are chosen for a role. Like whether it's wife or mother or anything else. And being chosen as a mother is, I think, a much more spiritual choice though. 'cause you're, I think that's what I believe.

I think your child chooses you. But regardless, I think as women, we do tend to get caught up in those roles. And doing the roles as well as we possibly can. And that our worth is all wrapped up in whether someone chooses us for that role. And we're more than that, men's are in roles too, but I don't think that they are as likely as we are to get wrapped up in, am I doing well enough at the role?

Because they're also people. So that's really what I needed to do. I need to figure out who I was as a person and what I wanted my life to be, just from my own eyes, from my own perspective. And I think as I started saying yes, more and more, and this, I've seen this happen to people over and over again, more opportunities came my way.

Like more opportunities for me to say yes, started presenting themselves. Because really and your great-great grandmother's book is all about that. I love that you quoted calling, 'cause that's one of my favorite quotes from the book. That he started recognizing that he could make magic with his life and he didn't have to be an invalid, he could be a healthy kid.

And so much in that book is about just your mindset and the way you're looking at the things around you. And it influenced me as a kid and influenced me again as I was doing this project because so much in life is about that so much in life is like, what do I actually believe? And let me let go of some of these beliefs that maybe I inherited or I learned somewhere, as simple as some teacher giving me a criticism about something that I did and now I'm never gonna draw again.

Like I feel like that's one of the really big ones that people have is it was just some teacher somewhere, someone with some authority gave them a bad mark or told them they were bad at something and then they, then that avenue of their life is cut off forever. And it's no, don't do that.

Follow your passion. Because really we, we are so unlimited in all the things we can do. And I do really believe that each of us has a calling. We have something that, the reason we have the certain gifts that we have is because we're supposed to express them by giving them to other people and not.

But the other thing I've realized recently, and I didn't write about this in the book, 'cause this is a more recent revelation. It's not even just our gifts. That we've been given to make the life better for others. It's also our like our foibles, like our flaws, the things that we're not as good at.

Because if we're able to express those things vulnerably too and be okay with it and forgive ourselves, we're also able to connect with people and have a better impact on humanity in that way because we're making ourselves more humble, if that makes sense. I'm still working that part out, but that's part of it too.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And but even just the willingness to work through that, not being good at everything and having, there's light to every side of darkness. And embracing both pieces of that I think is so important.

 Hey, hey, hey. Have you heard the news? I am so thrilled to announce that I have partnered with Melissa Gilbert of Little House on the Prairie Fame and her company and community over@modernprairie.com. You'll find me there most days. Teaching the topsoil of my life, tending, journaling, practice, leading an accountability and check-in group called the Journaling Gems Club, which is designed to help you to not just get journaling, but to stay journaling all while building some community along the way.

Or you can find me hosting and hanging out in a brand new part of their app that is dedicated to all things journaling. Sound like fun. Check out the link in the show notes to download the Modern Prairie app today. Then you can join the journaling circle and sign up for the class or join the club today.

I can't wait to see you there.

 I imagine in order to say yes as much as you did, you also probably had to spend a few nos, whether it's, no, I'm not gonna believe that old belief, or No, I'm going to say no to this in order to say yes to this.

Can, do you have any examples of that? Things that you felt like in that time period you had to either put on the shelf or just say no, it's not my season to do these things. Yeah, I mean everything really, at some point it started to feel that way. It started to feel at least by year two of doing this, that certain things that used to matter a lot to me.

I just didn't have time for anymore. Even as far as my job, I didn't actively leave my job. We had layoffs, but I think the timing of that was very interesting. , It was just because they were restructuring the company and they were taking in other magazines from other companies.

So when they do that, you could start to have redundancy. So they just had too many copy editors, basically. And, I got a severance, I'd been there for seven years, but I got into the elevator and I started smiling. And we had these very fancy full length mirror walls in the elevators.

I could see myself doing this and I'm thinking like what is happening? Why am I smiling right now? And my spirit was smiling 'cause it was like, this was what my spirit wanted. It wanted to not be in that building anymore, to be home and to be writing my book. And the longer I was in that building, the more I was not going to have time to write this book.

And I never ever was going to leave that job. I just wasn't. 'cause this was my dream. It had been my dream for 20 years and now I was living it out. But it, this dream was now conflicting with the new dream. And the new dream was the dream that was always there for me the whole time. But I didn't know how to make that happen myself.

So basically I think what happened was I got into a place in my life where I was ready to do the new dream and then the new dream had to take over and I had to surrender to it. And so every know that I started doing, I think was more of a surrender to what had to be and a letting go of needing to have control over what was happening.

So when I would say no actively, it was like this is refreshing because I used to be such a people pleaser that I would be very worried about saying no if someone invited me to do something or if I felt obligated to do something, but to have a thing I was committed to doing that was taking so much of my energy and my time.

These different list items, which you know, a lot of times involved travel, going to Georgia to meet President Jimmy Carter going to New Mexico to check off, ride a horse fast, like there was lots of planning involved. But because I wasn't doing it just for me, I was doing it for my dad to honor my dad, it was like suddenly that became so important to me that it was okay for me to say no to things.

I think was actually a big part of my healing because I had this like grief that I was still carrying inside of me and anger about what happened, but I didn't really quite know where to put it or what to do with it. And now that I had this venue of honoring this person, that's where I could put it, and it was like that mattered because it wasn't just a matter of honoring him and his life and my love for him. It was also a matter of honoring my emotions and my grief and my psychological growth. And I think sometimes people really get stuck and can't figure out what to do with difficult emotions because they don't have a place if that, does that make sense?

Like you don't have a place to put Yes. So the nose were very productive and they were very much okay, oh, there goes my husband, they're very, they were just like, I'm prioritizing me. That was new. Like I, and I don't think anyone ever totally taught me how to do that. And a lot of women struggle with that, I think.

Oh, a hundred percent. So you said the word surrender. Yeah. And I think that's such a big word. And I actually wrote it in my journal this morning, which is so crazy. And when I wrote it I realized that the word render, I. At the end. And I immediately was struck with this idea that when we surrender, it literally helps us to distill us down to our essence.

And there's just, there's something about that. When we surrender to the thing that we know we're supposed to do it helps us to say those nos, right? And those yeses and parts things up in a way that really isn't possible, I think until you say, okay, I surrender.

I'm in, let's go. And I think that thing that's really hard for people though, is how do you know, how do you know this is a, I certainly didn't, quote unquote know while it was happening. Especially not in the early, I had a lot of beginner's luck, so that really helped. As soon as I took on this project to the to do list, I started a blog and then my editor at work wanted to take the story about distracted driving in Good Housekeeping.

And she wanted to make it about my blog, like she wanted to make it about the list, the project. Like initially I was just gonna be a sidebar and the main story was written by somebody else. I. But then she's no, yours is the whole story. So that was crazy to me. Oh my God, I'm gonna have a three page feature in good Housekeeping.

This is that was my dream now coming true because I was surrendering my path to honoring somebody else. So that was like the beginning of that happening basically. And then I got to be on all of these like TV news programs, and then I I jumped out of an airplane on tv. That was one of the early ones that happened and I survived it.

We went and we successfully met President Jimmy Carter, as I mentioned briefly before. And we went to the Rose Bowl by the end of that year. I think I did 14 items in year one, and it was all going great. And then in year two, that was when I lost my job. And then suddenly, like by the end of year two, my bank account was really dwindling and I had also injured myself doing a list item and I had to have foot surgery.

Yeah. And I was in a very dark place and I was just like, oh my God, why am I doing this? 'Cause, because the other thing that I actually I don't really talk about this a whole lot, but the other thing that doing my dad's bucket list was really helping me with was, I wrote about it in the book more than I talk about it, but I had this very deep set fear that I was like him and that I was like him in bad ways.

Because I always looked at him as such a free spirit and as a dreamer and as someone who didn't finish things. And I saw those tendencies in myself and I was like fighting them for most of my adult life. Don't end up like dad, don't end up someone who seems like they're aimless and they're jumping from thing to thing.

And I hate saying this 'cause it sounds terrible, but it's just, I'm just gonna say it because it's true. There were moments when I even blamed his death on that. Like, why was he there? Why was, of course it was not his fault at all that happened, but I thought I need to live my life in such a controlled, predictable way that I will never end up in that intersection myself as though he had somehow attracted this to happen to him.

So that was a big fear for me. It was rational. It made sense that I felt that way. But the problem with it was, I was looking at it, and this is what people do a lot when they're afraid of becoming like their parents. I was looking at it through a child's perspective. I wasn't looking at him as a human being.

I wasn't like trying to piece out, why did he make that choice? And maybe there were other things going on that I didn't know about. And that was one of the really great gifts of doing the list was I kept finding myself now in life predicaments that he would've been in. Like there was a point where I owed my father-in-law like a thousand dollars and then I gave it to him and like that was one of the list items.

Pay my dad back a thousand dollars plus interest. I. And it doesn't matter why I was in that situation and I paid it back like in a week's time, but the fact that I was meant I could forgive myself for ending up in that situation, and then I could forgive my dad for ending up in that situation.

And I was now relating to him on a very just person to person level. So that fear of being like him in bad ways and just, really it was just being worried I would be perceived as irresponsible in my life. I had no idea how much that had been controlling me for so long. And now I was free to like, just do things I wanted to do without that fear.

I didn't have this notion of what does everyone think of me and do they think I'm responsible enough? That wasn't limiting me anymore because I know that I am, and I've experienced things that are scary, not just in a physical way, but in a, like in, in how I relate to the world, like in that way too.

And I no longer, I, I survived it and I trust myself. And that's really, I think that's really the greatest gift of surrendering is. When you're willing to surrender to something that feels like the right thing for you to be doing, that feels almost divine in nature. Suddenly, like you don't need that control anymore.

And, you learn to trust the voice that's inside of you that is telling you what choices to make. And that voice is a very different voice than, I would think of that voice living right here in my heart, and it's a very different voice than the voice that used to live here in the front of my brain that was like, oh, but that's not gonna go well.

Oh, why do you think you can do that? That's like the cranky negative voice. You don't wanna let that one run the show, basically. Yeah. And getting quiet is the best way to move from your head to your heart. And si letting those voices in your head, silence and and trusting that voice one step at a time.

Because as you saw, when you surrendered and you started to trust that voice. You said you had some good luck in the beginning. For me those are those open doors. Those are the, yes, you're going the right direction. Yes. More please. Like it, those things happen when you do.

Yeah. And you have to pay attention to very small signs. That was the other thing I think what I was saying with the, with my last answer for you was that I didn't know. Because people I think you just know, like when you're calling comes calling and you answer it and you start doing it, then you suddenly life feels great and you know exactly how it's going.

And it's not like that. Like I said, I had beginner's luck. Year two, everything went to crap and I had to decide in that moment when everything was crappy. Am I still gonna do this anyway? That was the important moment. 'cause if I'm only doing this just for the perks, like then obviously this is not the right thing for me.

But I still committed to doing it anyway and I just would pay attention more to, I started seeing hearts every day. When I started doing the list, I started seeing Xes, which I suddenly began to think, okay, either this is the an X for a crossroads in my life that I'm in, or these are kisses from my dad. I eventually decided on the ladder.

I used to see the number 88 all the time. 'cause August 8th was the day he died. But then as I got further and further into the list, instead I started seeing 54. And I still see 54 several times a day, two years after finishing the list. 54 is the age he was when he died. That's what, and it also it's how old he was.

And it's also the number of list items I did. And it just kept coming up. I went to Super Bowl 54. The bikes I have sitting behind me in my office or my size is 54. Like it just there, the final score at the Rose Bowl game I went to for the list was 54. Which had, that was record breaking. It had never reached 54 before.

That number just kept happening. And then I realized in Roman numerals, 'cause the Super Bowl was Roman numerals 54 is LIV. So I just started associating that number with the concept of enjoying being alive. And it's really just little things like that and even sometimes bigger things that are totally like indisputable.

Like the moment I was discussing earlier where I was in like my, like the cave or I was just like, oh my God, why am I doing this? 'cause I was on the couch. I couldn't walk from surgery. I was running out of money. I actually said out loud why did you wanna do this? And. Send me a sign. And an hour later, my dad's brother messaged me on Facebook and I didn't really talk to him on Facebook very often then.

And he said, oh, your dad had this roommate in college and he was cleaning his house and he had just found this newsletter he wrote in 1978, the same year he wrote the list and it's called The Sports and Leisure Newsletter and does, he wants to know if you want to have it. And so I started talking to that guy and he mailed it to me.

He's oh, your dad was like so ahead of his time. And this newsletter was like Facebook before Facebook. And it was really just, my dad was a cocktail distributor back then. And the newsletter clearly has veiled advertisements in it for helping people save money on liquor distribution.

But it's also like a way for his friends to announce things like, had a baby and just started a new job and oh, why don't we all go to this baseball game and we can get a group discount? And as soon as I read the, he called it the editor's letter at the front of the newsletter, it said, the point of this is to have fun.

As soon as I read that's when I knew what that was the sign. And that was like brand new for me, right? Like how many of us as adults, we forget that's the point. We forget that the point of life is for us to have fun too. And if you lose that, like if you lose that sense of fun, like what are you even doing?

A hundred percent. And I think it's interesting because I think especially women who have had children or even just went the career path, like fun feels frivolous. Fun, feels selfish, right? I remember listening to my kids playing ping pong with my husband and thinking like I can't do that because I have things to do, right?

I need to cook the dinner. And I, I had all these things to do, but yeah, my husband didn't feel that I had to retrain myself to put fun back. And in my days

 Friends, let me ask you a few questions and I want you to answer them honestly. Are you exhausted from years of watering everyone and everything else but you? Does it feel like your gifts, dreams, and passions have been locked up tighter than the secret garden? Do you struggle with. Things like anxiety, jealousy, busyness, or maybe fear.

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 I was actually gonna ask you how are you living your life differently? Post list post book and all the things. And I feel like fun must be, how, I guess really the question would be how are you keeping fun in your days and living it differently?

Yeah. It's still not easy, it's like I talked to somebody yesterday about this actually, because my friend Pam Lamp, she wrote this really great book. It's called do The Next New Thing and I wanna introduce her to Modern Prairie. 'cause she's just great. She did one new thing per day for y for a year when she moved to Nashville from Houston and.

She said, even for her now, it's still difficult be, even though she went through this really life changing experience because she's still her, and like I'm still me, I'm still that perfectionistic copy editor from Good Housekeeping from eight years ago. But now I have my own bucket list that I'm doing and at one point, I guess it was like right after I finished my book tour from my father's list, I took my Google calendar and I just mapped out all of the items.

I have 280 items on my bucket list. And wow. I know. I had to, at one point I was like, Laura, you gotta stop. Don't put your bucket list on your computer. Put it on paper because it's a lot harder to add new items to paper. But I just decided to commit to it and that was a lot harder for me.

'cause I was like I'm not a person who died in a car crash. Like, why do I care as much about doing this for me as I did for my dad? I was trying to make a statement with doing it for my dad and to just remember that, just to bring this full circle to remember this ring that I wear. That is my proposal to me.

And how important that is that I am being my own best friend still. That's a concept. I came up with one of the list items with Visit Vienna for my dad's list, and I went to Berlin and Vienna for two weeks. Berlin was also on there. And I was terrified of doing that. And there was a moment, I guess in like the middle of week two of being there.

And I had been to art museums all day long and I was sitting there feeling like I was 25 again because that's what I did when I was 25. Like when I was on a college campus and I was an art major and I would go and do the figure drawing class and then I'd go get a coffee afterwards and I was just treating myself and it's like, why did I leave that at 25?

This is crazy. I should still be this way at least sometimes, 'cause it makes me so happy. And like the things that are fulfilling just to me matter. I, they don't have to also be fulfilling to somebody else all the time. So it was that moment when I recognized oh, like I can be my own best friend and I, it's okay to enjoy my own company.

I was having a blast just being by myself, and I was like, oh, I'm fun. Like I enjoy being with me. And it's just was so like groundbreaking to me that had never occurred to me before. That was valid. That was a valuable thing to do. And it's so valuable because if we know how to enjoy our own company, then we stop depending on other people to help us to have fun.

And I really think that's a huge part of it. Like little kids, they don't need that. They're encouraged to be social, but little kids have wild imaginations and they can just have fun for hours. By themselves. 'cause I think that's what we're designed to do. So that really is a big part of it. I'm setting up a life plan now for the next I don't know, eight or 10 years.

And these adventures involve my husband a lot of the time, but some of them are just for me. And that's okay. It's okay to do that because these are things I want to experience. And the more we prioritize, like the things we want to experience, the more we're prioritizing our growth. Which I know is like a big part of what you teach at Modern Prairie and elsewhere.

A hundred percent. Okay. You just said the word life plan. I need to know what a life plan is. Did I? Yes. You said, that's what it's, that's what it's, yeah, it's not, when my dad wrote his list, it was a life plan. It wasn't a buck, the word bucket list didn't exist until like, whenever the movie bucket list came out in late nineties.

That was like crazy to me when I learned that the screenwriter of the movie, the bucket list, invented the term bucket list. Really? Yeah. Isn't that nuts?

It feels like a word that we have always known, right?

Oh. Yeah, I even tried to find, 'cause I'm a researcher. I tried to find where did they get that from? What is bucket and even that is debatable. There's like multiple definitions for kick the Bucket and they don't totally know where that comes from either.

And I won't get into what all of them are. But my dad was not thinking about his death when he wrote that. He was thinking about, his life. He was thinking about I'm a new father and I have a new lease on life. In a way, I probably felt a little bit more connected to being alive. So , that's what he was valuing.

That's what he was prioritizing. And I think my mind that way too. I also love the, I the idea of the word life list anyways, because I feel like bucket list makes it feel like, I don't even know like these are these things that I'll get to do if I live long enough, if I make enough money, right?

, I don't know why, but bucket list feels like these it has to be these big things. And I love, I think I like that idea more of a life plan list. Like these or it feels like more like these are the things I'm gonna do, buck. I don't know why, but bucket list feels like a big thing at the end.

When I've done all my work, when I've, when I have accomplished all my things, then I'm gonna go do these things. I feel like. The life list feels more like something that you're going continue to do along the way. And it's also, it's important that you don't look at it as a to-do list either, which is the spectrum.

Because my dad wrote at the top of the list, he wrote things I would like to do in my lifetime, and he underlined would like, like I don't know if he was trying to remind himself or like in case, I don't think he ever thought anyone else was gonna find it, but I like that, that he emphasized the wood.

'Cause I, he did five of them and that's good. That's good enough. Like I teach bucket lists now to people and I always tell them that, don't look at this as a to-do list. This is not a list of musts. It's things that, it's just a matter of prioritizing things you want to do too, which matters.

And if you do five, great. That's an, that's a huge accomplishment, right? Because you've dedicated some of your life to just doing things because you wanted to do them. Yes. Yes. I I asked my brother once where he was gonna retire and he said everywhere. And I was like, oh, I love that idea.

But it's interesting that comment got me talking with a bunch of friends about what does even like retirement look like? For us versus what it did back then. Like right back then, everybody worked like 60 years in the same job and then they retired and then they started traveling and then, but we've watched I've watched many of our parents get to that age and not be healthy enough to do all of those things. And they put off, like I said, like even like the bucket list. I, yet they put it off until they reached a certain point. How can we incorporate the bucket list idea or the life list or whatever it is, through, like throughout our days and not put it off.

Until tomorrow. I would say, have little items on it too. Yeah. Like my dad had little items on his, grow a watermelon or plant an apple tree. And the other thing about it is a good idea to put it on your calendar and just, it doesn't, like you have to be flexible about it, which I think I learned with wedding planning and training for marathons.

Like obviously I wasn't going to make it out there for every single 5K run I plan to do for a marathon. And that's okay. Like maybe I'll get out there a couple extra days next week instead we just have to let ourselves become a little bit more flexible in our planning and show ourselves a little more grace in order to reach our goals, which I think is probably good advice in general for goals in life, not just bucket list goals, but that's what I had to make myself become.

And I definitely hadn't been that way before. I had been the kind of person who, if I made a mistake, really tortured myself for it, but doing a bucket list because it's just like for fun. You're allowing yourself to make those mistakes and it's just it's a more enjoyable way of going towards goals.

I would say get your calendar out and instead of making your calendar just for your commitments and you know your work and if you are doing a fitness goal, like plan, like mapping that out, make your calendar for fun too. And the other thing I'd recommend, and this is actually brand new, like I only came up with this maybe like a month ago 'cause I was starting to reach burnout.

And it's crazy that could happen to me because I became so good at prioritizing fun, but with the book tour became this thing where, and now it has morphed into new, wonderful opportunities in my life. And I oftentimes struggle with saying no to those because I feel so grateful that I'm getting this chance to spread my message and still continue to work on this.

But I do actually have to, I do sometimes have to prioritize my rest and my wellbeing. So I keep my Google calendar like really color coded and now I have this thing that I'm calling. 'cause there was one color I realized I never used and the color I never used was light gray. So it has something, now I'm calling light gray rest days 'cause it's like this is where I get my serenity back.

And it's important you have to value the days where you're resting too. Otherwise you're not gonna be able to keep maintaining living your life to the fullest. So huge. Yeah. You gotta pour in so that you can pour out and you, if you are not rested, you cannot pour out. Or you, isn't that funny?

I never, that never even occurred to me like, oh, you need a rest day. If you're working really hard, you don't need a rest day if you're pursuing your purpose. But guess what? That's also work. Yeah. And I can't remember who it was that talked about it, but the concept of working from rest instead of working for rest, oh, it's that same idea of pouring in before you pour out, but if you work from rest, then you have the energy.

But if so many of us are working in order to rest, right? But what if you thought about it the opposite way, right? Like even just putting some of those fun things at the front of the day that give you the energy. Or, you put your journal time, any of that kind of stuff at the beginning of the day, then you're working from a rested place versus rewarding yourself with rest in the end.

I just wrote that down. That's so important. I really like that. And and two other things I would recommend if you have listeners who are thinking about living from a place of intention more a lot of times, and I think especially as women, we get like this we're afraid that we're gonna be seen as selfish.

We're afraid that like people aren't going to help us. And like just now in this very conversation I'm having with you, I recognize that the computer I'm on, which is my husband's was at 9% battery and I'm like freaking out. So I texted him and said, I need your charger. And he like quietly came into the room and plugged the computer in for me.

And like in the past, if that happened, I would've been freaking out after the interview and I would've been like, I'm so sorry. I inconvenienced you. I should have been prepared, like blaming myself for needing this person's help. At the moment I needed it. But now I'm like, oh, that makes sense. I didn't know that the battery was going low on this 'cause it's not my computer.

It's okay that I asked him to come help me. It's okay that I discreetly did it during an interview and it's okay that he's there and prepared to do it. Like our loved ones want to love us. That was one of the biggest things I learned doing this, that they want to give to us as much as we give to them.

And you're not like winning some kind of trophy by being the person who does the most for everybody, 'cause a lot of times people who are like that also find a sense of control and not needing that help. And the truth is, if you're gonna be a person who follows your calling in life, you're going to have to accept help from people.

Because I just don't think that God gives us callings that we can do by ourselves. They're too big. No. And for me, the coolest thing is that I believe that he has planted those people purposely around us to help us. We just have to be open enough to see it. Most of us are living our lives like those like the horses with the blinders on the streets of New York or whatever, right in the city where they're, taking you on the carriage ride because they're trying to keep 'em focused.

But our blinders are, our to-do list and our, our shame and all the things that keep us from looking around us. But if we can just take those off and look around and we realize how talented and gifted and kind the people are like to our right, to our left behind us, in front of us who, like you said, are willing and ready.

And not just that, not just the people who are living. That's the other crazy Oh yeah, like I actually heard the other day, I have this medium Alison Dubois, I love her. I've gotten to be on her podcast. She's actually the inspiration for the TV show Medium. Okay. Patricia Arquette, she has this great podcast called The Dead Life, and I'm shouting her out 'cause she shouted me out the other day and I was like what is happening?

She's saying my name. That's such a weird feeling when you're just enjoying a podcast is someone, they start suddenly they start talking about you. But anyway she was telling someone about how. A lot of times when someone has died at who we love and we really wanna feel some kind of message from them or communication what could be blocking it is the sadness.

Like we're so in the mode of I miss them. And thinking about the day that they died and the way that they died and that last moment we had with them which was either a goodbye or in my case, wasn't really a goodbye. 'cause I heard from my brother on the phone that this had happened.

We focused too much on that very scary moment and not enough on the way they lived and not enough on those cherished memories. And she said, really, just think about that time at Christmas when they gave you a sled, or think about that time you were recording music with them on their, these are just examples of my dad and things he did with us, but as hypotheticals.

But when you really focus on those cherished memories you had with them, that is when it happens. That's when you get the communication. That's 'cause really their spirit. Like our spirits, at least I believe this, our spirits are still around us all the time. And they want us to be happy and they love us.

And that's what Allison says all the time too. But I think as I began doing my dad's bucket list. I think the reason that so many serendipitous things happen and these miracles happen that no, like live human being was necessarily part of was because he was helping me. I really believe that. And I suddenly was able to hear him I could hear two or three word phrases sometimes from him in the beginning in my head.

It was the way he would've said it, it was the kind of words he would have used. , I don't really care if that seems unbelievable to people or not possible. It helped me. I think that's all that matters is if whatever you think is happening is helping you to live a better life and be a better person, then why would you not wanna be open to that?

I still experience that like once in a while. It's not to the same level, but once in a while I'll ask him, huh, what do you think about this dad? He'll give me like, a little image and it's usually very cryptic takes a while for me to unpack like what is that? One, one time he gave me like leveling sand with your hand on the beach.

I'm still figuring that one out. But that's, I've read somewhere that angel messages are like that. They're very like coded and you have to just pick, figure it out. But that was a revelation though, that what if, like what if God wants me to live a good life? What if there are forces coming together to help that to happen?

What if that's happening for everybody all the time? But you have to believe in it and you have to like, think it's possible that you would matter that much or that you could be that loved in order to receive it. Like that to me was like a revolutionary new way of living. Yeah. Do you feel more connected to your father after his passing than you did when he was here?

Yeah. Yeah. I do. Yeah. They say the reason for that is because when people pass whatever, whatever baggage or trauma or insecurities that they had in while living in a human body, they just evaporate because now they're just love. They're just their soul. Your soul doesn't have that stuff.

That's just stuff you get in your human life. And I'm probably sounding a little woowoo now, but I'm all about the woowoo. And I think, like you said, it's whatever you believe is where you, what you're gonna see too, right? Yep. I my, my dad passed and the next morning he turned on a electric candle, like a battery powered candle in my.

In my journal space. Like it was literally like calling me there and then he would do, he did that off and on for me, all like multiple times. And and same thing. Like I, I know it sounds woo. I know it sounds crazy, but I know without a shadow of a doubt, it was my dad. I

You're frozen. Oh, goodness gracious. I'm back. Am my back. Yeah. I don't know why I am freezing up. I know. Is that your dad? Dad? It's our dad's messing with it. They're very good at manipulating elect electronics. Yes. They're just their, I, yes. And gosh, so crazy. We could, I know you and I could talk about this for hours and hours, but is there anything, like what do you hope that people walk away after reading your book, the Father's List?

Because first of all, I want everybody to go out and get it. It's such an amazing story, and it's not just about her dad and her list. She had some struggles, younger and up. That really also makes this whole journey just even more amazing. But what do you hope people walk away from after reading your book?

Part of why I included the. Description of my depression I dealt with as a teenager. It's part of my story with my dad. 'Cause he had it as well. And I included it because I felt you know what? I'm not gonna hide this part of myself anymore. I'm gonna own it.

There was something about owning the parts of me I was ashamed of that took their power away and that helped me to embrace the person I was becoming. And I still struggle with it sometimes because, obviously when a kid has depression in a family, it affects the whole family.

It's not just you who's affected by it. But I needed to have the experience of putting that to rest and accepting all of myself as I am. And I do hope that when people read my book that it helps them to do that too. Or even, take a class with me at Modern Prairie or come hear me speak. It's branched out into so many venues bigger than the book now, where I'm recognizing that I get to help people be their most authentic selves.

And even if you're not someone who wants to have a list of intentions for your life that you actually go after and try to do. Maybe you're someone who is struggling with a traumatic event that happened to you. Like you're struggling with your grief. You feel your grief is maybe more complicated than the grief of other people around you.

And you don't know how to, what to do with it. And that was how I felt. I think that this book helps people to own that and to have permission to feel it all the way through. 'cause I really think that we're supposed to do that as human beings. I think if you have an emotion, don't just like necessarily act on the emotion.

That's something I'm still working on. Like an emotion isn't supposed to suddenly become your brain and control everything you do. 'Cause that's a way of being afraid of the emotion too, if you just let it take over. But I do think we're not meant to take our difficult emotions and pack them away.

I think we're supposed to feel them all the way through because there's a gift in doing that. There's a treasure at the end of it. And if you can be brave enough to just do it, just feel it. Just remember the thing that happened, write it down. Integrate that event into a larger story, which is so powerful.

That's what I do is what I try to help other people do. You start to recognize that I. You know your life isn't in two parts. It's not before the person died and after, and now you're a totally different person. I don't think we're meant to live that way. I think the way we're meant to live is as this continuous line.

We're still us. We're still that innocent us that we used to be. We just have to find a way to accept that some of the more trying times in our lives have happened. And I think that's where people get really stuck. 'cause it's oh, I was going along just fine and then I, this thing I never thought could happen happened and it was terrible.

And now I've lost all of my hope forever. That really happens to people a lot. And it becomes so much harder to have that same faith maybe that we had before. But I think when really scary, difficult things happen, like my dad's passing for example, and some of the other things I write about in my book, I don't think we're meant to do that.

I don't think I was meant to suddenly be a person who didn't have faith anymore. I think I was meant to be a person whose faith got even stronger. Not despite what happened, but because of it. And I embrace the fact that I had depression that I still have now, but it was very difficult when I was a teenager and I embrace my dad's life and the way he lived.

I embrace my parents' divorce. I embrace the way my dad died to me. The way I look at those things now is what if they were all planned? What if I chose them? Why wouldn't I? I really think that now I think we can choose, like I think before we're born, we have the ability to choose. I'm gonna have these great things happen and okay, maybe these crappy things are gonna happen too, but they might be necessary for the great things.

Like they all go together for sure. Oh my gosh. I hope everybody goes out and gets your book. Don't worry, we'll have all the links in the bio, so y'all can go find it all there.



Now let's move on to the end of the interview where I ask everybody all the same questions.

 And now it's time for my favorite part of the interview because it's inspired by my life tending journal practice. But let me be clear, this is not your grandma's journal. It's more of a growth chart, reflection, diary, planting reminder, observation deck, and research notebook all rolled into one. And when used daily, this journal practice is a life changer.

To produce big, beautiful purpose-filled blooms in any season. Now it's by far the most important tool in my own personal life gardening shed. And I wanna gift you a free journaling template today. So check out the link in show notes, or head over to the midlife. Get started today.

 Number one, I, when people ask me what's the first thing they can do to start living their best well attended life I tell them it's no the season that they're in understand like what is happening so that they can say their best yeses and their best nos in order to go into it.

So what kind of a life season are you in right now? Oh, I think I'm in a sapling. Okay. I think I just planted seeds for a new trium becoming like spring in, in the world, but it's also spring inside of me right now and it's very exciting. Love it. Do you have any regular practices that that you do that can help others to live their best well-attended lives?

Yeah. I train for races a lot still. I'm about to do the Pikes Peak climb in Colorado in September, and I tend to find that my exercise routine goes better if I have a goal like that, that I'm going to do. And then, so that's why I didn't just come out and say, oh yeah, I run three miles twice a week.

I almost never commit to doing that unless I have a goal that I'm training for. Yeah, I think that's a huge part for me anyway. Having an, I understand that there are some people for whom running isn't possible, but I think having something like that's just a release or even just getting to have 30 minutes of solitude in your day is really important.

'Cause it helps you just think more clearly. So just be somewhere by yourself and perhaps a garden that nobody else is in just go be outside. That's a big part of it for me. I need to be outdoors. I go a little crazy if I'm not outdoors for long enough. And what else? I, gosh, I feel like I've developed so many routines now that it's hard to pinpoint just one.

I have a thing I like to do now where instead of just reading things because I've told someone I would read it as a favor or I'm reading it for work because I'm a copy editor. So a lot of my a lot of my work involves reading. I follow my intuition. So if something is nagging at me, like the other day I just got this image in my head.

Something was telling me I need to watch the movie. Good Morning, Vietnam. And I'm thinking, what? A, I've never seen that movie. BI have no, I cannot give you any explanation as to why I am supposed to watch that movie, but I need to watch it. I know that 'cause something planted that in my subconscious and there will be a moment when I watch it where it's oh, that's an answer I needed.

Yeah. Something I was trying to figure out. So I think that's a really helpful practice to just, yes, I caught following my subconscious. Do you do that too? Yes, I have big time. Do it. Usually it's a song lyric for me when music pops into my head, I immediately go follow it to the lyrics. And yes, there's almost, nine times outta 10, there's a little nugget in there that I needed to hear.

But yeah, I always and my mom does this thing where if someone pops into her head, she immediately messages them, sends them a card, calls them, whatever it is. Yeah. And the same thing, she's nine times outta 10. Like it was, they either needed me or I needed them. And we just, so she taught me early on to listen to those.

For sure I do. I do that too. And it might sound weird at first, but it's ah, I was just thinking about you. Yeah, I feel like I should check in. Usually they were going through something like an illness or they were scared, it could be any number of things, but yeah. Another thing though is oh, what was I gonna say?

I lost my train of thought. I'm sorry. It's okay. Oh, this is a new one for me. The other routine thing that I do, although it's not, doesn't happen that often. But when it does, I do this every time. Now, if somebody like unleashes their anger on me, like unnecessarily, which happens in life, sometimes people are just upset and they just choose someone to project it onto.

Now I flip it immediately. This is like a new practice I have. So I had someone get angry around Valentine's Day this year, and then I immediately sent a text of Happy Valentine's Day to every single person I love. Which they might have. Some of them might've been surprised by, because it's not like I have a romantic relationship with them, but I still felt amazing after I did that.

And I realized, oh, that's what I can do every time now. If somebody just unleashes negativity, purely 'cause they don't want it anymore and they wanna let it go, I don't have to take it. And the quickest way to not take it and not be like, oh, poor me. Oh, why is this happening? And then now you're feeling it.

The quickest way to not do that is you just basically let it bounce right off because you immediately, like an alchemist turn it into positivity. So that's a good practice too. Ooh, I love that. I think I feel like somebody at home just went, okay, I have my new thing. Out of all the things they're yeah, it's it's protective is what it is.

It's okay, I'm not gonna house this. I have sympathy for the person who needed to do that, and I'm happy they feel better now, but I don't have to hold onto it. It feels like it would be very cleansing too. Yes. For sure. Oh my goodness. Okay. Last bit comes from my journaling practice where I encourage those who do it to look back on the day before and spot the joy, goodness and growth that is planted there.

So where are you spotting joy these days? What's bringing you joy and joy? I always say joy is like from the heart up, right? It's usually something that makes you smile, laugh out loud, like all the things what's bringing you joy these days? I can tell you, I don't think she would be upset that I did this, but the other day I got I got a thank you note in the mail from our Kim Baker at Modern.

Oh yeah. And she had just given, she had taught a tutorial on painting sunflowers. And I agreed to do it because I thought at first it was like I wanna be supportive of the prairies. Yeah. But then as I was doing it, I was like, oh my God, I'm so happy I'm doing this. 'cause I'm an artist. It's something that's gone dormant inside of me as I've pursued the writing part more.

And I was like, this is the happiest I've been and like so long, I'm so happy I'm painting sunflowers with the three of you. And in the card was, she had found this little picture of Bob Ross, the painter from tv and I can't remember what he said painting should be shared with others or, some funny, like Bob Ross quote.

And I laughed out loud. It brought me so much joy. 'cause I had made a joke when we were doing the painting session where I called her Bob Ross. So that's what she saying. Oh. But then I read her card and her card said it was thanking me for my teaching and for my friendship. And the card said that I helped her see the good in other people.

And I just started crying. And that's another kind of joy, right? Like where you feel, I immediately messaged her and I thanked her and I said, you really made me feel seen. Because that is, to me, if I help other people see the good in other people, that's like. My greatest gift. So if I've been successful at that, that brings me so much joy.

Oh my gosh. So good. Okay, second one is goodness. So goodness is deeper than joy, right? I think it's housed in the heart center. It's really something that you would list on a gratitude journal. What do you, where are you experiencing? Goodness. This, you mean this heart center? Yes. That's what this is the degree of entry heart.

I got this in New Mexico. I love that. This is my talisman, this is my main symbol of the bucket list of my dad's and writing the book. I would hold onto it while I was writing. Yeah, I had a, I on a lark. I went to see a psychic when I was starting my book. I had never done that before.

I was very afraid of writing. And she's you have to write this book because other people have had your experience, but you're able to find the words for it. And she said to me that she saw a green aura around me, and she said it was my heart chakra, which is where the good, like you said, where goodness lives.

And she's you need to tend to this. And it was so funny that that's what she said. 'cause like that's, those are the words that you use. And she was right. I needed to, I think I think that your question was where am I experiencing that goodness in my life? Yeah. Yeah. Everywhere. I guess and it's so weird 'cause I woke up this morning and I was thinking to myself, for some reason my brain flashed back to living in New York City when I was 27.

And I worked at the Associated Press. And I was thinking back to gosh, I felt so important when I was doing that. Oh, what a valuable life I lead because I'm succeeding at these big, like working for these big news organizations and I must be, I must matter. 'Cause I'm doing something so big and so important.

And then it suddenly hit me like, what am I doing now? I'm not doing anything like that now. I freelance still, I freelance for magazines like GQ and w and I used to work for people, like I'm still at these places, but it's not my identity anymore and it's not my full-time work. And my full-time work now I think is writing and teaching and that's a much better, for me anyway, that's a much better channel for expressing goodness.

It's more immediate for me. And I'm very grateful for that. And who cares whether other people deem that the same level of importance. It's important to me. Yes. Okay. So the last one is growth. And you said something earlier about paying attention to the small signs. And that's the reason I do this, a part of my daily journaling practice is because growth happens in tiny little shoots.

Oh. Every single day. And so if we're not seeing the signs, then we are thinking that we're not making progress. So where are you experiencing growth these days? Where are you feeling it? Where are you seeing it? I think it's when I'm with my nieces and nephews. My mom told me yesterday I'm gonna try not to cry saying this, but we just had a birthday party, an 80th birthday party for my stepdad, and my mom told me she felt touched, watching me with my nephew.

And I was like oh, Ben's my little buddy. That's just normal to me that I would be drawing with him and making books with him. And I was like, yeah, that's just what I draw and I write. So kids are drawn to that. But when she said that, it hit me like, oh, you know what? Like it's Mother's day and my mom is telling me this and I don't have my, like kids of my own, but maybe that's how I'm a mother.

And maybe the fact that these children like clamor to do that with me. If there's a family get together, they're like where's Aunt Lar? Maybe that's valuable. And maybe I am helping raise them as well, and that's who I'm supposed to be. That's the crazy part. Like how many women who don't have children let themselves feel like they're somehow different and they missed something.

When really you could find growth in recognizing the role that you're playing is so important. Yeah. Because we need more than just a mother and a father to or two moms, or two fathers. We need more than that to raise children. It takes a village. It takes a village. I'm, I am blessed with a really great friend tribe.

And they could say things to my kids. That I could say, and my kids wouldn't listen, but they could turn around and say the same thing. Yeah. And yeah. Yeah, having those outside voices is so important. And so being that outside voice is so huge, it's oh, there's a consensus. Okay.

I better listen then. Yes. Oh wait, yeah. No, I still don't think they recognize that I said it, but yeah. Oh, that's okay. Credit. Yeah, exactly. I don't care. As long as they did it, that's all that mattered to me. Laura, thank you so much for coming on today. This was so awesome. Tell people how they can find you, follow you by your books, all the things.

Sure. My website is by laura carney.com. That's your easiest way. That's where you can find links to buy my book, my Father's List. Also I'm My Father's List on Instagram. And if you want to come join Modern Prairie with Carrie and me. Yes, I teach the Pioneer Project. It's just a little Conestoga wagon symbol on there right now, so come join us.

It's really fun. Yes I, we didn't talk about this in the beginning, but Laura and I met through Modern Prairie, which you if you're following along, is Melissa Gilbert's brand. And it's just the most amazing, positive, encouraging environment for women. So if you're not on the app, go check it out.

I'll make sure to put all of that in the show notes as well, of course, with Laura's links, et cetera. But everybody, thank you for listening to the podcast today. I sincerely hope this episode has inspired you to, gosh, take hold of the fun in your life today and maybe make your own list in order to live out your best well tended life.

Until next time, y'all blessings and blooms. Thank you, Laura. Thank you.

 Oh my goodness, y'all, that was so good. Don't forget to check the show notes for my favorite Heart Tap moments from this episode. What is a heart tap? Whenever I read, listen to a podcast or watch a speaker, I'm always on the lookout for those like head bob, heart tap, and aha moments. You know what I'm talking about.

These are the things that cause your head to Bob, an agreement, your heart to make that tap. When a much needed word of wisdom comes along or your soul to scream, aha, that was the word I was looking for. So for each episode, I like to share a few of my heart taps in the show notes with you, but I'm curious.

What are your heart tap moments? From today's episode? Run on over and direct. Message me your favorite moments, questions, heart taps, and more over at Instagram or Facebook today. And if you are inspired by this episode or maybe learn something new, make sure to share this show with a friend or post about it in your stories.

Finally. Could you do one more favor for me today? Will you take a minute and hop on over to Apple Podcast and leave a kind and thoughtful review for the Well Tinder Live podcast. This is how people find us, and every positive review helps to unlock the door for someone else to get in on the magic life.

Tending to thank you again for listening and being a part of this well-attended life community. And until next time, y'all blessings and blooms.